Two Articles about What Brits Know (or Don't)...

Two articles i ran across online lately (the first is actually a
comment on the original article; the full original Reuters article is
at http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL0167874620080201)

[quote]

UK Woolworths Pulls "Lolita" Bed For Six-Year-Old Girls

By Robert Paul Reyes
 
"A shopping chain has withdrawn the sale of beds named Lolita and
designed for six-year-old girls after furious parents pointed out that
the name was synonymous with sexually active preteens. 

Woolworths said staff who administer the website selling the beds were
not aware of the connection."

(Quotation from Reuters)

The British school system must not be all this it's cracked up to be,
if the techies who manage a Web site aren't familiar with the sexual
connotation of the word "Lolita."

You don't have to be an English major to know that "Lolita" is a novel
about a man who has a sexual relationship with his 12-year-old
stepdaughter. But even if you've never read a book in your life, the
word "Lolita" has entered the lexicon as slang for a sexually
precocious young girl. 

Is Western society producing a generation of young people who can
program an iPod and create a Web site, but don't know the first thing
about literature and art?

[/quote]

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/50951

and

[quote]

Nearly quarter of Brits think Churchill a myth: poll

Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll which
shows nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth, while the
majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

The survey found that 47 per cent thought the 12th Century English
King Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

And 23 per cent thought World War II prime minister Winston Churchill
was made up.

[snip]

Meanwhile, 58 per cent thought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional
detective Sherlock Holmes actually existed, and 33 per cent thought
the same of WE Johns' fictional pilot and adventurer Biggles.

[/quote]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/04/2153628.htm?section=world