[r-t] The important points

[Philip Earis]

Graham John has posted (on ringing-chat) what, to my mind, hits the nail firmly on the head. I've copied his message below.  His final sentence is absolutely key here.  Simplifying and liberalising the rules in no way at all undermines composition.  Being able to ring a true peal of 5022 triples doesn't mean that people will stop searching for a bobs-only 5040 of Erin triples.

Stripping out any judgement of what is "worth" doing is extremely important.

I am a bit surprised by MBD's intransigence.  Mark, in the nicest possible way your "Norwich Axioms" were fatally flawed because they started with the existing patched-up Decisions as the framework and tried to improve things by deleting some of the crazier bits.

The contrasting approach supported in discussion on here in recent days - of stating a few key fundamentals (ie much closer to an axiomatic approach) - has to be the way forward.



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The definition proposed is:



Peal: One or more round blocks comprising at least 5000 changes in total.



There are a number of reasons for doing this:



1. A simple definition that does have qualifications for each stage.

2. Definitions that do not define change ringing differently for quarters and peals (which currently can only use one partial extent on more than 7 bells). Why shouldn't bands be able to ring a 5500 of Triples or a 50000 of Major?

3. Not telling people what they can and can't do. Some people will only ring 5040s, but others may want to ring 5000s, or 5250s or Triples, say.

4. Avoiding the CC having long debates every year about whether to include peals in its analysis because they don't conform in a non-material way.



5000 is a sensible minimum. Few people would argue that a 4998 is not long enough to be a peal. It is consistent of the Council's aim of encouraging innovation because it provides composers with a new challenge of producing all the lengths that people might want to ring, such as all the lengths between 5000 and 5250.  John Warboys has suggested that his 5040 in 39 Surprise Minor methods could be extended to 5280 in the 41 standard Surprise Minor methods. That's sounds a very worthwhile objective.



Finally, I cannot see how this does anything to detract from the compositional challenge of producing an extent of Triples, the purity of the extent, or the achievements of composers in the past

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