Anyone for S&M?

The letter arrived on Thursday morning last week.  It was from Scottish Widows plc.

As I am neither Scottish, female or bereaved, you may wonder why. 

Well my pension savings are held by Scottish Widows plc.  They had written to inform me that Scottish Widows plc, along with Scottish Widows Unit Funds Limited and Scottish Widows Annuities Limited would be simplifying their business by transferring all their assets to Clerical Medical Investment Group Limited.

When this is done, they propose to change the name of Clerical Medical investment Group Limited to (wait for it…..) Scottish Widows Limited.

Twenty years ago, I worked on a large capital library building and refurbishment programme.  One of the options we had for fitting out new libraries with shelving was to buy them from a specialist firm called Terrapin Reska Ltd.  Well the years have flown by.  Imagine my surprise when investigating shelving again recently I found that Terrapin Reska Ltd had become (wait for it…) Reska Terrapin Ltd.  But it didn’t stop there.  No sir. A mere transposition of names wasn’t enough.  Now the firm seems to operate as Reska Products Ltd. Do we dare ask what became of the terrapin?

Here's another one. Monty Python’s production company is named Python (Monty) Pictures Ltd.

So here’s a thought for a Monday lunchtime in the silly season. What if Marks & Spencer became Spencer & Marks?  Shortening that to S&M might do wonders for sales among their target market of the beige-clad, free-range elderly.