{"id":1243,"date":"2006-05-08T14:14:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-08T14:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/05\/08\/114709449539548991\/"},"modified":"2006-11-28T14:06:08","modified_gmt":"2006-11-28T14:06:08","slug":"blair-grammar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/05\/blair-grammar\/","title":{"rendered":"Blair and grammar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The importance of grammar, part 4,673: At <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk_politics\/4750191.stm\">today&#8217;s press conference<\/a> (amid much guff), Tony Blair commented on the 7th July bombings:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;He said he knew of &#8216;nothing that would indicate [the security services] should have known or been able to prevent the attacks&#8221;&#8216;&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which, of course, strictly speaking means he knew of nothing that would indicate the security services should have been able to prevent the attacks. So if the security services don&#8217;t need the ability to protect us from terrorists, why the need for all this new, intrusive legislation, eh?<\/p>\n<p>(And here the pedantry ends, for the time being &#8211; although I might ask why, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk_politics\/4750397.stm\">if Jack Straw&#8217;s Foreign Office policies won&#8217;t change under Margaret Beckett<\/a>, there was any need to remove him? Couldn&#8217;t she, as &#8220;a safe pair of hands&#8221; &#8211; despite the lack of evidence of this from her time at DEFRA &#8211; equally tackle Lords Reform, Straw&#8217;s supposed new task as Leader of the Commons?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The importance of grammar, part 4,673: At today&#8217;s press conference (amid much guff), Tony Blair commented on the 7th July bombings: &#8220;He said he knew of &#8216;nothing that would indicate [the security services] should have known or been able to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/05\/blair-grammar\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blair","category-london-terror-attacks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}