Voting Frights by Trevor Plumbly
I reckon sitting on a committee is more fun than phoning Vodafone, but only just. I’m not really the collective type. I do get on pretty well with most folk, but I dislike the process of group decision. To me committees are the bastard offspring of the democratic system; they intermarry to reproduce untold social dross, and are a haven for people who can’t make up their own minds. Even those trumpeting the cause of the individual get castrated by sheer tedium and end up agreeing to ‘joint compromise’. Genteel bullying at… Read More
Angela’s ABCs: Where do you put punctuation marks when you are using quotation marks? By Angela Caldin
I’ve been wondering for some time whether punctuation marks like full stops, commas and question marks should go inside or outside a closing quotation mark, and getting more and more confused. But now I’ve realised that there’s a reason why I’m so confused. Although both British English and American English follow the same rules up to a point, when it comes to commas and full stops they diverge.
A Walk in the Park (Part II) by Emily Smart
It’s been a week of rules. Spoken, unspoken and broken. It’s got me thinking about how we cope in our daily lives with the myriad of ethics, morals and standards that we and others impose, without even thinking about them. I’m not talking about laws. Obviously it isn’t a good idea to go around killing people and, whilst I am still unsure what coveting my neighbour’s wife means, I probably wouldn’t recommend that either. No, it’s the smaller things I’m talking about. I found myself repeating for the umpteenth time to a… Read More
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