While catching up with the morning news I came across this...

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/golf/49016675

Now I'm not a player of the Scottish game; golf is, for me, something that other folk do. I have tried it; my ex's family are all golfistes of skill and dexterity, and I played for a term at school as it was a long relaxed bunk-off from other more onerous scholarly pursuits, or worse, other sports or games that weren't cricket, swimming, or table-tennis. (I seem to recall a term with the épée too; the things our childish conceits put us through.)

Anyway, gratuitous history aside, this exchange between Mr Woods and Gavin Andrews shows that British regional accents, no matter how euphonious or otherwise, don't necessary translate into the wider media. I've said before now that some forms of spoken English facilitate greater understanding, whereas others occlude meaning. Mr Woods may well have been in a similar fix if he had been in Tyneside, or Glasgow. Gavin Andrews has a nice voice, and is no doubt a good journalist but in merely asking a question he has highlighted the problem of regional inclusivity when it comes to accents on the Beeb.

It was once the case that "RP" was synonymous with "BBC English". It promoted understanding and comprehensibility by setting the standards from which we were then all free to deviate. But that someone, asking a question of an American (who uses English as his mother-tongue), would do so in an accent that is literally incomprehensible to the interviewee, is slightly bonkers.

There needs to be a middle ground between putting regional accents to the fore and comprehensibility. Obviously I'd prefer a return to old-fashioned RP, because that's my default mode; but I accept that's not going to happen. So instead I'll put my weight behind maximising comprehensibility. I'm sure everyone has a right to their own handwriting, but when it comes to printing, some typefaces are just more legible than others; and when it comes to speaking, some accents are just more intelligible than others.

Nice case of not really knowing your catechism; and mixing religion and politics badly...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-49017512

Wherein we find that some folk, despite being nominally Christian, don't appear to be aware of "Render unto Caesar" which deals with this case specifically. How detached from reality are Christians these days? And how ignorant of their own beliefs and scripture?

Or maybe these folk aren't actually Christians. Maybe they are just rather simple capitalists who want some sort of affiliation with what they imagine to be their cultural inheritance. Maybe they want inclusion in some structure that does not partake of "the other"; because that is often how we define ourselves.

But whatever their motivation happens to be, these folk appear to be heterodox. Christians render unto Caesar. Jesus is recorded as actually telling them to do so in all of the synoptic gospels; they were told to pay their taxes, and at a guess, looking at the wording and context, in full. But try telling some Christians that. The context of the Zealot's revolt against Roman taxation rather makes the case specific. But it does go to show just how far back we can document anger about taxes.

What do the modern Christians think about taxes?

I mean if Jesus said it directly (as with the Sermon on the Mount) surely even Pauline theology can't ignore the direct instruction Jesus gives.

Or maybe American Christianity can just redact those bits of Jesus's teachings it objects to. 

The new Slough House novel...

Joe Country, by Mick Herron, is easily the best so far.

Of course there are miserable deaths, and sparkling dialogue as counterpoint. And some good jokes. When you read the extremely dodgy politician Peter Judd's dialogue it really should be heard in the inner ear as speaking with Bojo's voice. Also, the spook's church being St. Leonard's; I'm sure Elmore would have approved.

Slough House is at the lower end of purgatory, one step up from the least awful circle of hell, just behind the Barbican. The stories from there are getting better and better. If Pratchett had ever attempted the spy novel, he'd have to have been on top form to get close to this. I wonder, what are the requirements for good spy writing? Dense yet traceable plots? Dialogue? Characterisation? Villainous good guys and sympathetic bad guys?

Well, none of Herron's characters is anything other than flawed; excepting a blameless incidental chap who gets scarred for life. The only innocent in the whole novel gets shafted, as is good and proper in a spy novel; but it's not really about him as he's just collateral - again, as is good and proper... etc.

To those of us who grew up on Le Carré and his cold-war novels of moral equivocation will get the seediness of the milieu. But Slough House is many ranks lower than the Park or Le Carré's Circus.

Satisfying in all the wrong ways.