The brick famine. Peter Rhodes on a snag in Whitehall's planning, the case against booze and the misuse of question marks?
THE row over diesel pollution and car tax rumbles on, reaching some inspiring levels of discourse. From one website comes the claim that: “Modern diesels are just as clean as petrol engines because they all have catastrophic converters.”
BUILD, build, build. There is only one warcry in Whitehall today and that is to build as many new houses as possible. But listen closely and beneath the shrill yell of “build!” you may hear builders asking: “With what?”
FOR Britain is in the grip of a chronic shortage of bricks and building blocks. Builders report having to order some types months in advance. One cause of the shortage is Britain’s green energy policies. Building blocks are made with PFA, pulverised fuel ash, which traditionally came from British coal-fired power stations. As they have been replaced with wind farms and gas turbines, the supply of PFA has dried up. The new Jerusalem will be exceedingly green and pleasant but you may have nowhere to live.
THE food critic Giles Coren has written a splendid column calling for a total ban on alcohol. “No good ever came of a drink,” he thunders, blaming the demon brew for addling our brains and, worst of all, fuelling male sexual violence. Coren gave up booze four years ago. Until then, it’s fair to say his life was a succession of rages including a famous email rant at a hapless sub-editor for daring to cut one word from a review, and a Tweet involving a neighbour’s kid for which Coren had to apologise.
If the booze was to blame, Coren was quite right to give it up. The rest of us enjoy the occasional harmless slug and there is some medical evidence that moderate intake is healthier than no booze at all. Coren is a former drinker who has gone teetotal and now wants us all to be forced to join him. As any anti-terrorist cop will tell you, the converts are always the worst.
IF you are irritated by interviewees beginning answers with: “So ...” brace yourself for another growing abuse of our fair language, the random use of question marks. This came from a PR company a few days ago: “I hope you are well? I am contacting you to see if you are considering a technology angle around Black Friday?” Neither of these sentences is a question, so why the question marks? My guess is that the writer is under 40, grew up watching Neighbours and has adopted the Australian ‘upspeak’ where the pitch of the voice rises at the end of every sentence, making it sound like a question. And if it sounds like a question it must need a question mark?
MY new debit card arrives from the bank with the stern instruction to destroy the old card before activating the new one. Nice try but I’ll keep the old card intact until I’m absolutely sure the new one is working – and I bet most folk do the same. Anything else seems like sawing through the branch you’re sitting on.
