The English language is wonderfully vigorous and alive. It is constantly changing. The rules and usages I was taught at school were regarded as major blunders and indications of ignorance only twenty to thirty years earlier. In the time it takes you to read this, several nouns will have become the basis of new verbs. But a complete free-for-all leads to a proliferation of gibberish. I wrote following example down, heard on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, because it makes so little sense that it would be impossible to remember: "Little or no negligible impact". I don't expect to understand everything I hear on the BBC World Service these days and that's OK. For example, I take it when a presenter says he or she will be "across" something it means they are monitoring the situation. But the English language needs some kind of agreed framework to within which to continue to evolve. In the 1960s educators in Scotland decided that children should be encouraged to express themselves without feeling strait-jacketed by the full application of correct spelling and the rules of grammar. A good idea, perhaps; especially if the spelling and grammar tools were eventually supplied by a future teacher. But it turned out to be a slippery slope. How can teachers teach what they were never, or inadequately, taught themselves? There needs to be some push-back, some rearguard action to keep the barbarian horde from splintering the English language into umpteen mutually incomprehensible factions. As one American writer put it, we still need "a gentle foot on the brake and a guiding hand on the steering wheel".