The Queen's Jubilee

[MrGongGong]

Is it Po-land or Pole-and? I have always said Po-land but the television people keep saying Pole-and.

I am also not keen on the word "Poles" as I feel there is just a hint of the derogatory there. I prefer to say "the Polish" but most do not seem to share my concern. Is one right and one wrong and if "Poles" is the right one, should I worry less?

Yours in good faith etc.

and is it Dick-spring or Dick-spring ?

[Lateralthinking1]

and is it Dick-spring or Dick-spring ?

Neither. It's Durch Sprung.

(I thought I had posted on the paradise thread. I do apologise.)

[Lateralthinking1]

[amateur51]

Who did that? I hope that it was not a typo on my part!...

[MrGongGong]

???

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

To precisely what do you consider yourself to be a "pendant", EA? I'm aware, of course, that the exquisite though quite challenging unaccompanied choral piece An den Baum Daphne is a kind of "pendant" to your presumed hero's opera Daphne, but...

OK. Point taken.

However, Strauss is not really my hero. I just have this great obsession with one particular work.

Otherwise, I'm more drawn to early 20th century British composers

[Panjandrum]

Well, pendants like myself will never accept such grammatical vandalism, but as the contributor in question doesn't care about such courteous niceties as punctuation and capital letters, I tend to pass over those particular postings as too much trouble to translate.

And what about those who don't know their "discreet" from their "discrete"?

[amateur51]

Lovely analysis S_A ;ok:

And what did Nigel Lawson do in 1988?.

He abolished Multiple MIRAS

From wiki:

"Mortgage interest relief at source, or MIRAS, was a scheme introduced in the United Kingdom by Chancellor of the Exchequer Roy Jenkins in 1969 [1] in a bid to encourage home ownership; it allowed borrowers tax relief for interest payments on their mortgage.

In the 1983 Budget Geoffrey Howe raised the tax allowance from £25,000 to £30,000; unmarried couples with joint mortgages could pool their allowances to £60,000 and this remained unchanged until in the 1988 Budget, when Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson ended the option to pool allowances (a provision that had been known as Multiple Mortgage Tax Relief) from August 1988, a decision he later publicly expressed regret at not having implemented with effect from the time of the budget, as it is generally accepted that the rush to beat the deadline from the time of the Budget up until it was ended fueled a sharp increase in house prices.[2]

MIRAS was completely abolished in April 2000 by then Chancellor of the Exchequer (now retired Prime Minister) Gordon Brown who argued it had become a middle class perk.

Receiving MIRAS was one of the justifications given by mortgage advisers when selling endowment mortgages.[citation needed]

With house prices slumping and the British economy going into recession, there are many[who?] arguing for the return of some kind of similar scheme to help those in negative equity and encourage a revival in the housing market."

Do we really get the politicians we deserve?

An interesting report from the independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation about housing prospects for young people in 2020 ...

http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/housing-options-solutions-young-people

If it's a toss-up between private rented sector and housing associations on one side, and Housing Benefit or market rents on the other, only one thing is certain - poor (single) people will be the big losers