[r-t] [r-c] Definition of a peal (was Not A Block)

[Mark Davies]

John Harrison wrote, in reply to me,

>> ... Carry on as we were before - it's worked for four hundred years
>
> As before includes the CC being derided by the mass of ringers for being
> out of touch and wasting its time on technical arguments, being derided by
> innovative ringers for being prescriptive and obstructive, and having its
> tail tweaked by the awkward squad keen to kick any game target.  All of
> that weakens ringing because it distances many ringers from their central
> service body.

Yes, I agree, and I didn't qualify my statement sufficiently well. I 
believe strongly that we need to sort out the mess over method 
classification, in particular that of Differentials and false methods. 
This is what is causing all the aggravation.

But it seems to me that it might be better to go with the (often 
hundreds of years old) status quo in other areas. For example, any 
attempt to precisely define change-ringing is likely to be divisive, as 
I suspect is an attempt to reduce the peal length for Triples.

So I would argue for leaving all that as it is for now, and focussing on 
the Differentials/false methods/blocks classification. That to me is the 
badly broken bit, that needs fixing the most, and is causing the most grief.

MBD