[r-t] Doubles 240s

[Mark Davies]

Ander writes,

> There are plenty of things that I "dislike" in ringing, but for me this
> does not translate to any desire to prevent or discourage other people
> from ringing them.  Obviously Mark and others feel differently in this
> regard.  I wish I understood why...

You misunderstand me. I don't have any wish to prevent people ringing 
this if they want, and I might even join in, say on a practice night. It 
would be a bit of fun. However if I were ringing a peal or a 
quarter-peal I wouldn't expect the composition to include a "null 
change". It's just not change-ringing, in my view.

Then again, I'm not really too bothered in and of myself. I've never 
been that keen on Minor and lower numbers, nor on long lengths, so the 
"null change problem" is unlikely to affect much of my ringing.

But the exercise as a whole has to draw a line someone. You can't just 
say "anything is a peal". I don't think we want some horrible situation 
where half of us are ringing peals that the other half don't think are 
proper peals. A set of standards is a good thing.

So perhaps my main objection is better voiced like this: yes, I can see 
the mathematical elegance of adding the identity permutation to the set. 
But I think most the rest of the ringing world (outside ringing-theory) 
would think it is a load of old nonsense. That is probably not useful. 
It is ringing we are talking about after all, not just maths and 
abstract rules.

MBD