[vale willie de ville] love and emotion

Spanish Stroll

Oh wow. We look at all the meanness going on behind the scenes in our country, in our own experience, even affecting this blog and then we can look at Willie de Ville who died last night at the age of 58, of cancer. How often do you see your humble blogger wax so lyrical about a singer but this man had a genuineness, a passion and a zest for life, undercut by life's seamier side - it's a wonder he made it thus far when you look at all his personal issues.

Hey Rosita! Donde vas con mi carro Rosita? Tu sabes que te quiero pero ti me quitas todo

I could have run any youtube of his for your delectation but this one is special and if you can give a few minutes of your time, let me explain. The first youtube below was a performance of his song Just Your Friends, given at Museumplatz, Bonn in 2008, aged 57. The other version I was going to post was from 1981, aged 30!! It's my favourite song of all time by him, done 30 years later [you can see better quality in HQ here]:

I don't believe you know what's right or wrong
This is the price I pay for feeling so strong over you
You know that all of the time, I laid my heart on the line
And how I was so blind - I only see the good side of you

I remember that night, I remember the rain
I wandered the streets, lost in this pain over you
Yes, I wish I could take you away from your friends
Dragging you down but you're still hanging round with them ...

How many guys can relate to that?





Some lady commented:

Oh, what a gem!!! Whew!  Willy is so incredibly talented. Charismatic man who is multi-talented. Crystal clear video with terrific sound.

This is the hit which did it for him [hope Lou Reed's listening]:





Another:

She's a Mixed Up, Shook Up Girl

And one more to sign off with:





Did I say one more? Here's a slightly wooden early version of Love and Emotion [he seems a bit shy here] but the song is class:

I hold your hand and as we walk along, I can't understand, how a love can live in this desolate land. Broken windows and broken hearts and you are cheated before you start; was there ever a chance? No, there was never a chance ... but then your love, love and emotion ... oh your love sets me free.

Now everyday, at 5 o'clock, I run down your street baby, to your block and up five flights of stairs - up five flights of stairs ... and in your laughter there's mission bells, coloured lanterns and carousels, and in this hallway there's home, no Im not so alone ... because your love ... sets me free.

Critic Mark Keresman wrote about Willy DeVille:

In some respects, DeVille is the rock & roll counterpart to Sinatra—both can rock, both stared down personal demons, both are capable of rousing memories sweet and sad, and both can navigate the mean streets with panache before winding up on Lonely Avenue at daybreak.

Sigh - there's the litmus test. I'm sure the men won't like this music and I suspect there are not too many women left with that romantic streak who'd appreciate Mink de Ville. I hope I'm horribly wrong and wide of the mark.

Vale, Willy de Ville!

[manic humo[u]r] three nations

It's not how each nation does the sit-com and the straight that BEST defines a nation's humo[u]r IMHO but how they handle the manic. Here are three manic clips:

English:



American:



Australian:

[troll alert] code amber and apology

I'm having troll problems from someone who's trying to stir up a dead and buried issue again. I have the email filtering on for all the players in the backstabbing of your humble blogger long ago but unfortunately, Blogger itself does not allow blocking. Therefore, at the times I'm away from the computer, I have to use moderation for now.

These people are sad and one can only hope they get a life but there it is - some people like to stir up trouble. I'm not the only victim in this predicament around the sphere.

[japanese model] somehow forgets half her kimono

The First Post runs a simple issue - is this tacky or not?

It got a chorus of complaints from traditional Japanese but the French designer was disdainful:

[Ines] Ligron responded to the outrage with French disdain. "The conservative and fashion dinosaurs are criticising her [Miyasaka’s] costume, meanwhile the fashionistas love it," she said. "I care only about the movers and shakers in the fashion industry."

Well that's all right then. The Dominique Prieur School of Cultural Respect is not to be sniffed at. As long as the fashionisti notice you, Madame, that's all that matters in interpreting Japanese tradition.

Or is this a surly reaction?

[at the beach] in a paris arrondissement

The French are nothing if not inventive.

The city pours an amount of money into constructing beaches in summer in the romantic city so that commuters, holidaymakers and tourists can enjoy it without the inconvenience or cost of a trip.

Good idea or an eyesore, especially around sites of historic interest? Would you consider the sight of the great unwashed, unclothed along the elegant streets of Paris, obnoxious or do you think it's a positive and inventive move?

Is it good for the kiddies?

Would it work in London, Manchester, Birmingham or wherever? Could the city fathers be persuaded or is Britain too bankrupt?

Who would have the deckchair concession?

[naughty net] the beeb says people don't like it

Oh, give a medal to the BBC for its touching concern for the plight of the people "hooked" on the net.

"My wife won't send e-mail" one man says. "She likes the personal touch [so] doesn't know what's happening to that letter of yours [if it is sent electronically]."

Privacy is another worry, as computers have made information gathering so powerful.

"The whole world's on computers", says one woman. "You just have to say your postcode and they know everything about you. I'm just not interested."

"If you hit the wrong key," says her neighbour, "what about privacy?"

And hitting the wrong key took us into complaints about design and computer complexity.

There is an alternative point of view - that the net gives access to friends you'd not otherwise have had. Also, if you were to go around the blogs on your roll, you'd see so many cases of people on holiday or where RL impinges. Doesn't seem "hooked" to me ... although it is part of our lives.

For me, the net replaces television but not radio - this latter, thank you, Beeb. It replaces newspapers but not entirely. Sometimes I'll buy one but it is true the dead wood press does include magazine items of interest. The political commentary we get very well from the blogosphere, thank you.

Nice try, Beeb.

[10,9,8,7] 6,5,4,3,2,1

Stereo Total ... Devo

[thinking thursday] captions please

[text messaging, net abbreviations] and the purity of english

West country cheesemakers - blessed be the ...

Consider this:

Laccetti (professor of humanities at Stevens Institute of Technology) and Molsk, in their essay entitled The Lost Art of Writing, are critical of the acronyms, predicting reduced chances of employment for students who use such acronyms, stating that, "Unfortunately for these students, their bosses will not be 'lol' when they read a report that lacks proper punctuation and grammar, has numerous misspellings, various made-up words, and silly acronyms."

Fondiller and Nerone, in their style manual assert that "professional or business communication should never be careless or poorly constructed" whether one is writing an electronic mail message or an article for publication, and warn against the use of smileys and these abbreviations, stating that they are "no more than e-mail slang and have no place in business communication".

Uh-huh.

This is a reactive [note the avoidance of that other word] position and a conservative one, wishing, as one does, to retain some semblance of standards. The problem with English though is encapsulated in the old James D. Nicoll quote:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

Rather than give you my immediate opinion, may I give you the transcript of my speech to a state seminar in Russia in 2007 - the poor girl who had to translate had a hell of a time but I did give her lunch afterwards, I promise:


Maintaining the purity of the English language

Introduction

• In the 2000 Guy Ritchie film, ‘Snatch’, a Jewish-American gangster says to a London gangster, “Speak English to me Tony. I thought this country spawned the language and so far nobody seems to speak it.”

• In the G.B. Shaw play Pygmalion, Professor Henry Higgins opines, “The moment an Englishman opens his mouth, another Englishman despises him.”

• George Bernard Shaw is also supposed to have said, “England and America are two countries divided by a common language.”

There are two major movements in global language discussion today which are usually seen as diametrically opposite:

• Attempting to establish a one-world-language for all or at least for the majority

• Attempting to maintain the purity of the native language

There are, however, far more potent influences at work to dismember and prevent the integration of English as a single unified language and these are covered further down in this article.

If English has aspirations to be the predominant world language, or if it merely wishes to rank with French, Russian and other languages for ‘purity’, then surely it must first get its own house in order.

Attempts at establishing a global language

This is one of the key issues consuming much of the language teaching community today but as it is tangential to this article, here is an abridged summary of the current state of play.

World English

The most widespread second language of the present day, English, might make the world interlingual by becoming so well integrated in educational and social systems worldwide that it is accessible to all at minimum cost.

Over 85% of the scientific, technological or academic production in the world today is done in English. In most countries and industries, a knowledge of English is an invaluable asset - on the labour market or in monetary policy. And for the common people, English is simply prestigious.

Yet Yale linguist Stephen Anderson noted that:

“In most of the world, multilingualism is the normal condition of people. The notion that English shouldn’t, needn’t and probably won’t displace local languages, seems natural to me.”

Many authors have questioned the fact that English is not power-neutral and that for many, learning English is simply an exercise in upward mobility.

In the end, the usefulness of English, or any lingua franca for that matter, depends on the communicative competence of speakers and mutual intelligibility. Experience shows that this is by no means a given.

Esperantism

An invented language, designed as a global auxiliary language in which fluency can be achieved at low cost, might make the world interlingual. If it became customary to use such a language for all translingual communication, the burden of linguistic accommodation would be both small and equal for all.

Language Brokers

Professional translators and interpreters might achieve an interlingual world by enabling people without a common language to communicate with success, without the burdens and risks of widespread language learning.

Plurolingualism

If breakthroughs in the methodology of language teaching could be verified and propagated, and if multilingual competence became widely valued, people who needed to communicate across language barriers could easily develop the ability to do so.

Technologism

If the intricacies of grammar, meaning, and communicative strategy could be understood and codified, language barriers might disappear altogether in the presence of fully automatic translation between the world’s tongues, or be superseded by novel, automated, non or panlingual means of communication.

Interlingua

Created in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association and based on Romanic languages, this made it a minus point for most of the world.

Lojban

The development of Lojban began in 1987, through The Logical Language Group, but is based on another constructed language, called Loglan, the foundations which were laid in 1955, by James Cooke Brown. Every word has been selected according to an algorithm aiming at getting it as similar as possible to the corresponding words of the most widely spoken languages in the World - Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian and Arabic – in that specific order. Lojban has not taken off.

Ygyde

The basic structures of Ygyde were worked out by Andrew Nowicki, and presented in 2002. Later during 2002, Patrick Hassel-Zein contributed with the first grammar.

All words are built with the help of tables of syllables with specific meanings. The words usually do not have any similarities with corresponding words from any other language, but the structures are very simple and a speaker can create new words rather freely. Ygyde is a language well suited to scientific texts.

Defending the purity of native languages

Some attempts include:

L’Academie francaise

The primary role of l’Académie française is to regulate the French language by determining standards of acceptable grammar and vocabulary, adding new words and updating the meanings of existing ones, publishing an official dictionary, working with French terminological committees and offering linguistic and literary patronage to approved bodies.

The linguistic jury is more commonly known as «les Immortels» and that gives you a very good idea as to their status n French society.

Due to the recent hegemony of English in the world, l’Académie's major task now tends to be to diminish the influx of English by choosing or inventing French equivalents and the French are most passionate in their view of English. As Claude Gagnière said:

“Un homme qui parle trois langues est trilingue. Un homme qui parle deux langues est bilingue. Un homme qui ne parle qu'une langue est anglais.”

Russia

Vladimir Neroznyak, a Moscow linguist who helps advise the Russian government on language policy says: “If, before, more than 90 percent of the people in the Soviet territories spoke Russian, now less than half do. Within the decade that figure will have fallen to one in ten.”

Russian is under assault even within Russia itself. As many as 10,000 foreign words, such as voucher, biznesmen and bizneslunch, have entered the language within the past decade.

Neroznyak, who is lobbying to introduce language-purity laws as strict as those of the French, says:

“Whether we like it or not, half of Russian business is conducted in English.”

President Vladimir Putin has more than doubled the amount of money appropriated for the protection of the language. Russian “must be preserved as a language of international discourse,” he said soon after being elected.

14-year-old Adele Setjanova, in 2002, said:

“English is easy, it’s interesting and it’s new. Russian has been around for ages.”

England

And what of dear old England itself? There have been historical attempts to maintain the purity of English, most notably through Nathan Bailey, in his ‘Universal Etymological English Dictionary’ [1721], and Samuel Johnson’s ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’ [1755].

Though heavily influential in their time, neither managed to achieve any permanence and the reason can best be summed up in the internationally famous but irreverent quotation by James D. Nicoll [op.cit.]:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

In other words, English acts like a gangster, holding other languages at gunpoint and forcing them to give up their best vocabulary. Here is an example from a BBC article entitled, ‘Tingo, Nakkele and other wonders:

“English is a rich and innovative language. But you can't help feeling we're missing out on some words. Of course, the English language has borrowed_words for centuries [but] perhaps it's time to be thinking about adding others to the lexicon.

Malay, for instance, has gigi rongak - the space between the teeth. The Japanese have bakku-shan - a girl who appears pretty from behind_but not from the front. Then, from Tulu, India, there's a nakkele - a man who licks whatever the food has been served on.”

That gives you a very good idea of the attitude of English towards other languages. From time to time, there have even been language committees dedicated to searching other languages for words to rob.

Natural Evolution

The natural evolution of English, from the dropping of stressed final letters to the blending of Latin, French, German and so on, is beyond the scope of this article. Two small examples of change, from the same author, Bill Bryson, are:

“Today we have two demonstrative pronouns, ‘this’ and ‘that’, but in Shakespeare's day there was a third, ‘yon’, which denoted a further distance than that. Today the word survives as a colloquialism, yonder, but our speech is fractionally impoverished for its loss.”

“Until the eighteenth century it was correct to say ‘you was’ if you were referring to one person. Robert Lowth, an eighteenth-century clergyman and amateur grammarian, didn't like it and now, in the 2nd person singular, the only variant is ‘you were’”

Dialects and Pronunciation

When we look at the multitude of dialects and differing pronunciations which already exist, we could almost throw up our hands in despair. Here are a few from the British Isles alone:

Received Pronunciation

RP is the prestige British accent often taught to non-native speakers as ‘London Dialect’; used as the standard for English in most books on general phonology and phonetics; and represented in the pronunciation schemes of most British dictionaries. Many Britons abroad modify their accent to make their pronunciation closer to RP, especially teachers of ESL.

RP uses a broad ‘A’ accent, so words like bath and chance appear with /ɑː/ and not /æ/; it’s non-rhotic in that /r/ does not occur unless followed immediately by a vowel and the standing joke is that it can best be imitated by putting two plums in your mouth, producing the desired effect.

Cockney [East End of London]

Not really a language since the words spoken are clearly English; not a dialect either, since the speakers are perfectly capable of not using it, the criminal fraternity took to it so that they could hold open conversations within earshot of the Sweeney [police].

The word Sweeney comes from Sweeney Todd, a historical murderous barber. Todd rhymes with Plod, Mr. Plod is slang for a street beat policeman and so the Sweeney are the police. Clear? The Cockneys don’t want it to be clear and are happy to use their famous Rhyming Slang as an esoteric code to exclude strangers. Here is an example:

Cockney: 'Allo me old china - wot say we pop round the Jack. I'll stand you a pig and you can rabbit on about your teapots.

Translation: Hello my old mate (china plate) - what do you say we pop around to the bar (Jack Tar). I'll buy you a beer (pig's ear) and you can talk (rabbit and pork) about your kids (teapot lids).

Cockney is also constantly mutating, as much of it is based on contemporary celebrities eg. ‘hair’ is now ‘Tony Blair’.

Another trend is reported by the right wing National Vanguard [2006]:

“The Cockney dialect - studied by linguists for its ingenious use of rhyming slang and distinctive colloquialisms - is being replaced by Bangladeshi patois among White youth, who are now a minority in many East End neighborhoods.”

Scouse [Liverpool]

Liverpudlians are often called Scousers and speak Scouse, perhaps from the name of a traditional dish of scouse (food) made with lamb stew mixed with hardtack, eaten by sailors.

A notable feature of Scouse is its tendency towards lenition of stop consonants The /k/ phoneme is often pronounced [x], especially at the end of a word, so that back [bax] sounds like German Bach. In other positions /k/ may be realised as an affricate [kx].

The th sounds /θ, ð/ may be pronounced as dental [t, d]. This feature is shared with Hiberno-English. The /r/ sound is often a tap [ɾ], similar to Scots. Vowels /eɪ/ and /əʊ/) are pronounced as diphthongs similar to those of RP and do not use the broad A.

Scouse is noted for a fast, highly accented manner of speech, with a range of rising and falling tones not typical of most of northern England.

Glaswegian [Glasgow]

Glasgow residents from the poorer sectors of the city take the strangulation of the English language to new heights [or depths]:

"Gees-a-cheeper-hen" Give me a kiss, darling.

“Awright, Mucker? Hows-it-gawn?” Good day to you Sir, how are you?

“Oot-ma-face-fore-a-gie-ye-a-wee-malchie.” Go away please, before I do something violent to you.

Jim – Whether your name is Charles, Peter, or Godfrey, you will be called Jim or Jimmie by everyone. Don’t be alarmed, this is a sign that you have been accepted. Wain – It’s a myth that all Scottish children are named Wayne. This is merely a popular term-of-endearment for infants. Hen/Doll – Two very commonly used terms for females.

Tyke [Yorkshire]

This is the language of the largest county, Yorkshire and itself mutates into differing dialects and pronunciations:

‘If yer want owt fer nowt, alus, do it fer thisen.’ If you want anything for nothing, alas, you must do it for yourself.

Tyke is heavy on occluded articles, for example in the comedy programme Monty Python, in which Graham Chapman states: "There's trouble at t' mill!", and where John Cleese exclaims: "I'm going down t'market."

Geordie [Newcastle-upon-Tyne]

Many are of the opinion that the further away from London one resides, the ‘worse’ the dialectic abominations. This, of course, is a purely London opinion:

‘Ye knaa what ah mean leik?’ Do you know what I mean?

‘Eeeh man, ahm gannin te the booza.’ OK, I have had enough, I am going to the bar.

‘Whees i' the netty?’ Who's in the lavatory?

‘Gan canny or we'll dunsh summick.’ Be careful or we will crash into something.

A translation service for the bewildered is maintained at: http://www.geordie.org.uk/cgi-bin/dialect_convert.pl

West Country [South-West of England]

The West Country dialects can still be difficult for speakers of Standard English to understand. Although popularly considered to be only accents, academically the regional variations are considered to be dialectic forms of English.

One popular West Country expression is "Ooh, arr", used as a greeting, a farewell, or simply during conversation.

The West Country dialects derive not from a corrupted form of modern English, but reflect the historical origins of the English language, in particular Late West Saxon. English pronounces ‘warm’ as ‘worm’, and ‘worm’ as ‘wyrm’ but the dialect pronounces them as written.

The characteristic features of the accent of the region include: a slower, drawling manner of speech, with lengthened vowel sounds, the initial "s" is pronounced as "z", "r"s are pronounced far more prominently than in Standard English, in a Rhotic fashion, an initial "f" may become pronounced "v", as in Varmer Joe, use of male (rather than neutral) gender with nouns; put he over there = put it over there. Plus many other features too numerous to mention here.

There is a strong nautical element and the accent is associated with pirates of old: ‘Oo-ah, me hearties’ and is used extensively in comedy, eg. Monty Python’s: ‘Oo-ah, them be sheep up in them thar trees.’

Estuary English [along the river Thames and its estuary]

This is the most divisive dialect/pronunciation today, as it has spread like wildfire, first among the young and then into each section of society. Diana, Princess of Wales was sometimes said to use it and the Queen's granddaughter Zara Phillips speaks with a pronounced Estuary accent.

David Rosewarne, in the Times Education Supplement in October 1984, argued that it may eventually replace RP as the Standard English pronunciation. Tony Blair has been heard to drop into the accent at times in TV interviews, when he wishes to appeal to the common man.

Estuary English shares the following features with Cockney pronunciation: use of intrusive R, some glottal stops: eg. "t" sounded as a glottal occlusion instead of being fully pronounced before a consonant or at the end of words, diphthong widening; L-vocalisation, words from American English and Australian English, but it respects the standard grammar used by RP speakers.

‘Eh, John, got new motor’ is basically English, until you hear it spoken. Detractors say it is a bastardized, aggressive, mongrelized form of English which will eventually destroy a once beautiful language. It is fair to say that Estuary English is extremely harsh on the ear.

Slang and Idioms

Once heard only on the street but never taught, this is now changing. For many educators, this is just another nail in the coffin of ‘pure’ English. David Burke said:

“After years of presenting to numerous teachers and leading discussion groups, I have found that the vast majority of teachers feel that familiarizing students with slang, idioms and even some vulgarities is much more desirable than having students pick up this type of language haphazardly on the street.”

Political Correctness

For the last twenty years, in the English speaking west, everything people say to one another, read or which is taught in educational institutions has been slowly and methodically scrutinized, modified and often expurgated.

It is specifically aimed at language and is based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, from 1929, concerned with linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity. Put simply, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that "a language's grammatical categories and value-loaded vocabulary shape its speakers' ideas and actions".

The aim, then, is to place yourself into a position of influence as shaper of the nation’s language in education, journalism, the arts, music, literature, religion and politics, according to what you see as important and valuable.

The majority of people who have worked their way into such positions today are left-liberal, believing in such things as feminism, gay rights, abortion, the legalization of drugs, inter-racial marriage, the abolition of traditional teaching eg. grammar and the enforced teaching in schools of the values just mentioned.

Examples:

• In 1988 a Stanford University faculty changed its popular "Western Culture" course to "Cultures, Ideas and Values", as "Western" was now seen as a dirty word for some minorities.

• The Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, in the UK, states that "non-fluency in English should not be used as grounds to refuse employment, even for an interpreter or air traffic controller". This means you don’t need to know English any more to become an English interpreter.

• In New York, publishers’ have official guidelines as to topics which now must be avoided in any literary work:

“Abortion, death or disease, criminals, magic, politics, religion, unemployment, weapons, violence, poverty, divorce, slavery, alcohol or addiction, women as mothers or doing household work, men as lawyers, doctors or plumbers, African citizens in any negative light."

• A London educational conference was told, in 2003: "Everything written before 1970 was either gender or racially biased" and that "reading and writing are merely technologies of control." Therefore, Shakespeare can no longer be studied and reading and writing must be dropped from the curriculum.

• In 2005, at two British universities, the English Literature degree can now be awarded without studying the classics but must include a selection of feminist writers, which comprise 67% of the reading list.

• In the United Kingdom, in 2005, a government think tank advised schools to replace the term "failure" for students who failed their exams, with the term "deferred success", so they would not "feel sad".

• An under age criminal must now be called a "child at risk", so that he does not become traumatized by the word "hooligan".

• A person living illegally in your country is now to be called an "undocumented immigrant", so he does not become "anxious about his situation".

• Men must not call a life partner "wife", because it is humiliating for her.

• All references to men must be expunged from the language eg. the word ‘chairman’ must now be ‘chairperson’ or 'chair' and ‘manual labour’ must now be just ‘labour’.

Traditionalists point to the suffix "-ism", added to anything the Politically Correct find offensive, eg. racism, sexism, elitism, lookism [looking at another person] and "clientism" [liking one client less than another – this is deeply traumatic for the client].

The Politically Correct call their actions "affirmative action" and say they are working towards a "philosophy of inclusion" and "uncritical tolerance" of everyone’s point of view or "personal orientation", whether gay, terrorist, child molester or drug addict. The mixing of all religions into one is part of this process.

The effect of PC on the English Language is the greatest single factor today in the dismembering and disintegration of the grammatical and lexical basis on which it once rested.

Short Message Service Text Messaging

This is the latest horror story to strike at the heart of English. Or is it so horrifying? Here are some stories about the Short Message Service:

• In the UK alone there are 52 million mobile phone users who send about 2.3 billion text messages a year. A study at the University of Bath found that texting was the preferred medium for flirting and arranging dates. 62% of females compared to 52% of males are comfortable arranging a first date by text.

• Professor Helen Haste says: “Texting is replacing speech for much communication among young people. It is immediate, accessible, private and gives them unprecedented control over how they communicate with friends and family.”

• The staff at Wolverhampton University are now sending students revision tips, timetables, appointment times and coursework feedback using mobile phone texting.

• Base 25 is a Wolverhampton charity offering advice on relationships and health issues. They use texting to communicate with their audience.

• Texting has also been used as a cry for help. A potential suicide victim not wanting to talk, sends a text instead.
• Keith Grammar school is using texting to provide parents with regular updates on pupil’s progress. Rector John Aitken said the intention is to praise positive attitudes to work or behaviour but it will also be used to highlight any problems.

• Short messages are particularly popular amongst young urbanites. Despite the low cost to the consumer, the service is enormously profitable to the service providers.

• The most frequent SMSers are found in south-east Asia. Europe follows next. Curiously France has not taken to SMSing in the same way. In the US, SMS even more limited.

• "SMS Chat", involved sending short messages to a phone number, and the messages would be shown on TV a while later.

• Shakespeare is now taught in SMS form: “if u pardon we wil mend; & I am honst Puck”

• In December 2002, a cheating scheme was uncovered during final-exam week at the University of Maryland, College Park. A dozen students were caught cheating on an accounting exam through the use of text messages on their cell phones.

• In December 2002, Hitotsubashi University in Japan failed 26 students for receiving e-mailed exam answers on their cell phones.

• In July 2001, Malaysia's government decreed that an Islamic divorce (which consists of saying "I divorce you" three times in succession) was not valid if sent by short message.

• In the wake of the 2004 Madrid train bombings, SMS was used to garner up support for large protest rallies. It became known as "the night of short text messages".

• Emoticons are another way to send text messages. Emoticons are little pictures made out of punctuation marks. Here are some examples:

:-) = happy face :-( = sad face ;-D = winking grin

• One detractor, on an SMS website, wrote:

“i oftn fnd msgs ritn n ths nw styl Nglsh vry dfclt 2 undRstnd n wud rthr ppl jus rot clrly.” I often find that messages written in this new style of English very difficult to understand and would rather people just wrote clearly.

If you also are having trouble with understanding this new phenomenon, a free translation service is readily available at: http://www.transl8it.com/cgi-win/index.pl?convertPL

Two Conclusions

• If English is ever to become the global language, the question which must first be addressed is: ‘Which English?’

• If English is ever to become ‘pure’, the question which must first be addressed is: ‘What does ‘pure’ mean?’

[murder] new solution for our problems?

The world gets more and more weird:

A South Florida woman was arrested Wednesday for allegedly hiring an undercover police officer to kill her husband of six months, authorities said.

Dalia Dippolito, 26, was charged with solicitation to commit first-degree murder and taken to the Palm Beach County jail, Boynton Beach Police Department spokeswoman Stephanie Slater said. Bond had not yet been set and it was unclear if she had an attorney.

Dippolito gave an informant pictures of her husband, 38-year-old Michael Dippolito, and $1,200 for a hit man to purchase a handgun, according to a probable cause affidavit. She also offered to create an alibi for herself and detailed her husband's daily schedule.

An undercover officer posing as a hit man called Dippolito on Monday afternoon and arranged a meeting. The officer asked for $3,000 in cash and a key to the couple's home. [He] later met Dippolito in a pharmacy parking lot and asked if she was sure she wanted her husband killed.

She laughed, according to to the affidavit, and said: "I will be very happy ... I'm not going to change my mind," she responded, according to the documents. "I am 5,000 percent sure I want it done. When I set my mind to something, I get it done."

When an officer told Dippolito that her husband was dead, she broke down in tears, a video of the operation shows.

Many things spring to mind - 38/26, 6 months marriage, ethnicity [green card?], cold-blooded but can put on the tears, how typical is it at a time when there seem to be quite a few cold-blooded killers and more and more females[?], why was she unfortunate enough to hire an undercover cop? Did the husband maltreat her? If so, where was her distress?

It seems to be that killing is not seen as a non-option any more to solve one's difficulties. Is life cheaper today or is the fear of punishment less in these hug-a-hoody times?

Meanwhile, the picture of that other murderess, Melissa Todorovic, has been released [above right] and that Amanda Knox is still on trial. There's something really wrong and it ties in with that debate the ladies got into the other day, the whole acceleration of sexuality in early years, the falling away of moral codes, the things Alison said in her first comment on that post, the other things in society, gaming and so on.

The solution requires far more than just "education" - it's a complete paradigm shift among the young, I think because of the lack of boundaries set by anyone. In other words, it's a by-product of the falling away of society in general and parents' abrogation of their true responsibilities in these days. Why shouldn't the parents have taught these three right from wrong and in Knox's case, put the foot down on going to Italy with a boyfriend at that age?

Yes, even at 20 and 21 years of age - it used to be the age of majority and it should be once again.

There's a great deal made of the sophistication of kids these days at an early age. I beg to differ. The whole society is being infantilized and kids are more worldly and yet less emotionally mature than ever because they lack the upbringing now in so many cases.

Why? Because they reject it and the parents tuck their tails between their legs and say, "Yes, dear, whatever you say, dear. Stay out all you like but please, please don't think of me as an old-fashioned parent."

I'd prefer not to say that these three were sociopathic; I'd prefer to say that they are children and needed to have been treated as children years ago, no matter how loudly they would protest that they were "grown-up". There are things kids just cannot handle, for the simple reason that they're kids.

[lunacy report] posts from around the sphere

Our fearless bloggers expose lunacy out there in the [un]real world:

Julia M

Helen Penn said in practice it is unlikely the British police would get involved in a consensual case of "sexting" because it would not be in the public interest … [and] when the police look at this kind of offence, they are going to take it in context.

Blognor Regis

How well you can regurgitate a hand-me down, live on your knees, permanent statism mindset does not a British person make. In fact it's the very antithesis.

Guthrum

A grieving mother who took too long to say goodbye to her dead baby was hit with an £8.60 a minute penalty charge by the crematorium.

Angus Dei

A New York City woman who says she can't find a job is suing the college where she earned a bachelor's degree.

Letters from a Tory

This one’s lineball:

I’m sorry if I sound overly cynical but I simply do not see the value in trying to move towards a PPC voting system that is ridiculously expensive, encourages bland candidates and does not reflect local parties or local politics.

North Northwester

A judge who described Britain's immigration system as 'completely lax' is to face an official investigation, it was revealed today.
Judge Ian Trigger complained that 'hundreds and hundreds of thousands' of illegal immigrants were abusing the benefits system.

Andrew Alison

Over £38 million spent by government lobbying the government

Bill Cameron

This kind of propaganda piece on behalf of public subsidies for ferries to remote areas around Scotland seems to me to be laughably lacking in even the merest hint of basic economic analysis.

Cassandra

Those racist allegations whenever Obama is criticized.

Cherry Pie

Your report about proposed changes to the civil service compensation scheme - Blitz on the £1bn golden goodbyes for civil servants - is based on a grain of truth, a great deal of speculation and a dose of prejudice.

Longrider

We should remember that the essence of the government’s proposal is this: ministers plan to seize our information using our money for their benefit.

Martin Kelly

A report submitted to the Welsh Assembly has suggested the abolition of free bus passes for the elderly on the grounds of cost.

Mr Eugenides

As usual, he finds this ort of thing:

A beauty pageant for landmine victims has been cancelled by the Cambodian government, which branded it an insult to disabled people.

Sackerson

The Children’s Secretary set out £400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV supervision in their own homes.

[Alison says though that they’re not doing what they’re doing.]

Welshcakes

Feminist groups in the west have apparently paid little attention to an appalling discrimination case against a woman.

And what, Welshcakes? Second wave feminazis are not interested in women so they would ignore it, wouldn’t they?

Tom Paine

Guardianisti:

Top Gear is not fit to grace any list that has the likes of the office, the west wing and arrested development on it.

[wednesday quiz] around the disciplines

22:19 - Wot, no takers? :)

1. Astrologically speaking, if two of the fire signs are Leo and Aries, what's the third?

2. Who is the longest serving member of the Privy Council?

3. What is the meaning of the word Hypocaust? a) Annihilation of a town by flood b) mass innoculation c) underfloor heating d) milder holocaust

4. Juan Bautista de Toledo designed it and worked on it from 1563 to his death in 1567. Juan de Herrera revised and completed it. What is it?

5. What is 7 + 14 in base2?


Answers

Sagittarius, the Duke of Edinburgh (appointed in 1951), answer c, El Escorial, 10101

[city of culture] and those down below

[lol] click the pic if you dare

It's been checked for viruses [I've also viewed it and checked]:


Courtesy of Ubermouth: thank you, Sweet, my education is now complete. :)

[wordless wednesday] captions please

[common purpose] meanwhile, in america

Head honcho UK - "leading" without our authority


Here we go again [Hat Tip Cassandra]:

The latest in a series of new, low-profile efforts to coordinate the unusually focused progressive coalition backing the White House’s goals is a quiet weekly meeting run by a new group called the Common Purpose Project.

The Common Purpose meeting every Tuesday afternoon at the Capitol Hilton brings together the top officials from a range of left-leaning organizations, from labor groups like Change to Win to activists like MoveOn.org, all in support of the White House’s agenda. The group has an overlapping membership with a daily 8:45 a.m. call run by the Center for American Progress’ and Media Matters’ political arms; with the new field-oriented coalition Unity ‘09; and with the groups that allied to back the budget as the Campaign to Rebuild and Renew America Now.

Unlike those other groups, however, the Common Purpose meeting has involved a White House official, communications director Ellen Moran, two sources familiar with the meeting said. It’s aimed, said one, at “providing a way for the White House to manage its relationships with some of these independent groups.”

The group’s founder, political consultant and former Gephardt aide Erik Smith, described it in general terms after others had confirmed its existence. (Emphasis added.)

However, Jane Hamsher let slip who is really behind Common Purpose, calling it “one of the many groups Rahm Emanuel has set up to coordinate messaging among liberal interest groups”:

There are a variety of vehicles through which this is done — the 8:45 am call, Unity 09, Campaign to Rebuild and Renew America — and they’ve been extremely successful. When the banks told the White House they wouldn’t cooperate with the PPIP plan unless they got their bonuses, and the administration made the decision to “ratchet down their rhetoric,” the call went out to the liberal interest groups to stay silent too…and silent they remain.

***

There’s a big problem right now with the traditional liberal interest groups sitting on the sidelines around major issues because they don’t want to buck the White House for fear of getting cut out of the dialogue, or having their funding slashed. Someone picks up a phone, calls a big donor, and the next thing you know…the money is gone. It’s already happened. Because that’s the way Rahm plays.

Of course, the names are different, the backers different but the purpose "common".

[Addition at 20:22: Please do follow the links because below the links are the comments and in many of the comments is a wealth of added information ... plus you can see the concern of so many people ...]

Here is the European model explained:

1. From Ian Parker-Joseph - so many articles here [click this line]

2. Tavistock and Common Purpose

With its purposes now subsumed into Common Purpose, the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London was funded into existence in 1946 with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

One of the Tavistock founders, Dr. John Rawlings Rees, who also became co-founder of the World Federation for Mental Health, talked of infiltrating all professions and areas of society:

‘Public life, politics and industry should all ... be within our sphere of influence ... If we are to infiltrate the professional and social activities of other people I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organize some kind of fifth column activity!

We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life ... We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine.’

Common Purpose comes into its own in the post-democracy phase of the EU from 2012.

3. Common Purpose first noted and wondered about - read the comments section

4. Common Purpose training methods [also - Groupthink]

5. Service transformation and Common Purpose

6. Psychological profile of a Common Purpose graduate and Julia Middleton's famous Jerk comment

7. From Sonus, on who Common Purpose actually are:

One

Two

Three

[Note: it is Higham's red highlighting below]

So what organisation, among many, works according to Chatham House rules, has advised the UK Government, well nulab, since they were elected, and which is openly working towards a “post democratic” organised society?

Common Purpose!, and who was involved with Common Purpose at its inception? Geoff Mulgan. And which organisation did he represent at that point? Demos!

Who, or what was/is Demos? Demos is a creation of the Fabian Society, and Mulgan, via Demos was special advisor to T Blair. Yes him again, he who currently is employed by J P Morgan! (CFR represented)

And who is Mulgan? Ex LSE lecturer. And who were the original founders of LSE? The Fabian Society.

Who funded Demos, and Common Purpose? The Office of Deputy Prime Minister, ODPM, bruiser, and secretary shagger, Prescott. The ODPM also set up Regional Assemblies in line with EU prescribed geographical organisation structures, their links with local business that reek of moral hazard, and the local slush funds ermm, Regional Development Agencies, to guide finance into local projects, which once again reek of moral hazard. (Split 'em up in separate hierarchies so they can't organise resistance, then bribe 'em so they won't. Classic moves! Tried and tested.)

And all to comply with the EU, and the greater plan for the world and the new self anointed leaders.

And remember the link given previously.

It all becomes one great global organisation, consolidating power on its own terms.

And so we go full circle. Demos is now quietly advising Labour, Conservatives, and LibDems, - there is no difference between them, and no point in voting for them, and that is why they hate the BNP and the Libertarian party.

Mulgan wrote a book “The Invisible Hand Remaking Charities in the 21st Century”, and recently Miliband introduced legislation into the house that would allow charities to become politically active. There are 170,000 charities in the UK, turning over £44B pa. Clearly a problem. Thankfully the attempt failed, but you can see the direction of pressure! .......

[Higham interrupts to insert these on fake charities [read to get a feel for our situation]:

Mark Wadsworth 1
Mark Wadsworth 2]

... Sonus continues ...The Media Standards Trust adjudicates on reports and complaints about media bias.

Look at the list of trustees. Sir David Bell (Chairman, Financial Times Group) is also Common Purpose, -( link below). Robert Peston is also Common Purpose, but he wouldn't want you to know;) The best part is that they share premises with Common Purpose, same rooms, and Common Purpose provides their IT functions.

Represented are, Anthony Salz (Executive Vice Chairman, NM Rothschild) , and Charles Manby (Goldman Sachs) , and best of all, Deputy Chair Julia Middleton (CEO, Common Purpose) .

Common Purpose have clearly got the Media Standards Trust sown up! So when you make a complaint about the BBC bias, who do you think gets to know? They compile lists. Common Purpose graduates in local authorities and other state bodies are also building lists of enquirers under the Freedom of Information Act! What an excellent way to acquire schedules of dissenters!

And Given the CP overwhelming representation, will the adjudication be impartial? Think of the banal justifications presented by the BBC in their answers!

Then look at Common Purpose details.

Common Purpose have progressed since I last looked. Notice the international banks there, Stock Exchanges, Bundesbank, Goldman Sachs, Irish Banks, Dutch Bank, AIG, National Treasury South Africa,

So we go full circle again. Goldman Sachs, (on both), AIG, Anthony Salz (Executive Vice Chairman, NM Rothschild)

This is really interesting.

There are a smattering of CFR names there too, and Bilderberg names too.

The net closes. - - - On us.

This blogsite is a mine of information.

8. Origins and connections of Common Purpose

9. Common Purpose operations in Britain:

Common Purpose’s failure to explain “what common purpose?”, only to say it is “beyond authority” and when pressed as to what that means, answers that it’s to open up leadership opportunities to those not actually in positions of authority. Again, for what common purpose? They are silent.

The new DTI website now has Regulation in the title and deals with regional administration. CP lists these, concerning all their programmes:

• develop outward-facing leadership, as people who can lead beyond their authority can produce change beyond their direct circle of control
• are highly interactive and experiential, through their real-life settings
• are committed to diversity as working with new and different groups of people delivers greater insight, problem-solving and creativity
• operate under a set of international conventions that create an environment in which real challenge can thrive
• are demanding and fun.

Set of international conventions? In an English region? Change beyond their direct circle of control?

So the investigator either becomes a conspiracy theorist and joins the dots himself or else he is left with a fragmented database, no one snippet actually proving anything but tantalizing nonetheless.

Such as Ben Shepherd’s CP recruiting drive page [read the article] showing a young man in isolation and a blurb inviting young people to join. Notice it's supported by supported by Deutsche Bank and you can check out their history. H/T Cassandra

Again, not particularly nefarious although I thought it was British money supporting CP, not Euro.

And check the Julia Middleton video op. cit.: How To Lead When you haven't any authority and her explanation of recruiting procedure [read the article]:

Participants are selected by a local Common Purpose advisory group, consisting of senior leaders in the area covered by the programme.

But leadership for what? Well, clearly for local and regional CP graduates to occupy top places in government, semi-governmental and industry instrumentalities.

But for what and with what common purpose?

That question has been much on MPs’ minds too as they’ve asked many questions in parliament [read the article].

John Trenchard mentions [read the article], for example, Phil Woolas, Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government replied to one question about the PEU or riot police:

Since the formation of the Preventing Extremism Unit in October 2006, the unit has made grants of less than £100,000 to: Common Purpose - Muslim Leadership Development Project.

Pardon?

Or what of the 4.8 MB pdf on CP in Bradford, whose Page 1 Google fragment says:

THIS WILL TRANSFORM THE TOWN OVER THE NEXT 20 YEARS. THE FACILITY WILL ... YORKSHIRE FORWARD EXISTS TO CREATE A POWERFUL AND POSITIVE EFFECT ON THE ...... Leeds Common Purpose. Board member. January 2002. Leeds Initiative ...

You can find a partial list of CP controlled organizations here [read the article] .

Indimedia says the organisation now has training programmes in every major town and city in Britain and since 1989 more than 60,000 people have been involved with 20,000 'leaders' completing one or more programmes. These are:

Leaders: Matrix and Focus
Emerging leaders: Navigator
Very young leaders: Your Turn
Leaders who need a local briefing: Profile
National leaders: 20:20

Matrix?

They themselves seem quite proud of it [read the article]:

We run a Common Purpose programme in every major city and town in the UK and in an increasing number of European cities. 12,000 leaders from all sectors and backgrounds have become Common Purpose 'graduates'.

As CP aren’t making their methods available or filing their curricula online, Indimedia believes it is to do with NLP:

NLP is a technique of using words to re-programme the body computer to accept another perception of reality - in this case the consensus agreed by the manipulators before their victims even register for the 'course'. Apparently the CIA refers to these pre-agreed 'opinions' as 'slides'.

Anyone who resists the programming is isolated and the group turned against them until they either conform or lose credibility to be a 'leader'.

Well there’s not a lot new in that – it was the basis of much of our military leadership training – the need to have all think as one.

Winston Leonard got down to it on 15 October 2007, at my site, when he cited Derek Twigg, [Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Veterans), Ministry of Defence) Hansard source] in answer to parliamentary questions:

Sums paid to Common Purpose UK in each of the last complete five financial years, inclusive of VAT, are as follows:

Amount (£)
2002-03 56,576.25
2003-04 66,716.50
2004-05 42,958.00
2005-06 58,456.27
2006-07 83,817.89

"These payments covered the cost of participation by MOD staff in Common Purpose UK's training and education programmes. Programmes of this nature help to develop leadership skills, to gain understanding about broader aspects of government and to share experience with and learn from participants from both the private and public sectors."

One moment please. CP are connected with MOD training? Winston Leonard adds that, with that in mind, consider these two links:

SWRDA who bought delisted MOD territory [read the article]:

The site is being redeveloped by the South West Regional Development Agency and English Partnerships, who purchased it for £10m. Some form of mixed commercial, retail and housing development is planned, but no details are yet concrete.

Norfolk Action Plan [read the article]:

6.2 It was noted that the Unit would be using the services of a Graduate Placement to help drive the Action Plan forward. Members welcomed the report and emphasised the need for a sound regeneration policy and for this to be high priority particularly in the light of recent closures e.g. Crane Fruehauf, Heinz Foods, RAF Coltishall and RAF Neatishead.

It was also highlighted that regeneration could not take place without partnership working across the county including District Councils. Furthermore it was important to remember that the county contained many areas of hidden deprivation.

As to what action plan, read the article. And as for English Partnerships, Wiki is sketchy:

English Partnerships (EP) is the national regeneration agency for England, performing a similar role on a national level to that fulfilled by Regional Development Agencies on a regional level. It is responsible for land acquisition and assembly and major development projects, alone or in joint partnership with private sector developers.

Do you know anything about them? I didn’t before this week.

It’s often difficult to see the forest for the trees. What we have so far is a lot of acitivity on leadership training programmes for vaguely stated purposes, the buying up of property and some connection with the security forces [along with similar moves to EU militias in Europe].

10. Common Purpose disguising themselves behind Citizen's Juries

Hat Tip: James Barlow.

These people are bad news and now they are in America. Founder? Hardly, unless you consider Weishaupt a "founder". It's Twilight's Last Gleaming, America, unless you can unblinker your eyes and make grassroots moves to keep America constitutional.



Good material on Common Purpose

UK Column
CP Exposed
Stop CP
Ken Craggs
BetweenMyths

Some of my own, based on material supplied

Common Purpose - more evidence
Common Purpose dishonesty
An oppressor by any other name
CP - the cancer spreads
OFSTED - the fish rots at the head

Common Purpose at work and play
More than corrupt
Groupthink spreads like a cancer through the UK
Is this how to run a country?
One ring to rule them all
Paradiso and the future of the internet
Demos, Common Purpose, Labour, Tories, security companies
Common Purpose - the disease spreads to the Netherlands
Common Purpose - meanwhile, in America
Groupthink - gentle art of persuasion
Common Purpose - initially to have a coffee
Common Purpose - just the facts, ma'am
Common Purpose - rhetoric of the quisling

References to Common Purpose appear in many other posts.