Language, Linux, Open Source
Politics
The thoughts of Michael Gove
3 years
Today’s Graunaid reports on the establishment of a new Tory think tank, erroneously called “Onward“.
However, it is firmly denied that this anodyne moniker is meant in any way to be an echo of “En Marche!“, the movement that propelled the right-of-centre Emmanuel Macron to power in France (and Andorra; he’s also the ex-officio co-prince of the Pyrenean principality. Ed.).
Those at the centre of the launch in the Gruaniad’s eyes are Scottish Tory leader Ruth “tractor quotas” Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, and Michael Gove, the man with the most punchable face in British politics and alleged to be the UK’s current Secretary of State For Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.
Leaving aside the sordid details of the think tank’s launch, which were given far too much attention for my mind by the Gruaniad, what struck your ‘umble scribe was the following phrase relating to the boy Michael:
Gove, the environment secretary, who has long been one of the party’s most influential thinkers,…
The plain truth is that thinking doesn’t come naturally to Michael. In a previous incarnation as Secretary of State for Education, he’s on record as not understanding what an average is or how it works in this oral reply to the House of Commons Education Committee in 2012:
…we expect schools not only to be judged on the level of raw attainment but also in terms of making sure that children are on track and are not falling back-and, indeed, do better than the average.
Meanwhile in his present post, he has in the past had difficulty in remembering which country he’s in, singing the praises of Welsh lamb in a press release for a visit to Northern Ireland (posts passim).
Furthermore, there are also times when Michael Gove doesn’t think at all. He didn’t think of his son when he and his wife thought it acceptable to leave the 11 year-old at a hotel to go to a party.
Thinking is a skill that can be taught and acquired, but your correspondent has yet to see that Gove has gained sufficient quantities thereof in his education at public school and thereafter at Oxford University.
Then again, lack of talent has never been an obstacle to achieving high office for the Blue Team…
The GOP and the English language*
3 years
On Saturday, a certain Melania Trump was discharged from hospital following surgery for a kidney problem.
Needless to say her husband. one Donald John Trump, who occasionally resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. in between golfing trips, was delighted.
So delighted he sent the tweet below to his followers.
The reason why The Donald should misspell his wife’s name is unknown. Perhaps he had that pesky predictive text active on his tweeting device.
However, the 45th President of the United States is not the first Republican Party occupant of that office of state to experience problems with the use of the English language.
The 41st occupant of that office, one George Herbert Walker Bush, once quipped in an interview with Jim Lehrer on PBS: “They used to say English was my second language.”
George H.W.’s son, George W., who was affectionately known as “Dubya” and inaugurated as the USA’s 43rd president, was so inept with his alleged mother tongue that a term – Bushisms – was coined to denote his ability to engage both tongue and brain when speaking in public. Bushisms are defined as Dubya’s unconventional statements, phrases, pronunciations, malapropisms and semantic or linguistic errors in public speaking. Besides malapropisms, Bushism’s other common characteristics included the creation of neologisms, spoonerisms, stunt words and grammatically incorrect subject–verb agreement.
To conclude this brief excursion into members of the Grand Old Party’s difficulties with English, who can forget former Vice-President James Danforth Quayle’s erroneous correction of a school student’s correct rendition of “potato“? 😀
* = Apologies to the late George Orwell for the title.
More thoughts on monarchy and the royal family by Keir Hardie
3 years
Today, 19th May 2018, uncelebrated blues artiste Mumblin’ Harry Wales (posts passim) weds US actor Meghan Markle in Windsor.
Whilst I have no particular axe to grind against anyone wishing to get married and wish Mr Wales and Ms Markle every happiness, I do have objections to the undemocratic nature monarchy and the idea that the heads of state of this country should come down the birth canals of one particular family and one family only.
Then there’s the whole concept of the so-called royal family being somehow special or better than the rest of humanity.
In these objections I’m in fine company.
One of those who share my republican ideals was James Keir Hardie (15 August 1856 – 26 September 1915), socialist, politician and trade unionist, who rose to become the first leader of the Labour Party.
In “Keir Hardie: His Writings and Speeches” edited by Emrys Hughes and published by Forward Printing and Publishing Company Ltd, Glasgow in 1928, Hardie is credited with writing the following on the occasion of Victoria von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha’s diamond jubilee in 1897. However, his remarks are still relevant today and reveal how far ahead Hardie was of the conventional establishment thinking of his time.
Even under a representative system of government it is possible to paralyse a nation by maintaining the fiction that a reigning family is a necessity of good government. Now, one of two things must be – either the British people are fit to govern themselves or they are not. If they are, an hereditary ruler who in legislation has more power than the whole nation is an insult. Despotism and monarchy are compatible; democracy and monarchy are an unthinkable connection.
If we are for the Queen we are not for her subjects. The throne represents the power of caste – class rule. Round the throne gather the unwholesome parasites who cling to the system which lends itself to their disordered condition. The toady who crawls through the mire of self-abasement to enable him to bask in the smile of royalty is the victim of a diseased organism. No healthy, well-developed people could for one moment tolerate an institution which belongs to the childhood of the race, and which in these latter days is the centre, if not the source, of the corrupting influences which constitute Society.
The great mind, the strong heart, the detestation of wrong, the love of truth whether in cot or palace will always command my respect. But to worship an empty form, to make pretence to believe a gilded mediocrity indispensable to the well-being of the nation – where is the man who will so far forget what is due to his manhood?
In this country loyalty to the Queen is used by the profit-mongers to blind the eyes of the people. We can have but one feeling in the matter – contempt for thrones and for all who bolster them up.
Leveson 2: why the government is reluctant
3 years
In the last 2 weeks there have been several attempts to block implementation of part 2 of the Leveson inquiry, judicial public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International phone hacking scandal.
Part 2 of the Leveson inquiry (aka Leveson 2. Ed.) would investigate “the extent of unlawful or improper conduct within News International, other media organisations or other organisations. It will also consider the extent to which any relevant police force investigated allegations relating to News International, and whether the police received corrupt payments or were otherwise complicit in misconduct.”
The Conservative Party’s 2017 manifesto stated that Leveson 2 would be dropped entirely, a fact confirmed by Culture Secretary Matt Hancock on 1st March 2018.
However, the proponents of Leveson 2 have not given up. Yesterday the House of Lords voted in favour voted by 252 to 213 on Monday evening to back an amendment to the Data Protection Bill that called for Leveson 2 to be put back on the agenda, i.e. a full investigation into unlawful conduct by newspapers, misuse of data by social media companies and relations between the press and the police.
This overturns a decision made by MPs last week and has set up another showdown with the government.
At this point you may be wondering why the government is so keen to halt an inquiry into corporate criminality.
This is best answered in pictorial form, with no further comment being necessary.
Lookalikes – a politics & sci-fi double bill
3 years
Prime Minister Theresa May has the inhuman touch, an inability to relate to people that has led some unkind people to refer to her as the “Maybot“. Indeed, the Financial Times (the sporting pink for the casino economy. Ed.) even came up with a definition for his noun last December, i.e.:
A prime minister so lacking in human qualities that she soon requires a system reboot.
Ouch!
However, I wonder if our mainstream media have ever noticed the striking similarity between Theresa May and Twiki, the robot assistant of the eponymous hero of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century?
Twiki was mainly voiced by the late, great Mel Blanc, who provided the voices for the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, the Tasmanian Devil and many of the other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons stables. If, in addition to these vocal talents, he could be brought back from the grave to speak well and lie badly, the Maybot might sound less like an automaton.
We of a certain vintage remember our reading included following Dan Dare’s adventures in space against his arch-enemy, The Mekon, who with his shaven pate, does a remarkable impression of Sajid Javid, the current Home Secretary, who has recently been ushered into 2 Marsham Street, London SW1 with his dustpan and new broom to clear up the mess the Home Office has created in recent years in relation to the so-called “Windrush generation“.
Incidentally, Javid is not the first Conservative Cabinet Minister to be compared to The Mekon. One of his partisan predecessors, the late Angus Maude, who was Paymaster General in the government of Margaret Thatcher from 1979 to 1981, was nicknamed The Mekon.
Royal birth – a comment from the past
3 years
Yesterday a woman whose duty it is to produce occupants of the British throne gave birth to her third child and the right-leaning part of the British press has gone into overdrive churning out sycophantic drivel to mark the occasion, with several producing supplements.
While all this pap is being fawned over by the more gullible members of the public, there are no doubt civil servants, government ministers, local government officers and others in the establishment busy using a good day to bury bad news.
In June 1894 a previous royal birth occurred, prompting as it did then – and still does – the House of Commons to debate an address of congratulation to the monarch, in this case Queen Victoria. However, on the day the birth occurred there had been a terrible mine explosion at Pontypridd and 251 working class men and boys had lost their lives. The Government gave no sign of expressing any sympathy for the stricken town and the mourning relatives, and socialist MP James Keir Hardie sought to repair the omission by adding to the congratulation to the Queen an assurance of sympathy with the sufferers from the disaster.
His motion was out of order, but he had the right to speak and he declared in a House tumultuous with anger that the tragedy in South Wales demanded far more of the attention of the House than the birth of any baby.
Perhaps the most famous part of Hardie’s performance in the House of Commons that day is quoted below.
“From his childhood onwards this boy will be surrounded by sycophants and flatterers by the score – [cries of “Oh!,oh!] – and will be taught to believe himself as of a superior creation [cries of “Oh,oh!]. A line will be drawn between him and the people whom he is to be called upon some day to reign over. …and the end of it all will be that the country will be called upon to pay the bill. [Cries of Divide!]”
The royal grandson to whom Keir Hardie was referring grew up to be an unimpressive and irresponsible man with extreme right wing sympathies, notoriously visiting Hitler in 1937. In January 1936 he became Edward VIII. In December 1936 he abdicated before his coronation over his relationship with the American divorcee Wallis Simpson and during the Second World War was kept well away from Messrs Hitler and Mussolini by being appointed governor of the Bahamas in 1940.
Over £4K – the cost of dropping 6 cigarette ends in Bristol
3 years
Six litter louts have been ordered by magistrates to pay a total of £671.84 each for dropping cigarette ends in central Bristol, making a grand total of £4,031.04, yesterday’s Bristol Post reports.
The individual total of £671.84 is broken down as follows: £440 fine, £187.84 in prosecution costs and a £44 victim surcharge.
All the defendants have been given 28 days to pay.
Cigarette ends are litter too. Disposing of them properly will avoid the risk of a fine.
They were all originally caught littering on 9th and 10th November last year by civil enforcement officers working for Bristol City Council (the so-called litter police. Ed.) and were issued with £75 fixed penalty notices (FPNs) for their filthiness. Had the penalties been paid within 10 days, the culprits would only have had to pay £50 each.
As it is, they repeatedly ignored correspondence from Bristol City Council, as well as their summonses to Bristol Magistrates Court, as none of the defendants could be bothered to appear in person.
On average, more than 1,000 people have been issued with FPNs for environmental crimes such as littering and dog fouling each month since the ‘litter police’ started their work.
It’s good to see the City Council taking a tough line on litter. However, far more ‘litter police’ are needed to cover the rest of the city in addition to the centre. They have made the odd foray into a council-owned public park or two and an occasional jolly to Stapleton Road, but far more rigorous action is going to be needed by the local authority if it is to have any hope of meeting the objectives of Mayor Marvin Rees’ Bristol Clean Streets initiative, i.e. that Bristol will be measurably cleaner by 2020 in terms of litter, fly-tipping, fly-posting, graffiti, dog fouling, chewing gum and weeds (especially as the latter were only being eradicated last year if residents made enough of a fuss! Ed.).
The simple fact is that there would less strain on the public purse and less work for the council in keeping the streets and parks clean if people didn’t drop litter, allow their dogs to foul all over the place, dump fly-tipping and commit other environmental crimes.
Nevertheless, it is good to see that Bristol City Council and local magistrates are sending out a clear message to litter louts to keep Bristol tidy – or its centre at any rate.
Finally, in an opinion piece in the Bristol Post, Tristan Cork takes filthy Bristolians to task for the deplorable state residents leave the city’s parks in every time the weather gets warm. Meanwhile the council has warned people who leave rubbish in parks next to overflowing bins that they will be fined £100 if caught and that the “litter police” are now patrolling parks and have been instructed to issue fixed penalty notices for rubbish deposited around bins, as well as anything left on the grass.
German Federal government opts for open source cloud
3 years
Within the scope of its own cloud computing environment, the German Federal administration has opted for Nextcloud, heise reports. The software will in future be running by the Federal administration’s central IT service provider, the Federal Information Technology Centre (ITZBund). Unlike services such as Google Drive or Dropbox, Nextcloud is an open source project which users can install in their own computer centres.
The project is targeted at some 300,000 users in various authorities and ministries. They will be able to share and synchronise files centrally using the service. Stuttgart-based Nextcloud GmbH is supporting the ITZBund based on an enterprise subscription for operation and support. However, individual licences per user or per system shall not be incurred.
ITZBund tested Nextcloud with some 5,000 users in a pilot project before making its decision in favour of open source.
Dortmund plots course for open source
3 years
The City of Dortmund wants to examine the potential of free software and open standards for the city council until the end of 2019, German IT news website heise reports.
Munich’s decision last year to abandon open source is not the final word in open source matters in German local authorities. Dortmund’s city council has decided to investigate the potential of free and open source software “systematically” in the field of municipal ICT.
Dortmund panorama. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
A free software working group has been established and will work together with the council’s personnel board and Do-FOSS citizens’ action group in developing a free software strategy which should be produced by the end of 2019. Dortmund is thus an open source pioneer in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The NRW E-government Law stipulates that open and standardised file formats shall be used by public authorities for sending files to citizens and companies.
Less dependence, more flexibility
Amongst other things, efforts will be made to reduce reliance on suppliers and become more flexible in software use. The aspect of transparency and “Green IT” are also pre-requisites for the strategy. The German Federal Environment Office has determined that free software could save resources due to lower hardware requirements and longer life cycles. Moreover, a more flexible choice of suppliers could also improve local authorities’ negotiating position with proprietary software vendors.
Do-FOSS, which has been calling for years for a switch in public sector procurement towards free software and open standards, is hailing the decision as a “milestone“. In addition, a draft for the introduction of “Open Data Dortmund” is to be submitted to the local authority by next summer. DO-FOSS is now hoping that a comprehensive approach will now be developed within the council for the free and open source IT.
Back in January Mayor Ullrich Sierau and the personnel board signed the Digital Dortmund 2018-2030 Charter (PDF, German), in which the use of open standards was agreed for the council’s ICT.
A fool and his money
Q: Pictured below are 2 men: Winston Churchill, who some would argue was the greatest UK Prime Minister ever; and Piers Morgan, a man of no discernible talent apart from sycophancy to those on the extreme right wing of politics. What links them?
A: A cigar butt.
One of Churchill’s discarded cigar butts, to be precise.
Earlier this week, Piers Morgan bought said cigar butt at auction, as reported by the Shropshire Star.
Piers (affectionately renamed Piers Moron by Private Eye. Ed.) was so pleased with his purchase, he also tweeted about it.
Auctioneers Travanion & Dean of Whitchurch in Shropshire had been expecting the half-smoked historical artefact to sell for about £1,000.
Piers paid £2,600 for it.
Needless to say, the final bill would have been rather more than that once the auctioneers’ commission had been added.
He may have considered his action patriotic, but Piers’ action reminded your ‘umble scribe of an old adage, i.e. a fool and his money are soon parted.
That bit of folksy wisdom in turn set me researching its origins.
The King James version of the Bible published in 1604 has something similar to this saying in Proverbs 21:20, which states:
However, for a rendition slightly closer to the wording in question, one has to look at 1573’s Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie by Thomas Tusser, reproduced below:
The form of words commonly used in the present proverb were first just over a decade after Tusser. In 1587 Dr. John Bridges writes the sentence below in Defence of the Government of the Church of England: