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04 January 2018

Brilliant Russian way of describing the consequences of allowing too many Chinese to buy shares in your birthright

The sad fact is that most of the younger residents of modern England
will not know what a goat is, much less
how voraciously they eat, or how indiscriminately.
So the Russian insight is lost on them.
Luckily English is now a world language, not a local one,
so we can ignore the limitations of all those sad cases
 glued to their smartphones,  consuming e-crap 
as indiscriminately as the hungriest goat in the herd. 
Today's Financial Times (see "China land grab on lake Baikal raises Russian ire") about the number of Chinese buying land around Lake Baikal includes a sentence which ought to go into the English stock of expressions for describing something that is not exactly "an elephant in the room", nor a "Trojan horse", nor a "guest who overstays his welcome" - but is a part of all three, and something more.

Commenting on the consequences of allowing the Chinese to buy property in Siberia, one Yulia Ivanets from Angarsk wrote on Vkontyakte: "We have let the goat into the garden."

Brilliant! Nothing describes the situation better. And I can think of a hundred other situations to which that saying would apply. This should become the English language's first new popular expression of 2018. Well done Angarsk!

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