My latest plan is to rewrite underperforming and sloppy English on websites. And get paid lavishly for it.

Many websites are nice in technical design, but clumsy in expression.

No surprise there.

The capacity of people in the UK to write sharp, accurate English is plummeting. Good grammar and good writing are not taught and emphasised in schools to a high enough degree. And the marks taken off work for sloppy writing and poor expression edge down.

This is a truly amazing ‘deep’ phenomenon. Almost everything we make gets better and cheaper. How/why in fact are standards edging downwards in this horrible self-reinforcing way, so that there is no real capacity to expect and enforce higher and higher writing standards so that crass elementary errors invade all sorts of unexpected places?

Take this example: so dismal on so many levels that it is almost unbelievable.

If there is one comparative advantage we Brits have in the current world it is the English language, a peerless tool for accurate and subtle communication. Yet our education system inexorably devalues it.

Remember this example from an Oxford English graduate FCO fast streamer?

Anyway, there is an elite linguistic SWAT force ready to do what it can to help, namely at least one ex-Ambassador who has spent decades churning out top calibre prose of all sorts of shapes and sizes:

·         “outstanding work as speech-writer in Planning Staff, much applauded by Ministers”
·         “fabulously readable and interesting analysis, with practical application … just about the best scenesetter [No10 staff] have ever seen”  
·         “one of the few truly original thinkers in my time [in the FCO] – at his best on pungent analysis and stylish, warm-hearted influencing"
·         “acrobatic and eye-catching in his use of language”.

So, o world, groaning under the burden of awful English, when you need your website language sharpened up to fine and speedy effect, you know where to find the help you need.