Anti-anti-Americanisms

An Economist rebuttal, of sorts, to the BBC's list of Americanisms that Brits dislike.

Hint: if its in the King James Bible, it is probably not an Americanism.

Nerd heaven

The tale of a happy internet-based couple in the UK.

Two tasters:

The couple inhabit a topsy-turvy twilight world in which they cook chips or doughnuts at 3am, converse through computers even though they are sitting next to each other, and despite the fact that in theory they have an 'open' relationship, are completely faithful to one another because, as Amy says, somewhat plaintively: 'We literally don't know anyone else.'

...

'Why do you need to go out when you can talk to so many people on the internet? And the good thing is, online, if you don't like someone, you can block them off. But in real life you can't do that. I just have a dislike of the world. People can be annoying. I am happy this way.'

Most excellent. Does this make William Gibson a sociologist rather than a science fiction writer?

Hat tip: Charlie Brown

Hated Americanisms

A list of American expressions that readers of the BBC website dislike.

I was not quite sure what to make of this. "I could care less" is just a mistake, not an Americanism. Why maths are plural in the UK and not in the US is something I have always wondered about. I am unclear on why anyone would want "fortnightly" to remain a vital part of the language.

Overall, one might argue that most of these folks out to find more important things to worry about. On the other hand, I get irritated now, thanks to Duncan Thomas, when people say "observable" when they mean "observed" so perhaps I am just as bad.

Via the Agitator

For your dear departed on two wheels ...

... a British fellow has developed a motorcycle hearse. Says the BBC:

The unusual vehicle consists of a hearse built at the rear of the front end of a Triumph Rocket III and can take a coffin of more than six feet in length.

If a larger coffin size is required a hydraulic system can add a few more inches to the available length.

After the successful record attempt Mr Biddiss was upbeat about his machine.

He said: "It is 2,340cc of British engineering, the Rocket. If you're going to infinity and beyond, best you go by Rocket."

Be sure to check out the picture.

In Royal News

I learned from watching the BBC last night that one result of the Royal Wedding in the UK has been to focus attention on the younger sister of the Duchess of Cambridge. The Duchess of Cambridge is, of course, Kate Middleton, now wife of Prince William. Her sister has the horrifying name of Pippa, short for Philippa. One assumes her parents wanted a boy.

If this were a post on MR, it would be titled "The Culture that is Britain".

Hat tip: British comedian Russell Howard, who is sort of a convex combination of Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel with an accent.

Prince Andrew on France and the US

Some of those leaked diplomatic wires are simply good fun.

My favorite bit is at the end:

14. (C) COMMENT: Prince Andrew reached out to the Ambassador with cordiality and respect, evidently valuing her insights. However, he reacted with almost neuralgic patriotism whenever any comparison between the United States and United Kingdom came up. For example, one British businessman noted that despite the "overwhelming might of the American economy compared to ours" the amount of American and British investment in Kyrgyzstan was similar. Snapped the Duke: "No surprise there. The Americans don't understand geography. Never have. In the U.K., we have the best geography teachers in the world!" END COMMENT. GFOELLER

Who knew that geography teachers were the secret to the British empire?

Via: Cheap Talk

In Royal News

The headline on the Economist email for this piece was "Unemployed Woman Marries into Welfare Family".

QE II on FB - LOL

The Top 5 Facebook Status Updates From Queen Elizabeth

5> "attention, royal subjects: ya can't have any pudding if ya
don't eat yer meat! lol - i always wanted to say that"

4> "OMG! Giant, ugly purses are on sale at Harrods!"

3> "HRH thanks you for all the likes and comments of concern,
but would like to assure you she was NOT robbed at gunpoint
while vacationing in London."

2> "Who do you have to blow to get some heat in this damn
castle?!?"

and Topfive.com's Number 1 Facebook
Status Update From Queen Elizabeth...

1> "changed her relationship status from 'Ruler of a Vast
Colonial Empire' to 'It's Complicated.'"

From topfive.com

Economist on pubs

The Economist ponders the state of play in Britain's pubs and offers up this gem:

But not all the news is grim—and it is not just their owners that are casting around for ways to keep Britain’s pubs open. Just as pubs are diversifying, officialdom is beginning to view them more benignly: as linchpins of their neighbourhoods, which help to foster vague but politically fashionable goods such as community spirit and social cohesion. The Labour government, universally hated by publicans, appointed a “minister for pubs” a few months before it lost the general election in May. The Conservatives’ manifesto gave pubs the status of “essential services”, alongside facilities such as post offices, and promised powers for people to club together to buy boozers threatened with closure. More recently, as part of its drive to cut public spending, the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition floated the idea of merging pubs with public libraries.

Pubs and libraries! Just the kind of bold, innovative thinking one expects from a non-traditional coalition like the tories and the lib dems. Among the many possible benefits: watching the normally shy librarians cut loose after a few pints and a few chapters of Jane Austen. But does this mean privatizing the libraries or socializing the pubs?

Hat tip: Charlie Brown

On the form and substance of language

Quite so.

Hat tip: Charlie Brown

On the measurement of posh

A delightful piece from the Times of London on the relative poshness of Cameron and Clegg.

A teaser:

It is most odd,” said my friend, a Frenchman now living, like most sensible Frenchmen, in London. “Your country has given birth to twins. This Cameron and Clegg, he is the same person, no? They are both, how you say, posh?”

“Yes,” I explained. “But they are different sorts of posh.”

He looked confused: “But both went to private school, both are rich, both are sons of financiers. Even the hair is similar.”

“True,” I conceded. “But they are not the same species of posh. David Cameron is Eton-Oxford-country- clubby-cutglass-shooting party sort of posh, whereas Nick Clegg is Westminster-Cambridge- metropolitan-foreign-glottalstop-trustfund sort of posh. Cameron is upper-upper-middle class with a dash of English gentry, but Clegg is middle-upper-middle class with a hint of European aristocracy. These are quite different things.”

Quite so.

Hat tip: Cheap Talk

Still more on the British elections

The NYT with a piece on alternative voting.

Instant runoff voting is a different bird than proportional representation but I do not know the political science literature well enough to know exactly how one would expect it to differ.

I have always been a fan of including "none of the above" on the ballot, with a new election held (with new candidates) if it wins.

Hat tip: Cheap Talk

British election

I am watching the British election on Skynews. The final results are not in yet but it is clear that all the excitement about the "liberal democrats" (imagine separating out the subset of the US democrats with degrees in sociology or political science and giving them their own party) is not playing out at the ballot box.

Other bits: the CURE party has not won any seats but has gotten non-trivial numbers of votes in some places - ahead of many of the serious minor parties. This party illustrates something that we generally miss in the US due to (appallingly) restrictive ballot access laws. Looking up the CURE website reminded me of the OWL party in Washington State, which put enormously funny bits into Washington's voter's guide when I was in high school. What we generally miss are humorous parties designed to have a bit of fun at the expense of overly serious politicians.

The way they do the counting of votes in the UK is that each district counts its votes and then announces the total, and the nice Skynews people seem to have reporters at nearly all of them, and to broadcast many of them. This has a certain charm, as it means one gets to watch the local luminaries who do the announcing as well as even watching shots of the counting of the votes. Watching the luminaries read out the votes for the CURE party while maintaining a straight face is particularly good fun.

Also, the media do a better job of matching colors to parties in the UK. The labor party is red and the tories are blue.

Buckfast for breakfast

A (legal) drug scare in Scotland around a mix of wine and caffeine produced by Benedictine monks and called Buckfast.

Best bit:

Nor, he said, is wine-making a sign that the monks of Buckfast Abbey have strayed from the teachings of St. Benedict, an accusation recently leveled by an Episcopal bishop.

“It’s always wise to remember that Jesus turned water into wine,” the spokesman, Jim Wilson, said in an interview.

Amen to that!

Good to see, too, that religious competition is alive and well in Scotland between the Episcopalians and the Catholics!

Hat tip: Charlie Brown

On politicians, especially British ones

A fine rant from Mark Steyn, the only pundit I know who regularly writes about three different countries - the US, the UK and Canada (which, putting aside Quebec, is sort of a convex combination of the other two) - and does it well.

The rant is mostly, but not entirely, about the expenses scandal that has just brought down the speaker of Britain's parliament, and which is well worth reading about if only for its entertainment value.

A taster:

For their constituents, the scandal is a rare glimpse of a central truth about politics in an advanced western democracy: A lifetime in “public service” is a lifetime of getting serviced at public expense. The salaries are small but the perks are unlimited. A few weeks back, while the Home Secretary was away and her poor husband was whiling away a quiet evening , he purchased two pay-per-view pornographic movies – By Special Request and Raw Meat 3 – which, upon her return, his missus promptly billed to the government. Most of us, whether we land a job at the local feed store, the dental practice or National Review, expect to have to pay for our own moats, toilet seats, chocolate Santas and screenings of Raw Meat 3. But being in “public service” means never having to say, “Hey, this one’s on me.”

Hat tip: Nat Wilcox

Cool Brittania

A photo tour of the wild side of the UK. The photos are of Cardiff but I have seen the same sorts of things in London and Newcastle.

Hat tip: Good S**t blog

Tories and women

An entertaining story here about the UK Conservative party and its consultant-driven effort to pick up more female voters.

Their consulting firm, called Pretty Little Head (!) is here.

Evaluation with faces

Go here and then go to page 15 of the file (which is page number 12 of the report). This report is an evaluation of the UK program (or programme over there) called the New Deal 25+ performed on contract by PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Things to note:

1. The faces help out struggling policy wonks who cannot otherwise distinginguish good results from bad.

2. The evaluation results summarized in the table are all essentially meaningless. Most of the report results consist either of outcome levels - what fraction were employed - instead of impacts - what fraction were employed who would not have been without the program. As many (if not most or all) of the participants would have found employment on their own, the results summarized here wildly exaggerate the causal effect of the program. The remaining results consist of participant self-evaluations which have been shown to be unrelated to impacts in my work with Alex Whalley and Nat Wilcox.

I wonder how much the British taxpayer paid for this?

Hat tip: me, trying to find out when the ND25+ started for a referee report.

So many New Deals, so little time.

I sometimes joke when presenting my paper on the British New Deal for Young People program that the Blair government set up programs for pretty much every group of identifiable voters. This turns out to be more true than I thought: there is a description of the "New Deal for Musicians" here.

British investment bankers gone wild

"Do we really need to ban much-needed stress-defusing banter and jolly outings to strip clubs from an industry already under immense pressure, and whose workers we are relying upon to get our economy out of the mess it is currently in?"

How is it that the British write so well?

Warning: not politically correct and may be challenging for some readers. Includes words such as "arse". My linking to this or any other article, picture, song, movie and so on does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of any or all of the contents; please do not click through if you are prone to lawsuits; do keep in mind that the memory of free speech lingers on, even at universities.