Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Taking a step into the Daily Mail Zone...

...which is a bit like the Twilight Zone, only far scarier.

It seems all quiet in Charlton at the moment. I've had a bit of a break and not a lot seems to be happening right now. So, as happens at times like this, my mind turns to bigger things.

I was talking recently with some friends who are teachers within Greenwich. It turns out they've had a training course and in it were advised to refer to Britain and not Great Britain when talking about our country.

Uh?

Great Britain is the name of our country, it says so on our passports, so it must be true. They're going to be misleading and misinforming a whole generation of Greenwich children. What are they going to think when they see a passport or "team GB" at some sporting event?

Great doesn't imply anything to do with us claiming that we're fab or anything, even the French call us "Grande-Bretagne". It's got a lot more to do with our size as the largest part of the British Isles and Brittany in France, England's rulers became French speaking after 1066 and needed to differentiate between the two bits on either side of the channel.

To take my final step into the Daily Mail Zone, it's "political correctness gone mad"!

I'm hoping something more Charlton related will pop up soon.....

1 comment:

Inspector Sands said...

Er, no. It's geography.

Great Britain refers to the island that we sit on now.

Britain is short-hand for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which comprises the island we sit on now, and a bit of the one next door.