Dale Farm - a question of semantics

Sky News ran a poll today:

Should the Dale Farm travellers be forcefully evicted?

The results were perhaps unsurprising: 92% Yes, 8% No.

What I found more interesting was the wording of the question. Most coverage of this story has talked about "forcible" evictions. According to an online dictionary, forcible means "done or effected by force: forcible entry into a house" while forceful means "full of force; powerful; vigorous; effective". To me, forceful implies a degree of force beyond that which is strictly necessary to achieve the goal. I wonder whether Sky's choice of word was accidental or deliberate - and whether the 92% of respondents were actually enthused by the idea of police and bailiffs going just a bit too far.

Of course, the more obvious semantic question about the whole story is why these people label themselves travellers but want to stay put. Unfortunately I'm about the two millionth person to pose the question and no one has yet managed to answer it.

Booze, part 2

Speaking as the person who usually sticks with soft drinks at parties, I was interested to see this article on the BBC website yesterday. An eminent anthropologist suggests that many of the behaviours associated with alcohol are nothing to do with the physical effects but the result of personal or social expectations around drinking.

This comes as no surprise to me. I've long believed that in many cases inebriation is more psychological than physical. Of course balance, reaction times and the like are impaired; you won't catch me arguing that it's safe to drive or perform open-heart surgery when under the influence of alcohol. But there's nothing in a bottle to make someone become verbally or physically aggressive, jump into bed with a stranger, or do any of the other things that tend to be explained away with "I'd had a few drinks". I'm convinced that what really happens is the drinker sees an opportunity to act outside established social norms without having to take full responsibility, because society has allowed alcohol to be an acceptable scapegoat.

I know a person who when drinking becomes argumentative, opinionated, generally obnoxious. From the very first sip. This behaviour wouldn't be considered acceptable in many other countries where drinking is just as deeply ingrained. In Spain and Italy for example, many people drink a large amount over the course of a week but it isn't seen as extraordinary and doesn't lead to extremes of behaviour. Try convincing a magistrate there that it wasn't your fault, it was the drink. I suspect you wouldn't get far.

Alcohol is a depressant yet we're told some people become dependent, which seems a strange state of affairs. I can understand addiction to a stimulant, but how often do you hear someone say "I had to take more and more to get the same low"? I suspect that alcohol addiction is more about freedom from social norms than anything physical. And maybe there are others out there like me, who can enjoy the taste of a drink without turning into lager louts.

So, back to the subject of alcohol on the coach. Perhaps these secret G&T drinkers aren't bound to misbehave and it's all a storm in an Irish coffee cup.

Booze, part 1

Earlier this week I received an email from my coach company:

It has been reported ... that alcohol is being consumed on a number of the commuters coaches on both the morning and evening journeys.

And that's just the drivers. Boom-tish.

The email warned that anyone found drinking may be thrown out at the next stop. But what caught my eye was the word morning. Although it's not my cup of tea, I can understand a tinny to unwind on the way home from work - and on what I call the party coach there's certainly a pub-like atmosphere at times, with or without booze. But really, if you need a drink before you even get to work, it's time to look for another job, or some help.

Autumn Days

It was my sons' harvest festival last Friday and one of the hymns was called Autumn Days, by one Estelle White. With apologies to whoever holds the copyright, here are the lyrics.

Autumn days, when the grass is jewelled
And the silk inside a chestnut shell
Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled
All these things I love so well

So I mustn’t forget
No, I mustn’t forget
To say a great big thank you
I mustn’t forget

Clouds that look like familiar faces
And a winter’s moon with frosted rings
Smell of bacon as I fasten up my laces
And the song the milkman sings

Whipped-up spray that is rainbow-scattered
And a swallow curving in the sky
Shoes so comfy though they’re worn out and they’re battered
And the taste of apple pie

Scent of gardens when the rain’s been falling
And a minnow darting down a stream
Picked-up engine that’s been stuttering and stalling
And a win for my home team

According to a post on another blog, Estelle White died earlier this year, aged 85. A former nun and a versatile musician, she apparently wrote more than 160 hymns. I must admit though to surprise that this one is so popular at harvest festivals. Evidently I'm not the first to take issue with it either.

I should point out that my sons' school is CoE and lays on the Anglicanism fairly thick at times. Autumn Days seems at odds with this. My own church upbringing leaves me reluctant to term it a hymn. Usually there would be some kind of reference to God or a theological point. The closest this one comes is in the chorus: "I mustn't forget to say a great big thank you" - which begs the question, to whom? The things themselves? The universe? It sounds as though the children are embracing pantheism. Ms White herself apparently believed in starting from something concrete rather than abstract; it’s a common approach among modern songwriters but hymnists normally include some kind of religious reference along the way.

Of course, the basic theme of the song is to be grateful, to something or other. And this, it appears, is why the choristers in the article disliked it: they didn't believe they should be expressing gratitude for aircraft.

I have a more fundamental objection anyway: semantics. I don't believe many jet planes met in the air to be refuelled, even in the 60s when Ms White claimed it was a marvel, and I've never seen a cloud that resembled a familiar face (other than possibly in Disney's version of Pooh and the Heffalump). Would I really be putting my shoes on before the breakfast is even cooked? And milkmen were supposed to whistle, not sing, even assuming you could hear them above the whine of the electric float. Most of all I dislike the last line. "Home" team is the team playing in its own stadium. "My" team implies favouritism. The two concepts are unrelated: "my home team" makes no sense at all. And nor do I think it's healthy to thank a deity for a sports victory: it poses awkward questions in defeat. Perhaps Ms White had no clue about sport. But then she was a Geordie, where football is a religion, and presumably she spent a good part of her life wearing black and white...

The best compliment I can pay this song is that it meant there was no room on the school's playlist for "When the knight won his spurs". Who aren't my home team, incidentally.