The video below features very first performance of ‘Mama’, which was composed by the youth campaigners of Integrate Bristol, a local charity formed to help with the integration of young people and children who have arrived from other countries and cultures.
Integrate Bristol is also active combating violence against women and girls; this includes the fight against female genital mutilation (FGM).
‘Mama’ was written in honour of Efua Dorkenoo, also known as Efua Mama, the ‘mother’ of the movement to end FGM.
Yesterday, 5th February, was National Voter Registration Day.
Many political parties, civil society organisations and others were yesterday encouraging the disenfranchised to register to vote for the forthcoming local council and general elections on 7th May.
One of those parties campaigning was UKIP, which doubtless was ignorant of the hypocrisy of its message in the tweet shown in the following screenshot.
That’s right! A party actively opposing immigration to the UK is actively encouraging UK citizens who’ve become immigrants in other countries to register to vote in elections in the old mother country.
Capita Translating & Interpreting has been ordered to pay costs of £16,000 by judge Sir James Munby, president of the family division, over its failure to provide interpreters seven times in the course of a single adoption case, The Guardian reports.
The case in question was initiated in the family court in 2012. On six occasions at Dover Family Proceedings Court and Canterbury County Court, Capita T&I’s interpreters failed to appear or arrived too late, forcing the abandonment of hearings at which the Slovak-speaking parents were contesting the removal of their children. When the case was transferred to the High Court in London in May 2014 to be heard by Sir James, Capita T&I’s interpreters once again failed to appear. He was forced to adjourn the proceedings and ordered that HM Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) should provide interpreters instead.
There have been serial failures by Capita in this case against a background of wider systemic problems… [These were] not minor but extensive, and, at two different stages of the litigation, they had a profound effect on the conduct of the proceedings.
Sir James ordered Capita to pay Kent County Council £15,927.36.
TidyBS5 campaigners met the Mayor at the junction of Stapleton Road and Milsom Street – a notorious fly-tipping hotspot – to express their concerns about litter and fly-tipping locally, as reported by Bristol 24/7 (bit different from North Street, isn’t it, George? Ed.).
The Bristol Post also reported on George’s visit to Stapleton Road, managing in its own inimitable, cock-eyed way to describe TidyBS as a “street-cleaning community group“.
Although your ‘umble scribe was unable to attend due to other commitments, feedback has been positive. Witnesses report that George seemed genuinely shocked by the stinky bin by which he was confronted/ambushed. In addition, he gave a commitment to bring one of the Make Sunday Special events to Stapleton Road.
On Tuesday this week, local councillors Marg Hickman and Afzal Shah, together with local residents and Lorena from Up Our Street took Bristol’s Assistant Mayor for Neighbourhoods Daniella Radice on a walk around the Stapleton Road area to acquaint her with our local litter and fly-tipping difficulties.
One thing that shocked Daniella was the way the council’s contractors May Gurney dump the plastic liner bags from litter bins on the pavement for later collection (sometimes the next day. Ed.), which also contributes to making the BS5 area look grotty; this was a practice Daniella undertook to investigate and/or change. We also drew her attention to concerns in reporting street cleansing problems via Twitter, the council’s online reporting system and by telephone (0117 922 2100 if you’d care to give it a go. Ed.).
Daniella was also alerted to the totally inadequate – if any – recycling facilities provided for residents of the city’s tower blocks. For instance, Twinnell House in Easton houses hundreds of people. Their recycling “facilities” are illustrated below.
That’s right, a mere 6 wheelie bins!
Marg Hickman also pointed out that millions of pounds are and have been spent in refurbishing the city’s council-owned high-rise blocks. However, the refurbishment plans include no provision for recycling facilities. This is incredible for a city that allegedly prides itself on its green credentials and is the current European Green Capital!
Another item raised with Daniella was the lack of recycling collections for residents living on the lower part of Stapleton Road above the shops. They’re being charged for recycling collections in their council tax, but these collections are not provided. If I lived on Stapleton Road, I’d report Bristol City Council to the police for fraud and/or obtaining pecuniary advantage! đ
On Wednesday evening this week Up Our Street hosted a TidyBS5 task force meeting, which attracted about a dozen local residents from across the BS5 area, as well as councillor Marg Hickman and representatives from the local ACORN branch. Various priorities from the Residents’ Rubbish Summit (posts passim), planned forthcoming activities (e.g. consultations, litter picks, etc.) and discovered what skills attendees could provide to benefit TidyBS5.
Afterwards, we had the compulsory campaign photo taken.
The latest French anti-radicalisation publicity in the wake of France’s recent mass murders (posts passim) at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Parisian kosher supermarket has now been released.
Yesterday, the Law Gazette website reported that 3 years into its courts and tribunals interpreting contract with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), Capita Translation & Interpreting has yet to meet its key performance target – that of the percentage of requests filled for the provision of court interpreters.
According to the latest figures released by the MoJ, Capita Translation & Interpreting completed 94.8% of requests for language services in the 3rd quarter (July to September) of 2014, i.e. well short of the 98% target specified in its contract.
The Ministry of Justice said this was the hapless outsourcer’s highest success rate since the contract started in 2012.
Capita Translation & Interpreting is supposed to hit that 98% target every month and has yet to meet it at all in one single month over the last 3 years.
There’s a phrase for this: abject failure.
However, the MoJ seems to have a particular blind spot for its pet contractor’s pathetic performance. Courts minister Shailesh Vara said the interpreting contract had continued to deliver significant improvements since being introduced to tackle inefficiencies and inconsistencies (my weasel words detector is working overtime. Ed.).
Others involved in the administration of justice differ radically from the MoJ stance.
The Law Society said it was “shocking” that after nearly 3 years of the MoJ having a sole provider, the service was still failing to reach its performance target.
“A lack of available interpreters costs time and causes unnecessary adjournments, resulting in avoidable distress to victims and inconvenience to witnesses,” the Society said.
Furthermore, Shadow justice minister Andy Slaughter said it was shocking the government was unable to get a grip after three years into the contract.
I cannot disagree with either the Law Society or Mr. Slaughter. Had my failure to meet targets been of the order of that of Capita Translation & Interpreting, I would not have survived the last quarter of a century as a freelance linguist and been consigned to the dole queue long since.
You should seriously think of showing Capita T&I the door, MoJ. If they haven’t been up to the job for the last 3 years, what makes you think they’ll ever change?
It is said that up to 1.5 mn. people are attending the rally.
Amongst the attendees are many politicians, led by President Hollande. Many foreign politicians are also attending.
Charlie Hebdo was a beacon of free speech and freedom of the press. Several of the foreign politicians in attendance represent regimes whose treatment of the press is less than enlightened. They include:
Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates, which in 2013 held an Egyptian journalist incommunicado for a month on suspicion of links with the Moslem Brotherhood;
Messrs Irakli Garibashvili and Boiko Borisov, the Prime Ministers of Georgia and Bulgaria respectively. Both Bulgaria and Georgia have past form for attacking and beating up journalists;
According to the blurb on the European Green Capital website, the “European Green Capital Award (EGCA) has been conceived to recognise and reward local efforts to improve the environment, the economy and the quality of life in cities.”
However, it would appear that there’s been little local effort – apart from protests by local residents and councillors – to improve the environment and quality of life in inner city areas such as Easton, Lawrence Hill and St Pauls, judging by the amount of fly-tipping that still goes on daily on our streets with no sign of a slackening or any meaningful enforcement efforts or action by Bristol’s seemingly impotent or uninterested city council.
The photographs below were taken this morning by local resident Hannah Crudgington and are typical of the grottiness we inner city residents have to endure every day. All the photographs were taken within a couple of hundred metres of each other in the BS5 postcode area.
Was Bristol awarded the European Green Capital award on false premises? Some in the city believe that to be the case. Judging the evidence of my own eyes, awarding Bristol with the European Green Capital award would have been more appropriate.
A Latvian man spent 4 weeks in jail for an offence that would normally have attracted a non-custodial sentence, the Shropshire Star reports.
Rolands Etjantens pleaded guilty on 8th December to a charge of common assault, but was remanded in custody by Telford magistrates to await assessment by the probation service to see if he was suitable for community punishment.
According to his solicitor, Etjantensâ lack of English also meant he was not suitable for unpaid work in the community or supervision by the probation service as both of these would also require the use of interpreters.
District Judge Andrew King ultimately sentenced Etjantens, of no fixed abode, to 42 days in prison, meaning that he would be released within a few days.
Social media has responded quickly to the horrific attack on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris today, which resulted in 12 deaths and 5 injured. Four of those killed were Charlie Hebdo cartoonists Charb, Cabu, Tignous and Georges Wolinski.
The press office of Amnesty International in France has described that attack as “A black day for press freedom”.
Many Twitter accounts changed their avatar to the Je suis Charlie image shown below, whilst many tweets were also tagged with the #JesuisCharlie hashtag.
Some of the harshest condemnations of the attack have come from the attackers’ co-religionists. The imam of Drancy, Hassen Chalghoumi, is reported to have said: “Their barbarism has nothing to do with Islam”.
My deepest condolences to the victims and their families.
Capita Translating & Interpreting has been ordered to pay costs of £16,000 by judge 
