Pie Fight

How to learn a language - the fun way!

A good Crooked Timber thread on fun ways to learn a language. Now where can I find me a single Spanish woman with a weakness for short men who talk too much?

Business does things better than government, right? Right?

From the letters section of today's Guardian, two snippets showing the negative effects of deregulation on the transport industry. The more I hear of dereg, the more I suspect it was part of a policy of destroying certain supportive aspects of society. And society, after all, was something that didn't exist, according to Lady Thatcher.

Bus use in Britain is rising thanks to Ken Livingstone's improvements to services in London (Britain catches on to the bus, April 27). More people are taking buses in London than at any time since the 1960s. Outside London, bus use continues to decline. It is disingenuous for the Confederation of Passenger Transport to cite a few exceptions as if they were the general rule. Livingstone has been able to improve bus services because he can regulate routes, timetables, fares and service quality. Outside London, none of this is possible, because bus services have been deregulated.

The government could enable transport authorities outside London to regulate bus services using powers for "quality contracts" under the Transport Act 2000. It is consulting on how to speed up their implementation.
Tony Grayling
Associate Director, Institute for Public Policy Research

Catching on to the bus system of transport is not the difficulty, it is actually catching one on time and being able to rely on that happening that is the problem. If people could be reasonably sure that the bus will be on time, then more would use them. They would then be a more attractive option for local journeys than finding somewhere to park and pay the growing fees.

There should be a process where the local passenger transport executive can ensure that bus companies keep to their contracts.
Alan Pearman
Rotherham

Yes I do

Just learning how to post a pic...

Is the congestion charge bad for bidness?

John Lewis has come out against expansion of the congestion charge into the West End, arguing that it lowers retail sales by 5% - 9% (see letter below). If anything will hold back the charge, this is it. And as much as I'm in favour of the QOL and environmental benefits of the charge, we do have to make sure that it doesn't overly hamper the city's ability to make money. 'Cause baby we sho need that money.

The Guardian's reputation for giving its readers the facts will not have been helped by its coverage of the John Lewis campaign for a re-examination of the London congestion charge (Business Notebook, April 22). You speculate that "John Lewis is raging against [the] charge because the partnership is run by a bunch of Tories". Wrong. The partnership, a scrupulously apolitical organisation, is run by a bunch of shopkeepers. We recognise the environmental benefits of the charge and are not campaigning for its abolition. But we are saying it isn't just about cars: it's about economic vitality too. I'm surprised that you dismiss so lightly the findings of Michael Bell, professor of Public Transport Operations at Imperial College. Your hunch that no one would be deterred from the West End by a £5 levy is roundly contradicted by his findings, based on a rigorous and independent examination of trading figures and of the views of a large sample of our customers. His conclusion was that the negative impact on our sales was between 5% and 9%. This is the only in-depth study of the impact on the retail sector of the mayor's strategy.

The Guardian surely can not be arguing that policymakers should ignore the possibility that congestion charging, however admirable in other respects, is doing serious harm to one of London's most important economic sectors. And it is not the case that "John Lewis is alone among the major retailers in whining about the charge". True, we are the only big shopkeeper taking a strong public position in London but we know that we have the tacit support of many of our competitors who, for understandable reasons, have chosen to not break cover. However, in Edinburgh, all major retailers are publicly united in opposition to the city council's plans to go down the path pioneered by the London mayor.

We are not raging at the mayor. We want to continue the dialogue begun with him and to make our research available to him so that we can together work towards the continued health of one of the most vibrant retail areas in Europe.
Sir Stuart Hampson
Chairman
John Lewis Partnership

Glad I decided against that MA in Library Science

Bad news for the future of libraries.

It's a tricky one, isn't it? Book reading will probably continue to decline as a leisure pursuit, particularly as the internet grows more ubiquitous. And as the latter happens, the libraries' shift to providing electronic information will appeal to fewer and fewer people, because fewer will lack these functions at home.

As the pool of users shrinks, it will also become concentrated on the lower ends of the socio-economic spectrum, meaning that libraries will have to aim for these groups, including recent immigrants and those with low literacy levels and/or no family history of reading. On the surface, the Peckham library appears to do a good job of this: it's always busy, and its collection of foreign language books appears quite large. Wonder how good it really is.

The Quare Fellow

Saw The Quare Fellow last night. The interval came only about a third of the way into the piece, bemusing seemingly everyone in the audience. Not so much because of its early arrival as because of the disjointed, and non-compelling, though often humorous, performance we'd experienced so far. After the interval though it was a different matter, as the story came together into a fairly affecting look at the death penalty in a 1940s Irish prison.

There wad much fun to be had musing on Irish English. "Quare fellow", for instance, was not at all, as I had assumed it would be, referring to homosexuality. So when the homosexual prisoner of act one showed no signs of developing into an integral part of the story, I was at first bemused. What "quare fellow" means, said Orla afterwards, is more along the lines of "the centre of attention for now, the big man". Even "your man", she said. Not peculiar, just the one standing out.

Her reference to "your man" raised another question: What is the difference between "your man" and himself"? Neither Orla nor her Irish cohort had any ideas. In this play at least, "your man" was used for any of the prisoners (and guards) who were being talked about as the centre of focus, but "himself" was reserved for the hangman, the big bad daddy come over from England. Is there a status thing going on?

Global Motherfucking Acorn, Unlimited

Monbiot dials in to the one over-riding factor making me think that GM crops are bad news: too much of the world's food supply will be controlled by a handful of companies. That can't be a good thing, and I don't understand how people discount this aspect of the argument.

Rowing with mum as a communicative strategy

After an intensive study of 23 mother-daughter relationships, a Cambridge psychologist has concluded that girls use rowing as a way of communicating with their mums and keeping them up-to-date with their lives. I haven't read the report, but it seems to be a combination of the need to distance oneself from one's mum, while also using a strategy to remain in close contact with her.

Rows, it seems, are inevitable and are a teenage girl's coping mechanism. They are for the best.

Boys row less frequently with their mums and for shorter periods, and both boys and girls have shorter and less frequent rows with their dads.

Articles:

The Guardian
BBC News

The Atlas of Food

Hey JD, see if you can find The Atlas of Food (Tim Land and Erik Millstone) at the library.

Gimme shelter

"Since 1960 the price of a loaf of bread has risen sixfold but the cost of the average house is 60 times more expensive."