For Newsnight: should we end universal benefits for better off pensioners?

Is it different people noticing the same impenetrable prose?

Probably, elegran. I promise not to repeat myself.

when I went to school, we had one teacher and several students. As you age you are sometimes said to have returned to childhood. Beware the school teacher.Today on here, we have numerous teachers, that can't let go, and one reluctant, if not recalcitrant student.
If something's worth saying, well thats it in a nutshell, it's worth saying however said.
I suggest that looking in a dictionary would be more productive than checking out wickiwhatsit to see if someone has possibly plagiarised .Very few people are original, we are all influenced by our previous experiences and they inevitably have an effect on the things we do and say, that is how it should be.
Numerous would have to look up impenetrable, and as for prose, well it's a matter of semantics, and if you see it written or if it is heard The intonation, where the inflection is placed, has it been assumed that it is a slang word for something else,and do we end it with,as seems common now, the Australian interrogatory inflection.
"Is it me"? T Wogan ( I'm not expecting an answer)(Now how was that said)

Quite clearly for you deserving

No offence!

deserving

You see I started off O.K. then at the end I lost your point.

Maybe there are the teachers, the one reluctant, recalctrant student and those of us who are just not clever enough to have been either.

I guess that I find the teachers patronising (no offence to any GN.) to me in my world but you are also patronising by trying to equal those whom I beleive you to be having a go at. It doesn't differentiate you from them, you are them.

At least try one comment I can understand 'all the way through'. Or is that the ploy and my answering you allows you superiority over my stupidity. Which ever way I am not upset but who and what ever you are you will be pleased to know I do find you intriguing. I just hope I have not as I beleive fed any narcissism on your part, if I have enjoy.

Of what are you deserving, deserving?

Universal benefits, I would think.

POGS, just a thought. Why do you consistently do yourself down? Your posts are perfectly clear and make perfect sense.

If the man on the Clapham Omnibus cannot follow a piece of writing easily, it is badly written. We don't expect to be set English comprehension tests on a friendly forum. I try to make my own posts as clear as possible. I have given up trying to read posts whose purpose is not clear or which do not reach a conclusion. They seem like a bit of studenty showing off.

Quite!

Annobel

That's just the some make me feel sometimes. I put myself down before they get their two eggs in and try to make themselves look superior.

I have got better but as of now I will try and stop doing it. Now I know I will get into trouble again, like before!

I always said Neitzsche was a load of codswallop. Never understood a thing! Mind you, I've never ridden on the Clapham Omnibus. Perhaps that's what's missing from my education.

Did someone mention Neitzsche? Or is that a Bags red herring?
Anyone here been on the Clapham omnibus? I wonder who originated that expression!

Annobel I've certainly been on a bus in Clapham. The expression "the man on the Clapham omnibus" is thought to have first been used during the Tichborne case (a false claimant to a baronetcy in the nineteenth century) by the junior council against the claimant. It simply means any reasonable person.

Cut and pasted from The Answer Bank:

The man on the Clapham Omnibus

Q. Who was he, then

A. The phrase is used in legalese to mean 'the reasonable person', and has gone into the language to mean 'the man in the street', a modern Everyman.

�

Q. Everyman

A. Everyman was the central character of the medieval morality play of the same name, which dates from the early 1500s.

�

Q. So, the Clapham Omnibus

A. The phrase is said to have been coined by Sir Charles Bowen QC in 1903. While hearing a case for negligence he said (though whether he originated it is not proven, m'lud): 'We must ask ourselves what the man on the Clapham omnibus would think.' Clapham at the turn of the 20th century was a moderately well-off suburb, peopled by 'decent' middle-class types, who, by their staid lifestyle and unchallenging common sense may well have been deemed to be the epitome of ordinariness by the standards of the day, and thus an appropriate yardstick against which the Law Lord might have made a judgement.

Greatnan Different cases, same man. I couldn't remember his name. Sir Charles Bowen, who I think was Lordified later, was only junior council during Titchborne in the 1880s. Thanks.

I wonder what a post would be like if it were written in another language and then put into a program to translate into English? Another possibility would be someone with a different language using a text book to tranlsate into English. Perhaps that would explain the stiltedness?

Could be. AlisonM

Please see thread 'are you judgmental'. So many people have said they aren't and so many posts are! I include myself.

Lily that's not judgemental, I haven't 'judged', just 'suggested'

Agree Lilygran

No, Petallus "Lilygran She is suggesting an explanation, one which does not have any judgmental implication. Most of the world does not have English as a first language, and would translate a post for an English forum. It is not easy to marshall your thoughts to express them in another language, with a dictionary and thesaurus beside you.

It could explain the plagiarism suggestion as well.

I was thinking of Lilygran's remark in a more general sense rather than just applying it to AlisonMA's -post.

There has been a lot of hostility from some quarters to deserving in the past though.

Actually, having re-read deserving's earlier posts, I don't think English is her second language. She seems to have a good grasp of the current pension system, and those posts were not as convoluted as her later ones, which I suspect are just for effect.