Interesting Facts

According to report by NatCen Social Research 82% of Brits are proud to be British. (But only 62% of people who live in Britain said they would rather be citizens here than anywhere else. In a similar survey, commissioned by Tetley, researchers also found that Brits wear summer clothes at the first glimpse of sun, apologise too often, discuss the weather (see the forum), and make tea in response to a crisis.  The top signs of Britishness were eating a Sunday roast, the Fab Four, takeaway grub and the traditional brew (not beer - tea). Well 3 out of 4 isn't bad, I still think the Fab Four are overrated.) Source

Germany's Bild newspaper, the world's seventh-biggest newspaper, has stopped printing its page one girl. (The page one girl, usually a busty, semi-clad and sometimes completely naked woman has been a staple at breakfast time all over Germany for years. The German tabloid declared, "It is perhaps a small step from the viewpoint of women, but it is a big step for Bild and for every man in Germany."  Even more amusingly they reprinted a headline from May 1970 - ''Women have less in the head than men'' - and announced that ''this headline is of great embarrassment today''. The Sun, which started showing topless page 3 girls in 1970 and was an inspiration for the Bild, declined to comment on Bild's move,)

The UK press (apart from the obvious ones) have all jumped on the fact that Rupert Murdoch called the British Prime Minister's disabled son 'RETARDED' whilst giving testimony at the Levenson enquiry. (Retarded comes from the French word 'retarder', and when used in the context of childhood development it  has been around for centuries, it was used as an official medical adjective to describe a mentally disabled person, but for the last few decades retarded is now deemed offensive. Why is it offensive?  Well that happens to words the moment they start to be used as an insult.  I guess around 1970 kids started to say to other kids in the playground, 'you are such a retard' or 'you are so retarded'. In 2006 the medical term 'mental retardation' was dropped by the American Association on Mental Retardation and the organisation was renamed American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. And in 2008, a poll by the BBC conclu...