Yearly Archives: 2015

310. The Words of the Year (Part 1)

In this series of three new episodes Amber, Paul and I talk about a list of the 10 Words of the Year which have been added to the Collins English Dictionary. We’re going to explain the words and discuss the issues behind them and I’ll also explain and clarify a lot of the language you’re going to hear in our conversation.

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Links
Article in The Guardian about the 10 Words of the Year
Collins Dictionary Q&A about the Words of the Year

Transcript to the Introduction and some notes for language analysis
Hello everyone – welcome to another episode of LEP. I hope you’re doing well… etc.

This introduction is being recorded on 18 November, on a Wednesday, but the rest of this episode and the other 2 episodes in this series were recorded a couple of weeks ago.

This episode is all about the Collins Dictionary Words of the Year 2015.

What’s that?

let me break it down.

First of all, Collins are a publisher of dictionaries, and so it’s their job to monitor the usage of words in order to decide which words should be added to the dictionary every year. They do this by noticing new words and seeing how often they have been used in the last 12 months. They then pick some of the more commonly used new words and add them to the dictionary. These are their ‘words of the year’.

How do they monitor the words? They have a special database of word usage called a Corpus. This is a quote from the Collins website:

“This evidence is based on our 4.5-billion-word database of language called the Collins Corpus. The words in the Corpus are taken from a huge range of sources of spoken and written English, including newspapers, radio and other types of media, from all over the world.” Link here.

The ‘words of the year’ list is an interesting way to identify trends in language, but it’s also quite revealing about modern British life because these are the things we’ve been talking and reading about.

Some people complain that these words aren’t serious enough, and that adding them to the dictionary is an example of the decline of language in some way. I think it’s fine to add these words into the dictionary because they just reflect changes in culture and in the end with new words needed to explain new concepts. Also, we need a record of the words people are using – especially if you’re a learner of English. You want to be able to learn the real English that people actually use, don’t you? Then you’ll want the dictionary to include the words that people really use. It’s not Collins intention to decide if people should or shouldn’t use these words, rather to see which words are being used a lot just so that they can be added to the dictionary to reflect the language as a living thing.

As ever I’m curious to know what you think about these new words. What do you think of Collins’ list? How is the dictionary managed in your country?

In this episode, Amber, Paul and I are going to go through all the words in this list, explain what they mean and discuss the issues that relate to them. This episode is also going to be a kind of review of the trending issues of the year.

As usual our discussion is pretty fast and busy, which is normal when friends discuss things.

To help you to understand everything and to give you a chance to maximise your learning from this episode I’ve decided to break up the discussion into chunks.

What’s a chunk? It’s just a substantial piece, a part, a lump. Like, a chunk of meat, tear off a chunk of bread from a loaf, a chunk of rock, you can also talk about chunks of language – like fixed expressions or phrases. In this case, we’re talking about chunks of a conversation.

What I’m going to do is play you each chunk of the discussion and then explain some of the language you heard. That way you’ll understand and learn much more.

I really think this is the best way to do it because you’re getting the best of both worlds – you can listen to our natural and spontaneous conversation, and then I’ll break it down to help you understand everything and learn even more from our conversations.

This episode contains just one conversation chunk, and it’s just the pre-chat we had before we even talked about any of the words of the year! In fact, I started recording and said hello to Amber and Paul, asked them how they were, and we started chatting about different stuff like the weather and the November 5th and we talked before dealing with the words of the year. However, this pre-chat is so full of language content that it has taken up the whole of this first episode.

It’s a bit ridiculous – you won’t actually hear us discussing the words of the year in part one! So, before we listen to the pre-chat, let me just list the words of the year for you now, even though you won’t hear us discussing them until part 2 of this series. I like to make things complicated.

OK, so the Collins Words of the Year are (in reverse order – and all these words will be explained and discussed in this series of 3 episodes – you might not understand them now but you will by the end of the series I promise)

transgender, manspreading, contactless, swipe (left or right), ghosting, clean eating, Corbynomics, shaming, dadbod and binge-watch.

I will only say those words once. You will hear them again, and hear explanations, later in this series, but for now, let’s listen to the pre-chat I had with Amber and Paul

Pre-Chat
This includes stuff about climate change, November 5th, and some other things. So, let’s finally start listening to the conversation shall we? (I do go on a bit don’t I?)
Listen to the pre-chat

Language Analysis: Pre-Chat (The bits in brackets are notes for my comments)

Conspiracy theories (Paul talks about climate change as if it’s a conspiracy theory)
It’s a hot topic.
Is it a conspiracy theory? (upward intonation for surprise, doubt)
Some people say that climate change isn’t a thing.
some people deny climate change.
(climate change deniers / to deny climate change)
We are exacerbating the environmental trend.
We’ll be dead before anything bad happens.
We might not be (elision).
Would it be bad if we were still alive in 100 years? (pron – weak sounds)
There are already too many people (pron)
China – they’re getting rid of the one baby ban (a ban on having more than one baby)
Old people who are in retreat (he means in retirement)
China should open it’s arms to Syria (an interesting political idea – but I didn’t want to talk about it because it’s a sensitive topic and I didn’t want to go down a rabbit hole – get sidetracked).
It’s unusually warm, which is kind of nice in a way because we don’t have to wear big coats and everything. (pron, but also using a relative clause to refer to a while clause).
There was a plot to blow up the houses of Parliament.
1605 (how to say years – normally divide it in two, except: when it’s 05 06 etc, 1900 1800 etc, 2000-present = “two thousand and…”)
Passives – Guy Fawkes and his gang were caught in the act of trying to blow up Parliament. He was sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered.
And we’ve never forgot. (Nursery rhyme. “Forgot” isn’t it “forgotten”. Amber is referring to the old rhyme. Forgot here is poetic licence – it should be “forgotten” but that’s ok because of the poem and it’s old)
Words of Nathalie Portman there (Paul is referring to the film V for Vendetta which takes place in the future and has a character similar to Guy Fawkes. You hear the rhyme in the film. Obviously the quote is not from Nathalie Portman. In fact it’s an old rhyme from English folklore – we don’t know who wrote it)
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw405.html
Amber talked about the Lewes fireworks. http://www.lewesbonfirecelebrations.com
They make effigies and burn them. It’s very pagan.
Didn’t life change after that? (downward intonation – it’s a rhetorical negative question – it means – “life changed a lot after that, didn’t it”. “Didn’t she do well?” “Didn’t we have a good time?”)
(Obviously, 9/11 changed more than just the bottles of water not being allowed on planes and it was a very tragic event)
(Everyone laughed – not because 9/11 was funny, but because I was stuck in a serious topic suddenly and it was difficult for me to somehow get from this serious topic to the main topic – The Collins New Words of the Year.)
“How do I transition this to the actual theme of the podcast?”
“How do I get away from this potentially sensitive subject, which obviously is very serious, you know I don’t mean to make fun of THAT” (Features of spoken English – unfinished sentence, relative clauses, connected speech – all of it, and sentence stress)
2018 is when the next physical dictionary will be brought out. Some of these words may end up in that dictionary too. (phrasal verbs)
It depends if the words stand the test of time. (expression)
Article link: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/05/binge-watch-2015-word-of-the-year-collins

End of the pre-chat.

End of Part 1: We haven’t even started talking about the words of the year yet!

Part 2 will be available soon.

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Attacks in Paris / Paul Taylor’s Eyewitness Account

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Hi listeners, this is Luke, recording this in my flat in Paris as usual. This episode of LEP is all about the terrorist attacks which happened here last Friday evening. I’m joined by Paul Taylor and we’re just going to try to talk about what we saw, what happened, and what this all means.

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First of all, I should say – Thank you for your concern
As you know, I live in Paris and I should say right now, thank you very much for all the messages I’ve had from LEPsters. Lots of people contacted me in various ways, saying that they were concerned about my safety and the safety of my family and friends. Thankfully I can say that I am fine and so is everyone I know – including my wife, her family and all our friends – including Amber and Paul of course. Still, our thoughts go out to those people who have been directly affected by the attacks. It’s a very sad, shocking and infuriating time indeed, but one thing’s for sure, we have to carry on as normal to make sure these terrorists don’t win. Life goes on today. We keep laughing, we keep going out – basically, we keep calm and carry on.

Also, it’s not just Paris. This is just one of a number of recent ISIS attacks in different places.
Recently, two explosions in suicide attacks in a Shi’ite Muslim district of southern Beirut in Lebanon killed 43 people, and 224 people died when a Russian aircraft crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Also, Turkey stopped a major Istanbul terror plot on same day as Paris attacks, according Agence France Presse.
And it’s not just ISIS – there’s violence and fighting in many places by many people for many reasons. It all sucks. Our thoughts go out to anyone who has been the victim of violence in any country.

In this podcast we’re talking about the attacks in Paris in particular just because they happened in our town, close to home, and we have some direct experience of it. We just want to tell you about what happened.

I expect you’ve seen the story in the news a lot over the last few days. Here and in the UK it’s totally dominating the news. Just in case you don’t know what happened, on Friday evening Paris was attacked by ISIS terrorists and 129 people were killed in explosions and shootings. Members of the public were shot in public bars, restaurants and cafes. The worst attack took place inside a live music venue called Bataclan, which is just 100 metres or so away from Le Paname Art Cafe where Paul and I often perform stand up comedy. In fact, Paul was there at Le Paname when the attack happened nearby. He’s with me today and we’re going to talk about what happened, what he saw and the rest of the story.

Are you alright Paul?
What have you been doing over the past couple of days, since the attacks?

Paul’s account

Luke’s account

What happened specifically?
During the evening of Friday 13 November, there were six different attacks in and near Paris. Apparently the attacks were co-ordinated and carried out by ISIS terrorists. At this moment, 129 people have been killed in the attacks and something like 350 people are injured, with about 100 people in a critical condition. The death-toll might rise over the next few days depending on how people recover in hospital.

This is after some artists working for the Charlie Hebdo magazine were murdered by ISIS terrorists in Paris at the beginning of the year. After that, there was a big peace march in which hundreds of thousands of people got together to march against terrorism and to celebrate solidarity. Place de la Republique was the focal point of those peaceful gatherings. That is also the focal point of these recent attacks.

Here’s what happened in the 6 attacks. This info is based on what I’ve read in different articles online, such as one from The Guardian, which includes lots of eyewitness accounts. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/14/paris-attacks-timeline-of-terror

Stade de France 9.20pm
9.20pm on Friday 13th. A football game between France and Germany was underway at Stade de France which is just outside Paris to the north. 3 explosions were heard from inside the stadium, but the game carried on. French President Francois Hollande was inside the stadium at the time and by 9.30 he’d been informed as to what was actually going on, and was evacuated to the interior ministry for an emergency cabinet meeting. This was while attacks were going on in a number of different places in Paris. It’s not until the football game ended that the fans in the stadium really learned what had happened. 3 terrorists had set off explosive belts outside the stadium – two at entrances to the stadium and another outside a McDonalds. 4 people were killed – the 3 terrorists and one other person. The fans gathered on the football pitch and eventually were led out of the stadium, singing the French national anthem.

Le Carillon bar and restaurant; le Petit Camboge, Rue Alibert 9.25PM
These two places are on a road not far from Place de la Republique.
It’s not certain how many gunmen or cars were involved. It could be one shooter and one driver, or two shooters and two drivers. Apparently one of the cars stopped outside the two places and a gunman got out. He started shooting into Le Carillon bar, and then crossed the street to shoot into the Le Petit Camboge. It sounded like fireworks apparently, and people didn’t really understand what was going on. Some witnesses say one of the cars had Belgian number plates. 15 people were killed and 10 injured.

Casa Nostra, Rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi 9.32PM
This one happened at 9.32pm. Apparently a gunman arrived outside Casa Nostra, a pizza place and started shooting at people on the terrace. He was wearing tight black clothing and had a machine gun. Some witnesses commented that he looked exactly like a trained soldier, standing with one leg in front of the other, firing in short bursts, his clothes very tight fitting and completely black all over – just like you’d expect from a combat soldier. He appeared calm and didn’t say anything. After shooting a number of people on the terrace he swivelled (turned, mechanically, like the way soldiers are trained to do) and shot through the window of a car (presumably to kill the people in the car). He then went into the cafe. More shots were fired. When the police arrived they couldn’t find him. Five people were killed and 8 injured.

Restaurant La Belle Equipe, Rue de Charonne – 9.36PM
This is a popular restaurant on a street corner in a cool part of Paris where people like to eat out, drink on the terrace outside the restaurant and generally enjoy life, like they do here in Paris. That’s one of the best things about this place. The restaurant and cafe culture. But some people apparently can’t stand the fact that we like to freely drink, talk about anything we want and just have carefree laughs. The restaurant was fully booked on Friday evening, with quite a lot of seats outside.

So, at about 9.36 according to witnesses, a car pulled up outside the restaurant and a man got out with a high-calibre weapon – like an assault rifle or machine gun. He then, quite calmly, began shooting at people sitting outside La Belle Equipe. Within a few seconds everyone was on the ground, either dead or just protecting themselves. Witnesses said that people were screaming and moaning. 3 minutes later the gunman got back in the car and they drove away. 19 people died.

Bataclan 9.40PM
This is a concert venue in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. It’s a place to go and see live music. On Friday about 1500 people were in the venue, listening to a Californian band. At about 9.40 three men started shooting AK-47s randomly into the crowd. These men were no more than 25 years old, dressed all in black and apparently were calm and silent as they fired their weapons into the crowd, killing a lot of members of the audience. Apparently everyone hit the floor, lying on top of each other, protecting each other, trying to avoid getting shot. The gunmen walked around, reloading and continuing to shoot people as they lay on the floor. A lot of people managed to escape from the building, some of them getting shot in the process. There’s some footage of people scrambling out of the back of the venue, some people hanging from outside the windows, doing whatever they can to escape the shooting. The terrorists held about 20 people hostage. According to a witness called Pierre Janaszak who hid in the toilet but could hear what was going on, the terrorists were talking to the hostages, saying stuff like, ‘It’s the fault of Hollande, it’s the fault of your president, he should not have intervened in Syria,’ Apparently people who were stuck inside the Bataclan were using social networks to communicate with the outside world, with messages like this “I’m heavily wounded. Please police you have to launch an assault, there are still people alive here but they are killing them one by one.”

This all went on for several hours. The police were on the scene but couldn’t get inside. Special forces arrived at about 12.20 and raided the building because it was clear that the gunmen were still killing hostages on the inside. Within a couple of minutes the three terrorists were dead and it was over. Two of them blew themselves up with explosive belts they were wearing, and one was shot. The scene inside the Bataclan has been described as a blood bath. Immediately after the attack, about 90 people were dead.

Now there is a memorial outside the venue with flowers, messages and candles.

Boulevard Voltaire 9.40PM
This attack happened at the Voltaire restaurant at about 9.40pm. The restaurant is on Boulevard Voltaire which connects Place de la Republique with Place de la Nation, two big intersections and meeting places. Boulevard Voltaire is the road where some world leaders marched for peace after the Charlie Hebdo attacks earlier this year. Apparently one of the attackers involved in the Bataclan incident ended up here. I guess he was a fourth attacker. He went into the restaurant, ordered a coffee and then blew himself up. The attacker is dead, and one person is seriously injured.

That’s what happened in the six attacks.

Who did it?

ISIS have claimed responsibility for it.

Quickly – who are ISIS?
ISIS – Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIL – Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant or IS or DAESH in France.

ISIS is originally, an offshoot of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. They have established a caliphate – that’s an area ruled by one leader, and have imposed their harsh interpretation of Islamic law. Their strict conservative Islamic law applies in the caliphate. What distinguishes the new armed group is its capture and occupation of areas of territory, covering areas of Iraq and Syria.

ISIS has essentially formed this caliphate as a rogue state across the territories of sovereign nations. They’re using their base as the centre of operations, where like-minded people from around the world can come and train. They also use the internet as a training and recruitment tool, allowing them to control operations abroad.

ISIS gets its money by capturing oil fields and from extortion – essentially stealing money and resources by threat. They’re also accused of brutality and ethnic cleansing, including publishing beheading videos of their enemies. Residents of Syria are escaping them, that’s the reason there’s a big exodus of people from Syria into Europe. They’re running away from these people.

Syria was already in civil war, between Assad the incumbent President and rebel forces. It’s not completely clear to me what the relationship is between ISIS and these two factions. ISIS is probably a problem for both groups. Apparently, in the G20 summit happening in Turkey – Obama and Putin just agreed to work together to bring about a peaceful transition in Syria, as part of an effort to stop ISIS. This probably means they’re going to try to replace Assad’s regime with a regime involving the Syrian rebels, that may work like a proxy government. I don’t know enough about it at this stage, but it’s interesting that Obama and Putin are working together to take down ISIS.

How did ISIS organise the Paris attack?

It’s unclear if the Paris attacks were organised and arranged by ISIS from their headquarters (in Syria) or if it has been planned and carried out by local people who are operating under the name of ISIS. The nature of the attacks suggest that these are organised, and carried out by people with some military training – that suggests to me that it was a plan centralised in Iraq, but who knows. How did the attackers get their weapons? How did they get their training? It looks like they were experienced soldiers. They may be European-born men who went to Iraq/Syria in order to fight with ISIS. While there, they might have received military training and indoctrination before returning to France to carry out the attacks.

Who are these people? The individual attackers are yet to be identified. There’s lots of information going around, like reports of passports being found which suggest they’re either Egyptian or Syrian.
Unconvincing information – why would the terrorists have their passports? (I think this theory is now disproved)

Actually, reports suggest that three of them were French nationals, brothers living in an area of Belgium known for its community of extremists. Apparently one of these brothers is still “at large”

How many others were involved in the 6 attacks? 3 at stade de France, 3 in Bataclan, 1 at Boulevard Voltaire, 3 other gunmen and then there are drivers too. It’s at least 10 people. Only 7 have been accounted for. There must be loads of other people who were involved, including the leaders of the operation, locally, who no doubt are not the ones who killed themselves. The leaders aren’t the ones who kill themselves, they just get other people to do it for them.

Some people are blaming the refugees from Syria. Perhaps some of the attackers came into Europe with refugees via Greece. But those refugees are running from exactly the same people that did these attacks.
Just because the terrorists may have entered with the refugees, does that mean the thousands and thousands of innocent refugees should be turned away?

In fact, one Syrian passport found near one of the bodies of the attackers near Stade de France was not the passport of one of the attackers, so that’s a false alarm.

How was this allowed to happen during a period of high security in France?

There are many things we don’t know. But I guess what we can be sure of is – this was an attack by ISIS against the values and way of life that they hate, and as an act of revenge against western bombing of ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria.

I’m not going to say they’re evil or devils – I don’t really believe that stuff, and I think labelling someone as “evil” is a bit of a cop out. What does ‘evil’ mean, and where does it come from? I don’t think they’re evil – I think they’re just wrong. I think for whatever reason they have got completely the wrong idea about everything. That’s obvious isn’t it! But what I mean is that this isn’t the result of evil magic or something, it’s just an example of how humans can go wrong, can be misguided and can do terrible things if they live in certain circumstances, if they are children of war, if they are brainwashed by certain twisted ideas and if they believe they are doing the right thing. I’m sure they are convinced that they’re doing something good and that god wants it. That’s part of what’s so horrendous.

It just shows that people are capable of doing terrible things if they believe that it is the right thing to do, and this is especially so if they believe it is god’s plan.

These people are basically members of a death cult, with a super strict and messed up ideology. They want to impose their rules on everyone. For them, the lifestyle of the average Parisian should be punishable by death. Drinking, laughing, playing music, men and women flirting and hanging out together, etc. All these things are considered to be obscene and against the will of god. Never mind the fact that if god is all powerful it means he created all these people in the first place and if they do those things it’s because god allows it to happen.

I’m not going to go into the reasons why ISIS are wrong. I think we all agree.

Also, they don’t represent Islam of course. There are something like 1.6 billion muslims in the world and the vast vast majority of them are peaceful. No, ISIS have been created by other forces, not the doctrine alone. Their cult is based on Islam but it is not Islam of course, it’s some sort of twisted version of religion. I think their dogma is shaped by hatred – suffering from it at the hands of others, allowing it to breed. They don’t love life. They want to stamp it out at all costs. I still don’t really know why.

Just because you don’t like the Parisian way of life, it doesn’t mean you should go on a kill-spree.

Fair enough, we all find hipsters annoying, but you don’t need to shoot them, just bitch about them on Facebook and move on.

A Cambodian restaurant was targeted – Cambodian? Have some consistency! Why are you dragging the Cambodians into it?

Why did it happen?

Ideology
ISIS hate the western way of life and this is really embodied by Paris. They see our way of life as obscene and all that stuff. Paris is the capital of obscenity and prostitution according to them. I’m not even sure that’s accurate. Amsterdam is a bit more obscene isn’t it. That’s not a suggestion by the way.

Also, it’s way to make us submitted to their ideology. The plan is to strike so much fear into our hearts that we take them seriously and stop all our naughty behaviour. They failed didn’t they – we’re still completely convinced that we like music, wine, humour and sex and everything. That’s all still fine. In fact, we’re more aware of it and proud of it than ever. We like democracy, thanks very much, particularly now it is under attack. The attacks have caused a lot of fear and sadness, true, but it’s also making us celebrate our freedom and way of life. People are gathering together, showing solidarity with one another. Normally Parisians can be a bit moody and grumpy. Not this weekend. People are warmer, there’s more of a sense of community. Sure, people are panicky and scared of more violence. But we’re still carrying on. We stand together. Other countries all over the place are showing their solidarity too.

Intolerance of Islam
ISIS see France as a place which is intolerant of Islam, which is not really true. I think you’re free to practice your religion as long as it doesn’t violate the basic human rights of other people in society. As long as you don’t force it on other people then go for it – you can believe whatever you want to believe. That’s your right. Just don’t expect everyone to follow your ideas if you threaten them.

Foreign Policy
France has been launching airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq/Syria. These attacks are acts of revenge against that.

French Retribution

France has already launched a large bombing campaign – 10 planes, 20 bombs on Raqqa in Syria, where the HQ of ISIS is. The first target included guns & munitions. The second target was a terrorist training camp. They’ve both been destroyed, according to the French Ministry of Defence. I expect that’s involved multiple casualties – those places are unlikely to be empty are they?

So, instant retribution from France. That’s what happens in war I suppose.

What’s going to happen next?

More attacks, probably and not just in Paris.

Security will be stepped up. France has closed its borders. It’s going to be harder for us to live our lives freely. It may be harder to travel between countries.

The climate change summit is still going ahead. G20 summit too.

The far right parties in Europe will use this as an excuse to impose anti-immigration policy, and to get out of the European Union.

ISIS say they will launch more attacks, which is, of course, worrying.

Security will be stepped up. I hope the French forces really will pay attention and make sure this doesn’t happen again.

The police across different countries are attempting to find out exactly who these guys were. I think there’s one member of the 8 who was not caught, but really – we’re not sure exactly what is going on. It’s all very mysterious.

Final word from The British Humanist Association website:

On the tragic events in Paris: an attack on freedom and human dignity

November 16th, 2015

We live in an uncertain, fragile world.

And yet in this world, there is joy. We find a way, through the hardships of life, the pains, the tribulations, the daily struggles, to make life mean something more.

We socialise. We enjoy the pleasures of music or a good book. We watch films. We play sports. We enjoy a drink, or a meal. We find joy, and happiness, in life itself. And we can do so freely, whatever our tastes may be, so long as we do not harm others.

In a city like Paris, all interests are catered for. It is a city characterised not so much by its politics, architecture, or history as it is by life itself. By joy. By the bustle of humanity. By the diverse preferences and tastes of millions living side by side.

And yet life itself, the joy of living, was the target of Islamic extremists with a burning hatred for these very freedoms on Friday night, killing well over 100 people. They did not attack infrastructure, politicians, military personnel, or sites of historical or cultural significance. They targeted innocent people, going about their lives, trying to make it through this difficult and complicated world with a modicum of fun and lightness. Something we all aspire to.

It was, in every sense, an attack on multiculturalism; an attack on how we find happiness, outside the confines of a strict religious code of submission; an attack on the secular, enlightened spirit embodied by Paris’s vibrant, varied culture.

Our hearts go out to all those affected, over the world. And not just by events in Paris but those in Beirut and Syria and everywhere the cruel hand of extremism is felt.

Today we make one request of you. And it is a simple one.

Enjoy your life.

Make it count.

And don’t let the murderers win.

Our dream is of a tolerant, open society with a secular state ensuring the human rights of everyone, where we can all go about living the kinds of lives we want for ourselves.

That dream, that essential humanist cause, is now more important than ever.

309. The Lying Game (Part 2) with Amber & Paul

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Welcome back to the second part of this double episode. In part 1 you heard me playing a speaking game with Paul & Amber. Go back to part 1 for the details of the game, including the rules. Part 1 ended on a cliffhanger, with the scores even at 2-2-2. Even stevens! Listen to this episode to find out more. TEACHERS: At the end there’s a 15 minute section in which I explain exactly how to use this game in your English classes. You can download a simple .pdf worksheet (below) which you can use in your classes (just tell your students about LEP, or send me a little donation). Listen until the end of the episode to get my full instructions on how to use this awesome game to teach your students grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary and speaking skills in a really awesome way.

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The Lying Game Part 2

Amber: I used to be a performer at The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Prince Charles Cinema in Soho.

Tie-break round:
Luke: I used to be afraid of the tooth fairy.
Paul: I almost set fire to my parents’ house as a kid.

Final scores:
Luke – 2 / 0 / 1 / 2 / 1 Total = 6 points

Amber – 1 / 1 / 0 / x / x Total = 2 points

Paul – 0 / 2 / 1 / 0 / 0 Total = 3 points

Here’s an example of a Rocky Horror Picture Show Shadowcast (below)

For Teachers – How to use The Lying Game in class

Click here to download a .pdf worksheet to use in Class – The Lying Game Worksheet for Teachers by Luke Thompson teacherluke.co.uk

Listen to the last 15 minutes of this episode of LEP (The Lying Game Part 2) to hear me give detailed instructions on how to use the game in class, including details of the level, procedure, specific language and skills work you can do with students. I can get about 2 hours of class time out of this game, and it’s useful for teaching grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary.

In fact, here are the last 15 minutes of the episode if you’d like to listen to them again or download for later. :) [DOWNLOAD]

308. The Lying Game (Part 1) with Amber & Paul

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Hello, welcome back to LEP. This episode is called the lying game, and it’s one of those ones in which I play a speaking game with my friends Amber and Paul. A transcript for the first 15-20 minutes is available here on the page for this episode. In the introduction you’ll hear me welcome new listeners, talk a bit about my speaking speed on the podcast, mention the importance of listening to native speakers of English (even if it’s a bit difficult to understand every word) and explain some of the content of the conversation you’ll hear between Amber, Paul and me. Then, the speaking game begins properly. I really hope you have as much fun listening to this as we did recording it, because we really enjoyed ourselves! In part 2 (coming soon) you’ll hear the conclusion of the game and I’ll explain how I use this activity with my students in my English classes.

[DOWNLOAD]
Introduction Transcript Starts Here (+ more information below)
Hello, welcome to LEP. This episode is called the lying game, and it’s one of those ones in which I play a speaking game with my friends Amber and Paul.

Before you listen to that, I’d like to just say a few things here at the beginning of the episode. Firstly, hello to all my regular listeners, the LEPsters as they are sometimes known. How are you all? I hope you’re fine and having a lovely day or night or evening or morning or whatever time of day it is. Thanks for recent comments on my website. It’s always nice to read your messages. Recently I did episodes about The Battle or Britain and Back To The Future, and I’m feeling a lot of love in the comments section – particularly from my Polish listeners because of things I said in episode 303, which is really great. It’s very motivating to read the positive things you have to say in response to my episodes. I do think about my podcast a lot, and I always hope that you’re enjoying it and finding it useful. So, your comments are valuable bits of encouragement. Thanks also to those of you who have never left a comment on my website in your life – you’re my ninja listeners, and I think there are a lot of you out there, choosing to remain silent in the shadows, but listening to everything.

Secondly, just in case you’re new to LEP, let me just quickly introduce myself. My name is Luke Thompson and I’m an English language teacher from England, which is in Britain, which is in the UK, which is in Europe, sort of. I’m originally from London (in the south-east) but I went to university in Liverpool (in the north-west) and I also spent many years growing up in Warwickshire which is near Birmingham, which is in the midlands, which is in England, which is in Britain, which is in Europe, which is on Earth… etc. OK, I’ve been teaching English for nearly 15 years, wow has it been that long? Time flies when you’re having fun, and I do enjoy my job. I’m DELTA qualified, and in my career I have taught English to adults and children from many different countries, at many different levels, at many different times of the day – morning, afternoon, evening and at night sometimes, in any season, in all weather conditions – rain, snow, hail, wind, lightning, and even during a couple of earthquakes. I’ve taught courses in general English, business English, academic English, English for exams, English for doctors, English for pharmacists, English for engineers, English for lawyers, English for HR, English for secretaries of state, English for journalists, English for unemployed people, English for retired people and English for people who haven’t chosen what to do with their lives yet. Basically, if you need English, I’m your man. If I was a superhero for English teaching, you could call me Englishman! Which is appropriate, because I am an English man. Haha, I’m just joking, I’m not a superhero, I’m just an ordinary humble man, well as you can hear from this introduction I may not be that humble, but I am a man – definitely, I checked this morning. I am proud to be an English teacher – a profession which includes many bright and brilliant people all around the world, who have either chosen this vocation, or just ended up doing it because they didn’t know what else to do with their lives. As well as being an English teacher, I’m also a stand-up comedian, and I’m a podcaster. I do a podcast for learners of English called Luke’s English Podcast. You should listen to it. It’s quite popular and I have lots of downloads these days. I’m happy to say that I have a lovely community of people around the world who regularly listen to my podcast episodes in order to improve their English, but also (hopefully) because they just enjoy listening to each episode I produce. Did I mention that the podcast has won a few awards? No. Ok, well, the podcast has won a few awards. Am I sounding a bit arrogant? I hope not. I don’t mean to sound full of myself, I really don’t – it’s just that sometimes I think I should try and sell myself on the podcast, just a little bit, to remind you who I am. I don’t mean to just go on about myself a lot because it’s a bit self-indulgent isn’t it? But I do think it’s important to convince you that listening to this is very good for your English, and that you should keep doing it. It’s not just me who says that, I also have lots of testimonies from listeners of my podcast who have commented on my website, saying some very positive and nice things indeed, like this one which arrived just a couple of days ago, from someone called “Teddy WS” who simply wrote “Thank God I find this page.” He sounds a bit desperate maybe, like he’s been walking through some kind of English teaching desert, and my website is like an oasis for him, where he can drink from this refreshing wellspring of natural English. It’s certainly a positive endorsement.

Thanks Teddy, that’s nice. Now, admittedly, Teddy did make a mistake in his comment – he wrote “Thank God I find this page” and it should be “Thank God I found this page” but to be fair, he has only just found the page, and he has been walking through a desert for days and days, and he probably hasn’t listened to many of the episodes yet. I expect if Teddy writes on the page again in a few months, after he’s listened to more episodes and refreshed himself, he won’t make a mistake like that. I certainly hope so. Teddy, if you’re listening – don’t feel bad about making that mistake – mistakes are an essential part of the learning experience. Just brush it off, carry on and try not to do it again. By the way Teddy, I’m looking forward to reading another comment from you on my site in the future.

The main philosophy of my podcast is to give learners of English the chance to listen to authentic British English as it is really spoken. Sometimes it’s just me talking, sometimes I have interviews and conversations with friends, family or other interesting people. I try to keep it real – meaning I try not to adapt my language level too much. I don’t want to talk to you in a very simple way because that’s not how people usually speak in the real world. I think I speak clearly on the podcast, but at a fairly normal speed. I believe, ultimately, that’s better for your English.

So, it’s better for your English in the long run, but in the short-term, you might find it difficult to understand every single word I say, or every single word my friends say. So, I often remind you, that if you don’t understand what I’m saying or if you get lost during conversations on the podcast – keep listening! Keep going! Don’t be put off when you lose the thread of the conversation. Persevere, don’t give up. In the long run, it will be better for your English. So don’t stop.

If you want to pay close attention to every single word, and study those words, you can. Many of my episodes have transcripts, or at least some notes which you can read. You can then study the words and phrases I’m using and improve your English that way. Or, you can simply relax and listen to the episodes wherever you are in the world – just find a comfortable place, or even an uncomfortable place – it doesn’t matter that much, but comfortable is better, just put your headphones in, or turn your speakers on, and just listen for fun. It should be enjoyable to listen to English. It doesn’t have to be a boring study exercise. So, I invite you to just relax, kick off your shoes, make a cup of tea, listen to my episodes, and enjoy doing it. :)

This episode is entitled The Lying Game. The title of the episode has absolutely no connection to the things I’ve just said to you in the opening minutes of this introduction.

No, the reason this episode is called The Lying Game, is because in a few moments you’re going to listen to my friends and me playing a speaking game which involves either lying or telling the truth. It’s just a fun guessing game that involves some lying. So that’s why this episode has that title.

So let me tell you what you can expect from this 2-part episode of LEP.

What’s The Lying Game? This is a speaking activity I play with my students in my English language classes. In this episode you’ll hear me playing this game with my friends Amber and Paul, who are native speakers of English.

In a few minutes the episode is going to start (we haven’t started yet, this is still the introduction). I just wanted to say right now, that this was a very fun conversation for Amber, Paul and me. We really enjoyed talking and playing the game. I hope you enjoy it too. The thing is, we got pretty excited during the game and so we speak pretty quickly and sometimes we speak over each other. That might make it difficult for you to understand everything that’s being said. Still, like I said a few moments ago – keep listening anyway, even if you don’t understand everything. OK, I think I’ve made my point about that now!

The recording begins mid conversation. Let me just tell you a few things to help you understand what we’re saying, right from the beginning.

You’ll hear me say to Paul, “Do you really think I change the way I speak?” This is because Paul thought I sometimes change my voice when I’m recording the podcast. Like, I have a podcast voice that comes on when I start recording. We agree that it’s quite normal as a way of catching the attention of the audience from the beginning, or “pulling people in” as Paul says.

Just a couple of other things that will help you understand the beginning of the conversation:

Paul starts whispering subliminal messages into his microphone. This is because just the other day he was on a “film shoot” and he did that to the sound man – he whispered into the microphone and only the sound man could hear him. Just for fun.

I make a (lame) joke about something Amber says about it being a grey day. I thought she said ‘grade A’, referring to the sofa she was sitting on. A grade A sofa would be a top quality sofa. My sofa on the other hand is not that good, so it’s more likely to be a grade B or grade C sofa.

Then we make a few references to things you won’t know about, like my stand up routine, and a joke I made earlier about Philips lightbulbs, you know the technology company called “Philips”. Watch out for that. We found is hilarious. You might be confused by it. Let me know.

Then I realise that we’re having too much fun, and that could be annoying, like my favourite film critic Mark Kermode says that comedy is hard work. If people say they had fun making a comedy you’ll know it’s not funny.

It looks like they had a lot of fun making it which is always a recipe for disaster, when it comes to comedy. Because most really funny comedies are not fun to make – On reviewing Mortdecai 23 Jan 2015 show

So I hope that is not the case for this episode.

So, after that Mark Kermode reference, we settle down a bit, the conversation continues, we talk a bit about lying, and we start playing the game.

OK, I’m now going to stop explaining everything before it’s happened, and just let you listen to the episode. So, here we go!

Intro 2 (This is the second introduction which I say at the beginning of the conversation with Amber & Paul!)
Sometimes I play a fluency speaking game with my students, which involves telling lies. I call it The Lying Game. It’s an imaginative title. It’s just a fun game to practice giving information, and forming questions. I’ve been using it in class for years and it’s always a pretty popular exercise. This time on the podcast I thought I’d play the game with some native speakers. When you listen you can focus on noticing these things: question forms, how people describe events in the past (tenses and pronunciation of ed endings), how people describe present habits (verb forms and adverbs – not just present simple tense) and also the intonation that we use when asking questions in a suspicious, open or challenging way.

With me I have Paul Taylor & Amber Minogue.

How are you?
Do you think you’re good liars? Are you gullible?
Do you ever lie in your life?
Is it wrong to lie? Is it ever ok?
Are you ready to play the game?

Rules

Tell us something – it could be something that happened in the past, a habit, someone you’ve met – anything about you that we don’t already know. Try to make it interesting – partly ridiculous, partly believable.
We will then interrogate you about it, asking you all sorts of questions to investigate your statement. You can expand on it. This is the hilarious bit where we’re not sure if you’re lying or not. Ha ha ha.
Then, when we’ve run out of questions we will say if we think you’re lying or telling the truth, justifying why we think so.
Then, reveal if you were lying or not. It’ll be dramatic and entertaining.
Points: For everyone who guesses wrong, you get two points. Every person who guesses correctly gets 1 point.
Everyone has a go, and at the end we count the scores to see not only who is the best liar, but also who is the most gullible or untrusting person. If you’re gullible, you won’t score much. If you’re too trusting, you won’t score much either. If you’re a bad liar you won’t score much, if you don’t appear trustworthy you won’t score well either. So, the winner of this game will be some kind of psychopath, basically. Or, the winner will be a good liar and good at detecting lies too.

Luke, Paul and Amber’s Statements from the Game

Luke: I once met Dave Grohl (drummer from Nirvana, singer in Foo Fighters) at a buddhist temple in Japan.

Paul: I once spent Valentine’s Day with Elijah Wood and John Hurt.

End of part 1! You can hear Amber’s turn in the next episode, where you will find out what happens and who wins the game in the end! (exciting)

Scores at the end of part 1
At this stage, the scores are like this:

Luke – 2 / 0 Total = 2 points

Amber – 1 / 1 Total = 2 points

Paul – 0 / 2 Total = 2 points

So it’s even stevens!

Listen to part 2 (coming soon) in order to hear Amber’s story, and to see who wins.

The photo of Dave Grohl that I took on my J-Phone:

:) Thanks for listening!

The Invention of Lying – Film by Ricky Gervais

307. The Mystery of Corporate Jargon & Management Speak (Part 2)

4 Replies

‘Peeling back the onion’ on management speak and corporate jargon.
This episode focuses on defining and explaining the examples of language you heard at the beginning of the last episode. You’ll hear Paul and me going through all the phrases and by the end you should be able to understand it all, and you could create your own version of bullsh*t bingo! See below for definitions and to print some bulls*t bingo cards.

[DOWNLOAD]
The intro to part 1 – This contains all the language we define in this episode
Hi Paul, thanks for taking time out to talk to me today.
I just wanted to touch base with you in order to get all our ducks in a row, OK, so let’s peel back the onion and have a good look under the bonnet on this podcast situation here. At the end of the day, we’ve brought you on board here because we think you bring a lot to the table and I think that impacts favourably on our key market component players, and I think this is something we can leverage to bring about greater penetration, ultimately pushing our growth potential above and beyond just the low hanging fruit and into the stratosphere on this one. I’m talking streamlining, I’m talking synergy and with yourself on board we can push the strategic staircase all the way up to eleven. I’m talking 110% mate. After all, that’s part of our DNA here at LEP solutions isn’t it. We’re all about cascading relevant information and branching out across new frontiers and web 2.0 platforms and that’s why I thought I’d reach out to you, offline like this, just so we can have a bit of downtime to go over this, get a helicopter view to make sure nobody drops the ball going forward. I think you know what I’m talking about. Feedback says restructuring has been working very well, I mean, clearly this is not a come to Jesus moment, far from it and in fact I think there’s no need for much more of a drill down on this one or it’ll just turn into a case of paralysis by analysis, so let’s keep our eyes on the prize ok Paul? Wait, don’t say anything. I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, “but Luke, how can we truly push the envelope and come up with genuinely competitive deliverables across multiple platforms to upscale our market diversity moving forward” and that’s what I like about you Paul. You don’t beat around the bush, you just say it like it is. So, just to finish up here, I’d say – don’t let the grass grow too long on this one, okay, what I’m looking for is for you to have a get together with your team, unpack these issues, have an idea shower, really think outside the box – blue sky thinking, and then by end of play, shoot me over an exit strategy that will allow for true organic growth maximising our potential for upstream stratcom. So, if you could action that, then we’ll just run it up the flagpole, you know, put the record on and see who dances, and then ideally we can look to open the kimono and truly take it to the next level going forward, firing on all cylinders. OK?

List of Jargon & Definitions (Explained in this episode)
Action = as a verb, to mean “do”. “Can you action that?” (Redundant – why say this when you just mean ‘do’? Sounds self important)
At the end of the day = ultimately (why are things different at the end of the day? And anyway, it’s no the end of the day, it’s 11AM) (Cliche)
Bring to the table = What table? This means to offer skills, services, ideas etc. “What are you bringing to the table?” = what are you bringing to the team in terms of skills, knowledge etc.
Cascading relevant information – speaking to your colleagues. If anything, this is worse than touching base offline. From the flourish of cascading through to relevant, and onto information – this is complete nonsense. It sounds way more self-important than necessary.
a Come-to-Jesus moment (A meeting in which one person has to be disciplined and brought back in line with the philosophy or ethos of the organisation, a meeting or situation in which a person/organisation comes back to core values, often admitting mistakes in the process) Sounds really pretentious.
a Deliverable (a thing that has to be provided) – “the company’s primary method of measuring customer feedback on deliverables” Why not just products, services or information? It sounds annoying because it’s a noun which used to be an adjective. I think it’s not that bad.
Don’t let the grass grow too long on this one = work fast. I’m looking for a polite way of suggesting that you get off your backside and get on with it. What grass anyway? This is just an annoying use of metaphor, obscuring the fact that you’re telling me to hurry up.
Drill down = go into details, investigate the details. Seems unnecessarily aggressive and even overtly sexual?
Drop the Ball = rugby based expression, meaning fail or make a mistake.
End of play = This means by the end of the day, or by the end of the week. I guess it’s used to make it sound like sport or a game, but sorry – it’s work.
Exit strategy = a planned way of exiting a situation (e.g. investors need an exit strategy)
Get all your ducks in a row – be organised and in line with everyone else. You may think I’m disorganised, but there’s no need to talk to me like a five-year-old.
Going forward / Moving forward = in the future
Helicopter view – need a phrase that means broad overview of the business? Then why not say “a broad view of the business” or “an overview”?
Idea shower – brainstorm
Impact – instead of ‘effect’ as a noun. What will be the impact on our sales? How will this impact our sales?
Issues (not problems)
Leverage – used as verb to mean magnify, multiply, augment, or increase.
Look under the bonnet – analyse a situation. Most people wouldn’t have a clue about a car engine. When I look under a car bonnet I scratch my head, try not to look like I haven’t got a clue, jiggle a few pipes and kick the tyres before handing the job over to a qualified professional.
Low hanging fruit – easy win business
Open the kimono = to be open and transparent, usually with external people
Organic growth = naturally occurring development
Outside the box = usually, “think outside the box” – this just means thinking without any restrictions, like ‘blue sky thinking’. But I didn’t realise we were in a box.
Paradigm shift – just a big change in the way we do things.
Paralysis by Analysis = thinking about things too much and not actually doing anything
Part of our DNA = an intrinsic part of our nature, usually the DNA of a company. But companies don’t have DNA.
Peel back the onion = analyse the situation in detail, going through numerous layers.
Penetration = e.g. market penetration. This means going into something deeply. Again, it’s a bit sexual isn’t it.
Push the envelope = make things better, challenge current standards, go further.
Put a record on and see who dances – as above. Unfortunately the kind of person who says this is likely to put on Gangnam Style because they think that’s cool too. Think David Brent to the power 10.
Reach out – as in “I’ll reach out to sales to get the latest figures”.
Restructuring = usually this means firing people or making redundancies, or at least changing the structure of the company and moving people
Run it up the flagpole – Try it and see what happens, or ask for the opinions of everyone, or show it to everyone to get their feedback.
Square the circle – not entirely sure what this means! I think it means to standardise it, get it under control , solve a difficult problem. It comes from geometry – making a square with the same surface area as the circle. It’s difficult, basically.
Strategic Communication (also known as “Stratcom“) = communicating with customers in a planned way. “stratcom” just doesn’t sound like English.
The strategic staircase = a business plan. Thanks, but I’ll take the lift.
to Streamline something / streamlining = like restructuring. A nice way of saying “getting rid of people we don’t need”
Synergy = cooperation of different parts of a business. Different departments working together well.
Touch Base = to talk to someone
Touch base offline – meaning let’s meet and talk, in a more informal setting. Because, contrary to popular belief, it is possible to communicate without a Wi-Fi signal. No, really, it is. Fancy a coffee?
Unpack (as in “Let me unpack that statement.”) = explain and go into details

Bullsh*t Bingo
Use these cards to play your own version of bullsh*t bingo.
You can use the intro to episode 306 (in which I use a lot of management speak).
Play with 4 players.
Hand out the cards.
Listen to the intro to episode 306.
When you hear a phrase, cross it out.
The first person to cross out 3 phrases in a line shouts “BINGO” (or if you prefer: “BULLSH*T!”)

: Bingo card 1

Links
13 most hated corporate jargon phrases http://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/worst-office-jargon-phrases-staff-love-hate-management-speak
Weird Al Yankovic – Mission Statement. Buy Weird Al’s Album on iTunes here https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/mandatory-fun/id891836396

UK career’s service career player. People talking about management speak.

onion

306. The Mystery of Corporate Jargon & Management Speak (Part 1)

11 Replies

Why do people in meetings at work keep talking about “thinking outside the box”? Why does my boss say we need to “get all our ducks in a row”? And why does my project manager want to “touch base with me offline”? If it’s all a mystery to you, don’t worry – LEP is here to decode all this weird language.

If you work in an office in an English-speaking country I’m sure you’ll have heard of ‘corporate jargon’ or ‘management speak’. This is one of the things that people complain about the most, in offices all around the UK. It seems that managers, bosses, project managers, corporate leaders all speak a strange version of English full of bizarre idioms, over-complicated metaphors and unnecessarily big words. But what is ‘management speak’, why do people use it, and why do people find it so annoying? In this episode I’m joined by former Apple employee Paul Taylor as we ‘peel back the onion’ and decode the phenomenon of management speak. Listen to find out all the details and to learn some management speak in the process.

[DOWNLOAD]
Intro monologue featuring lots of ‘management speak’ (all explained in part 2)
Hi Paul, thanks for taking time out to talk to me today.
I just wanted to touch base with you in order to get all our ducks in a row, OK, so let’s peel back the onion and have a good look under the bonnet on this podcast situation here. At the end of the day, we’ve brought you on board here because we think you bring a lot to the table and I think that impacts favourably on our key market component players, and I think this is something we can leverage to bring about greater penetration, ultimately pushing our growth potential above and beyond just the low hanging fruit and into the stratosphere on this one. I’m talking streamlining, I’m talking synergy and with yourself on board we can push the strategic staircase all the way up to eleven. I’m talking 110% mate. After all, that’s part of our DNA here at LEP solutions isn’t it. We’re all about cascading relevant information and branching out across new frontiers and web 2.0 platforms and that’s why I thought I’d reach out to you, offline like this, just so we can have a bit of downtime to go over this, get a helicopter view to make sure nobody drops the ball going forward. I think you know what I’m talking about. Feedback says restructuring has been working very well, I mean, clearly this is not a come to Jesus moment, far from it and in fact I think there’s no need for much more of a drill down on this one or it’ll just turn into a case of paralysis by analysis, so let’s keep our eyes on the prize ok Paul? Wait, don’t say anything. I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, “but Luke, how can we truly push the envelope and come up with genuinely competitive deliverables across multiple platforms to upscale our market diversity moving forward” and that’s what I like about you Paul. You don’t beat around the bush, you just say it like it is. So, just to finish up here, I’d say – don’t let the grass grow too long on this one, okay, what I’m looking for is for you to have a get together with your team, unpack these issues, have an idea shower, really think outside the box – blue sky thinking, and then by end of play, shoot me over an exit strategy that will allow for true organic growth maximising our potential for upstream stratcom. So, if you could action that, then we’ll just run it up the flagpole, you know, put the record on and see who dances, and then ideally we can look to open the kimono and truly take it to the next level going forward, firing on all cylinders. OK?

Paul says “I have no idea what you’re talking about”
Just… it’s nice to have you on the podcast again.
So, what you all just heard there was me using a lot of what we call “corporate jargon” or “management speak”. If you didn’t understand it all, we plan to come back and explain it for you in this episode. Also, you can see it all written on the page for this episode at teacherluke.co.uk.

Management Speak / Corporate Jargon
We’re talking about management speak, or corporate jargon. That’s the focus of the episode – what is corporate jargon or management speak, how do people feel about it, what’s wrong with it (or not) and what are some of the most common examples of management speak that people don’t like?

Did you understand what I said Paul?
Have you heard that stuff before?
Paul talks about a couple of experiences at Apple.

CNN skit with loads of management speak

What is jargon?
Definition from the Cambridge Dictionary for Learners of English
jargon
noun [U] /ˈdʒɑːɡən/
› words and phrases used by particular groups of people that are difficult for other people to understand:
e.g. legal jargon, technical jargon, medical jargon, English teaching jargon (activate schemata, facilitate the non-deductive process of lexical acquisition, etc), also corporate jargon or just the jargon of managing people.

What is Corporate Jargon or Management Speak?
management speak (or corporate jargon)
noun [U] (also management-speak)
› WORKPLACE words and expressions that are used by managers and in management theory, but may not be understood by ordinary people:
“Relationship marketing” is management speak for selling products by offering discounts and benefits to existing customers.

Corporate jargon is basically the same thing, and just refers to words and expressions used in the corporate world.

Why do people use management speak?
Info about Corporate Jargon from a Guardian article, which includes reference to the Plain English Campaign (a movement which has been going since 1979 to promote plain, simple and clear English free of jargon and misleading public information. It’s been supported by numerous well-known and respected public figures including heads of state such as Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher, and the Prince of Wales – did I say respected public figures?) Anyway, here is what The Guardian wrote about the subject of management speak.
The Plain English Campaign says that many staff working for big corporate organisations find themselves using management speak as a way of disguising the fact that they haven’t done their job properly. Some people think that it is easy to bluff their way through by using long, impressive-sounding words and phrases, even if they don’t know what they mean, which is telling in itself. (So, people use it to make themselves sound more important)

Furthermore, a recent survey by Institute of Leadership & Management, revealed that management speak is used in almost two thirds (64%) of offices, with nearly a quarter (23%) considering it to be a pointless irritation. “Thinking outside the box” (57%), “going forward” (55%) and “let’s touch base” (39%) were identified as the top three most overused pieces of jargon.

Why does Paul hate it?
Bullsh*t bingo?

Is there anything wrong with it?
Isn’t it just the language of work? People need to use complex language to talk about complex specialist things. But sometimes, it’s used to build power structures and not to achieve tasks. E.g. Legal English in contracts is so difficult to understand that it doesn’t help the parties to the contracts, only the lawyers who are needed to decide it all. So, arguably lawyers (even subconsciously) fill contracts with legalese to make sure they are indispensable to their clients, possibly justifying their very high fees. Similarly, managers might use this language to make themselves sound more important, confident, impressive or expert. This lack of sincerity is what irritates people. It just sounds like self-important BS, and that’s annoying when we’re just trying to get things done.

Arguments For and Against

For: Some phrases are actually pretty useful and accurate and there’s nothing wrong with them really, and it’s just pedantic and uptight to get so annoyed. E.g. “Going forward” is quite descriptive and positive, and is not grammatically incorrect.

Against: But sloppy cliches, impenetrable jargon and meaningless, redundant language does not help proper communication and can just be used to distract attention away from the real work that has to be done. Also, it irritates so many people, and that is a reason alone to look further.

Some comments from an article by Financial Times journalist Lucy Kellaway on management speak (this one http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7453584.stm#)

Actually, this first one is from the Plain English Campaign Website www.plainenglish.co.uk

‘Human relationships depend on communication. Bad writing is a barrier to communication. When a large organisation such as the Government tries to communicate with the man and woman in the street the scope for misunderstanding is enormous. Too often clarity and simplicity are overwhelmed by pompous words, long sentences and endless paragraphs.

If we all wrote in plain English, how much easier – and efficient – life would be. It is no exaggeration to describe plain English as a fundamental tool of good Government.

Some people think that flowery language and complicated writing is a sign of intellectual strength. They are wrong. Some of our greatest communicators were – and are – passionate believers in the simplicity of the written word. As Winston Churchill described a particularly tortured piece of ‘officialese’: ‘This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.’

The Civil Service and public administration generally have made great strides in the use of plain English in recent years. Jargon and ‘officialese’, while far from extinct, are dying out. I would like to see them banished forever. Plain English must be the aim of all who work in government.’
Baroness Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister

No-one wishes to be reactionary and oppose all linguistic evolution; the efforts in France to “protect” their language are absurd and rightly the butt of much ridicule. However, Lucy Kellaway usefully points out how much of these recent changes are intended to deceive and mislead. Most of the phrases are merely empty, but some are deliberately dishonest and designed to distort meaning. (She takes her examples from the business world but this kind of malevolent misuse of language is at the heart of the “political correctness” fanaticism which can be seen in the political and social realms.)
Douglas McCallum, Kingdom of Bahrain (temporary); otherwise, Bullwood, by Dunoon (Agyll)

Many people hate it, but here’s why you still need to know it
If you’re doing business with native speakers, and let’s face it you probably will, you’ll need to try and decode what the hell they’re talking about.
I’ve met many people from lots of countries who do business with the Brits and Americans and they often struggle to penetrate their idiomatic language.
Native speakers should really cut down on it, but it will be useful if you know some of it, or are at least aware that it exists.

So, should management speak and corporate language be banned or something?
That would also be ridiculous. We don’t want a situation like in France, where a bunch of stuffy academics sit around deciding what we can and can’t say. But what we want is to cut out the bullshit factor – people just using language to lie, cover the truth, make themselves sound important or intelligent, to patronise, to be passive aggressive and all those other insincere and slightly dishonest things that people do, via language.

This episode is not just to moan about corporate jargon, but to decode it, help you learn some of it, and also to decide how bad it is really.

List of Jargon & Definitions (Explained in Part 2)
Action = as a verb, to mean “do”. “Can you action that?” (Redundant – why say this when you just mean ‘do’? Sounds self important)
At the end of the day = ultimately (why are things different at the end of the day? And anyway, it’s no the end of the day, it’s 11AM) (Cliche)
Bring to the table = What table? This means to offer skills, services, ideas etc. “What are you bringing to the table?” = what are you bringing to the team in terms of skills, knowledge etc.
Cascading relevant information – speaking to your colleagues. If anything, this is worse than touching base offline. From the flourish of cascading through to relevant, and onto information – this is complete nonsense. It sounds way more self-important than necessary.
a Come-to-Jesus moment (A meeting in which one person has to be disciplined and brought back in line with the philosophy or ethos of the organisation, a meeting or situation in which a person/organisation comes back to core values, often admitting mistakes in the process) Sounds really pretentious.
a Deliverable (a thing that has to be provided) – “the company’s primary method of measuring customer feedback on deliverables” Why not just products, services or information? It sounds annoying because it’s a noun which used to be an adjective. I think it’s not that bad.
Don’t let the grass grow too long on this one = work fast. I’m looking for a polite way of suggesting that you get off your backside and get on with it. What grass anyway? This is just an annoying use of metaphor, obscuring the fact that you’re telling me to hurry up.
Drill down = go into details, investigate the details. Seems unnecessarily aggressive and even overtly sexual?
Drop the Ball = rugby based expression, meaning fail or make a mistake.
End of play = This means by the end of the day, or by the end of the week. I guess it’s used to make it sound like sport or a game, but sorry – it’s work.
Exit strategy = a planned way of exiting a situation (e.g. investors need an exit strategy)
Get all your ducks in a row – be organised and in line with everyone else. You may think I’m disorganised, but there’s no need to talk to me like a five-year-old.
Going forward / Moving forward = in the future
Helicopter view – need a phrase that means broad overview of the business? Then why not say “a broad view of the business” or “an overview”?
Idea shower – brainstorm
Impact – instead of ‘effect’ as a noun. What will be the impact on our sales? How will this impact our sales?
Issues (not problems)
Leverage – used as verb to mean magnify, multiply, augment, or increase.
Look under the bonnet – analyse a situation. Most people wouldn’t have a clue about a car engine. When I look under a car bonnet I scratch my head, try not to look like I haven’t got a clue, jiggle a few pipes and kick the tyres before handing the job over to a qualified professional.
Low hanging fruit – easy win business
Open the kimono = to be open and transparent, usually with external people
Organic growth = naturally occurring development
Outside the box = usually, “think outside the box” – this just means thinking without any restrictions, like ‘blue sky thinking’. But I didn’t realise we were in a box.
Paradigm shift – just a big change in the way we do things.
Paralysis by Analysis = thinking about things too much and not actually doing anything
Part of our DNA = an intrinsic part of our nature, usually the DNA of a company. But companies don’t have DNA.
Peel back the onion = analyse the situation in detail, going through numerous layers.
Penetration = e.g. market penetration. This means going into something deeply. Again, it’s a bit sexual isn’t it.
Push the envelope = make things better, challenge current standards, go further.
Put a record on and see who dances – as above. Unfortunately the kind of person who says this is likely to put on Gangnam Style because they think that’s cool too. Think David Brent to the power 10.
Reach out – as in “I’ll reach out to sales to get the latest figures”.
Restructuring = usually this means firing people or making redundancies, or at least changing the structure of the company and moving people
Run it up the flagpole – Try it and see what happens, or ask for the opinions of everyone, or show it to everyone to get their feedback.
Square the circle – not entirely sure what this means! I think it means to standardise it, get it under control , solve a difficult problem. It comes from geometry – making a square with the same surface area as the circle. It’s difficult, basically.
Strategic Communication (also known as “Stratcom“) = communicating with customers in a planned way. “stratcom” just doesn’t sound like English.
The strategic staircase = a business plan. Thanks, but I’ll take the lift.
to Streamline something / streamlining = like restructuring. A nice way of saying “getting rid of people we don’t need”
Synergy = cooperation of different parts of a business. Different departments working together well.
Touch Base = to talk to someone
Touch base offline – meaning let’s meet and talk, in a more informal setting. Because, contrary to popular belief, it is possible to communicate without a Wi-Fi signal. No, really, it is. Fancy a coffee?
Unpack (as in “Let me unpack that statement.”) = explain and go into details

305. Film Club: Back To The Future (Part 2)

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Welcome back to part 2 of this episode of Luke’s Film Club, about the Back To The Future trilogy. In this episode I’m going to talk about: lessons we can learn from the story, a few fun facts, the 2015 predictions in the film, how the DeLorean works, theories about time travel and some temporal paradoxes in the story. So strap in, let’s go back to the future again.

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3. What are the themes of the film? or the morals of the story?
– Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go back and meet your parents when they were the same age as you? What would they be like? Would you get on with each other?
Writer/Producer Bob Gale had the idea for the film after finding his father’s yearbook in the basement, seeing that he was somewhat of a nerd and wondering if they would have been friends if they’d been at school together.
– The complexities of time travel and questions raised by it, including the dangers of meddling with the past or the future, and how certain events in your life can alter your future.
– The idea that you’re in charge of your own destiny and future.
– “You can’t go losing your judgement every time somebody calls you a name”
– “The future isn’t written. It can be changed. You know that. Anyone can make their future whatever they want it to be.”
– “No-one should know too much about their own destiny”
– “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything”
– History repeats itself – there are numerous examples of history repeating itself, all the way through the whole series. Biff is the bully across 3 time periods. In all three periods he is outsmarted by Marty in various similar ways, and in all three stories he ends up falling into a pile of horse manure. That’s just a couple of examples, but time and time again there are other repetitions.

4. Any info or anecdotes about how the film was made?
The Delorean was chosen as the time-travelling car because the filmmakers felt that its wing doors meant it could conceivably be confused for a UFO.
Claudia Wells only plays Marty’s girlfriend, Jennifer, in the first film and not the sequels because her mother became ill and she chose to spend time with her. Elisabeth Shue took over the role for the second and third movies.
Robert Zemeckis joked in a behind-the-scenes featurette that the hoverboards used on set were real. A large number of parents took him at his word and tried to order them in toy shops.
Robert Zemeckis regretted the decision to have Jennifer get into the car with Marty and Doc Brown at the end of the first film as it meant Jennifer would have to be incorporated into Part II, rather than giving free reign to tell a brand new story.
By time he shot parts II and III, Michael J. Fox was 28 years old, but still playing 17.
Chrispin Golver, the actor who plays Marty’s Dad chose not to appear in the sequels because he disagreed with the messages in the film. Apparently he didn’t agree with the film’s values. He didn’t like that the McFlys were happier people because they were more prosperous financially. And he felt the idea that money = happiness is BS.

5. How about their vision of the future in 2015? How many predictions did they get right?
So, here we are on October 21 2015. How is the world outside similar or different to the version from Back To the Future 2?

Some things were wrong, like mainly the fashion and the flying cars, but they got a lot of things right.
Let’s have a look.
Things they got right:
– 3D movies. But not Jaws 19. Technically we don’t have holographic TVs or cinemas in the mainstream yet though.
– Tablet computers. There’s a guy in Hill Valley with what looks like a tablet computer – a wireless touch screen with no keyboard.
– Drones. When Griff gets arrested we see a USA Today camera drone arrive to film the event. Now drones exist and some media companies use them to collect video footage.
– Big screen TVs mounted on the wall, and video conference calls. My TV in 1985 was like a big heavy wooden box. The ones in the film are much more similar to our TVs of today – flatter, wider, bigger, attached to walls.
– Multiple TV channels. Marty is confused by the TV he sees in his future home. There are hundreds of channels and you can see them all playing in different boxes on the screen, all a the same time, instead of having to flick through them one by one. Now this is a normal way people choose the show they want to watch. You can still flick through, but most digital TVs will allow you to get an overview of all the channels, usually with a little preview screen of what’s on that channel at the time.
– Hands-free video games. In 1985 Marty is an expert at the computer game in his local diner. In 2015 he finds the same game (left in the store as a retro novelty), and a couple of kids trying to play it. They don’t understand that you actually have to use your hands to play the game. Apparently, in 2015 all kids use hands-free games, and they think this one with a controller is boring. *Cameo by a young Elijah Wood here. When I saw this before, the idea of hands-free games was so ridiculous that I found it funny. Now, it’s pretty normal with things like Xbox Kinetic and other motion sensitive games consoles. Not so ridiculous after all.
– Fingerprint recognition. In the film it’s possible to make a payment by touching your finger on a screen. We’re pretty much there – you can do that on your iPhone and we definitely have the technology to do that in shops now too, although it hasn’t become commonplace yet. Finger and thumb prints are also used to open doors, and we do have thumbprint security systems now, but again, they’re not commonplace and haven’t replaced the usual keys that we still have in our pockets.
– Virtual reality headsets. Marty’s children in the future spend quite a lot of time wearing virtual reality headsets. They’re masks you put on which fill your vision with a screen, which can also be like an immersive video game experience. Yep, we’ve got them too. Also, some characters wear glasses that incorporate telephone and video call functions as well as augmented vision – for example Doc Brown wears a pair of glasses that provides him with extra information about things he’s looking at. Little boxes and bits of text fill his vision when he’s looking at things. This is basically Google glass, which hasn’t taken off yet but I’m sure that eventually we’ll get augmented vision in some way – so that we don’t have to keep staring down into our phone screens, and instead we can just walk around and get our internet services right there in our vision – perhaps this could be a projection onto a glass screen in front of our eyes like with Google Glass or some sort of biotechnology in which our brain is connected to the internet. Imagine that! Sounds a lot like The Matrix, which is a bit scary.
– Ordering your food and drinks from computer screens. In the film, people order by talking to digital versions of celebrities on TV monitors. Now many restaurants use table-top tablets to replace waiters. Ok, so you’re not ordering from a digital version of Michael Jackson but almost.
– Voice commands. Lorraine in the film gives commands to her oven by talking to it. Now we can do this with our phones by just saying “Hey Siri” or whatever and then attempting to perform basic commands by using your voice.
– Self-tying laces. Marty wears a pair of Nike trainers that fit themselves to his feet automatically. Apparently, Nike has developed something like this and in fact there are rumours that they’ll release a limited edition Back to the Future range of trainers with this feature.
– Robotic petrol stations. I’m pretty sure these exist in Japan – you go in and park the car and the machine does the rest of the work somehow. They’re not mainstream by any means.

Things they didn’t get right:
– Hoverboards. OK so we kind of have hover boards now, but they’re not like in the films. The real hover boards we have today require a special magnetic surface as well as the board. They’re based on magnets I believe, such as the Hendo hoverboard. (see link) http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/131774-skateboarding-superstar-tony-hawk-takes-on-the-real-life-hendo-hoverboard-see-how-he-gets-on-video IN the films the hover boards will fly on any surface at all, even on water if you have some power to keep pushing you forwards, which is exactly what’s so cool about them. The Hendo hoverboard only works on top of the magnetic surface, which makes it pretty limited. Also, the Lexus Slide hoverboard requires a magnetic skatepark but apparently it operates pretty well. But on the subject of boards that will hover over anything, Astro-physicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson believes that they are impossible. Hoverboards impossible – Neil DeGrasse Tyson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/07/neil-degrasse-tyson-hoverboards_n_7522040.html

– Flying cars. Ok we do have some cars that can fly – but they have wings and they need roads for take-off. It’s not the same as this kind of flying car.

– Self-drying clothes. Not done yet I think, but we do have some awesome technology that resists water and keeps your clothing dry, and also some fabrics that dry very quickly. Nothing with in-built fans though, or any clothes that say “Your jacket is now dry”. Pity that. I generally like it when inanimate objects talk to me in weird soulless robot voices. Except perhaps those tills at Tescos that are so patronising, scary and disappointed in you. “Unexpected item in bagging area. I didn’t expect you to put your bananas there yet Mr Thompson. We’re very disappointed in you at Tescos. That’s why, unfortunately, you will be terminated. Have a good day!”

– Using rubbish as fuel. In BTTF2 Doc Brown has invented a device called Mr Fusion which converts raw rubbish into energy to power the flux capacitor. That’s incredible because apparently it generates 1.21 gigawatts of energy. We can recycle a lot of things now, and also convert some rubbish into fuel, like waste cooking oil into bio-diesel fuel, but we’re far from being able to generate significant power by just using a few banana skins and a half drunk can of beer.

– Floating signs. We’re still using traditional signs which are attached to the ground. I can’t imagine us adopting floating signs soon because of the energy needed to keep them in the air, probably with drones. But who knows, maybe they’ll be using drones to fly information around the skies at some point, and that will no doubt include advertising. That’s not a nice thought – advertising is already invasive enough. I don’t really want drones to be sweeping into my vision to try and make me look at an advert.

7. Talk about the time machine / Delorean. How does it work?
Someone asked me how the Delorean actually works, and also how to travel in time. HA! That’s easier said than done, especially since I’m an English teacher, not a quantum physicist! Also, it’s just a movie! It didn’t really happen! I think you know this though, so you’d probably quite like to hear me bang on about time machines and some of the science around how they work.

The DeLorean
The car is really a carrier for the Flux Capacitor, which is the real heart of the invention.
Let’s start with the Flux Capacitor
Info from Futurepedia the Back to the Future Wiki http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Flux_capacitor
The Flux Capacitor is not fully explained in the film, which is clever because it means the film doesn’t get bogged down in too many technical details (of course here at LEP we love to get bogged down in details) and it leaves a lot to the imagination. Here are a few things about it though. It’s situated inside the car, just near the driver’s seat and looks like a Y shape with glowing and pulsating light running through it. This is the thing that allows the Delorean to travel through time.
Apparently it briefly opens up a wormhole in space-time and then the DeLorean passes through it, achieving time travel.
You input the date you want to go to and the date you’ve come from.
Start the car and get up to 88 and boom – you travel through time. It’s pretty dangerous because you’ll be travelling at 88mph wherever you arrive, and you might crash into something (like Marty crashes into a barn, and also arrives in the middle of a fight between cowboys and Indians).
The Flux Capacitor needs 1.21 gigawatts of power, which is a lot! It’s equivalent to the output of about 2.5 nuclear power stations. In fact, Doc Brown powers the flux capacitor using plutonium, which is of course a very powerful radioactive fuel, which apparently he stole from some Libyan terrorists (little bit of politics there). So, that time machine is actually an extremely dangerous and unstable thing, as it is carrying the power of several nuclear reactors on board.
Later Doc Brown replaces the nuclear reactor with an invention from the future called Mr Fusion, which converts household rubbish into fuel. How that works, we don’t know – it’s from the future! (I sometimes imagine that if they have that kind of technology in the future they’d probably have a time machine, and then the universe and all of history would be populated by people from the future in their time machines… but that’s a paradox or problem that we’ll come to later)

Why 88mph?
Here’s some stuff about this that I found on Reddit.com and it’s pretty good. It explains why the DeLorean has to travel at 88mph exactly.
Why the DeLorean had to travel at 88 MPH to travel through time. (Back to the Future)
submitted 1 year ago by LessThanHero42
The Flux Capacitor allowed time travel by generating a wormhole to the programmed temporal destination, but these wormholes are unstable and only last for a little over a tenth of a second.
If the wormhole stability was measured as lasting only .10717 seconds then to move a car 4.216 meters long (A DeLorean) through the wormhole before it closes you would need to be moving at 39.3395 meters per second or 88 MPH.
If you are moving too fast then the vehicle would reach the wormhole before it fully opens. The front part of the vehicle could be sheered off, spaghettified, be delivered to a different temporal location, and/or eaten by spacetime krakens (or the whole vehicle could simply vaporize from trying to coexist in spacetime with an opening wormhole, who knows). Also you could miss the wormhole completely and be forever known as that guy who crashed a DeLorean into Twin Pines Mall right before being gunned down by Libyan terrorists.
Going too slow would cause the back end of the car (the engine of the DeLorean) to remain in 1985. Possibly large portions of whoever was inside too.
Regardless, arriving in the past/future without the front of the vehicle/pieces of the occupants because you were going too fast or too slow is probably a bad thing.
It’s like walking into automatic doors. If you run full speed at the doors, they won’t open fast enough and you’ll get a number of lacerations and a trip to a hospital. If you walk too slowly, the doors begin to close on you (when you leave the motion sensor range) and you get a concussion when they close on your head.
Now these numbers are general and it is likely that Doc Brown gave himself some leeway on the timing (Human error and imprecise engineering being what they are, it would be hard to determine if the car is moving exactly 88 MPH). Most likely the Flux Capacitor is programmed not to activate until the car reaches the appropriate speed.

Is time travel possible?
Yes it is. In fact, we’ve already done it. Obviously we’re all doing it right now because we’re travelling forwards in time. But in terms of moving through time at different speeds, yes, apparently that is possible and has already been done.

This is a bit complicated for me to understand, but let’s go with it.
*Try to explain how time travel is possible* No problem!
– Moving clocks go slower than stationary ones.
Brian Cox can explain this. (short extract)
So, we can go into the future, by taking a rocket and flying at great speed (just under the speed of light) out to space and back again. It’s just a bit impractical, because we don’t have the technology or power to go that fast.

– Wormholes
Remember the TARDIS from Doctor Who? It’s the blue box that the Doctor uses to travel through time, around the universe. It’s super cool – looks like a blue police telephone box and is much bigger on the inside than on the outside. The cool thing about the TARDIS is that not only does it travel in time, it also travels in space. TARDIS means Time And Relative Dimension in Space. Remember, in previous episodes I’ve mentioned this before – the universe is moving all the time. The earth is spinning on its axis (the days), we are orbiting the sun (years) and even our sun and the rest of the galaxy in which we exist, is orbiting the centre of the universe, and that whole universe is said to be expanding all the time. So, nothing is static, all matter is racing through space pretty fast. This suggests also that there is no such thing as a single static point in the universe. I guess it means that if you travel in time, you’ll end up in a different place. For example, even 5 minutes would result in me being in a different spot completely, probably in the air over a different part of the earth, or maybe embedded under the surface of earth, or even outside the atmosphere completely. This is because the earth is spinning at hundreds of miles an hour not to mention the orbit of the earth around the sun and everything else. So if I travelled forwards or backwards in time, I’d appear in a different location. So you need a time machine that will also put you at the same place as you were before, relative to everything else in the universe. So the time machine would somehow log your relative position in the universe in both time and in space and take you there. That’s how the TARDIS works.

I think Back to the Future doesn’t really deal with this explicitly, so we just imagine that it is able to work like a TARDIS – travelling not just in time, but also to that location. So, if I went back 5 minutes, my TARDIS time machine would locate this chair in front of this laptop in my skypod here at LEP HQ, so I don’t just suffocate to death in space, or get burned up by the sun’s rays or whatever else would happen to me if I found myself floating outside our atmosphere.

OK, so that’s the fact that time and space are linked together and can’t be separated.

Let’s talk about wormholes. Again, I’m no expert but here we go.
This is another idea or theory about time travel, that could allow us to go forwards or backwards in time.
So, let’s say time and space are connected and you can’t separate them. It’s like an axis or a sheet of paper let’s say. You want to go from A to B (draw two points on the paper). To travel from A to B along the surface takes time (I guess like in the rocket across space to travel at a slower rate of time). But if you could fold that paper in half then you’d be able to go from A to B instantly. I don;t get it, I’ll be honest. Folding paper in half is easy, but how do you just fold the universe in half? That’s just ridiculous!

Apparently wormholes can do that. Wormholes can allow you to go from one point in the universe to another, and that includes travelling from one point in time to another. If we could create a wormhole in spacetime, and find a way to control when it opens and closes, we could possibly bend the universe like paper and take a short cut. Again, we don’t have the technology or access to massive energy to do that. It would require a lot more than 1.21 gigawatts to do it.

That’s utterly confusing I know. But basically, The Flux Capacitor creates a temporary worm hole in space, and then the Delorean travels though it before it closes.

So, that’s time travel!

Problems with BTTF / Paradoxes / Temporal Anomolies
Lots of people have noted that travelling in time would bring about lots of possible problems, paradoxes or whatever, like the idea that if you went to the past and prevented your parents from meeting, you would then cease to exist, but then if you hadn’t been born you would never have gone back into time in the first place, and you wouldn’t have prevented your birth, so you would exist… is it possible that you would simultaneously exist and not exist at the time? I imagine that would be painful. It’s giving me a headache just thinking about it.

But that’s just one of the temporal anomalies which is brought up by BTTF. In fact there are a number of problems that people have noticed, that the film doesn’t really deal with, focusing instead on just telling a fun story. (And thank goodness for that)

I’ve chosen not to go into some of those paradoxes here, for several reasons. One of them is that they’re just too complicated to explain! The other thing is that they miss the point. This is just a fun movie which plays with ideas of time travel. In the end it’s about friendship, love, choosing your own destiny and trying to do the right thing. It’s not about solving complex logical problems about time travel. However, if you’re interested in these anomolies, check out the links on my website.

Links
MJ Young’s Website about Temporal Anomolies in Back to the Future http://www.mjyoung.net/time/back1.html
MJ Young’s “Problems in Time in Modern Popular Movies” http://www.mjyoung.net/time/index.htm
Back to the Future 2 plot summary (quite long) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096874/synopsis?ref_=ttpl_pl_syn

3 Ways to Travel in Time

Prof. Brian Cox – Is Time Travel Possible? (BBC Doctor Who documentary)

Interstellar Wormhole scene

304. Film Club: Back To The Future (Part 1)

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Hello listeners, welcome to Luke’s Film Club, this is one of those episodes of Luke’s English podcast in which we focus on a classic moment from the movies. This one is an episode about Back to the Future, which is one of my all time favourite films and I’m not alone because it’s one of the most popular films of the last few decades, all over the world. It’s a really entertaining and fun film, which also contains some sub-texts related to the complexities of time travel as well as a few visions of the future. Also, in the film’s sequel, the main characters Marty McFly and Doc Brown end up travelling into the future – and to what date? October 21, 2015. That’s today (when recording this). So it seems to be the perfect moment to do an episode of Luke’s Film Club, devoted to this modern classic. This is basically international Back to the Future day, and there’s only one! So, this has to be the day on which I record this episode.

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In this episode I’m going to talk about these things:

When I first saw it and what it means to me
The plot of the film (quite a challenge actually)
Themes of the film and lessons we can learn from the story
Some bits of info or things you might not have known about the film
The films predictions of 2015 – how many are correct?
How does the DeLorean time machine work?
Is time travel possible?
What about paradoxes created by the film’s time travelling story?

Ironically, time will definitely be a factor in this episode, because it will be hard to squeeze all of that into an hour. Let’s see what happens. It’s probably going to be another 2 part episode or something. But Back To The Future is a great film isn’t it? Come on, it’s great. It’s really popular all over the world, it’s really fun and interesting. Let’s talk about Back to The Future, however long it takes.

UPDATE: In part 1 of this episode I only talked about points 1 and 2 in the agenda above. The plot of Back To The Future 1-3 is pretty complicated and takes some time to describe! The rest is covered in the next episode.

SPOILER ALERT!
I’m going to mention some parts of the plot in this film. So, if you haven’t seen it before then I will probably give away some of the surprises in the story. I’m assuming that the vast majority of you have seen this film. It’s one of the most popular films of the last few decades, but I’m sure some of you haven’t seen it. Just be aware that I will probably reveal some fairly big plot details in this episode, so you might want to watch the film before listening to this episode.

Saying that though, I think it’s quite hard to truly spoil the film, just because there are many things about it that make it exciting. I’ve seen it (and the sequels) lots of times, and I enjoy it more and more every time, even though I know exactly what’s going to happen next. It’s so well-directed that it’s always exciting. But anyway – watch out, there are spoilers ahead.

I’ve been trying so hard for ages to find a way to properly cover the subject of this film in a podcast. It’s very hard! There’s so much to say! The storyline of the film is pretty complex, and the themes of time-travel, family, future technologies and controlling your destiny are really big things that deserve a lot of attention. So, I’m not sure I can squeeze it into just 1 hour of chat. This may end up being two episodes – but you don’t mind do you? Why would you mind? This could be a 5 minute video on YouTube, like “The 5 best moments from Back to the Future” but I want to go into more depth, and get sidetracked by themes of technology and time travel, so it will just take as long as it needs. In fact it’s a bit ironic that I’m talking about time limitations when this is a film about time travel, and the complexities which surround it. Essentially, I’m going to focus on the subject first, and if that means it’s a long episode, then so be it. In fact, since this is a podcast you have some control over time and you can skip forwards in the episode, backwards in the episode or simply freeze time completely by pressing the pause button, and then start it again later. You’re in control of time, essentially. I’ll just focus on making the content and you can choose how to listen to it. :)

Also, there are other films/books I could have talked about: HG Wells: The Time Machine, The Terminator, Looper, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Interstellar. But, this one is all about BTTF! So let’s go.

1. When did I first see it and why do I like it?
– As a kid, with my Dad.
– I was 8 years old, my brother 10.
– We saw lots of really great films in the Ealing cinema around this time, including Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom, Flight of the Navigator, Back to the Future, The Goonies, E.T. and more…
– I actually managed to understand what was going on, and I found it incredibly fun and exciting.
– Cereal box, with the picture. I remember staring at it.
– Since then I’ve seen it on video and on TV countless times, and every time I watched it I understood more of the subtleties and intricacies of the complex plot, and also just enjoyed the pure fun of the franchise.

2. What’s the plot of the film (this could be complicated and long – and SPOILERS!)
Marty is an average yet pretty cool teenager, struggling slightly to make the transition to adulthood. Essentially he cares about his parents, his girlfriend Jennifer, playing guitar in his band, skateboarding, and his friend Doctor Emmet Brown, an eccentric and ambitious physicist. Marty’s parents are sweet, but his Father in particular is a bit of a loser. He has no leadership skills and he still gets picked on by the school bully, who hangs around the house because he still has a crush on Marty’s Mum, Lorraine. Marty’s Dad still gets bullied by Biff, who is a total jerk. Marty hates Biff with a passion but there’s not much he can do about him. Seeing his Dad all weak, even though Marty’s mum obviously loves him, is quite painful for Marty and you get the impression that family life isn’t very happy for Marty. Perhaps this is why he has trouble concentrating at school, and perhaps it’s also why Marty cares more about playing the guitar in a band, or hanging around with his weird scientist friend Doc Brown than he does doing his studies. Marty also has a really awesome girlfriend called Jennifer, and the two of them are very sweet together. Jennifer knows that Marty is a really cool guy with a lot of potential, and I guess this is why she loves him. We know that Marty feels pretty bad about his family situation.

Marty is friends with the local mad scientist, Doctor Emmet Brown, and associating with Doc Brown is going to propel Marty on an incredible adventure through time.
Doc Brown is the classic eccentric scientist. He has bug eyes, crazy Einstein hair, and lots of inventions and madcap ideas.
Marty also has a weak point – being called chicken. He absolutely can’t stand being called chicken (coward) and this will be important later on.
One day, Marty gets a message from Doc Brown to meet him in the car park near the mall. He has something amazing to show him.
Marty turns up on his skateboard and the Doc reveals his latest invention. Inspired by HG Wells, he has created a time machine. The cool thing about it is that it is housed inside a DeLorean sports car. DeLorean was a car manufacturer that is completely stuck in the 80s. They went out of business before the decade was over, but their car is immortalised in this film. One has to admit, it does have a certain UFO futuristic look that suits its use as a time travelling device. The key component in the device is the flux capacitor, which Doc Brown thought of during a dream. I don’t know how it works, but that’s the main thing.
The way the time machine works is that you programme the precise date you’d like to travel to, and the accelerate the car to 88 mph, at which point you’re transported through time. He demonstrates it with his pet dog, Einstein.
Amazing – it actually works!
Doc arranges for Marty to film him presenting the time machine on home video, but at this point some very angry Iranian terrorists turn up in a VW camper van. Apparently Doc Brown stole some nuclear plutonium from them, which he used to power the flux capacitor and they want it back. They seemingly shoot Doc Brown dead in the car park, which is shocking because we’ve grown to like this character very much in the short time he’s been on-screen, and then they go after Marty, who escapes in the DeLorean time machine. There’s a short chase around the car park, during which a date is accidentally added into the machine – 30 years previous. October 26 1955. During Marty’s escape from the terrorists, the DeLorean gets up to 88mph and Marty is whipped away, back to the past of 1955, where he finds himself driving though an open field – this is the location of the mall car park. The mall hasn’t been built yet! Marty crashes into a barn and the drama is over.
What happens next is that Marty explores Hill Valley in 1955, and gets caught up in the lives of his young parents, which interferes with the space time continuum, threatening to change the future, his normal life, forever. He then has to try and make sure his parents fall in love, like before, ensuring that his existence is secured in the future. As well as that, Marty plans to find a way to save the life of his best friend Doc Brown, who was shot to death by terrorists back in 1985.
Essentially, what happens with the parents is that instead of his Mum meeting and falling in love with his Dad, Marty interrupts that meeting, and weirdly his Mum falls for him instead. This is so weird, and yet a very compelling plot device!
In 1955 Marty has to deal with a few challenges.
Everything is different because it’s the past, and he’s a fish out of water.
His Mum has a big crush on him and he has to try and avoid her.
His Mum and Dad haven’t met as they should have, and so he has to engineer their relationship from nothing, against all odds.
He has to try and avoid the town bully – Biff, who is interested in Marty’s Mum too, and is also out to get him.
As well as this he has a couple of run-ins with Mr Strickland, who amusingly is exactly the same as he is in 1985. He doesn’t appear to have aged at all.

Marty, cleverly, manages to track down the only man who can help him – the younger version of Doc Brown. He convinces him that his story is true, and introduces him to the DeLorean and the flux capacitor. One of the cool things about this is that by introducing the Doc to his own invention, Marty ensures that the flux capacitor gets invented in the first place.

The two hatch a plan to get the parents back together to stop Marty from disappearing from existence, and also work out a way to utilise the power of a lightning strike to get the DeLorean up to 88 so Marty can go back to the future. The cool thing here is that Marty knows exactly when lightning will strike the clock tower in Hill Valley Square, because it is a famous event from local history.

We see Marty attempting to get his parents back together, which fails most of the time. The bully Biff gets involved and there’s a dramatic scene in which the cowardly George decides to stand up to him, winning Mary’s affections and securing Marty’s future.

In the process, Marty manages to invent rock and roll music by playing some Chuck Berry during the school prom.

Marty is also desperate to tell Doc that in 1985 he’ll be killed by Libyan terrorists, but Doc refuses to listen, saying that it’s very dangerous to know anything about your own future. He’s worried that the knowledge will haunt him, or that it will create some kind of time paradox. Nevertheless Marty writes him a note warning him of the shooting. Doc cuts it into pieces, refusing to read it. This is alarming because we know that Doc’s going to get shot in the future. It’s not dealt with any further.

There’s yet more drama as Marty and the Doc attempt to hook up a cable to the clock tower, to make sure they harness the electrical power from the lightning strike. At the last moment, the Doc manages to connect the cables, allowing Marty to get the DeLorean to 88, and he goes back to the future!

Back in 1985, things are a little different, in fact they seem to be a lot better. Since things went a little different;y in 1955, and George stood up to Biff – George is a different man. Much more confident and successful, and Biff is now far more subservient to him. The family is richer, the parents’ marriage is better, and Marty looks in the garage to discover his dream car, waiting for him. Jennifer is also there. She’s the same of course, because she was already perfect, and they kiss. At that moment, Doc Brown suddenly turns up in the DeLorean, saying that both Marty and Jennifer have to come with him on a matter of urgency, as it involves their children in the future! They all get into the DeLorean, ready to take it up to 88 and travel into the future. Marty says “Doc, don’t we need more road to get up to 88?” and the Doc says, “Marty, where we’re going, we don’t need roads” and the car takes off into the air! It’s a flying car! They then race off into the sky and disappear into the future!

Wow, what a rip-roaring and exciting ride. For me, it’s an almost perfect film and always keeps me entertained. I love the complexities of the story, the dramatic set pieces, the eccentric and cartoonish performances by all the actors and the fun the film has by playing around with the differences in culture between 1955 and 1985. There are lots of self referential jokes and small details to notice, including little similarities and consequences between the two time periods.

Back to the Future Part 2
This is when things get complicated!

Doc Brown knows that Marty’s son, who looks just like Marty but is a total loser, is going to get caught up in a robbery and will get arrested and thrown in jail. Doc decides to form a plan in which Marty will pretend to be his son, and will prevent his involvement in the robbery, making everything all right. Essentially, they prevent the crime and during this early scene we see Hill Valley in the future. In one of many similar scenes from the previous film, Marty wanders around the town square and we see how different everything is. Cars look futuristic, droids do basic service jobs, there’s a holographic animated advertisement for a Jaws sequel, people have self drying clothes, shoes with automatic laces, and clothes which automatically adjust their size to fit the person they’re wearing. Also, crucially, kids now ride ‘hover boards’ which are like skateboards except that they hover a few inches about the ground, somehow.

Marty manages to replace his son and say no to “Griff” – played by the same actor who plays “Biff” in the previous film. But in the process, Marty gets into a fight with Griff who is the 2015 town bully, complete with physical implants, an advanced hoverboard and a really bad attitude.

Marty gets away from Griff, and gets back to the Doc. We learn that Marty, while in the futuristic version of Hill Valley has picked up a Sports Almanac (a summary of sports results of the last 60 years), which he plans to use as a way to get rich. When Doc Brown discovers this he gets furious with Marty, demanding that Marty throw away the almanac because it’s far too dangerous to mess with the space time continuum. The results could be catastrophic. What they don’t realise is that the old Biff from episode 1 has overheard their conversation, has realised that Doc Brown has invented a time machine. Biff steals the almanac from the bin, and plans to somehow use the time machine to go back to 1955 to give the almanac to the young Biff, so he can make money from gambling.

Meanwhile, the police have picked up the young Jennifer, who had been turned unconscious by Doc to protect her and left in a doorway. They identify her using her fingerprint (which is the same, despite being young) and decide to take her home. Doc realises this could be disastrous – if young Jennifer meets old Jennifer, it could create a paradox in time which could unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum, destroying the whole universe in the process, which is generally a bad thing. The follow the police back to the McFly household in order to prevent young Jennifer meeting her older self.

We see the older McFly household. They’re a bunch of misfits and losers again! The children are stupid and foolish, and something has gone wrong with Marty. It seems that at some point in his later youth, he was involved in a car accident which injured his hand. As a result he wasn’t able to pursue his dream career – that of a rock guitarist. So, he’s ended up in a dead end job which he hates, and which he gets fired from. What a disaster.

The car accident is pretty important – it happens a bit later, after the events of BTTF1. Marty is driving his cool new pickup truck with Jennifer, when he gets challenged to a race by the local bully (a bit like Biff). Marty declines, and the bully says “What’s the matter McFly, chicken?” We know from countless other occasions that Marty can’t stand being called a coward, and he loses his judgement, taking on the drag race challenge, but he crashes, and injures his hand. He’ll never be a guitarist, and he’ll end up in a job he hates, and the future will be unhappy.

Marty realises that he has to avoid the car crash which seems bound to happen sometime later in 1985.

Doc worries that they are having too much impact on the future and that this is going to create a paradox of some kind… The car crash scenario that jeopardises the future is left open at the moment, and is resolved at the end of episode 3 (I think).

Little do they realise that while they’re at Marty’s future house, old Biff has broken into the DeLorean and travelled back in time to give the sports almanac to his younger self. Biff, exhausted by his efforts struggles to get out of the car, breaking his walking stick in the process. A part of the stick is left in the car, which later will show to Doc Brown & Marty that Biff stole the car.

So, Doc Brown delivers Marty back to the past in 1985, but everything is horribly different! It turns out that because of the book, Biff has become the richest and most powerful man in Hill Valley. In fact, his influence extends all the way into Marty’s family life as Biff is now married to Marty’s mother, and Marty is forced to live under Biff’s roof. Biff is a hugely powerful bad guy now. It turns out also, that he may have had Marty’s father killed. This is terrible. Under Biff’s influence, Hill Valley has become a lawless wasteland with crime everywhere.

Marty goes to get Doc Brown’s help, and he explains what has happened.

When Biff went back in time to give the Almanac to young Biff, he created a completely new version of time, in which Biff is rich and influential, and Hill Valley is a hell hole. What Marty needs to do is prevent that from ever happening, in order to ensure that the normal version of the present is created, not this twisted version.

I could go into more detail about different theories of time at this point but it’s a bit too confusing.

In a simple way, I guess there are two versions.
The first version says there’s just one universe with one time narrative. Big events can significantly change the course of history, and when it does, all the other possible versions of history just get erased from existence, with one version of time remaining. For example, when Biff gives the sports almanac to his younger self this causes a whole new branch of time to happen, in which everything is terrible, and I guess the other version of time just gets erased from existence. Or when Marty goes back and changes the past so that his parents grow up happy and successful, that erases the less happy version of events. There’s a paradox here though, which is that if the other version of history disappeared, then surely our version Marty would disappear too. If Biff changed the past, so that the events of BTTF1 never happened, then our Marty would surely cease to exist and in fact BTTF1 would never have happened. But that’s not the case – in the film we have many different versions of history, and Marty & Doc travel from one of those versions across to other versions. There are in fact 3 versions of 1985. The first one (a bit crap – George is a loser, Lorraine is an alcoholic) the second one (everything’s great) the third one (Biff is in charge and it’s absolutely terrible). Marty from version 1 appears in all versions.

So I suppose BTTF proposes some sort of multi-universe theory, which is the idea that whenever anything happens, different versions of history branch off from that moment, creating another parallel universe. For example, when Biff gets the sports almanac, a new parallel universe is created.

But isn’t it possible by that logic that at any moment there are so many possibilities, that there’s a parallel universe being created in which each possible event happened, with all its consequences after it? And that would mean that an infinite number of parallel universes are being created with every passing of time, basically creating infinite possibilities across infinite parallel versions of reality? Why is it that just a big event like a kiss, or a sports almanac coming into your possession changes time? If it’s a small change does time just carry on? Too complex? Probably. Don’t worry if that’s not clear – that’s the point.

Back to the Future goes for the more simplistic version, stating that basically there’s just one or two planes of existence, and big significant events can cause them to happen, influencing the future. Having access to all the sports results is one of these big events. Again, this is the genius of the film – it manages to skate around these big problematic questions while dipping into the science at certain moments to give enough depth to the story while keeping the energy, entertainment up.

So Marty and the Doc go back to 1955 with their flying DeLorean in order to stop Biff getting the almanac.

We see really cool scenes in which Marty runs around in Hill Valley 1955 at the same time (by coincidence) that he was there in BTTF1, trying to save his parents’ marriage. We see scenes from BTTF1 but from different angles. Marty has to save his other self, without them meeting. It’s really brilliant.

There are lots of situation in which history repeats itself.

So, in the end, Marty manages to prevent Biff getting the Sports Almanac, saving the future again. Marty burns the almanac, and Doc Brown turns up again (we’re still in 1955) to collect Marty and deliver him safely in 1985. It’ll be the good version of 1985 because as we saw, Marty in BTTF1 was successful and managed to save his future, and Doc managed to send him back with the lightning strike.

But, as Doc is about to pick him up, the DeLorean gets struck by lightning from the storm and this causes the time machine to malfunction, sending Doc accidentally to an unknown place and time. Wow! Great Scott! Where did he go? Is Marty stuck in 1955?

Immediately, a postman arrives with a letter for Marty. Apparently the letter has been held at the post office since 1885 with strict instructions for it to be delivered to Marty at this precise moment.

It’s a letter from Doc. He’s stuck in 1885, when Hill Valley was a cowboy town.

Marty realises the only person who can help him save the Doc is the Doc himself – the 1955 Doc who just risked life and limb sending Marty back to the future in a lightning powered DeLorean.

Marty runs to find Doc in the town square, and he even sees himself go back to the future. Doc is standing there, exhausted and delighted. Then, our Marty taps him on the shoulder. Doc turns round and promptly passes out “But, I just sent you back to the future? What are you doing here” – unable to comprehend that Marty is now back again and needs his help.

Back to the Future 3
After Doc has woken up and worked out what’s going on, he decides the only thing he can do is to send Marty back to 1885 in order to save him. But where’s the DeLorean? Both versions just disappeared – one to 1985 and the other to 1885. How come there are two DeLoreans? How is this possible? You can multiply things by travelling in time? Anyway…

The fact is, 1885 Doc has left the DeLorean in an abandoned mine, and has given Marty and 1955 Doc instructions on how to find it. They do that, and send Marty back.

To make a long story very slightly less long, Marty goes back to 1885, finds Doc and they attempt to create a plan for how to get them both back. The problem is, the DeLorean is damaged. It’s run out of fuel and there’s no petrol in 1885! They decide they can get a locomotive train to travel at 88mph, so the train is going to push the DeLorean up to 88 and then the DeLorean will travel back to 1985, and the train will crash.

Things get complicated though, because Doc Brown ends up falling head over heels in love with a woman called Delores. She ends up getting tangled in the time travel attempt, and Doc saves her life but stays in the past, as Marty goes back to 1985.

There, the DeLorean is finally destroyed, ironically as it appears on the train tracks that still exist in the same spot in 1985. It’s destroyed by an oncoming train. Boom. End of DeLorean – this happens after the original trip to 1955, so the DeLorean has been erased (I guess for the moment).

Marty finds Jennifer and they’re reunited. Then, finally, Doc dramatically arrives at the end with Delores. This time he’s created a time machine made from a train, using steam technology to power a flux capacitor. It’s not clear how he does this, but with all the knowledge he’s gained, he managed to do it, creating a sort of steam-punk time machine. He and Delores then travel off together, with their two children named Jules and Verne.

It’s a happy ending. But there’s still one loose end. Marty has to make sure that he doesn’t have that car accident. He needs to prevent that unhappy future in which he injures his hand and his dreams of being a guitarist go up in smoke, and he’s forced into a soul destroying job he hates.

Marty and Jennifer drive away in Marty’s cool truck. They stop at a junction. The bully pulls up beside them and challenges Marty to a drag race. Marty declines, and the bully calls him “chicken” but this time Marty has the strength of character to resist the challenge and in fact the bully is the one who crashes.

Marty and Jennifer’s future is secured, and they all lived happily ever after.

End of Part 1 …

303. The Battle of Britain

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This year marks the 75th anniversary of The Battle of Britain, and since this is such a pivotal moment in British history, I thought it would be appropriate to cover it in some way in an episode of this podcast. Also, I was asked recently by a listener in the comments section of my website to talk about the story of the Battle of Britain, specifically the role of one particular group of Polish pilots known as Squadron #303. So, here it is – the story of one of the most important moments in modern British history – The Battle of Britain, and the contribution made by a small group of pilots from Poland.

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The Battle of Britain is often cited as a proud moment in British history, particularly by nationalistic Brits who also believe that we shouldn’t let any immigrants into our country. Squadron 303 killed twice as many German fighters as any other squadron, and one pilot in particular became something of a flying legend, with a record number of kills. But the thing is, these heroes of the Battle of Britain weren’t actually British, they were foreigners, fighting in British made Hurricanes and Spitfires. Where did these brave and skilful pilots come from? Poland. So, this episode is not just a history lesson about Britain, but also a bit of a shout-out to my Polish listeners out there – I know there are quite a few of you. If you’re not Polish, then I hope you appreciate the telling of this story of danger, bravery and global warfare.

The Battle of Britain
First of all, this is Churchill speaking, before the battle of Britain begun.
*Churchill speech 1 – “Their finest hour”
So, what was the situation?
It was 7 September 1940.
Northern France was occupied by the Germans, and airfields everywhere were covered in bombers, loaded up and ready to begin bombing raids on strategic targets all over the UK. Hitler was about to take a bit crap all over Britain.
This was a year after Britain had declared war on Germany after Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and then Poland. It had been a pretty good year for Hitler. He’d basically marched across most of Western Europe and seized it, just like Napoleon and the Romans had done before. Hitler had a pretty effective strategy which we now call Blitzkrieg, or ‘lighting war’ which involved using planes to bomb the crap out of an area before sending in infantry and tank divisions to quickly mop up enemy troops. It was devastatingly effective as it took advantage of speed, mobilised mechanical heavy weapons, surprise and the general disorganisation of the enemy as a result of the air bombing. He used this approach to great effect in the invasion of Poland and then The Netherlands, Belgium, and France. In just one year Hitler’s troops were in control of large parts of mainland Europe.

British forces had been forced to evacuate the continent after effectively being chased away by the Germans. There was a big retreat and escape from France at Dunkirk. It was a military defeat for the Brits who ended up in a pretty desperate situation. The Nazis controlled the continent. The USA wasn’t in the war yet so we couldn’t rely on their full assistance. Britain was basically alone, cut off from the mainland, just separated from the enemy by a few miles of water, waiting to be attacked and invaded by the Germans. Not a good position to be in.

Perversely, this is often the moment that many Brits feel very nostalgic about. As I said, it’s often referred to as our finest hour. I think there may be something in the British consciousness that actually enjoyed the idea of being completely separated from the rest of the continent, as if it clarified the ‘us against them’ attitude of some people. This was perhaps our darkest hour. We faced total oblivion and invasion by the nazis. Certainly, thousands of Brits were going to be killed. Beloved properties and national monuments would be destroyed in the bombing, but for some Brits looking back on the Battle of Britain, this was a moment to be proud of, like it made us a great nation. I suppose the reason people say that is because it was a time when Britain showed some character and spirit. The whole country sort of pulled together and formed a united front. Churchill made his famous speech.
*Churchill Speech 2 – “We shall fight them on the beaches”

It was rousing stuff. Ultimately, Britain survived the invasion attempt. People feel proud of that.
But, it’s ironic that many of the people today who are still nostalgic for that moment are also the ones who preach a certain kind of politics – anti-immigration, nationalistic values, something approaching a kind of English or British fascism. They’re the ones who love that moment when Britain was alone, facing the invading hoards from the continent. It’s ironic because during that battle we were fighting against fascism. Now it seems that it’s the fascists at home who like to remember it.

Anyway, it looked pretty bleak for Britain.
Hitler decided that before attempting any kind of land invasion, he would attempt to thoroughly smash The UK from the sky. He planned to target industrial centres in the big cities, key points of infrastructure and even some national monuments and residential areas. The aim was to cripple the country, both physically and mentally. Ooh, scary stuff.

So, on 7 September 1940 the Luftwaffe were all ready and prepared to launch operation.

Britain at this moment was steadily making weapons from anything they could get their hands on. All heavy metals were being thrown into factories. All the money was being spent on defence and weapons. A lot of Brits felt the squeeze. Obviously it wasn’t as bad as in the occupied countries, I imagine. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But I imagine having a bunch of nazis from another country marching around your home town making themselves comfortable was rather difficult to take. So the Poles, the Czechs, the Belgians, Dutch and French (well, most of them anyway) were no doubt having a pretty awful time too, not to mention any other nations that I haven’t mentioned. This was a world war of course – so if I don’t mention your country in this episode I am sorry. This is after all the Battle of Britain.

Anyway, Britain was preparing itself for a rather bad time. A lot of planes were being constructed, men were being trained to fly and fight in the air.

The Germans were feeling pretty good about themselves. Morale was high. They’d just walked all over Europe and felt on top of the world. They basically felt absolutely superior. Whipped up by the rhetoric of their charismatic (albeit completely insane) leader, they’d been led to believe that the world was theirs and this was the natural order of things. Wrong.

So, the nazis were pretty chuffed and probably couldn’t wait to have a go at Britain, this global superpower of the time.

This was the biggest aerial attack of World War 2 so far. At 5pm on 7 September the first wave of bombers reached their targets in London. Apparently the sound they made was pretty scary. A kind of low, depressing drone sound. Ominous.

It was a Saturday afternoon in London. When I think of Saturday afternoons back home I think of tea, sandwiches, football with my Dad. I don’t imagine death from above, or death from any direction for that matter. The planes targeted the industrial areas, but a lot of workers lived right next to them and their homes got bombed too.

But that was just the beginning. What followed was a rain of bombs that no other city had ever seen in history. 12 hours of bombing without a break, continuing through the night. A lot of people died, and others were convinced they would follow.

How did the pilots feel? According to interviews they just hoped that they’d hit their targets, but they knew that civilians were probably getting killed. Really, they were a bit cut off from what was happening on the ground. I expect they didn’t feel too proud of themselves.

For the British people, particularly Londoners I think this bombing created hopelessness in some, but also a gritty determination in others, as well as a visceral hatred of the germans.

The fires caused by the bombing lasted for 57 nights, and in fact these fires were more damaging than the bombing raid.

The Nazi strategy was to continue to bomb, terrorise and demoralise the nation. Hitler expected Britain to give up and surrender to Germany, so he could then turn his attention on the East. He knew that it would be unwise to attempt to invade Russia (correction: The USSR) while also fighting on the Western front. So victory in the west was a crucial part of his plan. He expected Britain to surrender. He underestimated us.

It became a battle of wills, embodied by two men – Hitler and Churchill. It was Churchill who rallied the British people. He inspired them to carry on. He echoed the sentiments of the nation, that they would never ever surrender.

*Churchill Speech 3 – The Blitz*

Hitler didn’t expect Churchill to refuse to deal with him. This may have been a bit of a surprise. Britain was not going to be a walkover.

The German air force had already knocked out a lot of our warships in the English channel and planned to launch surprise air attacks on England, but England had a technological advantage: radar. This is now used in airports all over the world. It’s a kind of tracking device to monitor the skies. Radar was used as an early warning system, to let the RAF know if German bombers were on their way to England on missions. This allowed the RAF to scramble fighter planes into the skies in order to engage the German parties in combat. The Luftwaffe had no idea that radar even existed, so when RAF planes suddenly turned up to meet them in the skies it must have been a bit of a surprise. The fighting in the sky was essentially a duel of fighter pilots in single-man planes. Dog fights, one on one battles. Tracers from bullets flying through the sky. Chaos and destruction in the air.

It must have been incredibly frightening for the pilots. So many people were killed. Dogfights lasted seconds. It was a question of being aware of your surroundings and planning your attacks. If you had the right strategy you’d have the advantage and you’d find the enemy in a vulnerable position from which you could open fire and take out the plane. If your strategy was bad, you’d leave yourself open to attack.

The Germans were flying Messerschmitt 109s, the Brits in Hurricanes and Spitfires.

There were so many deaths during these fights that the pilots accepted that they would almost certainly die sooner or later. Everyone just expected to die. Imagine how that felt for these men. Living like that, in the knowledge that tomorrow or the next day, would be your last. What would that do to your mind? I’m sure it was the same for both sides. For the Germans there was the added fear that they would run out of petrol, or that they would be forced to crash land in enemy territory and then taken captive. The German pilots were forced by their superiors to always accompany the bombers, even if their smaller planes were running out of fuel. Sometimes these amounted to suicide missions for the fighter pilots who simply didn’t have enough fuel for the whole mission. Many pilots drowned as they had to bail out of their planes, landing in the English channel, miles away from the land.

Many wives, mothers, sisters and girlfriends lost men who were close to their hearts, again on both sides.

Women didn’t all stay at home worrying though. In the RAF the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force were an integral part of the British defences. They worked in the operations room and helped to coordinate the fighters.

So, in the summer of 1940 the Germans failed to break the RAF. That’s when Hitler decided to launch the large scale bombing attacks on London and other locations, and that was the true beginning of the battle of Britain.

Like on 7 September, waves of German bombers came across the channel, and RAF planes took off to meet them, engaging them in mid-air. The German bombers were well armed with machine guns, and also flanked by fighter planes too, which engaged the RAF in more one-on-one dogfighting. There were a lot of bullets in the air. The German escorts managed to keep the RAF at bay, allowing the bombers to continue to London. Large parts of the city were reduced to rubble. To this day, it remains one of the characteristic things about the city – there are gaps in the old buildings in which more modern buildings have been constructed. It doesn’t have the consistency of a city like Paris, because large parts of the city were completely destroyed during the war and then re-built later. Of course it wasn’t just London. All the main industrial cities took a beating, particularly Coventry in the midlands which got absolutely smashed in a huge bombing raid. It’s very sad. It was a beautiful and proud city with a magnificent cathedral. That’s now gone and is replaced by more modern structures, but something essential was lost, and for years Coventry was like a ghost town for the people growing up there in the aftermath of the war.

Londoners had to hide from the bombing in cellars under houses, or in specially made bomb shelters, even in underground stations like Oval in South London.

Between September and November 1940 London was bombed over 300 times. Thousands of individual bombs were dropped. London’s children were evacuated, meaning they were sent away for their own protection. Most of them went north into the countryside, away from the industrial targets. That must have been a very emotional moment, having to say goodbye to children and parents. I expect many of the parents thought they’d never see their kids again. Some children were taken all the way to Canada from Liverpool, and many were killed when their ship was torpedoed by a German submarine.

Back in London, the RAF with their radar and the brilliant Spitfire fighter plane had something of an advantage in the air, although it was a very slight advantage. Goering the military commander did not achieve the results he’d hoped for and decided to carry out all his bombing raids on London at night. The skies were lit up with fire as London burned, and with the lack of accuracy in the dark many residential areas all around London were hit and many civilians were killed. Nevertheless, Londoners kept their morale and managed to carry on as normally as possible during the day. Clearing up bomb damage but also attempting to go about their daily business. This is one of the things that kept the Germans at bay. The spirit of the people of Britain. Perhaps that’s what makes people so proud and causes them to say that this was Britain’s finest hour.

But the normality of daily life came to a sudden stop at approximately 5pm every day when everyone got into bomb shelters and the raids began again. Even though many people managed to carry on, I’m sure that many of them were basically walking around like zombies, expecting it all to be over by the end of that day. Many of them were ready for surrender, but they didn’t.

*Audiobook recommendation – “The Battle of Britain: From the BBC Archives”

The bombing continued all the way into the next year, until May 1941. Hitler called off the attacks on Britain, choosing instead to focus his attention on the east and Russia (Correction: USSR). However, that proved to be a problem for him because it left him open in the West, and later when America joined the war, Britain became a vitally strategic position for the allies. It was from the south coast of England that the allies launched their major counter attack against the Nazis with a land invasion in Normandy, Northern France which ultimately led to allied forces getting all the way to Berlin. Despite being a hero to the Brits, Churchill didn’t emerge from WW2 completely clean. There were large scale bombing raids on Germany from Britain, including the destruction of Dresden and massive damage to Berlin, largely as a response to the attacks on British cities.

In the east the Nazis struggled through bitterly cold and tough conditions fighting against the Russians (I mean Soviets). Many many Russian (Soviet) lives were lost as well as Germans. Ultimately Hitler couldn’t sustain a war on two fronts. The size and resilience of the Russian army (Red Army) in the east proved too difficult for Hitler, but also his inability to crush the spirit of the Brits left him open on that side too. The Battle of Britain proved to be Hitler’s first major defeat and was a decisive moment in World War 2, representing a turning point in favour of the allies. Nazi soldiers didn’t put a foot on British soil. The invasion never happened.

But that’s not the end of the story, because I’d like to turn my attention to a particular squadron of pilots who made an extraordinary contribution to the Battle of Britain, a contribution that could have made all the difference. During the battle, Britain was hanging on by its fingernails. Every single day of combat, British resources were stretched to their absolute limit. Dozens of pilots and planes were lost every day over British skies. They couldn’t have carried on much longer. If Hitler had continued, he would probably have crushed the British spirit, but he didn’t and Britain managed to hold on just long enough to keep the Germans at bay.

Churchill called it Britain’s finest hour, and famously said that “Never was so much owed by so many to so few”.
*Churchill Speech 4 – “Never was so much owed by so many to so few”

What gave Britain the edge? Well, it was partly radar, partly the brilliantly engineered Spitfire – which was specifically made as a bespoke fighter to keep up with and out-speed the German planes, while holding extra fuel to keep pilots in the air longer. The Spitfire is now a national icon, and it has to be said, is a rather beautifully designed plane, with its rounded and curved wings and fuselage.

But also it was the individual pilots involved in the fighting. There was one squadron which stood out, the 303rd. You might imagine them to be a band of plucky young British gentlemen, but in fact they weren’t. These men who may have saved Britain were in fact foreigners, from Poland.

303 Squadron
303 squadron was one of 16 Polish squadrons who flew with the RAF during the Battle of Britain. They were pilots who had flown against the Germans previously, but who had escaped to England when Poland was invaded. They turned out to be the highest scoring RAF squadron during the Battle of Britain. One of the pilots in particular was not in fact Polish but of Czech origin and was called Josef František. He is perhaps the most famous member of the squadron and is famous for being one of the highest scoring allies in the Battle of Britain.

The squadron chose its own name, The Kościuszko Squadron – named after another flying squadron that had taken part in the Polish/Russian war of the 1920s. In fact the 303 contained some members of that squadron. So they were already a pretty distinguished flying team. It was made up of about 21 pilots and a number of ground staff, and what was the prime reason for their success during these air battles? Anger and a vicious hatred of the nazis. This was like a high-energy fuel for these men, who just couldn’t wait to take down Nazi planes at the earliest opportunity.

But their opportunities were slow to come. The team was based in Northolt in England, and were assigned two RAF officers to look after them. The officers were responsible for training the Polish pilots in RAF protocol, but also in the basic English necessary to follow orders and instructions. So, before the pilots even got a chance to take to the skies, they were forced to sit through weeks of English lessons, and I imagine in those days it was pretty mind numbing stuff! There was no LEP that’s for sure.

Apparently the Polish pilots were so desperate to get at the Germans that during a training flight, when a party of German planes was spotted in the vicinity, one of the Polish pilots, called Ludwik Paszkiewicz, broke formation and tore after the German planes engaging them in combat. He shot down a German Messerschmitt Bf 110. The RAF officers were convinced and the next day the squadron was immediately put into action. This was the beginning of an incredible run of missions in which the 303 squadron scored a record breaking number of kills in the air. Apparently, these guys were absolutely incredible. Again, fuelled by a bitter hatred of the Germans, the pilots just pushed everything that bit further, going out of their way, taking incredible risks to take down as many planes as possible. But also, their use of British Hurricane fighter planes was a big advantage for them too. Previously they’d flown planes that were less powerful and less well-engineered. This had honed their flying skills considerably. IN their previous planes they’d been used to having to fly much closer to the enemy in order to get accurate hits. In the Hurricanes, with their increased speed and firepower the pilots continued to fly very close to enemy planes like they had done before, but this time the results were devastating. The German planes didn’t stand a chance. Later the squad were equipped with Spitfires and this made all the difference.

No. 303 Squadron claimed the largest number of aircraft destroyed of the 66 Allied fighter squadrons engaged in the Battle of Britain, even though it joined the fray two months after the battle had begun.

Josef František was a particularly successful pilot. He was considered by his commanding officers to be ill-disciplined and a danger to other pilots when flying in formation, but he was devastatingly successful at taking down Germans. In the end, he was given the right to break formation and go out on solo missions to pick off as many enemy planes as he wanted. In this way František was able to fight his own private war against the Germans, allowing him to take down at least 18 planes in one month, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal.

Sadly, on 8 October 1940, František’s Hurricane crashed in Ewell, Surrey during a landing approach after a patrol. Reasons for the crash are not known, but according to some theories, he may have been making aerobatic figures to impress his girlfriend, or it might have been a result of battle fatigue and physical exhaustion. So he never lived to see the end of the war.

The success of 303 squadron in combat can be mainly attributed to the years of extensive and rigorous pre-war training many of the long-serving Polish veterans had received in their homeland, far more than many of their younger and inexperienced RAF comrades then being thrown into the battle. Tactics and skill also played a role, as well as a daring commitment to bringing down the enemy; on one occasion, No. 303’s Sgt Stanislaw Karubin resorted to extreme tactics to bring down a German fighter. Following a prolonged air battle, Karubin was chasing a German fighter at treetop level. As he closed in on the tail of the German fighter, Karubin realised that his Hurricane had run out of ammunition. Rather than turning back to base, he closed the distance and climbed right above the German fighter. The German pilot was so shocked to see the underside of the Hurricane within arm’s reach of his cockpit that he instinctively reduced his altitude to avoid a collision and crashed into the ground.

After World War 2, Poland was occupied by Soviet forces and its borders were redrawn as part of the 1945 Potsdam Conference. Poland became enveloped in the Soviet Union (correction: Not the Soviet Union, but the Soviet controlled Eastern Bloc), behind the iron curtain. I’m not sure how many Polish people feel about what happened after world war 2. I understand there is some bitterness at the allies, and probably Britain in particular about this, that perhaps we sold-out the Polish or forgot them, or betrayed them by not securing their freedom. Many sad things happen at an international diplomatic level during or in the aftermath of war. They’re regrettable. I wonder how the Poles generally view Britain these days. Is there resentment there? Or is that just a thing of the past. I hope we can all let bygones be bygones.

Nowadays a lot of Polish people live and make their living in the UK. In London for example there is a very large Polish community. Where I used to live in Hammersmith there is the Polish cultural centre just up the road, and many Polish people live in the area. I guess for many of them it’s a chance to get more opportunities for living in the UK, and I’m pretty proud to be part of a country that offers opportunities for people from other countries, and it’s clear to me that residents from other nations can bring a lot of skills and benefits to the country they move to. I’m not one of these people who complains about immigrants stealing people’s jobs. Immigrants are often skilled people who can contribute a lot, as we saw from the example of the 303 Squadron, who might have given the RAF an edge over the Germans in the Battle of Britain. Maybe they saved the day and helped Britain stay free, allowing us all to indulge in these nostalgic memories about our “finest hour” in which we stood up to the Nazis when all hope was lost.

That is the end of the story and that’s the end of this episode. Please leave your thoughts on the page as usual. Have a good day.

Luke
BR2

7 Reasons Why The Brits Should Love the Poles (Thank you Piotr Perliński)

302. Bad Dentist / Star Wars / Adam Buxton / Headphone Jams / Jarvis Cocker (A rambling episode)

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Hi, this is the second part of a two part episode in which I’m telling you a few things about recent trending news stories, some anecdotes and other things that are in my head at the moment. There’s no specific language focus this time. Instead I’m focusing on general cultural information. Last time I talked about David Cameron and the pig, a story of a bad gig, and who the hell is Ronnie Pickering? In this one I’m going to ramble on about a bad trip to the dentist, some rising excitement about the new Star Wars film, Adam Buxton’s new podcast, some music that has been bouncing around inside my head, some news about a new jingle which is in the pipeline and how I want to hunt Jarvis Cocker for my podcast but I don’t know how to do it! If you don’t really understand those things, then listen on! All will be explained! All you have to do is listen. :)

[DOWNLOAD]
In the previous episode:
1. The UK political situation, and trending news relating to it – this is less boring than you might expect because it seems from recent reports that our Prime Minister David Cameron once had sex with a dead pig. Seriously. (Did PM David Cameron really have sex with a pig? What’s all this about Jeremy Corbyn? What’s going on?)
2. “Sorry, we’re English”
3. Tell a story or anecdote about something.
4. Who is Ronnie Pickering?

In this episode:
5. A trip to the dentist in Paris.
6. Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens – I can hardly contain my excitement, but I am attempting to avoid the hype.
7. OPP: The Adam Buxton Podcast
8. In my headphones recently: The Juan MacLean “A Simple Design”, The Who: “Who Are You?”, Erland Oye: “Lies become part of who you are”, DJ Krush & Ronny Jordan: “Bad Brothers”, Leyla McCalla: “Heart of Gold”. (Plus, the intro song: “Groove Holmes” by Beastie Boys)
9. Jingle news: Possible new jingle in the pipeline
10. Jarvis Cocker
11. That’s probably it, isn’t it?
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