Friday, April 11, 2014

Somebody's not doing their job properly

I'm not going to add to the brouhaha about former Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr's newly published memoirs, in which, among other things, he complained about the lack of subtitles on an opera video he was watching on an international flight. Thankfully, not all Arts graduates are as haughty as Bob Carr.

No, I'm going to pick a bone with Telegraph journalist Andrew Carswell, who wrote that Carr compared his memoirs to those of former US Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Alexander Hague (sic). This is the sort of sloppy mistake that a university political science student would be marked down for, and shows how important careful proof reading is. 

It appears that Mr Carswell is getting his wires crossed, confusing Alexander Haig and William Hague. Alexander Haig served as Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1982. William Hague has been British Foreign Secretary under Prime Minister David Cameron since 2010.

He could have avoided this mistake by interrogating Google, Wolfram Alpha, or his preferred search engine. I find these things amusing, so I couldn't resist writing about it.

http://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Parliamentarian?MPID=wx4

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/bob-carr-says-he-wears-titles-such-as-tosser-and-firstclass-snob-as-a-badge-of-honour/story-fni0cx4q-1226879884077

https://www.gov.uk/government/people/william-hague

http://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/haig-alexander-meigs


1 comment:

Scottyboy said...

Yes. I remember lecturers and tutors impressing upon us, the importance of proof reading, and cross checking information when researching facts.