Where did this term ‘Spanish practices’ come from all of a sudden?
All the media reports on the postal workers’ strike are throwing it around as if it is a term everyone uses all the time, but I can’t recall hearing it before. Someone else please admit to also being unfamiliar with it – or is it just me? I suspect there is a bit of Emperor’s new clothes syndrome at work here, with everyone picking up on it and pretending they have been talking about Spanish practices all the time, but it could also just be a gap in my knowledge.
So what is it? Am I one of the few people who didn’t know what it meant or just one of the few who will admit to it? Is it like the 80s when you couldn’t move for people who could go on Mastermind with a specialised subject of the Falkland Islands even though a month previously they would have guessed their location as being off the North coast of Scotland?
I checked on Wikipedia. The article on Spanish practices there was only created 3 days ago, although it says the usage goes back to Elizabethan times.
Maybe because I did Sociology with Industrial Relations, but I’m quite familiar with the phrase.