DJBrenton

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-36590284 "She is thought to be returning via Amsterdam." Really? Is that the wisest route?

Good guess. The wall went down Park Row and along Parliament St with a gate at Chapel Bar. edit They uncovered part of the wall at Chapel Bar once. The gate was apparently demolished in 1743 https://sixtiespixnottingham.wordpress.com/nottinghams-medieval-town-wall/ http://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/English%20sites/2891.html

I remember that still being there into the 80's. Didn't it cross Upper Parliament St to the top of Chapel Bar?

Yes, it's pretty much right across the road from Weekday Cross.

This puts in question whether or not MP's need to take security measures when meeting members of the public for surgeries. Unbelievable. I'd forgotten about these stories Liberal Democrat Nigel Jones, now a peer, was wounded and his aide Andrew Pennington was stabbed to death in a sword attack at the party's office in Cheltenham in 2000. In 2010, Labour MP Stephen Timms was stabbed twice in the stomach by a woman who tried to kill him for voting for the Iraq war.

Your parents probably thought the same about you when you were young. Being 'cool' when young has, ever since teenagers were invented in the 50's, been, in part, about using slang, and quite often about acting more 'common' than your parents.

The first figure, i.e. spending on the elderly can't be compared to years ago as central government devolved £5 billion Attendance Allowance from the DWP to local governments last year. The 1989 and 2004 Children's Acts also moved responsibility for safeguarding children onto the LA's, so it's not necessarily more being spent ( on an inflation adjusted basis) but that it's now down to Local Authorities rather than central government.

All I know (other than that he annoys me) is that a friend of mine's brother worked with him on local radio in (iirc) Manchester years ago and said that he was a complete **** to anyone 'below' him and sucked up to everyone 'above' him.

I've been having problems loading pages here lately.

Split infinitives are fine as long as the meaning remains clear just as ending a sentence with a preposition is. Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

Sorry to be a pedant Chulla but I do think grammar is important enough not to just leave a misunderstanding on ttable. It is not a modern interpretation but a fine point. The reason swimming pool and thousands of other compound nouns don't appear in your dictionary is because it just isn't big enough. Your copy (unless you have the Complete Oxford, you know the one that fills a whole shelf) will only include common compound nouns when they ARE hyphenated, not every possible combination of words that could become compound nouns without a hyphen. Does yours include coffee table, television stan

What? You don't pronounce your hyphens?

Sorry but I disagree. It only needs hyphenating when it becomes a compound adjective. On it's own it is a verb and noun i.e a pool for swimming. Out of interest I've just confirmed my belief on several grammar guides. https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns-compound.htm http://www.gsbe.co.uk/grammar-the-hyphen.html http://www.edufind.com/english-grammar/compound-nouns/ All say the same and use swimming pool as an example.

Hyphens are a really interesting (or maybe dull) case. For example dining room is not hyphenated but it should be when combined with another noun as it becomes a noun-adjective compound, so dining-room furniture. Similarly the examples Chulla gave do not take hyphens when on their own but do if attached to another noun as they become nouns describing other nouns so need to become compound. Swimming-pool lane Laughing-gas cylinder and Washing-line post would all be correct but without the last noun they don't need hyphenating. Like I said, interesting or dull? You decide.

I've recently started to notice the use of verbs instead of nouns for some teaching roles, so at David Lloyd we have a 'Swim Coach' which really grates every time I see it. The page below refers to 'swimming skills courses' yet they make 'swim skills easier to understand'

This is another odd one in that the American pronunciation is technically the correct one as it comes from the Greek. Our pronunciation comes from French and is newer, the hard k being the pronunciation here until the 19th century. As alluded to earlier, many words, their spellings and pronunciations travelled to America and stayed the same. The same words have changed here over time so in a sense it's our spelling or pronunciation that could be said to be incorrect. It's also regional in that skedule is a more common pronunciation further north anyway, the newer pronunciation having come from

That's true. I only found that out a couple of years ago.

I can settle that once and for all. It's pronounced 'controversy' not 'controversy'. Glad I could clear that up.

There's also the question of the point where something wrong, through usage, becomes acceptable. You used one of my 'pet hates' there DJ, 'reign it in'. The correct usages are 'rein it in' and 'free rein', both coming, quite obviously from horsemanship. Over time, the incorrect 'reign' has become so common that it may eventually just be considered an alternative. http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/03/rein-or-reign/ Similarly, a 'wake' was originally only the night spent with the body before burial but now is acceptably used to include the 'party' afterwards. Often we grow up using a wo

Is anyone else finding their spelling becoming less certain as they get older? I used to be top of the class for spelling at school but I find myself more and more having to check relatively common spellings or being uncertain about double 's's etc. I suspect it's because we often write less after a point in our lives and now maybe because predictive text takes care of much of it.

It is considered elitist to correct children's grammar.

60kg of Croatian dog.

Of all coincidences I ran into Alan Stevenson today. Apparently he spends half his time near Estepona and the other half at the hotel he still owns next to the Commodore (as was). His brothers still live locally, one in Clifton and the other on Aspley Lane. The General is now 93, still lives in Nuthall and drops into the hotel every day for coffee. The family have leased the p7b at Castle Donington out and are probably selling it next year.Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

And that one's right hand drive so possibly not Italian registered anyway.

One of the staff at David Lloyd managed to set the fire alarm off doing the 'double toasted' thing a while back. They evacuated the building but eventually had to give up trying to persuade me (and others) to get out of the outside pool and go to the car park for safety. I mean just how much more safe from fire can you be than in a swimming pool outdoors?