Friday, January 04, 2013

Synchronised Slurring

The BBC's Christmas drama offering Restless has been widely mocked for errors such as the sight of this lovely 1947 Truimph roadster trundling through wartime New Mexico ........ on the wrong side of the road.

Of more interest was the factual background against which the play was set, the Vanlo incident and, especially, British Security Coordination, Churchill's information/disinformation outfit operating in the United States.

It's doubtful if the practitioners of black and grey propaganda ever really went away, but surely they'd not waste their talents on anything as trivial as Wales and its ailing tongue?

Well, there have been some interesting newspaper articles concerning the Welsh language in the English press of late.  These usually hit on some minor incident or invention, which is suddenly thought important enough to raise blood pressure throughout Middle England ..... an obscure tweet complaining about school toilets in Ceredigion perhaps, or an arch-druid involved in a spat in a Pwllheli shop.  In the latest example an author moans about the Welsh Books Council and it makes the pages of, well, the usual offenders, the Telegraph and the Mail.

Are we to expect more of this synchronised slurring in the run-up to the Scottish Independence vote?  At least the most recent furore led me to this commaful "tribute" page.

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