04 June, 2010
Roboblogging
I check out Lancaster Unity, the blog of the Lancaster branch of the UAF, most days. Like Stormfront UK Newslinks, which I read equally regularly, it is quite an effective news aggregation site within its field of interest. Let the massed ranks of the fascists and the anti-fascists do the hard work of trawling the Internong for items of potential interest, I say. And on quiet days, LU can be relied on to bring us yet another breathless report, usually penned by Ketlan or Denise eux-mêmes, foretelling the imminent collapse of the BNP or, for a bit of variety, the EDL.
But I do wonder if Ketlan ever bothers to read the articles he reposts. Today he replicates this bit of fatuous cultural ignorance from the Toronto Globe & Mail, in which Russell Smith reveals to us a startling neologism among the skinhead chav thugs of the EDL. Apparently, "to sort", a chipper little British colloquialism meaning to achieve a satisfactory and congenial resolution to something, now in the hands of the EDL carries the sinister overtone "to beat up".
Just a minute, Sunshine, I've been speaking British English for the best part of 60 years and "to sort", or more commonly "to sort out", has carried among other senses the colloquial interpretation "to resolve a confrontation, antagonism or disagreement through aggressive action or violence" for as long as I can remember. It isn't a particular in-group idiom of the EDL that you can point out as symptomatic.
It gets a bit desperate sometimes, all this stuff, doesn't it? During the run-up to the recent rather curious general election in the UK, one of the provincial rags, I forget which one, came up with a shock-horror story about the BNP. The kernel of the story, the hook which justified its publication in the Borsetshire Badger Botherer & Pothole Recorder, was shocking further evidence of the knuckledragging ignorance and illiteracy of the neo-Nazi scum brought to a horrified readership: in an election pamphlet several pages in length, someone had written "your" where they should have written "you're".
As the poet Littlejohn never tires of saying, you couldn't make it up.
But I do wonder if Ketlan ever bothers to read the articles he reposts. Today he replicates this bit of fatuous cultural ignorance from the Toronto Globe & Mail, in which Russell Smith reveals to us a startling neologism among the skinhead chav thugs of the EDL. Apparently, "to sort", a chipper little British colloquialism meaning to achieve a satisfactory and congenial resolution to something, now in the hands of the EDL carries the sinister overtone "to beat up".
Just a minute, Sunshine, I've been speaking British English for the best part of 60 years and "to sort", or more commonly "to sort out", has carried among other senses the colloquial interpretation "to resolve a confrontation, antagonism or disagreement through aggressive action or violence" for as long as I can remember. It isn't a particular in-group idiom of the EDL that you can point out as symptomatic.
It gets a bit desperate sometimes, all this stuff, doesn't it? During the run-up to the recent rather curious general election in the UK, one of the provincial rags, I forget which one, came up with a shock-horror story about the BNP. The kernel of the story, the hook which justified its publication in the Borsetshire Badger Botherer & Pothole Recorder, was shocking further evidence of the knuckledragging ignorance and illiteracy of the neo-Nazi scum brought to a horrified readership: in an election pamphlet several pages in length, someone had written "your" where they should have written "you're".
As the poet Littlejohn never tires of saying, you couldn't make it up.
# posted by Edwin Greenwood @ 12:08 
