David Cantrell 🏏So you know how the two modern empires got single digit country codes? +1 for the USA (which it now shares with its neighbours) and +7 for the USSR? I wonder, if international direct dialling had been invented a few decades earlier would the British Empire have +4, instead of +44 for the UK and random other numbers for the rest? I think I'm going to get in my #TimeMachine and make it so. It would make fixing a bug in Number::Phone, my #perl #telecoms code, much easier.
In case you care what the bug is, +353 48 (that is, the 048 area code in the Irish republic's numbering system) is mapped on to +44 28 (the 028 area code for #NorthernIreland in the UK system) and doesn't fucking work. If the #DominionOfIreland had been under +4 along with the mother country things would be so much simpler.
I propose +4 0 for GB, +4 1 for Ireland (all of it), +4 2 for Canada, +4 3 for #Australia and #NZ (which are the same so should share a code), +4 4 for SA, +4 5 for #India (all of it, including #Pakistan, LOL), +4 6 for Burma and Ceylon, +4 7 for the rest of Africa, +4 8 for the Caribbean (all of it, we shall graciously permit the French and Dutch colonies to share).
+4 9 can then be split up amongst all the little rocks no-one has heard of, including the Dominion of #Newfoundland.
NB that the same bug affects #SanMarino, which as well as having its own country code also exists in the numbering plan of Italy as +39 0549. While I'm mucking about in my time machine I think I'll have to have a word with that irritable slap-head Signor #Mussolini in Italy. I shall try to butter him up by telling him that even in the 2020s some people know of his great contribution to world art, the #novel #TheCardinalsMistress.
And did you know that #SaddamHussein wrote a #novel too? #ZabibahAndTheKing is fucking awful and I don't blame the translator. Yes, of course I have a copy. And a copy of Mussolini's one as well.
If anyone can point me at any #Lenin novels or any of #Stalin's #WizardOfOz #fanfic I would be grateful. I wish to complete my collection of terrible books by terrible people.