Warts and all

Angela Rayner, Deputy Leader of the British Labour Party has instructed Hansard to stop correcting her "working class" grammar.

Hansard is in the habit of correcting reports of speeches in the House of Commons. Miss Rayner gives us an example. She said "less" when she should have said "fewer". Quite rightly, she told Hansard it must not, in effect, re-write history by correcting her mistake.

But bad grammar is not necessarily working class and hereditary peers also get corrected by Hansard.

One Edwardian Liberal peer - I used to remember who - praised another politician on his death for being faithful to his wife 'despite her being a woman of no great physical attractions'. The words he used were, in fact, 'a damned ugly old b-tch'. 

I redacted it not because I think the word is a bad one but because of the evil censors.