It’s almost too late to wish everyone a happy Burns Night. Burns Night/Day is a Scottish feast day more important than Christmas (Christmas Day was not even a public holiday there till a few decades ago).

The official Robert Burns site gives information on holding a Burns supper.

Armin Grewe has a picture of a haggis on his site – actually a plate with haggis, bashed neeps (mashed turnips/swedes) and potatoes. (Armin’s list of bloggers abroad here). And some more information (source):

bq. Among Burn’s many poems is one called “To a Haggis,” in which he describes the dish as that “Great chieftain O’ the puddin’-race.” Naturally, haggis must be served at the party. Haggis tastes slightly like hash. It is made from the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep. These organs are finely chopped and mixed with toasted oatmeal, onions, and seasonings. Then everything is boiled in a bag made from the sheep’s stomach.

While researching a comment on the last entry, I found a site (in German) with a list of types of non-verbal communication in road traffic: Nonverbale Kommunikation im Straßenverkehr. They include five different ways of flashing your lights (Lichthupe, literally ‘light horn’), warning flasher (Warnblinker), foglamps (Nebelscheinwerfer), and indicator (Blinker).

However, they omit one signal I saw quite a lot of when I started driving again in Germany a couple of years ago – the middle finger (sometimes down to the elbow, with window open). There’s also tapping the forehead.

Another driving site gives information on driving during Fasching / Karneval. You mustn’t drive with a mask on.

bq. Besteht bei einem Unfall ein kausaler Zusammenhang mit dem Tragen der Maske, besteht wegen grober Fahrlässigkeit sogar der Verlust des Koskoschutzes.

bq. If there is an accident with a causal connection to the wearing of the mask, you may even lose your (comprehensive) insurance cover (I presume Kosko is a typo for Kasko, and not Kokos / coconut as I read it first).

Jurawiki has a full copy of the new text of the German Straßenverkehrsordnung (Road Traffic Act) as revised by Wolf Schneider, who is well-known for his books on improving the style of written German – a mammoth task to judge by the stuff I am given to translate into English. Schneider was commissioned to do this by the Auto Club Europa (ACE). But it was the German Federal Ministry of Transport (Bundesverkehrsministerium) that asked ACE to look into the matter.

This is just a suggestion and not law. Some of the vocabulary that is changed: Wechsellichtzeichen (‘changing light signs’) becomes Ampel (traffic lights); Schallzeichen (‘noise sign’) becomes Hupe (horn); Führer von Krafträdern (‘person in charge of motorized wheeled vehicles’) becomes Motorradfahrer (motorcyclist).

(via Ralf Zosel at LAWgical)

Louise Woodward was in the news a lot in Britain and the USA a couple of years ago, when she was convicted first of second-degree murder, later reduced to involuntary manslaughter (something like ‘fahrlässige Tötung’) when the child she was looking after died. She’s started a two-year training contract with a firm of solicitors in Oldham (see article in the Oldham Advertiser). BBC News reported this on 20th January, but it has just been picked up in the USA (via Law Sites, who got it from law.com, where it has probably scrolled). Some of the international headlines are on the lines of ‘Baby killer turns lawyer’.

EUR-Lex, the website for EU legal materials, recently added pages on legislative drafting (thanks to Rainer Langenhan – ‘Gesetzestechnik’).
There is a Joint Practical Guide, an Interinstitutional Style Guide, a Manual of Precedents, and Rules on Legislative Drafting (dead link). There are also links to national sites. The links to Germany are mysterious – one to the Saarbrücken law portal, excellent of course, one to the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court), and one to some information on drafting in French at Fribourg in Switzerland.

One of the links for the UK is to the Parliamentary Counsel Office, which is responsible for drafting statutes, although the site seems unhelpful if you want information about drafting. Here’s a more useful page of international drafting links at Southamption Institute (of which I know nothing).

And here, my search threw up (to coin a phrase) the noble Lord Monson speaking in the House of Lords in May 1996 on the language of the Sexual Orientation Discrimination Bill (I don’t think it’s libellous – one has to be careful when quoting Hansard because Hansard is privileged by law and I’m not). The topic was ‘Page 2, line 18, at end insert (“male”)’:

The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving the amendment, I shall, for the convenience of the House, speak also to Amendment No. 2 which is consequential. So far as concerns the English language, Acts of Parliament ought to set the highest possible standards. Those responsible for drafting statutes should resist siren voices urging them to lower standards whether for populist or any other reasons. The word “homosexuality” derives from a Greek word meaning same and not from the Latin word meaning man. For anyone who doubts that fact, perhaps they should consider the Italian translation, which is omosessualita, not uomosessualita, as would be the case if the word had anything to do with man or with “male”.

To say without a prefix simply, homosexual or lesbian is, therefore, a tautology and the equivalent of saying “human beings or women” which, as I said last time, is considerably insulting to women. As a matter of fact, to incorporate the word “lesbian” itself in an Act of Parliament is cutting it a little fine as the word also means an inhabitant of the isle of Lesbos–whether they be homosexual or heterosexual. Indeed, in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary in the Library of the House which was published in 1973 that is the first definition given. However, I am prepared to give the noble Baroness and her friends the benefit of the doubt in that respect.

In Committee the noble Earl, Lord Russell, who I am sorry is not present in the Chamber this evening–I somehow assumed that he certainly would be–maintained that Acts of Parliament dealing with sexual matters should be framed in the language understood by the under 25s–presumably the sort of under 25s who wear baseball caps back to front. If that were taken to its logical conclusion, the possessive “its” in all such Bills would be spelt with an apostrophe, all punctuation marks other than commas would be eliminated, “fortuitous” would be used when “fortunate” was meant, “infer” would be employed when “imply” was intended, and so on. However, in reality, the young people about whom the noble Earl was concerned rarely, if ever, consult Acts of Parliament. They get their information elsewhere. Acts of Parliament are meant essentially for lawyers and, therefore, they need to be written in totally unambiguous English.

In an article on the rights of actors to have their names shown in credits (none!), IPKAT links a site that explains all those terms in the credits I never understood, like best boy and gaffer and key grip.
The story reported is in Ananova: Actors complain about speedy credits