Taxi driver's

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23488559-details/Taxi+driver+banned+from+driving...+because+he+can't+use+apostrophes/article.do

http://tinyurl.com/5zz9yh

"Mr Kirk was a taxi driver in Bournemouth six years ago but had to give it
up because of family commitments. His private-hire licence has since expired
and so he applied to Bournemouth Borough Council for a new one but was told
he would have to take a three-hour test.
It was a GCSE English exam, which consisted of 40 questions covering six
pages. Mr Kirk, a former scaffolder and roofer, got a mark of 60 per cent -
the pass rate was 70.
He said: 'The last time I went to school was 35 years ago and I didn't pass
my exams then. If I couldn't pass them then what chance had I of passing one
now? Most of the questions were, "Where does the apostrophe or semi-colon go
in this sentence?" or, "Here are four sentences but which is the right way
of writing it?"

Good to see standards of grammatical perfection being upheld in the literary
world of taxi-driving. Though if he got 60% he must have muffed 16 questions
and he's got more problems than apostrophes.
Mind you, most of the taxi-drivers I get in Oxford seem to concentrate on
safe and efficient driving rather than checking GCSE papers as they go. How
often, exactly, are written skills required of a hack?
--
John Dean
Oxford


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