Jun

8

Alphabet Soup

Posted by at 12:47 pm on June 8, 2009
Category: General

An alert reader from the U.K. pointed this out:

BERR (“Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform”) which houses the United Kingdom’s Export Control Office has changed its name to BIS (“Department for Business Innovations and Skills”). I can’t imagine that our own BIS (“Bureau of Industry and Security”) is very happy about this foreign incursion on its export control brand. Perhaps this will prompt the U.S. BIS to go back to its original name — BXA, or the Bureau of Export Administration. Or better yet: “CSI:Exports”

Then again tit-for-tat is always fun so we could rename BIS as the Export Control Office and the Department of Commerce could be come the Department of Business, Enterprise, Recovery and Reinvestment (“BERR”). Then 10 Downing Street could paint itself white and Pennsylvania Avenue could be renamed Downing Street. By the time it was all over, Parliament and Congress would shift names, and we could trade the Washington Monument for the Tower of London. Such fun, as long as we don’t have to trade anything for the Millennium Wheel.

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Copyright © 2009 Clif Burns. All Rights Reserved.
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4 Comments:

And it cost British tax payers how much to change from DTI to BERR les than two years ago? Then again… we don’t quite get expenses.

Comment by Anna Madejski on June 8th, 2009 @ 1:34 pm

Anna – I’ll second that. What with the government expense scandal(s) that are happening there now, this is probably a drop in the bucket. I must admit though that it made me smile when I read that someone expensed cleaning of their moat.

Comment by ldm on June 8th, 2009 @ 4:36 pm

Perhaps they should just apply a little government redundancy in the naming and we could have:

Bureau of Industry Manufacturing and Brokering Office.

I’m sure the name BIMBO would make having to deal with all the angry mid-level bureaucrats a tad more amusing.

Of course the Bureau of Industry Technology Construction and Harbors would be just too much hope for….

Comment by Chris Adams on June 8th, 2009 @ 5:29 pm

This is reminding me of the Seattle area’s delight 2 years ago when they named the new trolley the South Lake Union Trolly (S.L.U.T.) The local businesses made t-shirts saying, “I rode the S.L.U.T.”

In the case of the Bureau of Industry and Manufacturing Brokering Office, the slogan could be, “Doing business with BIMBO”

chris w

Comment by Chris W. on June 9th, 2009 @ 10:31 am