Many years ago, someone told me a sociology story. A researcher approaches three workers and asks what they are doing. The first is a Tory and answers "a fair day’s work for a fair day's pay". The second is a Socialist and answers "I'm having my labour exploited for profit by the capitalists". The third is a Christian and answers "I'm building a cathedral". I can't remember who told me this, but I woke up this morning thinking about how it reminds me of a famous witticism of Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, often quoted as "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse". He almost certainly never said it in that form. If he did say something like it, then the order would have been to emphasize Spanish, which he called the divine language: "... and Spanish to God". The translated order says more about the teller than it does about Charles, betraying an anti-Germanic prejudice by im
Simon Dobson's occasional musings, invectives and miscellaneous nonsense