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The British Language

I had to laugh at this headline above a top story on The Telegraph website now: Comet nears administration, 6,000 jobs at risk My first thought was that the headline writer had lost his mind in US election delirium. This sounds like a variation on that joke headline about how the end of the world […]

I had to laugh at this headline above a top story on The Telegraph website now:

Comet nears administration, 6,000 jobs at risk

My first thought was that the headline writer had lost his mind in US election delirium. This sounds like a variation on that joke headline about how the end of the world will be reported to reflect the biases of major newspapers, e.g., “World Ends Tomorrow; Gays, Minorities Worst Hit” (NYTimes), or “Massive Market Selloff In Apocalypse Fears” (Wall Street Journal). On first read, I thought this was a story about how a surging Romney threatens to put Obama administration workers out of a job.

Then I remembered this was a British newspaper. Comet is a UK retailer. For a company to go into “administration” means court-supervised bankruptcy. Ah.

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