from the Guardian:
Jeremy Clarkson had a point – and that’s not something you hear me say every day indeed, any day – when in a recent Sun column he challenged the scientists or “eco-ists” as Jezza termed them who had described a slab of ice that had broken away from Antarctica as “the size of Luxembourg”.
“I’m sorry but Luxembourg is meaningless,” said Clarkson, pointing out that the standard units of measurement in the UK are double-decker London buses, football pitches and Wales. He could have added the Isle of Wight, Olympic-sized swimming pools and Wembley stadiums to the list.
A Guardian letter writer, commenting on the same story, endorsed the argument: “I would have had some difficulty even if the chunk had been described in terms of the size of Wales. Could you tell us how big it was in football pitches or Olympic swimming pools?”
As Nancy Banks-Smith has noted: “Any plague spot of indeterminate location is always compared to Wales. Wales is not quite sure how to take this.”
[more] via Mind your language: Wales, Belgium and other units of measurement | Media | The Guardian.
“You’d better develop a thick skin and a tasty sense of humor, m’boy.” My father’s advice about telling my friends that I came from a Welsh family…about 1961.