Consider my favourite television experience—the police press conference. Police press conferences are cromulent. Especially Australian police press conferences. When the police hold a press conference, it’s because people want answers, they want clear answers and clear information, but most of the time they get something like this:
“Good afternoon. Early this morning, police in addition with other relevant agencies conducted raids on several locations in the region of the western vicinity of the Sydney metropolitan area of operations. After the execution of the aforementioned raids, police subsequently obtained evidence pertaining to the activities of several crime syndicates that are currently operating in the areas adjacent to the vicinity of the operations we conducted linked to the subsequent crimes being committed. When police subsequently entered one of the residences they conducted a search of them, whereupon they subsequently located three bodies that had sustained injuries that were deemed at that time to be incompatible with life.”
[Pause]
“Subsequent!”
In other words: Early this morning we searched some homes and businesses, found evidence of crime and three dead bodies.
Come on dude, there's no need for all those words, especially whereupon and all the subsequent uses of subsequent. It's almost like they're trying to impress us or something.
They also use the immediate past tense which is different from the simple past tense. They're both past tenses to be sure, but the immediate is what you'd use if you were commenting on a final for the Welsh Bog Snorkleing Championship. You'd say: "Gavin Jones has gone under and he's fighting for second place at the turn!" A simple past for the police would be: "And he went up to the woman and snatched her handbag and said, "This is nice!" and then he ran away." But they don't say that, instead they say: "And he's gone up to the woman, snatched her handbag and he's gone, "This is nice!" and then he's run away."
Don’t misunderstand me, I don't want the press conferences to stop, it's just spellbinding content, but the tense thing makes them sound like bogans.
