Now here's a movement I can go with

Uproar in the UK as Apostrophes abolished by council - Birmingham council has banned the use of apostrophes in street signs because its staff spend too much time dealing with complaints about grammar. (It seems being forced to spend extended periods indoors with a blizzard raging outside has been all too much!)

This is a move that has deeply upset John Richards, the founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society. Mr Richards suggested the move could prove to be the first step towards linguistic anarchy. "If you don't have apostrophes," he said, "is there any point in full stops, or semi-colons, or question marks? Is there any point in punctuation at all?" As a chronically confused user of apostrophes, I applaud the decision. And as for the rest of the punctuation, my granny managed just fine without punctuation in her letters - she wrote as she spoke, no room for a breath in, she seemed to be on intravenous oxygen. (It could take quite a while to get away as we waited for her to take a breath in so we could say, "got to go now Gran.") What do others think?

Do check out the comments at the bottom of the article and some of the related stories in the links to the right such as Council bans jargon and orders staff to return to 'common sense speaking' and Primary school drops word school from name as 'too negative'. Hooray for political correctness gone mad!

Champit tatties*

*(scots. - mashed pototoes - as in haggis, neeps and champit tatties as eaten at a traditional Burns Supper. Yummmmmm).

Lots to look at again this week. But it was fun and interesting.

Had a read of the wikipedia description of mashups first and looked at all the different sites. Thought the AlertMap was great. There's a "locust and other beetle infestation" at Temora right now! Great site for kids doing their 'disasters' projects.

Also impressive was CLEARMAP, in use by the Chicago Police to record and warn citizens of crime levels in their area. Useful for statisticians, politicians, sociologists and students for up-to-date and retro info. on crime. Wonder if any local police services are doing similar things? Didn't like the google maps do-it-yourself one though; too open to nefarious posts I should think - people trying to make up crime stats to suit their own purposes (see politicians above!).

Diaroogle - what a sensible site I thought, then I read it's mission statement - "It's for the discerning, on-the-go defecator who is brave enough to use a public bathroom, but still demands a hygienic and private bathroom experience." Hmmmm. That aside Diaroogle does help you find quality public toilets from your mobile phone. Handy. Compare it to the National Public Toilet Map, an initiative of former Liberal government minister, Bronwyn Bishop - with that one you have to check out the loos and try and estimate which one you'll need to use BEFORE you go out. Indeed the site acknowledges this - there is a Trip Planner to make life easier.

What a hoot the Big Huge Labs are. I've made a little brag book of the new babies for my daughter to take to school, and a dice on the same theme. And here's me by Andy Warhol. Quite fancy myself in the MOMA.


See my library poster? The boss has already ordered A3 copies from the printer so expect one in your boxes soon.

London : a life in maps. Love it. Can see the Local History boy having fun doing something like that. Have bookmarked it to really pour over later. Need to hurry before we're disconnected at 2pm.

The Public Library finder has obvious relevance to our lot. Anyone doing that in Oz?


When you have a spare several hours, have a look at The Generator Blog. There's hundreds of things to play with. One recent one is The Lazy Bloggers Post which I've already flagged before.

Ae Fond Kiss and Tam O'Shanter - how they should sound

I had a bit of a fright when I went looking for recitations of these great Scottish poems. Initially all I found was some AMERICAN doing a recitation of Ae Fond Kiss - nearly passed out! They don't even do well at English, never mind Scots!!

Then I remembered YouTube and found that there's heaps.

Below is Karen Dunbar reciting the exciting tale of Tam O'Shanter (click for the words). Set in Ayr where I went to boarding school, this is the story of a man who gets chased by witches and warlocks one night on his way home from the pub. We used to get learning verses of this as punishment.

This is one my Mum would approve of, a rendition of Ae Fond Kiss (again, click for the words) by The Corries.

Now I know I'm working too hard . . .

I haven't officially 'done' week 4 and RSS feeds yet but I've had a feed going for a little while. One of my feeds is the Guardian newspapers books blog. I was initially intrigued by the post Heading: Classic Poetry gets the Jackson treatment. Can you imagine my horror however, when I followed the link to an article entitled Michael Jackson goes into studio with Robert Burns. According to the article, poems W Jacko is going to have a go at include Ae Fond Kiss and Tam O'Shanter.

OMG, it's going to take a while to recover from the thought. Where are my smelling salts?