I have been quietly pestering the FCO about the spelling mistakes on their many websites. They have responded well to an FOI request about the rules/guidance they put round on website standards, sending me various papers. This guidance is pretty good, apart from one 100% incoherent sentence – just a pity the practice is less than satisfactory.

One of their documents told FCO staff that the guidance was not meant to impose a straight-jacket (sic) on them. The correct spelling of course is strait-jacket. How many people now know that? An untypically literate public school boy whom I met on the stairs at home this morning thought that it must be ‘straight-jacket – "it keeps people straight, unable to move". Sigh.

Also today a proof of an article I have written came back to me. My expression fomenting unrest had been changed to fermenting unrest. Aaargh.

But who these days has heard of fomenting anything? Everyone knows what you mean, so who cares exactly how it’s spelled? 

So strait and foment creep away sadly through the back door to die. And mentee and twonk brashly push their way in through the front door.

Decay? Or democracy?

Both?