Found elsewhere 1
Dominic Cummings is throwing his weight around again. One of the changes he’s insisting on is that from 1st February The College of Great Britain is set up. The fact that it’s “Great Britain” tells you what he thinks of Northern Ireland.
The college is going to be somewhat like the Académie française in France and will have broadly the same remit to protect the home language and in this case, “Britishness”. There’s one thing not going Cummings way at the moment though, and that’s his wish to make English the only official language of GB. Apparently Johnson, in a rare moment of clarity, thinks it might upset the Scots and the Welsh and just at the moment he doesn’t want to inflame any nationalist feelings.
Some of the other items on their agenda are bound to get a cheer from even the most ardent of brexiteers. Cummings has won one victory and one of the first projects they’ll be undertaking is to review English dictionaries and produce an officially sanctioned list that publisher of dictionaries will allowed to include. Some examples of words to be removed are recent additions such as oenophilia, cul-de-sac, gullible, ginorite, luchador. Any word with obvious foreign origins is obviously going to be considered for removal but it is understood that obvious European sounding words will be the first to be considered for the chop. The first draft of the sanctioned list is expected to be published by the end of 2020 and will be revised downwards with monthly updates from January 2021.
Another area that Cummings is particularly keen on is a review of weights and measures. It seems he’s very interested in how the USA has maintained on metric measurements and is of the opinion that GB would do better to align with their system rather than fully reverting the old imperial weighs and measures. With many imperial weights and measures phrases still in daily use, this is not seen as a particularly onerous task and it’s hoped that by introducing weights and measures separately, we should see the return of 10 foot of 4 by 2 in regular use in B&Q by April 2021.
Going back to old currency is seen as a step too far though, which will no doubt be a disappointment to some older brexiteers.
1. Oh, all right, I admit it, as if the spelling hadn’t already given the game away. I found it in my head. I’m in the pub on my own and I was bored.
