Saturday, November 03, 2012
Latin homework
I have a week's worth of e-mails to catch up on, not to mention some serious work preparing for my statement to Plenary on my Mobile Homes (Wales) Bill on Tuesday so this is just a cursory visit to announce that I am back and to leave you with a small appetiser until next time.
My eye was drawn earlier in the week to this item on David Cameron's failure to tell a US chat show host what Magna Carta meant. To be fair I did not know either, not without thinking about it for a bit anyway, but then I dropped out of Latin and did not attend public school.
The Daily Mail Black Dog column says that Dave's Latin fail could come back to haunt him in time for the next General Election:
An official committee set up to mark the 800th anniversary of the signing of the ‘Great Charter’ on Monday, June 15, 2015, has called for the day to be turned into a national Bank Holiday.
Or time for a ‘dies festus’, as the Romans might say.
I assume that the Prime Minister does understand the significance of Magna Carta with respect to the over-concentration and centralisation of power, even if he cannot translate it.
Given that the great charter mostly just reinforced the power of the barons, I can think of more significant anniversaries to celebrate with a bank holiday, such as the abolition of slavery or the introduction of universal suffrage for example.
My eye was drawn earlier in the week to this item on David Cameron's failure to tell a US chat show host what Magna Carta meant. To be fair I did not know either, not without thinking about it for a bit anyway, but then I dropped out of Latin and did not attend public school.
The Daily Mail Black Dog column says that Dave's Latin fail could come back to haunt him in time for the next General Election:
An official committee set up to mark the 800th anniversary of the signing of the ‘Great Charter’ on Monday, June 15, 2015, has called for the day to be turned into a national Bank Holiday.
Or time for a ‘dies festus’, as the Romans might say.
I assume that the Prime Minister does understand the significance of Magna Carta with respect to the over-concentration and centralisation of power, even if he cannot translate it.
Given that the great charter mostly just reinforced the power of the barons, I can think of more significant anniversaries to celebrate with a bank holiday, such as the abolition of slavery or the introduction of universal suffrage for example.
