Friday, January 26, 2007

More irony abuse

A man who led a 30-year campaign for a new bypass has become the first person to crash on it.

Jim Burley fought for the bypass in Pegswood, Northumberland, to reduce heavy traffic through the village.


Parish council chairman Jim, 70, and his wife Eunice, 69, were not seriously hurt when their Vauxhall van was in a head-on collision with another van.

Jim told the Sun: "I can certainly see the irony in being involved in the first accident on a bypass for which I have been campaigning for 20 to 30 years."





Not ironic.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

It's ironic enough for simple folks like us. You're just an irony snob.

Brit said...

C'mon, it's not difficult.

It would be ironic if his reasons for campaigning for the bypass were to reduce crashes.

In fact, his reasons were to get the high volume of traffic onto the bypass. Therefore it was not surprising that a crash would occur on the bypass once he acheived this aim.

The fact that it was him merely shows that he was setting a good example, and having his crash outside the village...

So it would be far more ironic if he had his crash inside the village, having successfully shifted all the traffic to the bypass.

Anonymous said...

You have to be English - not even British - to understand. It's a racial feature whereby the tongue fits snugly in the cheek.

Anonymous said...

Whose?

Brit said...

The first thing you should do if an Englishman starts analysing irony is remember not to take him seriously.

I'm only joking.






Or am I?

Unknown said...

Peter,
My face is still blank. Please diagram the joke for this North American.

Brit said...

That's fair. We call it "taking the piss".

It comprises 90% of our conversation. (The other 10% is talking about the weather).

Unknown said...

So it's "attitude" humor, eh? It's all in the delivery.

How does an Englishman signal when he has something serious to say? Do you hold up a blue hankie, or something like that?

Brit said...

No, but that's a really good idea and from now on that's what I'll do. If it catches on, it could save a heck of a lot of confusion.