Politeness is... being polite

These people who put little signs on the road outside their houses saying ‘Polite notice: no parking’: if it’s so polite, why do they never say please?

And would it be pedantic to point out that the use of 'polite' in this context is inappropriate anyway, because there is nothing polite about assertion of control over a space to which you have no claim?

‘Impertinent notice: no parking’ would make more sense, but this would probably not be explainable to the author of the sign.

As for those people who stick ‘No turning’ notices at the space at the end of their driveway: one can only hope that they will continue to prompt all right-thinking people to use these spaces for turning whenever they have the opportunity, even when there is no obvious reason to be doing any turning.

The wheels come off

Now and again something comes along which is capable of entirely changing your perspective.

I, like many others, conceived of media studies as a course of study which was probably not all that challenging. But it seems there is such as thing as a course in motoring journalism, run by the appropriately-named University for the Creative Arts in Farnham.

Well there was; it seems it has now been chopped: http://t.co/VBYjxzn. Also the course in leisure journalism, which sounds even better.

All this makes media studies look like, well, something jolly impressive. But I’m not sure I’m going to take all this information at face value. It has the feel of something that has got left over from April 1.