Politics | Steve Woods

Old Corruption and young Alexander

05/06/2021 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

Never trust a man who combs his hair with a balloon
Corruption and the part-time alleged prime minister of the English Empire (which some still call the United Kingdom. Ed.), one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, are often closely entwined.

Disregarding the current crowdfunded litigation against the government's awarding of PPE and other contracts during the pandemic, which was frequently characterised as less than transparent and evidence of a chumocracy, due to the frequent involvement of Tory party donors, I am reliably informed by Keith Flett’s blog that Johnson and his third bride Carrie Symonds recently spent a mini-honeymoon at Chequers, the grace and favour country house in Buckinghamshire provided at public expense for the use of prime ministers, alleged, part-time or other.
Keith Flett’s blog post also comes with the interest fact that William Cobbett, the pamphleteer, journalist, Member of Parliament and farmer, referred to such sinecures as Chequers as the “Old Corruption“.

Further delving into the topic of the Old Corruption took me to the website of St Stephen’s Chapel in Westminster, which reveals that, before the 1832 Reform Act, the “Old Corruption was a system by which the elite benefited from selling of offices, sinecures (jobs which paid a salary for little or no work) and pensions. Patrons also influenced the small electorate, often through monetary incentives, to secure election for their friends and allies to parliament“.
However, the sale of offices and other abuses did not entirely die out after the enactment of the so-called “Great” Reform Act of 1832.

Honours continued to be sold throughout the Victorian era, culminating in the actions of David Lloyd George when Prime Minister. Lloyd George made the practice of selling honours more systematic and more brazen, charging £10,000 for a knighthood, £30,000 for baronetcy and £50,000 upwards for a peerage, and by so doing prompting the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925. Furthermore, practically every single prime minister since has repaid favours with honours such as a seat in the House of Lords, knighthood or such like.

More evidence of corruption, neither ancient nor modern, but extremely blatant, emerged this past week and once again involved a certain Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the other members of the cast being one Peter Cruddas, billionaire, and the House of Lords Appointments Commission.

In December 2020, it was announced that Cruddas, a former Tory Party treasurer, would be made a life peerage after a nomination Johnson, despite the contrary advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission.

As reported by the Mirror, a few days later Cruddas made a donation of half a million pounds to the Tory Party.

The Old Corruption is perhaps not so old at all, but surprisingly contemporary
Irish Sea tunnel: a distant problem

26/05/2021 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

One phrase that has come to prominence is recent years is dead cat strategy, or dead cat for short.

This term denotes the introduction of a dramatic, shocking, or sensationalist topic to divert discourse away from a more damaging topic, according to Wikipedia.

Which brings us to this week, which although we’ve only got as far as Wednesday has so far furnished two deceased felines ahead of the appearance of former Downing Street polecat Dominic Cummings before the combined Commons health and science and technology select committees: firstly, the announcement of part-time alleged Prime Minister Boris Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson’s forthcoming third marriage; and secondly the proposed Holyhead to Dublin road tunnel.

The latter attracted my interest as the Department for Transport (DfT) is currently under the stewardship of that well-known latter-day spiv, Grant Shapps, alias Michael Green, Sebastian Fox and Corinne Stockwood (posts passim).

Anyway, let’s examine the anatomy of the DfT’s defunct domestic pet.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Shapps suggested a 50-mile tunnel between Wales and Ireland as an alternative to PM Johnson’s scheme for a bridge to link Scotland with Northern Ireland, another announcement of the dead feline variety made in March. Shapps’ tunnel could run between Holyhead to Dublin and had been previously been priced at £15bn. This Holyhead-Dublin link would ostensibly be twice as long as the Channel Tunnel, according to the Daily Brexit (which some still call the Express. Ed.).

Distances seem to be a major problem for the combined intellectual might of the civil servants in the DfT and the massed ranks of the country’s free and fearless press.

Firstly, the Channel Tunnel is 31.35 miles (50.45 km) long, so the Shapps Chute would be under twice the length of the Tunnel sous la Manche.

Secondly, there is the very minor matter that the straight line distance between Holyhead and Dublin is 67.5 miles (108.6 km). This means one end of the tunnel would terminate several miles out in the Irish Sea.

I wonder what lengths the feasibility study currently reported as being underway has taken this minor matter into account.
Bristol on the buses

25/05/2021 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics, Social Media

Buses are Bristol’s major mode of public transport and as your ‘umble scribe is now in possession of a geriatric’s bus pass, he might actually get around to exploring their possibilities.

One linguistic peculiarity of using the city’s buses which must be perplexing to outsiders and visitors is the use of the term drive to denote the person in charge of the vehicle. This normally takes the form of the grateful form of address “Cheers Drive” as passengers get off at their intended stops.

This phrase was last year used to name a new street in the BS5 postcode area, as reported at the time by BBC News.

It now seems that the buses themselves have also taken to addressing potential passengers in dialect, as per this photo courtesy of the WeLoveKeynsham Twitter account.

Of course, it’s not always been a smooth ride on the city’s buses.

Back in 1963, there was a boycott of the city’s buses led by youth worker Paul Stephenson and others over the Bristol Omnibus Company’s shameful and discriminatory refusal to employ black or Asian people.

Furthermore, the reliability of quality of services has been a perennial problem and formed the subject of Fred Wedlock’s song, Bristol Buses.

Cheers drive!
Germany – one place for public code

10/05/2021 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

German IT news website heise reports that software developed with taxpayers’ money should be made freely available by public sector organisations to enable its further development. Together with the states of North Rhine-Westhalia and Baden-Württemberg, the German Federal Interior Ministry wants to establish an open source platform for the public sector. It should make it easier for the Federal government, regional governments and local authorities to reuse open source software and jointly continue its development.

The overriding aim is digital sovereignty, i.e. minimising the current dependency on predominantly US hardware and software manufacturers. The repository should also be a documentation platform and include a user manual. Further important aspects in this case involve legal certainty, comprehensible rules for use, a general explanation of open source and bringing the community together.

Home for free code

A group of experts made up of members of the Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA), the Bundes-Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Kommunalen IT-Dienstleister e.V (VITAKO) and several collaborators carried out the preliminary work in September 2020 and produced an initial plan for an open source code repository. The initiative is working under the slogan “One place for public code”.

At the same time, the IT Planning Council’s “Cloud Computing and Digital Sovereignty” working group of the IT Planning Council decided to pilot an open source code repository. The BMI, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg are currently testing the platform’s initial stage. According to the BMI, a minimum viable product with the central platform’s core functions was achieved at at the end of March. On the basis of this, tests are currently being carried out, whilst the project continues to be developed.

Numerous supporters

“One place for public code” is also associated with the initiative. Its supporters include local authority associations, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), The Document Foundation (TDF), Wikimedia Deutschland and many major city councils such as Munich and Frankfurt am Main.
The vision thing

08/05/2021 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

“The vision thing” is a comment made by George H. W. Bush ahead of the 1988 United States presidential election when urged to spend some time thinking about his plans for his prospective presidency.

The embracing of vision – with or without the thing – is widespread in public life in Britain at both local and national levels. Every party leader is expected to have one; and any plans for the wholesale remodelling of large areas of our town and cities are expected incorporate vision too.

An investigation into the prevalence of vision in the organs of the British state reveals just how ingrained use of the term is. A quick Google search for items containing “vision” on websites within the .gov.uk domain is revealing.

No, your eyes do not deceive you – 2.3 million instances of use.

Looking more locally, a recent search (mid-April) of the Bristol City Council website for the term returns a total of over 4,200 hits. It has probably risen since last month (and with all that evident ocular deployment, one would have thought that the inhabitants of the Counts Louse – which some refer to as City Hall – would realise there’s a major cleanliness problem with the city’s streets. Ed.).

With all that vision in use in the country, opticians and their colleagues must be raking in the money. 😀

Sie hatten Recht, Herr Bundeskanzler!

Or is it necessarily opticians and associated practitioners that should be profiting from this phenomenon? There is some scepticism about the benefits of visions.

George H.W. Bush was mentioned at the start of this post. One of his contemporaries was the former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

Schmidt was very dismissive of visions and is on record as stating the following:

Wer Visionen hat, soll zum Arzt gehen.

This translates into English as:

Anyone who has visions should go to the doctor.

Will anyone working for the British state be visiting their GP soon, either individually or en masse?

I doubt it.

Finally, when someone summoned up the courage to ask Schmidt what his big vision was, he is reputed to have referred them to Bush! 😀
Twitter: a correction

07/05/2021 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

The media and social media today are awash with the result of yesterday’s Hartlepool by-election which was surprisingly won from Labour by the Tories*.

However, some of the language being used to describe the victory is prone to error, such as the example below from Twitter’s trending topics.

As the winning Tory was not the sitting MP, the correct way to describe her is as a candidate, not an MP. She only becomes an MP upon winning a parliamentary (by-)election.

In times past such a basic error would have been picked by a sub-editor or similar, but they were all dispensed with some years ago. 🙁

*= Hartlepool hasn’t had a Tory Member of Parliament since it was represented in Westminster by Peter Mandelson. 😉
Illiteracy or bloody-mindedness?

29/04/2021 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

It’s now 10 years since TidyBS5 was inaugurated by local residents with the support of local ward councillors to campaign for a more pleasant street scene in the Bristol council wards of Easton and Lawrence Hill.

During all that time, both residents and councillors has persistently call on Bristol City Council to increase both the presence and visibility of enforcement action, but our efforts have only been rewarded in the last couple of years with higher fixed penalty notices (FPNs) for environmental crimes in 2019 and the recent recruiting of more enforcement officers (posts passim).

Largely as a result of the actions of local residents raising awareness of environmental blight, the streets of Lawrence Hill and Easton are now marginally freer of fly-tipping than they were then, but problems still persist, not helped by the lower footfall due to lockdown and the amount of DIY and building works being undertaken.

This was spotted at the junction of Walton Street and Chaplin Road.

Is this an example of illiteracy or bloody-mindedness? Kindly give your answers in the comments.
Greens take impressive lead in recycling box poll

29/04/2021 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

It’s one week to go to the elections for Bristol City Council, the elected Mayor of Bristol (with 2 of the 9 candidates standing for election to the office vowing to hold a referendum with a view to abolishing the autocratic post. Ed.), the West of England Combined Authority Mayor and the Avon & Somerset Police & Crime Commissioner.

My recycling box is rapidly filling up with election materials as the parties all vie for my cross against their candidates’ names on the four ballot papers (Hint to canvassers: don’t bother with my house any more; I’ve already voted by post! Ed.).

Following the arrival on the latest leaflet on the doormat, the poll has been updated and now shows the following state of the parties.

The Greens seem determined to win Lawrence Hill ward and are pulling out all the stops. As they’re normally in fourth place, the Tories have managed on token leaflet as have the Liberal Democrats, who were once renowned for their zeal in bunging up letterboxes with their literature.

Why has there only been one Labour leaflet? Is this a symptom of lower levels of activism in the wake of members deserting the party after the election of Keir Starmer (whom some unkindly refer to as Keith. Ed.)?

All will become clear next week.

Maybe.
German federal elections 2021 – Demands for digitally sovereign society

27/04/2021 Steve WoodsOpen Data, Open Source, Politics, Tech, Uncategorized
German digital civil society organisations have made four demands for a digitally sovereign society to politicians standing in the 2021 federal election in late September 2021. Among them is the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), which works to ensure that software developed with public money shall be published under a free and open source software licence.

On 1st April 2020, German civil society organisations working for an independent digital infrastructure and free access to knowledge called on politicians to learn from the crisis and strengthen digital civil society.

In an open letter (German) of that date, the signatories (Chaos Computer Club, D64 – Zentrum für Digitalen Fortschritt, Epicenter.Works, the FSFE, Stiftung Neue Verantwortung, Superrr Lab and Wikimedia Deutschland) also made clear recommendations for action. However, far too little has happened since then. The past year has made it clear that politics and the public sector are overwhelmed with their own digital transformation and are setting priorities in digital policy that do not meet the needs of society. We are far from a digitally sovereign society.That is why a broad spectrum of organisations, including the FSFE has once again come together to support politics with their expertise.

With four demands, the network shows how digitisation can succeed for a digitally sovereign society – and calls upon the parties to make digitisation for the common good a central topic in the forthcoming federal elections.

Photo courtesy of FSFE

Four demands for the federal government
- Digital Sovereignty: politicians must anchor the digital sovereignty of society as the highest maxim in digital policy. Instead of a digital ministry, we need a mission for the coming legislative period that elevates digital sovereignty to a guiding principle and is drafted and evaluated together with representatives from civil society, science and business.
- Participation and Transparency: civil society must finally be afforded the same opportunities as business and science to contribute its expertise via a civil society quota in political advisory bodies, communication and transparency on procedures of political decision-making processes, legally defined deadlines for consultations and machine-readable documentation.
- Public Money, Public Good: publicly funded solutions must be accessible to all under a free licence so that no knowledge is lost or problems are solved twice. It should be a legal requirement that software developed for the public sector with public money must be published under a free and open source software licence. If public money is involved, the code should also be public. In addition, public sector data must be open data.
- Sustainable Digitisation: digitisation can only succeed if the development of digital infrastructure is economically and socially viable. To this end, diversity in digitisation and the development and maintenance of secure, decentralised digital infrastructure for society must be promoted in the long term.
5th May launch event

A new organisation and website – https://digitalezivilgesellschaft.org/ – has been established to promote the above demands and a launch event will be held on 5th May 2021 from 18:00 to 19:30 hrs to discuss these demands with a panel consisting of Julia Reda (former MEP), Henning Tillmann (software developer and co-chair of D64) and Julia Kloiber (co-founder Superrr Lab). The panel will be moderated by Katja Jäger (betterplace lab). Afterwards, all participants will have the opportunity to exchange ideas on solutions, measures and calls for action in four thematic rooms. FSFE’s Alexander Sander will moderate the room on “Public Money? Public Code!”.
Alleged Prime Minister pwned

23/04/2021 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

Yesterday, which was Earth Day, US President Joe Biden organised a two-day virtual climate summit bringing together dozens of world leaders.

Apart from world political leaders, Biden also inexplicably invited one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Britain’s part-time alleged Prime Minister, to participate.

Besides his propensity never to let the truth escape from his lips, Johnson is well known for his lack of attention to detail, his loose tongue and gaffes; and true to form he didn’t fail to embarrass the country of which he is supposed to be the highest elected public official, as shown in the following video clip.

Yes, you did hear that correctly – “politically correct green act of bunny hugging“!

Needless to say, Bozo the Clown had half of the country’s social media users rolling their eyes in despair, condemning his cavalier attitude and wondering what the blonde buffoon was going to sully next with his reverse Midas Touch.

However, it wasn’t just Britons who reacted to Bozo’s gaffe.

Amongst them was one Greta Thunberg, an 18 year-old Swede whose name is not exactly unknown on the world stage where climate change is concerned.

Greta very quickly changed her Twitter bio to reflect Johnson’s words.

Nice work, Greta! 😀

As for the embarrassment that is part-time alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, you can consider yourself well and truly pwned.

Friday afternoon update: the Green Party has now joined in the general mockery of Johnson’s remarks.

Home for free code

Numerous supporters

Four demands for the federal government

5th May launch event

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