We have long believed that the British government constantly lets itself and the country down by not using enough imagination in fighting its corner in Brussels: the Brits are the keenest cost-cutters, so why not regularly propose that the European Community slash the budget at a stroke by decreeing that English shall be the single language for all official Community business; it is impossible to argue against the proposal except on emotional grounds, but the point would not be ever to get the measure adopted, simply to trade it off against the latest measure the French or Italians or Spanish want that we regard as anathema… but when we see project names like Prenormative Requirements for Intelligent Actuation and Measurement, we begin to wonder whether it’s such a great idea after all – the proposal might finally win the day, and one shudders to think what desecration the perpetrators of sheepmeat and subsidiarity would inflict on our language.
