Lost in Translation?

As a Welshman I can relate to this. The road sign reads fine in English but workers at Swansea Council, knowing that all signs should be bilingual English and Welsh, sent an email to a Welsh translation site asking what the Welsh was for the lorry warning sign.

As no-one spoke or read Welsh there or perhaps there had been one too many drinks consumed the night before, no-one spotted that the 'translation' returned was in fact an out of office email reply which read 'I am not in the office at the moment, please send any work to be translated'.

Priceless

We Welsh are used to such nonsense in a country where less than 10% of the inhabitants can speak Welsh as many jobs in the Public Sector mandate that Welsh has to be spoken by the applicants - Positive Discrimination. How that squares with the Race Discrimination Laws I am not sure as 90% of Welsh people cannot apply let alone other British people and let's not even start on other races who may all be equally skilled or more so than the limited number of people who may apply. Then you get the lunacy as above.

But then again, Wales can be a funny place. Since I left some 25 years ago, we have our own National Assembly courtesy of Tony Blair where there is a whole new layer of powerless yet well paid bureaucrats who consume vast amounts of expenses and some even get caught doing rude things on common ground - I shall say no more. That there was perfectly good office space aplenty in the major cities, these 'politicians' immediately voted to have a brand new building erected for themselves so they could walk real corridors of power not ones rented from sleazy landlords no doubt.

Nice one Tony - just a tiny fraction over the 50% of the voters who turned out actually voted in favour of it on a turn out less than the average weekly crowd at Old Trafford (slight exaggeration but you get my drift. Wales was not as enthusiastic about it as everyone thought).

Achievements

But let's not knock all they do. Wales is the only place in Britain where everyone has free prescriptions and all hospital car parks are free.

It is also the home of the Rugby Union Six Nations Champions who last year completed their second Grand Slam in 3 years. Not bad for a country whose human population is exceeded by that of the local sheep. No silly jokes please, we've heard them all.

As we say in Wales 'I am not in the office right now. Call me when the rugby's finished.'