But me no butts
Boris Johnson, being taught a Maori head-to-head greeting, joked that it might be ‘misinterpreted in a pub in Glasgow’. But did he offend the wrong city? In 2007 the OED appealed for details on the origin of ‘Glasgow kiss’, meaning a headbutt. Then, its earliest known first use was in the Financial Times in 1987, whereas ‘Liverpool kiss’ (meaning the same thing) was traced back to 1944. The appeal pushed back the Glasgow first use, but only by five years to 1982, when the Daily Mirror said: ‘Glasgow has its own way of welcoming people… there is a broken bottle gripped in the first of greeting. Or there’s the Glasgow kiss — a sharp whack on the nose with the forehead.’
More equal than others
After the BBC pay uproar, how does the UK fare globally in gender equality issues?
Scores out of 144: one is the most equal
| Enrolment, tertiary education | 1 |
| Literacy rate | 1 |
| Women in Parliament | 43 |
| Labour force participation | 48 |
| Women in ministerial positions | 49 |
| Wage equality for similar work | 52 |
| Professional and technical work | 72 |
| Earned income | 92 |
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