So who is doing anything about lifestyle change? At the start of the millennium I did a Masters degree in Environmental Management and one of the modules was planning. In a debate about sustainability in planning, the subject lecturer turned to switch off the lights and said ‘there’s no going back’. My response was that if we don’t take a couple of steps back, we’ll be taking ten or more back, with no prospect of managing the process. Einstein’s adage that to continue doing the same old things and expect different results is insanity, is very apt.
And have you seen how the Regional Development Agencies and similar organisations have dealt with this ridiculous all things to everyone, whatever you want it to mean, idea of sustainability? To some it’s just the ability of business to make a profit. I’ve no problem with profit but don’t imagine that just because you tinker with the existing rules a bit, you can save the world, there’s some pretty big changes that need to be made but no sign that anyone is addressing the idea of major lifestyle change.
Requirements of development applications to show that account has been taken of environmental issues are a joke. In a town in northwest Derbyshire is a little wood, not beautiful but in the middle of a small but very significant green wedge between settlements. It is not publicly owned but local people use it and the surrounding open grass areas for passive recreation, with the blessing of the owner (who did so to appease local objections the last time the factory was extended). The area is protected by the Local Plan as Open Countryside, the wood is the subject of a tree preservation order and there is no way that its loss can be compensated for in the local area. The Council’s statutory conservation advisers are against it, the Council’s planning officers are against it but the Council have granted planning permission for a factory extension that will obliterate the wood and a large part of the grassland. It will save some jobs – and that is all that matters, until there is no green left. Development always wins however it is dressed (or ‘inconvenienced’ by the planning system, red tape or whatever these people complain about in their quest to avoid the real consequences of their action). How long do you think death by a thousand cuts will take?

 So I’ve been feeling pre-occupied and too down to be grumpy about much, so it’s words again. The first is the use of ‘Ramp up’ for increase. Isn’t that ridiculous? Ramps go up and down and are things that facilitate access. Got sod all to do with increasing intensity or rising prices (unless you’ve just had a ramp installed and it’s proved to be a lot more expensive than it would have cost you two years ago). And price hikes for goodness’ sake? Well, I know my money often takes a walk before I get it under control but what’s a walk in the country got to do with prices – and a hike’s another one of those things that goes down as well as up, so what’s the point?

 But here’s the peach this week. I have been in correspondence with nPower about a wrong initial meter reading and the consequent wrong payment, wrong annual consumption estimate for next year and wrong adjustment to my monthly direct debit. I had to email the final British gas bill and my own meter initial reading to them and they went away and somehow persuaded British Gas that it was their fault and BG should give me the refund because, though BG took a reading on the same day I had, they told nPower the wrong figure. I’ve had a fat cheque from BG but I still had to argue with nPower that all their subsequent projections are false. They have finally accepted my arguments to a point. What I discovered, though, is that nPower levy their ‘premium rate’ at different percentages of consumption in different months of the year, so in the summer months it’s only the first 1% of your consumption that is charged at the higher rate, but in winter it’s 18%, so gas is much more expensive at times of greatest demand. This has a certain logic, but if they are always able to meet the demand, the price should be the same, shouldn’t it? But that’s not my grump. Would you believe what they call this?

 The gas is ‘sculpted’ so that the summer months are 1% and the winter 18%. Sculpted? SCULPTED? If I wasn’t certain that it was yet another example of some corporate craphound thinking he was being supercool by allocating a new name to try to disguise a simple bit of weighted pricing, I’d think they were magicians, no, alchemists, able to sculpt non-solids. I’d like to see them sculpt their own flatulence (and I’m going to switch anyway, they are still proposing to take too great a monthly sum).

Corinne, the phrase that drives you to drink is….’what’ll you have?’

And Pete, Stephen Fry is very ready to correct a person’s usage of the language. Whenever Alun Davies says ‘there are less now’ Stephen pops in with ’it’s fewer’, so for him to say should of is acceptable, or any other bit of vernacular crapular, is rich indeed.

I didn’t expect to be following the theme of language into my second week but it is slightly different because my first grump here is

AMERICANISMS

A BBC newsreader of all people, Bill Turnbull, comes on Strictly Come Dancing It Takes Two (it’s better than the regional news programme and I’m quite warming to the offbeat humour and fashion sense of Claudia Winkelman) and says ‘from the get-go’. Three times.

Vom.

Quite apart from the fact that get-go is an American nonsense word, ‘start’ is easier to say. Oh, but it doesn’t sound cool, does it, and these jumped-up journos have to be celebs these days don’t they (and yes, I know about ‘The Birth of Cool’, of which more later).

And then there’s DJ Chris Evans. Digi-birder quite likes him and so I suffer the Warrington Wazzock’s attempts at sounding young and modern every evening as we go home. Ged oudda here and other inanities. His worst, though, is not confined to him because it’s a creeping trend but Evans is the one I hear most. ‘Hello Chris, how are you?’ says the punter. ‘I’m good’ says CE the WW. No, Evans, you are not good. You abandoned your first wife and child to follow your selfish desire for stardom, you are not good. Good is Desmond Tutu, good is Jane Tomlinson. An enquiry after your well-being is met with ‘I am well’ or ‘I’m coming down with terminal pork-sneeze’ (if only).

 Oh and these kids who go to Uni (slight geographical detour here – vile Australianism, usually accompanied by that bleednawful ridiculous interrogative inflection), visit a sandwich shop and enquire – back to USA here – ‘can I get a ham sandwich, please?’ (that’s emsemmitch in ‘stralian by the way), no you presumptive numpty, you can’t get it, I have to reach behind me you while you stay that side of the counter and when I’ve got it, I will give it to you. And can you get a latté with that, sir? No but I’ll do you a nice one with warm milk and a bit of froth – the standard traditional English effort that doesn’t need a specific identity – but you’ll have to be quick if you want to avoid getting your nice designer t-shirt and underpant nameband stained as it flies towards you without the traditional cup.

Actually, although so many of them are pieces of street talk from semi-literate ghetto-bound US yoof (why would anyone think that sounding like them is laudable?) it’s not all bad. There are some Americanisms that have style and seeped into the language, like cool (well he didn’t invent the word but it certainly applied to Miles Davis – it’s what I do, man) and moron (1912) and I lament the disappearance of the wonderful ‘Right On’ and especially ‘Far Out’ and the fact that the only time you’re likely to encounter ‘You in da groove, Jackson’ is in some black and white film (you won’t catch me saying movie – oh, just slipped out, sorry). Funky is one I don’t really like but it has stood the test of time in music.

 I read a few years ago that the word funky was actually late nineteenth century black American slang for the smell of sex, when I had thought that it was a word for the pall of smoke to be found in the music bars of 1890s New York. One of its several meanings is the smoke cloud but it’s much older by 200 years and the first recorded use of it is a strong smell or stink, from1623, so, unless Captain John Smith learned it from the native Americans, it’s English. Hooray. But it makes you wonder about exactly what went on in those New York clubs underneath all that smoke.

 HAVE OF

Just to begin my little page of tirades, I’m going to open with a paragraph gently echoing the irony of my Title and the things that I get grumpy about sometimes (I’m well balanced, really). I’ve just been reading the BBC’s online Football page and there are the usual blogs for comment. There’s some numpty making comment and writing ‘hull might of looked dead a(nd) buried last may’ MIGHT OF? MIGHT OF. For crap’s sake, the standard of English! Whatever you might feel needs condensing for snappiness’ sake or being cool, this is one that twists my spindle well ‘ard. I once dictated a letter and back came the paper with ‘should of’ in the sentence – it was an official letter as well. This is a few years ago mind, and the lady typist (well, yes, many years ago) was in her forties, very well spoken and proper, seemingly intelligent and when I sent it back for correction, she still didn’t get what it should’ve been. Should have, obviously, (I’m writing conversational English here but this was an official letter and you’d‘ve thought the sharp-tongued tart would’ve known better). But it’s spreading all over the place, with any half-thicko believing this is not only acceptable but correct.

 THE BROWN HEART

I can’t believe some of the things Gordon Brown does. He’s the Prime Minister of this country and feels he has to take up Parliamentary time to comment when some poor boy is stabbed to death – I’m a parent, our hearts go out etc. He doesn’t know the boy or the family from Adam. Is he trying to show that he is a Good Man with a Heart? Recently it appears he writes to the family of every soldier killed on active service. Then, because the poor bloke has defective eyesight and constipated spider’s handwriting, he gets into an argument on the phone with the mother of one such soldier, who just happened to have the tape recorder going for heaven’s sake – no intention to create controversy or a newspaper story there then – lord, lord, what would he do if there was a full scale war with hundreds dead every week? Did Anthony Eden or The Thatcher make personal contact like that (don’t know the answer to the Harridan but I’m sure with Eden it was a standard telegram or letter from the MOD) and why is it now imperative that the top man in Government has to be so personal? Does he feel he needs to improve his image? Man of the people? For goodness’ sake, he’s making such a mash of the job he’s supposed to be concentrating on without stretching credibility to feeling the pain of everyone.

 Do you think John Major started it with his wish to distance himself from the iron-cased hearts of his predecessor and her crew? Did Blair carry this on until he blew it with his ‘I’m a committed Christian but let’s obliterate Iraq’ or is Brown just a wind-wazzer?

More grumps later, as life progresses (is that the right word? ) Oh steady, keep some for next time.