Working for the BBC’s “Have Your Say” site is a position to aspire to. On the one hand, you are trying to stop the plague of racist, vacant armchair generals spreading their hatewords. And on the other hand, you are trying to promote the independent, unbisased journalism that has made the BBC a household name worldwide.

At least, that’s what you’d think.

Two examples of how this is not the case come in the forms of ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com - “A collection of ignorance, narcissism, stupidity, hypocrisy and bad grammar” that are comments taken from the site, and NewSniffer.co.uk - a site that dsiaplys comments that have been censored, and tracks changes to BBC articles. The ‘Recommended Revisions’ section shows that many article updates have a different agenda to the average typo corrections you’d expect.

This isn’t even a spoof. I’m not sure how useful these idioms would actually be to someone learning English. I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of them actually being used in everyday conversation. “The Teacher” (as he is known) has recently won an award for innovation from the English-Speaking Union. Top marks.