Englishness

At the moment I am reading a book called "Watching the English: The hidden rules if English behaviour" by Kate Fox.

It's a great book and I'd recommend it to anybody. It's well written, amusing, and, for the English out there, cringeworthingly accurate.

I'd like to share a little excerpt with you that I found particularly insightful.

"Even on the rare occasions when we [the English] are roused to passionate dispute, we usually end up with a compromise. The English Civil War was fought between supporters of the monarchy and supporters of Parliament-and what did we end up with? Well, er, both. We are not keen on dramatic change, revolutions, sudden uprisings and upheavals. A truly English protest march would see us all chanting; 'What do we want? GRADUAL CHANGE ! When do we want it? IN DUE COURSE!'"

Perhaps I should apologise to Ms Fox about blatant breach of copyright and downright cheek for reprinting her work here without permission. But, I figure, if she's as English as defined in her book, she's more likely to have a moan about it to her friends, than contact me.

Eurospeak

One of the great things about the EU is its sheer diversity. No more so than in the amazing number of different languages that are spoken. Of course, there are three working languages, French, German, and English, but most documents are translated into all the different languages at an annual cost of around 550m€, or 1.45€ per person. (The total EU budget for 2005 is estimated at 105, 221 M€)

Of course we could just have one language, although that might annoy certain members of the community more than others.

Here's something that was sent to me while ago. I found it amusing, hope you do too.

EEC Instructions on EURO Language

"The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other option.

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement.

In the first year, 's' will be used instead of soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivilservants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard 'c' will be replaced with 'k'. Not only will his klear up any konfusion, but typewriters kan haveone less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year,when the troublesome 'ph' will be replaced by 'f'. This will make words like'fotograf' 20 per sent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted toreach the stage where more komplicated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben adeterent to akurate spelling. Also, al wil agre that the orible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replacing 'th' by'z' and 'w' by 'v'.

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary 'o' kan be droped from vords kontaining 'ou',and similiar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no moretrubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

Ze drem vil finali kum tru."

Right here, right now...

I'm sorry, but the Conservative Party in this country has finally lost the plot.

Now, some of you may think they lost it a long time ago, indeed some of you may think they never had it, but to my mind this lastest idea is the worst yet.

Long gone are the heady days following the election of David Cameron, who was supposed to present an "electable" party, following the example of good ol' Tone, bringing the party into the centre of the political spectrum after eight years marooned on the far right under Hague, IDS and Howard.

However the idea to pull out of the European People's Party seems to me the clearest example that that is not the case. The EPP has, among it's membership, most, if not all, of the mainstream, and many of the smaller, centre-right parties in the EU.

The interesting thing is that the Tory MEPs, those with greater contact with the EPP, don't want to leave, but Central Office appears determined.

The most worrying thing is that by leaving, the Conservatives are likely to have to choose their associates from among those politicians with more extreme points of view.

Members of the EPP, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French "Présidentiable" Nicolas Sarkozy have said they'd cut ties with Cameron if they leave, to which William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, has said they'll not change decisions " by people threatening us".

That maybe, but the whole thing still strikes me as a really bad idea for a party that wants to get back into government.