Play With Words

记得十多年流行讽刺知识分子，就是现在的“小资”了，常用的段子就是男演员先作扭捏状，然后以一个江浙口音的普通话说“他母亲的！”

所以当看到昨天《卫报》上 Hadley Freeman 的这句话时，我禁不住笑了：

But you know what, Mr Romilly? Life is hard. Sometimes, one can even compare it to a female dog.

Hadley Freeman: Purely Cosmetic

小报(Tabloid)以耸人听闻的头版标题闻名，今天《太阳报》(The Sun)在报道昨天下议院财政委员会听证会时(这在小报是少见的)，用了 Scumbag Millionaire 这样的大字标题，用来描述英国银行RBS和HBOS的前高管，既迎合公众情绪又可以搭上当前热门电影 Slumdog Millionaire 的班车。不知道什么原因，我今天早晨还在《太阳报》网站看到这个标题党作品，到了晚上却怎么也找不到了。

(2月15日更新)在《卫报》网站上，找到了11日《太阳报》头版的照片：

当英国首相布朗在 Davos 大谈贸易保护主义的危险之时，英国的 Total 炼油厂工人正在举行非正式罢工，原因是炼油厂把一些工程外包给意大利和葡萄牙的公司，意大利和葡萄牙人抢了英国工人的饭碗。罢工工人举出的标语上写着 British jobs for British people，是布朗两年前在工党大会上喊出的口号，以示他为英国工人代言的形象。

但 是 British jobs for British people 不仅是保护主义，而且在欧盟内部也是不合法的。人员的自由流动，正是欧盟的重要支柱。正象昨晚 Channel 4 News 所说，正确的说法，应该是 European jobs for European people。

英国众议院每周三中午有30分钟的 Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQ – 我过去曾用过“首相提问时间”和“首相答问时间”两种译法，显然后者更好)。现在的趋势，根据一些议会专门报道议会辩论的记者(他们的职业称呼是 sketch writer – 议会写生员)，似乎是越来越粗鲁没礼貌。原因是工党首相布朗(Gordon Brown)容易动怒又不会开玩笑骂人，而保守党领袖卡梅伦(Cameron)倒是严辞锋利，但为了避免显得夸夸其谈太轻飘，不得不时时做出激愤状。两人你来我往谁也收不住，有时弄得大家都下不了台，身后的议员们就表现得像是一群看人打架在一边拍手叫好的看客，常常裁判－－Common Speaker (众议院主席)不得不介入拉架。所以本周三双方互骂对方 student politics 就显得挺应时：

The Prime Minister tried to be rude in return by accusing Mr Cameron of playing “student politics“, but the Tory leader batted this straight back: “Mr Speaker, only one of us was a student politician and he’s never grown out of it.”

Mr Brown was obsessed by student politics at Edinburgh: Mr Cameron kept out of student politics at Oxford.

Andrew Gimson on Telegraph: Sketch: Gordon Brown feels the pain of creating a brave new world

《泰晤士报》上的 Ann Treneman 则更多地感叹在世界经济危机面前，别人都团结一致，英国的议员们却东奔西散：

Student politics? We should be so lucky. This may even be sub-playground. I have seen pre-schoolers behave better. What is strange is that, in the country, the recession has brought us together. As a people, we are hunkering down, trying to ride it out. But, at Westminster, the recession has driven our politicians farther apart. Now, as surreal as a dream, they are screaming into the wind across an ever-growing abyss.

Ann Treneman on the Times: No end in sight to Gordon Brown’s global nightmare

Times 的餐馆评论员 Giles Coren 在他最近的文章中，对 Guardian 做了一番调侃，反映了部份人对这份报纸的偏见。他在解释为什么 Guardian 上的餐馆评论不如他自己的好：

Both critics are good friends of mine and both have undeniably tremendous appetites, but both are rather hamstrung, I guess you could say, by working for a newspaper group whose business model turns on the certainty that schoolteachers, social workers and angry jobless graduates will always need a newspaper, so it might as well be theirs. Thus any restaurant (or indeed anything) that reeks of frivolity, extravagance, bourgeois aspiration or pretentiousness must be flattened with the cold hammer of Socialist Realism.

前首相 John Prescott 一直以自己是 working class 出身而自豪，同样一直认为英国的 class system 依然顽固地存在着。他为BBC拍摄的2小时长的纪录片 The Class System And Me 就是他到处找人辩论 class system。其中一段他和17岁的少女 Josie Hall 和她的朋友对话。Josie Hall 住在council house，中学因打老师被开除，没有工作，但是能说会道，颇有思想。他们谈到 class system:

John Prescott: What class are you then?

Josie Hall: I’m middle class.

John Prescott: You are middle class?

Josie Hall: Yeah. I ain’t got lots of money. I’m not poor.

John Prescott: As far as I see, I will say you are working class, but you say you are middle class.

Jose Hall: But I don’t work.

这其实是一部蛮有趣的纪录片。Independent 上有一篇详细的评论。

星期五BBC Radio 5 Live 下午的 Simon Mayo 节目上，影评人 Mark Kermode 在评论英国导演 Terrence Davies 以他的故乡 Liverpool 为主题的新片 Of Time and the City。在播了一段电影录音之后，两人的一段对话：

Mark Kermode: Can’t you just listen to that voice just for the whole of rest of the day?

Simon Mayo: Not really. No.

Mark Kermode: Really? Oh. Here we go then.

Simon Mayo: Is the film better than that?

Mark Kermode: Well…That’s rather like someone looking at Mona Lisa goes “Is that all?”

节目链接：http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/entertainment/kermode.shtml

Terrence Davies’s Of Time and the City

Guardian’s Simon Hoggart recreated the scene of the communication between British Chancellor of Exchequer Alistair Darling and his Iceland counterpart:

(Later, Alistair Darling told us that he was at sea. “Getting information out of Iceland is quite difficult,” he said. Imaging their attempts. “The British Treasury here. Can you tell us what is going on?”

“You call is important to us. Please hold.” Then half an hour of Vivaldi.)

A happy day. For Labour at least.

哲学家 Julian Baggini 在他为 BBC Radio 4 的 Archive Hour 节目制作的专题 Julian Baggini’s Sound Philosophy 中的一段话：

We’re living at a time when people stay younger older, going to Glastonbury, listening to iPod in their forties, fifities, even older. But in other sense, we are getting older much younger. It’s now possible for someone in their twenties to be nostalgic about all sort of things no longer surround us because changing pace of the society is now so fast.

这是一个非常值得一听的节目。

F1意大利站，21岁的德国车手 Sebastian Vettel 驾着 Toro Roso 夺得第一名，成为获得F1分站冠军最年轻的车手。比赛将尽时，ITV 的解说，前F1车手 Martin Blundell 忽然冒出这么一段(凭我记忆的大意)：

This kid really has to change his attitude towards the media. He talks to the media. He always smiles. He shakes hands with journalists. He shakes hands with camera men. He says thank you after an interview. He’s giving formula one drivers a bad name!

引得他的解说搭档 James Allen 一顿爆笑。