The FA Cup has been destroyed by greed. It is a classic case.

The whole point of the competition was that it wasn’t about money. It was about a straight knock-out competition in which, by quirk of maths (and muddy January pitches), only one team remained unbeaten at the end. Ties went on for months, and that was part of the fun; Wembley was reserved specifically for the final, and that was part of the romance; third round games kicked off at 3pm on the first Saturday of the year, and you left that space in your diary. It was a truly magical competition. It is no more.

The first hint of impending doom was the 1991 semi-final. Leaving aside my biased bitterness about the result, it is worth recording that Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal had to meet at Wembley “because it would be unfair to send the fans away from London” and “because no other ground was available”. Yet two years later the FA saw fit for a Sheffield derby semi-final to take place at Wembley, 200 miles down the M1, excusing this by saying that it would be unfair for the North London derby (Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur having been drawn together again) to take place there but not the Sheffield. Ten years after the first effort, when the two North London teams met in the semi-final for a third time, the FA was quite happy to send them 200 miles up the M6 to Old Trafford. The truth is everyone involved in 1991 wanted money in the bank, concern about the fans (as ever) was feigned.

The next year came the true debacle, the introduction of penalty shoot-outs. This was to “help the teams sort out their fixture lists”. Yet since 1992, European competition has seen far more games added to those fixture list that the removal of second replays removed. No one would ever think of reducing the Premier League from 20 teams to aid “fixture lists”. Of course, a second replay against Sheffield United isn’t quite as attractive as a European night against Inter Milan, even if it’s a redundant group game. Money talks, again, but the result is the FA Cup is no longer won by the sole team to remain unbeaten.

Further disaster followed of course. Much though I don’t care to remember it personally, and despite all of the above, perhaps the greatest semi-final ever was played between treble-chasing Manchester United and back-to-back-double-chasing Arsenal in 1999 – a semi-final replay in fact. Beckham bent it, Keane got sent off, Bergkamp missed, Giggs got the ball… a sublime goal to settle a sublime game for the neutral. And remember it was a replay. There have been no semi-final replays since. We have been deprived of such epics because, apparently, we’d much rather see a Europa League game against Wisla Krakow.

The end came in 1999/2000. Holders Manchester United, incredibly, were allowed to withdraw from the competition altogether. To make matters worse, Third Round day was shifted to November, and included in the hat were the surprised players of Darlington – surprised because they had already been knocked out in the second round! Instead of playing Manchester United, therefore, Aston Villa had to knock Darlington out for a second time en route to the last final at the old Wembley – a final made fairly pointless by the fact that the defending and current league champions were not even competing. This showed that other competitions – even daft new “FIFA World Club” competitions invented for the sake of a few quid by an incompetent Swiss who excuses racism – were more important than the oldest Cup in the game. Money – directly from that supposedly big-club competition, semi-directly from United’s and the Premier League’s global marketing efforts, indirectly from the FA’s desire to host the World Cup (that worked out well…) – did all the talking. Forget the romance of the Cup, and forget the home-based fans.

My own team, Arsenal, enjoyed a great run after that – having been “not really knocked out” (aka beaten on penalties) of the “not really the FA Cup” (no Manchester United) in 2000, it reached the final in 2001 and the semi in 2004, while winning the competition in 2002, 2003 and 2005. But it just wasn’t the same. My own reaction to these triumphs was satisfaction of course, but probably on a par with the 1987 League Cup rather than the 1994 Cup-Winners’ Cup – that is how far the competition had fallen.

The media can talk it up all they want – a once magical competition has been destroyed by the FA, by the media, and most of all my money. It is a true lesson in where greed gets us.

There are some great lobbyists out there on behalf of victims of domestic violence. Notably, they are good at hitting the apparently “lowest” political level by ensuring Councillors and party campaigners are included in their campaigning. That is an excellent way of building awareness and support – and one too often overlooked.

I have visited Australia only once, in 1995/6, but I am more familiar with South African English, a much under-researched variety.

Australian English strikes me as essentially British, including British terms such as “mobile” (versus “cellphone”) and “give way” (versus “yield”, i.e. in driving). I did note while I was there the prevalence of “Can I get” over “Can I have” (although the former is now indisputably gaining ground in the UK also), a seemingly peculiar spelling “aging” (“ageing” would strike me as preferable, but most Style Guides give either as optional), and of course the “Labor Party”, although that is explained by its foundation going back to a time when “labor” was an optional spelling even in the UK. In his encyclopedia on the English Language, David Crystal further notes that the apparently “British” spelling “-ise” (as it “realise” etc) is obligatory in Australia, as opposed to optional in the UK (the London Times still has “-ize”) and unknown in North America. Australia, of course, has its own terms, some of which have made it back to the UK via soap operas and such like (but are perhaps unknown in North America) – for example, I received a text message the other day from an Ulsterman using the word “arvo”, an Aussie-ism for “afternoon”.

Southern African English is, for me, much more interesting, and not just because of my greater affinity to it having visited the country roughly once a year from 2000-8, and frequently before that also. It is of similar origin in some ways to Australian (and New Zealand), and to the untrained ear the accent can sound similar (perhaps in fact more similar to New Zealand than Australia). However, it is markedly different, largely because of its different setting (in Africa), and perhaps mainly due to influence from the (Dutch-derived) Afrikaans language. In the English of South Africa there is no particular “British” bias, with terms such as “cellphone” preferred to “mobile”, and also tag lines such as “you guys”; television is not South Africa’s strongest suit, it has to be said, and visitors could be forgiven for thinking it is almost entirely made up of American sitcoms, hence this tendency. However, intermixed with all of this are some seemingly peculiar/ingenious Afrikaans-isms, including “bakkie” (for pickup truck, these are more common in South Africa), “robot” for traffic light (hence the seemingly hilarious road sign “Robot Ahead”), and numerous delicious food items (as well as some, if fewer, not so delicious ones). Some Afrikaans terms, from “aardvark” to “trek”, have made it into Standard English both in the British Isles and North America.

Both Australian and South African English are notable also because of their lack of distinct regional accents, even over vast areas. You may be able to tell an Australian’s class from their speech, but not their geographic origin (at least, not with any certainty). This may change – New Zealand English was not regarded as clearly distinct from Australian phonologically until after World War Two, but is markedly different now (especially in pronunciations such as “fish and chips”). South Africa displays minor regional variation (though it is not well researched), seemingly somewhat dependent on the level of influence of Afrikaans (by far the dominant language among whites in the Cape in the west of the country, but almost unknown as a first language in KwaZulu-Natal in the east), and yet in such a large country speech remains remarkably uniform.

Coming from Northern Ireland, where accents are distinct every 20 miles or so, this regional commonality is astonishing, yet it reflects the common trend of “language introduction” (in the United States itself, while regional accents exist, displays considerably fewer proportionately than the UK).

Ultimately, varieties such as Australian and South African English are perhaps best approached in their own right, as opposed to via “British” or “American”.

He was not arguing (and nor would I argue) that he didn’t belong to a particular “side” of Northern Ireland society, although I think we came to agree over our correspondence that it would be helpful to recognise that there are those for whom “sides” matter more than others, and there are those for whom there are more than two “sides” (we may not have agreed this, by the way, it is merely my inference from a few 140-character notes). This does raise some interesting points, however:

- if someone is not a practising Protestant, not a particularly avowed Unionist, and has no sense of affinity to “Loyalist” culture, what does link them to those who live in “PUL communities” (an academic term, but one often readily accepted for self-identification)?

- is the notion of moving from allegedly lazy terms such as “Protestant” or “Catholic” to academic-looking terms such as “PUL” or “CNR” in fact liable to pigeon-hole us all further, necessitating not just a religious or political affiliation but a whole raft of affiliations all of which must be held by all of the people living within a particular community?

- ultimately, would it not make more sense to change the terminology to more “nationality”-based (since we all have a nationality but not necessarily a particular political identification or religious faith)?

There are those, of course, who suggest we should just move away from these “labels” altogether. Certainly, I am greatly discomforted by terms such as “PUL” (for the aforementioned “pigeon-holing” reasons). Yet it is equally dangerous to suggest that we are all free agents free of any influence placed upon us by parents and peers in childhood or by our general social culture and biases even in adulthood. It is ludicrous to suggest that if “government” were simply to stop even hinting at a broad Protestant/British versus Catholic/Irish divide, the Shankill would suddenly become just like the Falls – plainly, it wouldn’t! Seeking overall labels to place on communities is as descriptive as it is prescriptive – even if, either way, it is always imperfect!

I myself have always had two things to specify on the subject, first about the nature of the divide itself, and second about the importance of an overarching civic identity of some sort.

Although it is not always wrong to “label” communities (noting particularly that people who live within them are often to ones who label them), it is important to recognise that we do not have “mirror images” in Northern Ireland. Where religious affiliation may be more important to one community, national affiliation may be more important to another; where one group may find the symbolism of historical and military imagery important, another may find the symbolism of a language important; where some people may take a particular political viewpoint to be inherent to their identity, another may wish to avoid politics altogether. The most serious mistake government makes, therefore, is not “labelling” in itself (problematic though this can be), but the notion that because one “side” gets something, the other “side” needs something similar – often the value of one thing (say, a language or a flag) may be much higher to one community (however defined) than to another.

Also, for all this “labelling”, there must also be a focus on our responsibilities to each other as citizens of the same jurisdiction; or, put another (perhaps slightly less comfortable) way, no matter how “Loyalist or Republican” we are, or “Protestant or Catholic”, or whatever combination of whatever identities and backgrounds, we are all ultimately “Northern Irish” citizens. It is that which gives us our rights (legally, in fact), and it is that which also gives us responsibilities as people with a common designation (referred to in the 1998 Agreement as being “people of Northern Ireland”).

Dear Mr Salmond,

We have had significant debate thus far on the timing and nature of a referendum rather than on the actual issue of Scotland’s constitutional status. I am sure we can both agree, although we take opposing views on it, that it is in fact the constitutional status we should be talking about.

We understand also that the issue of Scottish independence is for the residents of Scotland themselves, alone, to determine. That is why we will shortly be publishing legislation clarifying that the right to call such referendums will be devolved to the Scottish Parliament.

I wish to explain to you why a referendum with anything more than a single, yes/no question would in this case be pointless. It is the UK Government’s intention, and has always been, to pursue greater localisation of decision making across the UK, and thus significantly greater devolution to Scotland. You have thus far been unclear about what you take “devo max” to mean, but let me be clear about what the UK Government would intend to do should the people of Scotland vote to remain within our Union.

We will publish proposals within three months of a referendum based on many of the recommendations of the Calman Commission, which will include but not be limited to:

- the devolution of welfare;

- the creation of a Scottish Civil Service;

- the creation of a Scottish tax collection authority; and

- the replacement of the Barnett formula with a system based mainly on tax and revenue collection within Scotland funding services within Scotland.

Naturally, should the people of Scotland decide to remain within the Union, they would continue to enjoy all the benefits influencing our common monetary policy, our common defence policy (with the full range of jobs available to Scots, as to other UK citizens, in our armed services), and our common diplomatic corps, one of the most extensive in the world.

To be clear, therefore, I am not proposing a three-way referendum because for the UK Government, the “do nothing” option does not exist. We are committed to expanding devolution while maintaining, for Scots, all the opportunities that come with being part of a larger Union.

Aefauldlie,

David Cameron

Alasdair McDonnell’s comments started a sideshow of a debate in the media about the notion of MLA pay rises, with a number of people coming out essentially in favour. We should not be fooled! Let us look at some of the arguments…

1. Paying MLAs more would get us better MLAs. To which I present to you: TDs in the Republic of Ireland. Paid far more, are they really a step above? Seriously?! Paying MLAs more would only make internal selection processes even more vicious and personal, thus in fact driving the people we want away.

2. They don’t get paid as much as MSPs. You bet they don’t! MSPs represent nearly three times as many people each!

3. They haven’t had a pay rise for ages. Nor have lots of people; and in fact, they have had a rise in kind, with Office Cost Allowance dramatically increased by Peter Hain prior to the 2007 restoration.

4. They can be kicked out at short notice. Not that short – the next election isn’t due until 2015, and of course they’ll likely switch that (rightly, in fact) to 2016. Should they lose their seat, they get a settlement. All of that is hardly going to result in “grinding poverty”!

MLAs are paid almost exactly double the average private sector wage, complete with job security to 2015-16. Given the lack of legislation coming forward anyway, there is simply no case for a pay rise – and don’t let any supposedly “clever” people tell you otherwise!

Yours aye,

Ian Parsley

You no doubt remember me as the gentleman with the frankly ludicrous knowledge of past World Cups, noted also for famously hitting the bar from the halfway line during that crucial Sunday morning friendly match against Gateshead Health Authority in early 1999. They didn’t have YouTube in those days unfortunately, but you will no doubt note that Thierry Henry has never been recorded as managing that, and of course when even Pele tried it, at Mexico ’70, he missed completely.

Some years ago I reluctantly had to accept my football career was over, having failed even to select myself for my own University Intra-Mural team. The final blow was your decision to make Cesc Fabregas – aged precisely 10 years and one day younger than me – Captain of Arsenal Football Club. There comes a time when you just have to let go of your dream, as the last six seasons have taught us all.

Nevertheless, I cannot help but notice two things:

- the return of formerly retired players to the game at various big Premier League clubs; and

- the dearth of defending talent at Arsenal (let’s be honest, Squillaci hasn’t turned out to be the answer, has he?)

Like Thierry Henry, I’m 34. Like Thierry Henry, I am perhaps not quite at full match fitness. Like Sebastian Squilaci, I once lived in Andalusia, but I was in eastern Andalusia which is completely different so you can overlook that one.

Therefore I feel it appropriate to bring my availability for selection, even if only as another defensive option on the bench, to your attention. Admittedly, I have a small business to steer through a recession and a book to be published soon (with subsequently lecture tours, fan buses, you know the sort of thing – those Americans love anything to do with Ireland), so I couldn’t do training or Champions’ League. Nor would I want to be cup-tied, of course. However, as there is currently no election canvassing to be done at weekends, I do feel I could make myself available for League games through the two-month period to the end of the financial year.

Obviously, I’d need to look at flights, particularly for the Spurs game on 26 February, so do please get back to me soon.

Veuillez agréer, Monsieur le Gaffeur, l’expression de mes sentiments distingués.

Ian Parsley

PS: Just to clarify, as I am not currently attached to a club, you would not in my case even have to clear insurance.

I recall a meeting I held alongside Trevor Lunn, probably in 2008, with a group who wished to build a Belfast “Rapid Transit” system. Certainly in my case they were preaching to the converted – more than 10% of my youth was spent in Germany in the company of trams (even in relatively small cities like Bielefeld), the benefits of which, in transport terms alone, are immediately obvious.  The  problem was, the documentation presented was amateur (leading me to wonder whether they really were capable of delivering), and there was no one supporting them (or even the wider case). It was a classic case of trying to win political support for a case merely on the grounds of the case alone – sadly, no politician is going to react to that, no matter how favourable their instinct is. The skill is to demonstrate professionalism and much wider support, so that the politician knows he/she will not be embarrassed by supporting the case/project, and will be rewarded by broad popularity at the polls for doing so.

What was required, first off, was really professional documentation (and perhaps a presentation), to give the impression of a business which not only talked a good game but was professional enough to deliver on it. I have no idea whether the two gentlemen present at this meeting were capable of delivery or not, but their documentation alone left me to wonder – despite the fact all the information I would likely want was contained in the file they gave us.

Secondly, there is little point in even the most professional company arriving at Stormont, handing over a file or delivering a presentation, and then expecting full backing for their case. Politicians’ currency is votes, they will need evidence that there will be much wider support for the proposal than just those advocating it in the room. Here, public affairs companies can help with “coalition building”, to demonstrate broad support (and likely popularity).

In short, politicians will support an unlikely proposal with likely support over a likely proposal with unlikely support. To deliver likely support takes internal professionalism and external coalition building.

French is of course, derived from Latin. Almost immediately, however, it was distinguished by its proximity to Germanic, and thus French is generally regarded as the first distinguishable Romance language (i.e. French was distinguished from Latin before Spanish, Italian, Portuguese or Romanian were). It is uncertain what the Germanic influence was – it may have been restricted to just a few words (brun ‘brown’, the Romans had no colour ‘brown’ but Germanic tribes did), it may have been quite widespread (and may be the fundamental reason that French phonology became so ‘reduced’).

French initially retained a distinction between nominative and accusative noun forms – rather confusingly, essentially masculine nouns ended in -s and then removed it in the plural, whereas feminine nouns had no obvious ending by added the -s in the plural. The feminine became the norm, although the former masculine -s lives on in male names (Charles, Jacques, Georges etc.)

French is also distinguished from Spanish, Italian and Portuguese in that it ceased to be ‘pro-dropping’, in other words, it requires a subject personal pronoun – thus j’aime ‘I like’ (versus Latin/Spanish/Italian/Portuguese amo, no word for ’I’ necessary).

However, what really marks French out is its dramatically reduced phonological system, with the written form (as in English) obviously representing a much older version of the language. This inevitably results in ‘re-lengthening’, examples include Qu’est-ce que c’est (literally ‘What is it which that is’, i.e. ‘What is it’) and aujourd’hui (literally ‘on day of today’, i.e. ‘today’).

(Interestingly, on that last example, written German shows a similar trend in the growing use of the phrase am heutigen Tag for heute, derived from the Proto-Germanic hiu tagu in the same way hui is derived from the Latin hoc die, both themselves meaning roughly ‘on this day’).

French has of course taken on a significant global, cultural and social relevance. It remains one of the UN’s six official languages and, officially, the language of the global postal service, both despite a comparative lack of speakers (no matter how counted) – Spanish now has at least five times the number of native speakers, and Portugese easily more than double, yet French retains a high degree of prestige. This is assisted perhaps by the huge influence of French (to be specific, French dialects) on English after the Norman Conquest, with a real sense among English speakers that French is accessible and that it is a ‘high’ language (compared to Germanic ‘low’ words) – although English is theoretically much closer to German, being mutually intelligible until around 800, the distance in time leads to a sense of linguistic distance also (it is much easier to recognise words such as impossible or civilisation than, say, vergeben ‘forgive’ or schlafen ’sleep’, particularly in print).

This great influence of French is almost its undoing, since it has nowhere obviously from which to borrow new terms to expand the lexicon (the way English and German obviously do). French speakers seem to view their language as somehow ‘purer’, never having had the huge influence of invaders the way English (with the Normans) or Spanish (with the Moors) had, yet ‘purity’ rarely wins prizes in language. This is the heart of the current issue of ‘Franglais’ – the rejection of terms such as le weekend is understandable socially, but in fact linguistically limiting. (Of course, this ‘purity’ notion is not true anyway, given the aforementioned notable influence of Germanic during the immediate post-Roman period.)

The study of French still has much reward, however, not least given the number of essential English words based upon it – ‘important’, ‘depend’, ‘arrest’ and so on. It remains a highly useful career language in lobbying, for example, given the European opportunities it offers. Its literature and philosophical history mean it has great merit as a primary language too.

For all that, it seems beyond doubt now that, even in the UK, Spanish will soon take over as the first foreign language (as happened long ago in the United States). We’ll come to why that is in due course, no doubt!

Firstly, we need to put an end to this nonsense about “devo max”. Scotland is either part of the UK, or it isn’t: if it chooses the former, it receives the benefits of being part of a wider Union but also has to accept that other parts of that Union have an equal say in determining its overall constitutional settlement; if it chooses the latter, it’ll go its own way and make its own decisions, but lose all influence on the rest of us. It is one or the other.

Secondly, the PM has a point about the uncertainty around Scotland’s constitutional future. This is significant for the whole of the UK. It is significant for us in NI for obvious reasons – it is hard to see how (or why) NI remains part of an Anglo-Welsh state. It is significant for England too: many of its political leaders are Scots; many of its armed forces are Scots; there are significant binds between England and Scotland which would need to be re-aligned in the event of Scottish separation.

Thirdly, the SNP does have to answer some of the obvious questions. A “Scottish Army”, for example, would be much smaller than the Scottish contingent of the third largest army in the world; what other options would young Scots currently joining the army have in terms of employment and so on? A “Scottish Finance Sector” would require a comparatively much vaster bail-out from the Scottish taxpayer, how would this be afforded? How would the SNP’s new state be characterised – would it be pro- or anti-Europe, high or low tax? That these, and many other things from citizenship to border controls, remain uncertain is the very reason the SNP has no chance of winning a straight yes/no referendum, and is of course the reason it doesn’t want to have one. It is a pro-independence party which doesn’t want a vote on independence – that contradiction should indeed be highlighted.

It has long been the case that the SNP was setting the conditions for Scotland leaving the Union, and for Scotland staying within it. The latter, at least, is unreasonable. The people of the UK as a whole must determine the constitutional situation in the UK as a whole, even if on occasions they choose to devolve aspects of that (as per the devolution/Agreement referendums of the late ’90s).

I have long said that Scotland could do perfectly well as a sovereign state. I have admired the SNP’s electoral growth. Its form of Nationalism – primarily based on civics and institutions – is much more attractive than anything on this side of the Sheuch. Nevertheless, the fact is the drive for “independence” had relatively little to do with that electoral success – many SNP voters just wanted rid of Labour; that said, many remaining Labour voters probably would not mind independence in theory. That is why such a referendum should be held – and why it must be about the practice, not just the theory.

Shared or sole sovereignty is a straight choice. There is no harm in Scots making it freely, no one in London is stopping that. But, for the all our sakes, there is also no harm in that free choice proceeding this year.