Tag: Russia
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Commission Impossible
Scientists have worked out a way to teach spinach to send emails. They now need to get it logged on pronto to send some urgent missives to the cabbages in Brussels. Following on from the reverse-ferret spectaculaire of last week’s Article 16 miscue, the EU Commission has now withdrawn its border staff in Northern Ireland…
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Not the Point
I have long been aggravated by comma abuse in writing, and that goes for both the scattergunners and the stinges. However, rules are not straightforward, and when you have a flow between linguistic registers sometimes within the same piece, commas are infinitely tricky and controversial. Even that last sentence was, for several reasons. That one,…
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Bye, Den
It’s customary for the US Presidential Election to be followed by a transition period, but in this context, you have to wonder whether there would be any point in it. Hard to imagine that Joe Biden will have too much interest in slicing tee-offs, spaffing investor cash, and grabbing pussy. ‘Stop the count!’ was the…
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I Spy…
Picture the scene of abject despondency in the Kremlin. The UK Government is strongly considering regulation for the espionage industry, with spies compelled to sign a register. There’s Mr Putin jumping on that crisis telekit with Mr Xi not knowing which card to lay down next. Talk about pulling the rug out from under the…
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Meddle Ceremony
I am a fan of etymology and the origins of words, but I have always known that they might sometimes be susceptible to the incorporation of urban legends. This false etymology, as linguists term it, sometimes takes the form of outwardly reasonable explanations that are essentially flawed or backronyms (acronyms that are contrived to provide…
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The Mask Raid
So, in a wholly unexpected development, the PM Boris Johnson has been carted off where he was subsequently inducted – not into the EU Hall of Fame – but into hospital intensive care. This has exacerbated the seemingly unabated coronapanic – we at least have to pretend that we need somebody to lead on the…
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Man Over-Bored
As I’ve mentioned already, it won’t be the virus that kills you. It will be the circus that has gone woomph around us. And there is no shortage of clowns. We do nevertheless appear to be favouring collapsing economies over collapsing cars. It’s boring me rigid now. All those asshats posting messages on LinkedIn or…
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For the Greta Good
Greta Thunberg spoke at a 30,000-strong rally in Bristol last week, which was great for all the kids who bunked off school to attend. Not so great however for the luxuriant lawns of the city’s College Green that were churned into a e-coli-bearing mud bath to rival the Glastonbury festival. And make no mistake, they’ll…
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Mourning Has Broken
So, they came together to embrace and share their melancholic whimpering. Candlelit vigils and sorrowful pleas to the EU to ‘look after our star’. I read that some of our fugazi centrist politicos have expressed our departure as a national humiliation. Well, it might have been a good idea, it might not have been. But…
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On a Bicycle Made for Two
So, in Russia, Mr Putin has pulled a surprise rabbit out of his Ushanka and hailed the end of the so-called Tandemocracy. That’s a weird term for the arrangement, but I am certainly not one for smears whether they relate to character, a cervix, or a doorknob. We had a similar high-profile arrangement in the…
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