> there was reasonable evidence to suggest that for some kinds of optical deterioration, exercises did make a difference.

Well, you’d think so. Every other muscle in the body can be made to work better through exercise. Why not the ones controlling the focus and exposure of your eyes?

I believe the current thinking is also that giving kids glasses so that they can learn to read is actually a cause of eyesight problems — if they didn’t have the glasses, their eyesight would improve itself as they got older. Course, if they didn’t have the glasses, they wouldn’t be able to learn to read, so it’s a reasonable trade-off.

That said, i’m coming round to S2′s take on specs: this is a great time to be myopic, because there are finally loads of decent, inexpensive specs to choose from. When I was a teenager the choice was National Skelpers or Sinister Taxi Driver.

And fluency is about being able to express ideas clearly rather than completely accurate spelling and grammar. Fluency is about flow rather than accuracy. Someone who can perfectly construct sentences and spell every word correctly cannot be described as fluent in another language if they cannot make themselves understood.

> Logic would suggest a company concerned about projecting a professional image would ensure its salespeople were fluent in the languages that they sell in.

You win this week’s prize for misuse of the word “logic”. What are you, illiterate?

Anyway, Evgania’s not a salesperson; she’s the head of her own company. Say what you like about Easyjet, but Stelios has happily appeared in his own adverts speaking his slightly imperfect English, and he is neither stupid nor fraudulent. Come to think of it, one of my colleagues is Ukrainian and speaks good but imperfect English and has just spent a few months in Canada doing important work for a major new client. No-one thinks it was unprofessional to send her. Myself, when I see that a company has employed salespeople fluent in the languages of every country they sell in, the only conclusion I draw from that is that they must have a huge budget.

We all have fun (quite rightly) taking the piss out of Brit chavs like Shlaine and Caine Haine when they try to write in their own language and fail. That’s not remotely the same as taking the piss out of a foreigner whose English is excellent but not quite perfect.

What she said may or may not have been bollocks, but it’s a bit of an ad hominem to criticise her accent.

A quick look at Google shows that, if Evgania does have a lot of dissatisfied customers out there, they don’t seem to be writing about it on the Web. Course, maybe that’s because they can’t see, but hey.