Oh how I laughed

Listening to BBC Radio 5 Live this morning (why do I do it?) I caught a story about the Licensing Act 2003 which comes into affect in November this year. Basically this Act requires businesses that supply alcohol, hot food and ‘entertainment’ to apply for licenses (as if they were extending an existing license) to continue to do so. If they miss the November deadline they will have to apply as if it were a new license which is a more complex and long winded process.

The main thrust of the BBC radio story was how discriminatory the application process is. You see, the application forms are (warning) WRITTEN IN ENGLISH (shock). They even had an ‘expert’ on to talk about how dreadful this was for minute after dreary minute, completely missing what should have been the main story, ie that having to ask the state for a license to entertain your customers is a bloody crime.

It was at the point where they introduced their ‘expert’ that I laughed. Fancy that. Written in bloody English! It’s almost as if there was a sudden and violent event in the space-time continuum that caused a completely unexpected and alien behavioural crossover to occur in our own Universe. It’s written in English? English! How can that be?

Not speaking the native language is a serious disadvantage in business and in all other walks of life where one comes into regular contact with the odd sounding natives. The solution to this problem is to learn the language. A non-solution to the problem is to automatically supply translations of the states paper trail into any number of languages.