Sky TV today asked its viewers whether the war on terror had ‘made the world a less safer place’. Less surprising than the response was the fact that none of the well-educated, highly-paid Sky journalists seemed to realise this is bad English. What will it be next - more safest?

11 of the 13 email messages I got last night warned me that my email account was about to be suspended and urged me to read the attached file. Is anyone still being taken in by this stuff? I guess they are.

Just in case you don’t know, the letters ‘b’ and ‘v’ are both pronounced in Spanish like an English ‘b’. Armed with this knowledge, you can now read this account of a short conversation at the English Speaking Society last night:-
Manolo: You should try some Gondeval wine. It’s the best of those from the Valdeorras area.
Me: How do you spell it?
Manolo: Hmm. I don’t know whether it’s a ‘b’ or a ‘v’.
Bernard: It’s a ‘b’.
Me: ‘b’?
Bernard: Yes, ‘b’, as in Valencia.
Me: Thanks, Bernie.

Here’s thought-provoking comment which might throw some light on those high US road casualty numbers that were mentioned a week or so ago - For anyone who doubts that fear of terrorism is much more destructive than terrorism itself, the Max Planck Institute for Human Development has provided a telling postscript to the September 11 attacks. In the three months after that day, Americans were so terrified of getting on planes that domestic air travel fell by 16 per cent as they took to their cars instead to drive long distances. As a consequence of all the extra passenger miles driven, there were eight per cent more fatal road accidents than would have occurred had those people stayed loyal to the airlines. Thus, 353 extra people were killed in those three months on American roads than would have been if they had flown as normal, against the 266 passengers and crew who died aboard the four planes hijacked on September 11.

I learn from an article in one of the national papers that the opposing models for the Spanish state are centripetal and centrifugal. Now I’ll have to find out what these mean. But I suspect in one the power gravitates to the centre and, in the other, to the periphery. Too bloody elitist, the Spanish press. Unlike Sky TV, of course.