So Plymouth Argyle football club is to be relegated next season, and will find itself down in Division 2. Of course, it true PC fashion, this is actually worse than it sounds. Just like in education, where 'A' has always sufficed to distinguish the best results, we now need to have 'A*' - has the best really got better, or is it rather like the composer, Schumann, for example, who asks that a piece of music be played 'as fast as possible' - then asks for it to be 'even faster' later on!
Division 2 is, infact, Division 4 - the lowest you can get without playing on the village green. The Premiership is the old Div 1, the Championship Div 2, so it's worse than you think - but is it!
Plymouth, despite its relative size, is a fourth-division city - just on the news, the decision to shut Plymouth Airport will be greeted in Exeter with great pleasure, as this will now expand, and become the gateway to the South West.
Culture stops, anyway, at Bristol - something trickles down to Exeter, and then filters through to Truro, neatly bypassing Plymouth - a naval town, but where there's hardly much navy left.
Our traffic system's a complete mess - there have been major roadworks for a year - unlike everywhere else, our traffic policy seems to be: narrow the roads, increase the pavement width, give wider cycle paths, and sod the motorist. Other cities seem to realise that if you widen the arteries, the blood flows better!!
I am sorry to say that, virtually through an accident of birth, I am a Plymothian - it's probably the one thing I can't actually change, like my nationality. We can re-assign our sexes, but once we're born, that's it - I wonder whether the church would allow me to be 'reborn' somewhere else - after all. it extols the praises of marriage as a holy state, where people don't live together until they are married - that is, of course, unless you're a 'Royal'! It's sensible to try anything out before you sign on the dotted line - but it's hypocritical of the church to take all the money for these kinds of weddings.
