The Box

It's probably quite old-fashioned these days to refer to television as "The Box", or, in one of its elongated versions, "The Goggle Box". After all, TVs are no longer boxes. No, they're high definition (or maybe just ready for it), three dimensional, flat, plasma, apps, PCs, pads, tablets and so much more. And mostly made in the far east.

The technology that has brought us all of these options and is continually developing new media through which to view, has an almost sigmoid quality to its growth but it also has a uncomplimentary reverse paradox. The greater the variety of (and access to) visual information and, in particular, entertainment, the lesser the quality of output. 

The programming available in the UK on terrestrial or free-to-air channels alone is becoming depressingly dismal and devoid of enlightenment. As an example, here's ITV 1's schedule for Sunday, 27th November:

14.45 - Almost two hours of X-Factor garbage. Talentless no-hopers prepare to be paraded in front equally talentless 'judges' called Gary, Tulisa, Kelly and Louis, who are in the business of making the pretence that anybody gives a shit about anything other than advertising revenue.

16.25 - Bergerac investigates the tedious, mind-numbing murder of the final resident of Midsomer (until some new ones move in, despite their life chances being about as good as a Biafran kid in the seventies). Interestingly, the Midsomer producer is Brian True-May. Does this mean that the Queen guitarist and astro-physicist is a false one?

At 18.00, there's an apology for a news bulletin before, at...

18.30 - Harry Hill burps about some shite. The next series will probably be Ant and/or Dec's TV fart, followed up by Alan Carr's TV defecation - Live!

19.00 - The Cube: Philip Schofield gets enthusiastic about watching wannabe Z-list celebrities fiddle about in a perspex, square-shaped bubble thing - oh, yes...it's a cube! Really stupid people can win £250,000 but, of course, they don't.

20.00 - Gary, Kelly, Louis and Tulisa factor some more Xs by verbally tossing off about the arses you watched in the afternoon while somebody called Dermot O'Leary talks some bollocks. Wouldn't you just love this guy to turn out to be Michael O'Leary's brother? Actually, everything would be worth watching if presented by the self-publicising CEO of Ryanair.

21.00 - I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here. This should be titled "No You're Not - Fucking Well Stay There", or, "I'm a Viewer - Get Me Hemlock". Watching Derek Jarman's film, 'Blue' would be more entertaining. Commentator's have informed us that this televisual equivalent of sitting in a barrel of cold vomit is losing its audience. There's a fucking surprise, then. Perhaps it should have read that the audience are losing it. Either will do. The fact that the whole thing is set in Australia reminds me of all the good things about transportation of undesirables in the nineteenth century.

There's another brief nod to current events in an apology for news journalism at 22.30 before...

22.45 - Has-been presenter and pensioner-goader Jonathan Ross gets the graveyard slot with a couple of end-of-the-pier magicians. The show is called, prosaically, Penn & Teller: Fool Us. Yeah...stick a "more" in front of the final two words of the title and that just about sums it up.

Not only is the programming complete bollocks and an insult to our collective intelligence, but throughout the whole experience we are bombarded by messages from the sponsors every few minutes suggesting that we are craven, selfish bastards if we don't spend at least ten thousand pounds making Christmas so special for our 'loved ones'. Recession? What recession?

And this is just one day, in one one week of a year of insulting programming that goes to prove that Warhol was correct about fame but I doubt that even he foresaw what we now experience. 

Thankfully, there remain some alternatives - usually on the BBC - although even "Auntie" has begun to plumb previously unexplored depths with the gratuitously stupid Gervaise vehicle about a dwarf, but then it elevates itself to more familiar higher ground too with the superbly observed comedy "Rev." and their usual high standards in journalism, drama and documentary.

When my father brought home our first 'Goggle Box' in 1961, there were only two channels. Maybe we should try that again?

Some Things Are Just So Wrong...Aren't They?

Here are ten things that are just so wrong...

1) The process for the selection of candidates and the election that follows for what is arguably the World's top job is just nuts, isn't it? First of all, any candidate that wants to get anywhere close to selection by one of the only two "parties", has to be either seriously rich or able to persuade some seriously rich people to fund their campaign. So, what follows is that the seriously rich run the United States either by being the POTUS or the power behind the POTUS, which is more worrying than having a rich idiot sitting in the Oval Office because at least the idiot has to appear before the public and the media. Either all of that happens or the American people are forced to have an actor in charge.  In  advance of No. 2 (below) there's also the ridiculous coverage by the US News media of the potential candidates with everyone trying to be as awful as Fox News. A perfectly legitimate and possibly even  a worthy, sensible future president can be be destroyed because of a prime-time TV nose-picking incident or just for having a spouse that's a little bit odd (although Michelle Bachman's husband's contention that "gayness can be cured by prayer" could be a bit of a vote-loser here and there, I guess). WRONG.

2) The world is run by media. Not in the sense that press barons and media moguls are actually Presidents or Prime Ministers (not now that Berlusconi has gone), but that the leaders of the free world cannot do anything without some element of the press and other media reporting it, commenting on it, disagreeing with it and generally spinning all kinds of crap around it, thus making it almost impossible for leaders to do what they're supposed to do - like taking difficult, unpopular decisions. Before we had all of this so-called press freedom (as opposed to what it is mostly - press interference) then some leaders got away with murder, literally, and probably, all kinds of other naughty stuff but, as nobody was any the wiser unless they were on the receiving end, did it make that much difference? You know, like if a tree falls in the forest when there's nobody there...does it make a sound? Fifty years ago, Harold McMillan was PM of the UK and being a toff, he used to take weeks off during the summer to shoot in Scotland (grouse, not scottish people). Half the time he was away, he wasn't anywhere near a land line or telegraph so had no idea how things were going and we had no idea what he was doing either. The Civil Service ran government anyway so it didn't matter much. Today, his successor, Dave, another privileged Old Etonian, can't even have a couple of hours' holiday and if News International had its way, there'd probably be a camera in his toilet so we could all see and tweet about the Prime-ministerial evacuation. There has to be a better balance so that these people can get on with their jobs; and it is only going to get more intrusive. WRONG.

3) "Children in Need" is bollocks. This annual celeb-fest of arseholes poncing about doing "fun" things for "charriddee"makes me heave. The BBC bangs on for weeks before the event (and for countless days after) about how selfless all these attention-seeking gits are, because they are doing things so out of the ordinary compared to their day-jobs. No, they're not. They're doing exactly what they and their money-grubbing agents want them to do - increase their media exposure so that they can sell a book or get on the next pile of televisual excrement called "Strictly Whatever" or "I'm an arse, get me out of Whatever". The evening of whacky funstering is a combination of vapid, overpaid, over-hyped twits performing against glitzy backgrounds interspersed with edited footage of the poor so that the viewing public will send money, supposedly just for children's charities in the UK. Given that the organisation of this whole fanfarrande must cost a bloody fortune, the BBC could just take £25m from the licence fee income (that's less than one per cent) and show repeats of Dad's Army instead. WRONG.

4) Sepp Blatter's views on racism in professional football are wrong on so many levels. In fact, Sepp Blatter's views on just about everything are questionable, especially where bribery and corruption are concerned but the daft old git trumped his previous gaffes a few days ago by suggesting that if one player offered racial abuse of another in the "tension" of a professional football match, then it would be OK to just shake hands at the end and put the whole thing down to enthusiasm of play and the various heats of the moments that made someone become a temporary racist. Less reported, however, were some of the reactions to Blatter's idiotic remarks, for which, to be fair, he has apologised...a little bit. Mark Bright, brought on to BBC 5Live on the day of the Blatter bollocks as a formerly racially-abused footballer, made the point that it was OK to insult fellow players on the basis of how they look, their families' idiosyncracies and their abilities or even disabilities. In fact, in Bright's world, anything goes on the football field as far as "sledging and banter" are concerned, as long as it isn't racist. What a tosser. WRONG.

5) Idiots in the popular media that ask the question, "How are you going to pay for Christmas?" These fools seem to be worrying on behalf of people who might be feeling the pinch of the recession and call upon "experts" who come up with solutions on how to borrow your way through this or, worse still, Kirstie-bleeding-Allsop being asked to blether on about home-spun ideas that will save you money, just so long as you have lots of it in the first place and can afford to knock some Christmas delights up from your spare antiques and silverware. It's quite simple. If you have to ask the bloody question in the first place, then the answer is, more than likely, "I can't". So don't have an excessive, gluttonous Christmas, then. Just be nice to one another, instead. There's a good idea for a present. But then we'll have the British Retail Consortium lobbying the government to make us all spend more money that, for nine items out of ten, will simply be lining the pockets of the Chinese. WRONG!

6) The Royal Bloody Family. Some fool asked the Duke of Edinburgh his opinion on wind farms a few days ago and got a vitriolic, nonsensical reply from the nonagenarian old fart who declaimed that wind turbine electricity generation was "useless", a "disgrace", that they "never work" and that their supporters are people "who believe in fairytales". It's not that there might not be an argument there, it's just that we shouldn't be asking for the opinions of privileged twits on things that they aren't qualified to speak about and then report them as if they're important. This bunch of inbred toffs have no fucking idea about anything outside of their privileged existences and should never, ever, be allowed to influence government on anything. Why not ask Prince Andrew his opinion on the struggle in Burma and the heroic efforts of Ang San Suu Kyi? The answer would probably be along the lines of, "...oh, yah! Burma! Trade missions there were just so sooper. Bang on hotels and lots of lovely 'brine' envelopes,  dontcha know? Ang san suckie who? Oh, yah, probably met her...ha!" Or we could seek the Prince of Wales opinion on...er...OK let's not. WRONG!

7) Ant and/or Dec. Poisoned dwarves. WRONG!!!!!

8) Celery. What on earth is this vegetable all about? Radishes and fennel are bloody awful too but celery has no redeeming features at all. It tastes inexplicably awful. It sounds worse than it tastes when people are eating it. Undoubtedly  it is the Robert Mugabe of vegetables and should be removed the surface of the earth. WRONG.

9) Rich Bastards. The lack of philanthropy in the modern world is shameful. OK, we have, thankfully, the Bill Gates's around and, to some extent, the Rothschilds and Warren Buffet, but these people are and have been so seriously wealthy that there is almost an embarrassment factor about not giving some of it away, which some of them do and, to some extent, they're damned if they do (because some might argue it's not enough, which is a tad unfair). There are others to whom it doesn't even occur to be philanthropic; Eccleston, Goodwin, Abramaovic come to mind among so many thousands of others. They may have some excuse in that they would not wish to have their cash distributed to the feckless and that might be why so many rich bastards don't bother. But why not give it a go? The current Lord Rothschild made the point on Ian Hislop's polemic about "Good Bankers" of the past, that he can only eat so much and spend so much on essentials for his well-being and the rest...well, it may as well go to those less deserving, as his family have always considered to be the correct things to do. Taking my own bete noir (Goodwin), he may not now be inordinately wealthy (I understand he may currently be unemployed, in the sense that he doesn't get  a wage, only consultancy fees, dividends and huge amounts of interest on investments to rely on, poor soul) but if anyone should be giving everything he's got over and above an income that doesn't attract 40% tax, then he's the fucking one. And if anyone wants to to understand the avarice that exists amongst the super-rich, then have a read of George Monbiot's  article in the Grauniad this week. Rich Bastards...WRONG!

10) George Gideon Oliver Osborne and Ed Balls. Wrong. The pair of them. Just so utterly, unremittingly, WRONG. (Worse than celery, by the way).

AND THESE AREN'T EVEN THE TOP TEN THINGS THAT ARE REALLY WRONG, ARE THEY?...they're the just the ones that occurred to me just now. More later, then, I guess...

Select a Committee

It all seemed to be going so well...or at least a little bit well...as the Parliamentary Select Committees had behaved with decorum over the past few months in their search for what might pass for truth in the phone-hacking inquiries. Tom Watson, a little-known back bench MP who, until recently, came to greater public attention with the Culture, Media &Sport Committee and his questioning of the Murdochs and other alleged ne'er-do-wells involved at News International. 

Mafiosi Enjoy a Lovely Evening Out?

Forget for a moment the odious, face-altered Tory chick-litter Mensch and her personal drive for stardom through her best-selling novels  and disappearing from the committee to look after the little Mensches; it was Watson's turn to have a minor implosion. It's a shame, really. He'd become a kind of champion of truth in the war against the Murdoch empire (that's the one that Vince Cable once said he would use the "nuclear option" against and then didn't) but then, right at the near-death, he blew it. Puffed up with a misguided sense of his own importance and errantry, he went for high drama and accused Murdoch Junior of being a mafia boss. And not just any old mafia boss. No. A mafia boss that didn't know he was running a criminal empire, or "enterprise" as Watson chose to describe it because he hadn't watched the right movies. So not only was James Murdoch, in Watson's view, a mafia boss but he was a pretty shitty one, seeing as all other mafia bosses were and are quite clear on the issue of criminality, inasmuch as they understand that they are criminals, even if they aren't that fussed about the laws that the rest of us are required  to observe.

The Murdochs at the Office?

The accusation of Murdoch being a mafia boss might have resonated if Watson hadn't absolved him from guilt on the basis that he didn't know he was running a crime enterprise. This silly line of questioning was accompanied by an allusion that the mafia code of "omerta" was also employed by the "enterprising" mafiosi. This might have been close to some kind of truth, given that the Murdoch heir was quite clearly, according to his own evidence, in the dark on just about everything that his employees had been up to when it came to phone-hacking and other alleged skulduggery.

But let's not be too beastly to Watson for this minor folly. On the whole, he's made some progress at the CM&S committee albeit largely on the back of the celebrity witnesses and the decisions by the BBC to move some of the proceedings from the exceptionally dull Parliament Channel to the more mainstream medium of BBC2 and then hyped it almost as much as they have Ricky Gervaise's new series about a dwarf , "Life's Too Short"(which is shit, by the way, and not anywhere near short enough, as it goes). The coverage of this latest inquisition of Murdoch who, possibly unreasonably, must now be in the top one hundred most mistrusted people in the world and therefore in the same company as Ahmedadinajad, also focussed on his tie. That's what we do, of course, with the world's most-mistrusted; concentrate on their dress-sense as it may provide us with a psychological window on their craven souls. So little Jimmy's tie was the colour of peat-bog mud. Maybe he hoped that an oddly-coloured tie might make commentators ignore the more worrying stuff (like being the world's worst mafia boss), and if he'd gone for shocking pink then the plan wouldn't have worked. And neither would it have done if he'd gone for a BNP motif or a KKK pointy-headed hat. No, a mud-coloured tie, shouting a bit at a dark blue suit was a perfectly subtle decoy.

The Culture Media and Sport Committee's powers are limited, especially where foreign nationals are concerned, but their influence on decisions made elsewhere is massive and written larger by the coverage on prime time Television and other mainstream media (even appropriately spun on Fox News). Up until a few years ago, the Parliamentary Select Committees had little in the way of public profile, seeming rather dull affairs if one read transcripts of their business. The idea is, that as not all of successive parliaments' business can be conducted in the main chambers (Select Committees operate in both the Commons and the Upper House), committees are established to do some of the "grunt" work and then report to Parliament where decisions can be made and legislation debated and enacted.

The Commons Committees work in three areas; Spending, Policy and Administration, relating to all Government Ministries so, within that deliberately vague brief, they can look at, investigate and report on just about everything that happens in the business of government and thereby, everything that happens in our lives here in the UK. In the Lords, the committees are more restricted and focus on European Union, Constitutional matters, Economic Affairs, Science & Technology and Communications. Lords have smaller brains than MPs, clearly, or just a restricted attention span or perhaps just attention deficit disorders.

So who is chosen to go on the scores of Select Committees? The House of Commons Committee of Selection (which in itself is a Select Committee) is responsible for the Standing Orders (no, not the things that one does at a bank) for Public Business in Parliament and this covers the appointment of members of Select Committees. The Committee of Selection is chaired currently by Geoffrey Clifton Brown Tory MP for The Costswolds, adjacent to Dave's constituency, so that's cosy. Apart from Clifton-Brown, all the the other eight members are whips; three more Tories, four Labour and one Lib Dem MP, Mark Hunter. A bit like a Max Mosley party, then; you just can't have too many whips, it seems.

As the rise of the Select Committees seems now inexorable along with their media-enhanced power, then the role of the nine selectors becomes even more powerful.

There are many other committees in both the Commons and the Lords, all of which have members who have been selected by the Committee of Selection and those committees that are not "Select" can recommend that they either become "Select" or that a Select Committee be established to look at something that has come up in their ordinary committee that might need a "Select" one. All of this stuff bubbles under a parliamentary veneer; the only view of the system of government that's relatively easy to see and, even then, often only through the eyes of commentators like Nick Robinson or Simon Hoggart who, let's face it, have their own agendas.

I love living in a democracy or, at least in what I believe to be a democracy. But when one looks at just this one aspect of the business of government and parliamentary governance with its layers of bureaucracy and administration, it's a wonder anything gets done. The tip of this gargantuan iceberg may have been the immolation of the corporate career of Murdoch Junior but there must be so much more going on that we could possibly get a handle on. For example, I didn't know what the "Hybrid Instruments Committee" looked at and now that I've been on their web pages, I'm still not sure. There are the committees for Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish "Affairs" but, of course, there isn't one for English Affairs, presumably because there's no Ministry for England (come on, Dave...the only people that vote for you live in England). There's a committee called the "Scrutiny Unit" that provides specialist advice to...guess what...the Select Committees, and it employs no fewer than fourteen lawyers along with several accountants, and economist, a statistician, a raft of Commons Clerks and administrators. And that's just to give advice!

Slaughtered so that our "Noble Lords" may
swagger about looking like twats?

It's no better in the Upper House. It's just so utterly worse. They have, for example, the DPRR - The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, made up of a ten Lords whose job it is to examine Bills before the Lords (so that's all of them that had previously made their way through the Commons, I suppose) and then report on powers proposed to be delegated to Ministers; you know, those frightfully common oiks in the lower house that are required to observe some bowing and scraping from time to time. Haven't they heard of the Parliament Act. The Commons can do what they like without their bleeding lordships grace or favour, ta very much.

What a waste of time, money and, when all said and done...stoats.

The Lords Privileges and Conduct Committee looks at, well, the privileges and conduct of Lords. They could just be the Conduct Committee in reality, seeing as all the Lords are bloody privileged in the first place whether through inheritance or through the rewards of their appointment to peerage in public life. Anyway, looking at the outcome of this committee's review of  The Conduct of Lord Taylor of Warwick the decisions taken beggar belief. Taylor, in a nutshell, stole several thousands of pounds by fiddling around with his parliamentary allowances, got nicked and served some time at Her Majesty's pleasure which is ironic, seeing as she approved his job in the first place. He appealed both to the criminal courts and to the Lords committees and lost all appeals. So..banged to rights, then. Now, when I was employed, if I'd nicked some money and had been sent to prison for twelve months and therefore missed work quite a bit, then my employer would have been quite right to sack me and no Employment Tribunal in the land would have sided with me. Taylor, on the other hand, was "...suspended from the service of the House for twelve months..."!

"I whole-heartedly agree with the
Select Committee's decision...
look at my nice hat"

The Chair of this "Lords Committee of Parliamentary Poodles for the Privileged Class" is Lord Brabazon of Tara who is one of the  ninety oxymoronic "elected hereditary" peers remaining in the house after the attempted putsch under the House of Lords Act in 1999. Brabazon has an astounding voting record in the Lords, according to the Parliament web pages. Four times in ten years he's voted and, even then, is reported as having voted "moderately" twice and both "for and against", twice. Sorry, I don't understand that, either - obviously a Lordy quirk so that they can all sit on their landed fences and not make any real decisions about anything at all. And this is the guy that we rely upon to chair the committee that will decide whether convicted felons should be stripped of their peerage or maybe just told to take a year off, have a bit of a laugh and then tootle on back to your comfy seat. What an arse...

The Commons Select Committees, on the whole, appear to be required in the complex management of the business of Government, otherwise Dave, Giddy, Theresa et al would have to make all the decisions themselves (after asking Nick, of course) and that just wouldn't do. The Lords Committees, on the other hand, are about as pointless as the privileged twits that populate that chamber; convicted criminals and law-abiding types alike.

English, and other Languages

Having spoken and written English almost all of my life, I consider myself quite expert. I speak no other languages with any fluency, having preferred to stick with one in order that I could attempt to master it. It has been an Herculean task.

When I was six years old, I was despatched each week to Sunday School. The teacher there would ask, before handing out hymn books, "who can read?" A few hands went up and their owners were given small, blue books. I was not among those clever boys and girls and had to sit on the floor at the front with the other educationally deficient children, or "mongs", I suppose, if I was to subscribe to Ricky Gervaise's curious view of the world. I was, however, perfectly capable of reading words at that time. I think I'd progressed to the "Janet and John" purple book, which even had different tenses. My idiocy was not in reading but in assumption. I assumed for some weeks into this Sunday School thing that hymn books - being books of hymns and, therefore, songs - were written musically and this was something I couldn't do. Staves and crotchets and quavers were beyond me. All became clear when the vicar expressed surprise to my mother that I "...couldn't read.." even though I was six! She was mortified at this embarrassing revelation.

As it happened, I read and wrote early and did both well. My handwriting was neat and orderly, especially when I moved to cursive script. I was discovered to have a good grasp of grammar while still aged in single figures and this continued into secondary education, aided by instruction in Latin. From age five to around thirteen, spelling was taught by rote; mechanical and repetitive with the added incentive of corporal punishment for failure to achieve excellence. It was only when I was embarking on studies in English toward an 'O' level GCE that I began to appreciate the quirkiness of our language and, in particular, the tensions between spelling and pronunciation.

From Fowler's English Usage through to the humorous works by Lynn Truss and others like John Humphrys and Bill Bryson, my view is now that enough has been done on grammar. Our language is changing. Whether it is through the American influences, spell-checkers, TV soap-operas and their upward inflections or the emerging patois in youth cultures, the picture we see is of an evolution in our language that needs to be embraced rather than dismissed. I find much of the change annoying but I suspect that I will be unable to halt its procession on my own. That doesn't mean that I can't stick to my guns and I suppose that I will do so, regardless of the anachronism that I will ultimately become.

A few years ago, I was listening to a programme on the radio (most likely BBC Radio 4) that included a discussion on the creation verbs from nouns. The debate centered on what had become known as "Corporate Speak". Words such as "tasked" and "championing" were made reference to. One of the experts was a linguistics professor from the United States and his final comment, in the face of opprobrium from the female BBC interviewer, was, "...honey, believe me, there ain't a noun that can't be verbed.." And he was probably right.

When I worked in the corporate world, the language was full of grammatical nonesense but it was understandable by readers and listeners alike and I suppose that that is the ultimate test of communication between fellow human beings through the spoken and written word. However, I recall a very senior executive who had realised that, in order to describe something that was happening throughout the business, he should express it as an issue that affected things "across the piece". Unfortunately for him, he had understood the phrase to be "across the piste". He was a keen and accomplished skier and this must have seemed to him to be a reasonable derivation of the phrase as I imagine that lots of different things happen across the varying ski slopes on offer. His mistake was writing "piste" in emails and what followed was the "piste" being taken out of him, mercilessly (as is the corproate way of finding chinks in the armour of bosses).

So, having accepted that language changes (and, by virtue of this, it is now acceptable to begin my sentence with a preposition), it's the spelling / pronunciation points that continue to occupy my interest. Let's take some examples...(note the erroneous use of ellipsis there...and there, again; but the correct use of comma and semi-colon. See what I mean? English is a very tricky language to write but, on the other hand, one that is glorious to read).

Through / Rough / Trough / Plough / Thorough / Dough: There doesn't appear to be any reason why all of these words should be differently pronounced. Why should 'rough' not be be pronounced "roo"? A golfer might feel a little silly attempting to chip his ball out of the "roo", or a pig farmer requiring his or her stock to eat, not from a "troff",  but a "trow". Make up the rest yourselves, remembering the rules of aspirated consonants and the whole dipthong problem and, while you're about it, consider 'ought' and 'drought', along with 'nought' and, curioulsy, 'nowt'. The word 'nowt' is described in dictionaries as a pronoun and adverb meaning 'nothing' from the North of England but its derivation is surely from the original 'nought' that someone assumed must be pronounced in the same way as 'drought', in which nowt will grow, I suppose.

Danger / Banger: There is no reason at all why these two words shouldn't be pronounced in the same way. Using the "danger" pronunciation, I'd like to go to my local cafe and order "bainjers and mash". Similarly, using the banger pronunciation, I'd like to declare that something is fraught with "danga" or, even better, that it might be "dangerous" without the 'G' acting like a 'J'. Come to that, why is "fraught" not pronounced as is "draught", making something "Fraft with Danga, maybe?

Flange / Strange: I'd like to think I could have told my children that they should never talk to strangers, as in stran - jers, or that my engineer friend located things onto a flainje. Cowboys would sound foolish singing "...Home! Home on the Ranj..."These curiosities go some way to explain why nothing in the English language properly rhymes with orange.

There's also the matter of stress in pronunciation (no...not the stress that makes you ill; the other one - as in emphasis). Take the word 'entrance'. With stress on the first syllable, we understand this to be the act of making an entry or an entry portal itself but with stress on the last syllable, the word becomes a verb describing the act of enchanting others.

Confusion also arises from words that are spelt, pronounced and stressed in exactly the same way but have different meanings (homonyms). Take the simple word, 'wear'. It is both a noun and a verb in the matter of something fading or ceasing to function as it did when new. It is also both noun and verb in the matter of becoming attired or the things that are used to attire onself along with its use as a suffix in this context, as in 'footwear'. The word is also a proper noun for the river that flows through County Durham but in this usage, it is pronounced as 'weir', that being an overflow often found on rivers, just to add an additional complication, as well as breaching the 'i' before 'e' rule of thumb. Muddying the waters further, there's the anagrammatical 'ware', which describes pottery or other manufactured articles or items for sale and is also a proper noun for the town in Hertfordshire. Let's not forget the homophone, 'where', either.

And what about the different spelling applied to words that are pronounced similarly? Take the words 'way', 'weigh' and 'whey'. How come these words fell into usage? Were they spelled differently once those who could write realised the confusion that may have resulted from Little Miss Muffet "...eating her curds and weigh"? The addition of one letter adds more muddle with 'away' and 'aweigh' (as in anchors). 'Weather', 'whether' and 'wether' are other homophonical examples.

And yet, amidst these and thousands of other confusions, small children seem to grasp our language with consummate ease. I'm no anthropologist so, to me, the ability of our youngsters to wade (or is that weighed?) through the maelstrom of the English language amazes me. My grandson, not yet four years old, constructs complex, syntactically correct sentences and can use homonyms and homophones with ease, even though he doesn't know that that's what they are. He's no different from any other kid. He watches TV, interracts with other children, his parents and relatives. His little brother is two and a half and is on his journey into language too and it's plain to see that he learns from his older sibling, as well as from the adult humans that surround him.

This should explain everything...?

So why can't I speak French?

La plume de ma tante. Janette et Jean sons dans le jardin. Et M. Sarkozy...il est un petit imbecile avec les chausseurs d'ascenseur, peut-etre? Aussi, il n'a aucune idee comment resoudre l'Euro crise, n'est ce pas?

Primogeniture - A Step Closer to Modernising the Royal Family?

The title of this blog post is deliberately ironic. Or is it? The fact that I chose to tell you that it's deliberately ironic makes redundant any irony that might have existed. But then again, anything to do with the Royal Family of the UK is ironic almost by definition.

I'm an amateur republican, I guess.  So once this post goes live I may be hauled off and placed in some tower somewhere until I swear allegiance to a monarch who - as it will doubtless be pointless for me to use as a defence - I hadn't voted for. A monarchy is just so utterly wrong on so many levels. Here are some examples:

1) In the case of Elizabeth II, and all of her predecessors, she has, apparently, been gifted this position of privilege and titular power by god. So, as one of her "subjects", I am supposed to kowtow to a monarch whose principal claim to her position is that a made-up super-being said it was OK for her to be in charge of stuff; like Mickey Mouse might have said it was OK for George W Bush to President of the US back in 2001 (which, in fairness, could have been what happened).


The Queen wearing
one of her nice hats

2) Her Maj, by virtue of this supposed god-given right, gets to keep all the wealth that her forebears accumulated by nicking off other countries, government and, ultimately, us...the proles. Not only that, but in order to maintain her lifestyle and that of most of her terminally stupid family, we have to give her another shit-load of cash that is dressed up as acceptable by calling it a "civil list". Let's look at that description. The word 'civil'; - adj. relating to ordinary citizens, as distinct from military or ecclesiastical matters. In my book, there couldn't be anything further removed from "ordinary citizens" than that represented by the legal freeloading achieved by the royals. And we're expected to be grateful to the spongeing bastards that the queen has 'agreed' to a cap on the cash for a while seeing as everyone else in the country is having "such a frightfully awful time" making ends meet.

3) The queen can, constitutionally, be in charge. How mad is that? She could, if she wanted to, just dissolve parliament and go,"...fuck this for a game of soldiers, let's invade France!..." She can! Honest! But in the meantime, on the basis that she's not that nuts, we still have to go through all the constitutional crap to get her to open parliament, give assent to bills, consent to appointments of ministers and so on. And what was the point of Gordon Brown going to "The Palace" and asking if it was OK for him to dissolve his government? Like she was going to say "no"? That's another thing, why is the royal family framework referred to as "The Palace", like the building itself was a living entity? That odious little squit from the BBC, Nicholas Witchell, his predecessor, Jenny Bond, and all the other toadies, talk to camera with idiotic phrases like, "...the palace has commented..." or, "...I have heard from the palace that..." Name your sources! A palace can't talk.

4) The biggest problem is a sum of the first three I've set out. If you're given your job by something that doesn't exist and you're allowed to keep all the money and houses that were never really yours and then get loads more money for doing basically bugger all of any value...how can you possibly be in a position to have a constitutional right to run a country of around sixty million people, of whom only the tiniest nano-minority have any idea what it's like to be like you and you have absolutely no idea what it's like to be the rest? 

And then a few days ago, we have a "big news" story at the front of the bulletins. The "Commonwealth" countries have agreed that, in the case of  our monarchy, it will now accept that the first-born can accede to to the top job even they happen to be a girl! Wahey! That's it, then! Everything sorted. Euro-crisis...doesn't matter today. Global financial meltdown...non-story. Thailand under water...who gives a toss? They're not a member of the commonwealth so they haven't the prospect of the first British queen who might have a younger brother at some point in the future if Wills and Kate ever get round to producing "issue". 

And of the fifty-odd commonwealth "countries" that voted on this monumental piece of constitutional reform, what do we know? Well, there's the UK, naturally. And Australia and New Zealand and Canada and Kenya. And Nigeria and Uganda, of course...great, upstanding nations of probity and deference to the "mother" country. Then there's all the other huge nation states that make up the bulk of the commonwealth, like Tuvalu and Vanuatu...you know, the ones that Vic Reeves extols on 'Shooting Stars'. Then there's those that might be a little closer to the royal family's heart like Brunei and the Bahamas. And Pakistan, India, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Maldives, Malawi, Malaysia, Seychelles...on and on the list goes. Fifty-three countries - that's about thirty per cent of the planet's nations and around twenty per cent of its population. And they voted to let girls be queen if they are the first to pop out of the womb instead of voting to just forget the whole thing and to take back the wealth for the common good.

And if we do happen to continue with our monarchy and in the unlikely event that the queen ever dies (see above - appointed by a god), then our monarch might be:



Chas: What's my name?

 His Royal Highness The Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Member of the Order of Merit, Knight of the Order of Australia, Companion of the Queen's Service Order, Member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, Aide-de-Camp to Her Majesty.

So divorced from reality are these people that they think that to have a name and title comprising just over one hundred words is entirely reasonable. I wonder if Alex Salmond has checked the constitutional issues of Scottish independence? It looks from Chazzer's list that he might not only be in charge of the the principality of Wales but also of Scotland. The queen's list is even sillier, seeing as she is regarded as a monarch in the majority of her "realms", i.e. these commonwealth countries that, every now and again, hold referendums on whether they wish her to continue as head of state or not. Even Australia's last referendum came out in favour of her retention.

It is often argued that having a constitutional monarchy - and all the pomp that goes with it - provides the UK with unfathomable revenue of invisible income through tourism. I'm not a huge fan of the French or the Russians but they had the sense to get rid of their royals. I'm not advocating bloody revolution and execution, however. In all fairness, it isn't the royal family's fault as individuals that they're in the position they find themselves. They just haven't known anything different. In France, the tourist trade thrives on their royal past with attractions like the Palais de Versailles enthralling millions and, similarly, in St Petersburg, the Winter and Summer Palaces of the Czars. Tourism income would, if anything, increase in Britain if we no longer had a royal family as visitors gawked at where and how the royals used to live. And I wouldn't even insist that the whole lot of them were moved to social housing in Neasden, either. No, they can take a few bob and keep one of their houses, (Sandringham, maybe - I mean, who really wants to go to Norfolk?) and live like a proper family. The £9bn worth of Crown Estates will pass to Government and, if at all possible, the Duchy of Cornwall business, if only to stop some legislation having to be "approved" by HRH, as we learned about recently.

King Carl Gustav of Sweden
in one of his nice hats

There are a number of royal households around Europe that have so modernised such as those of the Scandinavian countries. There is no reason whatsoever why ours shouldn't do the same and perhaps this primogeniture matter is the first step on the way to constitutional change. Regrettably, such change predicates the establishment of an alternate "Head of State" separate from active government as in republics around the world (although notably absent in the USA). How could we stop Blair becoming President?

Maybe we'd better keep Her Madge after all; better the devil you know and all that...

Told you I was only an amateur...