[r-t] decisions

[Robin Woolley]

Hi all,

Richard Smith:

"I share Robin Woolley's view that far too much time is spent trying to classify sui generis performances."

That's my view.

"But the solution is not to prohibit them as he appears to be advocating."

No! No! No! That is not, and never has been, my view! Ringers have always exercised their right to ring whatever they want to ring. The only time I ever prevent someone from ringing something they want to ring is when it's Grandsire 5 when we have a band to ring Surprise 6 - because they ring surprise far better than they ring Grandsire! In fact, I would ban the method altogether!

"The solution is to allow them to be rung, **recognised in peals**, named, and otherwise recorded in the CC's analysis and methods collections, but not necessarily to classify them."

I think the Council was right in 2002 to stop "recognis[ing] in peals..." but all perfromances of >5000 rows are "recorded in the CC's analysis and methods collections...". Richard Allton said, in 2013, that the Peal Record's committee's *Analysis* "[..] includes those peals published in The Ringing World, and the analysis comprised the entire report of both narrative text and tables", i.e., from Title to signatures! I thanked him for this assertion!

The most important word in Richard's sentence is 'named' for historical reasons which have been aired already. The Quark peal was classified as 'non-compliant', but perhaps 'other' is a better, less politically incorrect, term. It is interesting here that the 4990 odd 'decision compliant' peals are, basically, ignored - they just get a '1' added to a box in the table which appears, this year, at RW446.

On this, there are those that any Methods Committee should be 'pro-active' To me, pro-active is a synonym for 'telling people what to do'! (Who do we know who advocates pro-activeness here).

Giles says "There seems to be consensus here that the Decisions should not be prescriptive but descriptive." What is the effective difference? They allowed, in 2013, 4990 (ex 4990, i.e., 100%) peals to be described in less than four pages of the RW. If I go to the chemist doesn't my prescription describe?

"... I think we need a further Decision to say that the Peal Records committee will prepare a Peals Analysis. " - see http://www.cccbr.org.uk/rc/rc.php

In many ways, what Giles is asking for already happens.

I would say more, but there's a domestic crisis at the moment - real life intervenes - but:

I have no problem with the way the Quark peal was originally recorded. It *was* recorded, *not* ignored. In the last analysis, this whole argument is about in which pigeon hole we put this peal (possible worrying about which pigeon loft the hole is to be found in the first place).

It is the recording (name, p.n., etc.) for posterity of what was rung which is by far the most important.

Someone talked about a peal of, say 5082 Triples. The simple answer - and, let's face it, there are lost of people out there who don't like a simple answer - is for the CC to record it as a 5040, and a peal board, if required, to record it as '5082 Triples... 5040 + 42 (on the next line)' (For someone's birthday, for example).

Best wishes
Robin