If the violence displayed by the QPR captain at Manchester City last Sunday was remarkable, his subsequent conduct on Twitter has been astonishing. Barton appears to have radically reinterpreted the notion that attack is the best form of defence, lashing out at all and sundry via a series of tweets whose ultimate effect is entirely self-destructive.

In the past 24 hours, Barton has accepted one charge of violent conduct at the Etihad Stadium but denied another. The FA seems set to throw the book at him, and his club has declared that it will deal with the matter after the result of the FA investigation. Conspiracy theorists might conclude that QPR’s management team and board hope that the FA ban Barton for so long a period (four months and more) that their reported desire to rip up his contract can only be bolstered.

What, then, should Barton do? Should he:

(a) Keep his head down and say nothing, or

(b) Issue a sensible statement in which he acknowledges that both his conduct at the Etihad and subsequent tweets have brought QPR into disrepute, and

(c) Add an apology to said statement, or

(d) Go to Portugal, log onto Twitter and tweet that the world is against him but that he doesn’t care because everyone is a moron and he’s worked really hard to get where he is and if anyone is nasty to him again he is going to expose their secrets.

The answer is not (d).

The moral of the story is that if you’re a loose cannon, when you turn attack into defence there is a danger that you will blow yourself up.

But wait, what’s this? Could this injunction have been phrased rather more successfully:

Be concrete, not abstract. Use metaphors to get your message across.

Metaphors are, by definition, not exactly concrete. But be that as it may: there is a lot of sound advice in Clare Lynch’s piece and a revelation, too. We had never heard of the Gunning Fog Index.  But it exists, and reveals the age at which someone would have to leave full-time education to understand given text.

We’re pleased to display our own Gunning Fog rating for the above words. That of the Churchill speech cited by Ms Lynch was 9.698.

The Gunning Fog index is 9.585

Surely their respective tasks ought to be immune from spin? Then again, perhaps the way in which they execute them is deserving of some communications advice. Either way, times have changed. A similar inquiry from yesteryear (and such do exist) would surely not have been accompanied, albeit informally, by communications advice.

Pictured courtesy of this Flickr user: a portrait of the Leveson Inquiry.

Such a fate is averred in this piece in The Spectator. If it is true, what does this say about our glorious nation? Are we subservient to the International Olympic Committee? Did the Queen, in her Jubilee year, agree to take a back seat in favour of IOC insignia?

It all seems a bit rum. Or, to use another cliche, it’s just not cricket. (Er, no, it’s Londinium MMXII. We daren’t call it by its proper name lest we offend the IOC’s IP lawyers, who have been known to smother adversaries in flags before – and after – suing them.)

Pictured courtesy of sparetomato: a fraying flag.

Every month Surrey Life offers the essence of the Surrey – it is a magazine that is committed to the people of the Surrey, committed to the future of Surrey, and above all else, committed to the quality of life in this beautiful area of the South.

Gorkana Consumer Alert: Wednesday 22 December 2010
Surrey Life has now moved. They can now be contacted c/o 28 Teville Road, Worthing, West Sussex BN11 1UG

It reminds us of Cornwall Life – “a celebration of all that is great about life in this wonderful county”. Cornwall Life’s editorial office is in Totnes, Devon.

Pictured courtesy of this Flickr user: a Surrey scene. Or could it be from West Sussex? Or Cornwall? Or even Devon?

One of the committee members, Louise Mensch MP, says that the report has lost all credibility for its line over Rupert Murdoch being unfit to run an international company. This ‘conclusion’, as the world now knows, was inserted by Tom Watson MP, rejected by the Conservative members of the committee and approved by the labour contingent. Ms Mensch says that the insistence on inserting the damning statement about Murdoch’s lack of fitness to run an international company means that the report will now be viewed as ‘partisan’.

We hesitate to agree entirely, for Ms Mensch has a tendency to put things in the most dramatic fashion imaginable, but our perusal to date of Watson’s new book, Dial M for Murdoch, lends credence to her views. Time and again Murdoch, and all those who work for or are connected to News International, are described in loaded terms, while Watson stands immune, unsullied by a single ambivalent adjective.

Is it all really so black and white?

We doubt it. And we suggest something elementary to dear Watson: stick to the facts, and the evidence, and the remit, and refrain from bombast and bluster, and your points will be taken with the seriousness you so clearly crave.

Image courtesy of Mafleen.

Poor conduct, to be sure, for we all know that it is the height of rudeness to be absorbed in one’s mobile phone while ostensibly engaged in something else.

None of us would ever countenance such bad manners, and we cannot but wonder if the ubiquity of the phone is the source of many societal ills. Mobile phones make liaisons dangerous when otherwise they might never have happened; they are a means to embarrassment for those with impulse control problems; and they provide a fruitful source of dubious messages for those who insist on hacking them.

The mobile phone has a lot to answer for, but our last thought is this: if you are communicating with someone, whether friend, family or client, turn your phone off or, at least, turn it onto silent. Do not take time out to answer calls or check texts and text people back. It really is such poor form.

We shall look forward to perusing a copy and deciding, in the light of its revelations, whether the phone hacking scandal is, as Mr Wilby asserts, “bigger than Watergate”. Certainly, it is increasingly difficult to see survivors emerging once the dust has settled – David Cameron included.

Regrettably, The Guardian piece is founded in fact. Indeed, among the regionals, we suspect that it will not be long before freelance hacks are asked to pay for the privilege of seeing their work in print.

They tend to do this a lot when big sporting events are on the horizon. They’re even worse once the event is underway. Some even say that they take the joy out of sport, so mean-spirited are they about preserving the exclusive rights of event sponsors.

Needless to say, we would never misuse an IP lawyer’s favoured word. That sort of thing isn’t our game. And so we welcome the proposal, courtesy of The Guardian, that the celebration of sporting excellence taking place in London this summer be known henceforth as Londinium MMXII.

Pictured courtesy of The Armatura Press: could it be one of the sites of the Londinium MMXII Games?