Circuses, but Less Bread 1532


The London Olympics are already achieving the number one aim of the politicians who brought them here, which is making our politicians feel very important indeed.

The media is quite frenetic in its efforts to make us all believe we should be terrifically proud of the fact we are hosting the Olympics, as though there were something unique in this achievement. If we can’t competently do something that Greece, Spain and China have done in recent years, that would be remarkable. Of course the Games will be on the whole well delivered, sufficient for the media and politicians to declare it an ecstatic success. Some of the sporting moments will be sublime, as ever.

But did it have to be in London? We won’t know the total cost of the Games for months, but it will cost the taxpayer at least £9 billion and I suspect a lot more. I also suspect the GDP figures will, in the event, show that the massive net fall in visitor numbers has hurt the already shrinking economy further.

But to take the most optimistic figure, holding the Olympics in London has cost every person in the country an average of £150 per head in extra taxes. That is £600 for a family of four. Actually it is in the end going to be well over £2,000, as of course the money has been borrowed on the never never, and taxpayers are going to be paying it off their whole lives, along with the sum ten times higher they are already paying direct into the pockets of the bankers through their taxes.

The very rich, of course, don’t pay much tax, so they are not worried.

But to take just the figure of £600 extra taxes for a family of four, the lowest possible amount, and not including the interest. Is having the Olympics here really worth paying out £600 for? If Tony Blair had approached the head of the family and said “We are going to have the Olympics in London, but it’s going to cost you £600, would the answer have been from most ordinary people: “Yes, great idea, this is that important to us”?

People are not disconcerted because they don’t see that they have to pay. There is no special Olympics tax, and they pay their taxes in a variety of ways, and individuals are not the sole source of taxation. But this is nonetheless real money taken from the people in pursuit of the hubris of politicians.

I love sport. I hate the corruption of the International Olympic Committee, Fifa and the rest; I hate the vicious corporatism and militarisation of our capital and absurd elitism of the transport lanes; the sport itself I love. But with the economy contracting, and the NHS being farmed out for profit, is it really worth £600 for a family – and many families are really struggling in a heartbreaking way – is it worth the money to have the Olympics here rather than in Paris?

Of course it isn’t. I think many of us will feel an extra pleasure watching the Opening ceremony because it is British. Patriotic pride will surge. It is not wrong to enjoy the spectacle tonight on TV. The corporate well connected and ruling classes will enjoy it in the stadium.

But after you have watched it on TV, ask yourself this question. How much more did you enjoy it than enjoy watching the Beijing ceremony, and was that margin of extra enjoyment something that everybody in the room would have paid out £150 for?

Because they just did.


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1,532 thoughts on “Circuses, but Less Bread

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  • crab

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/18/bilingual-alzheimers-brain-power-multitasking
    “Being bilingual may delay alzheimers and boost brain power”
    -I believe it, and also like this adage “To speak another language is to possess another soul” -Charlemagne

    I found the debate on immigration like a court room drama with great persuasion bouncing back and forth, passions flared sometimes unreasonably but that is natural. I think the two sides have both made points that it would be good to try to accommodate, but the principal of treating everyone equally can demand sacrifices. Perhaps practicalities can demand sacrifices too. I have to support a grey area between. Nevermind just summed it up there as i would like to have added myself “I happen to believe in less borders, but sustainable entities need limited protectionismn to work in a self reliant way.”
    .
    I heard radio 2 announce reassuringly last night that Obama had restated his commitment to diplomatic solution to Iran. Aye wouldn’t it be nice if we could believe a word.

    Heads up everyone. Best to you!

  • Clark

    CheebaCow, I don’t think anyone would get dumber by learning another language, just that they’d be learning that rather than learning or doing something else. The beggars you refer to probably illustrate the point. Multiple languages would be a primary life skill for someone whose income comes mainly from visitors from countries with higher value currencies. You need to practice to become fluent, and you can’t practice if, for instance, you’ve got your head stuck in a book to learn chemistry. Also, these beggars may be fluent in these languages, but are they literate in them as well?
    .
    No, I don’t assume that others are talking about me if I’m in the midst of a group speaking a language I don’t know. However, they could be. I’m at a disadvantage, in that I lack information which they don’t.
    .
    There is also the matter of choice. You, CheebaCow, presumably find that languages and communication present the sort of challenges you find enjoyable and stimulating, or you wouldn’t have gone to live in a place where your primary language was not the local primary language. It’s a bit different for a person who finds that the predominant language in the place that they live is changing around them. They didn’t choose that challenge.
    .
    Regarding the approval of comments that have been submitted more than once, I do consider which version to approve. Often, the earliest one best fits the flow of the thread. Sometimes there are variations; the contributor has removed a link or something, to try to get through the spam filter. Sometimes, I approve them all, and then go back and tidy them up. It can get a bit hectic at times.

  • crab

    Globalism is obviously a hijacked term. It is not an idea of all things being globally related, viewed and connected, it is only about a particular politic being enforced globally. The politic involved being a financially motivated and purposefuly anti social one, it has hijacked the wider term, as its proponents can do so skillfuly. I believe a global pro social entity of some sort could be a great thing.

  • Chris Jones

    CheebaCow.
    .

    “However as the Netherlands has a population density almost twice that of the UK, the idea that the UK is full doesn’t seem convincing to me”
    .

    Just a small pedantic correction if you’d allow me – its the population of England that is one of the most populated in the world relative to size,not Britain as a whole. I will resist doing the Wikipedia thing: from memory i think England is in the top 5 or thereabouts,with Bangladesh, Japan, Malta and probably the Netherlands being in there too

  • Chris Jones

    England (not Britain) being the second most populated country in Europe relative to size-Malta apparently being the first

  • Anon

    Such,
    .
    The teenager was not likely arrested for his reported “taunt”. He may be 17 but his account has 6000+ followers and he specialises in hate. He also threatened to drown Daley and said he would shoot his supporters. He also claims to hate black people (using the N word) and Muslims. Oh and he regularly threatens to rape people.
    .
    If you read back through his tweets (before the Daley incident) he constantly uses hate filled language. He occasionally posts that he is just joking though and doesn’t really mean it but then says that was a joke and of course he meant it.
    .
    It is no surprise that he has been arrested once you read his tweets (still all there as of yesterday and easily findable).
    .
    Yes it may well be an act on his part but he carried it far too far (maybe alcohol fuelled?). In my opinion anyway based on a quick scan.

  • CheebaCow

    Mary:
    .
    Recently a lone duck appeared in the river next to my place and after a few days I decided he needed some friends. Now I have 4 pet ducks, and I’m really surprised what lovely animals they are (as long as the male to female ratio is right). I also have more duck eggs than I know what to do with.
    .
    Clark:
    .
    “I don’t think anyone would get dumber by learning another language”
    .
    I know, I was just kidding around. The beggar spoke 11 languages from India and I’m pretty sure he didn’t learn English for tourism, everyone can speak English there. As to written language, that’s a good point, it had never really occurred to me, I would guess no, at least for most of the languages. I’m only guessing here, but it seemed to me that he, like many Indians are fluent in numerous languages, through no formal training/education, but just from being immersed in the languages since childhood. The human capacity for languages really impresses me, before I traveled much I thought you had to be pretty smart to know even two languages. I have since learned that anyone can learn multiple languages easily if using multiple languages is an everyday thing.
    .
    I think my natural ability with languages would be on the bad end of the scale, I don’t find the challenge particularly fun, but it doesn’t make me feel uneasy. Are there really places in England where English isn’t the predominant language? By this I mean are there communities where second and third generation immigrants aren’t fluent in English and don’t use English primarily when outside the home?
    .
    “However, they could be. I’m at a disadvantage, in that I lack information which they don’t.”
    .
    They could be, but then anyone could be planning anything in their mind. Anytime I have ever been threatened by a group of people, they have never needed a secret language to set me up. In fact every time, the only language any of the people knew was English. If you were to weigh up all the advantages/disadvantages of being a ‘native’ vs all the advantages/disadvantages of being an immigrant, I think it’s almost cruel to begrudge immigrants the slight ‘advantage’ of knowing a minority language.
    .
    Crab:
    .
    That’s a beautiful Charlemagne quote, I’m going to try and remember that.

  • Clark

    Jives, thanks for your support.
    .
    Nevermind, glad you have the sunshine in Edinburgh; a good day to go “up the crags” maybe.
    .
    CheebaCow, “Hackerspace” looks like a great idea. Setting up some kind of community workshop and/or swap-shop is something I’ve often thought about. It also seems similar to some of the Transition Town initiatives. It looks like a good way to forge links between local people, build a set of small structures to fill the vacuum that has been left in the wake as government and local government structures have become larger, more centralised and more corporate in the way they administer power.

  • OldMark

    ‘typical Extremist Right-wing images – Rockall stuffed with the entire population of China and and so on.’
    .
    OOOHH, what’s that big straw man over there ?
    .
    ‘There are nationalisms and there are nationalisms (just as there are socialisms and there are socialisms). There are nationalisms which are fundamentally anti-colonial, progressive, inclusive(eg. mainstream Scottish and Welsh nationalism) and there are nationalisms which are regressive, supremacist and which draw on ‘blood’, ‘soil’ and constructed memories of empire and unfortunately, the latter is the manner in which, to date, most British and English nationalism has manifested politically. Some nationalisms contain elements of both and then there is a tussle for power within such movements.’
    .
    That’s a bit better; change ‘some nationalisms’ to ‘most nationalisms’ and you have the beginnings of a rational argument. All Balkan nationalisms include anti colonial elements (‘throwing off the Turkish yoke’ and so forth), and ‘blood & soil’ elements. Most twentieth century Zionists were political progressives, but were utterly blind to the colonial overtones of the ‘making the desert bloom’ rhetoric they used to push the idea in the diaspora.
    .
    Clark: the dilemma you posed some time back about English nationalism needing to free itself from the trappings of empire, and the assumption of superiority that go with it, was timely.Thanks.

  • crab

    There was an active hackerspace in the ‘Forest Cafe’ in Bristol Place in Ediburgh but the scene there died and the Cafe is closed now. The old church building in Bristol place is possibly squatted now by activists unencumbered by the previous artschool management, it could be worth checking out.

  • CheebaCow

    Clark:
    .
    Yeah with a tiny (relatively) amount of funding and some people with free time you could do all sorts of stuff that would appeal to people across the community. Free web space for users, robotics and video game making for kids/students, Linux distros and guides for mums, dads and grandparents, basic tools to tinker with your electronics, video/sound production and 3d animation. You could do just about everything listed above based on open source tech and have some really cool collaborations between different communities around the country.
    .
    I also find the Pirate Parties interesting, but I think they need to develop offline a lot more before they can really start to have a positive effect.

  • Clark

    CheebaCow, languages are related, so an understanding of multiple languages can improve ability in ones primary language. Practice is essential to fluency, so being surrounded by people speaking the languages one wishes to learn is a big help.
    .
    In my experience in England, I’m unlikely to find myself somewhere where English isn’t spoken at all, and I can’t make myself understood, at least about simple matters. However, it’s not that unusual in parts of London to be surrounded by people sharing a common language other than English, for everyone to be chatting around me whilst I can’t understand any of it. And if the atmosphere isn’t friendly, I can find that a bit scary. I’ve found the same thing in Bradford.
    .
    For all this talk of the benefits of multilingualism, I can’t see that it would necessarily help in a situation like that. It takes time to learn a language, and in cases of, say, misunderstanding that could lead to conflict, communication would be needed immediately.

  • Passerby

    Whilst the Saudi, Qatari and their mentors US, UK, et al, are busy planning and executing mass murder in Syria, yet another Muslim country, among the many Muslim countries that have been the subject of the shock, and awe murder fest, as a point of policy for the duration of the last decade in the 21st century.
    ,
    Rohingyas of Myanmar, formerly Burma, are being systematically, ethnically cleansed, from Burma. The same Burma that was the subject of years of tv and print media’s undivided attention lavished on aung san suu kyi, the same aung san suu kyi who was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford, and the print media waxed lyrical about her indefatigable fight against Burmese generals. Fact that she is as silent as the “media” or Oxford, or US, UK, et al, about the plight of the Muslim Rohingyas whom have been forced out of their homes and villages and are seeking asylum in Bangladesh.
    ,
    Fact that Bangladesh authorities as of today have ordered the four aid organizations operating to save the thousands of refugees from certain death, to stop helping the three hundred thousand refugees. Through feeding them and providing tents, and sanitation and water facilities, that effectively condemns these three hundred thousand Muslim souls to a death sentence, is no where to be seen in the “media” either.
    ,
    These monstrous Tartuffe and their fucking hypocrisy, stonewalling the mass murder, and ethnic cleansing in Burma, whilst pushing the terrorists in Syria as “freedom fighters”, is an all too evident and nauseating reality that Muslims are systematically being discriminated against across the planet.
    ,
    Fact that no one has so far even cursorily hinted at the plight of Rohingyas. Fact that the Muslim Rohingyas cannot vote, cannot be elected, are forbidden from owning their land and homes, are forbidden from even applying for a driving license, and have been forced to live under an awful apartheid, that is seeking to destroy and ethnically cleanse these from its lands in Burma.
    ,
    Who is talking about the holocaust of Rohingyas or Muslims for that matter?
    ,
    Shame on humanity, history shall judge harshly.

  • Mark Golding - Children of Iraq Association

    When Robin Cook got up from his seat after a heady BBC Question time in early 2005 I was there promptly to encourage him to one side of a bustling stage. I hurriedly introduced myself and tactically maneuvered Robin to answer some prepared questions I had scribbled on the back of an envelope. Nervously yet with perfect eye contact he complied.
    .
    I asked Robin rather naively if Labour cabinet members knew the “Dodgy Dossier” was based largely on a 12-year old PhD thesis culled from the Internet. He agreed and confirmed it made the case for war and sympathetically suggested it was all lies, resulting in hundreds of thousands dead and maimed including babies and children; millions of Iraqis displaced – yet no one held to account.
    .
    Robin’s driver appeared glancing over to the stage and looking at his watch. Crucially before he sped out to his waiting transport Robin tensely and apprehensively suggested A-Qaeda was a UK/American asset. His last words to me expressed a need, a warning from his wife, Gaynor to “get out of politics now.”
    .
    Of course Robin knew he was a marked man having demonstrated as foreign secretary his opposition to the expansion of Israeli settlements; he was after all enacting his intention to add “an ethical dimension” to foreign policy.
    .
    Today sadly I remember his nervous hand-shake and realise the truth of his words; Al-Qaeda is funded and armed by the West to execute regime change as and when required. The recent secret memo authorised and signed by President Obama gives assistance to terrorists in funding and encrypted communications that pin-point intel obtained by satellite on Syrian government forces’ strength and positions. It may well also source, buy and train these terrorists in the use of sophisticated weapons.
    .
    http://www.rt.com/news/us-support-syrian-rebels-obama-650/
    .
    I pray for a righteous denouement to the Syrian conflict, that the aftermath will fail to paint another gruesome picture of despair, hopelessness and sorrow, a condition we witness today in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.

  • Screaming Lord Sutch

    Mary, re: Michael Woods piece and G4S over at Propaganda HQ.
    .
    G4S (bigger than the British Army) is Israeli owned, I noted the article was very careful to state they are based in Crawly – a deliberate distraction in my view.
    .
    This story below is from the days when they were called Group 4 Security and the Guardian had yet to sell out to the fascist/globalist/Zionists power nexus (aka bankers).
    .
    Guardian investigation reveals how armed patrols work with Israeli settlers to control Palestinians
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/oct/09/israel
    .
    The parent company, Group 4 Flack as it was, was set up by Mossad. Ownership recently changed (suspiciously, after securing the Olympic deal) to another Israeli Mossad front called Hashmira (also mentioned in the Guardian article).
    .
    Now, think Olympic False Attack? A subject which the web has been getting hysterical about over the last month.
    .
    The discovery of such a plot to stage an ‘incident’ is the only rational explanation for what we have seen over the last couple of weeks with the Olympic Security debacle and the Army replacing them in *all* the sensitive areas.
    .
    I personally was expecting a chemical/bio gas attack, as the physical damage to property would be minimal but still has the suitably scary “WMD” to bring it up to 911 standards of terror.

  • Screaming Lord Sutch

    “I personally was expecting a chemical/bio gas attack, as the physical damage to property would be minimal but still has the suitably scary “WMD” to bring it up to 911 standards of terror.”
    .
    The reason I say this is that the media went nuts about Syrian chemical weapons in the month leading up to the opening ceremony and Israel even declared it was about to invade Syria to secure said chemical weapons, yet for the previous 16 months of the Syrian troubles chemical weapons were never an issue.
    .
    Is it a coincidence that all the talk of chemical weapons and Israeli invasions evaporated from the media after G4S were effectively sacked from security?

  • OldMark

    Passerby- You’re wrong to think that the plight of the Rohingya is going unnoticed;

    http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2012/07/20120716t1830vHKT1.aspx

    What is really galling about the current situation is the role of Bangladesh. The Rohingya are descended from indigent Bengali day labourers who migrated to Burma around a century ago. Their mother tongue is the Chittagong dialect of Bengali. Bangladesh could quite reasonably be called their ‘homeland’!

  • Komodo

    “The parent company, Group 4 Flack as it was, was set up by Mossad. Ownership recently changed (suspiciously, after securing the Olympic deal) to another Israeli Mossad front called Hashmira (also mentioned in the Guardian article).”
    .
    Don’t think so. Group 4 was founded by the late Philip Sorenson, lately also chair of Ecover, and Falck (as it was) was founded by a Swede called Sophus Falck in 1906. Sorenson presided over their merger to form G4 Falck. G4 Hashmira is the Israeli subsidiary, and is very good at helping to incarcerate Palestinians without trial or representation, but it doesn’t need Mossad’s help to do that.

  • Mary

    ScreamingLS The medja have moved on this afternoon from Syria. They are losing control of their collective bladders over the rush of GB medals!
    .
    Today’s the target for attack is Putin, especially contained within the black propaganda from Ms Bridget Kendall of the BBC. I see her partner Amanda Farnsworth used to be the editor for the BBC Six O’Clock News, then editor for Daytime news, ie 1pm and 6pm news and now i/c propaganda for 2012, Jubilee, Torch, Olympics, etc.
    http://www.visitengland.org/Images/Amanda%20Farnsworth_tcm30-29415.pdf

    .
    There are still many days left for something to happen btw. The military helicopter setting down at a police HQ yesterday seemed rather unusual.

  • CheebaCow

    Chris Jones
    .
    Ahh fair point, not pedantic at all. Instead I’ll be the pedant. Those numbers are only true if you count the 18 percent of the surface area of the Netherlands which is water. If you exclude the water, then the population density of the Netherlands is still considerably higher at 484/km2.
    .
    Clark:
    .
    “However, it’s not that unusual in parts of London to be surrounded by people sharing a common language other than English”
    .
    That’s perfectly normal in big Australian cities also. I grew up on the edge of some of those neighborhoods. The family next door who used to babysit me a lot when mum was working only spoke Spanish (I’m told that at 5 my Spanish was as good as my English, but I can’t even remember speaking a word). The school I went to was around 50% Greek kids, my best mate was from a huge Italian family. Hearing different languages was just a part of life, entirely unusual.
    .
    “And if the atmosphere isn’t friendly, I can find that a bit scary.”
    .
    Surely the atmosphere not being friendly is the important part, not the language being used? Personally, if the atmosphere isn’t friendly I ain’t hanging around, regardless of the language being spoken.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Old Mark, if it’s a straw man, it was one introduced here by Komodo, not me (see their ‘Tasmania’ analogy). My caricaturing of it (in the Rockall image) was only a slight exaggeration. We’ve heard this kind of thing here before from Extreme Right-wing posters (‘the whole population of the world could be squeezed into Hampshire if everyone stood up straight’, or something of that sort). And then some of these commentators go on to claim, for example, that Leicester has been subject to “genocide”. It’s introduced always – here, there and everywhere – by those peddling Far Right agendas. Agendas of hate, of scapegoating, Weapons of Mass Distraction.

  • Clark

    CheebaCow, yes, the bad atmosphere is the more important bit, but lack of a mutual language certainly cuts down your options. It even makes assessment of the situation more difficult and error-prone. And there are lots of other situations where communication is vitally important. A shared language is a really significant tool, and finding it absent in your toolkit can be worrying. I think that’s normal, not racist.
    .
    Just a reminder of the context of all this, which is: is it reasonable to cast someone as racist if they’re uneasy about such things as the rate of immigration, or changes in the language mix in their locality? I don’t think so. If someone hurls insults about skin colour or foreign ancestry, or constantly gives preferential treatment to people they regard as their own race, or pre-judges individuals by racial stereotypes; these things are racist.
    .
    It seems pretty clear to me that Technicolour’s stance was something like “if you question or criticise the immigration rate, or suggest that any aspect of nationalism is anything but evil, I will try to discredit you as racist, so shut up”. Well, I object to that sort of clamp-down. It also dilutes the term “racism”.

  • Mary

    No inquest for Dr Kelly and objections to the cost of one for Alexander Litvinenko.

    .
    http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/ken-clarke-demands-cut-in-4m-litvinenko-murder-inquest-costs-8000999.html

    .
    Cameron said on Sky News today that the death of Litvinenko is something that comes between the UK and Russia and prevents a closer relationship.
    {http://news.sky.com/story/967852/putin-on-first-london-visit-for-nine-years}
    In the interview with Kay Burley from the Olympic Park, he said that ‘Assad must be got rid of’ and that the actions against him must be ramped up. Blatant war mongering.

  • nuid

    “But this makes no difference to the argument about feeling uneasy if surrounded by people speaking to each other in a language one doesn’t understand.”
    .
    I’ve never felt that in my life! You can’t enjoy travel very much Clark. (Or maybe you haven’t had the opportunity to do much of it.) One of my greatest pleasure has been to pick up bits and bobs of other languages while abroad.
    .
    “I’d be surprised if something wasn’t displaced by learning extra languages, especially learning them later in life.”
    .
    Well, you didn’t mention age in your initial statement. And no, I don’t think anything is “displaced” in the brain. The part of the brain that deals with language and communication is not (as far as I know) the same part that deals with, say, mathematics or chemistry.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurobiological_origins_of_language#Broca.27s_and_Wernicke.27s_areas
    .
    Nuid: “Whatever is going on?” – I was wondering the same thing!”
    .
    No, I didn’t say that Clark. I used no question mark. I said, “And that doesn’t sound like you either, whatever is going on”. Meaning, there’s something going on but I’m damned if I know what it is. You found nothing in what Komodo said to quibble with, but you lashed out at Technicolour, who seemed largely on the same page as Suhayl. Komodo, who more or less admitted to “shitstirring” didn’t get one critical comment from you. (And it emerges, finally, that Komodo’s ‘concerns’ about immigration seem to be largely a result of being left on a housing list for a long time, and blaming that on immigrants.)
    .
    “The “Racists depriving you of your free will?” jibe was my response to having my direct question completely ignored”
    .
    It was sarcasm, which I’m not accustomed to seeing from you. I’ve had direct questions completely ignored — e.g. when I asked Uzbek to back up his/her accusation of hypocrisy by people here. (His/her implication was that people were condoning terrorism against non-Muslims.) Nobody batted an eye when I got no answer.
    .
    “Do you think that I’m racist? Are you trying to suggest to others that I’m racist?” – As I wrote immediately below that, these are genuine questions.
    .
    Yes, and it came across as paranoia.
    .
    It’s been good to see Suhayl, Technicolour and CheebaCow back here. Somehow I don’t think we’ll be seeing a whole lot of Tech in future, but hopefully I’ll be proved wrong.

  • nuid

    I appreciate that the precise words a person uses are important. But afterwards, it’s the totality of what a person has written that leaves an impression.
    And I referred early on to CanSpeccy (Albert/Alfred, whichever) because that’s the general impression I was left with, after reading Komodo. I don’t think I was alone in that.

  • DonnyDarko

    So, Kofi Annan has resigned, Syria is at war, Israel chomping at the bit, Iran saying “c’mon c’mon ” , the US , we are only intersted in world peace ,and this blog is discussing languages not learned nor spoken and racism issues.
    It is true that one can disram the opponent with rhetoric….. think I’ll open my pack of Mr Kiplings almond slices.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Wrt languages, there is considerable evidence now to suggest that being bi- or tri-lingual enhances many aspects of linguistic functioning, that each language ‘helps’ the other and that the dynamic of learning them aids the conceptual and expressive abilities, as well as brain function more generally. It’s not to say that people who are monolingual do not have these abilities, but – as with studying and practising music, also thought to be excellent for the mind – brain development throughout life is a multi-faceted and highly complex process.
    .

    All this might seem obvious to many, and my view is that the education system would do well to be teaching kids 2-3 languages minimum as a compulsory part of their education, from primary school onwards as they do in much of Continental Europe). if China cxan import lots and lots of teachers of English, can we not do the same with Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi-Urdu, etc.? If everyone spoke (at least two of) English, Mandarin, Spanish, French and Hindi-Urdu, we’d be able to communicate directly – and do business with – with much of the population of the world. It would be a great advantage (as well as being a good thing). Gaelic and Scots, too, in Scotland, present exciting opportunities.
    .

    It also would be good if kids could learn English in a manner which allowed them to use the language effectively (grammar, syntax and so on). There seems to be considerable debate going on right now in this area wrt ‘phonics’ and so on – a good series of programmes recently on BBC Radio 4 on this subject presented by the children’s writer, Michael Morpurgo. Language is like a music and we are the instruments – indeed, even when we read, we make sub-audible movements with our vocal apparatus, so that as we read silently, we are singing. Now let me get my dissonant axe and joyously split an infinitive!

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