[r-t] Covering bells as degenerate hunt bells

[Don Morrison]

On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 4:46 PM, Philip Earis <pje24 at cantab.net> wrote:
> I don't actually have much of a
> problem with what you call "mixed stages" though - but I agree this could
> currently be less liberalising.  At least it is consistent though.  How
> would the current decisions treat a peal of mixed minimus, doubles, minor
> and triples?  It doesn't seem clear.  At the least, my decisions are clear.

Oh, my, valuing consistency over the ability to describe what people
actually ring sounds more like the people you rail against, and less
like a noble effort to make things less prescriptive.

The current Decisions would treat a peal of mixed minimus, doubles,
minor and triples as invalid, or un-analysable, or whatever the
appropriate euphemism is these days.

Sadly, so would yours.

The current Decisions do treat a peal of mixed doubles and minor as
valid. And such peals really are rung today.

Unfortunately, yours does not allow such peals. Such a peal would not meet your
criterion for what a peal is, in particular not meeting the criteria you
have enumerated under "Conditions required for all peals".

Yes, this does make your criteria more consistent. But only because it
is more prescriptive than the current Decisions. That seems a big step
backwards.

And just to be clear, I'd really prefer the postulated peal in four
stages be allowed, too. That's forward looking, though. Your
prohibition of the two stage peal is a regression, and thus even more
of a problem.

I believe all of the following are important goals, but in the order
given. If they conflict hopelessly, then those earlier in the list are
more important than those later in the list:

1) Does not proscribe anything legal today. We don't want to go
   backwards.
2) Describe at least everything rung commonly today, where "commonly"
   means included in at least three performances in the past decade that
   were claimed by the band that rang them as peals.
3) Understandable by at least the average peal conductor.
4) Tidily consistent.

If we're letting (4) trump (1) or (2) we're doing something wrong.

Note: I am not saying that these are the only four goals. And I am
hopeful that they do not conflict hopelessly. I'm just saying that
looking at things in the light of these four, if they do turn out to
conflict hopelessly, we should prioritise them as above.

And, of course, (2) is not meant to say we should only be able to
describe such things. We want our descriptive powers to be more
flexible than that, I'm simply asserting this is a bare minimum
standard that needs to be met. I'm sure we can do much better.


-- 
Don Morrison <dfm at ringing.org>
"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh
at them in our turn."           -- Jane Austen, _Pride and Prejudice_