Ordinary Gweilo

Some of these made me laugh.  Lifted from the Daily Mirror, which took them from a new book, The World’s Stupidest Instructions, published by Michael O’Mara Books.

 

All examples of “funny English by foreigners” have been removed, but you can find them in the link.

 

BEWARE: Sledge may develop high speed under certain snow conditions [on a toboggan]

DO NOT eat toner [on a laser-printer cartridge]

CAUTION: knives are sharp [on a knife sharpener]

DO NOT use for drying pets [on a microwave oven]

CAUTION: remove infant before storing chair [on a pushchair]

DO NOT open here [on the bottom of a cola bottle]

DO NOT take if allergic to aspirin [on a box of aspirin]

INSTRUCTIONS: put on food [on a ketchup bottle]

OPEN bottle before drinking [on a bottle of rum]

DO NOT wash [on a pair of socks bought in Egypt]

DO NOT spray in your face [on spray paint can]

NOT dishwasher safe [on a TV remote control]

NOT to be used for drying hair [on a blowtorch]

NO small children [on washing machine in a launderette]

DO NOT use as an ice cream topping [on a bottle of hair dye]

DO NOT attempt to swallow [on a mattress]

DO NOT use under water [on a toaster]

NOT to be used as a hedge-trimmer [on a push-along lawnmower]

DO NOT put in mouth [on a box of fireworks]

WARNING! This is not underwear! Do not attempt to put in pants [on the packaging for a wristwatch]

DO NOT allow children to play in the dishwasher [on a dishwasher]

WHY NOT not rent out a movie for a dull evening? [sign in a video shop]

 

He’s written a whole book of these?  Good grief.

A couple of funny things I’ve read on Hong Kong blogs recently.

Shaky seems to be inhabiting the world of a Brian Rix farce. It’s the old story about someone who is sleeping somewhere unfamiliar and walks out of the front door rather than into the bathroom, preferably naked. Personally, I preferred it when it was Judy Loe in a hotel (in an ITV drama many years ago) but Shaky’s version is here

The other one also involves Shaky. As mentioned here yesterday, he was making a comparison between the death of the Queen Mother and the death of Ronald Reagan. For some reason, this made Eshin think that she has died recently and he had missed it. To make it worse, he admits that was in the UK in 2002 when she passed away! As I mentioned yesterday, the British newspapers wrote about nothing else for nearly a week.

Still, at least Eshin had the grace to admit he was wrong, unlike some people, and perhaps I should be embarassed to know so much about the British Royal Family. As Fumier remarked, who really cares?

I will admit that it’s not always easy to remember whether some people are still alive or not (and I seem to recall a quiz on Radio One a few years back in which the contestants had to say whether a famous person was dead or alive).

So, thinking about prominent British politicians of a few years ago, I wonder how many people know which ones are dead and which ones are still alive (or, as with the royal family, maybe no-one cares). For example, how may of the following are still alive?

Jeremy Thorpe, Jim Callaghan, Edward Heath, Michael Foot and Denis Healey

(more…)

Shaky is (I think) complaining that the reaction to the death of Ronald Reagan is out of proportion, especially the day’s holiday for most US civil servants this Friday. He points out that there was no holiday in the UK for the 60th anniversary of D-Day or for the Queen Mother’s funeral.

True. There was a public holiday when Charles and Diana got married, but nothing when they got divorced, or for Diana’s funeral (which was on a Saturday).

There was a public holiday for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee two years ago, but not for the Queen Mother’s funeral earlier that year. There was also a Public Holiday for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

Oddly, Hong Kong used to have a public holiday to celebrate the Queen’s birthday every year – even though it wasn’t a public holiday in the UK. Don’t anymore!

As for the Queen Mum, I never understood what all the fuss was about. She had lived to a tremendous age, so her death was hardly a shock or surprise, her main achievement was marrying into the royal family, and she was mainly known for being old and for having a fondness for gin and tonic. Oh yes, and she owned a few race horses. Yet the newspapers in Britain wrote about nothing else for days afterwards, even though there was hardly anything to say. I am pleased to say that The Economist managed to limit itself to a single paragraph, which I thought was commendable (though possibly one paragraph more than they really needed).

Strangest endorsement of the week comes from The Economist, who are supporting Ken Livingstone in Thursday’s election for Mayor of London.  I find this strange, firstly because Livingstone is normally regarded as a left-winger and The Economist is a right-wing newspaper, but also because it’s hard to see why they need to express an opinion at all.  The mayor of London doesn’t have a great deal of power, and it goes without saying that it extends only to London itself.  One of the strengths of The Economist is that it takes a less parochial view of the world than most of its competitors, normally managing to take a broader view of events than daily newspapers in Britain and avoiding the American bias of Time and Newsweek.

So what is so interesting about the mayor of London?  Presumably the fact that the staff of The Economist work in London and are directly affected by what happens there.  I can’t deny that it is interesting to me (having lived in London for many years), but I guess I’m in a fairly small minority amongst the overseas readers of The Economist.  Ah well, there’s always the Big Mac Index for everyone else. 

Ken Livingstone has had a very strange career.  He became leader of the Greater London Council in 1981 in a ‘coup’ just after the Labour Party (lead by the more moderate Andrew McIntosh) had won the election.  His best known policy was reducing bus and tube fares to encourage more people to use public transport – it was popular, it was effective, but it was also ruled illegal by the courts.  He then found himself out of a job when Margaret Thatcher abolished the council in 1986 because she was upset that the people of London stubbornly refused to vote for the Conservatives.  Then he became a rather obscure backbench Labour MP who regularly said controversial things and got quoted in the newspapers, but was otherwise irrelevant. 

When the Labour Party decided to introduce a directly-elected mayor for London (14 years after the abolition of the GLC), he was the obvious candidate – though in fact he ended up standing as an independent because the leadership of the Labour Party thought he was too much of a maverick.  He won easily, and last year he was re-admitted to the Labour Party and is standing this time as their official candidate.  Ironically, although he will most likely win this week, he would almost certainly have done even better as an independent!