Fake languages: a salutory tale (GanS 8)

The annals of Schloß Kolditz show that the 'bad boys' imprisoned there had one thing high on their minds (after Escape) to stave off boredom: study. One young inmate announced that, as China would surely emerge into prominence after the War, he wanted to learn Chinese. Two of his friends volunteered to share with him their expertise in the language, and 2-on-1 classes started soon after. But, alas, these 'friends' were nought but vile tricksters who had not a word of Chinese between them, but instead taught the poor gull a made-up mish-mash of quasi-oriental sounds. They had not, however, reckoned with the hunger for learning that burned within their young student's breast, and they found themselves having to create faux-Chinese at an ever faster rate (and, of course, to learn it all themselves as well!). After a while, it all became too much for the sly pair, they made their excuses and terminated the classes.

Sadly, the end of the story has not apparently come down to us; we can only imagine in our mind's eye the young Sinophile returning to his Chinese studies after the war, and his reaction when he realised that his 'friends' had duped him so wickedly: his wrath might have been a wonder to behold!

Happily though, we may not have to 'imagine in our mind's eye' for much longer; we may soon see exactly how he would have reacted, and on a much larger scale at that. I wonder what the reactions would be of all those poor dupes (who've been conned by the Kemynistas into learning the faux-Cornish that is Kemyn) were the scales to fall from their eyes. The old saw has it that you can't fool all the people all the time … but, who knows? —time does have a habit of making fools of us all. But even some of KK's own apparatchiki may have seen the writing on the wall; Myngow Vras, eponymous stranger to the truth that he is, has said this of the meetings at Tremough,

"We know the result in advance, an orthography designed by committee that's suppose [sic] to please everyone and will please no-one. Twice I've been to Tremogh, and twice I've been told in advance what I've decided [?]. So I can see how this is going to go."
[CornishOrthography # 2754, 22-11-06]

which sure don't sound as if he likes the prospect of these 'outside experts' scrutinising KK; why on Earth would he be afraid of impartial scrutiny? Even though he does feel the need to peddle his Big Lies "over and over till [he's] blue in the face", we feel inclined to believe his sincerity this time … well, almost. Let's just hope that all that cyanosis that he refers to (and the accompanying anoxia of which a blue face is a symptom) doesn't cause any further demise amongst his remaining leetle grey cells. Goodness knows he can't spare them!

One Guru to guide them all ...

We have mentioned elsewhere the authoritarian, top-down style of control that governs the Wonderful World of Kenowek Kemyn. Here's one small example of it in action, that was found on Ray Edwards' Kernewek Dre Lyther site. Here we have a man of mature years, who has been running the KDL system for a long time, in Unified Cornish at first before he turned his loyalties towards Kemyn. He says,

'Ken is ... envisaging the possibility of introducing z where there is a tendency to voice the s sound.'

Thus, nothing may be done until the Arch-Guru of Kemyn pronounces on His Envisagements. Still, to put his weltanschauung into perspective, on the same page he also mentions:

"... people liked and trusted Ken and appreciated the enormous amount of work he had put into trying to sort the matter out ..."
"... the sincerity of Ken George and other members of the Language Board ..."

Disingenuous, or merely ingenuous? Sure enough, it's a revisionist view of history that's not shared by most of the Cornish speakers that we know, none of whom would trust 'Likeable & Trustworthy' Ken or the 'Sincere' Kesva an inch! Given their dubious actions within the Cornish Language Revival over the last couple of decades or so, that's hardly surprising.

So, a fragment of evidence of the top-down authoritarianism of the KK world. Contrast this with the rest of the Cornish speakers, who --while they manage to cohere-- do so in a much more democratic, disputatious, even anarchic sort of way. Which is just how it should be, and is just how it's done in, say, the English-speaking world, where there is a long history of either ignoring the pronouncements of crackpot skylgerydhyon, linguistic charlatans and orthographical mountebanks, or at most exposing them to ridicule, satire and oblivion. Why, even the respected lexicographers of the likes of the Oxford University Dictionary are not taken as the final, undisputed word on the language.

We call to mind from the 1920s the almost forgotten Shavian Phonetic English of that other 'great' George, GB Shaw, as well as the 19th-century minor poet William Barnes and his Pure English (with its ludicrous 'welkinfire' and 'wortlore' for 'meteor' and 'botany'). How long will it be, we wonder, before Ken George's Kenowek Kemyn joins them and assumes its rightful place --as a small footnote in the history of the Cornish Language Revival (and as a cautionary tale of the dangers of ignorant meddling with languages)?

Modern (=Revived=KK) Cornish revisited (yet again!)

Just as the leopard can be relied on to be spotty, there's something almost reassuring in seeing Myngow Vras trotting out his tired old Big Fibs once more. In a recent post to Cornish Orthography (#3183) about Nicholas Williams' Towards Authentic Cornish, our lemur-loving laddie had the following to say:

The sections of the book relating to ... Wella Brown's standard [sic!] Grammar of Modern (i.e. Revived) Cornish, provide helpful notes ... Williams, unlike Edwards, is not attempting to improve the range and accuracy of Revived Cornish, but rather to undermine the whole enterprise, presenting every little 'error' and misuse as proof that Revived Cornish, at least when clothed in the Kernewek Kemmyn orthography, is mistaken. Which amounts to saying that almost the entire corpus of contempory Cornish is worthless.

One must conclude therefore that the entire enterprise is little more than a c300 pp 'poison pen' letter. Williams has almost nothing new to say on the subject of Cornish phonology and orthography, and has simply set out to rubbish Ken George, Kesva an Taves Kernewek and by implication most of those currently active in the Cornish Language Revival ...

Now, let's just look at the 'semantic drift' in that excerpt, with all of the following quotes referring to the same thing, namely Kernewek Kemyn:

• Modern (i.e. Revived) Cornish
• Revived Cornish
• Revived Cornish, at least when clothed in the Kernewek Kemmyn [sic] orthography
• almost the entire corpus of contemporary Cornish
• most of those currently active in the Cornish Language Revival

Thus, KK = Modern Cornish = Revived Cornish = most of the Language Revival etc. etc. etc.

This method of argument is quite reminiscent of that old school trick of proving that black=white by incrementally changing the meaning of the each of the two words until they meet in the middle somewhere. Or should we call it the 'Chinese Whispers' form of argument perhaps? Is it possible that the poor chap doesn't realise his arguments are as full of holes as a piece of gruyère cheese? I don't know for sure, but if his logical powers are as flawed as his linguistic ones, it is just about possible. Consider the following lovely items of orthography from one with such forcefully expressed opinions on matters orthographical:

• unwarrented
• denegrates
• ad nausiam
• repetedly
• fouth [i.e. 4th]
• monothong [evidently a skimpy item of swim-wear rather than a linguistic matter]
• contempory

And even thought he can't spell his own first tongue properly, he expects us to take his linguistical pronouncements seriously? Still, it might help explain why he was attracted in the first place to the orthographically challenged form of pseudo-Cornish that George and his acolytes have been peddling for the last couple of decades:

just as 'misery loves company', so evidently do bad spellers!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

fig.1 Surely Merv Davey, Pyber an Orseth, can't be an Piper Discrissick?
Or has his likeness been libellously taken in vain?

Quite a lot of pop groups have so-called 'tribute' bands, who play second-rate plagiarised versions of their hits, supposedly in 'tribute' to the Great Ones (although you can bet that not much 'danegeld' changes hands).

Even the humble bloggist is not immune to this species of sycophantic groupy. A 'tribute' web-site was announced recently on CornishOrthography (#3140) under the lexicographically challenged pseudo-pseudonym of 'an Piper Diskrissick' (Oh! –our aching ribs!), with the subject tag, 'An Gweeas Internet noweth an Piper Discrissick'. Alas, after having had an intoxicating burst of mispelling one of our names, his muse seems to have gone AWOL, as the site is almost bare of content!

This purports to come from a pseudonymous 'new' member of the group, one 'sarazin2007', who joined just the day before posting his/her/its first message.

By the by, we notice that 'torontosteve' aka 'brocher2001' has kept his promise (as mentioned in a previous article) and departed from the group, in that not one single trace of him remains in the list of members. But we have a suspicion that he has emerged from his lair under a new persona. Now, we appreciate that it's a dodgy job trying to guess who's behind the masks of online 'avatars' (has not one of us been oh-so-confidently identified as at least 3 separate people (all males, at that!) at various times?). But let's note the following points of circumstantial interest:

• the two noms de guerre are rather similar: brocher2001 and sarazin2007, which shows the lack of imagination we would expect from El Disparecido,
• one disappears from the members' list just as t'other appears –poof!– like the villain in a mediaeval melodrama,
• the pseudo-site is hosted at www.geocities.com/brocher2001/, which suggests that, if not one and the same person, the two 'dear boys' are abnormally intimate with each other,
•it's also hosted at the rather grandiosely addressed www.cornish-language.com, and the choice of this URL shows the same self-important egotism we came to associate with the 'dear departed' brocher2001.
• 'sarazin2007' doesn't like using lots of words; apart from URLs, his first 3 messages are 5, 3 and 10 words long. Brocher2001 was also sparing with words, perhaps because of his linguistic/intellectual difficulties described below. As we've seen in the past, brocher2001 shows impatience when faced with challenging linguistical phe-nom-en-a like:
– long words,
– lots of words (even short ones), as in sentences (or posts) longer than a few words,
– words used to form a logical, coherent argument,
– words used to denote abstract concepts,
– words used in humour, mockery or satire,
– words used to disagree with him,
– words used to criticise Kernewek Kemyn.
– words in foreign languages (such as Cornish and English)
• the brocher2001/sarazin2007 site is very sparing with its content to boot; in a similar way, many of brocher2001's posts were content free.

Just as 'torontosteve/brocher2001' had problems with language, so too does 'sarazin2007' seem to be similarly challenged:

(1) Vocabulary:
• 'gweeas' for website, when the word actually means 'web' (if we've correctly interpreted his dyslexic orthography, that is); 'website' would normally have the '-va' suffix denoting a place; thus, in his idiolectal spelling, he should have said 'gweeasva'.
• similarly for 'Internet': LCR uses 'An Gwiaz' for 'The Internet', so presumably the other versions of the language might use that word as well. It does seem a tad feeble just to use the English word au naturel, and make no attempt to Kernify it. A quick look at the Nance '52 gives us:
• between = 'yntra' before vowels, 'ynter' before consonants
• net = 'ros'
• so even the ad hoc calque *yntraros or *ynter-ros should be preferable to just using the English. Gosh, even An *Ynternet would be a slight improvement!
Surely even George's ghastly dictionaries should be equal to the task of providing pseudo-Cornish equivalents to this pair of basic lemmas.

(2) Syntax:
• reduplicated definite article à l'Anglaise in his genitive construction (oh, naughty boy!):
'an gweeas ... an piper ...'
for 'the web[site] ... of the piper', when every learner will have been told it should take the form:
'gweeas ... an piper'
with only a single article and, of course, proper spelling, e.g. 'gwyas An Pyber'.
Still, perhaps we should be grateful for small mercies: at least he didn't inflict on us the triple whammy of '*an gweeas an Internet an Piper ...' !

(3) Spelling:
• the UC spelling is 'gwyas', the LCR is 'gwiaz', and KK is 'gwias'. 'Gweeas' seems to be a home-brewed rendition. By contrast, he uses UC 'noweth', where LCR has 'nowedh' and KK 'nowydh'. While one can imagine there may be humourous intent in mispelling 'An Pyber Dyscryjyk' as he has ("an Piper Discrissick", with inconsistent capitalisation), it's difficult to see the fun in getting these two more mundane words messed up. We suspect he shares the dyslexia manifested on occasions by 'brocher2001'.

One final point that needs clarifying: we note with interest that the photograph of 'sarazin2007/Piper Discrissick' (shown on his profile page, and above in fig.1) appears to depict him as Pyber an Orseth, the official piper of Gorseth Kernow. In fact, it is recognisable as a photo of Merv Davey himself. Does this mean that the true identity of this plagiaristic piper has been revealed, or is sarazin2007 taking Mr. Davey's name in vain? Merv has always struck me as being an intelligent and articulate sort of person, quite unlike the linguistically challenged wee pissant that brocher2001/sarazin2007 has shown himself to be. One can only hope that a case for libel is not brought against our namesake!

Lies, Damned Lies, & Capture-Recapture (GanS 8)

Ecologists have an ingenious method of estimating the population size of animals in the wild; it's called the Capture-Recapture technique, and, stripped to its basics, it goes something like this:
1— capture a sample of the population, count them, mark them and release them.
2— after they've had time to mingle with the rest of the population, catch some more.
3— tot up the proportion of marked individuals in this 2nd sample, do some simple arithmetic, and you've got your total population size.

Now, there's a pressing need for field studies on the Cornish-speaking population, so as to find out, amongst many other things, how many there are and what kind of Cornish they speak. This sort of data could be vital for planning the future of the Revival, and present information is largely anecdotal. However, with a modification of the ecologist's method we've just looked at, what we can do is explore the likely truth or falsity of some ot the statistical claims made by the Keministas about the supposedly 'huge' proportion of Cornish speakers who speak KK. The raw data is all anecdotal (on both sides), and our logic is not quite of the staunchest, but let's see what we find.

A qualitative estimate is given by Myngow Vras in his post (#2754) cited above, where he said,
"nearly everyone seriously interested in taking Cornish forward changed to KK 18 years ago. The only people who clung to Nance's UC were a few old fossils who wanted to stick to what they knew, whether it was historically correct or not …They have been peddeling [sic] their wares for years now, and nobody really wants to know."
In summary, KK is spoken by 'nearly everyone' except 'a few old fossils' and 'nobody really'.

Don'cha just love the way this pissant wee nyaff dismisses with contempt the likes of Nance, Caradar, Talek, Len Truran, Donald Rawe, George Pawley-White, Bryan Webb, Dick Gendall and the rest —great people who devote their lives to the Cornish Revival? And from him all they get is his contempt, just because they don't favour his chosen KK spelling? Ha! And as for 'historically correct'— oh, my aching ribs that such a slur should come from him, the most dyslexic of all KKists!

To corroborate this picture, we need some pretty overwhelming statistics. And we find them, too, in accounts given by two other prominent Kemynites. The figures we have are 92% from Tim Saunders, and 98% from 'torontosteve', as the proportion of KK speakers out of the entire population of Cornish speakers. These statements are on record in the archives of the CornishOrthography group.

This gives non-KK speakers a mere 8% or 2% of the total. A conservative under-estimate of the total number of non-KK speakers is at least 100 according to their organisers and teachers (it is likely to be higher than this, but let's see where these figures take us).

KK speakers = 92%, non-KK = 8%,
… gives us a total Cornish-speaking population = (100/8) x 100 = 1,250
…or, KK speakers = 98%, non-KK = 2%,
… gives us a total Cornish-speaking population = (100/2) x 100 = 5,000

Which means either:
(a) the number of Cornish speakers is considerably larger than anyone has dreamed,
… or …
(b) the Kemynistas' 'statistics' are fake.

Me, I'm plumping for (b), and for this being yet another example of the Big Lies and disinformation we've come to expect from that quarter.

Postscriptum 1:
'pietercharles' has provided us with some alternative statistics (#2710), where he says that KK "is used by everyone I know that speaks Cornish bar half a dozen people." Cranking this figure through our equation, we end up with this fascinating conclusion:
no. of 'known' non-KK speakers = 6
% of speakers using KK = 92% …or… 98%
therefore, total 'known' speakers of Cornish = (6/8) x 100 …or… (2/8) x 100
i.e. total 'known' speakers = 75 …or… 40 persons

Well, the '40–75' speakers this KKist's 'statistics' give us is a heck of a lot less than the '1,250–5,000' of them implied by the two KKists cited above. Of course, it may just mean that PC needs to get out and socialise a bit more, or perhaps that non-KK speakers tend to avoid him and his barbarous idiolect. But it still makes his figure of "6" simple disinformation, even if true. And we're supposed to trust what this lot say? Ha! They're revealed by their own words as being strangers to the truth, and as ones who can't even agree on what lies to tell!

Postscriptum 2:
Keith Bailey has offered us yet another set of 'statistics' (#787), saying that "the KK "faction" represents something between 60%-95% of serious Cornish users":
no. of non-KK speakers = 6
% of non-KK speakers = 40% to 5% (based on KB's figures)
therefore, total no. of 'serious' speakers of Cornish = 15 to 120 persons

Now, it could be that KB just sets such high standards for his Cornish that very few people qualify as 'serious', no matter which version of the language they use. But looking at the grave flaws in his own Cornish and English, this hypothesis only seems tenable if he sets much higher standards for others than he does for himself.

Or it could be that in his assessment of 'seriousness' he takes a neutral stance on other forms of Cornish, and passes equally impartial judgement on all. But his frequent ranting diatribes against all other forms of the language but the one he favours make this hypothesis seem pretty shaky as well. After all, 'old fossils', 'troublemakers' and 'devious lying little shit-bags' wouldn't merit any impartiality, would they?

As regards his numbers, this guy's got a science Ph.D, which really had to have some maths in it. So you know you he's got to be numerate, and you should be able to take his stats without sniggering. But ya gotta love his weaselly confidence limits though, which go from …
… 'if we lose a few speakers, we're in the minority', to …
… 'if they lose a few, they go extinct!'

Can he really be surprised that someone felt it appropriate to modify his nom de plume from Mong-vras ('large mane') to Myngow Vras ('great lying-mouth'), so as to celebrate his truthfulness (or apparent lack thereof), rather than his matching hairiness (which rumour has it, if you'll pardon a gratuitously anecdotal argumentum ad personam tu quoque, lacks a little of the hirsute glory of his salad days, and is getting a tad scanty and moth-eaten in these his declining years)—or so we've heard. Sure, and it's only unsubstantiated gossipmongering, but as we say in Gaelic,

ma's fìor e thugam, 's fìor e bhuam

… loosely translated:
If the truth is what I heard, then that's what I'm telling.

—::|::—

'Modernist', 'Modern Cornish' (GanS 7)

This apparently innoccuous word has a troubled past and a confusingly disinformative present. Here we shall merely attempt to sketch out the various meanings the term has had, and show the current state of unclarity that the Kemynistas have brought about.

§a Late Cornish:
It was, so we're told, first used by the aficionados of Late Cornish for themselves, presumably on the basis that their form of the language deserved it, as it was the most recent of the revived varieties of the language in use. Sounds fair, and simple enough, thus:

(1) Modern Cornish = Late Cornish.

§b Kernowek Kemyn:
Then the Kemyn® Putsch occurred around 1987, as described elsewhere in these pages, and things got a little more confused. The KK apparatchiks decided that they would like this term for their very own, so they simply declared (with typically unilateral autocracy) that henceforth the phrase belonged to them, and to them alone. The LC folks may not have been best pleased, but when faced with the force majeur sort of droit de seigneur kinda tactics used against them, their options were limited. So, once the arguing was over, it was still not too tricksy at that point:

(2) Modern Cornish = Kernowek Kemyn ≠ Late Cornish.

§c Saunders' Private Patois:
Now the plot begins to thicken: along comes 'Ryz-vyl' (real name: Tim Saunders) with a new meaning for this poor, overworked piece of vocab. Initially, old "vile Ryz" uses the term with meaning #(2) to denote Kemyn, but this soon begins to pall, and he changes the meaning to denote a Cornish-Kemyn-Breton pidgin of his own devising, a strange miscegenated idiolect that no-one else uses, and which is referred to by some of its detractors as 'Saun-dreck' (with a wholly intentional bilingual double meaning). So, at this point, while meaning #(2) is still in use by others, he adds yet another area of meaning and confusion, and things just ain't as simple as what they used to be:

(3) Modern Cornish = Saun-dreck ≠Kernowek Kemyn ≠ Late Cornish,

. . . while sometimes he seems to suggest that . . .

(2a) Modern Cornish = Kernowek Kemyn ≠ Saun-dreck ≠ Late Cornish.

And, at the same time of course, meanings (1) and (2) are still being used, just to add to the ambiguity!

Envoi:
One notes that certain concepts which carry derogatory overtones are apt to have frequent name changes over time, in an attempt to shake off their shame-filled past, and move into a squeaky-clean brave new future. Examples of this include the names for devotees of certain …ah… unconventional sexual practices, as well as members of social and racial groups who feel they're looked down upon by Them. Raises the question, just what these Kemynistas and Saun-dreckers might be ashamed of, doesn't it?

The 'SWF' revisited (GanS 7)

The level of deliberate obfuscation and disinformation connected with this phrase is even worse than with the 'Modern Cornish' one we considered elsewhere. Since we last looked at this acronym way back in GanS 2, a whole few weeks ago, things have changed somewhat rapidly. Gosh, who'd have thought that lexical change would be so fast in the mad-cap world of Cornish Orthography! (Any suggestions that An Dysledorer Geriattrys is living up to the nonce-spelling of his nom de plume will be sternly rebuffed!). As best as our remaining leetle grey cells can manage it, here's the current state of play (rest assured that, if it changes, we'll be back):

(1) The Single Written Form:
This is the original wording behind the 'SWF' acronym as coined, so we're told, for the present series of meetings with the Cornish Language Partnership, and other interested parties. It denotes a future, consensual form of the Cornish language which will be agreed upon after this period of discussion and negotiation. It may contain (or consist of) Kernowek Kemyn, or it may not. It may consist of a compromise blend of the other 3 forms of Cornish, or it may not. All is up for discussion, thus:

(1) SWF ('Single') = ±Kemyn ±UC ± UCR ± LC ± LCR ± … etc.

(2) The Standard Written Form:
Some supporters of KK are unsatisfied with the idea of democratic discussion of these issues, and have decided to return to disinformation to try and get what they want. They have deliberately conflated their own version of the SWF acronym (S = 'Standard) with the normal meaning of SWF (S = 'Single), and declared that Kemyn is the 'de facto Standard as it has over 90% of Cornish users'. Mind you, their figures are so dubious that they tend to be nearer to the 'damned lies' end of the spectrum than to the 'statistics' one! Thus, according to them, the 'SWF' (i.e. 'Standard' rather than 'Single' version') is Kemyn, and—as the 'SWF' ('Standard') already exists, there's no need for any of this discussion/negotiation/transparency/democracy nonsense, thus:

(2) SWF ('Standard') = Kemyn

(3) The Saunders Written Form:
Recently, one of the correspondents to the CornishOrthography group, who goes by the pseudonym of 'Ryzvel' (aka Tim Saunders, in real life) seems to have added yet another layer of meaning to this phrase. As mentioned above, he advocates a strange version of Cornish that goes even further than Kernowek Kemyn does in importing Breton loanwords, calques and other features. His private 'Cornish' pidgin also has some ill-adapted ideas from the Breton system of spelling. The result is, too most people's eyes, grotesque, obscurantist and irrelevant: most people abandon 'private' languages at adolescence!

In some of his recent posts to the group, it seems as if he is advocating that this idiolect (known to its detractors as 'Saundrek' or 'Saun-dreck') should be adopted as the SWF. One can only wonder at his folie de grandeur! As Charles de Gaulle—never known for his overwhelming self-effacement—might have put it, "Le Cornouaillais, c'est moi!" ('Cornish—it's me!')), In other words:

(3) SWF ('Saunders') = Saun-dreck.

Conclusion:
One notes the parallels in attitude from the Kemyn/Saunders camps towards both of the terms 'Modern Cornish' and the 'SWF'. There is evidence that this sort of behavious has manifested itself widely and consistently over the last 20 or so years (since KK first leapt to prominence) as a key part of its propaganda and disinformation tactics. Indeed, there are many tales of precisely this high-handed, self-serving, untruthful arrogance related by many followers of the other forms of the language (as well as by some users of KK itself). And there's not a few to be discerned within their own utterances, if you read closely what they've said.

We also note in passing the badmouthing that is currently being given by many of the Kemynistas on CornishOrthography to the Cornish Language Partnership, to the Commission, and to the current efforts to find a negotiated, compromise form of Cornish that most speakers can agree on as the best way forward for the Revival.

Significantly enough, it's only the Kemynous who are opposed to all of this, and some of their utterances show that they're seriously worried:

Without us, the Revival will die, it'll have its guts ripped out. We are the future—sans us - no future.

Kemyn = Cornish, so…

NO KEMYN = NO CORNISH,

NO KEMYNISTAS = NO KEMYN = NO CORNISH,

and If WE don't get our hands on all that lovely grant money, and all that lovely power …

… but that's a topic for the next issue of the Gerva!

And anything that worries them has, almost by definition, to be good news for the future of the Cornish Language Revival. The old saw has it that 'those who live by the sword shall die by the sword', but in this case it's a little different:

Those who live by the Big Lie shall die by the small Truths.

And small truths (with a satirical twist!) is just what we try to give you. I suspect that we can look forward to some deliciously public squirming and ever more frantic and extravagant Big Lies and Doom-laden Prognostications, over the next few months and through the first part of 2007, as the writing on the wall for them looms ever more closely over the horizon, while they row themselves up the faecal creek without a paddle, and get hoist up a gum-tree by their own petard to enjoy their just desserts [don'cha just love mixed metaphors!]