DAZED AND CONFUSED
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Ever since The Independent Magazine moved from City Road, I have harboured a lingering suspicion that the Weasel may not be a Weasel. Having read his fascinating account of the British oven that is, as he puts it, "our sole contribution to international space research at the turn of the millennium" (Up & Down Canary Wharf, 28 January), I now feel sure that a distant, and, I suspect much younger, relative has taken up his pen.
The first inkling comes in the third paragraph, which opens "Not me, pal". What grammatical and stylistic solecisms are there! "Pal" is bad enough, but "not me"? As if that were not sufficient, later on, in the same paragraph, we are treated to "Nope". My dictionary - Oxford, naturally - dismisses it cursorily as colloquial. My computer spellcheck - American, regrettably - desperately offers a string of alternatives, including "nome". Nome?
The weasel, and I am deliberately avoiding the use of a capital, may well be as entertaining as his predecessor, but he lacks the delight- ful sense of stuffiness and pomposity which was the hallmark of a meticulous style which must have come from years of intensive study of Livy and Macaulay.
Perhaps what we now have is a cousin of the weasel, a stoat. And as an old countryman once said, "They are weasily distinguished because they are stoatally different."
alan mcmurray
Loughborough, Leicestershire
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments