May I have a word about… Mike Lynch and tech’s ‘trial of the century’

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2019/mar/31/may-i-have-a-word-about-mike-lynch-techs-trial-of-the-century

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You come across some phrases that are so toe-curlingly vile, obnoxious and just plain wrong that they make you blench. One such occurred in a report on the continuing case between Mike Lynch and Hewlett-Packard, which I’m sure has you on the edge of your seat.

Said report contained the following: “Lynch founded software company Autonomy in 1996, which went on to become one of the UK’s tech darlings, based out of Cambridge.” Why in God’s name should a phrase such as “based out of” be allowed to pollute all that is great and good about the English language? “Based in” suffices. I suppose I should be grateful that Autonomy wasn’t headquartered there, but the damage has already been done.

I have long and vehemently argued against mobile phones and their ubiquity, contending that they fry users’ brains, make their hair fall out and cause them to talk drivel; they have also led to an inexorable rise in antisocial behaviour. Now I learn about warnings against their use when putting petrol in your car at a garage, for fear of causing “incendive sparking”.

This warning comes courtesy of the UK Petroleum Industry Association, which is the mouthpiece of “the UK downstream oil industry”, so I assume it knows whereof it speaks. So if you want to blow yourself up when bunging in the unleaded, go ahead. You have been warned.

On to happier matters. I could have sworn I heard a Tory MP on the Today programme, the morning after Theresa May’s offer to stand down, describe the whole Brexit imbroglio as “monumentous”. What a wonderful word and if she didn’t say it, then I claim paternity.

After the ghastliness at the top of the column, let me finish with an altogether more felicitous offering, from Heinrich Böll’s novel, The Train Was on Time, about a young German soldier going to the Eastern Front in the Second World War.

“Galicia, a dark word, a terrible word, and yet a splendid word. It sounded something like a knife cutting very quietly ... Galicia ... ” Bloody good stuff.