LibFem Grammar

Just listen to these words of Tim Farron, President of the LibDems: Your average Tory minister, bless them, works hard in their department and is rarely seen anywhere near their constituency. 

The statement itself is of course utter bollocks - a black lie - but the words are grammatical bollocks too.  Your average Tory minister - singular - bless them - plural - works hard - singular - in their department - plural - and is rarely seen - singular - anywhere near their - plural - constituency - singular.

Now, whatever you may think of Tim Farron's politics or intellect, like me you probably do not believe that he is this ignorant of the rules of grammar.   So why does he do it?  He does it in a desperate attempt to avoid upsetting the women's lib fraternity by saying  his or him, saying them and their instead even though the singular subjects at that point require singular personal pronouns and possessive adjectives.  He could of course have avoided the problem by saying his or her or, much better, by starting and staying in the plural thus: Average Tory ministers, bless them, work hard in their departments and are ... etc. But getting your words right takes time and effort and for him it was clearly far more important to use that time and effort to get right the LibFem Speak grammar rather than the English grammar.

Farron is not the only one who routinely mangles our grammar for this reason; the habit has become rampant at all levels of society and in all walks of life. But nowhere is it more rampant than on the centre-left of politics, which is particularly worrying because it indicates an obsession with form rather than substance and with dogma and political correctness rather than clarity, practicality and intellectual honesty.  In short, it is a symptom of the disease that is eating away at the governance of Britain.

What Kind of Psychopath Wants to Own a Savage Dog?

My lovely, sweet, affectionate, harmless Cocker Spaniel was savaged yesterday by a bull terrier-type dog let off its lead without a muzzle in a public park.  Fortunately my young, strong, brave and fit son was the one walking him at the time and managed to wrestle with the beast and prize open its jaws. Had its walker been anyone less strong and brave our Cocker would almost certainly have been killed; all its owner did was stand and watch, and his beast had already inflicted multiple deep wounds with blood gushing out of them in the minute or two it took my son to drag it off.   Three visits to the vet for treatment so far, and many more to come at horrendous expense before he is finally signed off I should think.

Browsing the internet we discover that other harmless little dogs suffer similar attacks on a daily basis and nothing much can be done about it because no criminal offence has been committed so the police won't be interested. 

Only someone who actually admires and enjoys savagery could possibly want to own such a breed. If we can manage as a society virtually to criminalise smokers, why for God's sake can't we make the owners of savage dogs suffer for wanting to inflict them on the rest of us?  Why not add an element to Council Tax for all households with dogs, on a sliding scale from modest for harmless little breeds to punitive for the breeds that most frequently attack? Unlike the old dog licence this would be cheap and easy to administer and would bring in some badly needed revenues as well.

Anti-Democratic Europhobia

I am no great lover of the ever-closer-union ambitions of the Europhiles myself, but I do have trouble sometimes understanding the logic of the Europhobes.  To a man and a woman they seem to take the line that having the fiscal and budgetary policies of Eurozone states fixed by Eurocrats controlled by Berlin and Paris would be anti-democratic and bad, and so it would; but then they go on to shout even louder that total political union with the fiscal and budgetary polices of all states controlled by a federal government elected by universal suffrage throughout the Eurozone would be far worse, the ultimate total-loss-of-sovereignty nightmare.  

Er, hang on a minute;  the reason why there isn't a cat-in-hell's chance of the Germans and the French agreeing to such a political union full-Monte anyway is because, far from robbing the people of their sovereignty, it would actually go some way to restoring it, making it harder for Berlin and Paris to run Europe as a duopoly as they more or less do now, and giving every European voter a direct vote for or against everything that any Eurocrat does.

Now, before you shout that the trouble with that idea is that it would be hard for voters in the smaller peripheral states to have the influence on central policies that the big boys would have, stop once and ask yourself whether that isn't a fundamental problem with democracy anyway - dictatorship of the majority; and then stop again and ask yourself whether you are for or against the union of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with the United Kingdom. If you think it is right for the Scots to vote to elect the Westminster Parliament and Government within the full political, fiscal and budgetary union of the UK with certain powers devolved to them, why not ditto the whole UK relative to the parliament and government of a European Union?

The paradox demonstrates to me that the issue for most Europhobes is at heart nothing at all to do with democracy or sovereignty, it's just history and tribalism.  They are just proud Brits and full European political union would be just too much of a blow to their pride.  I have some sympathy with that sentiment, especially after another magnificent Last Night of the Proms last night; but when Scots say they are proud Scots and the Union is too much of a blow to their pride, we have to remember that what's sauce for the goose...

What is it with all this Man United Bollocks?

Am I the only one who is sick to the back teeth of hearing just about everyone in the media world refer to Manchester United and Manchester City as Man United and Man City?  It gets right up my nose.  

It can't be because they just can't be bothered saying long words or because they think it's a clever idea to use the abbreviations of team names that appear in the score boxes at the top of our TV screens when we watch games, because if it was we should also expect to hear them saying things like Bir City, Liv,Tot Spur, Hud Town, Arse etc, but we don't.

And it can't be because they think it's such a clever, neat, trendy thing to do.  I mean even they can't be thick enough to see it that way now that it's been going on for years and just about every two-bit hack and his dog is doing it.

So it must be that they do it as an affectionate abbreviation - a pet name displaying their personal admiration and loyalty.  But look here you half-wits; we are not ALL fans of Manchester or of either of its Premiership clubs. In fact millions of us are either bored to death by them or hate the very sight of them.  So will you please stop it.  Let us hear the word Manchester in full every time so we don't constantly have to groan and say what prats you are.

What Happened to the Continuous Tense?

Why is it that just about no one says I am sitting or I am standing, or I was sitting or I was standing any more? Or just about any other continuous tense of any verb you can think of for that matter?  It's all I am sat, or I was sat, or I am stood, or I was stood, etc. etc. Even people who otherwise sound quite educated do it. In fact just about everyone seems to be doing it, both orally and in print, including in many of our finest organs.  

Why for God's sake?  If they had been George Formby would they have sung: I'm Leant on a Lampost at the Corner of the Street in Case a Certain Little Lady Comes By ?  Doesn't scan quite so well does it, quite apart from displaying ignorance of English grammar?  The only explanation I can think of for this and the countless other ways in which the depressing impoverishment of our language continues to accelerate is that grammar and style are no longer taught to our kids in school.  The notion  seems to be abroad that as long as what kids say or write is understandable, that's OK.  Don't correct the poor little dears in case you upset them or damage their confidence.  And anyway good grammar is really just posh middle class talk so it's discriminatory and offensive to suggest it is superior to chav talk.  In fact some seem to think its not only socially desirable but linguistically desirable to let kids make up their own grammar and style because that enriches our language.  

No it doesn't you clods.  It just makes them sound ignorant, not least to the millions of foreigners who speak and write far better English than they do, and it makes for prose and speech that are devoid of elegance and style and painful to listen to (the thousands of varied and interesting words and phrases that have been replaced in the speech of just about everyone in public life, especially at the BBC, by the words in terms of is another example of the same depressing trend).  

I suspect we are now well into stage two of the nuclear chain reaction, with most of the so-called English teachers in our schools being incapable of teaching good grammar or style because they haven't a clue what constitutes it themselves as a result of having been taught the same ideological junk in their own school days.

If you can get us out of this fine mess Mr Gove, you'll go down in history as one of our great political heroes . 

Seeing Through the Planning Fogs

There is so much fog in the great greenfield planning controls row that it makes your head ache trying to see through it all. 

Yesterday morning the front-page headline story in The Times was Planning Revolt Fuels Fears Over Economy, giving massive prominence to (and, by implication one would have thought, thereby seeking to reinforce): (1) the argument of David Frost of the British Chambers of Commerce that ministers must defy opposition to their plans to ease restrictions on greenfield development otherwise economic growth will be imperilled; and (2) Vince Cable's statement that groups opposing those plans are "semi-hysterical". 

So we know where The Times stands on that I thought, but then I turn to its leading article on page 2 with the sub-heading: The Government is Ignoring Some Genuine Concerns in the Countryside.  It needs to Balance the Demands of the wider Economy and the Local Landscape.

This reminds me that the previous day The Times had devoted an entire page to an Opinion piece by Alice Thomson with the headline The Looting Continues - in the Countryside in which Alice ridiculed the Government's planning proposals and accused Greg Clarke, Eric Pickles, Chris Huhne, David Cameron et al of being a bunch of  economically illiterate vandals.

Today The Times devotes the same Opinion page to a piece by Phillip Collins: Want a Home? Lose a Hedgerow.  That's Progress in which he basically argues precisely the opposite case to Alice Thomson's.

I am left wondering whether The Times is having difficulty distinguishing its arse from its elbow; whether it is simply genuinely trying to give equal space to all sides of the argument, or whether there is some kind of internal power struggle going on with different editorial staff having control over different pages at different times and using that power to further their sharply differing views.

Whichever it is, a great deal of wisdom and a great deal of bollocks is all getting hopelessly jumbled together.  Alice Thomson is absolutely right to argue that the housing problem is not caused by lack of space for houses but lack of money to buy them; and that housebuilders are hoarding hundreds of thousands of plots of land assuming that the new rules will lead to a free-for-all.  She is right also to attack the Government for its insane green energy policies which achieve nothing but hugely increased energy costs and the hideous scarring of landscapes.  But she is wrong to throw opposition to HS2 into the pot.  If HS2 is needed in the national economic interest the countryside has to be sacrificed for it to be built.  Unavoidably.  So the argument is just an economic one: is HS2 really needed or not?  It is not an argument about the Planning System.  Housing is undoubtedly needed but it is far from clear that a flawed planning system is the cause of any of the problems we have, so that IS an argument about the planning system. (The green energy row is basically a religious one: only those believing they are doing God's work could possibly think there is a case of ANY kind for Huhne's lunacies).

By conflating the housing and HS2 arguments Alice Thomson is doing the building lobby's dirty work for it, because it too is only too happy to conflate them to support its spurious line that relaxation of greenfield planning controls is necessary to correct a housing shortage. Have you noticed in fact that they are usually careful not to blame the controls themselves but planning "red tape", the implication being that it is not the criteria used to decide cases but the slowness of the decision-making that causes the housing shortage. Just speed things up, they imply, and all will be OK. Third rate journalists taking their text from the press releases of the developer lobby repeat the same bollocks.  If speed of decision-making were the problem, it wouldn't be a problem would it?  Because any given volume of applications meeting the criteria for approval would produce exactly the same volume of approvals at any given moment regardless of the length of time taken; speeding it up just reduces the time from application to approval in each case, not the volume of approvals coming out on any given day.  Yes it might reduce builders' costs, but only if you assume that the delay is caused by needess "red tape" rather than by builders failing to comply with criteria for approval, being refused, then appealing, then having central government planning inspectors second-guess the decisions of local planning committees etc.  Can you think of a single major infrastructure project where the time getting it through the planning system has been more than a tiny fraction of the total time taken for the Government or quango concerned to make up its mind to do it and get the budget in place for it?

Phillip Collins shrouds it all in even more mist by arguing that the shortage of housing is causing people to rent rather than to buy, leading to a sharp increase in the percentage of renters over buyers and driving up rents.  Er, hello?.. whether people live in owned or rented houses they are still houses so the demand and supply of houses is just the same.  Yes rents are rising but not because the supply of houses is falling; if it were, house prices would be rising too, but they are not, they are falling. That's becasue there is no shortage of supply of houses, just a shortage of savings, income and mortgages to buy them.
 

In fact I'm far from clear that a national swing back from buying to renting is such a bad thing.  It could be argued to be an essential and unavoidable part of the correction of a bubble process that left many bankrupt with negative equity, placed home ownership beyond reach even for middle-income families, wrecked the banking system and plunged the economy into deep recession.  Listening to the building lobby it is very interesting to hear them crying one day about falling house prices as though they are a national disaster and screaming the next day for more greenfields to build on because it will .... er, bring house prices down.

The central but pretty much unspoken idea on which the developers' campaign and the Government's proposals appear to be based is (1) that, yes, while it may be the case that ample housing could in theory be built on brownfield land, it cannnot be in practice because available brownfield sites are too expensive for the housing built on them to be affordable and/or are not located where the housing is needed; and (2) houses built on a greatly expanded supply of greenfield sites will bring down house prices not so much by increasing supply (since that could be done on brownfield anyway) as by reducing costs. But if you believe that you might as well go and mine the moon for green cheese.  Have you noticed any difference between the prices builders charge for homes on their greenfield sites and their brownfield ones in the same areas?  And if you believe that builders are sitting on hundreds of thousands of brownfield sites waiting for prices to rise before they build (and if you don't you're living on another planet), why do you believe that they won't do the same thing on greenfield sites?

And even if that's an unjust accusation - even if the real truth is that the builders bought the brownfield sites at the height of the bubble and have no choice but to hang on for prices to recover because they'll go bust if they build and sell at current market-clearing prices - so what?  That's what market's are for isn't it?  Let them go bust; let the land then be auctioned of to the highest bidder and let them build at the new market price.  I haven't noticed the Government riding to the rescue of any of the tens of thousands of poor sods who went bust with negative equity in their own homes when the housing bubble burst. Why should builders be immune?  Slap a tax on greenfield developments tomorrow to make greenfield no more profitable than brownfield and stand back to watch the deluge of brownfield housing development that will then happen (and use the revenues to help people get mortgages).

I am in fact basically sympathetic to the idea that building houses on nondescript isolated greenfields will often be less of a loss and cause less real distress to existing communities than cramming more houses into suburban gardens or suburban extensions.  I therefore have some sympathy with the central idea in the Government's proposals that local councils should have the power to decide which greenfields should be used for housing rather than be driven by the ludicrous Soviet-style regional planning system Labour introduced.  But the essential corollaries of that are: (1) that power should be held by local authorities alone: responsibility for every decision should be seen to rest squarely and solely with them so that local electors can punish them on polling day if they do not reflect local wishes, which means that (2) there should be NO right of appeal to central government planning inspectors against local decisions to refuse.

The trouble with even this scenario however is that in many constituencies overwhelming majorities vote even for a monkey wearing the right colour rosette, leaving councillors confident they can get away with murder.  The incentives for them to try therefore need to be minimised, which leads me to the conclusion that the current system under which developers make planning gain payments to local councils should be scrapped and replaced by one in which any revenues flow not direct to local councils but to central government and are used to fund national programmes to help people get the mortgages they need, not funnelled back to local authorities.