Steve Woods

Written by a human.

  • Crapita makes one L of a mistake

    Steve WoodsLanguage

    image of Scarborough Justice CentreCapita Translation & Interpreting has made yet another linguistic cock-up, landing the taxpayer with a bill for £3,000 when asked to supply interpreters for a Lithuanian accused of stealing two bags for life worth 20p, according to Thursday’s Yorkshire Post.

    Tadas Tarkutis was accused of stealing these low value items from Sainsbury’s in Scarborough and arrested. A Lithuanian interpreter was arranged to attend the police station, making a 120 miles round trip from Harrogate.

    However, when Tarkutis appeared in Scarborough Magistrates Court the following morning the same interpreter was unavailable and Capita T&I arranged for a substitute – a Latvian interpreter who made a wasted 320 miles round trip from Rugby. Tarkutis was then remanded in custody overnight while a replacement interpreter was sought for the next day.

    This time Capita T&I were able to supply a Lithuanian interpreter, Tarkutis admitted the crime and was jailed for 6 weeks breach of a suspended sentence.

    One court source is reported by the Post as saying: “It was as if someone somewhere had just picked out a country that begins with ‘L’. It was ridiculous.”

    Quite.

    Capita describe as a company “you can rely on”. One can definitely rely on Capita to cock things up.

    The Yorkshire Post’s reporter refers throughout the piece to the linguists involved as translators. He or she – should they happen to visit this blog – definitely needs to read my illustrated guide to the difference between the two.

  • LibreOffice command line magic

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    One of the delights about using Linux is the command line interface (CLI), where the user issues program commands by typing in successive lines of text.

    ODF file iconEven programs which rely on a graphical user interface (GUI) can be controlled from the command line, including the LibreOffice office suite.

    One of the great features of LibreOffice is the integral PDF converter and this can even be controlled by command line using the command below without launching the program in a GUI.

    $ libreoffice --headless --convert-to pdf name_of_file.odt

    Just replace name_of_file.odt above with the actual file name you wish to convert, hit enter and the job’s done!

  • Environment Agency to release flood of open data

    Steve WoodsOpen Data, Tech

    The Environment Agency has announced that it is releasing a whole raft of information as open data.

    Environment Agency datasets that are already available as open data include:

    • Flood Alert Areas;
    • Flood Warning Areas;
    • Flood Warnings (Live Feed);
    • Real-time and Near Real-time River Levels (Live Feed);
    • Real-time and Near Real-time Air Temperature (Live feed);
    • 3 day Flood Forecast (Live Feed);
    • Water Framework Directive (WFD) River Waterbodies;
    • Water Framework Directive (WFD) Groundwater Classification Status and Objectives; and
    • Water Framework Directive (WFD) Measures.

    EA Open Data logo

    The Agency is now increasing its commitment and will soon public as much of its data as possible, including flood data, as open data. This means that over time more EA data will be made freely available to developers, technology companies and individuals.

    To assist the release of open data, the Agency is setting up a user group to advise it on which data it is most important to concentrate on making open.

    The group will be made up of external parties with an interest in EA data, its current data customers and people with an open data background; the group will also receive input from the Agency and Defra. Anyone interested in joining this group should email OpenData@environment-agency.gov.uk.

  • Under a week to St Werburgh’s Users Forum

    Steve WoodsBristol

    I’m very proud to be Chair of St Werburgh’s Community Association, a post which I’ve held for the past couple of years.

    We’re an organisation that’s very much led by its users – both individuals and groups – and we hold a forum for users annually where we ask them what things should be going on at St Werburgh’s Community Centre, what could be improved and so on.

    poster for User's Forum

    This year’s forum takes place on Tuesday next week from 3.30 pm and the customary invitation email has been circulated to users. It says:

    Our Users Forum is an afternoon full of fun for everybody of all ages. It is a chance to see what goes on at the community centre, join in our free demonstration classes and talk to other users. It is also an opportunity to tell us what you love about us and what you’d like to see improved. We will have plenty of fun activities – including a Children’s Challenge activity with prizes, a bouncy castle, games, ‘Bear Grills’ BBQ and stalls. If you have never been, it is a great opportunity to have a look around the Centre and meet the staff, users and other visitors.

    It will also be the last day at work for Centre Manager Goska Ong before she goes on maternity leave, so come along and wish her farewell.

  • Ossmeter to reduce open source evaluation costs

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

    Q: what has the EU ever done for us?

    A: helped promote free and open source software!

    EU flagSeveral universities and companies are working collaboratively in the Ossmeter research project on a platform for evaluating and comparing open source software. The European Union is funding Ossmeter’s development to the tune of €2.6 mn. (out of total project costs of €3.4 mn. Ed.) and the software that is ultimately developed will be made available online as a free service and released as free software so it can also be deployed as an in-house quality management tool.

    The aim of the project is to reduce the costs of evaluating open source software. Collecting information from associated communication channels such as newsgroups, forums and mailing lists to identify whether user questions are answered in a timely and satisfactory manner, and to estimate the number of experts and users of the software are equally as important as the researchers’ objective, as is a comparison of several open source projects with regard to usage. The platform’s capability will be tested in three use cases.

    Ossmeter is being developed by nine European research and industry organisations:

    The Open Group is the over-all coordinator and the University of York provides the technical coordination.

    For more information on Ossmeter, read Joinup’s original post.

  • Greenwash: Bristol City Council’s favourite paint

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

    2015 sees the city of Bristol wearing the crown of European Green Capital.

    This award of European Green Capital is allegedly bestowed in recognition of the important role that local authorities play in improving the environment and their high level of commitment to genuine progress.

    However, is it deserved in the case of Bristol City Council?

    I have my doubts.

    Earlier today I discovered tree felling, thinning and scrub clearance had been going on within the last few days at Lawrence Hill roundabout.

    image of tree felling at Lawrence Hill

    image of tree works at lawrence hill

    This is the middle of the main bird nesting season in the British Isles.

    As regards protecting breeding birds and mitigating harm during the breeding season, Natural England’s advice (PDF, p. 4) is as follows:

    The main mitigation route to reduce the likelihood of harm to breeding birds is to undertake clearance or destruction of any vegetation or structure which may be used as a breeding site outside the bird breeding season when breeding birds are unlikely to be present (based upon habitat features) or where survey work has confirmed their absence. Avoidance of such features is best achieved through timing of work (see below) but may also be possible by temporarily preventing birds from using these features, before they start doing so. Examples include physical exclusion (preventing access to potential nest sites) or use of visual or audible deterrents. Such measures should only be undertaken following the advice of a suitably experienced ecologist, taking account of relevant legislation and welfare considerations.

    The bird breeding season will be dependent upon weather conditions and will vary from year to year, but in general is the period between early March and late August.

    Natural England is the government’s advisor on the natural environment, providing practical advice, grounded in science, on how best to safeguard England’s natural wealth for the benefit of everyone.

    Furthermore, a quick search of the city council’s website for scrub clearance bird nesting season returns 29,400 hits, with the first page seeming to consist of the council pontificating that no such works should be undertaken when birds are on the nest.

    However, it is clear from the pictures above that Bristol City Council’s clear modus operandi is “do as I say, not as I do“.

    The English language has a term for such an attitude: hypocrisy.

    There’s also a splendid fairly new English word specifically for a superficial or insincere display of concern for the environment shown by organisations: greenwash.

    Next year, Bristolians can bet their city will be coated in greenwash, liberally applied with big brushes and rollers by the city council, given its apparent hypocrisy when it comes to nature conservation.

  • New version of Scribus open source DTP package released

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    Scribus logoThe developers of the Scribus open source DTP software have probably released the last version of the 1.4.x development branch with the release of version 1.4.4. From now on they want to concentrate solely on the next major release in the form of the 1.6.x series, whose first alpha version (1.5.0) should be made available for testing later in 2014.

    The Scribus version that has just been released contains a script to allow users to align images in frames and it is now possible to use page borders as guides for the snapping of objects. The autoquote script has been rewritten and has more available options. In addition, problems with the spellchecker that resulted in crashes have been resolved. A further new feature is and option for exporting work as PDF/X-1a.

    A new colour palette has been added for geographers, whilst Scribus now comprise a further CMYK colour palette created by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) for newspaper advertisements.

    All the changes in the new version can be seen in the release notes.

    In addition to the release of the new version, the Scribus team has also announced a new industry partnership. By collaborating with Software Consulting Services (SCS), which was involved in the invention of Quark-XTensions, commercial support will now be available for migration to Scribus. Furthermore, SCS is willing to work on future Scribus development and already offers a plug-in for the import of Layout-8000 geometry files into Scribus.

    Scribus is available for the following platforms: Linux, BSD UNIX, Solaris, OpenIndiana, GNU/Hurd, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp 4, eComStation and Windows.

  • Avon (still) calling

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities, Politics

    The Heath government’s Local Government Act of 1972 radically overhauled local government arrangements in England and Wales.

    In particular, it redrew the map of the shire counties, some of which had been in existence in some form since medieval or Saxon times.

    coat of arms of Avon County CouncilOne of the Act’s results was the creation of the County of Avon, a non-metropolitan county, which survived from its creation on 1st April 1974 until its abolition on 31st March 1996, when it was succeeded by the present unitary authorities of Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath & North East Somerset.

    Despite its abolition and its failure to engage popular support during its existence (it was widely derided at the time as a “cardboard county”. Ed.), Avon is proving harder to eradicate than a vampire. Its legacy can be found all over the West of England and the defunct county’s former administrative area.

    In organisational terms, its name crops up in the following public and private bodies:

    In addition to the above, there’s still an Avon Coroner’s district, the Forest of Avon community forest project and one can by an Avonrider ticket on local bus services.

    Although it ceased to exist nearly two decades ago, many bodies still insist that Avon forms part of the postal address of places like Bristol in spite of the fact that the Royal Mail long since indicated that it was not necessary to include Avon as part of any address as Royal Mail itself had abandoned the use of postal counties in 1996.

    The inspiration for this post came from a conversation this morning on Twitter.

    Any further instances of the survival of Avon can be posted in the comments below.

  • Lack of interpreter delays Staffordshire court case

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    image of gilded statue of Justice on top of Old BaileyMonday’s Stoke Sentinel reported that magistrates at the North Staffordshire Justice Centre in Newcastle under Lyme had to adjourn a case until 30th May to allow for an interpreter to be arranged for the defendant.

    Antonia Lakatos, of Gladstone Street, Basford, Stoke on Trent, is charged with theft of alcohol and clothing worth £345.15 from Asda in the Wolstanton district of Newcastle under Lyme, as well as going equipped for theft with an item used for de-tagging shop merchandise on 31st March.

    Will an interpreter turn up? After all, some of the interpreters working for Capita T&I cannot even be bothered to turn up for a case being heard by someone as senior as the President of the Family Division of the High Court of England and Wales (posts passim).

  • A ‘concerning state of affairs’

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    image of Sir James MunbyYesterday’s Law Gazette reports that senior judge Sir James Munby, who is the President of the Family Division of the High Court of England and Wales, has described the arrangements for providing court interpreters under the contract between Capita and the Ministry of Justice as “unacceptable” after he was forced to abandon a final adoption hearing after Capita was repeatedly unable to provide interpreters for the Slovak-speaking parents.

    Sir James ordered Capita to explain why neither of the 2 interpreters booked for the 7th May hearing had attended. He described the response to the points he raised in his judgement (PDF) from Capita’s relationship director Sonia Facchini, as disclosing a “concerning state of affairs”, with 3 points “demanding notice”.

    In the first instance he noted: “The contractual arrangements between Capita and the interpreters it provides do not give Capita the ability to require that any particular interpreter accepts any particular assignment or even to honour any engagement which the interpreter has accepted.”

    Secondly, he drew attention to the short notice courts were given of any cancellation of a booking by a interpreter (2 pm on the day before the hearing). This gives the court insufficient time to make alternative arrangements.

    Thirdly, he noted the lack of suitably qualified interpreters. On the day in question, Capita needed 39 Slovak interpreters to cover the workload requested by the courts; Capita only had 29 suitably qualified Slovak interpreters on its books for court hearings that day, of whom a mere 13 were within a 100-mile radius of London’s Royal Courts of Justice.

    Defending his adjournment, Sir James stated: “Anyone tempted to suggest that an adjournment was not necessary might care to consider what our reaction would be if an English parent before a foreign court in similar circumstances was not provided with an interpreter.”

    Quite.

    When approached for a response to the learned judge’s remarks, both Capita and the MoJ made their usual, meaningless soothing noises that are not worth transcribing, let alone reading.

    In political terms, the responses by the MoJ to concerns about its contract with Capita are akin to the “Big Lie“. However, the lies told by its various spokespersons over the years are so preposterous, no-one with any sense is buying their propaganda.

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