A couple of weeks back the Adver ran a piece in it’s weekly ‘Rewind’ article that showed protestors outside the Odeon in Regent Street.

The date was 1972 and people were railing against the showing of the film Clockwork Orange, which they deemed to be unsuitable for public viewing. Presumably they’d all seen it to be sure. Otherwise how could they know?

Anyway, they were holding immaculately manufactured placards that read ‘THIS IS EVIL’ in an attempt to influence intended cinema goers to change their minds about going in.

It got me thinking of the placards that I regularly see featured in the Adver now, and I’m afraid I have to report that these days they are rubbish.

‘Sponsered Silence’ was one I saw relating to a fundraising event, and I was left wondering how this differed from a sponsored one.

Another referred to the proposed biomass incinerator. Apparently this is to be sited in somewhere called Swidon, and one protestor felt it was necessary to proclaim their opposition to this plan in writing.

I would have thought that they would be relieved that it wasn’t due to be constructed in Swindon… but there you are. 

Now both of these are covered by the usually offered response of ‘Well, you knew what I meant’.

Or, as they would probably write, ‘U NEW WOT I MENT’.

But I saw a placard a couple of weeks ago that I have puzzled about ever since. It related to the pharmacy that has apparently flouted the regulations prior to opening, and I really do not have a clue what it meant.

‘UNETIAL WITHOUT PLANNING CONSENT’ it proclaimed.

I’ve scratched my head about this for weeks now. At first I wondered whether the company was called Unetial, but if it was, I could find no reference to them in the story.

Then I searched the interweb thing for a match and was offered initial, inertial, and also the one that I thought looked most likely, unethical.

But if this really is what the writer meant, it’s a spectacular oversight that leaves two letters of nine out of the word completely.

I wonder what this person would make of their employer leaving two digits out of their pay slip one month.

And they only had to leave three letters out of the second word to make it ‘WITH PLANNING CONSENT’… which would somewhat negate the protest.

Phew, that was lucky then.