We are constantly being told by Gordon (is a moron) Brown and his herd of anally retentive sycophants that our education system is in perfectly good hands with them.

As I have said before, and will continue to do so until someone convinces me otherwise What a load of old shoe menders! I find myself being increasingly dismayed by the command of the English language not only displayed by the 'yoof' of today but also by people, by dint of whose qualifications and position, one would expect far better literacy skills.

I now cite two examples.

The first is from a person who emailed me. Theoretically they have no small level of technical ability but who consistently spells "Zero" as "Zerow" and the word "Noise" as "Noice".

They write: I have thinking about somthing and now i must ask, ....Than i turn off my RF-GAIN fully anti-clockwise i still got a weak noice in my speaker, is whis normal .. ? Or should it be all quiet if i pull down the RF-GAIN to zerow?.

Now OK I understand the question but is that really sufficient?

Secondly there is this bizarre need for some people to write in a mishmosh of upper and lower case letters, with no punctuation and atrocious spelling.

As per this example from a drumming forum I belong to.

MaN ! these is aweSomE..i MeAN a lot of this stuFf...u dont get it frOM nowherE !!....

juSt... i'd like tO asK....

what's the link or cnnectioN betweeN... the size of the stick + thE strength in yoUr aRm + the technique....i meAN... there Are a loT of diFferent opinioNs ... buT i feel more comfortable...if you guys aswer it!

ThanKs

I find it unlikely that this style is purely for visual effect in emails and on the web. I cannot believe that this is not how the author writes with pen and paper - assuming he (she?) ever does.

But why the constant case shifting? What does it prove or improve? To my mind nothing whatsoever.

Basic literacy and numeracy skills seem increasingly unimportant to the educational and governmental establishment. This is despite many of the heads of large business institutions bemoaning the fact that they are having to send even their graduate level new employees on basic literacy and numeracy courses before they can fulfil the role for which they have been employed.

What bothers me is that if they are employing the graduate cream so to speak and still needing to educate further, what the hell are rest of the bunch like?

So Mr Brown please remove your head from it's present location inserted up your fundament, stop singing "La La La I can't hear you" and start taking notice.

I realise that you only need to make an X on your ballot sheet to vote in the next lot of losers but if the voter can't read, the scriptive ability to make an X really isn't going to help you too much now is it?