Category: English
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Living in the UK: Things They Don’t Teach You – Part 3
Britain is a wonderful, quirky country. When I left the Netherlands in order to move to the United Kingdom over 11 years ago, I was fully prepared to getting used to eating baked beans and to finally have a go at being part of an orderly queue, but I there were a great many facets…
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Farting under the covers – How the English language is unkind to the Dutch
If you didn’t know any better after reading this article, you’d believe that the British harbour a particular dislike towards the Dutch. I must admit that after living in the UK for 11+ years, I have never encountered such sentiments among the British. Quite the contrary, I’ve met a great deal of Britons over the…
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Who needs Gorgo when mayors destroy London?
In 1954, Godzilla made his first appearance on the silver screen in Japan, and he immediately did what he does best: destroying Tokio. It was such a hit that the King of the Monsters paid Tokyo 12 more cinematic visits over the years, while also laying waste to a host of other Japanese cities. The…
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Northern Ireland needs a peace summit immediately
This is a translation of my April 2021 newspaper article in Nederlands Dagblad The British government could not have been clearer about a potential border in the Irish Sea before December 2020 if it had tried. ‘No British Prime Minister will ever agree to this’, then-Prime Minister Theresa May proclaimed in 2018. ‘Over my dead…
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Easy Peasy, Tory Sleazy
Unless you’ve been in hibernation for years, you’ll have noticed that the past decade in the UK can be summarised by one word: austerity. The Conservatives, led by David Cameron and sidekick George Osborne, told the British public that the belts had to be tightened as savings had to be made. Osborne announced in the…
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An Ode to Gammon
When I first heard that Twitter had become a safe haven for gammon, I was very pleased. After all, gammon is the best of all the cured meats. Each Christmas Eve I boil a gammon joint in cherry coke and then roast it in the oven with a honey-mustard glaze, which I look forward to…
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The English Lesson You Never Had
Are you a foreign national and you have a decent English vocabulary? Good. Do you have a good understanding of English grammar and do you shudder at seeing the words ‘should of’ appear together in a sentence? Good. This means that you’re fluent in English, right? Wrong. A common mistake is to assume that knowing…
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Corbyn is the new Thatcher
The header of this article may upset followers of Jeremy Corbyn, as the comparison between the MP for Islington North and the former Conservative Prime Minister may seem to them as drawing comparisons between Jesus and Satan. Likewise, many Conservatives probably won’t look favourably upon equating the Iron Lady to Corbyn which they will regard…
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Conservative Jesus and the Privatisation of Heaven
Nadhim Zahawi, Tory Minister for Vaccine Deployment, posted an image on Twitter to mark the start of the Easter Weekend. The picture contained all the essentials to announce to his followers that Good Friday was upon us: a cross, the words ‘Good Friday’ and a logo of the Conservative Party. It begs the question what…
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British Tabloids (are) For Dummies
“Ghost of Jacko bummed my monkey”, “Is THIS the most dangerous chicken in Britain?” and “The EU wants to ban our kettles”. These are ridiculous headlines that I’ve made up, but they could have been genuine tabloid headlines. Actually, one of them is real, but the other two could have been real. Well, in the…
The Dunglishman 