When the SNP say so with their new £100,000 vanity project — to rename the Scottish Executive to The Scottish Government. A few have been noticing the creeping use of the phrase ‘Scottish Government’ over the past few months, but I did not foresee the full-scale name change (despite what SNP supporter Scottish Politics says).

Nationalists are dead chuffed. According to them, it is monumental. Not from my perspective. This is just the Executive deciding it wants a fancy new name just as arbitrarily as a ned gets a personalised number plate for his car.

I’m not sure what the point of the name change is (beyond making the SNP feel more important than they actually are). For a start, officially changing the name would require a change in the law in a reserved area. The change is cosmetic. Mind you, that is probably enough for nationalists. But beyond that, Alex Salmond’s justifications do not quite add up to me.

Normally supporters of independence line up to criticise unionists of claiming that Scots are too stupid and incapable of making an independent Scotland work. But today ask a nationalist and all of a sudden Scots are just too stupid to understand what “Scottish Executive” means. This is despite the fact that the phrase has been a part of everyday language for almost a decade.

Perhaps I am being a bit harsh. Maybe this “Scottish Executive” business is too taxing for those little voters. So what do they do to alleviate the confusion? They change the name. Because that won’t muddy the waters one bit!

It’s a tweak to the political lexicon that is not needed. Since the inception of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 there has been a need to differentiate between the bodies that govern us.

So the legislature in Holyrood is the Scottish Parliament (or sometimes just Parliament, if there is enough context to allow you to ditch the ‘Scottish’). There the Scottish Executive is formed and is led by the First Minister.

Meanwhile, the legislature in London is called Westminster (to differentiate it from the (Scottish) Parliament). That is where the government, led by the Prime Minister, does its business.

I didn’t think that was too confusing, but there you go. Obviously I, unlike Alex Salmond, am not in the sort of position to say when and when not Scottish voters are too stupid to know what’s what.

I was used to saying “Executive” for things that the Scottish Executive did and “government” for things that, er, the Government did. Now we have a homonym. So what do I say now? I suppose it will all be “Scottish Government” and “UK Government” from now on.

Except, that is, in bills. These will still contain the phrase “Scottish Executive” even though it was the Scottish Government that put forward the bill. The whole situation is crystal clear now. I really am glad that helpful Mr Salmond has cleared things up for us!

Of course, the Scottish Executive hasn’t given itself a new name because the voters are just too, too confused (although that is the SNP spin on it). Bellgrove Belle lets slip the real reason behind the name change:

[O]nce we are called a Government, act like a Government, people will begin to demand the powers of a Government.

So there you have it. Not only is this name change a piece of spin to the n^th degree deliberately designed to make voters more likely to vote in favour of independence. But also the Executive is not a real government with “the powers of a Government”. It wasn’t me who said that; it was Bellgrove Belle.

So just what is the justification for the name change?

The internet is said to have made a lot of people’s jobs more difficult. Record company bosses, for instance. Or insurance companies. Or publishers. Surely another should be added to the list: lexicographers.

I was thinking the other day about how quickly new words enter everyday vocabulary. Before the internet, language evolved slowly and often in geographical pockets. Now? It’s “chav” this and “wag” that and “spam” the other (not to mention omg, wtf, lol, btw). And the fact that I am blogging about this would befuddle the 1990s you.

In fact, spam proves the point quite well. Of course, spam has existed since the year dot as a strange canned meat product. But when you say spam today you think of unsolicited (usually commercial) email. The word spam was first used in this sense in the 1980s, yet it took until at least the late 1990s for it to become a household name.

Today? Some wise guy can invent some half-arsed new term and almost instantly it is all over the internet like a rash. Or a rasher (rashr?). Of bacn.

I first heard of bacn via Gordon McLean. When I saw it at his blog I thought it was pronounced like the word ‘back’ with a rogue ‘n’ at the end. I thought it looked a bit like the name for some dodgy quango. British Autocratic Complete Numpties? (Too honest a name to be a real quango I guess.)

I soon remembered that this is “the age of the stupid removal, for no good reason, of the penultimate letter of a word if the penultimate letter is a vowel and the last letter is a consonant”. This is thanks to those wise guys at Flickr. Wankrs the lot of them. So bacn is like bacon, except now you have to delete the ‘o’ when you accidentally type it out of habit.

I have since learned through Boing Boing that bacn is an overnight internets phenomenon. So what is this mysterious bacn?

Putting it simply, Bacn is email you receive that isn’t spam… And isn’t personal mail. It’s the middle class of email. It’s notifications of a new post to your Facebook wall or a new follower on Twitter. It’s the Google alert for your name and the newsletter from your favorite company.

On Boing Boing it is described as “e-mail you want, just not now”.

The thing about this bacn thing, though, is that this is not really a phenomenon that I identify with. Spam is ubiquitous. We all know what it is. We all get it. We all hate it. Bacn? Not quite.

I can just about see it when it comes to the newsletter from my favourite company. But usually I just (skim) read them straight away so that they don’t pile up. I have signed up to The Economist’s newsletters, but I almost never read them. Hardly counts as “email you want”, even though I did ask for them. The exception is the indispensable Boomkat newsletter, which is one of the first things I read on a Friday.

So what about the rest of them — Twitter follower notifications, Facebook wall post notifications and the like? Well, I do want to know about them now. I just don’t want to read them.

Google Talk comes with a handy Gmail notifier which tells me whenever I get a new email. I can just look at the subject of the email and pretty much know what it is. Take three recent notifications that I received from three different websites:

• X sent you a message on Facebook
• X is now following you on Twitter
• Please confirm story about X [from Bebo]

In each case I did not want to read the email. What a waste of time. I just marked them as read the next time I logged into Gmail. But in each case I did visit the relevant website immediately to see what was going on.

Maybe I would understand more if I was an omg wtf busy 24/7 21^st century lifestyle stressed out city dude. But for me, bacn is not so much email that I want to put off reading until later. It’s email that I either want to read immediately (like the Boomkat newsletter), or not at all (Twitter followers).

Sorry about my absence over the weekend. I was here all along. In fact, I was here more than usual. It was one of the least busy weekends I’ve had in a while. But I somehow misplaced my blogging mojo and I was distracted by other things.

Other things like my latest internet addiction, Scrabulous! Jeremy Bentham thought that humans wanted to maximise pleasure rather than pain. Goodness knows what he would have thought if he saw me inviting Facebook friends to play Scrabble against me.

It has mostly been a demoralising affair. I hadn’t realised quite how rusty I was at Scrabble. I knew it was bad when I changed my target in my games to staying within 100 points of my opponent. Apologies to everyone who has had to put up with my awful Scrabble standards.

Still, I did win one game. I got off to a good start with ‘zealot’ early on, but I fell behind. Just when it was looking beyond hope, I redeemed myself with — of all words — ‘pies’. I always knew they were good for you really.

It’s incredible to think about the popularity of the Scrabulous Facebook application. I would never have heard of Scrabulous if it wasn’t for Facebook even though Scrabulous must have been in existence for a while.

This is part of the genius of Facebook Applications. They realised that there is added utility in combining other websites with Facebook. For instance, with the Last.fm Facebook apps I can see the music that all of my friends are listening to — people who I didn’t necessarily know had a Last.fm profile. With Scrabulous I can instantly play games of Scrabble with my friends without having to sign up or track down my friends.

All this has got me thinking about Facebook Applications again. When they were launched at the beginning of the summer, it felt as though there could be two or three really good uses for it, but that it could lead to the kind of overload that makes MySpace unbearable.

Now my profile has 14 apps on it (not including the ones made by Facebook themselves) and rising. Some are trivial. Others are distracting. The best are nigh-on revolutionary.

Perhaps with the latter group of applications in mind, Facebook themselves appear to have taken a bit of a step back. One annoying move they have recently made has been to call their excellent Courses feature an application and promptly remove it. I still don’t understand the justification for it.

For students like myself (who, after all, Facebook was originally designed for), the courses feature was not a mere add-on service. It was practically integral to the website as it allowed you to easily find your classmates.

Now it has been ripped out and replaced with at least two different applications (and probably more in the future). And because different people will be using different applications (or none at all), now you won’t be able to find your classmates so easily. Not the smartest move by Facebook if you ask me.

I wonder quite why Facebook felt the need to pull out. Maybe they are feeling the heat of the spotlight a bit too much. It’s not good to be the top dog. Ask McDonald’s, CocaCola, Microsoft or (now) Google. These companies all receive exponentially more flack than whoever is on the next rung down. Facebook is dangerously close to being among them.

By passing on responsibility for so much of its functionality to third parties, at least Facebook can now attempt to divert the attention elsewhere. If somebody launches into some kind of tirade about privacy and the courses feature, Facebook can now say, “Don’t look at us — it was [third party application developer].”

Perhaps there are less sinister reasons for Facebook’s change in tack though. A new application is causing a bit of a buzz and it is putting Facebook itself to shame (via Martin Stabe).

I have written in the past about how Facebook’s geographical networks are woefully inadequate. Basically, they have plucked some major cities from the atlas and decided that that will do. There are only 17 geographical networks for the UK, and they are almost all major cities.

If you are in Scotland you have to choose from Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh or Glasgow. Tough luck if you live in the Western Isles or even Fife, a peninsula wedged in between two of the aforementioned cities.

The rather excellent looking Neighborhoods app cuts out all of this nonsense. It makes these geographical networks for you. I added the app and it created a Kirkcaldy network for me, just like that! It has its own network-style page.

Of course, the problem with this is that the network is extremely small compared to, for instance, the Edinburgh one. In fact, I am the only member. But perhaps the tight-knit nature of these networks will work to its advantage. If the Neighborhoods app takes off (as it apparently has in Seattle), it could prove to be just the ticket. A simple solution to an old problem that Facebook themselves didn’t have a solution for.

It feels like a good time for me to review some of my favourite Facebook apps. But that will come tomorrow.

There are many, many, many things that I utterly despise about being alive. One of the worst is the rigmarole of having a conversation. Don’t get me wrong. Having a nice chitty-chat and a catch up is all fine and dandy. But those conversations where you do not actually get to the bottom of anything — what a pain in the arse!

It is called “small talk”. Small Talk used to be the name of a teatime programme on BBC One. Ronnie Corbett would sit there in his cardigan and point and laugh at all the gullible little children saying naive things. The poor children who starred in the show probably got bullied for the rest of their school life.

Much hilarity was caused by these kids talking about things that they don’t really about (and even then, it’s only because their parents did not have the sense to tell them the truth in the first place). Yet, the things these children said still made more sense than approximately 100% of actual “small talk” conversations that I have had.

I mean, what a waste of breath, power, energy and brains. I bet you if all the input used to make small talk was diverted and put to a better use, fusion power would have actually been invented instead of still being a pipe dream.

The thing that I really hate about small talk is the fact that I am not the only person who seems to hate it. In fact, I bet you that everyone hates it! It is an acute pain in the arse, yet we all subject ourselves to it.

What really gets me is the way people ask, “How are you?”, even though they could not give two hoots how you actually are. As such, you can never actually explain how you actually are (which, let us face it, is shit, complete with long-winded tale of woe).

If you do say how you actually are, the person who asked how you were in the first place will probably just turn around (if they are actually still in the room and haven’t fallen asleep) and say, “What makes you think I care?! Don’t take it out on me.” And if I retort, “Well, you did ask me how I was,” they would look at me as if I was the mental!

Even if they do not, I can assure you that they did not take in “how I am”. People just ask “How are you?” as a way of avoiding an uneasy silence. It is probably supposed to be polite, but I would rather have the uneasy silence, because at least that recognises the truth of the matter: you don’t care about me, and I don’t care about you. So don’t ask me how I am.

I am not even all that fussy about small talk. Questions like “How are you?”, “Nice day, isn’t it?” and “Have you got any plans for the weekend?” may not lead to any world-changing answers, but at least they form proper, meaningful sentences. Because there is another form of small talk which I consider to be little more than an advanced form of grunting.

“All right?”

That is the most innocuous one. Indeed, I often find myself using it. But even this is an absolute minefield. James O’Malley summed up the dilemma excellently:

I really hate it when people greet me by saying “Alright?”, as I can never figure out what they’re asking, nor how to respond. Are they basically saying “Hello”, or are they asking “How are you?”? If you misinterpret the question you risk looking like an idiot.

So, if somebody greets me by saying “Alright?”, I reply simply: “All right (?)”, which I say with an ambiguous monotone so that you can’t tell if I’m asking a question or not. This is because, to be honest, I don’t know if I’m asking a question or not, because I don’t know if I’m answering a question or not. “How’s it going?” provides similar confusion.

But those are benign compared to something like “What’s happening?” This sounds like it is less ambiguous than “All right?”, but it is not. If anything, it is even more confusing. I mean, think about it. The person who is asking me the question already knows what is happening — I am having a terrible conversation with him. Once again, there is no sensible answer to this.

But the absolute top of the tree has to be this: “What are you saying to it?” I mean, what the fuck is that? What am I saying to what? I’m not saying anything to any one, or any thing. A nonsensical question. Sometimes I reply, “Hello, It! Ho ho.” But that seldom raises a titter. Therefore, the only viable response is: “Nrargh.”

I am sure I have had actual conversations which have gone like this:

“All right?”
“All right (?)”
“What’s happening?”
“Errm. Yes.”
“What are you saying to it?”
“Nrargh.” [runs away]

Another one to add to the list: “What’s the craic?” The craic with what? I have not set foot in Ireland for about a decade. The only craic I have is my arse craic, and I doubt you want to know about that.

All of this explains why I fully support James O’Malley’s campaign to insert “What are the haps?” into every conversation. You know it has to be done.

Do you ever find yourself in awe of people who would normally be mundane? Today I found myself in the unhappy position of having to take the train into Edinburgh (every time I enter the city it just reminds me of university dread).

For some reason that I can’t really fathom, the train was absolutely mobbed today. The station was busy enough — on both platforms. When I got on the train it was already standing room only, before any passengers from Kirkcaldy boarded. It was not as if it was a particularly nice morning or anything. Yet the train was heaving with tourists.

Anyway, the poor train guard had a mountain to climb just to get tickets out to everyone. He had to barge his way past the dozen or so people standing in the “vestibule area”. Once he emerged he was confronted with a large group of people from Cupar who had only gone and bought the wrong tickets. Their tickets were for Dundee, not Edinburgh.

Most guards obviously can’t be arsed with their job. My guess is that some might have pretended not to notice that the tickets were for the wrong destination. After all, this was a group of daytrippers who were, to be fair, of advanced age. Having to shell out for new tickets would put a considerable dampener on their day and, dare I say, edged them a couple of hours closer to death. Other guards might just lose their patience over the matter.

But this guard knew what was what. The passengers seemed pretty upset when they realised what had happened, but the conductor kept the whole situation under control. Most would have mumbled and grunted. Some others might have rolled their eyes and tutted. This one? “It’s all right, it’s all right. It’s all under control. Keep your tickets. You can get a refund at the station.”

Of course, this is just him doing his job. But the unusually high number of passengers made the journey feel a bit chaotic as it was already, and there must have been several passengers on the train who did not yet have a ticket for those all important barriers in Edinburgh. And by the time the whole tangle was sorted out, we were almost halfway to Edinburgh already. I’m not sure how calm I would have stayed.

In time to reach the Forth Bridge, he made an announcement on the loudspeaker system. This is another point where you can usually tell whether the guard’s heart is in it. Sometimes they start with a heavy sigh, making you wonder if the guard is accidentally broadcasting to the entire train when he actually meant to dial 0898 50 50 50. Then they might grumpily plod through the script, as if to signify, “Look here, I really can’t be arsed, so don’t give me shit today, okay?”

Incidentally, I am certain that some members of staff have a bet on to see who can say “Cupar, Leuchars” the quickest. So the next time you’re on the East Coast Main Line around Fife, listen out for the announcement. “Edinburgh *sigh* Waverley… Haaymarket… err, Inverkeithing, gah, Kirkcaldy… Markinch… *cough* Ladybank… Cuparleuchars… Dundee…”

I am also sometimes amused (and this is where I reveal my snobby side) at the way guards try to speak formally and politely but are just incapable of doing so. Many long words are inventerised, causating me to arise my head from my book in amusementation.

There was none of that sort of thing from today’s masterful guard. He was a fine speaker with an authoritative yet friendly voice. In fact, with his distinctive, formal Scottish accent I couldn’t help drawing a comparison with late night radio hero Rhod Sharp.

Yet again, the guard was the calm amid the storm. “Those of you who still do not have tickets, I will endeavour to see you before we arrive at Haymarket and Edinburgh Waverley.” Not only this, but he seemed to be getting into the spirit of the day for many passengers, who were mostly tourists, as I have already noted. Acting as part tour guide, he appended his announcement: “To the group that joined us at Leuchars, you will see the painters hanging off the side of the bridge; I was not jesting about that.”

It was that last comment that made me think, “Wow.” In a hectic situation he managed to find the time to make a frivolous but heart warming comment for the benefit of the daytrippers, and provide on update on it over the loudspeaker system.

I quickly realised that it was silly to be so impressed, because he was only doing his job. But so many people don’t do that. Most guards grumpily check your tickets then sod off to their cabin for the remainder of the journey.

By contrast, here was a person who knew what he was doing. He kept control of a busy train with some upset passengers and still found the time to have a bit of fun with the passengers as well. I found myself appreciative of the fact that the guard put in so much effort and that, horror of horrors, he looked as if he might even enjoy his job — one that most would find unfulfilling.

I think now I understand why lollipop men are sometimes on the honours list.