WHEN he was economic secretary to the Treasury, Sajid Javid once baffled a Japanese delegation when an interpreter translated his job-title as “cheap typist.” 

It seems politicians north of the border haven’t fared much better with the perils of translation. 

“Apologies if my sign language is even worse than my Gaelic,” Scottish Parliament presiding officer (speaker) Ken Macintosh said at the Scottish Parliament’s 20th anniversary situation. 

“The sign for Scotland is a bagpipe played under one arm. On my first attempt I used both arms and was assured by my colleagues in the deaf community that I had just welcomed guests to the chicken parliament.”

Memory lane

PICTURES of the occupation of an arms factory in Oldham struck a familiar chord this week. 

When the company turned out to be Elbit Ferranti, I realised why. 

My grandma once worked in this former cotton mill, washing up in the “pan corner” of the canteen. 

At the age of 15, I took some photographs of this building as part of a GCSE art project. 

The gates had been left open, but before we knew it there were flunkies at the windows with loudhailers demanding we report to the site office — where no doubt I’d have been threatened with the law if I didn’t erase my images. 

We made a swift escape, with the perfectly innocent exterior shots intact.

Mass media and revolution

STILL seven weeks left to see the Hunterian Gallery’s excellent German Revolution: Expressionist Prints exhibition, which I reviewed for art magazine Apollo this week. 

There’s too many highlights to describe in one paragraph, so I’ll stick to one observation. 

I’ve long been fascinated by printmaking, but it took this show for me to fully realise its power as a form of artistic mass media. 

All of the artists on show would have been considered “degenerate” by the nazis, but the sheer multiplicity of these works served as an insurance policy against both destruction and confiscation. 

Germany’s communist uprising was brutally crushed, but an artistic counter-revolution was plain impossible.