Drugs, apostrophes, and culture wars: it’s the news from Britain

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Should we start with the drugs?

We should always start with the drugs.

The Emerging Chemical Contaminants team at Imperial College London reports that cocaine use doubled between 2011 and 2014-15. They measured this by testing the city’s waterways and they’ve informed us that so much was ingested (and then digested and then, um, ex-gested down the toilet) that even after the water was treated cocaine could be found in wild shrimp in rural Suffolk. 

But it’s not just cocaine that we generous humans share with our waterways and with the species who live there. It’s opioids. It’s antidepressants, painkillers, antipsychotics, and every other drug, prescription and otherwise, that we and our neighbors take. It’s also antibiotic resistant bugs. It’s microplastics. It’s raw sewage; we’ve had floods of that lately. Have I mentioned that in the name of efficiency Britain’s water systems were (and still are) privatized? If a person was cynical enough, they might say it’s more profitable to dump raw sewage than to treat it. 

Irrelevant photo: a begonia

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How does so much cocaine get into the country? Well, this doesn’t account for all of it, but back in May the National Crime Agency found £40 million worth of cocaine in a Yorkshire pub’s parking lot. Or car park, as folks here put it, making it sound like someplace we take our cars to play on the swings.

How’d it get there? The working theory is that it came from [you’ll have to fill in a geographical location here, because the newspapers aren’t saying] on a ship that sailed past Hull, slowing down only long enough to transfer the coke to an inflatable, which took it to a beach some 18 miles from the pub.

Now picture three guys loading £40 million worth of coke into their car, then saying, “Who fancies a nice breakfast, then?”

Whether they’d have been spotted if they hadn’t stopped for breakfast I don’t know,  but they were arrested at 8:30 and, I’m sure, had put in a long night. They’d earned that breakfast. We can only hope they got to finish it before the local cops, the National Crime Agency, and the Border Force came crashing through the door. 

 

What else has been found in Britain lately?

Something that’s been described as a “beautifully crafted Roman dodecahedron” was found in Lincoln. That was also in May. It’s one of 130 that have been found since the 19th century, all across what used to be the Roman Empire. 

Dodecahedrons have twelve sides and they’re hollow and no one has a clue what they were for. To date, no one’s found any mention of them in Roman art or writings. 

Dodecahedrons aren’t just objects a craftsperson could’ve just slapped together. They’re made of a copper alloy and feature holes and knobs that wouldn’t have been simple to make. 

Theories on what they were range from measuring instruments to stress toys to religious objects. (When an archeologist says something was a religious object, feel free to translate that as, We don’t have a clue what this was for.) And someone who I have to assume doesn’t knit suggested that they might’ve been knitting tools. Follow the link for a photo and see if you can find a way to use that in your knitting. 

The contexts they’ve been found in have been resolutely unhelpful in explaining what they were for, but they’re unquestionably old and the people who found this recent one were excited about it. 

 

Politics, lying, and language

An election’s approaching and the current government’s flailing around in search of an idea that voters might actually respond to. I’ll skip most of them. They’ll be forgotten by next week anyway, but I have to resurrect one that hit the news a few weeks ago anyway and has already passed through the shredder of our collective memory. In all its murkiness, it’s emblematic of our current politics: schools in England have been told they can no longer teach the “concept of gender identity,” although “secondary-school pupils will learn about protected characteristics, such as sexual orientation and gender reassignment.”

How can you discuss gender reassignment without discussing the concept of gender identity? Beats me. Maybe you tell the kids there’ll be a lottery and they just have to wait and see if their number’s drawn. Best advice? Don’t splurge on a wardrobe until you know whether you’ll be reassigned.

I recently heard the secretary of state on the radio, in full warlike mode and talking over and through the interviewer, explaining the danger trans women pose to women who were lucky enough to be supplied with the appropriate birth certificate at the time they entered the world. She wants to keep trans women from getting new birth certificates that would recognize them as women. 

Why? As far as I could figure out, it’s to protect us from men posing as women to use public toilets. She cited a case of a woman who’d been raped in a public toilet, who of would of course have been safe if the perpetrator had been unable to change their birth certificate.

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In Wales, the Plaid Cymru party is pushing to make it a criminal offense for a politician to lie–or at least to deliberately mislead parliament or the public. If that becomes law, life’s going to be interesting, although its impact will depend on the definition of mislead.

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So now we’ve banned lying, teaching “gender ideology,” and amended birth certificates. What’s left? Local government in North Yorkshire has–okay, it didn’t try to ban apostrophes but it did want to get rid of them in street names. They cause computer problems, and new street signs, they said, wouldn’t have them.

Want a clearer explanation? Of course you do, and a spokesperson provided it: “Street names and addresses, when stored in databases, must meet the standards set out in BS7666.” 

In what? Why, the naming system set up by the British Standards Institution, of course.

And what’s the British Standards Institution? “The national standards body of the United Kingdom,” Lord Google informs me. Or as the institution itself says, “Our mission is to empower you to inspire trust, foster excellence and ensure safety in your organization; driving positive change for a better world.” 

That’s all good, then? We all know what we’re talking about here?

Of course we do.

The Cambridge city council tried to make the same change in 2014 but backed down after facing a small army of grammarians armed with well sharpened apostrophes. North Yorkshire quickly did the same.

 

Life in an English village

A flock of feral chickens has been found in Norfolk. 

“They’re out of control,” according to some residents of the chickens’ nearest village. They destroy the gardens and the food people leave for them attracts rats. 

That’s visitors leaving food, not residents. Visitors have swarmed in to see them. Or–okay, we don’t have numbers here. Maybe there’ve been enough visitors for a swarm and maybe we’re talking about one car every third day. You’re free to imagine packed tour buses if you like (Step right up, forks; see the feral chickens!) or one weedy individual on a bike, but do remember that your imagination may not match up with reality in any way.

Other residents have no problem with the birds. One said, “People in the new houses are moaning about them, but they’ve been here such a long time [that’s the chickens, not the people in the new houses] and there’s more important things going on in the world than a few chickens. They should get a life.

“Two of them have been in my garden since they were babies and they don’t bother me.”

41 thoughts on “Drugs, apostrophes, and culture wars: it’s the news from Britain”

  2. Pingback: Drugs, apostrophes, and culture wars: it’s the news from Britain – Just Incredibly Quiet

  3. It’s such a weird coincidence that you should post this today. I’m doing a 10-week course on how to heal your hormones, and this week’s module is all about toxins in our surroundings, including water. Our course leader told us that there are poo and contraceptives in our water. I am never drinking it again, ever.

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  4. Though your mockery is usually fairly gentle, I doon occasion have to wonmder whether you like the UK and the British at all, Ellen. Maybe we make it a trial to live here for someone ‘Furrin’. I sinncerely hope the law to stem deliberate lies by Politicians takes off and becomes an example to others.Freeeedom of speech goes too far in allowing anyone to say unsubstantiated garbage about others, so a ‘Put up or Shut up’ law seems a great idea.

    We get the occasional rat visit when neighbours throw food out for birds, but we also get the odd squirrel visit to climb bird feeders and perform acrobatics, so the entertainment value is great. Sometimes in life you have to take the rough with the smooth. Huge Hugs

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    • I love living here, and there’s an endless number of things I admire about the country. High among them is that you-all have managed to either create or preserve (or both) a sense of cooperation–at least compared to the US, the land of Me First. Drivers will let another car onto the road in heavy traffic and will merge cooperatively, like a zipper. People will consider others in an assortment of ways, from medical care to cake.

      And many other things. The problem is, there’s no humor in that. Humor thrives on bleakness, so you find me gravitating toward it here. Sorry to mislead you, although I suspect I’ll continue to.

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  5. The dodecahedron is obviously a scented tealight holder, can’t see what the fuss is about.
    I quite possibly abuse the odd apostrophe though I try not to, but I figure if you close your eyes and repeat the offending sentence out loud the meaning of the words are not lost, there are worse crimes to get het up about in the world.

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    • More or less the point a linguist made (about the apostrophe, not the dodecahedron). I thought about quoting her, but it took me off in a different direction and in the end I didn’t. They’re a latecomer to the language, she said, and for the most part you can drop it without confusing anyone.

      That doesn’t mean you should, mind you. Armies of outraged grammar fanatics will threaten your health and sanity.

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  6. feral chickens…we have them too. They roam the streets like a feathered gang, daring the poor meals on wheels deliverer (aka my husband) to approach the house. He figured out the chicken code and all is calm currently.

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  7. Back in the 80s and 90s when I was at school, I learned about neither apostrophes nor gender identities, I have had to muddle through and figure these things out on my own… I would say that from personal experience, this is not the best way to do it!
    Some people seem to get it right, and the other ones seem to end up in government as far as I can tell…

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  8. Regarding cocaine in sewage, I heard from researchers in Akumal, Mexico, that turtles were being affected by chemicals in effluent flowing into the sea from tourist hotels on the beach. Which chemicals were stressing the turtles? Caffeine and sildenafil (Viagra).

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  9. Those first two paragraphs are really troubling. I’m bracing myself to start watching Seaspiracy on Netflix. Maybe I should take some uppers so it doesn’t depress me too much. Just kidding. I don’t do drugs. But I do drink water and I have eaten shrimp, so maybe I DO do drugs. :(

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    • Halfway through your comment, just a punctuation mark or two before you said it, it occurred to me that we’re all taking whatever anyone’s taking, at least a little bit. Sort of like during the AIDS crisis they used to say that, medically speaking, you’re having sex with everyone the person you’re having sex with already had sex with.

      Sorry–not a particularly appealing image. Or I suppose someone might like it. It doesn’t appeal to me, but it does communicate something worth knowing.

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  10. Pish-tush ! If those chickens were truly feral they would kill the rats trying to steal their food. Anyone who doesn’t believe chickens descended from dinosaurs has only to look at their legs and feet, or to ask anyone who , as a toddler on the farm, was attacked and “flopped” by a chicken.
    What is it called when the chickens take over the word ? A Chicken Coup.

    We definitely support the proposed legislation in Wales. But good luck with it.

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    • Working backwards: 3, I’m with you on the legislation in Wales, on both counts. 2, Groan–but in a good way. 1, I’ve been told that chickens can be fierce but hey, I’m originally from Manhattan. What I know about chickens could fit on the back of a matchbook–if we had them anymore.

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  14. I had no idea there was such a thing as a feral chicken. I wonder how they had enough time to get wild. It seems that the foxes and coyotes would have taken care of the birds before it became an issue.

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