What's our Belisha Beacon?

A Belisha beacon

I was crossing the road (the way you do) on a zebra crossing and enjoying the mellifluous name of the flashing orange ball-on-a-stick that alerts drivers to its presence: a Belisha beacon. It is named, of course, after Leslie Hore-Belisha, who introduced both the driving test and these handy crossings when a transport minister in the 1930s.

When you think about it, it's rather sweet, naming something after the minister responsible in this way. I think it is something we ought to see more of. Forget 'free schools' which sounds like something Victorians set up for the deserving poor. Let's have Gove schools. Or Blair wars, Brown gaffes, Osborne cock-ups and Cameron u-turns. Actually, with the exception of the schools, they're a bit vague - we need specific, detailed objects like the Belisha beacon. Perhaps a Grayling commissioner for police commissioners.

They don't have to be named after politicians, of course. We might speak of a Dyson cleaner, for instance (though in practice we tend to call it a hoover, something that really irritated them when I kept doing it while touring the Dyson R&D department). Or a Branson stunt. (Not cockney rhyming slang.)

What are your suggestions for the new equivalent of a Belisha beacon? Who, for instance, introduced dog poo bins? I'd love to know.

Image from Canthusus at the English language Wikipedia

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope

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