Saturday, July 07, 2007

Is there a translator in the house?

We've just spotted something that's been posted on the local Tory ward website for Eltham North that did make us laugh. Actually that's a lie, we didn't laugh at all, in a rare of moment of gratuitous swearing we did in fact exclaim "what the fuck?!" We try to avoid using that word normally but there are limits for all human beings and this was such a moment.

Apparently, the pasted text below is a direct transcript from tape of a Labour councillor's speech in the Council chamber after the Opposition had proposed a motion about reinstating the tidal-flow at the Blackwall Tunnel. If anyone would like to provide a translation for us we'd greatly appreciate it.

"Thank you Mr Mayor. I think I would like to say when Peter Brooks proposed this amendment he rather gave it a quite detailed factual statement by giving all the dates and the figures. I think that shows how honest this Council has been right from the beginning but under the circumstances I think we cannot accept it. That is the reason we are putting up this amendment. Another reason that I see, I have been thinking over, is every day in the newspaper, on the television, environmental impact and all those sort of things. I don’t think it is a rather fair thing to the members what are we going to do about this, environment obviously is an issue on this side. But, what I see people do something, say something else, but that is not on – we need to promote London Transport, we need to work out the other ways of communication on why we need to discourage the ………it is important we [hear] the change before we see anything else to follow."
We believe that the "..." are genuine pauses in the speech rather than ommitted content.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wholeheartedly echo your "WTF?" sentiments!

7:37 pm  
Blogger Jae Kay said...

I cannot understand a sentence of that piece! It reminds me of the type of English you get in those Nigerian scam emails.

8:32 am  
Blogger Major Gripe said...

I think it means "no, and no I don't have any particular reason. I am just untouchable."

10:39 am  
Blogger Neil Reddin said...

It seems the ghost of John Prescott lurks around the Labour group.

12:30 pm  
Blogger Inspector Sands said...

Neil, I'd hope the parties are more coherent. Instead, they sit on their hands.

1:56 am  

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