At Least Someone Cares About Grammar

Revealed: Self-styled 'grammar vigilante' corrects badly punctuated shop signs in dead of night

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The anonymous crusader roams Bristol at night with the 'Apostrophiser' - a long-handled tool he created to reach the highest signs CREDIT: BBC POINTS WEST/SWNS

•  Harry Yorke, online education editor 

3 APRIL 2017 • 9:39PM

Aself-styled ‘grammar vigilante’ has revealed that he has spent years changing offending shop signs in the dead of night.

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Wielding an ‘apostrophiser’ – a broom handle laden with two sponges and a number of stickers – the man has corrected tens of missing and misplaced apostrophes on shop banners across Bristol over the past 13 years.

The pedant, who is yet to reveal his identity, claims his efforts are needed to bring an end to the improper use of English. But critics suggest he should start with his own name – as apostrophes are strictly a matter of punctuation rather than grammar.

• Vogue

People might say what I am doing is wrong, but it is more of a crime to have the apostrophes wrong in the first placethe self-styled grammar vigilante

“I’m a grammar vigilante,” he told the BBC. “I do think it’s a cause worth pursuing. I have felt extremely nervous. The heart has been thumping.”

He claims to visit different high streets across the city, using a trestle for the harder-to-reach banners in order to make good on his name.

One of his most recent corrections was to Cambridge Motor’s garage, where an errant apostrophe in ‘Motor’s’ had annoyed him for years. It isn’t the first time the vehicle repairs service has suffered at his hands.

Paul, who manages Cambridge Motor’s, said he caught the man in the act more than two years ago, when he was seen attempting to scrub out an apostrophe on a sign that read “Keys and letter’s through here”.

One of the signs corrected by Bristol’s anonymous grammar vigilante CREDIT: BBC POINTS WEST/SWNS

“We put up a sign and I caught him at the front attempting to scrub off permanent marker,” he told The Telegraph.

“I said to him, ‘What are you doing?’ and he said, ‘You’ve got a rogue apostrophe there’. He was a middle-aged bloke, he obviously lives locally and it’s just his pastime.”

While Paul is more than happy for the grammarian to point out mistakes, many are less receptive.

Jason Singh, 42, who owns the tailors Tux & Tails, claims that he potentially faces paying thousands of pounds for his sign to be corrected.

Another rogue apostrophe covered up CREDIT: BBC POINTS WEST/SWNS

The issue, the omission of an apostrophe in “Gentlemens”, has been corrected with what appears to be two blobs of paint, or stickers, that do not sit well with the newly-fitted vinyl.

“I did take it lightly at first, but now I’m a little angry to be honest,” he said. “We think it’s paint, and this is vinyl, so if we have to replace it you’re looking at a few thousand pounds. I understand, but at the end of the day I’d have preferred him to come in and tell me.

"I think it could be considered rather rude. I think there might even be grounds for a police complaint, and if his name is revealed, I’ll be sending him an invoice for the damages.”

Tux and Tails - one of the shops targetted by Bristol's grammar vigilante CREDIT: SWNS

However, the vigilante has defended the legality of his work, telling reporters that some of the mistakes he redresses are “just wrong” and that “it’s more of a crime to have apostrophes wrong in the first place”.

Melania Branton, a poet from North Somerset, said that whoever the ‘grammar vigilante’ turns out to be “must be wincing at the misnomer, as punctuation isn’t grammar”.

Meanwhile, Peter Barker, the chairman of the Queen’s English Society, added: “I don’t disapprove of his motives; in fact, I can see why he would be frustrated. Whether or not I would be going about his business late at night is another matter, however.”

A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police said the force was unaware of any complaints being lodged, but any permanent damage caused could provide grounds for police intervention.

Immigrants In This Country Are NO Longer Assimilating Into The Greater Society!

From Conservatives United:

Is the U.S. an English-Speaking Country? Read This Before You Answer.

•  FEATURED, IDEALS, NEWS
•  ECONOMY, ENGLISH LANGUAGE, GREAT RECESSION, IMMIGRATION

Most of us think of the United States as an English-speaking country, but a recent study tells a different story. The study, conducted by The Center for ImmigrationStudies and based on U.S Census Bureau data, found 64 million – or 1 in 5 – people living in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home. Forty-four percent of those, 27.2 million, were born in America.

Steven Camarota, research director for CIS, believes the report demonstrates the United States’s immigration system is failing in assimilating the more than one million people who come to this country through legal channels. He also blames the Obama administration for tolerating the surge of illegal immigrants passing through our borders. Said Camarota:

It is important to understand that the enormous growth in foreign language use reflects past policy decisions. Allowing in over one million new legal immigrants a year and to a lesser extent tolerating illegal immigration has important implications for preserving a common language. For too long we have given little consideration to whether continuing this level of immigration, mostly legal, hinder the assimilation of immigrants and their children.

Seven languages were cited in the study as being spoken at home by over a million people each. Most commonly used is Spanish, with 38.4 million speakers. Second is Chinese, with 3 million people. 1.6 million people use Tagalong, the national Philippines language. Vietnamese is fourth, with 1.4 million speakers. French is fifth, with 1.3 million, and tied for sixth place with 1.1 million speakers each are Arabic and Korean.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates most of the more than a million people admitted into the U.S. every year legally come from non-English speaking countries such as Mexico, countries in Central and South America and in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. An earlier CIS study reported 2.5 million immigrants come from “predominantly Muslim countries.” There has also been considerable growth in the number of immigrants from Asia, the Caribbean, and the Americas.

In addition to threatening the use of English as our national language, immigration is hurting the American economy. A previous report by CIS, written by Camarota and Karen Zeigler, says:

Government data show that since 2000 all of the net gain in the number of working-age (16 to 65) people holding a job has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal). This is remarkable given that native-born Americans accounted for two-thirds of the growth in the total working-age population. Though there has been some recovery from the Great Recession, there were still fewer working-age natives holding a job in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000, while the number of immigrants with a job was 5.7 million above the 2000 level.

No Way Will President, Senate Or House Members Ever Send Nugent's Letter To Mexico.

Amazing Letter form Ted Nugent to Obama, Senate and Congress

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Jul 21, 2014

43 21296

From Ted Nugent’s Facebook page:

Thanx alot US government numb-nuts. We went from the last best place to the dumbest fkn idiots on planet earth. How else can you xplain that we are the ONLY country in the world that has abandoned the very foundation of what makes a country a country. Obama you dumb mthrfkr you!

Dear Mr. Obama, Senate and Congress:

I’m planning to move my family and extended family into Mexico for my health, and I would like to ask you to assist me.

We’re planning to simply walk across the border from the U.S. into Mexico, and we’ll need your help to make a few arrangements.

We plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports, immigration quotas and laws.

I’m sure they handle those things the same way you do here. So, would you mind telling your buddy, the President of Mexico, that I’m on my
way over?

Please let him know that I will be expecting the following:

1. Free medical care for my entire family.
2. English-speaking Government bureaucrats for all services I might need, whether I use them or not.
3. Please print all Mexican Government forms in English.
4. I want my grandkids to be taught Spanish by English-speaking (bi-lingual) teachers.
5. Tell their schools they need to include classes on American culture and history.
6. I want my grandkids to see the American flag on one of the flagpoles at their school.
7. Please plan to feed my grandkids at school for both breakfast and lunch.
8. I will need a local Mexican driver’s license so I can get easy access to government services.
9. I do plan to get a car and drive in Mexico, but I don’t plan to purchase car insurance, and I probably won’t make any special effort to learn local traffic laws.
10. In case one of the Mexican police officers does not get the memo from their president to leave me alone, please be sure that every patrol car has at least one English-speaking officer.
11. I plan to fly the U.S. flag from my housetop, put U.S. flag decals on my car, and have a gigantic celebration on July 4th. I do not want any complaints or negative comments from the locals.
12. I would also like to have a nice job without paying any taxes, or have any labor or tax laws enforced on any business I may start.
13. Please have the president tell all the Mexican people to be extremely nice and never say critical things about me or my family, or about the strain we might place on their economy.
14. I want to receive free food stamps.
15. Naturally, I’ll expect free rent subsidies.
16. I’ll need income tax credits so that although I don’t pay Mexican taxes, I’ll receive money from the government.
17. Please arrange it so that the Mexican Government pays $4,500.00 to help me buy a new car.
18. Oh yes, I almost forgot, please enroll me free into the Mexican Social Security program so that I’ll get a monthly income in retirement.

I know this is an easy request because you already do all these things for all of his people who walk over to the U.S. from Mexico. I am sure that the President of Mexico won’t mind returning the favor if you ask him nicely.

Do you see how stupid this looks when you put it in writing??

Ron Paul Homeschool Curriculum An Alternative To Common Core

Ron Paul: Opt-Out Of Common Core And Opt-In To Pro-Liberty Curriculum

June 23, 2014 by Ron Paul 

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Oklahoma recently took action to protect the state’s children from the Federal education bureaucracy by withdrawing from Common Core. Common Core is the latest attempt to bribe States, with money taken from the American people, into adopting a curriculum developed by Federal bureaucrats and education “experts.” In exchange for Federal funds, States must change their curriculum by, for example, replacing traditional mathematics with “reform math.” Reform math turns real mathematics on its head by focusing on “abstract thinking” instead of traditional concepts like addition and subtraction. Schools must also replace classic works of literature with “informational” texts, such as studies by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Those poor kids!

Oklahoma will likely not be the last state to explicitly ban Common Core, as grassroots opposition to this latest Federal education “reform” scheme continues to grow. While “reform math” and the use of “informational” texts grab headlines and fuel the outrage behind this movement, they are just symptoms of the problem, not the cause. The devil with Common Core lies not in its details but in its underlying principle. That principle is that that DC-based central planners can develop a curriculum suitable for every student. The idea that government “experts” can centrally plan a Nation’s educational system is just as flawed as the idea that government can centrally plan the economy.

One major flaw in a curriculum deigned by central planners for use by all students is that it will likely not be academically rigorous enough to meet the needs of college-bound students. Yet at the same time, “one-size-fits-all” curricula like Common Core offer little to meet the needs of students interested in technical or vocational education opportunities.

Growing dissatisfaction with Common Core and other centralized education schemes is leading an increasing number of parents to pursue alternatives such as homeschooling. Throughout my Congressional career I was a defender of homeschooling. Now that I am out of Congress, I have expanded my work with homeschoolers through my Ron Paul Homeschool Curriculum. The curriculum provides students with a rigorous education in history, math, English, foreign languages, and other subjects. While the curriculum is designed to prepare students for college-level work, students not interested pursing a traditional four-year college degree will also benefit.

The curriculum features three tracks: natural science/math, social sciences/humanities, and business. Students may also take courses in personal finance and public speaking. The curriculum avoids the ideological biases common in public schools; for example, the government and history sections of the curriculum emphasize Austrian economics, libertarian political theory, and the history of liberty.

Students can use the student discussion forums to interact with, learn from, and teach their peers.

One unique feature of the curriculum is that it gives students the opportunity to start their own Internet-based businesses.

The curriculum is free for students from kindergarten through fifth grade. Families above the fifth grade pay $250 a year, plus $50 per course. However, for the next three months, the Ron Paul Home School Curriculum is offering — for non-members only — an online summer school refresher program for students above the fifth grade. For just $25 students can access the curriculum for three months. This is an excellent opportunity for parents to see if my curriculum meets their child’s needs.

If you are a parent dissatisfied with existing education options, I hope you will take advantage of the Ron Paul Curriculum’s summer refresher program and consider opting-out of Common Core and opting-in to the Ron Paul Curriculum.