I represented a 52 year-old woman of good character needing an interpreter, first appearance 10 am start – she was in virtual court so she was in the police station. The interpreter was there early and promptly (and spoke the language required well) but…there was a part heard trial in another court where no interpreter had been arranged. So they took my interpreter, and my woman in the police station who had already been there from 6 pm the night before had to wait.
When I raised this with the trial DJ and said she was diabetic, she took the view that she could wait a bit because the police would look after her and carried on hearing submissions a bit longer in the part heard trial. A replacement interpreter was booked to come at 1.45 pm. When I found the replacement interpreter at 2.15 pm because the matter was put back to 2.30, he said he had to go!
When I volunteered many years ago on producing Planet Easton – a community newspaper for my part of Bristol – one of the hardest tasks for the editorial team was devising headlines for articles.
However, one unnamed employee at The Argus in Brighton deserves a special mention for the example below, a fine example of the use of alliteration and homophones.
WAN-IFRA is the global organisation for the world’s newspapers and news publishers, with formal representative status at the United Nations, UNESCO and the Council of Europe. The organisation groups 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries.
No doubt WAN/IFRA’s intervention will have absolutely no effect the surveillance of citizens by the British state revealed by Glenn Greenwald’s Guardian articles or the UK’s abuse of terrorism legislation.
The Right Honourable David Cameron MP
Prime Minister of Great Britain
10 Downing Street
London
United Kingdom
23 August 2013
Dear Prime Minister,
We are writing on behalf of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the World Editors Forum, which represent 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries, to express our deep concern at the actions of government officials that led to the destruction of computer hard drives at the offices of the Guardian newspaper on 20 July.
According to reports, the decision to destroy the equipment was made by Guardian staff in response to the threat of legal action by the UK government. In attempting to exercise prior-restraint, the government’s aim was to prevent the publication of reports based on the leaked files supplied by National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistle-blower, Edward Snowden.
That your government felt the need to threaten legal action in order to block reporting into issues of public interest is deeply regrettable. Furthermore, WAN-IFRA is extremely concerned that the government’s actions were an act of intimidation that could have a chilling effect on press freedom in the UK and beyond.
WAN-IFRA fully supports the actions of Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, who explained on numerous occasions that copies of the information stored on the hard drives were held elsewhere under foreign jurisdictions, and that physically handing them over to UK government authorities or destroying them would be a symbolic gesture only.
In a separate but not unrelated incident, WAN-IFRA is equally concerned over the manner of the detention at Heathrow airport under Schedule 7 of the UK Terrorism Act 2000 of David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald who has been instrumental in breaking the story on the NSA files. Mr Miranda had his personal electronic items confiscated and was held for an unprecedented nine-hours without charges being brought against him.
The apparent misuse of this particular element of anti-terror legislation places journalists, and those aiding journalistic work, under suspicion of being terrorists or having involvement in terrorist activities. This is an outrageous and deeply disturbing connection to make, and we seek assurances from you and your government that the necessary inquiries will be made to ensure any inference of association between journalism and terrorism is not part of official policy and is publicly condemned as categorically misleading.
Added to these latest incidents, WAN-IFRA is disturbed by the perceived slide in press freedom witnessed in the UK over recent months. Serious questions remain regarding the future direction of independent press regulation. Reports also suggest that since Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into press behaviour as many as 59 journalists have been arrested under three separate police investigations. None have been convicted and many have spent months on police bail.
As a result, the United Kingdom’s commitment to international standards of freedom of expression, as outlined in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), of which Great Britain is a signatory, is under intense scrutiny both domestically and around the world.
We respectfully call on you to reaffirm the United Kingdom’s commitment to a free and independent press and to realign the various government and police authorities behind this unequivocal message. We urge the UK government to respect the rights of journalists to protect their sources and to create the conditions necessary to ensure the press can continue its crucial role in maintaining free and fair societies, without government interference or intimidation.
We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
Yours sincerely,
Tomas Brunegård
President
World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers
The container being loaded for shipping to TogoBristol’s University of the West of England (UWE) has announced that a shipment of refurbished computers and office furniture has just arrived in Togo after an eight week voyage. The recycled equipment was refurbished by UWE student volunteers.
Jo Earl, from UWE Volunteering, co-ordinated students from UWE’s Department of Computer Science & Creative Technologies to make the computers ready for use.
“Four volunteers worked as a team to assess the donated equipment, install operating systems and additional software. In total 84 PCs were shipped and the students worked really hard on a complex and time-consuming task,” said Jo.
“After refurbishing the computers, our next big task was shipping the PCs from Frenchay campus,” continued Jo, who worked with UWE facilities manager Richard Bird on packing and loading the computers, printers, desks and chairs into a shipping container.
Ebook management software Calibre has now reached version 1.0, seven years after it was first released and a year since the last major release. Lots of new features have been added to calibre in the last year — a grid view of book covers, a new, faster database backend, the ability to convert Microsoft Word files, tools to make changes to ebooks without needing to do a full conversion, full support for font embedding and sub-setting, and many more, which are listed below. However, it should be pointed out that many of the features listed below were actually introduced during the lifetime of Calibre’s 0.9.x series.
A grid view of book covers
A new, faster database backend
Virtual Libraries
Conversion of Microsoft Word documents (.docx files)
New metadata download sources
Full support for font embedding
An easy to use tool to edit the Table of Contents in ebooks
Rewritten PDF output engine
New “Polish books” tool that allows users to carry out various automated clean-up actions on ebooks
The developers of Calibre also believe now is an appropriate time to express their thanks to all the developers who have contributed many of the major new features listed above. An incomplete list of contributors is available here.
Calibre 1.0 is now available for download for Linux, MacOS and Windows.
Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news website, reports that government of Spain’s autonomous region of Valencia has completed its migration from MS Office to LibreOffice, the free and open source office suite.
Under this initiative, LibreOffice has been installed on a total of 120,000 public sector workstations.
Besides the financial benefits, the investment in LibreOffice entails other benefits, such as the availability of applications in Valencian and Spanish, vendor independence and the freedom to modify and adapt the software to the users’ needs.
Yesterday I returned from my annual meet-up in Shropshire with my sister Hilary. Dubbed the ‘sibling saunter’, it’s an opportunity we take each year to meet in Shropshire, the county of our birth, and go walking without the encumbrance of children, partners, etc.
This year we went down into the Clun area in the south-west of Shropshire and the first day’s walk took us into Wales. Following an excellent route map (PDF) prepared by the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust, we visited the prehistoric burial cairns on Corndon Hill (513 m above sea level) before making to the Miner’s Arms in Priestweston for a pint and finishing off at the Mitchell’s Fold stone circle. Legend has it that one of the stones in the circle is a petrified witch, punished by locals for seeing off a magic cow that provided them with unending supplies of milk.
There’s a very convenient bench next to the trig point on the top of Corndon Hill and it’s perfect for a breather and a refreshment stop.
The porous, unclear nature of the border between England and Wales is well evidenced around this area by places with English names in Wales and Welsh ones in England. The border itself has moved around too. For instance, Montgomery – the site of one of the Marcher castles and now firmly part of Wales – is included in the Shropshire county returns of the Domesday Book.
Although our Corndon Hill walk was only 6 miles in length, we both agreed on its strenuous nature for fifty-somethings, albeit fairly fit ones.
As the first evening of our annual saunter set in, we were still undecided as to the next day’s walking route. Eventually we decided on a loop of some 10 miles in length comprising a section of the Shropshire Way to Hergan and its junction with the Offa’s Dyke Path, which here is well preserved and follows the line of the Dyke itself, down to Newcastle on Clun and then back to our base at the youth hostel in Clun.
Offa’s Dyke is a massive linear earthwork, roughly followed by some of current border between England and Wales. In places, it is up to 19.8 m wide – including its flanking ditch – and 2.4 m high, with the ditch always on the Welsh side. In the 8th century it formed some kind of delineation between the Saxon kingdom of Mercia and the Welsh. Offa himself was King of Mercia from 757 to 796.
So we set out from the grounds of Clun Castle following the Shropshire Way along the valley of the River Clun. The route is well waymarked and the Shropshire Way’s buzzard logo is well displayed on all signposts. After a couple of miles we climbed over the Cefns to Hengarn and Offa’s Dyke.
My sister, the great navigator, at the junction of Offa’s Dyke (on the left) and the Shropshire Way (on the right)
The section of the Shropshire Way over which we’d walked was shared with Wild Eadric’s Way, named after Eadric the Wild, a Saxon thegn (or thane. Ed.) who was lord of Clun and refused to swear fealty to the usurping William the Bastard of Normandy. The factual life of Eadric has since become interspersed with folklore, as shown in this article.
Once back in Clun it was time for a well-earned pint in the Sun Inn before retiring back to the youth hostel. If you’re thinking of staying in the area and have fond memories of ‘old skool’ hostelling, you’ll love Clun YH. It’s a beautifully restored water mill with plenty of the mill machinery on view. Furthermore, it’s one of those hostels where people talk to one another. Before drawing to a close, I’d like to thank Sue the volunteer warden on duty during our stay for her helpfulness and very cheery disposition. We both hope the bedding inventory didn’t do your head in! 🙂
We’re taking the sibling saunter back to the Clun and Bishops Castle area next year to explore inter alia the Iron Age hill fort of Bury Ditches.
Update: 24/08/13: About the time this post was published yesterday, the Shropshire Star reported that a section of Offa’s Dyke in Wales has been destroyed by bulldozer. Police and Cadw, the Welsh heritage organisation, are continuing to investigate how the earthwork alongside the A5 north of Chirk, came to be flattened in this blatant act of vandalism. Jim Saunders of the Offa’s Dyke Association is reported to have said: “The ditch could be dug out but the dyke has been destroyed now it will never be the same again.”
The Bristol Post website is an online disaster that just keeps on giving, as in today’s example in the screenshot below where the unnamed hapless hack can’t tell the difference between looking for something and being debauched. 🙂
There’s one major problem with that statement: no railway line runs between Bristol Parkway and Westbury-on-Trym. The closest any line runs to Westbury-on-Trym is the Henbury Loop line (posts passim), which has been closed to passenger traffic since 1964.
Is there a chance that reporter Daniel Evans was confusing Westbury-on-Trym with Westbury in Wiltshire, which does have a functioning railway station – or does he live in a Bristol in a parallel universe where public transport provision is excellent? 😉
According to company financial information website DueDil, Capita Translation & Interpreting, the company that has been entrusted (rather foolishly. Ed.) by the Ministry of Justice with providing interpreting services for courts and tribunals in England and Wales (posts passim), is not doing particularly well financially, as the screenshot of the company’s latest basic financial information shows.
Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news website, 
