Thursday 22 September 2011

Getting away with murder

Spotted by Pavlov's Cat at the BBC:

A Durham Police spokesman said:

"From our initial investigations it appears that about 9.30am, Mr Jameson has* left his home to tend to his cattle on his parents' farm. At about 4.35pm, having had no contact, co-workers have searched the farm area and have located him lying trapped beneath his quad bike on a steep and boggy hillside. It appears that while negotiating the very steep incline, the quad bike has* overturned and landed on top of him."

The hillside is not visible from the roadside, police said. Officers are working with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to investigate what the spokesman described as a "tragic accident."


It appears that cows were not taken in for questioning.

* The use of the present perfect ("has left") instead of the past perfect ("had left") really annoys me, and it is becoming more and more widely used. In the sentences quoted, simply saying "Mr Jameson left" or "the quad bike overturned" would have been better anyway.

8 comments:

Pavlov's Cat said...

Shouldn't it be 'whilst' and not 'while' as well

Ta for the mention

wv. drampyra - a vampyre that sucks your whisky?

Mark Wadsworth said...

PC, "while" means "at the same time as" and "whilst" means "even though", so that usage is correct.

Funnily enough, my former employer wrote a reference letter for somebody saying "Whilst he worked here, he was capable and honest..." which I thought was hilariously funny.

Pavlov's Cat said...

Are you sure? the OED defines Whilst as 'During that time or meanwhile'.

So just an older version of 'while' (Although I thought it was a past tense of while)

Although Wikitionary defines it as a pendantic or pompous version of while.

As I am both, I shall continue to use it

dearieme said...

Do you think that the irksome use of the perfect rather than the pluperfect can be related to the "footballer's present", the tense a footballer uses when being interviewed about the match while being invited to watch a replay. He then says "I get the ball from Giggsy, and I'm beating my man, and I give the goalie the eyes and I stick it in the bottom corner", as he watches events in the reconstituted present.

Mark Wadsworth said...

PC, well I'm even more pedantic and pompous than you.

D, I don't mind the footballer's present if it makes the story a bit more exciting. What's far wose is this:

"I've got the ball from Giggsy, I've beaten my man, I've given the goalie the eyes and I've stuck in in the bottom corner"

(which is using present perfect instead of simple past tense, but hey).

Anonymous said...

Hmmm. I'm not so sure in this case. The police spokesman is talking about something happening in the present ("it appears that") and therefore shouldn't something that completed before the time being talked about (which is the present) be talked about in the present perfect?

If he had said, "From our initial investigations it appeared that," then he should have used the past perfect.

Regardless of which, the simple past tense would, as you say, be better anyway.

FrankC said...

For worse examples of what I call the "permanent bloody present" see the BBC news website. "So and so dies in tragic whatever". No you pillocks, it's "So and so died".

Mark Wadsworth said...

FC, that's traditional for newspaper (and website) headlines, isn't it? As long as the article itself uses the past tense, that doesn't bother me.