About 20 years ago, my country decided that it wasn’t very good at making cars any more and left the car making to other countries. It decided this after £11 billion in government subsidies and decades of restructuring.

David Broooks thinks the same thing might happen in this country.

Some companies are in the steel business, some are in the cookie business, but General Motors is in the restructuring business. For 30 years, G.M. has been restructuring itself toward long-term viability.

For all these years, G.M.’s market share has endured a long, steady slide. But this has not stopped the waves of restructuring.

Brooks suspects that, by taking responsibility for GM, Obama has set himself up for a showdown with middle-America.

It would have been better to keep a distance from G.M. and prepare the region for a structured bankruptcy process. Instead, Obama leapt in. His intentions were good, but getting out with honor will require a ruthless tenacity that is beyond any living politician.

I read somewhere else that Obama will throw Chrsyler against the wall as a lesson to GM. I hope so. I don’t think there is a happy ending in this one.

One problem with bringing up kids in countries where they speak funny is when you get homework like this:

Underline the words that have a schwa sound and circle the vowel that makes the sound.

A schwa sound? What the bloody hell is a schwa sound?

Luckily they gave us …erm…the kids…some clues:

• (A)bout
• Less(o)n

I doubt there are two words in the English words that have less vowel sounds in common except maybe orange and Aardvark. Neither of those words, as best as I can tell, have a schwa sound. An oo sound maybe, if you are Canadian, but no schwa sound.

Luckily, we have an older child - he talks funny too - to help. Eldest rattled off the first few words:

• Again - Ok, I can see that. If About has schwa then maybe again has one too.
• We argued about silent. It seemed to have something in common with Lesson but, ultimately, we decided against.
• Problem - Wait! What?

If I squint my ears I can be persuaded that the em syllable vaguely resembles a schwa but both my oddly-spoken offspring assured me that the schwa-like syllable was the first one.

We went through a whole verbal dance.

Funny-speaking son: prwaaablem

Normal-speaking father: problem. It’s a short o. Like pot.

Funny-speaking son: Not pr’bliiim….prwaaaawblem!

Funny-speaking daughter: prwwwaaaaaawwblem!!

Eventually, I was dismissed and the funny-speaking ones decided among themselves.

Need a parent to derive the quadratic formula for you? I am there! Got a  theorem that needs proving? I can do that! Need help locating the fallacies in America’s founding mythology? That’s my strong point…but locating schwa sounds…?….

You’ll need to find a different parent or a funny-speaking sibling.

In the old days, we ran to USGS for our earthquake news.

Now we run to Twitter.

USGS should keep up with the times.