"They are absolutely not a joke party," said Christoph Bieber, a professor of political science at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
Xu Liping, a pro-Beijing scholar from China's National Institute of International Strategy, told the Guardian he believed the ruling was "biased and unfair", "absolutely terrible" and "a joke".
"If you absolutely insist on a joke, or an odd request, check to see whether this could invalidate the will and avoid doing it if it could.
I will say that it's an absolutely joke that we still have no a-la-carte options.
I recognise that my comment, even though it was intended as a joke, was absolutely out of place and also unacceptable.
"The idea that I wouldnt have any empathy 4 the victims or their families because I make a joke is absolutely ridiculous, U know that, right?," Biggs added.
The more you travel, the more you realise that the reflex of making a joke out of absolutely everything, all the time, and valuing your friends for how funny they, are is peculiar to Britain - all of it - rather than any constituent part (though you will also find it in Australia and some Arab countries).
I repeated what I said to Geoffrey Boycott and Dickie Bird and they said: 'It's a joke, that's absolutely fine.'" Explaining the incident, he said: "One of my aides had said to me that there were five or six different bids from Yorkshire for devolution, different ideas from different parts of Yorkshire.
But it wasn't a joke — Cook was absolutely serious.
