There's a (not very) interesting little spat going on over at UFO UpDates, which I'm ashamed to say I started. A posting by the very vocal Alfred Lehmberg referred to the alleged UFO crash at 'Shag Harbor', in Nova Scotia. I pointed out that in fact the town, being in Canada, is correctly referred to as 'Shag Harb
our' (no tittering at the back, there), the Canadians, like all members of the Commonwealth, know how to spell correctly (apart from the Australian Labor Party, of course).
For some reason this mild interjection roused Mr Lehmberg's ire (in fact almost anything I ever write on UpDates arouses Mr Lehmberg's ire), calling it a 'derisive commentary' and saying the spelling was taken from the cover of the major book about the case, Don Ledger and Chris Styles' 'Dark Object'
At this point Don Ledger himself steps up and tells us that: "It's Harbor on the front of the book because Anne Strieber - the editor - changed it because she said having the 'U' in there would confuse Americans - seriously, that's what she said."
He makes the point: "Doesn't matter how the word is spelled in the US, Shag Habour is a place name. They changed the name of the place where the incident happened. It would be like us adding an 'R' to Chicago and spelling it Chicargo because it's confusing to spell it the way it 'doesn't' sound."
This does seem to suggest that Anne Strieber holds a rather low opinion of the intelligence of the average American, or at the very least the American readers of UFO books.
For ufologists of a certain age the name Clement Freud means several things: grumpy doyen of radio and TV panel shows; grumpy Liberal MP for the Isle of Ely, grumpy celebrity chef and food critic, grumpy star of dog food adverts partnering an equally grumpy-looking dog, and grumpy newspaper journalist and columnist.
