Lately I’ve been considering writing a book to help Romanians (specifically) improve their English. Three years and 90-odd students have given me a pretty clear idea of what pitfalls they face, and why. I’d divide the book up into chapters (confusing words, avoiding word-for-word translations, pronunciation, prepositions, verb tenses, and so on). There are plenty of similar books on the market here, but none of them are produced by native speakers as far as I can see, and most of them are brimming with misinformation. My Romanian is nowhere near good enough to write a book in that language, but maybe that wouldn’t matter, as long as I pitch it at people at intermediate level or above. It’s worth thinking about.
Yes, Britain will be having a general election on 12th December, the third in less than five years (the length of each parliament is supposed to be five years). The UK political system stopped being fit for purpose ages ago, long before the Brexit sham. It functions (if you can use that term) by making compromise almost a dirty word, and when dealing with something as divisive as Brexit it totally fails. I’ve watched snippets of Westminster in the last year, and with a few notable exceptions (Ken Clarke? Jess Phillips?) it’s been deeply depressing stuff from all the parties. The Tories (or at least those who remain in the party) have been the worst, though. So many complete and utter arseholes. And they now have double-figure leads in most of the polls. I honestly think any outcome would be better for Britain than a sizeable Tory majority, even the giant mess that a hung parliament would create, but that’s where we’re heading.
I put it to my dad a couple of weeks ago that all the time he lived in the ultra-safe Tory constituency of Huntingdon, he never really had a vote. What? Of course I had a vote. You did, but in name only. You physically marked an X on a piece of paper, but it didn’t matter. But I had one vote, just like everybody else. No! Some people’s votes in different parts of the country were dozens, hundreds of times more important than yours. But there was no point going on. I then mentioned (which I basically never do) that I have a maths degree and also passed a bunch of actuarial exams, so I really do get this stuff. He got a grade 9, which is the equivalent of an F, in his maths O-level. (They’ve recently changed the system once again, so that a 9 is the top grade.) Anyway, first-past-the-post is complete garbage, but maaaybe it’s garbage you can get away with if the (two!) major parties themselves are broad churches, but certainly not in the highly polarised environment we see today.
There are two recent election results that illustrate some of the problems with FPTP. In Canada, where they also have that insane system, Justin Trudeau was re-elected despite his Liberal party losing the popular vote to the Conservatives. Luckily, the Liberals would likely also have formed the government under a sensible proportional system, because they have a natural left-wing partner that got 16% of the vote (but not many seats). So it was really a case of two wrongs making a (sort of) right. Then in Wellington they had the mayoral election, which doesn’t use FPTP, but preferential voting instead. The incumbent Justin Lester was leading until the final count, when Andy Foster took the majority of the votes from the third-place candidate to win by just 62 votes, although Lester has requested a recount. Whichever way that goes, it seems totally fair.
It’s the second half of the week, and that means kids. Two of them coming up.
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