[r-t] Decisions

[King, Peter R]

>I don't know how many members there are of this list, but there are very few who are advocating the types of changes we have seen recently - >"value judgements of a small group".
Well yes you are probably right that it is a tiny minority of ringers who are advocating change, but I suspect it is also a tiny minority of riungers who are aware that there are any decisions or what they are.

>By far, the great majority of ringers will carry on quotidian ringing - not necessarily in peals - nominally following the decisions as they were before >c1985 - the uncovered triples change.
And yes this is again correct that even if radical changes were made then >>99% of peals would be the same old stuff (I don't mean that disparagingly). But then ringers are terribly conservative how many peals of plain major which are not plain bob or double Norwich (perhaps occasionally St clements) are rung each year, very few, simi9larly how many peals of treble bob (on major or above) which are not kent or oxford (or the two combined) are rung each year? If we rang things only based on popularity ringing would be severely limited.

>The CC is for everyone - those struggling with plain hunt, those I am forcing to learn London Minor when they don't think they can, not just for >Cambridge.
I would agree entirely that the decisions should be inclusive of everyone. Nothing that is proposed would exclude any of the traditional forms of ringing but does include, or allow for, innovations. In fact some of the changes proposed include more older performances than the present set of rules. Richard Smith has given examples of earlier peals of triples with  <5040 changes. At present these would be excluded retrospectively, I would advocate that they (and any similar modern performance) should be included. None of this means that the vast majority of ringers will be forced to ring these new fangled things so allowing for the new doesn't affect the old in any way.

I think the real reasons for advocating change were best put forward by Graham John a few days back. One of which was to prevent this discussion recurring every year. If the current decisions are kept people (yes a tiny minority) will keep ringing something outside the decisions and this kind of argument will go on for ever. There seems to be 3 things one could do i) tell them tough rules is rules and this sort of thing is not allowed ii) keep adding extra patches to the rules that then opens up other issues (this looks like epicycles on epicycles and is what we have now) iii) take a serious re think and see what decisions would fully acknowledge all past performances whilst allowing space for "reasonable" innovation in the future. I suspect the debate is really over what is "reasonable".

>Lastly, in your professional lives, how many of you would (a) bother or (b) be thanked by your manager for bothering with coping for a particular case >which only occurs once in every 2000 events?

My professional life is all about predicting rare events and what one should do about them and in particular advising major companies what they should do. Nearly always this ends up in drawing up a protocol for procedures that should be in place, nearly always these don't currently exist or are woefully inadequate. A very good analogy! You are probably quite pleased that a pilot has practised all sorts of landings under circumstances that they will almost certainly never come across in real life, or that your doctor has studied all sorts of conditions that they will probably never come across. Ringing a non-compliant peal is hardly life or death but I have no problem having a set of decisions that allow for a peal that may only be rung once.