Why I'm literally furious at our use of the English language – Toby Neal
In the hit single Nine Million Bicycles by Katie Melua – who says I'm not up with modern pop? – the singer controversially asserted that "we are 12 billion light-years from the edge".
It attracted criticism from a particle physicist who said that she suffered from "a deep ignorance of cosmology and no understanding of the scientific method".
So she sportingly recorded a new version with a lyric specially written for her by the scientist to correct her error. It went: "We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe. That's a good estimate with well-defined error bars."
Bravo, I say. The complaint by writer and scientist Simon Singh was lodged to make a serious point, but also with tongue partly in cheek.
Since then tongues have been completely removed from cheeks and humourless attack literalism is standard. For instance, if you tell somebody to go and jump in the lake they will report you to the police for making a threat to kill.
Just for completeness, I should add that it wasn't Katie's fault, although she said later that she was a member of the astronomy club at her school and so should have known better. The original lyric was by Mike Batt, renowned songwriter and also creator of The Wombles, who made a spirited defence of his right to use some artistic licence.
But as part of Sir Keir Starmer's crusade to pass lots of new laws to find new ways to get people sent to prison for spreading misinformation – he's a former Director of Public Prosecutions, you know, a chap with a forensically brilliant lawyerly mind – should we not start with the polluting effect of popular music on young brains?
