Nope. The more I read the BBC News about Castro the more confused I am. Is it context or balance that is lacking? /s

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.

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.

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"?

I have a soft spot for Cuba I spent about 3 months there just after Castro took control. Before then it was a den of iniquity. The people were very poor indeed and heavily exploited. While Castro was in charged they all got fed and they had a world class health and medical research department.

Apologies, Cuban records has been molested by Climate Scientists. They probably enjoyed the climate and all the other delights on offer, in exchange for foreign money.

http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/legislation/countries/cuba/

Castro, Cuba, Climate Science.

Has sea level in the Bay of Pigs survived unmolested, throughout the evil Climate Science era?

What about Cuba's temperature record?

stewgreen 12:27, anything Lord Deben says on climate science is 97% wrong. He is a very useful inverse barometer, still existing up on high, as climate science sinks to unprecedented lows.

I think he still believes in Mann's Holy Hockey Stick, which has served him very well financially.

Mark Hodgson 8:42 that is roughly the explanation that I had in mind. East Coast USA had stuck with the more traditional English spelling as English modernised/reinvented itself.

There was an Inspector Morse plot where the authorship of a handwritten note was deemed to have originated with someone of a classic British education, ie a Public School, because "..ize" had been used rather than "..ise".