Politics

  • The FoI requests go in for #tidybs5

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    The struggle to clear the inner city of fly-tipping and litter continues (posts passim).

    Earlier this week it was revealed that ward councillor Marg Hickman had taken Assistant Mayor Mark Bradshaw on a walk along Stapleton Road. Cllr. Bradshaw professed himself to be shocked and angered by what he saw. Let’s hope his involvement manages to stir council officers to take the area’s problems rather more seriously than they have to date.

    Jane Street - a regular fly-tipping hotspot in BS5
    Jane Street – a regular fly-tipping hotspot in BS5. Picture courtesy of @HelmoreAndHunt

    My latest 2 FoI requests have now been submitted. Both seek to see how the BS5 area compares with the rest of the city as regards enforcement action as there is a distinct impression locally that the area is regarded as less worth bothering about than the city’s more affluent parts. The first concerns fly-tipping in the BS5 area and is reproduced below.

    Dear Bristol City Council,

    This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

    1. As regards Stapleton Road (the section between its junctions with Trinity Road and Fishponds Road) in particular:

    a) How many fixed penalty notices have been issued for fly-tipping on this road in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

    b) How many people have been prosecuted for fly-tipping on this road in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

    2. As regards the BS5 area in general:

    a) How many fixed penalty notices have been issued for fly-tipping in this area in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

    b) How many people have been prosecuted for fly-tipping in this area in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

    Yours, etc.

    The second concerns the associated problem litter.

    Dear Bristol City Council,

    This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information
    Act.

    1. As regards Bristol in general:

    a) How many fixed penalty notices have been issued for dropping litter throughout the city in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

    b) How many people have been prosecuted for dropping litter throughout the city in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

    2. As regards the BS5 area in general:

    a) How many fixed penalty notices have been issued for dropping litter in this area in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

    b) How many people have been prosecuted for dropping litter in this area in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

    Yours, etc.

  • Islamic State: potted history

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics

    If you’re having difficulty in understanding what’s happening with the militants of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria at the moment without going any further back than Bush War II (the overthrow of Saddam Hussein – and the roots of the conflicts and tensions in the region do go back to at least the end of World War 1 and the Treaty of Versailles! Ed.) then Aubrey Bailey of Fleet in Hampshire has provided a concise and not too confusing potted guide.

    image of newspaper letter with the heading Clear as mud

    Hat tip: Marina S.

  • Introducing FixMyDocuments.eu

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

    FixMyDocuments.eu logoFixmydocuments.eu is a campaign aimed at helping European public sector organisations make better use of open document formats, such as ODF.

    A number of public sector organisations throughout Europe have decided to support open document formats when communicating with the public and FixMyDocuments.eu is a campaign to help them implement their decision effectively. One of the largest of these is the UK government, which recently opted for open standards for communicating and working with anyone outside Whitehall (posts passim).

    Inspired by the FixMyStreet project, FixMyDocuments.eu aims to help European public sector organisations that have decided to support ODF to implement their decision by documenting, tracking and reporting their compliance online. Anybody can report public web pages which are not compliant with the decision, which are then checked and added to a central listing which is updated weekly.

    One of the first supporters of FixMyDocuments.eu was European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes. In her statement of support (no. 6 on the list. Ed.) Neelie Kroes says:

    When open alternatives are available, no citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to use a particular company’s technology to access government information. No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one, through a government having made that choice first. I know a smart business decision when I see one – choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed.

    Well said, Neelie!

  • Mobility scooter drink-driving case adjourned due to lack of interpreter

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics

    image of gilded statue of Justice on top of Old BaileyYesterday’s Stoke Sentinel reports on the case of a Romanian man in court on a charge of being drunk in charge of a mobility scooter.

    On 7th August Staffordshire police stopped Romanian-born Silviu Croitoru on the A34 London Road in Newcastle-under-Lyme: 47 year-old Croitrou – now resident in Trent Vale, Stoke-on-Trent – was driving his mobility scooter at the time and gave reading of 95 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath; the legal limit is 35 microgrammes.

    Magistrates at the North Staffordshire Justice Centre in Newcastle-under-Lyme adjourned the case to arrange for the attendance of an interpreter and to allow time for defence representations.

    One would have thought that if the defendant required an interpreter, this should have been noted and arranged for the initial hearing, but waste and incompetence seem to be endemic in the justice system nowadays.

  • Open data: Hamburg establishes transparency portal

    Steve WoodsOpen Data, Politics, Tech

    The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg has put a transparency portal online, heise reports. Data and documents from the city administration and publicly-owned companies are being made available in the schedule of information. The portal also comprises the data from the former Hamburg Open Data Portal. Amongst other things, the transparency portal makes available decisions by Hamburg’s Senate, minutes and resolutions, budget and management plans, policies and specialist guidelines, official statistics and progress reports, geodata, the tree protection register, environmental measurement data and commercial data.

    logo of Hamburg transparency portal

    The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg is therefore complying with the requirements of the Transparency Law, which became effective in the city in October 2013. According to this legislation, Hamburg must publish its reports, contracts and Senate decisions on the internet. Under the previous Information Freedom Law, it only had to provide information upon request.

  • Project Fear revs up

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    The No campaign against Scottish independence has since the outset been playing on people’s uncertainties about the fate of an independent Scotland to such an extent that supporters of independence have dubbed it Project Fear.

    In recent times, some of these have included some strange arguments, such as the one illustrated below.

    headline reading Scots could lose Top Gear

    That’s right! Project Fear has now put the idea in the minds of Caledonian petrolheads that they could lose the likes of Clarkson & Co.

    I can think of nothing more that would make me vote yes were I a Scot and was eligible to partake in the referendum.

  • EU public sector machine translation tool now available online

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Source, Politics, Tech

    EU flagJoinup, the European Union’s public sector open source news website, reports today that MT@EC, the Machine Translation service developed by the European Commission under the ISA programme, can now also be accessed over a secure (https) internet connection; previously it was only accessible to institutions connected to the highly secure sTESTA network. The new web access now also allows public administrations that are not connected to the sTESTA network to request access for their staff.

    MT@EC is currently available free of charge to all public sector organisations. Since the tool has been trained mainly on official EU documents, it can handle and translate texts and documents related to EU policy and collaboration in the 24 official EU languages better than other tools. A presentation of the MT@EC service, including screenshots of the user interface, is available as a PDF. Interested organisations have the opportunity to participate in ‘customisation pilot projects’, concerning which more information can be found in the document “ΜT for Member States: Description of pilots” (PDF).

    In this 2nd major release of MT@EC, the quality of the output has been further improved by adding data from more sources and by enhancing the processing for the current 6th generation of the machine translation engines. Users can now also submit PDF files, whilst support for other formats has been improved. Furthermore, language auto-detection is now available for text snippets. Users can drag and drop files if they are using the interface through the Firefox or Chrome web browsers. Users can also choose not to receive the translated text by email for confidentiality reasons but instead download it from their personal workspace in the interface.

    The European Commission (DG Translation) is organising a user conference on the machine translation service on 5th December 2014 in Brussels.

  • Jane Street, Bristol celebrates Zero Waste Week

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

    Zero Waste Week, now in its seventh year, is currently taking place in the United Kingdom between 1st and 7th September 2014.

    The aim of Zero Waste Week is to “an opportunity to reduce landfill waste & save money“.

    The theme of this year’s event is “One More Thing“.

    Jane Street in Redfield, Bristol, shows in the picture below just what can be achieved with “One More Thing” in Zero Waste Week, in this case, one more instance of fly-tipping!

    Jane Street fly-tipping
    Image courtesy of Amy Harrison

    As part of the campaign to clear up Easton and Lawrence Hill wards (under the #tidybs5 moniker. Ed.), I recently attended a meeting with Marg Hickman, my local councillor, and council officers (news passim). At that meeting I was informed by the officers that the problem of fly-tipping in Jane Street had disappeared since a local mafrish – a café used for chewing khat – had closed down following the UK’s outlawing of khat. Obviously the council officers concerned hadn’t bargained for the persistence of Bristol’s filthy fly-tipping community!

    Besides alerting @BristolCouncil via Twitter, fly-tipping can be reported to the city council by:

    • using the dedicated fly-tipping report form on the council website (which also has a mobile version that works on smartphones);
    • a third party smartphone app, such as My Council (which is available for both Android and iOS; and
    • telephoning 0117 922 2100.

    The most direct reporting route is using the fly-tipping form as the report is sent directly to the department concerned, whereas the other methods require the report to be forwarded by its original recipient.

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