Apparently not, if the title of this web page is anything to go by:
Yes, it is a page from the BBC website and it is entitled:
BBC News – Hysterical, deluded and thoroughly English.
Category: headlines
verses and versions
One of the joys of speaking two languages is that you get far more opportunities for puns than monolinguists do.
It was with delight, then – and with a language hiccough mid-way – that I saw the following on the El País website earlier today: 
The word verse flipped my mind into English and conjured the wonderful image of Obama and McChrystal having a flyting contest.
political priorities
On the BBC lunchtime news today they were talking about the new MPs at Westminster whose attempts to find their way around would be hampered by the fact they don’t know if they are part of the government or the oppostion.
I was particularly taken with the comment that they’d be:
learning how to use their new laptops, learning how to use their new phones and learning how to do their expenses.
Just think how much more confident the public would have been in the political system last year if MPs had been taught how to claim their expenses correctly.
health check
I received a very worrying newspaper cutting through the post this weekend. (Yes, I know people who still communicate by ‘real’ mail and take the trouble to clip and send on articles of interest.) It came from the UK Metro, and the headline read Take the Pill ‘for a long life’. What was particularly disturbing was the following phrase that also appears on the web version of the story:
Women who take the contraceptive are 12 per cent less likely to die compared with those who never have.
The same story on the IBTHealth site says:
Continue reading “health check”
(mis)reading skills
From a BBC news story, yesterday:
“Plans have been published by ministers in England to tackle the “social exclusion” of adults with autism.
[…]
[T]he cross-government strategy sets out a range of measures to help them have “rewarding and fulfilling” lives, including training for Jobcentre staff.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve had to deal with Jobcentre staff. I’m not even sure they were called “Jobcentres” back then. Surely we used to go to sign on at the Labour Exchange? (Was it the Tories who implemented the name change, afraid that the ignorant unemployed would believe their benefit cheque was funded entirely by Labour and vote accordingly?)
Continue reading “(mis)reading skills”
don't confuse the narrator 