Learners of English – BEWARE

Because you hear it on the BBC’s Today programme or said by the Prime Minister’s spokesman doesn’t make it acceptable English. John Humphrys, one of the presenters on the BBC’s Today programme has written at least two books on the English language: Lost For Words: The Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language’ insists that laBeyond Words’. He is a much-respected journalist and broadcaster, he’s Welsh and therefore knows a thing or two about language. All this does not stop him from using a bunch and stuff as well as give us a sense of. I wish he wouldn’t. One of his colleagues, Sarah Montague, when asked the other morning: how are you? replied: Good. I really wish she wouldn’t. John Humphrys is guilty of using sloppy Americanisms and Sarah Montague of using sub-standard English. I should like them to be role models for what used to be known as the Queen’s English, to be people that learners of English could use as a reference.

nguage should be simple, clear and honest, and ‘

By drawing attention to the following points, a few among many, I hope that learners of English will resist the temptation to imitate the unfortunate habits of rather a lot of native speakers who don’t care or who don’t know any other way of expressing themselves. They follow verbal fashion and are often difficult to understand. I know that sounds conceited, but that’s because I feel strongly about good English. An (*) indicates an incorrect form, a solecism.

Fewer / less

*The less people who know, the better. *He made less mistakes in the previous match.

This one is a marathon-runner; it just keeps on going. In 2008, Tesco raised the hackles of many people by putting up a sign at a till saying *10 items or less. They chose to replace it by “Up to 10 items” rather than “10 items or fewer” on the grounds that it was easier to understand. I suppose this might be called dumbing-down and may explain why a lot of people have a problem with this distinction.

It's interesting to note that "The less people know, the better" is grammatically a perfectly good statement. So it's not simply a question of collocation.

Figures / numbers

It is now fashionable among some financial journalists and analysts to talk about “the numbers” and nothing but the numbers. There are stock market numbers, companies publish their numbers, numbers are good or bad. Figures are disappearing. Why? This is American influence again. Perhaps they think it sounds more professional or with it to say numbers all the time. Numbers are mathematical symbols. When they have been processed in some way, they magically become figures. Companies publish figures or why not results? Numbers are things you dial on a telephone, or they identify the house in the street where you live.

Station / train station

More transatlantic influence. There is a concept known to linguists as “marked / unmarked terms”. It’s a most useful idea, beautifully illustrated by this present pet hate of mine. In British English, Station is unmarked, it’s neutral, it's the place where you go to catch a train. Marked forms of station are bus station, power station, police station. If you want to use a marked term to make sure there’s no misunderstanding about where to meet somebody, why not call it a railway station like we always have done.

Queue / Stand in line

This is moving in at a rapid pace. Admittedly, queue is a funny one to spell but is that an excuse for everybody to stand in line?

*For John and I

This is said by people who care about the language, who have been taught at school that there’s something to be careful about here but have forgotten what it is. What they were told is that John and I are great mates, but they don’t like John and me. They explained this to John and me, but we didn’t understand. After a preposition or as the object of a verb I becomes me. It happens with the other pronouns, too: he/she/we/they become him/her/us/them. It doesn’t drive me mad, but when I hear it used correctly, I always mentally give the speaker a couple of gold stars. A current TV advert for mis-sold insurance claims, includes the following:..that have been sold to you and I.

Out there

Out there is a very frequently-heard thinking-stopper. It means everything and nothing. Its precise meaning is what its two words indicate and no more. It’s best to leave it out.

Stuff

What can I say about “stuff”, except “ouch”, another thinking-stopper. It seems to have completely taken over from “things”, our own British home-grown thinking-stopper.

How are you? – *good

Another one moving in fast under American influence. The cost of this type of fashion is that a pair of words, in this case good/well, is reduced to one. The other one disappears in a relatively short space of time and we have permanently lost a useful shade of meaning.

Meet with

Nobody meets anybody anymore, but they constantly meet with somebody. This has now got its feet under the table. When I hear that somebody has met somebody, I pause for a few seconds and give thanks.

Basis points

The British fashion-oriented financial brigade ought to sort this one out. It's been around for a while, but some of them still seem to think it's smart to use this American mumbo-jumbo. Do 50 basis points better or more clearly express one half percent? Are 30 basis points 0.3% or not? Is it supposed to be simpler? It's nothing but another useless layer of jargon

Sense

I am now finding the use of sense enervating: give us your sense of the situation, which has the value of understanding or feeling, is as annoying as give us your take on the situation, another horror. If this continues much longer the verbal use of sense: do you sense that this situation is getting out of control? and the nominal use: common sense, the five senses, what sense are you giving to this expression? are going to become confused. People will begin to hesitate and possibly even avoid using the word.

If you listen to journalists, there are specialists of the “one sense fits all” school, like Norman Smith on the BBC. His excellent reports and analyses contain lots of my sense of the situation, which is a pity. This usage is taking over at the BBC.

To Grow a company

Growing companies now happens all the time. Tomatoes or potatoes, yes, but companies, no.

Deliver

Everything is now delivered, including education, policing and government. Provided? Nothing at all?

Impact

Earnings were impacted by the decline in oil prices, hit or affected will do the trick. French needs this verb and has taken it. English doesn’t. Used as a verb, there is a sense of physical contact, collision.

Bunch

A bunch of grapes, bananas, even a bunch of fives or hooligans, but not a bunch of files, companies or books.

Key

When I was at school, we were not allowed to use the adjective nice, felt to be lazy, over-worked and almost meaningless, and we had to find another word. I feel the same way now about the adjectival use of key. It has traditionally been used attributively as in key player, key industries, key factor. It began to be used predicatively around 1970 and, like knotweed, is now all over the place. Everything is key, factors are key to our success, the use of military force is key in this strategy. Hardly anybody says vital or crucial any more. These two adjectives are under threat.

To gift

27 per cent said they had gifted their items in the last month (given away?)

To Pause

As a precaution the UK's A400M aircraft are temporarily paused (grounded?)

Referencing

Referencing Conservative pledges to cut the welfare budget (regarding?)

Post

Post 1945. Post bellum, post hoc. But, Post the EU referendum? Post lunch?

Multiple

It’s everywhere, multiple sandwiches, multiple buses, multiple pairs of shoes. This used to be very restricted in use: multiple injuries, fractures etc. Several and many are going to disappear.

Firefighters

Firemen have disappeared.

First responders

Emergency services says it so much better.

Shooter

This is slightly ridiculous; makes me think of pea-shooter or the dated slang word for a pistol. Have Americans forgotten the word gunman or sniper?

It’s all about a lack of elegance, style. Standards unfortunately only go in one direction, South, and that’s another one that should be on my list.

The referendum – where to Guv?

The shock wave

There is a frenetic rush to bring out the next horrendous story in this British cataclysm. The Telegraph reveals a French plot to topple the City. The Guardian recounts that Standard Life has shut its property fund. Why the UK is plunging towards an economic nightmare, clarions another. These are testing times, agreed, but in the midst of all the noise, the thinking process has begun.

The BBC reports that “lawyers acting for a group of business people and academics, said it would be unlawful for a prime minister to trigger Article 50 without a full debate and vote in Parliament ...because they would be overriding the 1972 European Communities Act that enshrines UK membership of the EU ...constitutionally only legislation can override legislation and an act of Parliament is required to give the prime minister legal authority”. Or, again, will Britain have to invoke Article 50 before starting to negotiate terms as a European commissioner has suggested? The details of our new relationship are going to take years to settle; what we don’t need is interminable legal debate about whether we are in or out.

Agree or disagree with the referendum result, we need a government and we need an opposition, asap. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are no longer candidates for anything. The Tory leadership election is underway. The Brexit worthies in the party seem to think that only a candidate who supported leave can do the job; that is probably Mr Gove or Mrs Leadsom. I don’t follow this; it’s an odd kind of logic. The future leader and Prime Minister will do what is best for the country and must be chosen on merit. Are they saying that a candidate who voted to remain is somehow going to commit only half-heartedly to the job or might even sabotage Britain’s negotiations? Is this an example of Mr Gove’s superior intellectual powers of which we hear so much? Mrs Leadsom no doubt has many qualities, but I know nothing about her;  mea culpa I’m sure. Mrs May has far more experience at home and abroad than all the others put together. Mr Corbyn’s Labour party will eventually re-organise, with or without tears. Sooner would be better than later because Her Majesty’s opposition is a vital part of our government process.

While we get our house in order, as we shall, we should remember that our European allies have their own problems. Belgium’s Le Soir says it all; the whole of Europe is feeling the shock waves from Brexit. Frau Merkel has her own immigration sword of Damocles to dismantle. France has so many concerns, it doesn’t know what to deal with first. Apart from terrorism, unions and an egregious unemployment rate, among others, Monsieur Valls is currently having his own spat with the European Commission about the Bolkestein Directive, voted in the European Parliament in 2006, which France has always hated. It began with the Polish plumber and in 2013 Ryanair was fined by the French government because its Marseilles operation was using Irish contracts to save on social charges. France has very high costs to employ, so it doesn’t like cross-border provision of services where a European employer toes the line on the minimum pay and health and safety regulations of the host country but pays the lower social contributions of the service provider’s country. The Le Figaro newspaper said yesterday that it would cost less to employ a French worker on the national minimum wage than a Polish worker. Just in case anybody has forgotten, Europe has its own troubles to sort out.

The status of EU citizens living in UK and vice-versa has also rightly drawn attention. They must not be used as pawns in any negotiation, this is self-evident and I’m sure they will not be. But negotiations will take place and this provision for continued, unchanged residence will have to be ratified. In this context, Germany has proposed dual nationality for British citizens. This type of solution is pleasant but nugatory.

Britain needs Europe and Europe needs Britain. The task now is one of re-design and both Europe and Britain will have to rethink some of their tenets. The word negotiate derives from two Latin words for not and ease. Lines are drawn, there is much posturing and sucking of teeth. Hand-wringing and hair-tearing are not acceptable. We have lots to negotiate with and the future is unwritten. We shall be involved in something like a game of chess where checkmate will never be reached. Only a draw.

The referendum, some days later

Those English! How they dynamited Europe.
Why they don't do anything like the rest of us.

The referendum has predictably brought its lot of anger, recrimination, confusion, despair but also its lot of wishes for a successful outcome from many quarters, if not from the European Commission. The New Zealand government has offered to second some of its highly experienced EU trade negotiators to London which may or may not be practicable, but it’s a most kind and encouraging offer which shows that we are not without friends.

Emotions are still running high and some of our politicians are not setting the highest of behavioural standards. Nigel Farage’s baiting of MEPs in open session in Brussels shows why he is not a suitable person to take part in domestic UK politics at any decision-making level. I don’t often say this, but I felt embarrassed - by his taunting manner, particularly given that what he said about MEPs’ work experience was clearly not true and vindicated those who accused him during the Brexit campaign of telling lies. The other person who disappointed me was the Prime Minister who railed against the leader of the opposition, in the Chamber, telling him to resign, to go. I have a lot of time for David Cameron, it’s a pity he’s leaving; I suppose that the heat of the moment got to him.

Referenda are very unpredictable events. They are simple matters with fiendishly difficult questions. They are expressions of participation in the democratic process, yet the questions asked are usually so technical that only top flight specialists could hold a reasoned opinion. The mass of voters end up relying on their intuition or, usually, their emotions. In the present referendum, everybody knew the consequences of voting the status quo, but nobody knew what leaving would entail, not the experts, not the government, not the Brussels technocrats, nobody. You would be forgiven for thinking that the government simply wanted to off-load responsibility for the decision onto the electorate. You would likewise be forgiven for asking why the referendum was called in the first place. David Cameron bears this responsibility. I understand his motives and if he is to be condemned for anything, it must be his judgement; he was too sure the result would go his way, but so also was half the nation.

Yet it was always going to be a close run thing. It was fairly clear that the élite, those with money, would vote remain, that those less well-off would vote leave; the educated, remain and the uneducated, leave; those in the London area, remain and those in the North, leave; the upper classes, remain and the lower classes, leave; the young generation, remain and those who grew up before 1973, leave; those who went skiing in the French Alps or clubbing in Ibiza, remain and those who went on holiday in the UK, leave; Scotland and Northern Island would vote to remain. It was all very binary. It was always going to be a close call. The unknown and unfathomable is what difference the large numbers of people living and working in Europe and who were disenfranchised would have made had they voted.

Britain has always been accused of having only one foot in Europe, of being an unruly and disruptive element, yet one of her great contributions to the European project has been to ask difficult questions, openly oppose what she did not think right and fight for change. She has fought for a rebate and she has fought for opt-outs. Sometimes these positions have provoked acrimony and sometimes official enquiries and change have been the result. Once again, she has asked difficult questions, but this time it’s: how does Article 50 work? and how do we negotiate our place outside of the European Union? One doesn’t have to be gifted with divine foresight to predict that the European institutions will now reflect on the reasons this has happened and on the need for change. For once, foresight and hindsight are both perfectly aligned and on target.

British European Union referendum

I couldn’t not comment on this referendum. The country is split in two with 1.3 million votes separating them. The leave-supporters are pleased and the remain-supporters are desperately unhappy. Most people expected the result to be the other way round. Another group which is hugely discontented is that of the Brits who have been resident in Europe for more than fifteen years, and have been disenfranchised by Mr Cameron. The reason for this is not clear and seems difficult to defend since these Brits are in the front line, living and working in countries of the EU. There are said to be some two to three million of us and if this is the case and we had been able to vote, then the referendum result would have been reversed. This is therefore a vote which leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. It is not ‘job well done’.

There is a petition which is trying to influence this result, called: EU Referendum Rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum. The head is: We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based on a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum. When I looked a few minutes ago, there were 3.75 million signatures; it will therefore have to be debated by Parliament. The Scottish government says it is trying to block the Brexit. Others are saying that a referendum is only consultative, that Parliament is not obliged to heed the result. Britain is held by most to be the home of parliamentary democracy; it would be extremely malodorous if our legislators chose to override the vox populi. It looks very much as if out is out, as the European Commission likes to put it.

Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty is the mechanism for leaving the EU; unfortunately, there are no explanatory details in the treaty. Despite Mr Juncker and others saying that Article 50 must be invoked without delay, it remains Britain’s decision when to announce that she is leaving. There is nothing to be gained by doing things precipitately. These are uncharted waters and Britain has chosen to be the guinea-pig. Before formally invoking Article 50, the Tory party has to choose a new leader and the Labour party will very likely have to do as much.

Immigration is said to have been the main theme of this referendum, the power behind Brexit. But I think that an even more powerful factor was the unelected nature of the European Commission, that unelected functionaries can tell elected members of Parliament what their laws must be, what they can and cannot do, whom they can or cannot extradite –  this has always been a major sticking point. When Katya Adler, the BBC’s European editor, asked Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission president, if this were the end of the EU, he growled “No” and with a scowl left the press conference. This was exactly the kind of arrogance that the British abhor in an unelected representative. Other Europeans are even blaming him for Brexit as he pushes for “more Europe” including a European army which Britain is dead-set against. Juncker is a divisive force; his election was opposed by Cameron and he is on record as saying that Brexit will not be an amicable divorce.

Of course, it didn’t help the Remain cause that the world and his wife were telling the British voters that if they voted to leave, World War Three would start the following day. President Obama, Christine Lagarde and the hundreds of eminent scientists, economists, church leaders, Nobel Prize winners, blue-chip company bosses all saying sign here, not there, doubtless provoked a backlash.

Sovereignty and take back control are powerful concepts in a campaign. They won the day. Now, cool heads and time are needed. Festina lente.

France, its companies and its trade unions

The unions are still putting the French government under pressure and when I say unions, I’m referring mainly to the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT). The CGT wants to hold a full-blooded march in Paris this Thursday. The authorities say that given the current state of emergency they will only allow an assembly and not a march of protestors. The CGT rejects this idea, so there is stalemate. Given that all public demonstrations attract ultras, what the French call casseurs, they are high-risk events. A nationally known childrens’ hospital was damaged by ultras last week, to public outcry, yet given the terrorist threat and the football crowd control, the police are stretched to the limit and still the government does not dare forbid outright the CGT’s march with the risk that they might have to prosecute the organisers and impose fines or imprisonment as laid down by law.

The French public are greatly inconvenienced but there is still this feeling that the CGT has a right to strike, that’s the way things are. They forget that the union represents a small minority, is defending the privileges of a few and does not have the right to stop others from working.

The French are still very much ambivalent about trade unions and the companies they work for. There is still a very strong them and us culture. The patrons (bosses) are still seen as exploitative and the lines of cleavage are everywhere. Who will protect the worker against the patron? Yes, there are bosses who exploit workers, but certainly not all of them do. Yet the French give this impression that a patron is by definition an exploiter of employees. This belief has been underpinned by the Code du Travail, the code of labour law which exists to protect the employee against the employer’s excesses and is very often an administrative nightmare for the employer. The bigger the company gets, the more time and money it has to devote to making sure it is not infringing any of its articles of law. The number of employees determines the level of complexity: 10, 20 and 50 being critical. For example, if a company employs 11 people, it has to organise elections for representatives of the workforce (délégués du personnel); if it employs 51 people it must set up a works council (comité d'entreprise). These are significant additional changes to the workload and responsibilities of the owner or manager, to such a degree that the owner of a small company will often refuse to employ that eleventh person. This is a considerable obstacle to national growth and one of the reasons why French unemployment figures have been above 10% for the last 35 years or so.

It often seems as if salaried employees don’t see the relationship between their company, their customers and their monthly payslip. The company owes them employment and a living and these rights are enshrined in law, everything the patron does has to be measured against the Code du Travail and if somebody spots that something is not being done by the book, there may well be an outcry. This does not make for company loyalty. The owner often feels alone, without support. The workforce forgets that the patron who started the company and created employment probably had to get a bank loan or re-mortgage his home to do it; the element of risk-taking is often unknown or forgotten.

Because of this, it often seems that doing business in France is extremely difficult, but let’s not forget that France manages with this system and so do many foreign companies which set up businesses here. This doesn’t mean that things would not be better if this legal strangle-hold were not eased. This strangle-hold is partly applied by the unions. What would happen, I wonder, if the trade unions had to function within the constraints of their own finances, that is that they were responsible for their own income, with no subsidies from public funds? I haven’t heard the government suggest that, or perhaps I missed it.

Mrs Thatcher, Monsieur Hollande and the unions

When observing the current difficulties that President Hollande and his socialist government are experiencing with their labour unions, mainly the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), it’s difficult not to think back to Margaret Thatcher’s world-famous battle with the unions in the 1980s which followed her world-famous victory in the Falklands war in 1982. Those were indeed heady times with strong, decisive political leadership.

In 1974, Ted Heath, the Conservative Prime Minister fought an election with the slogan: "Who governs Britain?" The result was that Labour's Harold Wilson became prime minister. It’s this kind of question that many people are asking in France today.

Those of us who were around at the time still remember names like Vic Feather, Joe Gormley, Jack Jones, trade union leaders who had great power and influence. Today, it is difficult to understand just how powerful they were. The strikes were never-ending, all sectors were affected: the steel industry, the car industry, the Post Office, the ferries, transport, power generation, and most famously or infamously, the coal industry. There was also Derek Robinson, known as "Red Robbo", who regularly brought the production lines at British Leyland to a standstill.

The Labour party had traditionally always been close to the unions, claiming that these good relations enabled it to keep them in line. The Conservatives, on the other hand, constantly suffered at the unions’ hand. But the unions, with such repeated strike action, now became an embarrassment to the Labour party.

In the first three months of 1979, the then Labour government ran slap-bang into the "winter of discontent". Public sector workers went on strike, chaos ensued and the effects are remembered to this day. Labour couldn’t handle their union “allies”. At the General Election in May 1979, Mrs Thatcher was returned to power with a majority of just 30. It is fair to say that the unions loathed Mrs Thatcher, but she was on a mission: the "British disease", strike fever, had to be cured and she had the treatment.

She appointed Norman Tebbit as Employment Secretary. Norman Tebbit is now Lord Tebbit, and still a force to be reckoned with. Before becoming a politician, he was an airline pilot and used to be leader of BALPA, the pilots' union. In 1978, Michael Foot, at the time deputy leader of the Labour Party, famously called Norman Tebbit in Parliament a "semi-house-trained polecat". Just the man for the job.

He began by removing legal protection from the unions. “Flying pickets” described at the time as “the shock troops of industrial warfare” were banned; they could no longer blockade factories, fuel depots, refineries, ports, railway stations, public buildings and more. Strike ballots were made compulsory. “The closed shop” was made illegal; this forced anyone trying to get a job to join a specific trade union.

It is a matter of history that the final “battle” was with the miners’ union, led by Arthur Scargill. Large numbers of police officers were brought in to ensure that the pits remained open and there were many very violent clashes, but the miners were finally beaten. By 1985, it was all over. The unions went into a steep decline. Power, influence, membership, much of their legal protection, melted away.

Mr Sarkozy said yesterday that he would make the unions liable for any damage caused during demonstrations organised by them. Mr Hollande said he might go so far as to ban union marches during the state of emergency. It will take more than that to bring about the worthwhile and lasting changes in labour relations that France so desperately needs.

French unions and the CGT

The French CGT union (Confédération Générale du Travail) is seriously slowing the country down, disrupting daily life and calling into question who really runs the country. To say it has almost brought the country to a standstill is a bit of an exaggeration but it’s moving that way. The leader of the public service section of the CGT was interviewed on radio this morning by a polite and knowledgeable presenter, Jean-Michel Abatie; the union man kept referring to the majority of the French public who supported them. This is what they do, keep repeating the same thing over and over until they acquire a kind of legitimacy. The one thing the interviewer didn’t point out was that the CGT represents 3% of workers and should then have asked him to justify his claim to have the support of the French public. The interviewer suggested that the Union considered itself to be stronger, more representative, more legitimate than the democratically elected government, to which the union man said that the current mess was all the government’s fault.

Not only is the fuel supply disrupted, so are the nuclear power stations, the national rail company (SNCF), the Paris underground, airport services, domestic waste collection in Marseille and Paris is affected with rubbish bags beginning to appear on the streets, all of this against the background of torrential downpours and flooding in many parts of the country.

Tomorrow, the Euro 2016 football competition begins. Hundreds of thousands of people will be trying to travel to the different venues and the police, security and other emergency services will be doing their best to make sure that everybody is kept safe. The CGT says this is all the fault of the government for not backing down on their recent watered-down employment legislation initiative.

The government has not exactly got a lot to be proud of in its handling of this situation. Not only has it eviscerated the original employment law, trying to pacify the unions, but it also intervened behind the scenes with the SNCF management’s plan to get its own specific reforms accepted by the unions. The SNCF is a publicly owned enterprise and the government forced the chairman, Guillaume Pépy, to give way to the unions in the hope that this would defuse the industrial action against the new employment law. It didn’t. Monsieur Pépy threatened to resign. He didn’t.

How are unions financed in France? That’s a very simple question which has no simple answer. Union finances are best described as complex or opaque in the sense of not transparent. Only since 2008 has it been a legal requirement for unions to produce certified accounts and to publish them. Statistics are difficult to find and not up-to-date. According to figures on Wikipedia, only 8% of people in France are paid-up members of a union compared to 29% in Britain and Germany, 65% in Belgium and 83% in Sweden. Given this very low membership rate, it is surprising that France has the highest number of union officials as a percentage of union membership. Its subscription income is quite modest and thus inadequate to meet its needs.

Where then does the money come from? The government website Vie Publique, lists them as being: subscriptions, company funding (legal requirement), local authority funding (public and company money), public subsidy. Certain taxes levied on companies by local authorities go towards financing union activities. Most small companies don’t realise this and they would be galled to know that they are footing part of the bill for unions to strike with the ensuing disruption often causing their own businesses to fail. If French unions had to exist on their membership subscription income alone, they would all fail. As it is, they are financially well-endowed, enjoy many privileges and are well protected by law. Why on earth should they put up with any government which attempts to take any of this away from them?