Wednesday 10 March 2004

And Soweto is the new tartan ...

The City of Glasgow has launched its new PR campaign:
As well as the promotional material featuring individuals, two posters have been devised with the slogans "Discover Mackintosh's art nouveau masterpiece: It's called Glasgow" and "Glasgow: The New Black".
The latter seems to be a rather unfortunate slogan given recent racist attacks in the city.

I note that the supposedly Scottish version of the Daily Mail has made a bit of a faux pas.

According to the Mail:

... yesterday it emerged that the multi-million pound campaign to bring visitors to Glasgow is being fronted by a Russian model.
Tourist chiefs are "red-faced" about the Eastern lady, and Tory MSP Jamie McGrigor said:
It might have been better to have used a native girl to represent Scotland. There are plenty of pretty Scottish girls.
I'm sure that Jamie understands the difference between Scottish and English girls. The "Scottish" Daily Mail apparently doesn't, for it turns out that the "Russian" model:
" ... was born and raised in the mainly Muslim town of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan."
Oh dear.

Repeat after me: Just as Scotland isn't (and wasn't) part of England, Uzbekistan isn't (and wasn't) part of Russia. Like Russia, it was part of the USSR. (Assuming that it's not still part of the USSR of course.)