Elvis lives ... and now he's selling motor insurance; CD-WOW ruling online

Absolutely astounded by the riddle of the Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society, the IPKat now thinks he has a solution. Today's Telegraph reports that the 160-year old society, one of the largest insurance, asset management and banking groups in the UK, has jettisoned its crusty old monicker "Liverpool Victoria" in favour of LV= (see logo, above left). The riddle is this: how is 'LV=' pronounced? There may be some languages in which the '=' sign is articulated as a vowel or consonant, but English is not one of them.

At first the Kat hypothesised that LV= would be pronounced as written, eg. "ellvee-equals". Then a brilliant idea struck him. When he was but a little Kit at primary school, he and his classmates had to chant their multiplication tables: "1 x 3 = 3, 2 x 3 = 6, 3 x 3 = 9 ...", and so on -- and the '=' bit was always rendered "is" (eg 3 x 3 = 9 would be chanted as "three times three is nine"). Consider this. If "L" is pronounced "ell", the "V" is articulated as the normal "v" sound, as in 'very' or 'vixen' and the '=' is rendered as is, you get "ell" + "v" + "is", which is "Elvis". QED.

Merpel is unimpressed by this startling deduction. It’s obvious, she says, that the logo reads like the word “love” but with the ‘o’ —pronounced “love” in tennis scoring—strategically omitted. This is because there’s no love lost between motorists and the insurance companies which they regard as hitching a free ride on their disposable income.

Elvis here
Alvis here
Elvis sightings here
Loch Ness Monster sightings here
Another silly green British insurance company logo with an unpronounceable symbol in the middle of it here


The travails of the music consumer’s self-appointed friend CD-WOW were noted briefly by the IPKat here yesterday. The full text of the judgment of Mr Justice Evans-Lombe in Independiente and others v Music Trading On-Line (HK) Ltd and others [2007] EWHC 533 (Ch) is now available here on BAILII. It’s well worth a read, particular on the arguments relating to the alleged applicability of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 to online purchases made by European customers on non-EU websites.
Elvis lives ... and now he's selling motor insurance; CD-WOW ruling online Elvis lives ... and now he's selling motor insurance; CD-WOW ruling online Reviewed by Jeremy on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 Rating: 5

4 comments:

  1. Dear God, Jeremy you need serious help. Here in the go -ahead UK TM Registry we have counselling sessions at the end of each day.

    This is where TM Examiners can avail themselves of trained professional advisers who, prior to the Examiner's re-entry into the real world, counsel said examiner in the art of seeing what is actually there, not what they want to see. For most the treatment works, sadly for some, well, one doesn't like to blab...too much.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well done, Anonymous - you saw through my ingenious ruse. While some readers might have been fooled into thinking that I was poking a little fun at the new LV= logo, you spotted instantly that I was being deadly serious.

    Or is it a case of a TM examiner seeing what he wants to see rather than what's really there? Hope the counselling works better next time!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Combining Merpel's and Jeremy's suggestions for the pronunciation and you end up with "Love is".

    Is there a chance that the Liverpool Victoria "Friendly" Society might now be confused with this well known comic strip?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Love is like a butterfly

    ReplyDelete

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