Here’s the story: inspired by a picture of rabid racist politician, the late Enoch Powell, on a pogo stick, a high school kid wrote to hundreds of British politicians to see if they’d been photographed doing equally silly things. He got more than 80 replies, some with pictures. He’s set up a website to collate the results.
Very entertaining. Personally, I would have paid good money to see Enoch Powell on a stick when he was alive.
Who’d have thought it – Jim Callaghan a sk8rboi? Apparently not even Jim himself. But I was shocked to hear that Norman Tebbit has never been on a bicycle; was that not a family tradition amongst the Tebbits?
Margaret Thatcher seems to be having fun… maybe not as much fun as the guy sitting behind her, though 
I find it hard to believe that that media-whore Jeffrey Archer hasn’t been photographed doing at least one of those activities listed.
He couldn’t possibly be lying could he??? 
And looking further I’m bloody impressed that Teddy Taylor managed to blame silly photos of Politicians on the EU!
Damn Europeans…
Archer? Lying? No, no, I won’t have that. Does a lot of great works for charidee, blah, blah. Did you notice how he was referred to in the Facts and Figures section? I’m surprised he didn’t claim to have invented the BMX bike.
Taylor is actually insane isn’t he? Talk about monomania.
I’m surprised Lembit Opik was the only Lib Dem photographed riding a bike too, but Denis Healy on a death slide takes first prize IMHO.
This is my new all-purpose curse:
e.g.
Stubs his toe
Argh! Dennis Healy on a f*cking Deathslide!
Did none of the politicians write back to point out that, for an A level student, his simple ‘formal’ letter contained 5 grammatical errors?
However, I note that the letter from Thatcher’s lackey has an glaring grammatical error in it too. And Healy’s is just illegible.
Apparently everyone these days is out on rollerskates rather than learning how to write proper!!! :mad:
<Teddy Taylor Voice>
This the fault of the EU - they’ve taken power in Education away from the local level and…
</Teddy Taylor>
Also, apparently everyone these days is using smilies rather than learning how to write properly!!!
It’s true enough that Jason’s letter was badly written, with numerous punctuation errors to add to the grammatical ones. Many of the replies were almost as bad, but I think it would have been a bit cheeky of the pols to slag off his English (whatever they may have thought privately).
Surely it’s understandable that a reply to that sort of letter should have been written hastily, and the handwriting of people who write as much as they do is unlikely to be neat. It’s not very entertaining to read the dreary replies from the likes of Blair and Short, but I’d have been more worried if they’d had time to spare reminiscing about fun on wheels let alone criticise a schoolboy’s grammar.
All the same, I nominate Baron Mackay of Clashfern for the Rowley Birkett award. I get the impression Jason’s letter may have been his only communication from the outside world since the mid '90s.
I get the feeling that Baron Mackay is about a paragraph short of bursting into an Uncle Albert-esque “During the War…”
I’d say about a sentence short.