On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
While we all have our, ahem, views on Big Bad Dom and his proposed reform of the civil service, I can say that there has long been disquiet with the civil service in terms of basic literacy. An MP of my acquaintance said they spent 40% of their time correcting basic errors of the your welcome type.
Some years ago, I had a long and rather acid correspondence with the Student Loan Company, which went right the way to board level.
All of the letters I received contained at least one error. Some of them actually changed the meaning of the words.
I advised Mr Kevin O’Connor that if his staff were that incompetent he should enrol them on the WEA’s excellent adult literacy courses.
He didn’t like that very much, especially as I had copied the letter to Vince Cable.
I have no feel for the pool from which the civil service is drawn (ie Oxbridge or Hartlepool Poly) but according to my friend this issue has been pervasive for many years.
On Spain, yes there is some internet sneering about the kind of people off on their holidays and thats fine. Its the absurdity of it that makes me laugh - the head of the Valencian regional government pointing out that people travelling in and out of Alicante airport enter a region that is as bereft of the virus as much of the UK. Nobody would have quarantined me had I been to Rochdale or Rotherham to visit family where there is more of the virus.
Anyway, I get it. Public health. So when Mrs RP and the kids get back they have to Not Go Out as they might Spread the Virus. OK. So I get Mrs RP to infect me on night 1 of her lockdown. I'm then free to go to the gym and sweat in the AC - no mask needed as thats safe - and go to the office and then the pub again without masks as safe. I would of course wear one in the pizza shack afterwards as being inside there without one is Not Safe.
Combine the above nonsense with the zero police resources that are used to enforce said lockdowns and its no surprise that people don't take them seriously. Because they aren't intended to be serious. This is a classic dead cat from the government. Look how STRONG we were in reacting to a THREAT. Don't worry about the 20k we killed in care homes.
A you gov poll on the 2nd July showed only 11% of Brits intended holidaying abroad and the possibility of quarantine post their holiday would have played a part in their decision
HMG is attacked for being too slow and now we have the media and others attacking HMG for acting too quickly.
It is clear the scientists told the UK to act immediately on Saturday and that is what they did. It is said Spain's infection rate had risen to 3
The idea this is a dead cat is nonsense. The swift act was co-ordinated across the UK including by Sturgeon and Drakeford in Scotland and Wales
And of course should anyone now travel to mainland Spain it is against FCO advice and uninsurable
I can understand the anger, but foreign travel in this very serious worldwide pandemic was always going to carry risk
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
While we all have our, ahem, views on Big Bad Dom and his proposed reform of the civil service, I can say that there has long been disquiet with the civil service in terms of basic literacy. An MP of my acquaintance said they spent 40% of their time correcting basic errors of the your welcome type.
But how much of that do you think is weakness in basic literacy standards, and how much is the sheer volume of work that civil servants have to churn out, yesterday, of little or no value?
When typing quickly i often have an issue with things like "your welcome" or "there/their". That's not because i have any deficiencies in my literacy (and i will usually notice and correct) but just instinctive.
Wouldn't be surprised if over time your MP's staff started doing it on purpose just to annoy him.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
It’s the misuse of apostrophes that infuriates me, especially in shared resources. Although that said, even autocorrect gets that wrong. It keeps adding apostrophes to ‘Democrats,’ for example.
But my new line manager can’t even spell my name correctly, and more annoyingly, doesn’t seem to care.
That is pretty bad. I did have a colleague who used my nickname when talking about me with a pupil as she thought that was my actual name, but we had only been introduced the previous day and that was in the pub...
Ed Davey must be the only choice to keep the LDs on their present course.
Swinson written off as a disaster. Yet the LibDem vote increased by 56% in the 2019 election. Didn't translate into seats as national vote tally largely irrelevant on that basis, but its momentum and thats crucial for our recovery climb out of the Clegg pit
The only man who can lead you out of the Clegg pit is the one who led you into it.
Give Nick another chance. He's wasted as a PR man for Facebook. You know you want to.
I would like to apologise for my recent outbursts and I hope all users will accept my full and unreserved apology
Cheers, Horse.
Reading last night's thread almost all of it seemed to be outbursts from a number of us about pensioners; can't remember if I commented.
There seems to be a perception that pensioners all live in castles with gold plated vegetable patches and sometimes relocate to cruise ships.
That's only some of them. There are plenty who only have the state pension plus a small occupational, and spend their holidays looking after grandchildren and in guesthouses, or at home.
Of course. But there is no denying their favourable position viewed in aggregate (I believe average earnings in retirement now exceed those in work?), and there are numerous ways in which they (soon to be we) are treated more favourably than working age people in a similar financial position.
No-one is suggesting devising measures that hit the poorest pensioners, but the fact of poor pensioners is a poor argument for seeking unreasonably to protect the benefits of the richer ones.
I think your first para is off, unless you don't mean "earnings" (does that include eg the State Pension?). I think the one you are thinking of is that one report in 2017 (Resolution Foundation) said that pensioner households were £1000 a year better off *after housing costs*. No idea whether that was before housing benefit or not.
(Obvs more pensioners own homes outright, but Housing Benefit would perhaps skew to younger groups).
The stats are a black art as we all know, as you can make them say whatever you want depending on your adjustments (eg people wanting to talk about UK as unequal often take GINI numbers on pre-benefit system figures - which is designed to make it more equal), but the average pensioner household income after housing costs is around £320 a week and has not increased since 2010. Hardly rolling in gold dust.
I'd certainly agree on very high pension incomes, which I may not reach - I am of the generation that had my pension arrangements significantly damaged in the Gordon Brown period, so I am partly in property now.
But I don't think there is anything like as much money there to raid as people imagine.
You're right - median income for pensioners is still below that for people of working age (the last figures seem to be about £25k to £31k), although the gap is narrower than it used to be.
The data I was thinking of was on disposable income after housing costs, which are clearly much lower for the many pensioners who own their homes outright. A study on this suggests that pensioners are about £1000 per year better off than those of working age, whereas twenty years ago working age people were about £3500 better off.
The same study did find a big skew in pensioner earnings, with the top 20% of households receiving 74% of pensioner employment income, 66% of pensioner investment income, and 52% of pension income. Whereas the bottom 20% are almost entirely dependent on benefits.
It also found that the dramatic increase in disposable income is being driven by the arrival of a 'new cohort' of wealthier pensioners, with those already of retirement age (i.e. current older pensioners) having only marginal increases in income.
Whilst that 25K to £31K may be right pensioners have less commitments than working age on average (rent/mortgage/student loans/kids/national insurance contributions) .The one collective commitment pensioners have that working age do not is care costs -and they are collectively trying to pass that on!
Fewer commitments. Grrrr !
Are those numbers household or individual?
31k is the number for disposable household income for working age in FY 2019 ie after taxes and benefits. My first numbers were for imdividuals I think.
Ed Davey must be the only choice to keep the LDs on their present course.
Swinson written off as a disaster. Yet the LibDem vote increased by 56% in the 2019 election. Didn't translate into seats as national vote tally largely irrelevant on that basis, but its momentum and thats crucial for our recovery climb out of the Clegg pit
Losing her own seat may be considered a disaster.
There is a wonderfully dry comment on Henry VI in the ODNB, before pointing out he did have multiple achievements:
‘No king who loses the crown twice, who dies in prison, and whose reign ends in civil war, can be counted a success.’
Ed Davey must be the only choice to keep the LDs on their present course.
Swinson written off as a disaster. Yet the LibDem vote increased by 56% in the 2019 election. Didn't translate into seats as national vote tally largely irrelevant on that basis, but its momentum and thats crucial for our recovery climb out of the Clegg pit
I don't think you can describe it as momentum. It was a precipitous fall from the ratings when the election was called; comparing it with the even worse results of the immediate coalition aftermath isn't really any consolation.
The bottom line is that the party's fortunes depend heavily on there being a batch of voters pissed off with the Tories, coupled with its campaigning ability to capitalise on these in the wards and seats where it matters. My worry would be the hollowing out of both activity and expertise for ten years now.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
The one that does involve a lack of clarity is the distinction between "may" and "might". But that battle seems to have been completely lost. At least judging by BBC journalists, who regularly write things like "Germany may not have lost the Second World War."
My personal bugbear is the misuse of the word "refute"
@dixiedean in reply to your comment yesterday about why, as a Newcastle fan, I would be unhappy with season just gone:
Well we finished on 44 points, with a goal difference of -20, 11 wins, and 16 losses.
Last season under Rafa we finished on 45 points, with a goal difference of -6, 12 wins, and 17 losses.
So I’m not sure how you can consider us “over achieving” when if anything we’ve done exactly the same as last year, but with significant more “🤢”. Oh and we spent a ton of money in the summer too.
On Spain, yes there is some internet sneering about the kind of people off on their holidays and thats fine. Its the absurdity of it that makes me laugh - the head of the Valencian regional government pointing out that people travelling in and out of Alicante airport enter a region that is as bereft of the virus as much of the UK. Nobody would have quarantined me had I been to Rochdale or Rotherham to visit family where there is more of the virus.
Anyway, I get it. Public health. So when Mrs RP and the kids get back they have to Not Go Out as they might Spread the Virus. OK. So I get Mrs RP to infect me on night 1 of her lockdown. I'm then free to go to the gym and sweat in the AC - no mask needed as thats safe - and go to the office and then the pub again without masks as safe. I would of course wear one in the pizza shack afterwards as being inside there without one is Not Safe.
Combine the above nonsense with the zero police resources that are used to enforce said lockdowns and its no surprise that people don't take them seriously. Because they aren't intended to be serious. This is a classic dead cat from the government. Look how STRONG we were in reacting to a THREAT. Don't worry about the 20k we killed in care homes.
A you gov poll on the 2nd July showed only 11% of Brits intended holidaying abroad and the possibility of quarantine post their holiday would have played a part in their decision
HMG is attacked for being too slow and now we have the media and others attacking HMG for acting too quickly.
It is clear the scientists told the UK to act immediately on Saturday and that is what they did. It is said Spain's infection rate had risen to 3
The idea this is a dead cat is nonsense. The swift act was co-ordinated across the UK including by Sturgeon and Drakeford in Scotland and Wales
And of course should anyone now travel to mainland Spain it is against FCO advice and uninsurable
I can understand the anger, but foreign travel in this very serious worldwide pandemic was always going to carry risk
Any questions being asked in Scotland about why they lifted quarantine rules for Spain only a few days ago, only to do a massive reverse ferret on Friday?
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
It’s the misuse of apostrophes that infuriates me, especially in shared resources. Although that said, even autocorrect gets that wrong. It keeps adding apostrophes to ‘Democrats,’ for example.
But my new line manager can’t even spell my name correctly, and more annoyingly, doesn’t seem to care.
That is pretty bad. I did have a colleague who used my nickname when talking about me with a pupil as she thought that was my actual name, but we had only been introduced the previous day and that was in the pub...
It might be forgivable if my name were Llywelyn, or Rhidian, or Rhisiart, or Gwalchmai.
I would like to apologise for my recent outbursts and I hope all users will accept my full and unreserved apology
Cheers, Horse.
Reading last night's thread almost all of it seemed to be outbursts from a number of us about pensioners; can't remember if I commented.
There seems to be a perception that pensioners all live in castles with gold plated vegetable patches and sometimes relocate to cruise ships.
That's only some of them. There are plenty who only have the state pension plus a small occupational, and spend their holidays looking after grandchildren and in guesthouses, or at home.
Of course. But there is no denying their favourable position viewed in aggregate (I believe average earnings in retirement now exceed those in work?), and there are numerous ways in which they (soon to be we) are treated more favourably than working age people in a similar financial position.
No-one is suggesting devising measures that hit the poorest pensioners, but the fact of poor pensioners is a poor argument for seeking unreasonably to protect the benefits of the richer ones.
I think your first para is off, unless you don't mean "earnings" (does that include eg the State Pension?). I think the one you are thinking of is that one report in 2017 (Resolution Foundation) said that pensioner households were £1000 a year better off *after housing costs*. No idea whether that was before housing benefit or not.
(Obvs more pensioners own homes outright, but Housing Benefit would perhaps skew to younger groups).
The stats are a black art as we all know, as you can make them say whatever you want depending on your adjustments (eg people wanting to talk about UK as unequal often take GINI numbers on pre-benefit system figures - which is designed to make it more equal), but the average pensioner household income after housing costs is around £320 a week and has not increased since 2010. Hardly rolling in gold dust.
I'd certainly agree on very high pension incomes, which I may not reach - I am of the generation that had my pension arrangements significantly damaged in the Gordon Brown period, so I am partly in property now.
But I don't think there is anything like as much money there to raid as people imagine.
You're right - median income for pensioners is still below that for people of working age (the last figures seem to be about £25k to £31k), although the gap is narrower than it used to be.
The data I was thinking of was on disposable income after housing costs, which are clearly much lower for the many pensioners who own their homes outright. A study on this suggests that pensioners are about £1000 per year better off than those of working age, whereas twenty years ago working age people were about £3500 better off.
The same study did find a big skew in pensioner earnings, with the top 20% of households receiving 74% of pensioner employment income, 66% of pensioner investment income, and 52% of pension income. Whereas the bottom 20% are almost entirely dependent on benefits.
It also found that the dramatic increase in disposable income is being driven by the arrival of a 'new cohort' of wealthier pensioners, with those already of retirement age (i.e. current older pensioners) having only marginal increases in income.
Whilst that 25K to £31K may be right pensioners have less commitments than working age on average (rent/mortgage/student loans/kids/national insurance contributions) .The one collective commitment pensioners have that working age do not is care costs -and they are collectively trying to pass that on!
Fewer commitments. Grrrr !
Are those numbers household or individual?
31k is the number for disposable household income for working age in FY 2019 ie after taxes and benefits. My first numbers were for imdividuals I think.
It must have been 30 years ago that a university student said 'times this with that' in a presentation and I thought the poor lad was being facetious, only to learn later that that was how multiplication was taught in schools. My abhorrence was intensified by that knowledge.
Ed Davey must be the only choice to keep the LDs on their present course.
Swinson written off as a disaster. Yet the LibDem vote increased by 56% in the 2019 election. Didn't translate into seats as national vote tally largely irrelevant on that basis, but its momentum and thats crucial for our recovery climb out of the Clegg pit
Is it though? Is it really? Because "fuck Brexit" is hardly going to be a vote winner in 2024.
Key to winning seats is to pick an area that you are competitive in and fighting on that ground to win it. In 2017 the Lib Dems had 12 seats and were runners up in 37 so those were the seats to be targeting to make progress . . . but instead ended up with 11.
Increasing your share in seats from next-to-nothing to next-to-nothing+2 isn't great.
The only thing working for the Lib Dems is you're now runners up in 90 seats, but the party realistically needs to pick some of those and target the heck out of them. What should have been done when there were just 37 to target.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
It sounds old-fogyish, but I am really shocked at the poor standard of spelling and grammar from Government officials. I can cope with this up to a point but evidently the habit of proof-reading is disappearing, and that's just laziness. It is also inefficient because it often means a subsequent clarification is necessary.
Just because someone has been to university, even a good one, does not mean that they will have good grammar or spelling. The assumption is that you have been taught that sort of thing before getting there and it would look pretty bad to have remedial English lessons when you would rather be punting on the Cam.
@dixiedean in reply to your comment yesterday about why, as a Newcastle fan, I would be unhappy with season just gone:
Well we finished on 44 points, with a goal difference of -20, 11 wins, and 16 losses.
Last season under Rafa we finished on 45 points, with a goal difference of -6, 12 wins, and 17 losses.
So I’m not sure how you can consider us “over achieving” when if anything we’ve done exactly the same as last year, but with significant more “🤢”. Oh and we spent a ton of money in the summer too.
Season after season of dross unfortunately.
Considering how the club's supporters were so unhappy to have lost Rafa and how much negativity there was around the club at the start of the season . . . finishing "only" 1 point down, it could have been worse! It could have been much worse.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
It sounds old-fogyish, but I am really shocked at the poor standard of spelling and grammar from Government officials. I can cope with this up to a point but evidently the habit of proof-reading is disappearing, and that's just laziness. It is also inefficient because it often means a subsequent clarification is necessary.
Just because someone has been to university, even a good one, does not mean that they will have good grammar or spelling. The assumption is that you have been taught that sort of thing before getting there and it would look pretty bad to have remedial English lessons when you would rather be punting on the Cam.
True, but it can happen. In a similar vein, I was rather startled to find out that Bristol University runs a summer school for its music freshers.
It appears that PB could care fewer about the LD leadership election.
It might be relevant though if we have a hung parliament in 2024 and either Davey or Moran have 30 odd MPs and the balance of power as Clegg did in 2010
I bet this will be introduced in a couple of years just as I turn 40 too. Student grants were abolished and tuition fees introduced just as I started university so I had to pay fees while students who'd started previously didn't. I know full well pensions by the time we retire are going to be crap too. Now this . . . I can see it happening!
They should definitely make it 50 or 55. Our generation seems to have become the most put upon, unable to buy property because our parents' generation pulled the ladder up behind them, huge childcare costs and longer living parents resulting in huge care costs.
We definitely have become the very definition of the "squeezed middle" politicians love talking about. I'm lucky to have a career that has affordede a fairly comfortable life and the chance to own my own home but loads of my friends are t so fortunate.
Our generation also inherits far more on average than any previous generation did and also far more of use went to university
It remains disputed how much ‘of use’ we are...
I'm of the view that the 50% uni target was a big mistake and far less of our lot should be going to university.
I agree with @MaxPB's sentiment though, our lot are getting screwed. We don't vote Tory, they offer us nothing.
Far FEWER
Funny you should mention this, I was watching a video on speech today and saying far less is perfectly correct.
Who was saying that? Probably just one person´s opinion, and my opinion is probably just as good as his.
Yes, that's literally the point. The idea that there is a distinction between less and fewer applying to countable and uncountable nouns was invented by a style guide writer out of thin air - they wrote that they found it nicer to themselves.
If you look at textual analysis of the English language as actually used across centuries there is no such split, people use less and fewer interchangeably.
Anyone pushing prescriptivist bollocks on this is being a total smug utterly wrong wanker.
The worst kind of people are people who put two spaces after a full stop because “they were taught that way”. So what? It’s crap and unnecessary in a digital age. Thank god HTML removes it by default.
Research has shown that two spaces after the full stop increases reading speed of the text. I write for the reader so I use two spaces. Even in tweets.
What research? All research I’ve read suggests that is only true for mono-space typefaces and not for modern typefaces where the software already increases the gap for a space after a full-stop.
Suspect there will be a different result for sans-serif and serif typefaces too.
Personally double spaces before a full stop don't happen in my circle; if it did they would be shot.
Who would do double spaces before a full stop ?
That would be very odd .
Got to encapsulate that punctuation with blank space , to really help the readability .
A space before question and exclamation marks used to be common, and imo should be again.
My 1932 Imperial Model 50 typewriter has no exclamation mark key!
What is that strange-looking object to the left of your typewriter?
@dixiedean in reply to your comment yesterday about why, as a Newcastle fan, I would be unhappy with season just gone:
Well we finished on 44 points, with a goal difference of -20, 11 wins, and 16 losses.
Last season under Rafa we finished on 45 points, with a goal difference of -6, 12 wins, and 17 losses.
So I’m not sure how you can consider us “over achieving” when if anything we’ve done exactly the same as last year, but with significant more “🤢”. Oh and we spent a ton of money in the summer too.
Season after season of dross unfortunately.
Considering how the club's supporters were so unhappy to have lost Rafa and how much negativity there was around the club at the start of the season . . . finishing "only" 1 point down, it could have been worse! It could have been much worse.
Of course it could have been worse, but that’s not what we’re discussing. The comment was that we “overachieved”. Objectively we did not, we stagnated.
Remember we smashed our transfer record in the summer.
On Spain, yes there is some internet sneering about the kind of people off on their holidays and thats fine. Its the absurdity of it that makes me laugh - the head of the Valencian regional government pointing out that people travelling in and out of Alicante airport enter a region that is as bereft of the virus as much of the UK. Nobody would have quarantined me had I been to Rochdale or Rotherham to visit family where there is more of the virus.
Anyway, I get it. Public health. So when Mrs RP and the kids get back they have to Not Go Out as they might Spread the Virus. OK. So I get Mrs RP to infect me on night 1 of her lockdown. I'm then free to go to the gym and sweat in the AC - no mask needed as thats safe - and go to the office and then the pub again without masks as safe. I would of course wear one in the pizza shack afterwards as being inside there without one is Not Safe.
Combine the above nonsense with the zero police resources that are used to enforce said lockdowns and its no surprise that people don't take them seriously. Because they aren't intended to be serious. This is a classic dead cat from the government. Look how STRONG we were in reacting to a THREAT. Don't worry about the 20k we killed in care homes.
A you gov poll on the 2nd July showed only 11% of Brits intended holidaying abroad and the possibility of quarantine post their holiday would have played a part in their decision
HMG is attacked for being too slow and now we have the media and others attacking HMG for acting too quickly.
It is clear the scientists told the UK to act immediately on Saturday and that is what they did. It is said Spain's infection rate had risen to 3
The idea this is a dead cat is nonsense. The swift act was co-ordinated across the UK including by Sturgeon and Drakeford in Scotland and Wales
And of course should anyone now travel to mainland Spain it is against FCO advice and uninsurable
I can understand the anger, but foreign travel in this very serious worldwide pandemic was always going to carry risk
It's flying (or more correctly being inside an aircraft with lots of others) that is the real risk, though.
I am just back from a few days in the Cotswolds and Cornwall, staying in hotels. I was conscious that being away from home and in busier places was exposing me to greater risk than had I stayed at home, but the proximity to people was mostly outside, and my travel was all by car. So it was a calculated risk, objectively tiny if current infection data can be believed, and so far one with no evidence to suggest didn't pay off.
I have a Germany/Italy trip upcoming in September, partly arranged before the virus crisis broke. It'll be the same - self drive and hotels, with days spent mostly outside. I don't see that the risk is any greater - indeed the likelihood of bumping into an infectious person in those countries is (probably) currently lower.
I bet this will be introduced in a couple of years just as I turn 40 too. Student grants were abolished and tuition fees introduced just as I started university so I had to pay fees while students who'd started previously didn't. I know full well pensions by the time we retire are going to be crap too. Now this . . . I can see it happening!
They should definitely make it 50 or 55. Our generation seems to have become the most put upon, unable to buy property because our parents' generation pulled the ladder up behind them, huge childcare costs and longer living parents resulting in huge care costs.
We definitely have become the very definition of the "squeezed middle" politicians love talking about. I'm lucky to have a career that has affordede a fairly comfortable life and the chance to own my own home but loads of my friends are t so fortunate.
Our generation also inherits far more on average than any previous generation did and also far more of use went to university
It remains disputed how much ‘of use’ we are...
I'm of the view that the 50% uni target was a big mistake and far less of our lot should be going to university.
I agree with @MaxPB's sentiment though, our lot are getting screwed. We don't vote Tory, they offer us nothing.
Far FEWER
Funny you should mention this, I was watching a video on speech today and saying far less is perfectly correct.
Who was saying that? Probably just one person´s opinion, and my opinion is probably just as good as his.
Yes, that's literally the point. The idea that there is a distinction between less and fewer applying to countable and uncountable nouns was invented by a style guide writer out of thin air - they wrote that they found it nicer to themselves.
If you look at textual analysis of the English language as actually used across centuries there is no such split, people use less and fewer interchangeably.
Anyone pushing prescriptivist bollocks on this is being a total smug utterly wrong wanker.
The worst kind of people are people who put two spaces after a full stop because “they were taught that way”. So what? It’s crap and unnecessary in a digital age. Thank god HTML removes it by default.
Research has shown that two spaces after the full stop increases reading speed of the text. I write for the reader so I use two spaces. Even in tweets.
What research? All research I’ve read suggests that is only true for mono-space typefaces and not for modern typefaces where the software already increases the gap for a space after a full-stop.
Suspect there will be a different result for sans-serif and serif typefaces too.
Personally double spaces before a full stop don't happen in my circle; if it did they would be shot.
Who would do double spaces before a full stop ?
That would be very odd .
Got to encapsulate that punctuation with blank space , to really help the readability .
A space before question and exclamation marks used to be common, and imo should be again.
My 1932 Imperial Model 50 typewriter has no exclamation mark key!
Ed Davey must be the only choice to keep the LDs on their present course.
Swinson written off as a disaster. Yet the LibDem vote increased by 56% in the 2019 election. Didn't translate into seats as national vote tally largely irrelevant on that basis, but its momentum and thats crucial for our recovery climb out of the Clegg pit
Is it though? Is it really? Because "fuck Brexit" is hardly going to be a vote winner in 2024.
Key to winning seats is to pick an area that you are competitive in and fighting on that ground to win it. In 2017 the Lib Dems had 12 seats and were runners up in 37 so those were the seats to be targeting to make progress . . . but instead ended up with 11.
Increasing your share in seats from next-to-nothing to next-to-nothing+2 isn't great.
The only thing working for the Lib Dems is you're now runners up in 90 seats, but the party realistically needs to pick some of those and target the heck out of them. What should have been done when there were just 37 to target.
Essentially the Brexit policy attracted a lot of disaffected remainers without delivering much in the way of seats, while seeing the LDs go backwards in former targets like N Devon and N Cornwall
The LDs now need to double down to an extent by looking for new policies, which are socially liberal but economically centrist to appeal to their new target seats
@dixiedean in reply to your comment yesterday about why, as a Newcastle fan, I would be unhappy with season just gone:
Well we finished on 44 points, with a goal difference of -20, 11 wins, and 16 losses.
Last season under Rafa we finished on 45 points, with a goal difference of -6, 12 wins, and 17 losses.
So I’m not sure how you can consider us “over achieving” when if anything we’ve done exactly the same as last year, but with significant more “🤢”. Oh and we spent a ton of money in the summer too.
Season after season of dross unfortunately.
Considering how the club's supporters were so unhappy to have lost Rafa and how much negativity there was around the club at the start of the season . . . finishing "only" 1 point down, it could have been worse! It could have been much worse.
Of course it could have been worse, but that’s not what we’re discussing. The comment was that we “overachieved”. Objectively we did not, we stagnated.
Remember we smashed our transfer record in the summer.
Subjectively - that's not objectively true.
Stagnating can be overachieving if you were already overachieving or should have done worse. Stagnating can be good, it depends upon your starting point. For something to be objectively true you need to have some objective measurements to go with.
Hypothetically if next season Liverpool finish as Premier League Champions and 97 points then I'd think they'd have had a very good season despite "stagnating" and it being their worst points haul in three seasons.
On Spain, yes there is some internet sneering about the kind of people off on their holidays and thats fine. Its the absurdity of it that makes me laugh - the head of the Valencian regional government pointing out that people travelling in and out of Alicante airport enter a region that is as bereft of the virus as much of the UK. Nobody would have quarantined me had I been to Rochdale or Rotherham to visit family where there is more of the virus.
Anyway, I get it. Public health. So when Mrs RP and the kids get back they have to Not Go Out as they might Spread the Virus. OK. So I get Mrs RP to infect me on night 1 of her lockdown. I'm then free to go to the gym and sweat in the AC - no mask needed as thats safe - and go to the office and then the pub again without masks as safe. I would of course wear one in the pizza shack afterwards as being inside there without one is Not Safe.
Combine the above nonsense with the zero police resources that are used to enforce said lockdowns and its no surprise that people don't take them seriously. Because they aren't intended to be serious. This is a classic dead cat from the government. Look how STRONG we were in reacting to a THREAT. Don't worry about the 20k we killed in care homes.
A you gov poll on the 2nd July showed only 11% of Brits intended holidaying abroad and the possibility of quarantine post their holiday would have played a part in their decision
HMG is attacked for being too slow and now we have the media and others attacking HMG for acting too quickly.
It is clear the scientists told the UK to act immediately on Saturday and that is what they did. It is said Spain's infection rate had risen to 3
The idea this is a dead cat is nonsense. The swift act was co-ordinated across the UK including by Sturgeon and Drakeford in Scotland and Wales
And of course should anyone now travel to mainland Spain it is against FCO advice and uninsurable
I can understand the anger, but foreign travel in this very serious worldwide pandemic was always going to carry risk
Any questions being asked in Scotland about why they lifted quarantine rules for Spain only a few days ago, only to do a massive reverse ferret on Friday?
If UK holiday makers have observed the all the rules regarding avoiding infection whilst out in Spain the chance of them returning infected is negligible. There again maybe many haven’t.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
It’s the misuse of apostrophes that infuriates me, especially in shared resources. Although that said, even autocorrect gets that wrong. It keeps adding apostrophes to ‘Democrats,’ for example.
But my new line manager can’t even spell my name correctly, and more annoyingly, doesn’t seem to care.
That is pretty bad. I did have a colleague who used my nickname when talking about me with a pupil as she thought that was my actual name, but we had only been introduced the previous day and that was in the pub...
My physics teacher used to tell us that we were the future leadership of the country .
Who was in the class? Er ... one Edward J Davey.
That particular Physics Teacher did not have a nickname.
I love debates about grammar. According to my research, people who insist that fewer should be used for countable nouns tend to earn fewer than twenty thousand pounds a year, and are fewer than 160 centimetres tall.
@dixiedean in reply to your comment yesterday about why, as a Newcastle fan, I would be unhappy with season just gone:
Well we finished on 44 points, with a goal difference of -20, 11 wins, and 16 losses.
Last season under Rafa we finished on 45 points, with a goal difference of -6, 12 wins, and 17 losses.
So I’m not sure how you can consider us “over achieving” when if anything we’ve done exactly the same as last year, but with significant more “🤢”. Oh and we spent a ton of money in the summer too.
Season after season of dross unfortunately.
Considering how the club's supporters were so unhappy to have lost Rafa and how much negativity there was around the club at the start of the season . . . finishing "only" 1 point down, it could have been worse! It could have been much worse.
Of course it could have been worse, but that’s not what we’re discussing. The comment was that we “overachieved”. Objectively we did not, we stagnated.
Remember we smashed our transfer record in the summer.
Subjectively - that's not objectively true.
Stagnating can be overachieving if you were already overachieving or should have done worse. Stagnating can be good, it depends upon your starting point. For something to be objectively true you need to have some objective measurements to go with.
Hypothetically if next season Liverpool finish as Premier League Champions and 97 points then I'd think they'd have had a very good season despite "stagnating" and it being their worst points haul in three seasons.
The objective measurement is that our points total, and overall achievements, was essentially the same....
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
It’s the misuse of apostrophes that infuriates me, especially in shared resources. Although that said, even autocorrect gets that wrong. It keeps adding apostrophes to ‘Democrats,’ for example.
But my new line manager can’t even spell my name correctly, and more annoyingly, doesn’t seem to care.
That is pretty bad. I did have a colleague who used my nickname when talking about me with a pupil as she thought that was my actual name, but we had only been introduced the previous day and that was in the pub...
My physics teacher used to tell us that we were the future leadership of the country .
Who was in the class? Er ... one Edward J Davey.
He possibly has achieved more than anyone else in that class though
@dixiedean in reply to your comment yesterday about why, as a Newcastle fan, I would be unhappy with season just gone:
Well we finished on 44 points, with a goal difference of -20, 11 wins, and 16 losses.
Last season under Rafa we finished on 45 points, with a goal difference of -6, 12 wins, and 17 losses.
So I’m not sure how you can consider us “over achieving” when if anything we’ve done exactly the same as last year, but with significant more “🤢”. Oh and we spent a ton of money in the summer too.
Season after season of dross unfortunately.
Considering how the club's supporters were so unhappy to have lost Rafa and how much negativity there was around the club at the start of the season . . . finishing "only" 1 point down, it could have been worse! It could have been much worse.
Of course it could have been worse, but that’s not what we’re discussing. The comment was that we “overachieved”. Objectively we did not, we stagnated.
Remember we smashed our transfer record in the summer.
Subjectively - that's not objectively true.
Stagnating can be overachieving if you were already overachieving or should have done worse. Stagnating can be good, it depends upon your starting point. For something to be objectively true you need to have some objective measurements to go with.
Hypothetically if next season Liverpool finish as Premier League Champions and 97 points then I'd think they'd have had a very good season despite "stagnating" and it being their worst points haul in three seasons.
The objective measurement is that our points total, and overall achievements, was essentially the same....
Indeed it was the same . . . and given the negativity around the club at the start of the season I'd have thought your points total would have gone down, not stayed the same. Staying the same is overachieving if the benchmark expectation is you'd have gotten less.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
It sounds old-fogyish, but I am really shocked at the poor standard of spelling and grammar from Government officials. I can cope with this up to a point but evidently the habit of proof-reading is disappearing, and that's just laziness. It is also inefficient because it often means a subsequent clarification is necessary.
Just because someone has been to university, even a good one, does not mean that they will have good grammar or spelling. The assumption is that you have been taught that sort of thing before getting there and it would look pretty bad to have remedial English lessons when you would rather be punting on the Cam.
I think nowadays the assumption is that whatever device you are writing on will flag errors and/or make corrections automatically.
It appears that PB could care fewer about the LD leadership election.
It might be relevant though if we have a hung parliament in 2024 and either Davey or Moran have 30 odd MPs and the balance of power as Clegg did in 2010
Sir Keir has to prepare Labour for such an eventually.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
While we all have our, ahem, views on Big Bad Dom and his proposed reform of the civil service, I can say that there has long been disquiet with the civil service in terms of basic literacy. An MP of my acquaintance said they spent 40% of their time correcting basic errors of the your welcome type.
But how much of that do you think is weakness in basic literacy standards, and how much is the sheer volume of work that civil servants have to churn out, yesterday, of little or no value?
When typing quickly i often have an issue with things like "your welcome" or "there/their". That's not because i have any deficiencies in my literacy (and i will usually notice and correct) but just instinctive.
Wouldn't be surprised if over time your MP's staff started doing it on purpose just to annoy him.
I almost never have such problems when typing quickly. And as you say if any occur they are near-instantly corrected.
These people are working for MPs helping to draft documents often for public consumption of some form or another. If they are not up to it and/or do it deliberately then the sooner they are booted out by Dom the better.
@dixiedean in reply to your comment yesterday about why, as a Newcastle fan, I would be unhappy with season just gone:
Well we finished on 44 points, with a goal difference of -20, 11 wins, and 16 losses.
Last season under Rafa we finished on 45 points, with a goal difference of -6, 12 wins, and 17 losses.
So I’m not sure how you can consider us “over achieving” when if anything we’ve done exactly the same as last year, but with significant more “🤢”. Oh and we spent a ton of money in the summer too.
Season after season of dross unfortunately.
Considering how the club's supporters were so unhappy to have lost Rafa and how much negativity there was around the club at the start of the season . . . finishing "only" 1 point down, it could have been worse! It could have been much worse.
Of course it could have been worse, but that’s not what we’re discussing. The comment was that we “overachieved”. Objectively we did not, we stagnated.
Remember we smashed our transfer record in the summer.
How much higher than Sunderland did you finish?
My brother is, for complicated reasons, a Sunderland fan. For the last two years that means I’ve been able to take him to see them play Wycombe, my local team. Next year I won’t be able to as Wycombe are now in the next league up.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
While we all have our, ahem, views on Big Bad Dom and his proposed reform of the civil service, I can say that there has long been disquiet with the civil service in terms of basic literacy. An MP of my acquaintance said they spent 40% of their time correcting basic errors of the your welcome type.
But how much of that do you think is weakness in basic literacy standards, and how much is the sheer volume of work that civil servants have to churn out, yesterday, of little or no value?
When typing quickly i often have an issue with things like "your welcome" or "there/their". That's not because i have any deficiencies in my literacy (and i will usually notice and correct) but just instinctive.
Wouldn't be surprised if over time your MP's staff started doing it on purpose just to annoy him.
I almost never have such problems when typing quickly. And as you say if any occur they are near-instantly corrected.
These people are working for MPs helping to draft documents often for public consumption of some form or another. If they are not up to it and/or do it deliberately then the sooner they are booted out by Dom the better.
They can just use a tool like Grammarly and never have to worry about spelling, or grammar, ever again.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
While we all have our, ahem, views on Big Bad Dom and his proposed reform of the civil service, I can say that there has long been disquiet with the civil service in terms of basic literacy. An MP of my acquaintance said they spent 40% of their time correcting basic errors of the your welcome type.
But how much of that do you think is weakness in basic literacy standards, and how much is the sheer volume of work that civil servants have to churn out, yesterday, of little or no value?
When typing quickly i often have an issue with things like "your welcome" or "there/their". That's not because i have any deficiencies in my literacy (and i will usually notice and correct) but just instinctive.
Wouldn't be surprised if over time your MP's staff started doing it on purpose just to annoy him.
I almost never have such problems when typing quickly. And as you say if any occur they are near-instantly corrected.
These people are working for MPs helping to draft documents often for public consumption of some form or another. If they are not up to it and/or do it deliberately then the sooner they are booted out by Dom the better.
Such documents as I have received from Mr Cummings - and there have been a few - do not reflect well on the English department of Durham Cathedral School.
Indeed, on one occasion his grammar was so bad I actually commented on it, noting that it was ironic he had confused his tenses in a document calling for a more rigorous approach to teaching English.
@dixiedean in reply to your comment yesterday about why, as a Newcastle fan, I would be unhappy with season just gone:
Well we finished on 44 points, with a goal difference of -20, 11 wins, and 16 losses.
Last season under Rafa we finished on 45 points, with a goal difference of -6, 12 wins, and 17 losses.
So I’m not sure how you can consider us “over achieving” when if anything we’ve done exactly the same as last year, but with significant more “🤢”. Oh and we spent a ton of money in the summer too.
Season after season of dross unfortunately.
Considering how the club's supporters were so unhappy to have lost Rafa and how much negativity there was around the club at the start of the season . . . finishing "only" 1 point down, it could have been worse! It could have been much worse.
Of course it could have been worse, but that’s not what we’re discussing. The comment was that we “overachieved”. Objectively we did not, we stagnated.
Remember we smashed our transfer record in the summer.
How much higher than Sunderland did you finish?
My brother is, for complicated reasons, a Sunderland fan. For the last two years that means I’ve been able to take him to see them play Wycombe, my local team. Next year I won’t be able to as Wycombe are now in the next league up.
Are Sunderland that small club from County Durham? I forget.
On Spain, yes there is some internet sneering about the kind of people off on their holidays and thats fine. Its the absurdity of it that makes me laugh - the head of the Valencian regional government pointing out that people travelling in and out of Alicante airport enter a region that is as bereft of the virus as much of the UK. Nobody would have quarantined me had I been to Rochdale or Rotherham to visit family where there is more of the virus.
Anyway, I get it. Public health. So when Mrs RP and the kids get back they have to Not Go Out as they might Spread the Virus. OK. So I get Mrs RP to infect me on night 1 of her lockdown. I'm then free to go to the gym and sweat in the AC - no mask needed as thats safe - and go to the office and then the pub again without masks as safe. I would of course wear one in the pizza shack afterwards as being inside there without one is Not Safe.
Combine the above nonsense with the zero police resources that are used to enforce said lockdowns and its no surprise that people don't take them seriously. Because they aren't intended to be serious. This is a classic dead cat from the government. Look how STRONG we were in reacting to a THREAT. Don't worry about the 20k we killed in care homes.
A you gov poll on the 2nd July showed only 11% of Brits intended holidaying abroad and the possibility of quarantine post their holiday would have played a part in their decision
HMG is attacked for being too slow and now we have the media and others attacking HMG for acting too quickly.
It is clear the scientists told the UK to act immediately on Saturday and that is what they did. It is said Spain's infection rate had risen to 3
The idea this is a dead cat is nonsense. The swift act was co-ordinated across the UK including by Sturgeon and Drakeford in Scotland and Wales
And of course should anyone now travel to mainland Spain it is against FCO advice and uninsurable
I can understand the anger, but foreign travel in this very serious worldwide pandemic was always going to carry risk
Any questions being asked in Scotland about why they lifted quarantine rules for Spain only a few days ago, only to do a massive reverse ferret on Friday?
If UK holiday makers have observed the all the rules regarding avoiding infection whilst out in Spain the chance of them returning infected is negligible. There again maybe many haven’t.
Actually no, it's the flight home, as I said below.
When this crisis first broke, infection rates in Spain and Italy were pretty low, and there is no way that all those infected returnees just happened to bump into an infected local. How much 'closer than a metre and longer than fifteen minutes' interaction do tourists have with locals anyway? (edit/SeanT in Thailand excepted)
There will have been one infected person on the plane and the rest of them caught it while they were enjoying their inflight meal.
It appears that PB could care fewer about the LD leadership election.
It might be relevant though if we have a hung parliament in 2024 and either Davey or Moran have 30 odd MPs and the balance of power as Clegg did in 2010
Sir Keir has to prepare Labour for such an eventually.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
While we all have our, ahem, views on Big Bad Dom and his proposed reform of the civil service, I can say that there has long been disquiet with the civil service in terms of basic literacy. An MP of my acquaintance said they spent 40% of their time correcting basic errors of the your welcome type.
But how much of that do you think is weakness in basic literacy standards, and how much is the sheer volume of work that civil servants have to churn out, yesterday, of little or no value?
When typing quickly i often have an issue with things like "your welcome" or "there/their". That's not because i have any deficiencies in my literacy (and i will usually notice and correct) but just instinctive.
Wouldn't be surprised if over time your MP's staff started doing it on purpose just to annoy him.
I almost never have such problems when typing quickly. And as you say if any occur they are near-instantly corrected.
These people are working for MPs helping to draft documents often for public consumption of some form or another. If they are not up to it and/or do it deliberately then the sooner they are booted out by Dom the better.
They can just use a tool like Grammarly and never have to worry about spelling, or grammar, ever again.
Grammarly is shit. It’s dreadful. It’s a very expensive way of making most of your written English grammatically incorrect.
On Spain, yes there is some internet sneering about the kind of people off on their holidays and thats fine. Its the absurdity of it that makes me laugh - the head of the Valencian regional government pointing out that people travelling in and out of Alicante airport enter a region that is as bereft of the virus as much of the UK. Nobody would have quarantined me had I been to Rochdale or Rotherham to visit family where there is more of the virus.
Anyway, I get it. Public health. So when Mrs RP and the kids get back they have to Not Go Out as they might Spread the Virus. OK. So I get Mrs RP to infect me on night 1 of her lockdown. I'm then free to go to the gym and sweat in the AC - no mask needed as thats safe - and go to the office and then the pub again without masks as safe. I would of course wear one in the pizza shack afterwards as being inside there without one is Not Safe.
Combine the above nonsense with the zero police resources that are used to enforce said lockdowns and its no surprise that people don't take them seriously. Because they aren't intended to be serious. This is a classic dead cat from the government. Look how STRONG we were in reacting to a THREAT. Don't worry about the 20k we killed in care homes.
A you gov poll on the 2nd July showed only 11% of Brits intended holidaying abroad and the possibility of quarantine post their holiday would have played a part in their decision
HMG is attacked for being too slow and now we have the media and others attacking HMG for acting too quickly.
It is clear the scientists told the UK to act immediately on Saturday and that is what they did. It is said Spain's infection rate had risen to 3
The idea this is a dead cat is nonsense. The swift act was co-ordinated across the UK including by Sturgeon and Drakeford in Scotland and Wales
And of course should anyone now travel to mainland Spain it is against FCO advice and uninsurable
I can understand the anger, but foreign travel in this very serious worldwide pandemic was always going to carry risk
Any questions being asked in Scotland about why they lifted quarantine rules for Spain only a few days ago, only to do a massive reverse ferret on Friday?
I believe they are along with uncomfortable questions for Sturgeon re her meetings with Salmond
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
While we all have our, ahem, views on Big Bad Dom and his proposed reform of the civil service, I can say that there has long been disquiet with the civil service in terms of basic literacy. An MP of my acquaintance said they spent 40% of their time correcting basic errors of the your welcome type.
But how much of that do you think is weakness in basic literacy standards, and how much is the sheer volume of work that civil servants have to churn out, yesterday, of little or no value?
When typing quickly i often have an issue with things like "your welcome" or "there/their". That's not because i have any deficiencies in my literacy (and i will usually notice and correct) but just instinctive.
Wouldn't be surprised if over time your MP's staff started doing it on purpose just to annoy him.
I almost never have such problems when typing quickly. And as you say if any occur they are near-instantly corrected.
These people are working for MPs helping to draft documents often for public consumption of some form or another. If they are not up to it and/or do it deliberately then the sooner they are booted out by Dom the better.
They can just use a tool like Grammarly and never have to worry about spelling, or grammar, ever again.
Grammarly is shit. It’s dreadful. It’s a very expensive way of making most of your written English grammatically incorrect.
Well, I bow to your superior knowledge on the matter.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
It sounds old-fogyish, but I am really shocked at the poor standard of spelling and grammar from Government officials. I can cope with this up to a point but evidently the habit of proof-reading is disappearing, and that's just laziness. It is also inefficient because it often means a subsequent clarification is necessary.
Just because someone has been to university, even a good one, does not mean that they will have good grammar or spelling. The assumption is that you have been taught that sort of thing before getting there and it would look pretty bad to have remedial English lessons when you would rather be punting on the Cam.
I think nowadays the assumption is that whatever device you are writing on will flag errors and/or make corrections automatically.
Off I go to write a personal statement for my September University application. I’ve been putting it off for weeks. My current writing tool, IA Writer, has a built in “style check” to remove fillers, redundancies, and cliches, amongst other things. Hopefully it works.
@dixiedean in reply to your comment yesterday about why, as a Newcastle fan, I would be unhappy with season just gone:
Well we finished on 44 points, with a goal difference of -20, 11 wins, and 16 losses.
Last season under Rafa we finished on 45 points, with a goal difference of -6, 12 wins, and 17 losses.
So I’m not sure how you can consider us “over achieving” when if anything we’ve done exactly the same as last year, but with significant more “🤢”. Oh and we spent a ton of money in the summer too.
Season after season of dross unfortunately.
Considering how the club's supporters were so unhappy to have lost Rafa and how much negativity there was around the club at the start of the season . . . finishing "only" 1 point down, it could have been worse! It could have been much worse.
Of course it could have been worse, but that’s not what we’re discussing. The comment was that we “overachieved”. Objectively we did not, we stagnated.
Remember we smashed our transfer record in the summer.
How much higher than Sunderland did you finish?
My brother is, for complicated reasons, a Sunderland fan. For the last two years that means I’ve been able to take him to see them play Wycombe, my local team. Next year I won’t be able to as Wycombe are now in the next league up.
Are Sunderland that small club from County Durham? I forget.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
It’s the misuse of apostrophes that infuriates me, especially in shared resources. Although that said, even autocorrect gets that wrong. It keeps adding apostrophes to ‘Democrats,’ for example.
But my new line manager can’t even spell my name correctly, and more annoyingly, doesn’t seem to care.
That is pretty bad. I did have a colleague who used my nickname when talking about me with a pupil as she thought that was my actual name, but we had only been introduced the previous day and that was in the pub...
My physics teacher used to tell us that we were the future leadership of the country .
Who was in the class? Er ... one Edward J Davey.
He possibly has achieved more than anyone else in that class though
That would be quite an interesting question to investigate.
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
While we all have our, ahem, views on Big Bad Dom and his proposed reform of the civil service, I can say that there has long been disquiet with the civil service in terms of basic literacy. An MP of my acquaintance said they spent 40% of their time correcting basic errors of the your welcome type.
But how much of that do you think is weakness in basic literacy standards, and how much is the sheer volume of work that civil servants have to churn out, yesterday, of little or no value?
When typing quickly i often have an issue with things like "your welcome" or "there/their". That's not because i have any deficiencies in my literacy (and i will usually notice and correct) but just instinctive.
Wouldn't be surprised if over time your MP's staff started doing it on purpose just to annoy him.
During a long and depressing correspondence with a Government Department recently I reached the conclusion that the main reason for the incoherence of the letters it was sending was the numbers game. They were 'rewarded' for processing as many cases as possible regardless of content or quality.
The inefficiency of this fatuous approach resulted in a wholly unnecessary appearance before a Judge at a Tribunal in London (I live in Gloucestershire) where finally we got some sense. But what a waste of time.
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
Do you think that after a tax rise on Amazon, their prices will a) stay the same; or b) rise to reflect the tax rise?
Ed Davey must be the only choice to keep the LDs on their present course.
Swinson written off as a disaster. Yet the LibDem vote increased by 56% in the 2019 election. Didn't translate into seats as national vote tally largely irrelevant on that basis, but its momentum and thats crucial for our recovery climb out of the Clegg pit
Is it though? Is it really? Because "fuck Brexit" is hardly going to be a vote winner in 2024.
Key to winning seats is to pick an area that you are competitive in and fighting on that ground to win it. In 2017 the Lib Dems had 12 seats and were runners up in 37 so those were the seats to be targeting to make progress . . . but instead ended up with 11.
Increasing your share in seats from next-to-nothing to next-to-nothing+2 isn't great.
The only thing working for the Lib Dems is you're now runners up in 90 seats, but the party realistically needs to pick some of those and target the heck out of them. What should have been done when there were just 37 to target.
Essentially the Brexit policy attracted a lot of disaffected remainers without delivering much in the way of seats, while seeing the LDs go backwards in former targets like N Devon and N Cornwall
The LDs now need to double down to an extent by looking for new policies, which are socially liberal but economically centrist to appeal to their new target seats
Where are their new target seats? Given that both N Devon and N Cornwall now have majorities near 15,000....
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
Have you missed raising taxes for 40 plus for care widely discussed on here yesterday
Off I go to write a personal statement for my September University application. I’ve been putting it off for weeks. My current writing tool, IA Writer, has a built in “style check” to remove fillers, redundancies, and cliches, amongst other things. Hopefully it works.
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
You don't think some at least of such would fall back upon consumers?
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
Do you think that after a tax rise on Amazon, their prices will a) stay the same; or b) rise to reflect the tax rise?
How is taxing online retailers going to help the high street?
Yes, costs will rise for consumers. But there'll still be the structural problems. Visiting town means time and travel cost. Running a business there means paying for the privilege by renting space. And that space will still be insufficient to compete with an online retailer's out of town warehouses.
There may be ways to revitalise high streets. Perhaps local currencies/vouchers, and an emphasis on things that can only be done in person (for example, a bowling alley gives a small voucher with every spend, that voucher can then be used, but only in person, for a small discount at a local clothing store), and that sort of thing.
The internet isn't going anywhere. Trying to make it less appealing won't work. The high street should focus on what it can do better.
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
Do you think that after a tax rise on Amazon, their prices will a) stay the same; or b) rise to reflect the tax rise?
b.
Its the right thing to do.
Of course. Especially given their dominant, near-monopolistic position.
= a tax rise of the type that @HYUFD said would not occur under the Cons.
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
It sounds old-fogyish, but I am really shocked at the poor standard of spelling and grammar from Government officials. I can cope with this up to a point but evidently the habit of proof-reading is disappearing, and that's just laziness. It is also inefficient because it often means a subsequent clarification is necessary.
Just because someone has been to university, even a good one, does not mean that they will have good grammar or spelling. The assumption is that you have been taught that sort of thing before getting there and it would look pretty bad to have remedial English lessons when you would rather be punting on the Cam.
I think nowadays the assumption is that whatever device you are writing on will flag errors and/or make corrections automatically.
Ed Davey must be the only choice to keep the LDs on their present course.
Swinson written off as a disaster. Yet the LibDem vote increased by 56% in the 2019 election. Didn't translate into seats as national vote tally largely irrelevant on that basis, but its momentum and thats crucial for our recovery climb out of the Clegg pit
Is it though? Is it really? Because "fuck Brexit" is hardly going to be a vote winner in 2024.
Key to winning seats is to pick an area that you are competitive in and fighting on that ground to win it. In 2017 the Lib Dems had 12 seats and were runners up in 37 so those were the seats to be targeting to make progress . . . but instead ended up with 11.
Increasing your share in seats from next-to-nothing to next-to-nothing+2 isn't great.
The only thing working for the Lib Dems is you're now runners up in 90 seats, but the party realistically needs to pick some of those and target the heck out of them. What should have been done when there were just 37 to target.
Essentially the Brexit policy attracted a lot of disaffected remainers without delivering much in the way of seats, while seeing the LDs go backwards in former targets like N Devon and N Cornwall
The LDs now need to double down to an extent by looking for new policies, which are socially liberal but economically centrist to appeal to their new target seats
Where are their new target seats? Given that both N Devon and N Cornwall now have majorities near 15,000....
Given the current demography of its support, I'd suggest those will be in areas with significant educated middle class working age populations where the party hasn't in the past built much of a campaigning infrastructure. Which steers you away from the South West, as you say, and toward the Home Counties and University towns.
Off I go to write a personal statement for my September University application. I’ve been putting it off for weeks. My current writing tool, IA Writer, has a built in “style check” to remove fillers, redundancies, and cliches, amongst other things. Hopefully it works.
Get a human to check it as well if you can.
I will do, but thank you for the advice. I’m happy to say that my writing has improved a lot in the past year since I started studying law, with thanks in no small part to the help of @AlastairMeeks proof-reading many of my cover letters!
On Spain, yes there is some internet sneering about the kind of people off on their holidays and thats fine. Its the absurdity of it that makes me laugh - the head of the Valencian regional government pointing out that people travelling in and out of Alicante airport enter a region that is as bereft of the virus as much of the UK. Nobody would have quarantined me had I been to Rochdale or Rotherham to visit family where there is more of the virus.
Anyway, I get it. Public health. So when Mrs RP and the kids get back they have to Not Go Out as they might Spread the Virus. OK. So I get Mrs RP to infect me on night 1 of her lockdown. I'm then free to go to the gym and sweat in the AC - no mask needed as thats safe - and go to the office and then the pub again without masks as safe. I would of course wear one in the pizza shack afterwards as being inside there without one is Not Safe.
Combine the above nonsense with the zero police resources that are used to enforce said lockdowns and its no surprise that people don't take them seriously. Because they aren't intended to be serious. This is a classic dead cat from the government. Look how STRONG we were in reacting to a THREAT. Don't worry about the 20k we killed in care homes.
A you gov poll on the 2nd July showed only 11% of Brits intended holidaying abroad and the possibility of quarantine post their holiday would have played a part in their decision
HMG is attacked for being too slow and now we have the media and others attacking HMG for acting too quickly.
It is clear the scientists told the UK to act immediately on Saturday and that is what they did. It is said Spain's infection rate had risen to 3
The idea this is a dead cat is nonsense. The swift act was co-ordinated across the UK including by Sturgeon and Drakeford in Scotland and Wales
And of course should anyone now travel to mainland Spain it is against FCO advice and uninsurable
I can understand the anger, but foreign travel in this very serious worldwide pandemic was always going to carry risk
Any questions being asked in Scotland about why they lifted quarantine rules for Spain only a few days ago, only to do a massive reverse ferret on Friday?
If UK holiday makers have observed the all the rules regarding avoiding infection whilst out in Spain the chance of them returning infected is negligible. There again maybe many haven’t.
Actually no, it's the flight home, as I said below.
When this crisis first broke, infection rates in Spain and Italy were pretty low, and there is no way that all those infected returnees just happened to bump into an infected local. How much 'closer than a metre and longer than fifteen minutes' interaction do tourists have with locals anyway? (edit/SeanT in Thailand excepted)
There will have been one infected person on the plane and the rest of them caught it while they were enjoying their inflight meal.
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
Ed Davey must be the only choice to keep the LDs on their present course.
Swinson written off as a disaster. Yet the LibDem vote increased by 56% in the 2019 election. Didn't translate into seats as national vote tally largely irrelevant on that basis, but its momentum and thats crucial for our recovery climb out of the Clegg pit
Is it though? Is it really? Because "fuck Brexit" is hardly going to be a vote winner in 2024.
Key to winning seats is to pick an area that you are competitive in and fighting on that ground to win it. In 2017 the Lib Dems had 12 seats and were runners up in 37 so those were the seats to be targeting to make progress . . . but instead ended up with 11.
Increasing your share in seats from next-to-nothing to next-to-nothing+2 isn't great.
The only thing working for the Lib Dems is you're now runners up in 90 seats, but the party realistically needs to pick some of those and target the heck out of them. What should have been done when there were just 37 to target.
Essentially the Brexit policy attracted a lot of disaffected remainers without delivering much in the way of seats, while seeing the LDs go backwards in former targets like N Devon and N Cornwall
The LDs now need to double down to an extent by looking for new policies, which are socially liberal but economically centrist to appeal to their new target seats
Where are their new target seats? Given that both N Devon and N Cornwall now have majorities near 15,000....
Mansfield.
Ono that has a majority of 16,000.
More seriously, it's going to be University Towns, bits of the South, and nooks and corners.
Ed Davey must be the only choice to keep the LDs on their present course.
Swinson written off as a disaster. Yet the LibDem vote increased by 56% in the 2019 election. Didn't translate into seats as national vote tally largely irrelevant on that basis, but its momentum and thats crucial for our recovery climb out of the Clegg pit
Is it though? Is it really? Because "fuck Brexit" is hardly going to be a vote winner in 2024.
Key to winning seats is to pick an area that you are competitive in and fighting on that ground to win it. In 2017 the Lib Dems had 12 seats and were runners up in 37 so those were the seats to be targeting to make progress . . . but instead ended up with 11.
Increasing your share in seats from next-to-nothing to next-to-nothing+2 isn't great.
The only thing working for the Lib Dems is you're now runners up in 90 seats, but the party realistically needs to pick some of those and target the heck out of them. What should have been done when there were just 37 to target.
Essentially the Brexit policy attracted a lot of disaffected remainers without delivering much in the way of seats, while seeing the LDs go backwards in former targets like N Devon and N Cornwall
The LDs now need to double down to an extent by looking for new policies, which are socially liberal but economically centrist to appeal to their new target seats
Where are their new target seats? Given that both N Devon and N Cornwall now have majorities near 15,000....
Given the current demography of its support, I'd suggest those will be in areas with significant educated middle class working age populations where the party hasn't in the past built much of a campaigning infrastructure. Which steers you away from the South West, as you say, and toward the Home Counties and University towns.
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
Um, Amazon probably pay their fair share of tax - they process VAT correctly and pay an awful lot of NI
What Amazon are still doing is investing an awful lot which means their profits are being spent on jobs around this country (well paid engineering work in London plus lots of new warehouses around the UK).
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
You don't think some at least of such would fall back upon consumers?
Of course it will but why shouldn't it?
Do you have any idea how much in tax "the High Street" has to pay HMRC via NNDR (Business Rates)? And how much that then gets passed on to consumers? Amazon is essentially exempt from that tax so there is a tax incentive for consumers to spend on Amazon rather than in the High Street.
Why should HMRC be incentivising sales via the tax system the likes of Amazon instead of the High Street? Putting a tax on online sales would not penalise online sales, it would bring it in line with bricks and mortar that is already taxed more.
I would like to apologise for my recent outbursts and I hope all users will accept my full and unreserved apology
Cheers, Horse.
Reading last night's thread almost all of it seemed to be outbursts from a number of us about pensioners; can't remember if I commented.
There seems to be a perception that pensioners all live in castles with gold plated vegetable patches and sometimes relocate to cruise ships.
That's only some of them. There are plenty who only have the state pension plus a small occupational, and spend their holidays looking after grandchildren and in guesthouses, or at home.
Of course. But there is no denying their favourable position viewed in aggregate (I believe average earnings in retirement now exceed those in work?), and there are numerous ways in which they (soon to be we) are treated more favourably than working age people in a similar financial position.
No-one is suggesting devising measures that hit the poorest pensioners, but the fact of poor pensioners is a poor argument for seeking unreasonably to protect the benefits of the richer ones.
I think your first para is off, unless you don't mean "earnings" (does that include eg the State Pension?). I think the one you are thinking of is that one report in 2017 (Resolution Foundation) said that pensioner households were £1000 a year better off *after housing costs*. No idea whether that was before housing benefit or not.
(Obvs more pensioners own homes outright, but Housing Benefit would perhaps skew to younger groups).
The stats are a black art as we all know, as you can make them say whatever you want depending on your adjustments (eg people wanting to talk about UK as unequal often take GINI numbers on pre-benefit system figures - which is designed to make it more equal), but the average pensioner household income after housing costs is around £320 a week and has not increased since 2010. Hardly rolling in gold dust.
I'd certainly agree on very high pension incomes, which I may not reach - I am of the generation that had my pension arrangements significantly damaged in the Gordon Brown period, so I am partly in property now.
But I don't think there is anything like as much money there to raid as people imagine.
You're right - median income for pensioners is still below that for people of working age (the last figures seem to be about £25k to £31k), although the gap is narrower than it used to be.
The data I was thinking of was on disposable income after housing costs, which are clearly much lower for the many pensioners who own their homes outright. A study on this suggests that pensioners are about £1000 per year better off than those of working age, whereas twenty years ago working age people were about £3500 better off.
The same study did find a big skew in pensioner earnings, with the top 20% of households receiving 74% of pensioner employment income, 66% of pensioner investment income, and 52% of pension income. Whereas the bottom 20% are almost entirely dependent on benefits.
It also found that the dramatic increase in disposable income is being driven by the arrival of a 'new cohort' of wealthier pensioners, with those already of retirement age (i.e. current older pensioners) having only marginal increases in income.
Whilst that 25K to £31K may be right pensioners have less commitments than working age on average (rent/mortgage/student loans/kids/national insurance contributions) .The one collective commitment pensioners have that working age do not is care costs -and they are collectively trying to pass that on!
Fewer commitments. Grrrr !
Are those numbers household or individual?
31k is the number for disposable household income for working age in FY 2019 ie after taxes and benefits. My first numbers were for imdividuals I think.
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
Um, Amazon probably pay their fair share of tax - they process VAT correctly and pay an awful lot of NI
What Amazon are still doing is investing an awful lot which means their profits are being spent on jobs around this country (well paid engineering work in London plus lots of new warehouses around the UK).
Which do you think pays more Business Rates - Amazon, or their High Street competitors?
On Spain, yes there is some internet sneering about the kind of people off on their holidays and thats fine. Its the absurdity of it that makes me laugh - the head of the Valencian regional government pointing out that people travelling in and out of Alicante airport enter a region that is as bereft of the virus as much of the UK. Nobody would have quarantined me had I been to Rochdale or Rotherham to visit family where there is more of the virus.
Anyway, I get it. Public health. So when Mrs RP and the kids get back they have to Not Go Out as they might Spread the Virus. OK. So I get Mrs RP to infect me on night 1 of her lockdown. I'm then free to go to the gym and sweat in the AC - no mask needed as thats safe - and go to the office and then the pub again without masks as safe. I would of course wear one in the pizza shack afterwards as being inside there without one is Not Safe.
Combine the above nonsense with the zero police resources that are used to enforce said lockdowns and its no surprise that people don't take them seriously. Because they aren't intended to be serious. This is a classic dead cat from the government. Look how STRONG we were in reacting to a THREAT. Don't worry about the 20k we killed in care homes.
A you gov poll on the 2nd July showed only 11% of Brits intended holidaying abroad and the possibility of quarantine post their holiday would have played a part in their decision
HMG is attacked for being too slow and now we have the media and others attacking HMG for acting too quickly.
It is clear the scientists told the UK to act immediately on Saturday and that is what they did. It is said Spain's infection rate had risen to 3
The idea this is a dead cat is nonsense. The swift act was co-ordinated across the UK including by Sturgeon and Drakeford in Scotland and Wales
And of course should anyone now travel to mainland Spain it is against FCO advice and uninsurable
I can understand the anger, but foreign travel in this very serious worldwide pandemic was always going to carry risk
Any questions being asked in Scotland about why they lifted quarantine rules for Spain only a few days ago, only to do a massive reverse ferret on Friday?
If UK holiday makers have observed the all the rules regarding avoiding infection whilst out in Spain the chance of them returning infected is negligible. There again maybe many haven’t.
Actually no, it's the flight home, as I said below.
When this crisis first broke, infection rates in Spain and Italy were pretty low, and there is no way that all those infected returnees just happened to bump into an infected local. How much 'closer than a metre and longer than fifteen minutes' interaction do tourists have with locals anyway? (edit/SeanT in Thailand excepted)
There will have been one infected person on the plane and the rest of them caught it while they were enjoying their inflight meal.
How do you actually prove that though
Given the length of the incubation and asymptomatic period, very difficult. If I get the virus next week, who is to say how, and whether my short UK holiday was to blame?
There have been a few genetic studies of individual samples to throw a bit of light on how the virus spreads. In the US there has been a major study that combined contact tracing and genetic mapping of virus mutations to build a picture of how the virus spread across the states (there's an animated map on NYT), which shows that internal flights within the US were key. Indeed that things are so bad in the US is probably partly down to the air above the states having remained full of aircraft while in Europe flights were mostly shut down, back in April-May.
I haven’t lurked for a few days (new born in the house!) so may have missed prior discussion. But what was the consensus on the NY Times UFO story and where the congressional process is headed?
On your story, with so many bigger stories going on including Brexit, a worldwide pandemic, an imploding government and the decisive Test, we haven’t really discussed that.
Thanks! Other than Fox, no one else has picked up the story much. But there’s quite strong bipartisan language, perhaps the book might be opened soon and the insinuation is that there’s something to show. Puts rain at Old Trafford today into perspective in any case...
Should we expect any play in Old Trafford today do we think?
Alexa currently says we should expect thunderstorms and 13.9mm of rain in Manchester today.
Nah. Windies to be polished off by lunchtime on day 5
Forecasts have been all over the place. We are clearly in a very changeable pattern.
For once, I have a little bit of sympathy with the forecasters, but not too much. They will continue to be the butt of jokes until they start publishing regular and easily accessible results, just like most other tipsters do.
The Met Office site could quite easily be re-purposed as a betting exchange. But don't forget that poor Admiral FitzRoy was driven to suicide by the ribaldry that greeted his frequently wayward forecasts. Tread softly for you tread upon his grave.
Ed Davey must be the only choice to keep the LDs on their present course.
Swinson written off as a disaster. Yet the LibDem vote increased by 56% in the 2019 election. Didn't translate into seats as national vote tally largely irrelevant on that basis, but its momentum and thats crucial for our recovery climb out of the Clegg pit
Is it though? Is it really? Because "fuck Brexit" is hardly going to be a vote winner in 2024.
Key to winning seats is to pick an area that you are competitive in and fighting on that ground to win it. In 2017 the Lib Dems had 12 seats and were runners up in 37 so those were the seats to be targeting to make progress . . . but instead ended up with 11.
Increasing your share in seats from next-to-nothing to next-to-nothing+2 isn't great.
The only thing working for the Lib Dems is you're now runners up in 90 seats, but the party realistically needs to pick some of those and target the heck out of them. What should have been done when there were just 37 to target.
Essentially the Brexit policy attracted a lot of disaffected remainers without delivering much in the way of seats, while seeing the LDs go backwards in former targets like N Devon and N Cornwall
The LDs now need to double down to an extent by looking for new policies, which are socially liberal but economically centrist to appeal to their new target seats
Where are their new target seats? Given that both N Devon and N Cornwall now have majorities near 15,000....
Given the current demography of its support, I'd suggest those will be in areas with significant educated middle class working age populations where the party hasn't in the past built much of a campaigning infrastructure. Which steers you away from the South West, as you say, and toward the Home Counties and University towns.
M40 and Surrey. Even if Brexit has been and gone, Tory remainia won't be kind if it has been a rough few years of low competence government.
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
Um, Amazon probably pay their fair share of tax - they process VAT correctly and pay an awful lot of NI
What Amazon are still doing is investing an awful lot which means their profits are being spent on jobs around this country (well paid engineering work in London plus lots of new warehouses around the UK).
Amazon UK also pays exorbitant licence fees to the Luxembourg parent which happily means they make little to no profit in the UK (or France, Germany, Italy and Spain). Odd that they have a variable annual licence fee that just happens to be almost their entire operating margin.
Business Rates raise £29 billion a year in tax - all of which of course in the end has to be passed on to consumers. That is 4.5% of the entire UK tax take.
Amazon have essentially next to no Business Rates due unlike their competitors that they can undercut, in part because they're not taxed as heavily as their competitors!
On the fewer v less debate: when you write something it is so that you can communicate your ideas as well as possible (unless you are a lawyer). “Eight items or less” conveys the same idea as “Eight items or fewer” and in one fewer character, so why the argument? Well for a significant fraction of your readership the first version will cause them to wince a little. They are now thinking about your grammar, not your ideas. This is not helpful.
Over time English evolves as it is used, and the distinction will become less (and here fewer is certainly wrong) important. Incidentally that is why quoting uses from the ninth century doesn’t really help here; it’s how people use it now that is important. But while there are still those of us around who will wince then you are more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by avoiding that construction.
I think that was the point the video I linked to previously, was making.
Many of the things we say now were wrong a few hundred years ago (or more) but as you say language adapts and changes.
I don't know if it's a generational thing but I certainly don't wince when I see "less" instead of fewer and I don't know anyone else who does either.
Do you think the OED will ever state:
"LOSE" - alt "LOOSE"...?
It might. There was a recent report that people are losing the ability to spell as they rely on software handling it for them. Combine that trend with the descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) approach to language, and yes, loose/lose will be in the OED.
“Should of” for “should have” (from the sound of “should’ve”) is one I think I am fighting a losing battle with. I’m conscious that I’m one of the few on here that can do anything at all about this by flagging up these points in my pupils’ work. Some would end up with more written by me than they did if I went for everything they got wrong. Not just pupils either. We have a school policy of getting someone else to check our reports before they are sent out and I’ve had a few discussions about what I think are basic bits of grammar with some of my younger colleagues.
It sounds old-fogyish, but I am really shocked at the poor standard of spelling and grammar from Government officials. I can cope with this up to a point but evidently the habit of proof-reading is disappearing, and that's just laziness. It is also inefficient because it often means a subsequent clarification is necessary.
Just because someone has been to university, even a good one, does not mean that they will have good grammar or spelling. The assumption is that you have been taught that sort of thing before getting there and it would look pretty bad to have remedial English lessons when you would rather be punting on the Cam.
I get that, but what the hell is wrong with proof-reading? It actually saves time.
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
Um, Amazon probably pay their fair share of tax - they process VAT correctly and pay an awful lot of NI
What Amazon are still doing is investing an awful lot which means their profits are being spent on jobs around this country (well paid engineering work in London plus lots of new warehouses around the UK).
Which do you think pays more Business Rates - Amazon, or their High Street competitors?
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
You don't think some at least of such would fall back upon consumers?
Of course it will but why shouldn't it?
Do you have any idea how much in tax "the High Street" has to pay HMRC via NNDR (Business Rates)? And how much that then gets passed on to consumers? Amazon is essentially exempt from that tax so there is a tax incentive for consumers to spend on Amazon rather than in the High Street.
Why should HMRC be incentivising sales via the tax system the likes of Amazon instead of the High Street? Putting a tax on online sales would not penalise online sales, it would bring it in line with bricks and mortar that is already taxed more.
I agree, absolutely. My comment was a challenge to HY's assumption that it wouldn't 'count' as a tax rise because somehow it would be paid by cheque from Amazon Towers.
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
Um, Amazon probably pay their fair share of tax - they process VAT correctly and pay an awful lot of NI
What Amazon are still doing is investing an awful lot which means their profits are being spent on jobs around this country (well paid engineering work in London plus lots of new warehouses around the UK).
Amazon UK also pays exorbitant licence fees to the Luxembourg parent which happily means they make little to no profit in the UK (or France, Germany, Italy and Spain). Odd that they have a variable annual licence fee that just happens to be almost their entire operating margin.
@HYUFD I remember the halcyon days when you were laughing at anyone who suggested that there might be tax rises.
Good times.
Ensuring the likes of Amazon pay their fair share of tax to protect the high street is hardly the same as raising income tax or imposing a wealth tax on the Home counties
Um, Amazon probably pay their fair share of tax - they process VAT correctly and pay an awful lot of NI
What Amazon are still doing is investing an awful lot which means their profits are being spent on jobs around this country (well paid engineering work in London plus lots of new warehouses around the UK).
Which do you think pays more Business Rates - Amazon, or their High Street competitors?
In aggregate? Or per High Street?
In aggregate. Since Amazon is itself an aggregate.
Comments
HMG is attacked for being too slow and now we have the media and others attacking HMG for acting too quickly.
It is clear the scientists told the UK to act immediately on Saturday and that is what they did. It is said Spain's infection rate had risen to 3
The idea this is a dead cat is nonsense. The swift act was co-ordinated across the UK including by Sturgeon and Drakeford in Scotland and Wales
And of course should anyone now travel to mainland Spain it is against FCO advice and uninsurable
I can understand the anger, but foreign travel in this very serious worldwide pandemic was always going to carry risk
When typing quickly i often have an issue with things like "your welcome" or "there/their". That's not because i have any deficiencies in my literacy (and i will usually notice and correct) but just instinctive.
Wouldn't be surprised if over time your MP's staff started doing it on purpose just to annoy him.
Give Nick another chance. He's wasted as a PR man for Facebook. You know you want to.
Are those numbers household or individual?
31k is the number for disposable household income for working age in FY 2019 ie after taxes and benefits. My first numbers were for imdividuals I think.
"In financial year ending (FYE) 2020, the period leading up to the implementation of measures against the coronavirus (COVID-19), average household disposable income (after taxes and benefits) was £30,800 – up 2.3% (£700) compared with FYE 2019, after accounting for inflation."
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/householddisposableincomeandinequality/financialyearending2020provisional
There is a wonderfully dry comment on Henry VI in the ODNB, before pointing out he did have multiple achievements:
‘No king who loses the crown twice, who dies in prison, and whose reign ends in civil war, can be counted a success.’
The bottom line is that the party's fortunes depend heavily on there being a batch of voters pissed off with the Tories, coupled with its campaigning ability to capitalise on these in the wards and seats where it matters. My worry would be the hollowing out of both activity and expertise for ten years now.
Well we finished on 44 points, with a goal difference of -20, 11 wins, and 16 losses.
Last season under Rafa we finished on 45 points, with a goal difference of -6, 12 wins, and 17 losses.
So I’m not sure how you can consider us “over achieving” when if anything we’ve done exactly the same as last year, but with significant more “🤢”. Oh and we spent a ton of money in the summer too.
Season after season of dross unfortunately.
Oxford BLM demanding a Black Militia. With a Cuban (?) flag behind. The speaker is one Sasha Johnson, who seems to be an Old Harrovian.
It's gone the full Charlie Gilmour.
https://twitter.com/jfwduffield/status/1287533774016741378
But how difficult is it to spell ‘Huw?’
AIUI the figures are individual (and gross.
Key to winning seats is to pick an area that you are competitive in and fighting on that ground to win it. In 2017 the Lib Dems had 12 seats and were runners up in 37 so those were the seats to be targeting to make progress . . . but instead ended up with 11.
Increasing your share in seats from next-to-nothing to next-to-nothing+2 isn't great.
The only thing working for the Lib Dems is you're now runners up in 90 seats, but the party realistically needs to pick some of those and target the heck out of them. What should have been done when there were just 37 to target.
The subject being ‘basic harmony.’
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1287589819246358528?s=20
Remember we smashed our transfer record in the summer.
I am just back from a few days in the Cotswolds and Cornwall, staying in hotels. I was conscious that being away from home and in busier places was exposing me to greater risk than had I stayed at home, but the proximity to people was mostly outside, and my travel was all by car. So it was a calculated risk, objectively tiny if current infection data can be believed, and so far one with no evidence to suggest didn't pay off.
I have a Germany/Italy trip upcoming in September, partly arranged before the virus crisis broke. It'll be the same - self drive and hotels, with days spent mostly outside. I don't see that the risk is any greater - indeed the likelihood of bumping into an infectious person in those countries is (probably) currently lower.
Good times.
The LDs now need to double down to an extent by looking for new policies, which are socially liberal but economically centrist to appeal to their new target seats
Stagnating can be overachieving if you were already overachieving or should have done worse. Stagnating can be good, it depends upon your starting point. For something to be objectively true you need to have some objective measurements to go with.
Hypothetically if next season Liverpool finish as Premier League Champions and 97 points then I'd think they'd have had a very good season despite "stagnating" and it being their worst points haul in three seasons.
Who was in the class? Er ... one Edward J Davey.
That particular Physics Teacher did not have a nickname.
These people are working for MPs helping to draft documents often for public consumption of some form or another. If they are not up to it and/or do it deliberately then the sooner they are booted out by Dom the better.
My brother is, for complicated reasons, a Sunderland fan. For the last two years that means I’ve been able to take him to see them play Wycombe, my local team. Next year I won’t be able to as Wycombe are now in the next league up.
Indeed, on one occasion his grammar was so bad I actually commented on it, noting that it was ironic he had confused his tenses in a document calling for a more rigorous approach to teaching English.
When this crisis first broke, infection rates in Spain and Italy were pretty low, and there is no way that all those infected returnees just happened to bump into an infected local. How much 'closer than a metre and longer than fifteen minutes' interaction do tourists have with locals anyway? (edit/SeanT in Thailand excepted)
There will have been one infected person on the plane and the rest of them caught it while they were enjoying their inflight meal.
I've had more first comments on PB, though.
The inefficiency of this fatuous approach resulted in a wholly unnecessary appearance before a Judge at a Tribunal in London (I live in Gloucestershire) where finally we got some sense. But what a waste of time.
Its the right thing to do.
Yes, costs will rise for consumers. But there'll still be the structural problems. Visiting town means time and travel cost. Running a business there means paying for the privilege by renting space. And that space will still be insufficient to compete with an online retailer's out of town warehouses.
There may be ways to revitalise high streets. Perhaps local currencies/vouchers, and an emphasis on things that can only be done in person (for example, a bowling alley gives a small voucher with every spend, that voucher can then be used, but only in person, for a small discount at a local clothing store), and that sort of thing.
The internet isn't going anywhere. Trying to make it less appealing won't work. The high street should focus on what it can do better.
Tbh, Sadiq is the only person who wil win even though he has been rubbish.
= a tax rise of the type that @HYUFD said would not occur under the Cons.
Ono that has a majority of 16,000.
More seriously, it's going to be University Towns, bits of the South, and nooks and corners.
What Amazon are still doing is investing an awful lot which means their profits are being spent on jobs around this country (well paid engineering work in London plus lots of new warehouses around the UK).
Do you have any idea how much in tax "the High Street" has to pay HMRC via NNDR (Business Rates)? And how much that then gets passed on to consumers? Amazon is essentially exempt from that tax so there is a tax incentive for consumers to spend on Amazon rather than in the High Street.
Why should HMRC be incentivising sales via the tax system the likes of Amazon instead of the High Street? Putting a tax on online sales would not penalise online sales, it would bring it in line with bricks and mortar that is already taxed more.
There have been a few genetic studies of individual samples to throw a bit of light on how the virus spreads. In the US there has been a major study that combined contact tracing and genetic mapping of virus mutations to build a picture of how the virus spread across the states (there's an animated map on NYT), which shows that internal flights within the US were key. Indeed that things are so bad in the US is probably partly down to the air above the states having remained full of aircraft while in Europe flights were mostly shut down, back in April-May.
Amazon have essentially next to no Business Rates due unlike their competitors that they can undercut, in part because they're not taxed as heavily as their competitors!
Change the record, you lost. Again and again and again you have lost. Get over it.