Monday 7 May 2007

And Ham begat Shem begat blah blah

Pity the scribe that has to type up this stuff, probably getting beheaded for every typo:
Abu Dhabi/Riyadh: President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has sent a cable of condolence to King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia on the demise of Prince Abdul Majeed Bin Abdul Aziz.

His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, sent a similar cable to King Abdullah.

Shaikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Presidential Affairs, and Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Foreign Minister, yesterday conveyed condolences from Shaikh Khalifa to King Abdullah on the demise of the Emir of Makkah Province.

No chance of just writing:
The UAE government has sent condolences to Saudi Arabia for the death of the ruler of Mecca.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think if you go and work for WAM there is a good chance you're an Emirati, and that you probably enjoy protocol :-)

Anonymous said...

I love when they have a welcoming party for a foreign dignitary and the list of names (in full, all titles) spans paragraphs and sometimes even columns. Poor subs - not a lot they can do.

I wonder if the rulers would really be offended if their titles weren't in full and if each name weren't mentioned? Or whether it is the shapeless nameless Protocol Departments that mind more.

Anonymous said...

Could be worse:

Idi Amin styled himself as "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular".

Imagine fitting that in a photo caption .....

Anonymous said...

Imagine if Idi Amin had ever had a meeting with Shaikh Mohammad and Shaikh Khalifa!!

Anonymous said...

Ham, Shem and Japheth were brothers. So they couldn't of begat each other. Heroic attempt at starting a thread, anyways.

Could we have one exclusively on the ECM?

(M is for Moustache, and a big one it is.)

Anonymous said...

On a semi-related note, nice to see the leader of the UAE, Sheikh Khalifa al Etcetera bin Whatever giving the Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki the Emirates Towers red carpet welcome on the front page of all the Arabic-language newspapers today. Under Afwerki, Eritrea has one of the worst records in the world regarding press freedom - journalists are being killed in prison there. Maybe Afwerki is giving Khalifa lessons on how to treat dissident reporters...

Anonymous said...

He was not the 'ruler' of Mecca. There isn't one!

Anonymous said...

I don't think the rulers would be offended for not having their full titles mentioned, as long as they are mentioned with the proper prefix (His Highness Sheikh... ). In fact, I would probably not want to have my title mentioned since I would like to think I am already pretty well known.

On another note, the cable was not by the UAE government, it was by individuals in the UAE government. However, it probably could have been put in one paragraph, listing their names together.

It's very hard to read those things.. when I see too many 'sheikh's in a paragraph I skip to the next hoping to figure out what it's about.

Anonymous said...

What kind of editors actually work at WAM on the English service? What's the money like?