As you would expect for a man of his intellect, charisma and importance, Bozza claims a fair few prestigious awards. We reported, for example, that the Mayor picked up the Personality of the Year award from City AM in late 2010.
As the paper themselves said: “Boris, whose victory elicited the biggest cheer of the night from the 450-odd guests in attendance at the ultra-modern new Grange Hotel at St Pauls, had installed his new gong in pride of place on his groaning trophy shelf”.
Well, his trophy shelf will be groaning even louder this week after Boris bagged another trophy. The Mayor has been awarded the prestigious Golden Bull trophy from the Plain English campaign….presumably for his excellent and colourful use of the English language.
According to the BBC, ‘The Plain English Campaign was set up in 1979 and says its focus is on combatting “gobbledegook and misleading public information”.’
Uh-oh. This isn’t going to end well.
The BBC reports that the Mayor, alongside the Northern Ireland Civil Service, were awarded a Golden Bull for using language that was considered overly complicated or meaningless. The Mayor received his gong for saying that he hoped the city’s new bike hire scheme would create “a cyclised city of pioneers”.
Whilst it may be on odd phrase to use, it’s not in the same league as the other Golden Bull winner. The NI Civil Service was given its gong for its instructions on how staff should take a half day holiday. The instructions said:
“If the annual leave request that you are entering is less than a full day on the First Day or the Last Day, then please select Hours from the drop down list of values in the Part Days Unit of Measure field. Then select the amount of hours absent on the first day in the Fraction of Start Date field or the last day in the Fraction of End Date field. If the absence is only for one day, use the Fraction of Start Date field to record the hours absent.”
Gulp.