In testimony to the Leveson inquiry, former Sun and News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks told how the Prime Minister would sign off text messages to her with "LOL", under the impression it meant 'lots of love'. Of being told it's actual meaning - 'laugh out loud' - Mr Cameron stopped using it.
This isn't the first or only acronym and/or initialisation that the Prime Minister has got wrong. Other common internet and text-speak abbreviations include WTF - 'what the fuck?', as expression of surprise and alarm - which Cameron thought meant 'World Trade Fair' and had instructed civil servants to get down to King's Cross after seeing a message on Twitter saying "WTF is going on at King's Cross?" It turned out to be a minor traffic incident leading to some queuing. A couple of diplomatic incidents were narrowly averted when Cameron sent messages ending 'PMSL' - 'piss myself laughing' - to world leaders dealing with national disasters. Prime Minister of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari had to be calmed by aides for hours after receiving a message from his British counterpart after the devastating floods. The message is thought to have read "terrible news about the flooding, PMSL", with Cameron under the impression he had signed off 'Prime Minister sends love".
But it isn't just those commonly used in electronic communications; he also has trouble with governmental acronyms and abbreviations. PSBR - public sector borrowing requirement - has been translated in the head of the country's leader as 'please slash budgets recklessly', while NHS appears to have been interpreted as 'national horse sale'. "On arriving at Number 10", a former aide to the PM told us, "he was adamant that government had no business in the NHS as buying and selling horses was not a key function for the state and instructed us to sell it off forthwith. When we finally explained what the NHS was, we had a jolly good laugh before he told us to go and sell that off forthwith anyway".
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