Personal

I need to say this.  Seeing Tom Finney's funeral on TV the other day, I just kept thinking - are you watching, Wayne Rooney?

Not for little Jimmy's eyes?

Sad story of a butcher's shop in Suffolk which has had to take down its traditional display of animal and bird carcasses in the window because of complaints from passers-by objecting to having to look at "bits of dead animals".  Sad because it's symptomatic of the modern approach to food production which has resulted in a generation who are growing up having no real understanding of  - or interest in - where food comes from.  Not that I want to go to an abattoir and watch animals being slaughtered, but I would much rather go to a butcher's like that and know what I'm getting than (as I'm afraid I too often do) buy a packaged ready meal containing who knows what.  Get real, people!

Music man

OK, here's a question for you - in what key was Mozart's Symphony No. 40 written? G minor, right?  Well, yes and no.  It was certainly written with a key signature of two flats, which is the right key signature for G minor, and if you hear it played today and pick out the keynotes on the piano, it will come out as G minor. So why yes and no?  It's all to do with pitch.  Just how do you decide what note sounds like what? And throughout history there have been different approaches. The A above middle C, which orchestras traditionally tune to, has been officially set at 440 Hz since 1939, but it wasn't always so, and even today it is not universally adhered to (the New York Phil for example tunes to 442).  In particular, in Mozart's time, this A was set at 424.2, which is pretty well a semi-tone lower than today, so you could argue that Symphony 40 as originally written would have sounded to modern ears as being in something closer to F# minor.

What's in a name?

I've posted before about what I have referred to as the "National Insurance Scam" (see post of 24/2/10), and now at last an MP has taken up the cudgels.  A Bill is to be introduced to rename the levy as the "Earnings Tax" on the basis that, as I have said, it is not and never was insurance as commonly understood by the man in the street. Mind you, what exactly is the difference between "income" and "earnings" when it comes to tax is not readily apparent, and I do wonder if what is behind this is to pave the way for the eventual merging of the two, which has been talked about more than once.

Sauce for the goose...?

Am I a dinosaur?  If you can have women-only organisations which are not open to men, why not the reverse?  The oldest working men's club in the country is having to close, because, as it does not admit women members (although women are welcome to use its facilities) it has been refused funding for necessary repairs. During my chequered career I was for some time the pianist for a local Townswomen's Guild choir, and I remember one occasion where the choir were singing at a venue which (I can't remember just why) was only open to Guild members.  As a man, I couldn't be a member and in order to be able to play for them I had to become a nominal women for the night.  Hilarious yes, but I ask again - if it's OK for the TWG to restrict its membership to women (and I understand the rules have not changed) why should a working men's club be penalised for restricting its membership to men?  Am I a dinosaur??

The pound in your pocket...

So an independent Scotland could not keep the pound?  Yes, they could!  What they couldn't keep (without Westminster's agreement) is the pound sterling. There's nothing stopping them calling their own currency the pound (although you can't help but feel it would be a recipe for confusion) but it would be their own currency, finding it's own value, and not underpinned by the Bank of England. And this I think is the nub of the matter - if the Scots were to keep the pound sterling, and at some future point their economy were to go pear-shaped, we (England and Wales) would be forced to bail them out in order to protect our own currency.  This is why we are not prepared to allow it to happen, and the cynic in me reckons this is why Alex Salmond is so keen for it to happen!

That which must not be named...

Think I've mentioned before that, at one time during my working life I was involved in dealing with people seeking to go bankrupt.  But now I learn that the EU want to ban the word bankruptcy. Apparently they see it as "pejorative" and want to replace it with "debt adjustment".  I can perhaps see where they're coming from, but I am not convinced, and the word "bankrupt" itself has a specific definition which, unlike the practicalities surrounding the process of "bankruptcy" has nothing to do with dealing with indebtedness, but simply signifies a situation where your liabilities exceed your assets.  I don't think "debt adjusted" means the same thing at all.

Are you in or out?

I don't know if I've got a particularly "outside the box" sort of mind, but so many times it seems to me that a crucial question is not answered - or even asked.  Do you remember the case of the journalist who was detained at Heathrow as he was passing through and his belongings confiscated (see post dated 20/8/13)? The Court of Appeal have held that this was legal under the provisions of the infamous Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.  I've no real problem with that - whatever I think, that's their ruling and that's what they're there for, but what about the fact that he was in transit?  This wasn't mentioned at all, but my understanding is that if you are in transit you haven't entered the country (remember the film "The Terminal" which was based on true events?) in which case the question is - did the Terrorism Act (or any other UK legislation for that matter) even apply?  Answers on a postcard...

Sad outcome.

Update on the story the other week of a little boy at a primary school being suspended for having a packet of Mini Cheddars in his lunchbox - he's now been expelled!  I have nothing to add to what I said then, save to say that the boy would appear to be the innocent party in all this - clearly what we have here is a dispute between the school and the boy's parents, and wherever your sympathies lie, is it right that it should be the boy who suffers?

Snow and ice

Winter Olympics - what do you think?  The Olympic motto is "Faster, higher, stronger" and I personally feel that anything which does not meet those criteria should not be included - and on this basis there's much in the winter games which perhaps doesn't deserve to be there.  Figure skating for one - artistic it may be, but I don't see it as a sport, where the outcome is decided empirically, but as a performance, where the outcome is a matter of the subjective opinion of the judges.  Same thing goes for this modern inclusion of snowboarding and skiing events where the idea is to do aerial tricks more appropriate to inner-city adolescent showing-off.  And then there's curling - bowls crossed with housework as somebody put it - which however skillful it may be does not depend on the winners being faster, higher or stronger than the opposition.  There's plenty there to enjoy (downhill skiing, bobsleigh, speed skating etc.) but a lot that I don't think should be there.  The one I'm not too sure about is ski-jumping - if it were just decided on the basis of distance, I would have no problem - but style marks??

English as she is spoke

Where did this idea come from that "herb" should be pronounced without the "h"? There's a Birds Eye advert running at the moment which refers to "' 'erbs and spices".  Is this an American influence?  If so, I don't like it.  Herb is a perfectly good English word (albeit it comes from the French) which has always traditionally been pronounced with the initial "h",  Who decides these things?

Stupid boy!

I may have mentioned before that when I was a kid I fancied myself as a linguist, but a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.  For example, the German for roof is dach and the German for dog is hund, so dachshund is roof-dog, right?  Never could understand that - why would you have a dog for the roof, did it live up there or what, and in particular why was it bred to be long and thin - where's the advantage in that?   It was years later before I realised that there is another word dachs which is the German for badger, and suddenly all became clear - it's a badger-dog, bred to go down holes and flush the badgers out!

R.I.P.

Tom Finney - one of the last - if not the last - of his kind.  A footballer who played for his local team, and stuck with them through good times and bad.  A footballer who had a day job (plumbing) and of whom it was said by none other than Bill Shankly "he would have been great in any team, in any match and in any age... even if he had been wearing an overcoat".  It's a cliché to say we shall not see his like again - but I'll say it.

Splosh!

Well, you go all through your life believing something to be so, only to find that you've been wrong all along. What shape's a raindrop?  Well - raindrop shape, yes? A sort of tapered globe going to a point at the top. Also known as teardrop-shape. Well, no apparently.  American scientists have discovered that the true shape of a raindrop is more like the top half of a hamburger bun - rounded at the top and more or less flat on the bottom.  Mind you, at present we could just do with less of them, whatever the shape!

You're on your own!

Pretty unbelievable story coming out of York.  There's a primary school on a major road, and many pupils have to cross the road to get to it.  Lots of traffic, so parents asked the local authority for a crossing warden to help keep their children safe. The council's response - no way, it's too dangerous! So it's too dangerous for a lollipop person, but OK for children?  Really difficult to see the logic in that - and just to compound the issue, the council are on record as saying that "it is down to parents to make sure their children get to school safely".  What do we pay these idiots for?

Explanations.

In trying to make my posts short and concise, it appears I sometimes just confuse people.  Why did I call my post the other day "The panda problem"?  This was a reference to Lynne Truss's recent best-selling book "Eats shoots and leaves" where the title is based on an old joke about a panda who goes into a restaurant, orders a meal, finishes it, pulls out a gun and fires it, then walks out.  When asked to explain his actions, he takes out a reference book and points to the definition of a panda as an animal which "eats, shoots and leaves" - thus demonstrating the way a comma can completely alter the meaning of a sentence.  Had it been written "eats, shoots, and leaves" by the way, the second comma before the "and" is what is known as an Oxford comma, so that clears that one up as well.

Spot the difference?

I get the impression that the Somerset levels flooding was a matter of "Oh dear, what a shame" whereas the Thames valley flooding is "Panic, panic, major emergency!!".  Somehow it seems that when things happen in, or close to London it is seen as far more important than when it happens elsewhere.

The panda problem...

Almost six years ago now, I was posting about the semicolon, and whether it was really essential in modern written English.  But now someone has suggested that the comma is basically superfluous to requirements, and here I have to disagree. The so-called "Oxford comma" could probably be dispensed with - but then, who uses it anyway?  But in general, the comma performs an essential role - as somebody pointed out, there's a wealth of difference between "Let's eat, grandma" and "Let's eat grandma"!

Whose is it?

Here's a conundrum for you - you put something in your kitchen waste bin - does it still belong to you? You then empty the contents of your kitchen bin into your wheelie-bin - does it still belong to you? You put your wheelie bin out on the pavement for collection - does it still belong to you?  Your bin is emptied onto the cart - does it still belong to you?  I think most people would agree that once it goes into land-fill, it is no longer yours, but just when does it cease to be yours?  This is not an entirely pointless question - more and more people are it seems rifling through supermarket waste bins looking for stuff which is still edible or otherwise usable, and the question has arisen - is this theft?  Clearly this is stuff which the supermarket has no further use for, but is it still "theirs"?  As far as I am aware there is no settled law on the subject, but what do you think?

A wee dram...

If you go back as far as December 2009, you will find me posting about a Norfolk distillery starting up to produce English whisky, and the question was whether it would catch on in a market dominated by Scotch of various types and qualities. Well, we now have (sort of) an answer.  Marks & Spencer have been selling a Norfolk single malt and a Scottish single malt for the same price, and the English one is outselling the Scottish one by two to one!  It has been suggested that this is in fact English whisky drinkers sticking two fingers up to the Scots in the run-up to their independence referendum.  Can't imagine the Scots are exactly trembling in their boots, but it will be interesting to see if the trend continues.

Where did that expression come from?

A recent TV programme had one of the characters saying something like "when this is all over, I want to buy a little farm in Provence and settle down".  And this brought to mind that it was commonplace in the last war for fighter pilots to say much the same thing - except of course that their wish farm would be in the English countryside.  So when a pilot was killed it would be said that he had "bought the farm", which later got shortened to just "He's bought it".

Computer says...

My hearing isn't what it was, and so I find subtitles a boon, but I usually only have them on for films and such, where they are prerecorded.  Even so, they sometimes come up with amusing mistakes, but for really hilarious blunders you need to have them on for the news, where they are computer generated in real time using voice recognition software.  And you get howlers like the Leader of the Opposition coming up as "Ed Miller Band", and the Leader of the Church of England as "The Archbitch of Canterbury", but a recent one which has had people in hysterics was when the celebrations for Chinese New Year were subtitled as welcoming in "the year of the whores"!  Keep 'em coming, says I.

Hitler...Stalin...Headmaster??

I did once say that I thought we were going to have a separate sub-blog for wheelie-bin stories, but they seem to have tailed off lately.  But fast coming up to take their place are stories about power-mad teachers.  We've had a couple recently and here's another - a primary school in leafy Berkshire has suspended one of its pupils for four days for having a packet of Mini Cheddars in his lunch-box. Yes, you read that right - four days suspension and indeed the head is considering permanent exclusion! Clearly there must be more to this than a single packet of cheesy biscuits, but once again I am forced into my constant refrain - who exists for whose benefit, and which should take precedence, education or school rules (no chocolate, sweets, crisps or fizzy drinks in a lunchbox)?  Is it only a matter of time before we get surprise visits by the Food Police to ensure little Jimmy is being fed healthily (or what is considered healthily by the "experts") at home?  I've no problem with a school having a healthy eating policy (although I make the same caveat about what is healthy) but that's quite different from dictating what a child may or may not eat. I'm afraid I'm solidly with the mother on this one when she says "they don't have the right to tell us what we can feed our son" - though I fear it may only be a matter of time before they do!

Hic!

I thought we had 24-hour drinking in this country - indeed I have posted on the subject in the past.  So I was surprised, following the fuss about England's opening World Cup match being played at 11.00 p.m. our time - to find that it isn't so.  As an establishment which serves alcoholic drinks you need (and have always needed) a licence to do so, and the 2003 Licencing Act allowed for the first time for such licences to be for round the clock opening, but you have to apply for such a licence, and only a relatively few places - mainly nightclubs - have done so.  So the majority of pubs and other drinking places still call "time" at some point depending on the terms of their licence.  The government apparently have the power to grant a nationwide temporary extension to licencing hours for special events, and this is what is under consideration for the World Cup match.  Otherwise it would be for individual establishments to apply for individual extensions to their licence, which would be bureaucratic and costly.

Open sesame

Have you seen this story about the Japanese lingerie firm who have developed a bra which remains locked until the wearer's heart-rate reaches a certain level - indicating that they are emotionally aroused - when it automatically pops open? Recipe for disaster it seems to me.  You're in the cinema watching a scary film and --- ping!  And what immediately occurred to me is - how do you take it off?

Figure of speech

OK - I ran yesterday's post past my grandchildren and their immediate response was "I know the word, but exactly what is a metaphor?".  Good grief, what do they teach children these days?  So here's grammar 101.  A simile is when you compare one thing with another.  A metaphor is when you talk about one thing as though it were another.  So "the moon crossed the sky like a ship under sail" is a simile - comparing the moon to a sailing ship.  "The moon sailed across the sky" is a metaphor, treating the moon as though it were a sailing ship.  So a metaphor is always a fantasy - the moon cannot really sail any more than a person can really be on tenterhooks.

I'm all on edge!

The expression "on tenterhooks" cropped up the other day.  It means to be in a state of (rather uncomfortable) suspense, and contrary to what a lot of people think, it has nothing to do with tents.  A tenter was a wooden frame on which woven fabric used to be stretched out to dry, and to stop it shrinking it was held in place by - you've guessed it - tenterhooks, little hooks around the edges.  So the cloth was kept under tension, and hence the metaphor of people being under tension was born.

Ha ha.

The recent episode of "Sherlock" brought this joke to mind -

Four men standing on the roof of a very tall building.  One is Asian, one is eastern European, one is black and one is white.  The Asian goes to the edge of the roof, shouts "This for all my people" and throws himself off.  The eastern European similarly goes to the edge, shouts "This for all my people" and jumps off.  The black man goes to the edge, shouts "This for all my people" ---
               --- and throws the white guy off!

Oooooh - was that sort of racist?