Oh, bottoms. It’s fixed!
I was just about to spread the news!
They would probably just make themselves exempt from the law.
Any evidence that I committed a crime is obviously fabricated by people who wish me, a politician, ill.
Doesn’t being Right just feel so much sweeter than being correct?
(You don’t have to like ‘architect’ being a verb; but it was being one often enough that the second edition of the OED, issued in 1989, presumably much of the work done before then, recognized it as such. At the descriptive level, the battle is long over. At the prescriptive level, the ‘battle’ is just people swooning about their precious prejudices, and largely irrelevant.)
There was an MP for Devizes
Whose brain lobes were of different sizes.
One was so small
It was no brain at all
But the other one won several prizes.
(With apologies to James Herriot.)
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Surely if he sued her, he would cease to be anonymous? Perhaps he has more money riding on remaining “Guido Fawkes” than having a go at some idiot.
You’re correct that it’s pedantry, but it’s still pretty clunky usage (whether it’s in the dictionary or not) to say someone architected a plan. Being technically permissible and being appropriate are two different things. You’ve also confused the fact that it gets used frequently in computer development circles (specifically about the design of computer components/software) with the idea that it’s generally used to refer to anything involving computers (such as a government policy aimed at regulating the internet).
Anyway, back on topic, as much as I reached for my pitchfork as soon as I heard about the ‘default-on’ porn blocker, Guido Fawkes is such a populist, rabble rousing cretin that I think he’s the greater evil here. As the discussion about “architected” proves, sometimes you can be right for the wrong reasons.
They are already exempt - if they say it in Parliament. Which is why saying it on Twitter was so stupid.
“David Cameron’s idiotic national porno firewall plan.”
This is a bit of a hysterical characterisation of Cameron’s plan. It’s really just an [idiotic] automatically-opt-people-in-to-existing-ISP-content-filters plan.
It’s a ‘nudge’ measure, like making the organ donor register opt-out instead of opt-in.
He isn’t anonymous. His name is Paul Staines.
Are they completely exempt from slander laws if they say things in parliament? I thought that exception only protected you from slandering other members of parliament, not from standing up and accusing random members of the public of criminal actions.
Alright, you got me on the computer thing - the word would only be appropriate there if she had actually designed the firewall, not if she simply proposed the plan (and she clearly lacks the facility to design such a thing). I have been caught playing a dirty trick when I could have just relied on the fact that several dictionaries define it as a verb meaning to design or orchestrate.
But when you say it is a clunky usage, and imply that it isn’t “appropriate”, are you really saying anything more than “I don’t like that?”
(On topic, I have never heard of Guido Fawkes before this story and have no opinion of him, but feel very strongly that members of parliament be forced to adhere strictly to the law so I would be happy to see a libel suit)
Parliamentary privilege only applies to statements made during a Parliamentary session, AFAIK.
OK, this changes things a bit. He looks like evil-timeline Paul Staines.
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