Re the Dirty Kuffar video: although the transliteration changes, radical Islam has been predicting imminent victory over us for quite a long time: And Halid returned to the west of Azahfi, and said to them: – Know that these kafres are disheartened. (Anonymous, Libro de las batallas (1600)) But we aren’t, are we, because we…
La Vanguardia’s incompetent in London, Rafael Ramos, used to file stories that – apart from his appalling spelling – bore remarkable resemblances to articles in The Guardian and The Times. When I caught him out the paper refused to take an interest and he started using The Times more, presumably secure in the knowledge that…
How I used to chant UB40’s Ivory Madonna when I was small, drunk and confused. Other well-known versions of this include “I’ve a green banana,” but no one gets misunderstood like Michael Jackson. This, from Misheard Lyrics, is not an excerpt from Beat It: Heated, heated. No one wants a beef fajita. Show ’em hot…
Reports the Chicago Tribune: New Lenox’s newest cop barks, or at least understands, only a foreign tongue. So when canine officer Bear joined the force five months ago, his partner, Officer John Conroy, learned to give commands to the Czech born and bred German shepherd in his native language. “It is a bit of a…
Although Spanish playing fields are not the 2m-deep clay solution of their English cousins, I’m still a bit surprised that Zapatero thinks he’s going to win votes with an education policy featuring less religion and more physical education. A reduction in religion has got to be welcome in a country in which religious education still…
Not only (as Margaret Marks notes) has the BBC started using trucker instead of lorry-driver or patient with chronic back pain and a dietary disorder: the Americanism has been the preferred usage in Holland for years. Henk Wijngaard’s 1978 hit, Met De Vlam In De Pijp, is probably the best-known Dutch truckliedje. Try singing this…
I just don’t get it. While one bunch of nutters has finally managed to destroy Catalunya’s last Osborne bull for being too Spanish, another bunch of crazies is going round putting up things that look pretty damn Gallic to me: OK, now here’s a challenge: discuss this solely with reference to the aesthetic merits of…
Orwell biographer DJ Taylor wants to dig up the common of Southwold, a quiet Suffolk seaside resort, in order to find a time capsule that Orwell allegedly buried there 70 years ago. If found, I suspect that it will not contain a bucket and spade.
NRC Handelsblad, Holland’s most respected rag, says that the French commission that advocated banning the headscarf was strongly influenced by what it was told during a fact-finding trip to Holland in November. The two out of three members of the delegation contacted by the paper said they were shocked by the situation and in particular…