Well, it's only money

The Londoner’s Diary in today's Evening Standard has a delightful story of a minor though undoubtedly expensive mishap in Brussels and other, minor, capitals of the European Union. (That includes London, in case you are wondering, as well as Edinburgh and Cardiff.)

It seems that the official EU pocket and A4 desk diaries “distributed to workers throughout the EU” have been found to have a bit of a slip-up. Apparently the capitals of the two new members, Romania and Bulgaria, have been exchanged. Terrific. They don’t even sound the same.

A particularly delightful aspect of the story is that nobody noticed this, until the erratum messages went round all those workers (though not peasants, apparently) with various stickers to be placed in the rather hefty diaries with the right addresses.

It seems nobody carries round or consults those blue diaries with gold lettering and, no doubt, gold stars. Derek Scott, director of the London office of the European Parliament is quoted as explaining:

It’s not helped by all that Cyrillic print. I don’t use the diary because I contact people by e-mail.

The words brewery and p*ss-up spring to mind.

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