They say, "we can only have the welfare we can afford": a story

Mr Bill owned a shop and Mina worked in the shop. In winter it got cold and Mr Bill said that he could heat some of the shop but not all of it. Mina felt very cold.
We can't afford to heat the whole shop, said Mr Bill.
Mina didn't know anything about Mr. Bill but one day she was going for a walk in the country with her friends and one of them said, 'We're near where Mr Bill lives.'
So, they went and had a look.

It was a big house, with a beautiful garden. Looking over the wall, Mina and her friends could see a big de luxe car in the drive.

On the way home, Mina thought more and more about what Mr Bill had said about 'we can't afford to heat the whole shop.' Certainly, she couldn't afford to heat the shop. Mr Bill only paid her enough to feed herself and pay her rent. It was true, the shop didn't seem to make huge amounts of money, but it was doing well, well enough for Mr Bill to buy a lovely house and car.

So how did it all work? And why was she cold?

Grammar: it's not the name of the word that makes it behave that way...

Steven Pinker has written an article in the Guardian:

Steven Pinker: 'Many of the alleged rules of writing are actually superstitions'

and there is a thread following his article - which itself is a summary of a new book he has out.

On the thread people were getting exercised about starting a sentence with 'but'. This is because people think that when we say a word 'is' a 'noun' or a 'verb' etc, then that's what it is forever more. Part of the reason for that is because that's how grammar is taught i.e. wrongly. Another reason, it's how dictionaries list words - but that is really only meant to be a guide not a prescriptive order.

On the thread below I made the comment below. It's an attempt to focus on the fact that there is 'grammar' but the 'grammar' is not in the names and rules we invent. It's in our usage, how we say and write things. The job of grammarians, or anyone describing language, is to describe it in use. Words in use have functions and work like cogs in a machine, they link with other cogs (words) so that there is a coherent 'utterance'. Unlike cogs, which are of a fixed shape in a fixed place in the machine, words can morph, move about, change how they fit with the other words. If we are serious about grammar, and serious about helping children understand it, then that's the model we should work with and not this silly stuff about naming words and telling them that the words have to behave in a certain way because we've named them that way. Here's my comment:

"There is no essential grammatical quality attached to any word until it is used. A word is not a noun until it is used as a noun. Same goes for 'but'.  When it is used as a conjunction, it is a conjunction. When it is used as a frontal adverbial or 'sentence adverb' - as it is when it begins a sentence, that's what it is. The great mistake of pedantry is to assume that words are what grammarians have called them. It's a form of nomenclature determinism. Luckily we are human beings and not machines, so we can say, 'but me no buts' or 'proud me no prouds' (which gets a red underline from the typography nazis in my computer) but was good enough for Shakespeare. 'Hah, but 'proud' is an adjective,' they cry. Not in that sentence - one is a verb and the other is a noun."

Eye-watering sums in merger - great for the shareholders, bad for us

Anthony Hilton - no raving lefty he - the economics editor of the London Evening Standard, had an article in the paper last night about a big new merger that may or may not take place in the brewing industry. When I say big, this is seriously massive, and calls into question all the usual rubbish that lovers of capitalism talk about when they say that the marvellous thing about capitalism is that 'competition' is good for the consumer. In reality, if this merger takes place, when we go into a pub or are buying beer we will be choosing between different offshoots of the same company, under different labels.

That to one side, Hilton is against the merger and amongst the reasons he cites are as follows:

"Apart from the shareholders [who, he explains elsewhere are likely to make a big, big killing if the merger goes through] what characterises this deal is the number of losers - there will be fewer suppliers, fewer employees, less choice for customers and no doubt lots of legitimate new ways for the company to avoid paying taxes.'

Just spend a few seconds on that sentence, please. He is saying that if this merger, worth billions of pounds - it involves, yes, the world's largest brewer - goes ahead, it will result in people being put out of work, more of the same kind of thin watery crap beer, and more tax-dodging ('legitimate' of course - we don't want legal proceedings to take place by not calling it 'legitimate') - which means less revenue to the state to pay for schools, hospitals and welfare.

But this is normal market activity. This is what we have to remember. It's normal. If it's 'normal', that means it's 'right'. That means it's 'nice', that means it's 'good' for us.

But it's not. It's about making some people richer - 'shareholders' i.e. people who happen to have some money and earn money from that money by doing no work, working-people laid off and therefore instantly poorer, crap beer, and less tax.

[The potential merger is between AB InBEv and SABMiller - combined value £180 billion. Lawyers' and accountants' fees to put the merger together, $3billion. (Hilton gives those 2 figures, as I have, in sterling and dollars.)]

Great stuff down at Discover, Stratford, E.London

Something very exciting is brewing at the Discover Centre, in Stratford, East London. I know I'm biased but...

They are building an 'immersive' visit for young children based on several of my books. There are several 'habitats' or 'experiences' - the various sites of 'Bear Hunt', an old classroom (from my era), my grandparents sitting room, a chocolate cake that you can walk into and a 'dread shed'.

In each of these there is the potential just to look at things I've written about turned into an exhibit or tactile experience or read poems relevant to the habitats or write poems triggered off by the exhibits are the 'story-builder-guides' who are on hand to lead workshops.

There'll be a soundscape of sounds, words, parts of poems from me (pre-recorded) as well as some of my vids.

The exhibition is in effect a slice of my mind, which children enter.

I think it'll be a fantastic visit for children with their relatives, friends or - as during their week - with their class. It's the kind of 'education' that I really believe in: exposing children to surprising, challenging places and experiences, encouraging them and helping them create things of their own, in a safe, friendly environment.

Quick summary of what Corbynomics seems to be about...

A certain level of deficit is affordable. It has become almost impossible to make this argument. Journalists and commentators know that it's true but they seem to be pre-programmed to howl it down. Corbyn et al seem for the moment to consider that it's best to leave that argument alone. 

Instead, they are pointing out that the underlying question of Who pays for that deficit? is a better one to make. As we know, the Tories have made a political decision to get the unpaid and the low paid to pay for it, and for all of us to have worse public services to pay for it too. Meanwhile, the super-rich have made a killing. (both sides of this equation have been admitted a) by Clegg when he 'apologised' to the low paid) b) by the Telegraph when it said the quantitative easing had enabled the rich 'to make a killing' (their words).

So, Corbyn et al, appear to be saying that they will do other things to deal with this deficit: find the non-tax payers, (100 billion?), not renew Trident (100 billion?), use Quantitative Easing to finance council housing and railways (stimulates steel, concrete, glass etc production, creates employment, increases tax yield for government), increase tax take from super-rich. 

This argument would, they think (I'm guessing) put the journalist-politico deficit mob on the back foot because they would have to argue against this on the basis that it's bad for rich people and good for poor people???!!!!

Still angry about demands that we sing what we don't believe in....

(I wrote this on a comments thread at the Guardian when someone asked me what Jeremy Corbyn meant when he said that in future at ceremonies and public occasions he would 'participate fully' or some such. I said I don't know.)

"I'm not in the Labour Party, I'm not Jeremy Corbyn. All I can say is that I look a bit like him but that gives me no access to his thinking. As it happens I think it is an absolute outrage that Labour MPs and the liberal press couldn't defend the principle of freedom of conscience, that none of them could rise above the matter of whether they thought it was 'advisable' that he sing the anthem and defend the right of someone who is an atheist and a republican to not sing about a god who should 'save' a 'Queen'.

When I think of all the screeds of guff that are written about 'British values' and 'tolerance' and our wonderful freedoms and yet, when it comes to a moment when one of those freedoms is tested (freedom of conscience) a great baying and lynching takes place where people demand that someone should pretend to identify with ideas that he doesn't believe in.

And this is the country that explains about how brave Ridley and Latimer were, how we fought for our freedoms in WW2 etc etc etc. I can say, when I heard that Tory MP on the World at One going on about how 'disgraceful' it was of Corbyn to not sing the anthem, I found myself wondering just how safe that leaves us all. 

And as for the grovelling Labour MPs who can't even defend Corbyn against that kind of attack - pathetic. Either we have freedom of conscience or we don't. You can't have a sort of or a kind of a bit of a freedom of conscience. We're not talking about taking up arms here. We're just talking about a particular kind of public ceremony. And even diverging from that makes a certain kind of person call that 'disgraceful'."

Why Labour politicians attacking Corbyn over National Anthem deprives us of liberty

Labour politicians attacking Corbyn over the National Anthem may be nasty, may be disloyal but it says something else to me. It also shows me that these people haven't even got the guts to take up a position on the basis of a) freedom of conscience and b) the memory of the thousands of people who died in WW2 who were atheists and/or republicans...and irony of ironies, almost all of whom would have voted Labour in 1945, if they had been alive.

So, what this means is that these people in the Labour Party can't even defend their own ground. They can't defend liberty. And they can't defend many of the kind of people who vote for them.

Instead they hope that by wrapping themselves in the flag and the so-called 'decency' of wearing immaculate clothes, that this will win them the affection of the right-wing press. It doesn't. Miliband appeared in public in immaculate outfits and sang the National Anthem loud and long. In effect, all this won him was the accolade, 'Geek in a suit' or worse - 'or 'Son of Jewish traitor wears suit'.

And in a small way, their collaboration with this chorus deprives us of our liberty. People we thought could and would protect our freedom of conscience, and our right to wear what we want are saying, 'No we won't.'

Thanks, guys.