Der Spiegel: India anger over ‘racist’ German magazine cartoon on population
Continue readingBe careful how you say
When you are a marketing executive it becomes you to ensure that any advertising you do will not raise the expectations of your customers and potential customers to an unsustainable level even if you write the most taxing spreadsheet in the world; are the best in the market place; everyone knows that and you always get AA ratings. So that, anecdotally, if you had bought a Rolls Royce, in the days when quality was quality and you had a problem with it, there would be no questions asked when you took it back to the showroom. A new vehicle would be provided. Coco has a suspicion that the one you returned was later rebranded as a Bentley, but that might be an apochryphal addition to the tale.
Continue readingThe use of alien languages
If Coco had written:
Gan nad yw rhywun yn disgwyl gweld Firenze mewn erthygl am Fflorens neu 臺北市 mewn erthygl am brifddinas y weriniaeth Tsieineaidd, pam mae disgwyl i un ddarllen Snowdon mewn erthygl Gymraeg am yr Wyddfa?
Trade Marks
My surprise is not so much in the way Lidl managed to win, but how they managed to gain a trademark for a yellow disk on a blue background in the first place.
Has no-one looked at the sky recently?
Continue readingA word you should not use
He was twenty minutes into the sermon when he heard the sound of a little girl’s voice in the congregation. She was speaking to her mother, who was desperately trying to tell her, quietly, not to speak. Then everyone one heard it: ‘But mummy, he used the word which you said we should never say’. He thought back for a moment at what he had just said, and wishing to take away the mother’s now very public embarrassment, he addressed the little girl:
Continue readingThe winter’s past
A winter’s tail may yet in spring
Be seen upon the wall
But mare’s tail found agathering
Where roses should be, all
The cold icicles of winter
have done their work in stone
Whilst rootlets in the earth prepared
to make their presence known
And we have felt the icy blast
With rain upon the head
But hearts with pleasant thoughts were warmed
And nothings only said.
Now to this day, as long ago,
We quickly do repair
Another year, the old doth wane,
Refresh you with due care!
1915 Charles Rennie Mackintosh – Fleming Collection
Not at the occident
12/04/2023
Ukraine war: Leak shows Western special forces on the ground
Does it really matter who leaked them? What really matters is are they true? Are NATO troops involved in the war? Some may argue that it is OK to sell arms to Ukraine, even to give them, and continue to claim that we are not involved in the fighting, but when we are on the ground? Surely that claim, if it has not already done so by the provision of arms, falls flat?
Continue readingSteak knives
Just criticism
10/04/2023
China jails prominent legal activists Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi
The BBC reported that ‘in response to past criticism about its human rights record, Beijing has said “only the 1.3 billion* Chinese people have a say on China’s human rights”.’ It could well have added: ‘and if any of them exercise their right to have their say, we shall listen to them. In due time there shall be no more criticism’.
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