Salut!

Minding our language: Harvey, Irma, Maria ... and now Hurricane Trump?

I don't know who to believe on climate change. English grad @JamesDelingpole or literally millions of trained scientists worldwide 🤔

— Dan 🐙 (@GameDevDan) September 20, 2017

Loosely my column on words, this latest instalment at The National* - the editor kindly consents to reproduction of my work here - had a look at the naming of hurricanes. The tweet was irresistible: James has views that I'd run a mile from on just about everything, but wasn't a bad sort when I knew him ...

Gazing at his damaged home after Hurricane Maria struck his Caribbean island, the Dominican prime minister Roosevelt Skerrit is unlikely to have been wondering why tropical storms are given such cosy names.

Still, less would he have been bursting to discuss the merits of a study, published in the scholarly setting of the journal of the US National Academy of Science, on a gender issue arising from the nomenclature of such cruel sources of death and devastation.

Minding our language: Piers Morgan, Tommy Robinson and the free speech debate

My attachment to principles held by Voltaire - he may not necessarily have uttered or written the words 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say', but that essentially was his view - is well known. You are free to say whether you think I am right or wrong. Here, from my latest Comment piece for The National, Abu Dhabi ...

The despicable van attack outside London’s Finsbury Park mosque, which left one person dead and several injured, produced a hero for humanity. Indirectly, it also reactivated an important debate on the freedom of expression.

For the hero of the piece, look no further than Mohammed Mahmoud, the imam of a neighbouring mosque who stood between an understandably angry crowd and the driver, possibly saving him from serious harm.

Minding our language(s): can Marine Le Pen ever be treated as a politician 'like any other'?

My French election update is that I still believe Emmanuel Macron will win, but that his relatively uninspiring performance so far in the second round will enable Marine Le Pen, all cliches and soundbites but that suits the sort of people attracted to her, to push him a lot closer than the first polls (62-38, narrowing slightly over the weekend) suggest. She has softened her image enough to seduce some waverers. But is she still, in all important respects her father's daughter? Comment piece for The National*
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From Brexit to burqinis, a rotten year for words and an evil one for deeds

Nobler words: overhead sign on the A8 motorway leading from Nice the day after the July 14 attacks

No intended amalgam, as the French would say, linking Brexit and terrorism. But ugly words have been plentiful in 2016 and they have played their part in inspriing violence and inciting hatred** ...

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.

The inaccuracy of the couplet remembered from childhood has been amply demonstrated in 2016. In another miserable year for words, menacing language has again inspired violence of thought or action.

Is motorsport really sport? Rosberg and Hamilton's F1 duel answers the question

Pictures, from the 2015 24 Heures, courtesy of my nephew-in-law Guillaume Bonnin

In all the years I have been visiting my city-in-law Le Mans, I have not attended the 24 Hours. It is not a deliberate omission from my life's experiences, though nor have I ever considered making a special trip there to be present. Fast cars are not really my thing. But I have at least reconsidered* a long-held prejudice against applying the S word to the people who drive them competitively ...

Motorsport is a word that is occasionally dismissed, by a certain kind of snob, as self-contradictory.

On my earliest exposure to fast men in fast cars, I was that snob. It was my first visit to the French city of Le Mans, home of the woman who was to become my wife, and I was taken to the course of the famous 24 Hours race, not for the event but for the trials that preceded it.

Minding our language: chill guys, it's a no-brainer at the end of the day

Flossie Malavialle - quand un anglais laborieux a provoqué des froncements de sourcils. Image: Jon Bradley

From my column about words at The National*, looking at the assorted way in which liberties are taken with the English language, from officialese after tragic events to jarring modern clichés ...

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After the terrible accident that killed four people on a ride at an Australian theme park last Tuesday, an official spoke these words to the media: "They sustained injuries that were incompatible with living."

Oddly enough, it took a French woman to draw attention to such a strange and inelegant example of what the English writer George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm, might have called officialspeak.

Flossie Malavialle, a singer who lives in the UK and performs exquisitely in English and French on the British folk music circuit, posted on Facebook that it seemed a "really weird" way of saying four people had been killed.

Minding our language: from Swarb to Chirac via a rather silly Roselyne Bachelot

For an idea of one of the things that start at 60, read on (and buy the book if you want at Salut!'s Amazon link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/2081386054/salusund-21...

Many years ago, I came across a Church of England clergyman whose duties then involved serving as diocesan press officer. At one point during a minor crisis affecting his diocese, he complained to me that "journalists keep ringing me up". Plumbers objecting to mending leaks, accountants rebuking clients for wanting help on tax returns and teachers playing truant all came to mind.


Now we have a former French minister, Roselyne Bachelot, who earns good money from the media, complaining that the media sought her thoughts on Jacques Chirac, in seriously declining health. From my latest column on words* ...

Minding our language after Bastille night in Nice: liberté, égalité, fraternité

I intended to have a go at those who jeered the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, at an otherwise dignified homage to the dead of July 14 on the Promenade des Anglais. A report in the usually dependable Nice-Matin suggested heavy Front National involvement in a gesture I considered unseemly. A great friend in Nice assures me that anger with the government, and its perceived security failings ahead of and on the fateful night, goes way beyond the odious FN and is embraced by Nicois of all political opinions. I defer ... this is my latest column on words for The National

So many words, which ones to choose?

All the languages we use possess the richness of expression needed to convey the grief and anger aroused by such grotesque events as the carnage of Bastille night in Nice.

Yet three French words evoked by this man-made disaster seem especially potent: liberté, égalité, fraternité, a high-minded national motto that requires no translation.

Paris, Brussels, Istanbul, Bangladesh: should the BBC just accept they're terrorists?

Written before the latest ISIL/ISIS/IS/Daesh atrocity, in Bangladesh, all the points made in this comment piece for The National (see my work for that newspaper at http://www.thenational.ae/authors/colin-randall) remain valid. it is not, however, any kind of attack on the Beeb, warts and all a great institution, just a reasoned challenge to its reluctance to call terrorists terrorists ...

In the last gestures of worthless lives, three men committed mass murder at Istanbul airport and the BBC naturally devoted much time and countless words to the atrocity.

Two words absent from the BBC’s coverage, except when attributed to an outsider or perhaps uttered mistakenly by a reporter, were terrorist and terrorism.

Minding our language: Hollande and the CGT - a plague on both houses?

Just liked the photo - and there's no copyright

France, yet again, is in the grip of turmoil between government and unions. When governments talk of reform in France, they vaguely hope to make the country economically more viable, more attractive to investors, less a pays poubelle that is so used to living beyond its means that it can see no alternative. For the unions, reform is higher pay, even shorter hours, ever stronger protection for employees (unfortunately not a combination that appeals greatly to business).

I instinctively support unions when in legitimate dispute. Political strikes trouble me; a nominally socialist government is running out of time, both in the presidency and parliament. If the CGT and other unions dislike their policies and laws, there are elections coming up next year. I strongly suspect a lot of their members will be pleased with the support they're getting from the odious far right.

Unions and I also fall out when they and/or their members act as if under no civic obligation to obey laws against violence, criminal damage including arson and intimidation. And that's all before even mentioning the CGT's unforgivable attacks on an already enfeebled press.

Against that, Francois Hollande's government has handled the contentious "loi du travail" abysmally and is hugely responsible for the ensuing chaos. Here are some more thoughts on the subject* ...