Re: Taxi driver's
- From: Leslie Danks <leslie.danks@xxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 31 May 2008 16:52:13 +0200
John Dean wrote:
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?
Perhaps one should search Google for traffic accidents involving
greengrocers van's.
--
Les
.
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- Taxi driver's
- From: John Dean
- Taxi driver's
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