Up to five percent - or more!

"Almost half of the 500 firms surveyed say they intend pushing up prices by up to 5 per cent or more..."

Has anyone ever written a less meaningful sentence?

Anyway, some people might think that 11 per cent (the businesses 'planning' to raise prices by 5%+) is "a small number" - but then we have no idea what the ratio of people putting up their prices by 5% and those lowering prices is, because the Herald hasn't bothered to tell us the latter percentage. Meanwhile, later on in the article - entitled, of course, "Shoppers face GST price-rise rort":

Westpac economist Dominick Stephens said small firms could struggle to get away with large price rises on the back of GST changes.

"I would suggest that sort of thing will be very short-lived. Exactly the same sort of competitive pressures and market conditions that have got prices and profit margins to where they are now will prevail after the GST increase," he said.

So nothing to see here then.

'Accident'

What on earth are they trying to imply?

"Police are looking for two 70-year-old retirees with a bone to pick."

Doncha think?

On the death of the motorcyclist in the Waikato:

A police officer who made a fatal u-turn in front of a motorcyclist was left so badly shaken by the man's death he could not key in an emergency call on his cellphone, says a witness.

In an ironic twist, the allegedly speeding motorist who the officer was about to pursue when he made the u-turn may have been the motorcyclist's best friend.

The Oxford English Dicitonary defines 'irony' thusly:

2. fig. A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things. (In F. ironie du sort.)

Let's ignore that fact that, even if this situation were ironic, pointing it out - an "ironic twist"? - in the second sentence of an article about a man's death, as if we were watching an M. Night Shyamalan movie, might be considered a wee bit too wry.

"A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected". Now we can probably accept that you wouldn't expect that, when a man is killed after a police car sideswipes him during a U-turn, the policeman happened to be about to pursue someone who may have been the victim's best friend. That much is certainly true, in the same way as it's true that one might find it unlikely to meet the man of one's dreams and then, in short order, meet his beautiful wife. But it's hardly the opposite of what was expected, is it?

It's not even "a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things". Now, if the policeman had been about to go and rescue the victim's friend from a burning car, that might have been ironic - he's ended up saving one, but harming the other. Unfortunately for the English language he was only about to give the man a speeding ticket.