Steve Woods

Written by a human.

  • Bristol – European fly-tipping capital?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Politics

    In the world of the city’s great and good, Bristol is off to a flying start celebrating its year as European Green Capital.

    Plans are already well advanced to spend thousands on spurious ‘green‘ arts projects, such as dumping a load of old boats in picturesque Leigh Woods.

    According to the blurb on the European Green Capital website, the “European Green Capital Award (EGCA) has been conceived to recognise and reward local efforts to improve the environment, the economy and the quality of life in cities.”

    However, it would appear that there’s been little local effort – apart from protests by local residents and councillors – to improve the environment and quality of life in inner city areas such as Easton, Lawrence Hill and St Pauls, judging by the amount of fly-tipping that still goes on daily on our streets with no sign of a slackening or any meaningful enforcement efforts or action by Bristol’s seemingly impotent or uninterested city council.

    The photographs below were taken this morning by local resident Hannah Crudgington and are typical of the grottiness we inner city residents have to endure every day. All the photographs were taken within a couple of hundred metres of each other in the BS5 postcode area.

    fly-tipping at Twinnell House

    fly-tipping on Stapleton Road

    fly-tipped mattress on Goodhind Street

    Was Bristol awarded the European Green Capital award on false premises? Some in the city believe that to be the case. Judging the evidence of my own eyes, awarding Bristol with the European Green Capital award would have been more appropriate.

    Do you agree? Please feel free to comment.

  • Dutch language is long-winded and peculiar, research reveals

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

    De Volkskrant reports that speakers of Dutch are daily more circumlocutory with many diversions and ’empty elements’ than speakers of languages such as Bantawa, Bininj Gun-Wok, Egyptian Arabic, Samoan, Sandawe, Kharia, Khwarshi, Kayardild, Teiwa, Tidore, Sheko and Sochiapan Chinantec, according to research by graduate researcher Sterre Leufkens of Amsterdam University. A total of 22 languages were scored by Leufkens for the presence of unnecessary grammatical elements and rules. Her dissertation contains several disappointing findings about her mother tongue.

    Take the difference between ‘de‘ and ‘het‘. English only has ‘the‘. Under the coconut palms of Samoa in the south Pacific they have know for a long time that life can be easier from a linguistic point of view. Another interesting fact is that when Dutch arrived in southern Africa, ‘de‘ and ‘het‘ melted like Dutch snow in the African sun to make space for the clearer ‘die‘.

    map of world depicting where Dutch is spoken
    Where Dutch is spoken. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Key – Dark blue: native and majority language; Blue: Afrikaans (daughter language); Light blue: secondary (non-official language), where some knowledge persists

    Plural form

    Dutch is also long-winded because verbs have a plural form – hij loopt and wij lopen – and due to the double plural endings of substantives: ‘ziektes‘ and ‘ziekten‘, ‘sektes‘ and ‘sekten‘. Dutch has no less than three ways to compose words. In linguistic jargon such peculiarities are known as historical junk.

    In Dutch the lumber could have accumulated over the centuries due to the fact that few people made this language their own as a second language. When large groups actually do that it often results in grammatical simplifications. That must have happened some 1,500 ago with the West German dialect from which English is derived.

    It still remains to be seen whether Dutch contains more lumber and ballast than German, French, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Greek or Armenian. Dutch features as the sole Indo-European language in Leufkens’ research. “The point was to get an initial impression of what is possible in this area,” Leufkens told the magazine Onze Taal. “In that case it is better to take languages that are as far apart as possible.”

  • Latvian man spends 4 weeks in jail due to interpreter problem

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    image of scales of justiceA Latvian man spent 4 weeks in jail for an offence that would normally have attracted a non-custodial sentence, the Shropshire Star reports.

    Rolands Etjantens pleaded guilty on 8th December to a charge of common assault, but was remanded in custody by Telford magistrates to await assessment by the probation service to see if he was suitable for community punishment.

    According to his solicitor, Etjantensā€™ lack of English also meant he was not suitable for unpaid work in the community or supervision by the probation service as both of these would also require the use of interpreters.

    District Judge Andrew King ultimately sentenced Etjantens, of no fixed abode, to 42 days in prison, meaning that he would be released within a few days.

  • Je suis Charlie

    Steve WoodsMedia, Politics, Social Media

    Social media has responded quickly to the horrific attack on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris today, which resulted in 12 deaths and 5 injured. Four of those killed were Charlie Hebdo cartoonists Charb, Cabu, Tignous and Georges Wolinski.

    The press office of Amnesty International in France has described that attack as “A black day for press freedom”.

    Many Twitter accounts changed their avatar to the Je suis Charlie image shown below, whilst many tweets were also tagged with the #JesuisCharlie hashtag.

    Je suis Charlie

    Some of the harshest condemnations of the attack have come from the attackers’ co-religionists. The imam of Drancy, Hassen Chalghoumi, is reported to have said: “Their barbarism has nothing to do with Islam”.

    My deepest condolences to the victims and their families.

  • WiFi coming soon to French TGV trains?

    Steve WoodsTech

    After years of tests, the French state railway operator SNCF is going to launch an invitation to tender to equip its TGV (high-speed train) carriages with WiFi, Le Monde Informatique reports. There’s light at the end of the tunnel for the travelling public.

    picture of 3 TGV trains
    Three TGV trains at Paris Gare de l’Est. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    On Friday’s France Inter breakfast programme, Axelle Lemaire, the Secretary of State for Digital Affairs encouraged SNCF to deploy WiFi quickly on TGV lines. An invitation to tender to provide internet access will be launched very shortly under the aegis of SNCF’s digital strategy. The railway company has been testing a service using a flat satellite antenna on the roof of some carriages for several years. In June 2007, SNCF was reported to be working together with Colubris Networks. In December 2007, the firm was testing a WiFi service on TGV services to eastern France. There has since been lots of public relations exercises, but nothing definite for passengers.

    If passengers are growing impatient waiting for the arrival of WiFi on TGV services, this is also because the service has already been available for many years on Thalys and EuroStar trains providing international services. SNCF’s immobility is once again being blamed on the cost of deployment: €350,000 would be needed to equip one TGV carriage. Asked whether the service would be free for passengers, the Secretary of State stonewalled expertly hoping “that the recent increase in SNCF’s fares will include the costs of deploying WiFi”, adding her wish that “using the WiFi would be without additional charge for passengers”.

  • Beyond compere

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    a female compereThere’s a classic homophone in today’s online Bristol Post, which carries a feature on the return of What the Frock!, the city’s all-female comedy night.

    The homophone in question is in first sentence of the third paragraph, which at the time of writing reads as follows:

    The line-up features extended sets from both Mae Martin and Anna Morris and will be compared by Bristol’s very own Jayde Adams, pictured, winner of the Funny Women 2014 Awards.

    Compared? With what? Or whom? šŸ˜‰

    The word you’re looking for, struggling Post journalist, is compere, whose dictionary definition is:

    comĀ·pere
    (kŏmā€²pĆ¢rā€²) Chiefly British
    n.
    The master of ceremonies, as of a television entertainment program or a variety show.
    v. comĀ·pered, comĀ·perĀ·ing, comĀ·peres
    v.tr.
    To serve as master of ceremonies for.
    v.intr.
    To serve as the master of ceremonies.

  • Dinner for One – a German New Year’s Eve institution

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

    Dinner for One, starring Freddie Frinton and May Warden, is an institution on German television on New Year’s Eve, as well as in Austria and Switzerland.

    Dinner for One was originally written as a two-hander comedy sketch for the theatre in the 1920s. Its author was Lauri Wylie.

    In 1963 German television station Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) recorded a performance of the piece in the original English with a short introduction in German.

    The sketch presents the 90th birthday of elderly upper-class Englishwoman Miss Sophie, who hosts a celebration dinner every year for her friends Mr Pommeroy, Mr Winterbottom, Sir Toby and Admiral von Schneider. However, due to her great age, Miss Sophie has outlived all her friends…

  • Friend deputises when Capita interpreter fails to show

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    image of scales of justiceOn 29th December the Grantham Journal reported on the case of a Romanian man appearing before Grantham Magistrates Court charged with the theft of £2,000 worth of chewing gum and other items from two Lincolnshire supermarkets.

    31 year-old Ionut Dumitru Nae of Coventry, had pleaded guilty on 24th November to attempting to take £900 worth of gum and other items from Morrisons in Stamford and then stealing more packs of chewing gum, champagne and other products to the value of pound;1,500 from Asda in Grantham.

    However, the defendant had to rely on the assistance of his English-speaking friend to translate in court when no interpreter turned up.

    Hat tip: Linguist Lounge.

  • Want to bash immigrants? Use interpreters! The Express does!

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    The Daily Express, once described by Prince Philip as a “bloody awful newspaper“, is not well known for its love of foreigners.

    One has to wonder whether there are any limits the depths to which it will sink in its xenophobia.

    The latter was apparent in an article earlier this week on police use of interpreters in West Yorkshire (which are provided by our old friends and paragons of competence Capita Translation & Interpreting, according to the Bradford Telegraph & Argus. Ed.).

    Apparently the police had to resort to using interpreters 6,000 times for 75 different languages.

    The Express’ derisive attitude to foreigners is obvious in the report’s second sentence, as is its scant regard to skilled professionals such as interpreters being paid properly.

    The cost, believed to be rising because of a soaring number of immigrants, was not revealed but interpreters can command fees of up to £40 an hour.

    To support its xenophobia, the Express finds a willing accomplice in Bradford Tory councillor Michael Walls, who even goes so far as to suggest that officers with a second language assisting in interviews would be a cheaper option for the police than engaging a skilled professional interpreter. He is quoted by the Express as saying: “Police officers who have a second language would be more economical.”

    Clearly neither the Express nor Councillor Walls have heard of a minor impediment to such a scheme, one that’s called conflict of interest.

    Your correspondent wonders what the considered response of the Law Society would be to such a suggestion.

    The article is open to comments and Express readers are not backward in showing their xenophobia (and accompanying support for UKIP. Ed.) either. Indeed the first comment is quite definite, starting: “They should have to Speak English before we let them in!”

    How would that person feel if the tables were turned and he or she couldn’t go on holiday abroad because he couldn’t speak fluent, French, Spanish or Thai beforehand?

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