Are you an illiterate twat?

ACCORDING to Stanley Johnson, most Britons lack the literacy to spell ‘Pinocchio’. Do you mangle the English language and earn the prime minister’s dad’s contempt? 

You have a guess at words

Despite having access to a spellcheck and the whole internet you just have a vague stab at spelling words, resulting in painful attempts like ‘inditchiness population’, and then add ‘(?)’ to further insult the reader.

Your spelling undermines every point you make

When you’re going off on a political rant in the MailOnline comments, nobody will bother to follow your conspiracy theory about both parties’ leaders being Russian puppets when you spell them ‘Borris Jonston’ and ‘Jeromy Corbin’. Shame, you were really onto something.

You get familiar figures of speech wrong

Are your emails littered with malapropisms like ‘fly in the oinkment’ and ‘let’s talk pacfics’? There is a reason for this – you only read rubbish online, not proper books where people use the phrases correctly. Even a Jack Reacher novel would help.

The old ‘their, they’re and there’ trichotomy

Look, it takes about 15 minutes on the aforementioned internet to clear up this baffling homophonic puzzle. ‘There going to Chester Zoo on Saturday if they’re car is fixed’ is, frankly, just agonising.

You still communicate in txt-spk

If you are applying for a job with sentences like ‘OMG wud luv 2 work here!!!’ in your covering letter you may not get the job, although your future boss may also be an illiterate twat and will reply: ‘Gr8 2 hav u on bord.’

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How to blame a bloke who left nine years ago for you being crap at your job, by Boris Johnson

HELLO. You’ve probably noticed, over the last nine years, how pretty much everything has gone wrong. The funny thing is, absolutely none of it is my fault. 

It would be easy to think it was, based purely on the coincidence that it’s been nine years and a handful of copper change since the Conservatives took power. But it would also be lazy and wrong.

Because – and this is the bit you can do in your jobs – it wasn’t me. It was the person who left nine years ago whose mess I’ve been clearing up ever since.

Cast your mind back. Past May, who already you can barely remember. Past girly-whirly swot Cameron, who probably should take some of the blame but then people might remember my role in it.

Remember a grouchy man, sullen, Scottish, mean with money? Remember the name Gordon Brown? Well, actually it was him?

‘Who he?’ I hear you cry. Exactly. He’s been gone so long no one can remember a flying fiddle about him. This is why he’s so easy to blame, because he’s as distant and confused a memory as the pop hits of the Black Eyed Peas.

You can do the same. Say something like, ‘Remember Bob? He set up these procedures.  I know I’ve had nine years to change it and now it’s obsolete and everyone who has worked on it between now and then has screwed it up, but really it’s all Bob’s fault.’

And if you subsequently realise that doesn’t sound very convincing, who gives a toss? I don’t.