A load of Bull

It is English, but you could be forgiven for not realising it. As well as celebrating clear writing, the Plain English Campaign is today presenting the Golden Bull awards for the worst examples of gobbledygook.

As Britain's most preposterous prose is held up to ridicule, below are some of the sentences which make no sense at all.

United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is the winner, for his statement

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know.

"We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know."

Arnold Schwarzenegger
"I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman."

Chris Patten
"Having committed political suicide, the Conservative Party is now living to regret it".

The Social Fund maternity and funeral expenses (general) regulations
"For the purposes of these regulations, a person shall be treated as a member of a polygamous relationship where, but for the fact that the relationship includes more than two persons, he would be one of a married or unmarried couple."

An advertisement for Warburtons the bakers
"With a launch burst of 550 TVRs - and £34m in 'premiumisation' opportunities - we're confident you'll rise to the challenge."

An apology from Lloyd's Pharmacy
"The cognitive process that staff will go through when interpreting prescriptions and selecting drugs is almost intuitive in that the prescription will be read, a decision is then made in the mind of the individual concerned, they will then make a selection based on what they have decided."

Dishwasher instructions from SMEG
"At this point you must press contemporary the P1+P2 buttons and then this phase the writing 'Time to end' flashes up.

"This allows to make function the dishwasher at the time you want. By pressing one after the other button DELAY PROGRAM (5), it will be seen on the display the vizualisation of delay hours numbers in which you want to make start the machine from 12 hours onward."