Good points, well made all round.
Any phraseology which is prone to misunderstanding, or needing one person's common sense, which can differ from another person's common sense, should, of course, be avoided. Heck, thats just common sense, right?
However, my point remains that in this case, the controller quite clearly gave in instruction to the Ryanair to allow the other aircraft to pass, hence the use of give way to that
specific aircraft. If the Ryanair then wishes to use the text book interpretation of the instruction as opposed to what was clearly required of her, then she is playing a very dangerous game. She may be cleared of blame in an incident investigation, but why not avoid the investigation in the first place.
Another point to make is that she obviously understood the instruction in the way it was meant, because her response when asked what she was doing was "I thought you meant the other one," meaning the first of the two airbus's. If she had believed the instruction to be as my good pal Hooligan Bill would have us believe then surely she would have indicated this with her response, rather than go straight on the defensive.