Unthreaded
Can I recommend this informed and objective view of Cuba by John Simpson in the Spectator
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/11/cuba-really-like-fidel-castro/
Ross Lea
The plight of Cuba is not primarily a consequence of Castro's revolution but to 1) the USA's embargos and its attempts to isolate it from the world community, 2) its overall poverty before and after the revolution and 3) it only had one cash export - sugar which was sold originally to the USA then to the USSR in exchange for petroleum products. After 1991 the USSR market disappeared and Cuba lost access to petroluem products (fuel, pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilizers - all seemingly essential to its agriculture). Somehow the Castro regime managed these enormous problems creating the best educated population in the whole of Latin America, an innovative health system that is the envy of many and whose new techniques were exported worldwide (except to the USA), an agricultural system reinventing old techniques that just about kept its population from starvation (rice and beans mostly) and it created a new pride in its people exemplified by its success in international.sport. It has been many years since I visited (but after the revolution) and it didn't feel like a communist dictatorship, people spoke to you in the street and bitched something shocking about their governments.
I have always been interested in Cuba because if peak oil had been imminent, it provided an illustration of how we might have managed with limited petroleum products.
ACK
I'll second your comments about Feersum Endjinn, RR. I especially enjoyed many of Iain M Banks SF books that always contrived a happy ending.
michael hart
Stewgreen: my comment was not that language should be constrained and never allowed to evolve, it is that it is being corrupted, in diction, usage, spelling and punctuation. Following a common spelling makes reading much easier, for reasons I have already given; punctuation also allows for better comprehension – read Eats Shoots and Leaves to find out why. Diction, nowadays, seems to be intent on reducing the language to guttural grunts – “Do’wha, i’sson duh innerneh inni’ …” What does the BBC have against the letter “T”? Why should people feel the need to demonstrate their “street cred” by unlimited utterances of swear-words (commonly the four-lettered variety; perhaps because anything longer becomes an intellectual challenge?)? Surely, limiting your use of foul language gives any use of it more impact – one of the best-known film quotes is “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” The only “cuss”-word used in that film, and one that caused palpitations at the time; now, we have to endure such delights as the opening sequence being an endless stream of the same four-lettered swear-word. Ho ho ho; how clever. If the films are to be believed (and why not? – after all, they are so often mimicked), the only way to open a conversation with a pretty girl is to start with a four-lettered word of foul language. Yet, read the classics, from Don Quixote to the Discworld series, and very, very rarely are such words used, as the masters of the written word really have no need for such vulgarities; it is not “strong” language; it is weak language.
Radical Rodent
Nope. The more I read the BBC News about Castro the more confused I am. Is it context or balance that is lacking? /s
Harry Passfield
I just love the BBC's hagiographic reporting of Castro's death. They manage to get Corbyn, Livingstone and Galloway to praise the fact that Castro gave his country a top class health and education service. I daresay Abbott will be along soon to say that he was as good as Mao at running his country and looking after his people.
And that tells me that the Left's key success indicator would be health and education sucking up the UK's entire GDP while all UK drivers running round in 1950s Ford Prefects, Austin Eights and Morris Minors while we couldn't afford to live in anything but council housing or WW II prefabs. The Left have always hated their own countrymen.
Harry Passfield
ACK, as someone who has never had wonderful neat handwriting, a capital "Z" was unmistakable, so is a lowercase "z".
Putting a lower case "z" into joined up handwriting was always a struggle. Mine look similar to a lowercase "g". A lowercase "s" for many in joined up handwriting does look a bit like a teardrop shape with a slightly curved wavecrest tip.
If there ever was confusion about the use of "s" as opposed to "z", I wonder if it was simply easier for teachers and pupils alike. I do not mean lasiness by teachers and pupils, just eazier and zimpler.
golf charlie
I don't think it's ever been "arize" or excercize just "arise" or excercise
whereas summarize and summarise were options
So with passing time the "ize" sounds came to be written more often as ise ..a standardisation.
I hate writing Because when cos will do
and hate saying long winded archaic things like "I beg your pardon"
stewgreen
If you are correct about more recent UK use of the -ise ending, why do you think this has happened? It doesn't seem to.make much sense - replacing an ending that phonetically reproduces the way the words are pronounced with an ending that requires new users of them to independently memorize (note ending) the way they are spelt and pronounced.
Has there been a demonization of the letter "z"?
ACK
RR sometimes swear words used in abundance work. I half recall a Peter Sellars film in which he masqueraded as a hoodlum with huge shoulder pads in which every other word he uttered was foul. But this was the point - it was excruciating funny -all words were pronounced in a mock Italian accent. However the classic scene occurred in a lift - once seen, never forgotten.