Politics

  • January – the pick of Barton Hill

    Saturday 6th January saw the first Barton Hill community litter pick of 2024.



    The December event had been rained off at the last minute. However, this time the weather gods were beneficent and the sun shone.

    All told five volunteers turned up, tidying the Ducie Road area, including its council-owned car park. In meetings with the council, your correspondent has been informed in the past that the car is supposed to be visited and cleansed by street cleaning crews once a week, although this appeared not to have been done well – or at all – in recent times.

    Some of the swag from the January litter pick
    Bags of swag

    In one hour we managed to collect over 6 bags of general waste and recyclable materials for collection by Bristol Waste, after which three of us had another one our of usual interesting chats over tea and biscuits at the Wellspring Settlement before going our separate ways until next month.

    As per usual, many thanks to Shona for organising and my fellow pickers for turning out on a cold morning. šŸ˜€

  • Its name is Cymru, not a Saxon slur

    To the west of a ditch and bank built by the Saxon Offa of Mercia between the Irish and the Severn Seas, lies a country with a language and culture distinct from the English. It’s called Cymru by its inhabitants known as the Cymry.

    These words are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning fellow-countrymen and probably came into use before the 7th century.

    Some time before then, but after the Roman occupiers of Britannia withdrew in the early 5th century, incomers from the other side of the North Sea started to arrive and settle on the eastern and southern shores of what is now England. These incomers included the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.

    Map of Britain in 500 CE showing distribution of Britons speaking Cymraeg and other Celtic languages, plus areas where incomers from Europe predominated
    Image courtesy of Project Gutenberg and Wikimedia Commons.

    These new arrivals brought their language with them, which over time developed into English, which went on with addenda and changes from other languages (including early French and Norse) in subsequent times to become one of the world’s most widely used tongues in today’s world.

    One word these Germanic speakers brought with them was Waelh, denoting a foreigner.

    That word survives today as the name of a country known in English as Wales, thus denoting it as a land of people who weren’t Saxon and talked funny, hence Offa’s action of putting a defensive boundary between him and his and those over the dyke who most likely ate funny food too.

    Following recent changes to the names of two national parks – Eryri and Bannau Brycheiniog – in Cymru to their equivalents in Cymraeg, a petition to call the country solely by the name Cymru has now been posted on the Senedd’s website and is collecting signatures. At the time of writing, it has collected nearly 9,000 signatures. A total of 10,000 is required before it will be considered for debate in Caerdydd.

    The text of the petition states:

    Wales is a name imposed on Cymru and is essentially not a Welsh word at all. The world knows about Wales because of its English connection since 1282. Hardly anyone has heard of Cymru or realises that we have our own unique language and culture which is totally different from the other countries within the United Kingdom.

    Sign the petition.

    Update 07/01/24: The petition has now reached over 9,000 signatories.

    Update 12/01/24: The petition will now be considered for debate by the Senedd, having now reached over 10,400 signatories.

  • American Idiots

    Another day, another social media post showing how unaware some people are of the world about them, particularly in relation to popular music and politics.

    Green Day is an American rock band with a reputation of not being afraid to include political content in their lyrics.

    Take the song American Idiot, for instance.


    Released in 2004, it’s a protest song critical of the policies of the then US President, one George W. Bush, particularly his response to the atrocities of September 11 and his subsequent launch of the so-called War on Terror. It clearly went down well upon release as it was nominated for four 2005 Grammy Awards: Record of the Year, Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, Best Rock Song and Best Music Video. According to Wikipedia, it is considered one of the band’s signature songs.

    As a prominent element of Green Day’s discography, the band performed it on ABCā€™s broadcast of Dick Clarkā€™s New Yearā€™s Rockinā€™ Eve With Ryan Seacrest, but with a modern update, used the opportunity to call out Trump supporters by changing one word in the original lyrics, amending the line “Iā€™m not part of a redneck agenda” to “Iā€™m not part of the MAGA agenda“.

    This did not go down well with the right-leaning part of the populace of the 50 states, who denounced the band on social media.

    Then there were those like the gentleman in the screenshot* below, who seems totally oblivious to the blatantly political content of the original song or did not engage brain before placing fingers on keyboard and posting the following,an action which resulted in him ending up with his foot firmly inserted in his mouth.

    Post reads - You know the more I thought about it, why did Green Day have to insert politics into their performance of American Idiot? We're trying to get away from that for a few hours.

    For the benefit of Mr Starzynski and his like, your ‘umble scribe has transcribed the full, original lyrics of American Idiot below. šŸ˜€

    Don’t wanna be an American idiot
    Don’t want a nation under the new media
    And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
    The subliminal mind fuck America

    Welcome to a new kind of tension
    All across the alienation
    Where everything isn’t meant to be okay
    Television dreams of tomorrow
    We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow
    For that’s enough to argue

    Well maybe I’m the faggot America
    I’m not a part of a redneck agenda
    Now everybody do the propaganda
    And sing along to the age of paranoia

    Welcome to a new kind of tension
    All across the alienation
    Where everything isn’t meant to be okay
    Television dreams of tomorrow
    We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow
    For that’s enough to argue

    Don’t want to be an American idiot
    One nation controlled by the media
    Information age of hysteria
    It’s calling out to idiot America

    Welcome to a new kind of tension
    All across the alienation
    Where everything isn’t meant to be okay
    Television dreams of tomorrow
    We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow
    For that’s enough to argue

    Have a Happy New Year, y’all!

    * = Courtesy of George Takei‘s Mastodon account.

  • ‘American’ art and architecture

    Many years ago, your ‘umble scribe remembers a fellow pupil in German class being admonished as follows by Mr. Wreford, our teacher: “Boy, you are arrogant in your ignorance; and ignorant in your arrogance!

    That same mixture of arrogance and ignorance can still be found today: if anything more easily thanks to social media

    .

    Which brings us to Twitter – now rebranded X by rich man-baby Elon Musk – and the account of Jesse Kelly, the conservative talk show host of The Jesse Kelly talk radio show.

    Being a professed conservative, Jesse is naturally a very patriotic man, as can be seen from the following tweet.

    Post reads: 
People love to sound sophisticated and brag about European art and architecture. Iā€™ve seen Americaā€™s and Iā€™ve seen what theyā€™ve got. Theirs canā€™t touch ours.

    American art and architecture, Jesse?

    Somehow you failed to engage brain before tweeting and have ended up with you foot lodged firmly in your mouth.

    In case Mr Walker happens to be passing, here’s a quick history lesson on the Statue of Liberty or Liberty Enlightening the World or even a LibertĆ© Ć©clairant le monde for reasons which will soon become all too apparent.

    The statue itself is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, which was was dedicated on October 28, 1886.

    So far, so American.

    Now things start to change, so pay close attention, Jesse! šŸ˜€

    The statue is a figure of Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty holds a torch above her head with her right hand, whilst in her left hand she carries a tablet inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI (July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. A broken chain and shackle lie at her feet as she walks forward, commemorating the national abolition of slavery following the American Civil War. After its dedication, the statue became a symbol of freedom and of the United States, particularly welcoming to impoverished European immigrants arriving by sea.

    There are still more European connections to come, so don’t nod off just yet, Jesse!

    The statue was designed by the French sculptor FrĆ©dĆ©ric Auguste Bartholdi the metal framework on which its copper outer skin was hung was built by Gustave Eiffel. yet another Frenchman Jesse might just have heard of due to some ironmongery he left lying about in central Paris. That’s Paris, France not Paris TX, by the way, and should not be confused with the 1984 film of the same name by German director Wim Wenders.

    Just one more little history lesson on the Statue of Liberty left now, Jesse.

    The heavy Gallic references might provide a hint of what it might be: the statue itself was a gift to the USA from the people of France. Where else?

    Update 28/12/23

    Your correspondent is not the only person to have pointed out Kelly’s mistake, as reported by Raw Story, which notes that a community note was added to the Kelly’s original post in which readers added context to Kelly’s image, stating very much the same as above, but in more temperate tones.

    However, even this gentle correction did not go down well with the MAGA mouthpiece, who responded as shown below.

    Kelly's new tweet reads: I thought [Elon Musk] taking over would let freedom ring on this site. Guess I was wrong. Sorry, but these colors donā€™t run.

    Your colors may not run, Jesse, but here’s a bit of free advice: when you are in a hole, particularly one you’ve excavated all on your own, stop digging and put the shovel down. šŸ˜€

  • The one per cent

    Yesterday your correspondent arranged a poll on his social media account on Mastodon to coincide with the appearance of disgraced former alleged party-time prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson before the Covid-19 inquiry being chaired by retired senior judge Heather Hallett.

    Needless to say, Johnson was his usual courageous self, turning up at 7.00am to avoid the crowds of bereaved relatives who’d hoped to make their feelings known to the lazy, bumbling charlatan. He did likewise today with several papers showing him arriving once again in the hours of darkness, but then again this is the same brave politician who hid in a fridge in 2019 to avoid being questions by the talentless Piers Morgan.

    There is plenty of reporting and live coverage of Johnson’s evidence to the inquiry, which is also being streamed. Today’s Guardian editorial is particularly scathing of Johnson’s performance yesterday, with its byline stating:

    Nothing in the former prime ministerā€™s record or his testimony so far suggests he is a reliable witness or capable of genuine contrition.

    Neither reliable nor contrite; that a damning assessment.

    Anyway, back your ‘umble scribe’s social media poll. A screenshot of the result is shown below.

    Poll reads Which would you trust most? Boris Johnson or a forged Ā£9 note?

    All that can be said is that your correspondent is shocked to learn one per cent of respondents would sooner trust a man never known to have had an intimate relationship with something known as the truth.

  • Bizarre feudal remnants

    The unelected, alleged head of state of the English EmpireNews arrived today of a bizarre feudal remnant – one used by a human bizarre feudal remnant line his own already well-stuffed pockets.

    The human bizarre feudal remnant is none other than Mr Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor, alleged to be the head of state of the English Empire (which some still call the United Kingdom. Ed.), who generally masquerades under the alias of “King” Charles III.

    Today’s Guardian reveals that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor is stealing the estates of people who die intestate – i.e. without leaving a will – or with no known relatives in the territory of the Duchy of Lancaster, which consists of consists of 18,433 hectares of land holdings, including rural estates and farmland, urban developments, historic buildings, and commercial properties across England and Wales, particularly in Cheshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire and the Savoy Estate in London. Its principal purpose of the estate is to provide a source of independent income for Mr Mountbatten-Windsor and his heirs and successors.

    This theft of other people’s assets is covered by the legal term ‘bona vacantia‘, meaning unowned property. The same practice of ‘bona vacantia‘ is employed by the Duchy of Cornwall to provide an income for the so-called ‘Prince’ of Wales, one William Arthur Philip Louis Mountbatten-Windsor.

    The rich and powerful of this backward medieval country have been stealing the assets owned or used by others for centuries. From 1604 onwards the Inclosure Acts created legal property rights for the rich to land previously held in common in England and Wales, particularly open fields and common land. Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 individual acts enclosing public land were passed, affecting 28,000 km2.

    These thefts of common land were commemorated in a popular poem in the early 18th century.

    They hang the man and flog the woman
    That steal the goose from off the common,
    But let the greater villain loose
    That steals the common from the goose.


    The law demands that we atone
    When we take things we do not own,
    But leaves the lords and ladies fine
    Who take things that are yours and mine.

    This practice of appropriating land owned and used by others reached its zenith during Britain’s colonial expansion under the concept of ‘terra nullius‘, literally nobody’s land. How could allegedly primitive people claim ownership of land when nothing concerning property rights was written down, was the flawed logic behind these seizures, which reached their height in Australia, where people now commemorated by street names and public artworks were responsible for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people, who have no public monuments by which to remember the victims. This was documented in all its brutality by the three part 2022 TV series The Australian Wars.

    Anyway, back from nobody’s land to nobody’s property in the north of England. The Guardian has found out that the Duchy of Lancaster has been secretly using the bona vacantia funds to renovate properties owned by the alleged king and rented out for profit. The Duchy’s accounts suggest it has collected Ā£61.8m in bona vacantia funds over the last decade. Of those, only Ā£9.3m or 15% of the total has gone to charities, which the Duchy maintains is the main reason for collecting the funds.

    Needless to say, this news has not gone down well in areas subject to the Duchy of Lancaster’s writ.

    Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester is on record as saying:

    I think many people in the north-west will be surprised to learn that the savings and assets of friends and neighbours are being taken in this way. I donā€™t recall this archaic system ever being explained to anyone here nor public consent for it being given.

    Burnham furthermore added that:

    This appears to be a bizarre remnant of feudal Britain. While we await the public acts of levelling up that we have been promised, it seems this country still has silent mechanisms of levelling down at work, redistributing wealth in the wrong direction.

    Furthermore, friends of some of those whose assets have been stolen have described their use to fix up Duchy properties for future rental as ‘unethical, ‘shocking and ‘a disgrace.

    The worst decision this country ever made was to readmit Charles Stuart (son of the late tyrant) in 1660. That would have avoided any future regal robbery of people’s property either in this country or around the world.

  • Bristol City Council & the English Language

    Bristol City Council logo with sinking shipBristolian may exist as a dialect with its own idiosyncrasies, but within the city and county of Bristol itself, there’s one place where English is used in a peculiar way: the Counts Louse (as pronounced in the local vernacular; some call it City Hall – or a variant thereof – after its renaming by the then Mayor George Ferguson in 2012. Ed.). In his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell wrote the following:

    Political language ā€“ and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists ā€“ is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

    Down at the Counts Louse, the English language has been used to conceal what is really going on behind its mock Georgian faƧade, particularly where funding cuts and redundancies are planned, usually couched in terms such as redeployment, restructuring and the like.

    Perhaps the most famous use of such obfuscatory language occurred in 2013 when it was discovered – as reported by The Bristolian – that Ā£165,000 in cash was missing from the council’s loss-making markets department (a department that’s supposed to make money for the local authority. Ed.). This was duly recorded in an internal report as ‘material income misappropriation‘.

    We ordinary mortals have a much more succinct phrase than material income misappropriation. We call it theft.

    That infamous bit of council-speak has now been joined by another phrase by Councillor Craig Cheney, the elected member in charge of the city’s purse strings, which was duly reported by the Bristol Post in relation to the evacuation of Barton House in Barton Hill due to structural defects.

    Barton House in Bristol
    Barton House. Image courtesy of Google Street View.

    What Cllr. Cheney said to the local press while commenting on Barton House included the sentence below.

    Thereā€™s perhaps not as much concrete as there should be.

    Perhaps? Most definitely not as much concrete, plus ignorance and non-observance of the building plans, according to your colleague Councillor Kye Dudd.

    Give yourself a pat on the back, Cllr. Cheney; that one sentence alone deserves its own special place in the annals of British understatement. šŸ˜€

    In less light-hearted reporting on Barton House, it has now emerged that the government warned Bristol City Council in 2017 – six years ago – about the condition of Barton House and four other tower blocks built using the LPS building system and perhaps more scandalously that no structural survey of Barton House had been conducted since 1970, i.e. over half a century ago. Municipal neglect of the city’s infrastructure is endemic down the Counts Louse. šŸ™
  • Lookalikes – Eric and Leonardo

    Newsweek in the United States reports that Eric Trump’s recent comment comparing his family’s assets to the Mona Lisa amid their ongoing civil fraud trial in New York has spawned a wave of mockery across social media.

    Disgraced former president Donald John Trump and his three adult children – Ivanka, Donald Jr. and the aforementioned Eric are accused of frequently inflating The Donald’s own net worth and the value of his assets by billions of dollars from 2011 to 2021 to secure better deals and loans. Trump and his children have dismissed the accusations and maintained their innocence, accusing prosecutors of being politically motivated and attempting to harm the Dunning-Kruger effect’s candidate’s 2024 presidential campaign.

    Earlier this week Eric Trump – hardly one of the world’s towering intellects – claimed that the Trump family properties at play in the civil fraud trial are “worth a fortune” and called them “Mona Lisas of the real estate world.

    Below in true Private Eye style, the Trump Tower in New York and Leonardo’s famous painting are placed side by side, so readers can draw their own conclusions as to which of them are of greater value to the human race as a whole.

    On the left the Mona Lisa with the caption Trump Tower, New York. On the right the New York Trump Tower captioned Da Vinci's Mona Lisa
  • Padlocks and Pero

    One of the many bridges that crosses Bristol’s city docks is Pero’s Bridge which spans St Augustine’s Reach, formerly St Augustine’s Trench. It is a pedestrian bascule bridge, linking Queen Square on the eastern side and Millennium Square on the west.

    Pero's Bridge over Bristol city docks

    It was opened formally in 1999 by Paul Boateng MP, then a Home Office minister.

    The bridge is named after Pero, also known as Pero Jones, who lived from around 1753 to 1798, arriving in Bristol from Nevis in the Caribbean in 1783, as the slave of the merchant John Pinney (1740ā€“1818) at 7 Great George Street.

    Hundreds of people now attach padlocks – so-called ā€˜lovelocksā€™ – to the bridge as a sign of affection to each other. This is a practice that began on the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris.

    Padlocks attached to the parapet railings of Pero's Bridge

    The city council does not technically allow padlocks on the bridge, but they are not routinely removed, and over the years hundreds – possibly thousands – have been attached to it, which could just affect the proper operation of the bridge.

    Your ‘umble scribe wonders if those who attach padlocks – a means of confinement and restraint -to the bridge have really thought through the implications of their action. It is, after all, named in memory of an enslaved person.

    Moreover, your correspondent is not the only person with misgivings.

    A petition has been launched by Helen Tierney calling on the Mayor of Bristol to order the removal of the padlocks and to ban any more being placed on there. The petition reads as follows:

    To Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol. In the heart of Bristol is a pedestrian bridge crossing the harbour. The City Council agreed the name Peroā€™s Bridge to honour a young enslaved African, Pero Jones, who in the 18th century was sold into slavery aged 12 & brought by his ā€˜ownerā€™ to live in Bristol. Pero was never granted his freedom & died enslaved. A tiny plaque by the bridge tells this story.
    Peroā€™s Bridge is now defaced with thousands of padlocks, so called ā€˜lovelocksā€™ locked on to its structure. The keys most likely dropped into the water below. Only a few steps from the bridge is the place where, in 2020, the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was thrown into the harbour. I call upon the Mayor & City Councillors of Bristol to remove these hideous padlocks, not symbols of love at all but of oppression down the centuries, of enslaved people chained & padlocked with the keys thrown away, those people disrespected still today in the very place where they should be honoured.

    Beneath the petition, Ms Tierney has added: “Peroā€™s Bridge is named after an enslaved person, someone our city chose to honour by naming the bridge for him. To have it weighed down by the very symbols of oppression disrespects his memory“, to which your ‘umble scribe would add that those affixing padlocks to the bridge have clearly considered the implications of their action.

    Sign the petition here.

  • Lest we forget

    It’s Remembrance Sunday, the nearest Sunday to Armistice Day, November 11th, when the guns fell silent on the western front in World War 1 on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

    In the USA, 11th November is known as Veterans Day and commemorated as a federal (i.e. national) holiday.

    It’s a a day to commemorate the contribution of people in the two World Wars and later conflicts.

    The second of those world wars was fought against fought against fascism, so it is disturbing indeed to see fascist rhetoric being employed by those on the right of politics such as the current alleged Secretary of State for the Home Department, one Sue-Ellen Cassiana Braverman KC, who has been described as ‘irresponsible and incendiary.

    However, it’s not just Braverman who’s been pandering to fascist tendencies at this sensitive time of the year.

    Over the Atlantic, disgraced former president Donald John Trump has also been rousing the right-wing rabble under the pretext of commemorating the dead of past conflicts, as is shown by his social media activity.

    Post reads: In honor of our great Veterans on Veteranā€™s Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave, than the threat from within. Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our Country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

    A second Trump term in the White House would be very dangerous for the USA and, as in the above social media post, The Donald has made it very clear he would go after all those who oppose him (i.e. vermin) and in the process turn the United States from something resembling a democracy to an authoritarian regime with distinct fascist overtones.

    As Hillary Clinton remarked recently, it is very easy to slip from a democracy into fascism: “Hitler was duly elected. All of a sudden somebody with those tendencies, dictatorial, authoritarian tendencies, would be like ‘OK weā€™re gonna shut this down, weā€™re gonna throw these people in jail.’ And they didnā€™t usually telegraph that. Trump is telling us what he intends to do.

    At this point the words of Pastor Martin Niemƶller’s famous postwar poem spring to mind.

    First they came for the Communists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Communist
    Then they came for the Socialists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Socialist
    Then they came for the trade unionists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a trade unionist
    Then they came for the Jews
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Jew
    Then they came for me
    And there was no one left
    To speak out for me.

    Today is not only a day to remember the war dead, but also more importantly why exactly they fought.

    Lest we forget.

    Update 13/11/20203: This morning Braverman was sacked as Home Secretary. In a clear case of reverse nominative determinism, her replacement is James Cleverly, affectionately known by one political commentator as Jimmy Dimly.

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