HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: WANTED: how much does a bicycle cost in Cambridge, England?
Date: 24 Jul 92 12:14:56 GMT
Organization: Oxford University VAXcluster

In article <njdrru8@zola.esd.sgi.com>, livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
> In article <1992Jul21.171803.8552@aus.intel.com>, ajw@aus.intel.com (alan waldock) writes:
> |> In article <23989@castle.ed.ac.uk> matt@castle.ed.ac.uk (M P Taylor) writes:
> |> 
> |> >                                                    ... and I would like
> |> >to think that even in the most casual of situations a true devotee of
> |> >British culture can make the effort to get THEIR English grammar
> |> >correct.
> |> 
> |> HIS would be grammatically correct; THEIR is merely politically correct,
> 
> No, "their" has been common usage, in this context, in both the 
> US and UK for decades.  It is also, but not merely, PC.
> 
> jon.
It's being "common usage" does not make it grammatically correct. English
grammar is fairly rigid: Shakespeare's grammar is more or less the same as
modern English grammar, and one of the rules says that "they", "their" and so
on can only stand for a plural noun. It may be the case that only SMRWs like me
(I was described thus recently on alt.english.usage) actually care about good
grammar, but that does not make incorrect grammar correct.

-- 

Stephen Wilcox             |   Remember what happened to the dinosaurs!
wilcox@maths.oxford.ac.uk  |    I did---and look what happened to me.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phillip M. Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: BBN II -- Murk-o-Vision World Update (Mau Mau)
Reply-To: hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: DESY ZEUS Central Data Acquisition
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 12:00:20 GMT

In article <1992Jul27.051417.8378@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>,
buckley@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (BUCKLEY  CHARLES RAY) writes:

|>The US may never regain what it was at the end of WWII unless it once
|>again enjoys the distinction of being the only industrial power left
|>in the world.
|>Apologizing to Viet Nam won't regain the US that position.

Heh heh, anything may serve as a precondition for an impossible action.


Phill Hallam-Baker
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: sp@mirabeau.osf.fr (Simon Patience)
Subject: Re: help
Reply-To: sp@mirabeau.osf.fr (Simon Patience)
Organization: OSF Research Institute
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 14:57:20 GMT

In article <3649@keele.keele.ac.uk>, cla04@seq1.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
> "College" normally indicates some form of higher education, but normally
> below University level. 

Unless, of course, you went to a collegiate University (ie a University
made up of a number of normally fairly autonomous parts, eg Oxford,
Cambridge, London and doubtless others that I can't think of right now).
Collegiate Universities are seldom considered below the level of
non-collegiate universities.

> "University" is the standard way of indicating a
> degree-awarding institution in England and it's also the colloquial term
> used for them. Americans talk about going to school where we would talk
> about going to University. Most University degrees in England are
> awarded after a course of three years - this would be for a Batchelor's
> degree.

Unless you go to a Polytechnic where you would also get a Batchelors
degree (not necessarily inferior and sometimes superior to Universiry
degrees) but in four years, one of which is usually spent in industry.

Scotland is another story, which I shall leave to a Scot.
 
Simon.

  Simon Patience
  Open Software Foundation			Phone: +33-76-63-48-72
  Research Institute				FAX:   +33-76-51-05-32
  2 Avenue De Vignate				Email: sp@gr.osf.org
  38610 Gieres, France				       uunet!gr.osf.org!sp
From: singer@apple.com (Dave Singer)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Macedonia
Date: 27 Jul 92 20:28:17 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer

In article <Bs1r9w.7xM@newcastle.ac.uk>, w.p.coyne@newcastle.ac.uk writes:
> 
> 
> The former Yugoslav republic of Macadonia [sic] has been independent for 
> the last few months.  Its government want it to be called Macedonia, but
> Greece objects to this.

Personally I think that they should call themselves Balk, 
inhabited by the Balks, thus claiming the regional adjective Balkan.

I ought to be amazed at how puerile the Greeks are being, but puerility
of governments ceased to be worthy of notice a while ago.
Xref: sparky soc.culture.british:10694 soc.culture.usa:6221
From: awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Al Crawford)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: Pronounciaton of Three-Syllable Words
Date: 27 Jul 92 09:45:40 GMT
Reply-To: awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Al Crawford)
Organization: The University Of Edinburgh - Department Of Computer Science

And lo, lpj@col.hp.com (Laura Johnson) spake unto the masses saying:
>
> OK, is that enough drift now? I thought I was asking a simple question.
> (In fact, it hasn't been answered yet. The question--what I *meant* to
> be the question -- was, "Is working while in high school confined to the 
> lower classes in the U.K.?" I guess maybe it has been answered, in the
> affirmative, by the number of postings which assumed that I meant
> "university".)

Well, no, working while in high school *isn't* confined to any particular
class here in the UK. The reasons for working may differ though.

The situation you refer to, where kids have to work through high school to
pay for college/university, is (or at least was, back when I went through
it) pretty uncommon. If your parental income was below a certain level
(fairly low), you got a 100% grant (fees plus living expenses), otherwise
the parental contribution came into effect. Under this scheme your parents
were expected to pay some share of your grant, and the amount you got from
the Education Authority was reduced accordingly. If your parents, for one
reason or another, weren't willing to pay this *then* you'd have to get the
cash together yourself, by taking on work. This does happen, but it's not a
common situation. I'm not sure exactly how things work now that the student
loans scheme has come into operation here.

Perhaps the main difference is in the proportion of people that actually go
to university or college. It's *much* smaller here. So the majority of
schoolkids you find holding down jobs while at high school will either be
doing it to give them extra spending cash, for the usual parental "stacking
shelves five nights a week is character building" reasons, or because,
quite simply, their families need the money.

I managed to avoid the last mentioned - just. If it hadn't been for the
School Bursaries scheme operating by my Education Authority, which provided
me with a grant for clothing etc for my two optional years of high school,
I'd have had to leave at 16 to help support our family. Not that leaving
would have done a lot of good since, at that time there was almost no work
to be had - I couldn't even find a part-time job for the evenings/weekends,
let alone full-time work.

So, to summarise, working during high school isn't restricted to any
particular income bracket in the UK. The reasons for working in high school
may differ though, both because the proportion of people who go into
further education is considerably lower, and because those who do go into
further education find it rather easier to get funding (or did, at least).

Al

--
		      Al Crawford - awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk
			   "Click click drone."
From: wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: help
Date: 30 Jul 92 14:01:46 GMT
Organization: Oxford University VAXcluster

U48073@uicvm.uic.edu (Cole Kendall) writes:
> 
> In Kingsley Amis' *Memoirs* he refers to making the decision to go for
> a B. Litt., which would distinguish him from those who had B.A.'s and
> M.A.'s (since he was interested in a teaching job, which he eventually
> got at Swansea, although he never got the B. Litt.).  What exactly is
> the relation between, say, a B.A., and M.A., a Ph.D. and a B. Litt?
> This was at Oxford in the late 1940s, BTW.
> 
> Cole Kendall

The B.A. is the bog-standard under-graduate degree at Oxford---though lawyers
do a B.LL. and medics a B.M.  The M.A. is the one you buy four years after you
graduate.  These days, and probably back in the 40s, a B.Litt. is probably a 
one-year post-graduate course.  The D.Phil. is what everyone else calls a 
Ph.D.  And then there are the D.Mus, D.D....
-- 

Stephen Wilcox             |   Remember what happened to the dinosaurs!
wilcox@maths.oxford.ac.uk  |    I did---and look what happened to me.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: dylan@ibmpcug.co.uk (Matthew Farwell)
Subject: Re: music stores in London
Organization: The IBM PC User Group, UK.
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 07:31:51 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.021015.16222@morrow.stanford.edu> mossop@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Antony Mossop) writes:
>In article <Bs2ACA.361@news.udel.edu> pere@chopin.udel.edu (Persephone Brooks) writes:
>>	I'm going to be taking a vacation to London in a few weeks, and
>>I'm very interested in buying some CDs while I'm there that I can't find
>>in the US.  Can anyone give me suggestions for good music stores in
>>London?  I'm specifically interested in alternative, industrial, and
>>U2 that can't be found here.  Thanks for your help!
>>	I'll also need addresses, if possible, since I don't know my way
>>around yet.
>YET! London is a middlingly large village, you'll tend to find that even 
>the locals have copies of the essential A-Z stashed somewhere to help find
>addresses etc..

If you'll be spending a while in London, I seriously recommend getting
an A to Z.  It's not worth getting one of those crappy touristy maps
really.

As for music stores, there are three really big ones:

Tower Records: There is an entrance to Tower Records from Piccadilly
Tube Station.  Open til god knows what hour at night (usually around
midnight).

HMV-Oxford Street. Was (still is?) the largest music store in Europe. 
Very hard to miss.

Virgin:  Oxford Street (Tottenham Court Road end) - again, very hard to miss

Dylan.
-- 
It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As
pretty as an Airport' appear -- Douglas Adams
From: ming@salieri.inria.fr (Xie  Ming)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: help
Keywords: educational system of high school in UK
Date: 29 Jul 92 07:26:43 GMT
Organization: INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis (Fr)


Hi,

It seems to me that the educational system of high school in UK
is little different from that in France. Could someone be kind
enough to give some explications about educational system of high 
school in UK (how many years, what kind of degrees, what is the
difference between COLLEGE and SCHOOL, what is the meaning of the
term "general paper", ...) ?

Thank you very much in advance.


Xie Ming (Ph.D)
INRIA Sophia
France
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,uk.misc
From: des@frogland.inmos.co.uk (David Shepherd)
Subject: Re: Americanising of the UK
Organization: INMOS architecture group
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 92 09:18:08 BST

In article <1992Jul29.173838.876@Princeton.EDU>, kjcarey@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Kevin J. Carey) writes:
>As someone already suggested, the "Britishi(s/z)ation" of the US is an
>equally serious problem. Every housing development I see these days has
>a name like "Nottingham Oakes", "Windsor Run" or something equally crass
>and inappropriate. Speaking of "Oakes", the practice of adding extra
>"e"s to everything is also endemic - I have seen more "Ye Olde Englishe
>Shoppe" signs than I care to remember. My roommate from Michigan tells
>me that he gets his car serviced at "Eds Oil Shoppe"! I also find stuff
>in shops marketed as English that to the best of my knowledge has
>nothing to do with England e.g. "English Muffins". No ad is complete
>without a British accent, and I now see that Coors are using the alleged
>approval of London beer drinkers (I'm sure the beer was free) in their
>ad campaigns. The Northeast appears ridden with Sloane Ranger wannabees,
>but I think I've gone on long enough.

i'm still amused by the fact that i found watney's red barrel
being served in bars in california last year as a "premium imported
beer".

[[ note for our american readers: watneys red barrel was a
sign of all that was bad in british beer when the big
breweries tried to standardize their beers across the UK
by shutting down all the small breweries they'd taken 
over. watneys stopped selling red barrel in the uk about
10 years ago and CAMRA (campaign for real ale) hailed
this as a great victory for real beer ]]


-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
david shepherd: des@inmos.co.uk or des@inmos.com    tel: 0454-616616 x 625
                inmos ltd, 1000 aztec west, almondsbury, bristol, bs12 4sq
		"i speak latin to god,   spanish to men,   french to women 
		 and german to my horse."             - charles v of spain
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: apm@hpopd.pwd.hp.com (Andrew Merritt)
Subject: Re: VNS: Thu 30-Jul-1992
Organization: Hewlett-Packard NSG-PWD, UK.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1scd1 PL4
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 12:28:31 GMT

evansg@uproar.enet.dec.com (Gwyn Evans @ IME) writes:
:      The cyclist Chris Boardman won a gold medal in the 4k individual persuit
:      at the Olympics last night by overtaking his opponant giving him a
:      convincing victory. He is using a revolutionay 1-piece bike, designed in
:      Norfolk and only developed by the Lotus car company since April.

The information from the BBC about the bike has been slightly misleading
(except for a report on the Financial World Tonight on Radio 4).

The bike was designed by Mike Burrows, who has been working on it for at
least 3 years (there is a picture of an early version in the 1989 edition of
Richard's Bicycle Book).  The collaboration with Lotus Engineering (not the
car company itself, but an offshoot from it) has been to improve the
aerodynamics, reduce weight and work on improved methods of production.

Andrew
Xref: sparky soc.culture.british:10699 soc.culture.usa:6224
From: sandee@Think.COM (Daan Sandee)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: In re the Minister of Rumpo
Date: 27 Jul 1992 11:43:27 GMT
Organization: TMC
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: telecaster.think.com

In article <1992Jul27.103214.7761@cas.org>, jac54@cas.org () writes:
|> 	The Columbus Dyspeptic finally carried something from the
|> 	Observer on the minister known by the Elvish word for "friend"
|> 	yesterday.  

Always glad to pick a nit ... In Elvish, "friend" is "mellon", not "mellor".
And before somebody else comes up with a similar story, the gamekeeper in
"Lady Chatterley's Lover", who has figured in these pages before, is "Mellors."
Mellor was the chap who wrote a standard text on Inorganic Chemistry.

Daan Sandee                                           sandee@think.com
Thinking Machines Corporation
Cambridge, Mass 02142                                 (617) 234-5044
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: hclase@morgan.ucs.mun.ca (Howard Clase)
Subject: Re: Macadonians: the stupidest ever country ??
Organization: Memorial University of Newfoundland
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 16:15:16 GMT

In article <Bs1r9w.7xM@newcastle.ac.uk> w.p.coyne@newcastle.ac.uk writes:
>
>   They could also use 'Germany', 'Finland', 'Spain' etc for the
>    same reasons - ie these are names used by others to describe 
>    a country, but not used by the country itself.

	'Finland' is used by the country itself - in it's other official
language, Swedish; look at the stamps, they all say "Suomi - Finland"

	Howard Clase
From: scott@festival.ed.ac.uk (Scott Larnach)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,uk.misc
Subject: Re: Americanising of the UK
Date: 29 Jul 92 13:59:45 GMT

>Neil Postlethwaite (neilp@cs.hw.ac.uk) writes:
>
>> Does anyone think that the all pervading Amercanisation
>> of the world had really gotten out of hand.

I certainly do. For example, I think it's terrible to find British
people on the net using phrases like, oh, "get a life punk", for
example. In fact, here's a good example of what to look out for:
Path: edcastle!hwcs!neilp
  From: neilp@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Postlethwaite)
  Newsgroups: soc.motss,talk.politics.misc,rec.arts.tv,alt.individualism,rec.arts.tv.uk,alt.activism,rec.arts.tv.soaps
  Subject: Re: Gayspace (was Re: Do You Remember... and Re: On Banning Private Discrimination)
  Message-ID: <1992Jul28.094019.14254@cs.hw.ac.uk>
  Date: 28 Jul 92 09:40:19 GMT
  References: <1992Jul20.190203.21469@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <19024@fritz.filenet.com><l76cdcINN1l6@mizar.usc.edu>
  Sender: news@cs.hw.ac.uk (News Administrator)
  Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University, Scotland
  Lines: 13
  Xref: edcastle soc.motss:71601 talk.politics.misc:64744 rec.arts.tv:32214 alt.individualism:8398 rec.arts.tv.uk:10935 alt.activism:24743 rec.arts.tv.soaps:33825

[ ... deleted as irrelevent ... ]

  Do you want to stop cross-posting this shit to sewsgroups that it doesn't
  concern.

  Seriously, get a life punk.

  Neil

S
From: kjcarey@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Kevin J. Carey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,uk.misc
Subject: Re: Americanising of the UK
Date: 31 Jul 92 19:35:21 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@ernie.Princeton.EDU

In article <1992Jul31.091809.27732@wraxall.inmos.co.uk> des@frogland.inmos.co.uk (David Shepherd) writes:
>In article <1992Jul29.173838.876@Princeton.EDU>, kjcarey@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Kevin J. Carey) writes:
>>As someone already suggested, the "Britishi(s/z)ation" of the US is an
>>equally serious problem. Every housing development I see these days has
>
>i'm still amused by the fact that i found watney's red barrel
>being served in bars in california last year as a "premium imported
>beer".
>
>[[ note for our american readers: watneys red barrel was a
>sign of all that was bad in british beer when the big
>breweries tried to standardize their beers across the UK
>by shutting down all the small breweries they'd taken 
>over. watneys stopped selling red barrel in the uk about
>10 years ago and CAMRA (campaign for real ale) hailed
>this as a great victory for real beer ]]
>
>
>-- 
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>david shepherd: des@inmos.co.uk or des@inmos.com    tel: 0454-616616 x 625
>                inmos ltd, 1000 aztec west, almondsbury, bristol, bs12 4sq
>		"i speak latin to god,   spanish to men,   french to women 
>		 and german to my horse."             - charles v of spain

I know some Americans who feel similarly about the amazing appeal of
Rolling Rock to people trying to be hip. I happen to like Rolling Rock,
but only because it's as cheap as Bud or Miller and 10 times as good.
It's still not a premium beer, yet it is marketed (and priced) in
Britain and Ireland as such.     ---- Kevin
From: ams@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Mellor: The establishment will again rush to protect their own
Date: 28 Jul 92 16:15:28 GMT
Organization: Oxford University VAXcluster

In article <1992Jul28.105907.643@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>, mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
> From: ams@vax.oxford.ac.uk
>>Of course. On the principle that "Man bites dog" is news, while "Dog bites
>>man" isn't, it ought to be obvious that "MP finds mistress" is news,
>>while "Government runs out of money for election promises" isn't. Hence the
>>front pages of the comics^H^H^H^H^H^Htabloids for the last few days. It
>>isn't serious stuff, but it's extremely entertaining.
> 
> I would have thought that "MP find mistress" is on the level on
> "Dog bites man". Which of us would not resist, with the pulling
> power of being a government minister, and the opportunity of
> all those late night sittings?
> 
That's one way of looking at it. The other is to ask why, with a british male
population of some 30 million, any actress with her contact lenses in would be
interested in an MP. (If you can think of any erotic practices more revolting
than sucking David Mellor's toes, please keep them to yourself; some of us read
news just before tea.) I'm not really convinced that being a rather minor 
Cabinet minister has done anything for Mellor's "pulling power". Certainly, 
judging by the radio, it would make for some _very_ dull pillow talk.

I suspect the news feed from here is very slow - we seem to be following
arguments several days after they finish everywhere else. So by the time you
read this, it will probably all either have blown over, or Mellor will have
gone. Either way, it will all have been gone into quite enough (cue old joke).

Michael.
Xref: sparky soc.culture.british:10608 rec.games.empire:2310 alt.war:1537
From: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Metric System (was: New banknotes)
Date: 24 Jul 92 17:01:39 GMT
Reply-To: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Organization: Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.

In article <Bru7Fw.1nM@brunel.ac.uk> Christopher.Carne@brunel.ac.uk
(Christopher J Carne) writes:
>Would the defenders of the Imperial/US weights & measure like to
>answer this one:

	[Assorted typos and mixed units deleted]

	This sort of question misses the point.  The "old" measures
*evolved* over many years to be *convenient* to the users.  You don't
cover a room with lino by measuring its size in chains, rods, poles or
perches, feet, inches and fractions in each direction, multiplying and
reducing to acres, and going to a shop with a request for so-many acres,
square yards, square feet and square inches of lino -- the assistant
would look at you gone out [to coin a phrase].  Lino comes in standard
widths, and you buy it by *length*.  Since the pattern has to match,
getting an exact length for the area is useless.  Any decorator worth
his salt can glance at a room and tell you what length of lino to buy,
how many rolls of wallpaper you need, how many tins of paint, etc.

	Yes, I could do those questions;  yes, they were drilled into
me at school.  At least they were more interesting than "multiply 1.234
by 9.876" and the like.  Treat those questions as a way to learn how to
do arithmetic at the same time as learning the measures at the same time
also as learning by association what sorts of values are appropriate on
the human scale.

	Today, there is no reason why the questions should not be
doable by calculator.  My calculator will happily accept angles in
degrees, minutes and seconds;  there is no *good* reason why it should
not accept lengths in feet and inches and fractions, prices in pounds
shillings and pence and work out the cost.  A calculation such as
4'6" x #3/17/6 is almost indistinguishable in practice from one such
as 1.4m x #3.875.  Today it would be done by calculator;  yesteryear
it was done by ready reckoner.  In neither case would the shop assistant
be laboriously doing long multiplications by hand.

-- 
Andy Walker, Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
anw@maths.nott.ac.uk
Xref: sparky soc.culture.british:10965 rec.games.empire:2360 alt.war:1607
From: jmunro@wyse.wyse.com (Jim Munro x2497)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,rec.games.empire,alt.war
Subject: Re: BBN II -- Murk-o-Vision World Update (Mau Mau)
Date: 28 Jul 92 00:36:23 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.british
Organization: Wyse Technologies San Jose, Ca

>In article <1992Jul24.050033.18743@dscomsf.desy.de> hallam@zeus02.desy.de writes:
>]
>]I would suggest that you consider the bit where the NCOs go surffing
>]during an battle in `appocalypse now'
>

So?  Apocalipse Now was voted one of the all time best surfing movies by
Surfer magazine, so you would expect to have surfing in it, wouldn't you?

Jim Munro