The Daily Mail’s website posted up an article today about supposed spelling mistakes by local authority workers on road signs across the country. They led with a picture, (above), of a road outside of Innellan Primary school near Dunoon in Argyll where the word ‘SCKOOL’ can be clearly seen in yellow lettering painted on the road. Of course to anyone passing this looks like a spelling mistake by council road workers, but there’s an altogether different explanation which the Daily Mail conveniently overlooked. Because facts, who needs them, right?

The real story is that a sub-contracted construction firm dug a trench across the road which ran right through the original yellow ‘H’. You can see in the picture where they’ve refilled and tarmaced over it. Of course the firm didn’t have any of the official road lettering stencils the council use nor did they have the specific yellow paint used by the roads department, so they left the ‘H’ without a middle bar and end stalk. The ‘K’, (which you can see in the picture), was actually painted in by a well known member of the public as a prank and has yet to be corrected. Of course I found out this information with a simple five minute phone call to a Dunoon based council worker and a local resident who lives near Innellan Primary and I’m not even a paid journalist.

Nothing unusual about the Daily Mail failing to check the facts on a story but what was interesting were the comments below the article. A heady mix of class elitism and straight-up jingoism. Nigel Farage would be proud: