The other Blair

Trevor @ Monday July 11th 2005 11:40

Re the unreliability of the Spanish press’s foreign coverage: a big profile in La Retaguardia this morning identifies Ian Blair as the head of the British police, when in fact he’s just the boss of the Metropolitan Police, greater London’s biggest police force (others include the City of London Police). It’s a common mistake, but a strange one for a Catalan newspaper to make: rather like saying the boss of the Madrilenian police runs the whole of Spain, which of course he doesn’t…

(An interesting anachronism in Spain, Holland, and probably other parts is the use of the term “bobby” for British policemen. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it in the UK. What I for a couple of microseconds believed to be an RAE citation is to be found a 1951 letter from Pedro Salinas comparing the FĂĽhrer’s faithful to the “teen-agers” and “bobby-soxers” who mobbed Messrs Crosby and Frankensinatra, or whatever.)


Categories: Les bourgeois

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