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Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Brits steal carloads of F**king Austrian roadsigns

An Austrian village called Fucking will not change its name despite sniggering Brits making off with its roadsigns.

Mayor Siegfried Hauppl has asked visitors to lay off the signs which began to attract outside attention after British and US soldiers passing through in 1945 illuminated the locals as to the English meaning of Fucking, Ananova reports.

Hauppl explained: "We had a vote last year on whether to rename the town, but decided to keep it as it is. After all, Fucking has existed for 800 years, probably when a Mr Fuck or the Fuck family moved into the area. The 'ing' was added as a word for settlement."

We reckon that Fucking has been around a lot longer than 800 years, otherwise there wouldn't have been any Fucks to lend their name to the village in the first place, would there?

Be that as it may, the disappointing news is that the residents of Fucking are - according to Franz Duernsteiner, an expert on preposterous Austrian village names - very "conservative" people. He said: "Most of them can speak English, and when someone asks them where they come from they are a little ashamed to say it."

That's fair enough, and certainly something the residents of Milton Keynes can sympathise with.

Note:
The village is known to have existed as “Fucking” since at least 1070 and is named after a man from the 6th century called Focko. “Ing” is an old Germanic suffix meaning “people”; thus Fucking, in this case, means “place of Focko’s people”. Here is Wikipedia's notes on Fucking, Austria.

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Fjuckby Residents Demand Rebranding

The good burghers of the Swedish village of Fjuckby have decided they've had enough of being the butt of fjuck jokes and are demanding a rebrand, The Local reports. The Fjuckers finger globalisation as the principal cause of their woes, which "has led to rude English-language associations that the villagers could do without".

To add insult to injury, Fjuckby also contains the Swedish word juck, meaning "hump" in the local lingo. Accordingly, Katriina Flensburg wrote a heartfelt letter to the National Heritage Board on behalf of her fellow Fjuckers. It read: "There should not be any doubt at all that, as a result of relatively new associations, the pronunciation and spelling of the place name 'Fjuckby' today arouses ridicule, teasing, and hilarity in the general public.

"This regrettable fact engenders feelings of weariness, embarrassment and conditioned shame among villagers, who are often forced against their will to take a tiresome 'defensive stance' with regard to the name of their home town." The solution to the problem is, the locals reckon, a reinstatement of the name Fjukeby which "as late as the 1930s... was the accepted spelling".

We don't think this news will be well received in the Austrian village of Fucking. In 2004, the residents voted defiantly to keep their name, despite carloads of sniggering Brits nicking their roadsigns.

Fjuckby (Click here for map)

Alternative Name: Fjuckby
Name Type: Native
Area / State: Uppsala

Coordinates & Location type:

Area Type: Populated place
Location Type: Populated Place

Latitude: 59.98333
Longitude: 17.6
(Decimal degrees)

Latitude (DMS): 59° 58' 60 N
Longitude (DMS): 17° 36' 0 E
(Degrees, minutes and seconds)

Location modified: 1/14/1994
Maps & Location database updated: 2004-02-27

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Sidney, Montana not Sydney, Australia

Spelling mistake takes tourist 13,000km off-course

A typing mistake on an online booking form left a German tourist 13,000km off-course on a journey to meet his girlfriend. Tobi Gutt left Germany in high hopes on Saturday, dressed in T-shirt and shorts for the Australian summer, but instead of heading towards Sydney, Australia the 21 year-old ended up en-route to Sidney, Montana.

Initially Gutt reasoned that it was possible to fly to Australia via the United States and it was only as he boarded a commuter flight to Sidney, an oil town that's home to around 5,000 people, that the terrible truth dawned on him. Up to that point he'd flown to Portland, Oregon and on to Billings, Montana with mounting concern.

"I did wonder but I didn't want to say anything," Gutt told the German newspaper Bild. "I thought to myself, you can fly to Australia via the United States." He was left in the stuck middle of nowhere with only a thin jacket to keep out the cold. Fortunately after three days his family and friends were able to send him the €600 he needed to book a new ticket to Australia. "I didn't notice the mistake as my son is usually good with computers," his mum, Sabine, told Reuters.

Most Corrupt Countries, 2006

Rank	Country
1.	Haiti
2.	Myanmar
3.	Iraq
4.	Guinea
5.	Sudan
6.	Congo, Democratic Republic
7.	Chad
8.	Bangladesh
9.	Uzbekistan
10.	Equatorial Guinea
11.	Côte d´Ivoire
12.	Cambodia
13.	Belarus

The Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain, and measures the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among a country's public officials and politicians.

Source: Transparency International, 2006. Web: www.transparency.org.

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The 2006 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index

According to the annual survey by the Berlin-based organization Transparency International, Finland, Iceland, and New Zealand are perceived to be the world's least corrupt countries, and Haiti is perceived to be the most corrupt. The index defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain and measures the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among a country's public officials and politicians. It is a composite index, drawing on 12 polls and surveys from 9 independent institutions, which gathered the opinions of businesspeople and country analysts. Only 163 of the world's 193 countries are included in the survey, due to an absence of reliable data from the remaining countries. The scores range from ten (squeaky clean) to zero (highly corrupt). A score of 5.0 is the number Transparency International considers the borderline figure distinguishing countries that do and do not have a serious corruption problem. Countries that have significantly improved their rating since the 2005 index were Algeria, Czech Republic, India, Japan, Latvia, Lebanon, Mauritius, Paraguay, Slovenia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uruguay. Some of the countries that have a significantly worse rating since 2005 include Brazil, Cuba, Israel, Jordan, Laos, Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, and the United States. Because inclusion in the index requires at least three sources Afghanistan, Fiji, Liberia, Palestine, and Somalia, with only two sources in 2006, were not included.
#. Country CPI (Corruption Perception Index)
1. Finland 9.6
2. Iceland 9.6
3. New Zealand 9.6
4. Denmark 9.5
5. Singapore 9.4
6. Sweden 9.2
7. Switzerland 9.1
8. Norway 8.8
9. Australia 8.7
10.Netherlands 8.7

The full report is located here. Rate Me on BlogHop.com!

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