Misprints of mine that I caught at the last goddamn minute before they got published #3,015

Lord Hunt of Wirral: The regulations impose considerable compliance and time costs on insolvency practitioners. In moist instances, these costs must be borne by the creditors of insolvent companies.

“Self-discovered misprint” hall-of-famer

Sometimes you spot these as you make them; other times it’s when you’re checking your work; occasionally someone finds your mistake before publication; and very occasionally it makes it into the actual book and we have to issue a correction. Many of the misprints I share here are ones that I have caught myself, and although I find it entertaining to envisage an unwary subeditor waving through Lord Elystan-Morgan’s “monumental rats of interest” or Baroness Andrews “meeting neds”, I have to thank my lucky stars not just that I picked this one up today but that anyone did before it snuck into the book. Still, end the year on a high, eh.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Department for Work and Pensions (Lord McKenzie of Luton): The Treasury’s projection is that claimant-cunt unemployment will peak at 1.75 million in mid-2010.

For clarity, that’s a typo of “claimant-count unemployment” rather than a particularly lavish Tourettic typing tic.

Have Your Incoherent Yell

The BBC’s Have Your Say forum has outdone itself with today’s choice of topic. Presumably this is part of a departmental drive to increase web traffic to impress the bosses, but the question amounts to simple trolling. Strap in (steady) for some reasoned debate, everyone.

NB: Sane people are advised not to actually read any of the comments.
Should homosexuals face execution?
Go on then, sample quote:

Can I move to Uganda? At least one country in the world is taking moral values seriously (as well as the health of their citizens). It may sound extreme, but that shock value will allow more people to think about their actions beforehand.

Throwing condoms is not going to solve any problems. Look at the UK--you give out birth control for free and you still have problems with unwanted pregnancies!!

N F, Alberta, Canada

Thanks to the nothing tralala blog for this.

He has a point

Lord James of Blackheath: In 2008 ... I went to work in New York. Each day from my hotel I walked up 47th Street where there is a one-legged ex-Vietnam veteran who sits on the pavement and cleans shoes for $2 a time. He has been there for quite a long time, and I got to know this friendly and talkative guy. I was getting my shoes cleaned by him one day and he said, “You’re in a nice suit but you’re going to burn in eternal hellfire”. I said, “I’m sure I am but not too soon, I hope”. He said, “No sir, you’re going to start burning in eternal hellfire nine weeks tomorrow”. “Really?” I said, “I had hoped for a bit longer than that. Why then?”. He said, “Because Lehman Brothers are going to file for bankruptcy that day. The great fiery jaws of hell are going to open up and suck all you suits down into it”. I would like to know how a one-legged Vietnam vet sitting on 47th Street knows, nine weeks to the day before the event, that Lehman Brothers is going into insolvency when the rest of the financial world appears to live in total ignorance and does nothing about it.