Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Yes or no?

My mother was a teacher. She had a habit (and still does) of pulling me up on grammatical errors. A favourite was my misuse of the word 'borrow' when I meant 'lend'.

But one I always got her on is using a double negative. And it's very common. People will often fall into the trap by making a negative statement and then tacking "I don't think" on the end. So what is all this nit-picking about?

A report about Rodney Hide's Regulatory Responsibility left me struggling to draw a conclusion with this statement;

However the commerce select committee said it did not think the bill would not work as it would create legal headaches.

Perhaps we can find out exactly what is happening to this bill today when Rodney takes Leighton Smith's place for the morning as talkback host on NewstalkZB.

For Wellington and Christchurch listeners live-streaming is available here. Select Auckland.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's pretty clear what this means:

the bill will work because it will create legal headaches

although I think "Legal headaches" is a rather vague term for constitution prohibitions against more regulation, legislation, or tax rises

I'm against this legislation on principle: in NZ, parliament is sovereign, unlike in the US or Australia. To make sustainable changes, we need to change the composition of parliament to something that better supports the economy.

MMP has clearly been a disaster - as predicted - on that basis!