175. Did you just use the U word?

I am annoyed and so, I’m not just having a grumble and I’m not even having a moan.  I’m so pissed off that I’m probably having a rant.  

I think that’s the sequence of degrees of frustration when you are letting people know that you feel aggrieved about something.  A moan then a grumble with the ‘rant’ being the superlative form.

Is ‘nonsensicalest’ a word you’ve ever heard or come across? 

No, it isn’t.  A rule about adjectives with three or more syllables (and some with two, like ‘careless’  and ‘cheerful’), is that they always have ‘more’ and ‘most’ as their comparative and superlative.  You would write “more nonsensical” or “most nonsensical” and that means you’ve never heard ‘nonsensicalest’ because it doesn’t exist. 

You have now because I’ve just invented it.  It has become the superlative form of ‘nonsensical’ and I’ve created it because when it comes to Political Correctness and being ‘woke’, I think we are at a point where new words are needed to describe the farcical position in which we now find ourselves.  

Existing words are just not up to the job.

In October 2015, I wrote a piece titled “PC Nonsense”. (Click to See)  If you agreed with me that the situation was bad then (and I know you did even though you’re probably cautious of admitting so now), you cannot begin to imagine how things have developed over the past five years.

We live about two miles from the nearest newsagent and that is too far to be included in a paperboy’s round.  

Am I allowed to use the term ‘paperboy’?  That is an ageist and sexist term and we should probably talk about a ‘paperperson’ now with the collective term being ‘paperpeople’.

Because of our isolation, I pay to subscribe to a well-known, national, broadsheet newspaper, online.

It appears on my computer screen with exactly the same print, stories, photographs and advertisements that the paper version has.  However, my subscription also allows me to read its e-paper version on its website.

The online version is quite different in layout but as well as looking dissimilar, it provides the reader with the opportunity to comment on stories.

When one posts a comment, it is moderated and if it does not contravene the site’s guidelines in any way, it will be posted. 

I have commented on stories fairly often over the past twelve years but twice I’ve fallen foul of the moderators.

The first time was when Denis Norden, the renowned wit and comedy writer, died in 2018.  I submitted two comments.   One of them, attracted 304 'Recommendations' from other readers.  It was the first time I led the Leader Board in recommendations.

Norden had died at the time Jeremy Corbyn was under huge pressure and criticism amid accusations that the Labour Party was intrinsically anti-Semitic and its upper echelons, both locally and nationally, were riddled with anti-Semites.  

Part of the problem was that Corbyn had supported an artist who had created a mural depicting hook-nosed bankers getting rich on the backs of the poor.  Under attack, he tried to explain his views by saying, “British Zionists don’t understand English irony.”

Denis Norden was a Jew and about him I commented, “Just imagine how even more brilliant he’d have been if only he’d understood English irony.”

That comment was allowed but the one that wasn’t was my attempt to relate a rambling tale that Denis Norden had told on the Radio 4 comedy programme ‘My Word’ sometime in the 1980s.  It was barred and never appeared.  

Norden had been asked to explain the origins of the title of the Dickens novel ‘Great Expectations’.

I wrote about how he had told a long, rambling tale to do with a container ship whose crew was entirely Chinese. 

The audience (and I) were in fits of laughter throughout the four or five minutes he described the voyage.  The saga ended with him telling us that the crew had to spend their last night on board, all squashed together for some reason or other, in a small crate and getting very little sleep.  Consequently, he told us that the:

"Crate irks packed Asians".

My comment was pending for about 6 hours and then it just vanished and was never posted.  If a comment is pending, it is visible but only to whoever posted it.  I was annoyed and puzzled and so I rang Customer Services to find out why.  I got nowhere.  

A week later, after sending several emails, someone replied to me explaining that my comment had breached guidelines.  Can you see how?

No, I bet you can’t.  Apparently, the generic term 'Asians' is banned because it is sometimes used abusively.   I am not joking.

In early January this year, there was a story under this headline: 

Lenny Henry: Television is too white. After four 

decades on screen, I still feel lonely

I commented: So, Lenny Henry feels lonely in a predominantly white industry.  He may not realise that outside the urban bubble he inhabits, this is a predominantly white country. (86.1%, 2011 census)

What exactly is the problem?

That comment was “Pending” for 7 hours and then vanished.  At 4.30 that afternoon, I tried again and reposted it.  This time, it did appear (different shift of moderators?).  When I went to bed at 11.30 that evening, it had attracted 159 readers’ recommendations.

By 9 o’clock the following morning, it had gone.  It had been pulled.  I rang Customer Services and got nowhere and so, I sent a couple of emails and in one of them, threatened to cancel my subscription unless someone explained to me why it had been removed.

The Letters Editor, replied to me by email, “Thanks for getting in touch. Your original comment has been reviewed. We agree that it did not, in fact, contravene our guidelines.”

I asked exactly why it had been pulled and in a further email I was told, “I can see that your original comment was approved but was then taken down as it was reported by another user."   

That means that at some time in the middle of the night, one person had complained and my comment was summarily taken down.  One person?  I bet it was Lenny Henry!

I made more of a fuss and eventually, someone from the newspaper’s Escalation Team, rang me.  He told me that the original comment, the one pending for hours but never posted, had alerted the computer algorithm that it contained a word associated with offensive language.  It had never actually been read by a person.

Guess the word?  To save you scrolling up, here’s that deeply offensive comment again:

So, Lenny Henry feels lonely in a predominantly white industry.  He may not realise that outside the urban bubble he inhabits, this is a predominantly white country (86.1%, 2011 census).

What exactly is the problem?

Did you spot it?  Of course, you didn’t.  You are not woke enough to spot it and you should be embarrassed and I expect you to be ashamed of yourself.

The vile, offensive word - the word that had offended the computer’s sensibilities was…..     

 

Scroll down

 

 

 

U R B A N

God help us!  I was told, in all seriousness, that people will often include the word ‘urban’ in offensive or defamatory comments and so the computer will red-flag it.

Here’s what could be a fun competition:  

Including the word 'urban’, used correctly and in context, write a sentence that is offensive in any way at all.

I’ve tried and I can’t.  What sort of deranged mind does that computer have?

It’s the nonsensicalest thing I’ve ever come across.

 

152. Fabrications and Mendacious Inexactitudes

According to a scientific research paper published in 2011, each of us tell an average of 1.66 lies a day.  The average man lies 1.93 times every day whilst a woman lies 1.39 times.  

The research scientists reported that difference is wholly accounted for by the fact that it’s only men who are ever asked, “Does my bum look big in this?”

Interestingly, 5% of the sample admitted to just more than 50% of all the lies that were declared to researchers.  Those people must spend a fortune on replacing their burnt pants.

However, as virtually all participants in this scientific survey admitted that they lied on occasions, how can we believe the published results?   

I can’t remember the last time I calculatedly told a lie.  With my uneventful way of life, I never have the inducement, need or opportunity to do so.  

The last time I can remember being tempted to lie was soon after we moved into our current house, six years ago. There was a knock on the door one morning and there stood a woman who was visibly angry.

“Did you put this into a bin?” she demanded, holding up a broken lamp and thrusting towards my face. 

I had to think quickly.  Yes, I had put it into one of the communal bins but why was she so furious about it?  I had obviously done the wrong thing and the easiest response was to lie and say I hadn't but hey-ho, what the so:

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s my bin.  I look after it.  I wash it out every month.  You have your own bin so use it and not mine!”

She moved away a year ago and I don’t miss her.

I don’t think I tell lies but I do tend to exaggerate sometimes and I have a friend who once, when he discovered that I had exaggerated about something, suggested that I was actually lying.  I suppose that, technically, he was right and exaggeration is a form of lying. 

Perhaps it’s hereditary, as my father was inclined to exaggerate sometimes.  

January 1963 was very, very, very cold - no exaggeration.  In fact, it was the coldest month in the UK since 1814, with -2.1°C (28.2°F) the average January temperature in central England.   Dad was driving us on the A12 back to Lowestoft, after a weekend visiting his brother in London. 

That journey usually took about three hours but the roads were treacherous because of ice and deep snow.  After four hours we had only reached Ipswich, 45 miles from home.  Dad pulled into a pub for some food.

“Difficult journey?” asked the barman.

“Oh yes.  We must have seen two hundred abandoned cars,” my Dad told him.  

My brother and I almost collapsed with laughter at this.  Perhaps, we had seen two and they could both have just been parked.  For the rest of his life, we just had to mutter, “Two hundred,” to let him know that we doubted something he’d said.

I was probably four-years-old the first time I deliberately and consciously told a lie. I can date it that closely because until I was five, we lived in a house in South London that had a cherry tree in the back garden.  There were always lots of birds in the branches of that tree. 

I must have seen a photograph of a bird feeding from someone’s hand and I asked Mum how I could do that.  She told me that if I stood in the same place at the same time every day holding food in my hand, the birds would get used to me and eventually, they would come and feed from my hand.

For two or three days, that’s what I did.  On about day four, I came back into the house and informed my mother that a robin had flown down and eaten the bread from the palm of my hand. 

It took 57 years, but Mum was right because I managed it eventually and here’s the proof:

The Leader of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition told a lie in parliament recently, didn’t he?  Yes, he did and you know he did.  

In the late seventeenth century, the Earl of Halifax pronounced that, "A known liar should be outlawed in a well-ordered parliament.”  

Jeremy Corbyn was referring to Theresa May when he clearly mumbled, “Stupid woman,” under his breath during Prime Minister’s Questions in December.  He denied that’s what he said and insisted that what he’d actually mouthed was, “Stupid people.” 

Oh, come on Jeremy!  You could see the same television pictures that we all saw and you know that we know that your version was a flagrant lie.  

Every expert lip reader who was asked for an opinion, agreed that the first word was “stupid” and all but one said that the second was “woman”.  Not one of them said it was “people”.

What a pointless and unnecessary lie it was too.  It might have been unparliamentary language but surely, if it’s acceptable to accuse a cabinet minister (Chris Grayling) of being incompetent, then calling a person “stupid” isn’t that much different and any sanction imposed would have been relatively trifling.  

However, what made it a really senseless, ridiculous and stupid lie was that more than half the population probably agreed with him.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, once said to someone, “I'm not upset that you lied.  I'm upset that from now on, I can't ever believe you.” 

Corbyn has put himself into an impossible and irretrievably hopeless position in that, as a proven liar, we can never believe any promise he ever makes orally, or anything ever written in a Labour Party manifesto while he is leader.

He is obviously no intellectual but I hadn’t realised until then that he is actually very stupid.  

I’m not going to spend much time on the case of the Labour MP who has just been sentenced to three months in prison for obstructing the course of justice. 

In order to avoid something that I’ve experienced five times, a £60 fine and 3 points on her driving license, she told the police lie after lie.  

She will lose her parliamentary seat and will almost certainly be struck off the roll as a solicitor.  In future, she will be virtually unemployable.  All for what?  Calling her an idiot is too kind.

She has taken stupidity off the scale.  

I tried to tell a joke once to Jo, a friend’s 7-year-old daughter but I gave up after she implied that I was a liar.

Me: A horse went into a pub.

Jo:   A horse in a pub?  Pubs don’t let horses in.

Me: This one did.  Anyway, this horse….

Jo:   Where was the pub?

Me: Kettering.  So, this horse went into a pub and asked for a lemonade.

Jo:   What?  Horses can’t talk.

Me: Most can’t but this one could.  The barman….

Jo:   No horse can talk.

Me: No, you’re right.  Horses can’t talk but you’ll have to imagine that this one could.

Jo:   It’s not true then?

Me: It's a joke, so of course it’s not true.  Just let me finish, OK?

Jo:   OK.

Me: So, the barman said to the horse, “A lemonade?  That will…….”

Jo:   Is it a lie then?

That was the point at which I gave up and so Jo never got to hear that the barman, thinking that the horse would have no idea of the true price of a lemonade, charged him £30.  

Then, when the barman remarked that they didn’t get many horses in this pub, the horse replied, “With lemonade at that price, I’m not surprised.”

Are you lying every time you tell a joke?  Unless it’s a pun or wordplay, it would appear you are and so, by using that reasoning, all novels and most films are lies.

So, some lies are good and some can add to our collective happiness.

That’s good to know and rather reassuring because if I do ever lie, it will be a good and positive one.

Ramble:

In response to Jo saying, “No horse can talk,” I wrote this:

“No, you’re right….”  

If I’d written: 

“Yes, you’re right….”  

The meaning would have been exactly the same.  That’s strange isn’t it?  One of them could be wrong but which?

110. Loyalty, Allegiance and Support

Jeremy Corbyn didn’t sing the national anthem at a service in St Paul’s Cathedral soon after becoming elected as the leader of the Labour party.  He was accused by some of not showing respect or loyalty to his country. 

On Friday 18th September, the day that the rugby World Cup started, a column in The Times newspaper was headlined,

“The left will never really love this country”.

If he cares about rugby at all, will Jeremy Corbyn be supporting the country of his birth, or will he and other English socialists have their loyalties elsewhere?  What about expats living abroad; will they be supporting the country of their birth, or will they be hoping that their adopted country triumphs?

I never had any interest in the Winter Olympics until the 2010 Vancouver games.   I couldn’t name one UK competitor, but I was really hoping that Dow Travers would do well in the giant slalom because he was the Cayman Island’s first ever winter Olympian and Caroline and I were living on Grand Cayman at the time.  

He finished 101st, only beating a skier from India and one from Mexico.  The UK didn’t have a competitor in that event but if we had, I would have hoped Travers would beat him.

In February 1956, I was given a book token as a ninth birthday present.  I didn’t use it immediately and so the token was unused for some weeks.  Then in April of that year I discovered the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.  I literally read the 1956 Wisden from cover to cover many times. 

I had lived in Sidcup in Kent until 1953 and so I started by reading about Kent County Cricket Club.  By the end of the summer of 1956, I could recite all the Kent averages from the 1955 season and all the county’s records.   I can still remember many of the adverts in that edition.

Although I played cricket in Middlesex for many years and played with and against many Middlesex players, Kent remains the county whose result I always check first because Kent was, is and will remain, my county.

In January 1955 my Dad took me 30 miles to Norwich to watch Norwich City play Bristol City in the 3rd Division South of the Football League. 

Norwich lost 0-1 but despite that and despite the fact that the school where I taught for 33 years was only three miles from Tottenham Hotspurs’ home ground, White Hart Lane, and even though for ten years, I lived only 500 yards from Underhill where Barnet played, Norwich City is still the team whose results matter more to me than those of any other club. 

I am in touch with Patrick Gallagher.  Pat and I were at University together 50 years ago.  He was a very good cricketer indeed.  After we graduated, we both lived in London and we both joined Finchley Cricket Club.  In a game for Finchley against Malden Wanderers, Pat performed the remarkable feat of taking all ten wickets in an innings – the only time I ever saw it done.  

That feat was astonishing enough, but what made it almost incredible was that two of those wickets were as a result of catches by me at first slip.

A couple of years later he emigrated to Australia, and he has been living in Sydney for the past forty years.  In July this year I met him and I was surprised to hear him talk quite casually of “our opening bowlers” when referring to the Australians: Johnson, Starc and Siddle.  I hoped that he was doing it to see if I would ‘bite’ but I soon realised that I was wrong; he meant it. 

After the test series had finished Pat sent me an email with his thoughts on the outcome and wrote:  “…all our quicks leaked runs…”, “I think our bowling can improve…” and, “Ever since 2005 our batsmen…”.  I think they show that his assimilation into becoming an Australian is total and complete.

Perhaps Pat should bear in mind something said by Cecil Rhodes 150 years ago:

“Remember that you are an Englishman and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.”

Does it matter that Pat has thrown away his lottery ticket when it comes to cricket?  No, I don't think it does.  Support for a team is rather like religious faith.  Faith is the belief in something for which there is absolutely no evidence.  Every year I believe and have faith that Norwich will get promoted that season or win the Cup.  For a week or two I really believe that it will happen.  

Support in sport, defies logic. Only when the hard facts confront me do I reluctantly accept that my hopes for Norwich that season will not be fulfilled.  Last season, however, was a wonderful exception.

With most sports Pat transferred his allegiance to Australia within a couple of years but with cricket it did take longer.  In 1981 he had been in Australia a few years and when England won the Ashes series, he was still a Pom, disturbing the neighbours in an Adelaide hotel while he cheered loudly in the small hours of the morning as England won at Headingley.

But, after a few years of playing cricket with Australians, watching and reading about Aussie cricket and talking about Aussie cricket, especially in the pre-internet days, he found it harder and harder to stay engaged with English cricket.

Is he demonstrating that he has passed the Aussie version of the Tebbit test?  I am always tremendously uplifted whenever I see an Afro-Caribbean or an Asian spectator in an England shirt supporting England and so I shouldn’t be surprised if and when the same thing happens in other places. 

But all those immigrants who support England today are second or third generation and I suspect that those who arrived relatively recently still support their country of origin. 

Fifty years ago, in the 1960s when England played the West Indies at The Oval, all the West Indians in the crowd, and there were many of them, vociferously supported the Windies.  That clamorous support is largely absent nowadays for two reasons.  Ticket prices have risen disproportionally in the past 45 years and are beyond the means of many.  Most South London Afro-Caribbeans who do go to The Oval were born here and those few who do attend are supporting England.

I don’t think Pat supports Australia just to have a happy, calm and harmonious time socially and at work.  For reasons that I can’t understand and that totally elude me, he really does genuinely support Australian cricket and probably gets the same unrestrained joy when Australia wins a series against England 5 – 0 that I experience when Australia is bowled out before lunch for 60.   

I regard it with the same mystification and bafflement with which I view religious faith.   To me at least, it challenges reason.

As I said earlier, support denies and defies logic and so at the moment I am looking forward to the Ashes series of 2017-18, supremely confident that by then Finn and Wood will have become world beating opening bowlers; somebody will have been found who can open the batting with Cook; we have an authentic wicket keeper/batsman and at least one genuine, international-class spinner and we will retain the Ashes by winning at least three tests.

I really believe that.

A last thought:  When Canada play France in the Rugby World Cup on 1st October, which team will the Quebecois support?