Time enough

Listening to the radio last night I was reminded of something I was taught when I first worked in the theatre industry. The news announcer at 1am started off with "The time is 1am … good morning" yet, I suspect, few of us would consider the middle of the night to be 'morning'. Indeed if you switch across to the television services operated by the same broadcaster you will hear "Good evening" and "good night" well into the small hours as they consider the post-midnight hours as art of the day before rather than the start of the oncoming day.

Working in the entertainment industries it is often the case that you will end up finishing a show post midnight, indeed a get-out might not finish until 2am or later. But — I was taught — because one always wants to be able to say "Good Morning!" to colleagues the first time you say hello to them each day many theatre workers consider that the day starts and finishes at 04:44 (expect that as nobody likes Mondays they finish at midnight making Monday a short day and Tuesday a long day!)

All this also brings to the fore the lack of terminology we have in the English language for times of day. "Afternoon" is fairly clear as being the time after 'noon' (which is, strictly speaking, when the sun is at its zenith so in the UK at the moment that is 1pm not midday) but when — exactly — does 'afternoon' end and 'evening' begin? 5pm? 7pm? But if 'evening' takes us up to midnight, with afternoon and evening sharing that twelve hours, 'morning' to cover an entire twelve hours all by itself seems … excessive.

There are the church's divisions of the day by times of prayers, and even the watches on a ship divides the day, but there doesn't seem to be an accepted colloquial terminology. 'Early morning' to one person might be 3am but to another (like me some days!) would mean 8am. And if 'mid-morning' is elevenses what is left for 'late morning'?

A New "Routemaster"?

On the day we discover how empty the public purse really is, Boris Johnson — somehow elected as Mayor of London — unveils his new shiny.



A "Routemaster" in name only it will move fewer people than the buses it will replace; has no rear window to check what the bus following is for when you need to change routes; has no front seats upstairs — thus missing the whole point of a double decker — and is longer and wider than the original so won't deal with City streets and junctions so well (which was, indeed, the whole reason for the design features of the original Routemaster).

It is also massively more expensive than the alternatives at £300,000 per bus after the initial development costs of £1,200,000 per bus for the first five.

Where you live

I'm listening to Radio 4's The Westminster Hour at the moment and, unsurprisingly, the discussion is about the recent General Election and where do things go from here. One of those discussions is about PR (Proportional Representation) and the perceived need for the relationship between the citizen and the MP in the form of the Constituency relationship. Some MPs and commentators suggest it is sacrosanct and must never be broken, which some forms of PR (such as AV+ and list) partially or completely do.

But I'm wondering whether that relationship is all it is suggested it is.

At this election the boundary between seats in my area was shifted, and where I had been an voter in the Hampstead & Highgate constituency for the last 24 years I was now voting for an MP in the Holborn & St. Pancras seat. I didn't get any choice in that 'move' — my home hasn't changed. And, as I commented in a recent post on the results, the lines dividing the nation into constituencies are pretty much random; though sometimes they may associate similar areas together they are just as likely to separate one area into individual, illogical parts.

So is the 'Constituency' all it is said it is? If you know which Member of Parliament is representing you (or, indeed, which Members plural) then does there need to be a direct relationship between them and where you live? Does where you work actually matter more, for example?

In London there are 'constituency' members of the London Assembly, and 'top-up' or 'London-wide' members, and residents of London can go to either 'type' of Assembly Member as they choose. Similar arrangements apply to other elected bodies in some areas.

So would Parliament fall apart if the method of allocating new MPs based upon the number — and proportion — of votes received changed from the present (and clearly outmoded) method?

Somehow I don't think most of us would even notice the change.