Steve Woods

Generic carbon-based humanoid life form.

  • Qu’ils mangent des navets

    Steve WoodsMedia, Politics

    Thérèse Coffey, the alleged Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has advised consumers to opt for turnips as tomato and cucumber supplies dwindle, owing to shortages.

    This instantly reminds your correspondent of that phrase attributed to Marie Antoinette, supposedly uttered by her during the French Revolution: “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche“, usually translated into English as “Let them eat cake“.

    However, there is no there is absolutely no historical evidence that Marie-Antoinette ever said “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” or anything like it, although folklore scholars have found similar tales in other parts of the world.

    Lookalikes - Thérèse Coffey and Marie Antoinette

    Anyway, back to Coffey, a minister devoid of humanity and compassion, but richly endowed with incompetence, callousness and that all-important can’t-do attitude.

    Coffey has stated that shortages of salad and other vegetables in UK supermarkets could last up to a month. However, critics have accused the government of bringing the problem on itself by failing to support local growers and through Brexit policies.

    Speaking in the House of Commons, Coffey told MPs British consumers should “cherish” home-grown produce, whilst castigating the latter for wanting “a year-round choice“.

    In her own words:

    “It’s important to make sure that we cherish the specialisms that we have in this country. A lot of people would be eating turnips right now rather than thinking necessarily about aspects of lettuce and tomatoes and similar.”

    Finally, so that Coffey can indulge in ‘cherished‘ home-grown produce, your ‘umble scribe will perform a public duty by providing a link – should the alleged Secretary of State happen to be reading this post, to a recipe for cream of potato and turnip soup.

    Enjoy! 😉

    Update 25/02/23. One consequence of Ms Coffey’s advocacy of “cherishing” this humble root vegetable is that supermarkets are reported as running of turnips. Your correspondent could find none at his local Lidl yesterday, although swedes (the Swedish turnip) are plentiful.

    As a final postscript, your ‘umble scribe notes from The Guardian today that its political sketch writer John Crace has written:

    Four years ago I tweeted, “Let them eat turnips”. It was meant to be a joke about Brexit. Now it’s government policy. Satire comes at you fast these days.

  • Campbells responds to bigot

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

    One disadvantage of social media is it allows hard-of-thinking bigots a platform to express their prejudices.

    However, this might not always work to the advantage of the prejudiced, as the exchange below between a Tennessee redneck and Customer Service for the Campbell Soup Company re homophobia illustrates.

    Original post comments Your new commercial with the 2 dads makes me sick, whilst Campbells Customer Service replies Hi Kim! If you're feeling sick, we suggest a enjoying a delicious can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. Make sure to enjoy it hot, so that it can help warm up your cold, dead heart.

    According to Wikipedia, chicken soup – with or without noodles – ‘has long been touted as a form of folk medicine to treat symptoms of the common cold and related conditions. In 2000, scientists at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha studied the effect of chicken soup on the inflammatory response in vitro. They found that some components of the chicken soup inhibit neutrophil migration, which may have an anti-inflammatory effect that could hypothetically lead to temporary ease from symptoms of illness’.

    No research has yet been conducted into the curative properties of chicken soup on prejudice and homophobia.

    However, Campbells could be onto something. In the words of the French chef and culinary writer Auguste Escoffier:

    Soup puts the heart at ease, calms down the violence of hunger, eliminates the tension of the day, and awakens and refines the appetite.

    Bon appétit, bigot! 😀

  • Tasteless food, tasteless advertising

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

    Junk food giant McDonalds’ advertising department clearly has as much taste as the food, otherwise it would not have placed the advertisement below by a Cornish bus stop directly opposite Penmount Crematorium on the road between Truro and Carland Cross (the A30/A39 junction).

    McDonald's to remove 'tasteless' sign opposite Cornwall crematorium

    Will the person who thought this was a good idea be getting a roasting?

  • Lost?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language

    Spotted in Bristol’s Old Market Street this morning.

    Bilingual Welsh Road works sign - Traffig gwyriad - Diverted traffic

    Whether it has been dumped far from home and/or is trying to make its way home is not clear from its demeanour.

    This not the first occasion a bilingual Welsh sign has been used in England, as reported by Nation Cymru with this example of the English city known in Welsh as Caerwrangon and Worcester to the local monoglots.

  • More Reach ambiguity

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

    In my first paid job after graduating, your ‘umble scribe received further instruction in English, namely adapting what he wrote to fit in with his then employer’s house style, part of which included the avoidance any ambiguity.

    As Merriam Webster points out, ambiguity is defined as “a word or expression that can be understood in two or more possible ways: an ambiguous word or expression“.

    If only those writing today’s newspapers had also received such training as your correspondent or access to a newsroom dictionary with the above definition for the entry ambiguity

    Experience would suggest neither situation obtains, particularly in the titles of the Reach plc stable of regional “news” titles, as this ambiguous offering from the Daily Post/North Wales Live implies.

    Headline reads The historic inn opposite a popular country park that's been serving weary travellers for centuries
    Which establishment is serving weary travellers – the inn or the country park?

    Your correspondent diligently read the piece to discover how and what Loggerheads Country Park has been serving weary travellers down the centuries, all to no avail. 🙁

  • Farewell Nadhim Zahawi

    Steve WoodsLinux, Media, Politics

    Nadhim Zahawi disgraced MP for Stratford-on-AvonNews broke this morning that the alleged prime minister minister, one Rishi Sunak, had finally shown some of the “integrity, professionalism and accountability” promised when he was inexplicably made Conservative Party leader by its ageing right-wing membership.

    Yes, he’s finally sacked Nadhim “Stable Genius” Zahawi as Party Chair for what is described as a “serious breach of the ministerial code“.

    And the nature of that serious breach? While he was in office briefly as Chancellor Chancer of the Exchequer under disgraced former alleged prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Zahawi by failing to declare he was investigation by HMRC into his tax affairs. It subsequently transpired that he has had to pay the taxman £5 mn. in back taxes and a penalty for tax avoidance. Despite his ministerial media appearances involving prominent – possibly patriotic – display of the Union flag (which some call the Bloody Butcher’s Apron. Ed.), environmental campaigner and philanthropist Julia Davies subsequently wrote in a Guardian opinion piece entitled “Dear Nadhim Zahawi: here’s what patriotic British millionaires do – we pay our proper taxes“.

    Your ‘umble scribe cannot remember any time in his six decades of life when the minister allegedly in overall charge of collecting the country’s tax revenues has been investigated and penalised by the people he’s supposedly administering for not paying what he owed.

    Even before the Zahawi incident, Sunak, who so far has only been PM since the end of October, had already lost one cabinet minister within two weeks of assuming office: over-promoted fireplace salesman “Sir” Gavin Williamson resigned as a result of alleged bullying.

    However, looking around what passes for the current alleged government of the English Empire (which some still call the United Untied Kingdom. Ed.), it seems that despite Zahawi’s sacking, other members of Sunak’s administration seem to regard compliance with the ministerial code as an optional extra during their terms of office.

    Dominic Rennie Raab supposedly Justice Minister and Deputy Prime MinisterTake for example one the case Dominic Rennie Raab, supposedly the Secretary of State for Justice and Deputy Prime Minister.

    Dominic is not a boy who took any notice of his mother’s admonitions to “play nicely“. He is currently under investigation for allegations of bullying. The Guardian reported in December that eight separate incidents of bullying by Raab during a previous term of office at the Justice Ministry during Johnson’s premiership.

    Johnson himself faces a Commons privileges committee inquiry into whether he lied to misled parliament over the Partygate scandal.

    Handy tip for anyone who believes there is any integrity in Johnson: never trust a middle-aged man with a toddler haircut who combs his locks with a balloon.

    It doesn’t look as if there’s much of Sunak’s “integrity, professionalism and accountability” on either the front or back benches of what passes for the political party he is supposed to be leading.

    Before the announcement of Zahawi’s sacking, there did not appear to be much local support in Stratford-on-Avon for their tax-avoiding dishonourable member. Given the opinions expressed to The Guardian four days ago, our Stable Genius would be well advised not to seek the Conservative Party candidacy for the next general election.

    Update 31/01/23: In today’s letters in The Guardian, Keith Flett of the Beard Liberation Front remarks that Nadhim Zahawi “has now managed to bring the hirsute into disrepute“.

  • How to Lose French and Alienate People

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Social Media

    The stylebook of Associated Press (AP), the largest news agency in the USA is a highly regarded reference work for journalists wishing to improve their written English.

    The same cannot be said of the AP Stylebook Twitter account which posted the tweet below on Thursday.

    Tweet reads We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing “the” labels such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college-educated. Instead, use wording such as people with mental illnesses. And use these descriptions only when clearly relevant.
    Zut alors !

    The offending post has since been deleted, the BBC reports.

    Before its deletion, the advice was widely mocked by Francophones and Francophiles. Even the French embassy in the USA joined in the derision, briefly changing its name to the “Embassy of Frenchness in the United States“.

    Writer Sarah Haider responded that there was “nothing as dehumanizing as being considered one of the French” and that a better term was “suffering from Frenchness“, whilst political scientist Ian Bremmer suggested “people experiencing Frenchness” as a possible alternative.

    Washington Post journalist Megan McArdle also joined in the fun: “The people experiencing journalism at the AP have their work cut out for them“.

    After the tweet had been deleted, those in charge of the AP Stylebook Twitter account said their reference to French people had been “inappropriate” and that it “did not intend to offend“.

    The moral of this story: think before you tweet.

  • Content liability: Big Tech squares up to Uncle Sam

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Privacy, Social Media, Tech

    US Supreme Court sealFollowing the announcement anti-trust action by the United States Department of Justice along with the Attorneys General of California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia against Google, Meta (owners of Facebook and Instagram), Microsoft and Twitter have all made statements seeking to defend their actions.

    In their legal opinions, the big US tech giants, including Microsoft, Meta and Twitter, are warning the Supreme Court against amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). This would enable actions against content recommendation algorithms, French IT news site Le Monde Informatique reports.

    One week after Google’s filing of a defence statement with the US Supreme Court warning that amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) “would upend the internet“, several companies including Twitter, Meta and Microsoft, have filed their own legal opinions. They support Google’s argument that a restriction of the law could have disastrous consequences for the content editors. By virtue of the 1996 CDA, the companies are shielded from liability for content posted by their users, including comments, criticism and advertising.

    US Supreme Court west facade
    US Supreme Court.
    Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and UpstateNYer

    However, the Supreme Court has been asked to examine whether Section 230 was still pertinent and appropriate, given that it was promulgated before the internet became part of everyday life. The law was subject to a minute before the suit filed by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23 year-pld US citizen killed in Paris during the 13th November 2015 terrorist attacks claimed by ISIS. The Gonzalez family asserts that the algorithms should be regarded as editorial content not covered by the immunity from liability granted by Section 230 and thus Google’s YouTube subsidiary has violated the US Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) when its algorithms have recommended ISIS-linked content to users. The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in the case on 21st February next.

    Criticisms of the protections of Section 230 for websites

    Both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have criticised the protections provided for by the law. The Republicans believe that those in respect of liability make websites take partial decisions regarding content removal, whilst the Democrats would like the same sites to take more responsibility as regards moderation. In a statement President Biden has stated that his administration would support the position that Section 230 protections should not apply to recommendation algorithms. In its petition of 19th January, Microsoft asserts that if the Supreme Court makes amendments to Section 230, it would “strip these digital publishing decisions suit—and it would do so in illogical ways that are inconsistent with how algorithms actually work.“.

    The company added that any decision aimed at restricting the law “thereby expose interactive computer services to liability for publishing content to users whenever a plaintiff could craft a theory that sharing the content is somehow harmful“. In its own petition Meta stated that the plaintiffs’ argument is “deeply flawed from a legal point of view”; by interpreting Section 230 as a means of protecting sites from liability for content posted by its users whilst removing protection from content “ignores the way in which the internet works“. The company continued by describing the plaintiffs’ position as “regrettable from a practical point of view” and by stating that a ruling in their favour would ultimately prompt “online services to remove important, provocative and controversial content on matters of general interest“.

    Protection from liability essential for website operation according to Twitter

    Twitter has said that the current interpretation of Section 230 “ensures that sites such as Twitter and YouTube can work in spite of the unfathomable amount of information they make available and the potential liability that might result from this“. Since Twitter’s acquisition by Elon Musk, the site has been criticised for having reinstated the accounts of people it previously banned, such as disgraced former president Donald Trump or alpha male par excellence and all-round amateur human being Andrew Tate who is currently under investigation in Romania for alleged human trafficking.

    However, the review of several other high-profile cases will have to take place before the law is changed. Last week the Supreme Court was set to discuss its jurisdiction in two cases that challenge Texas and Florida laws prohibiting online platforms from removing certain political content. In addition, a Twitter vs. Taamneh case, which has many similarities with the Gonzalez vs. Google case, is due to oral pleadings on 2nd February. In this case Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are accused of having aided and abetted another attack claimed by Islamic State.

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