Oddities | Steve Woods

Pound surges against Euro

21/05/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities, Politics

Ever since the so-called United Kingdom disastrously withdrew from the European Union, the supporters of Brexit have been promising Brexit bonuses. The first of these could have finally happened, if the photo below of a display in a foreign exchange bureau in Bristol is telling the truth.

$600 for a fiver? Your ‘umble scribe couldn’t believe his eyes! Have the economies of the EU27 gone into total meltdown in the last couple of days?

Perhaps all those air miles clocked up by Kemi Badenoch, Secretary of State for Patronising, are paying off as told to the Europhobic hacks at the Daily Brexit (which some still call the Express. Ed.)

Well, if Brexit really is going that swimmingly, your correspondent reckons he’ll shortly be seeing unicorns on the Downs – Bristol’s answer to the sunlit uplands.

Is this a Brexit bonus or a mistake? Have your say below in the comments.
Gerrymander, Jacob?

16/05/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics

Jacob Rees-Mogg, whom the voters of North East Somerset were foolish enough to elect as their Member of Parliament, has a reputation for not living in the present. So much of a problem that Tim Fenton of Zelo Street refers to him as “the member for times past“.

It now appears Jacob has trouble in understanding the English language too.

Yesterday’s Independent carries a report on The Mogg’s speech to the far-right National Conservatism conference yesterday in which he criticised the new voter photo ID rules that were introduced in time for the recent local government elections in England, elections in which the Tories did particularly badly, losing over 1,000 council seats.

In his speech, The Mogg stated the following:

Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them – as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections.

We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.

Gerrymander, Jacob?

Voter suppression, surely?

It’s at this point that a dictionary comes in handy. The dictionary definition is “to divide an area into election districts (= areas that elect someone) in a way that gives an unfair advantage to one group or political party.”

One would have thought someone who has been a politician as long as The Mogg would know that, but poor old Jacob was badly educated, first at Westminster Under School, followed by Eton College and finally at Trinity College, Oxford.

As regards gerrymander itself, it has an interesting etymology. It’s a portmanteau word originating from the USA in 1812. The gerry element is a reference to Elbridge Gerry, one of the country’s Founding Fathers, whilst the mander element is derived from salamander.

While Governor of Massachusetts, Gerry signed into law a bill that rearranged the state’s electoral districts to give advantage to the Democratic-Republican Party, although Gerry himself was said to disapprove of the practice. When mapped, one of the contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble a mythological salamander. Thus the term was born with its spread and popularity sustained by a political cartoon depicting a strange animal with claws, wings and a dragon-like head that supposedly resembled the oddly shaped district.
Bureaucratic logic

28/04/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities, Politics

The West of England Combined Authority (WECA) is a combined authority consisting of the local authorities of Bristol, South Gloucestershire, and Bath and North East Somerset.

The authority’s functions, as specified by the West of England Combined Authority Order, mostly cover planning, skills and local transport.

And this post is specifically concerned with transport and buses in particular.

Since passing pensionable age last year, your ‘umble scribe has been entitled to a concessionary bus pass offering him free bus travel within England, subject to various conditions.

That being so, your correspondent has found himself doing things he hasn’t done for many a decade, like running for buses. 😀

At the start of April, significant changes were made to bus services within the WECA area. To announce the changes, posters were put up at bus stops. At the foot of each poster, some useful information is given (not that the remainder of the posters did not also provide useful information. Ed.), as shown in the photo below.

Like your ‘umble scribe, readers may also be perplexed at the advice given to those without internet access to contact the Transport Operations Team by email. Obviously a kind of bureaucratic logic of which normal mortals do not wot is at work, together with a degree of perspicacity to which the fictional Yes Minister could only aspire.

That’s not to say that the authority does not have aspirations. Indeed, the term vision appears some 500 times* on the WECA website, according to a site-specific Google search.

Those working at the authority are therefore in need of a doctor in the opinion of the late West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who famously quipped “Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen“, usually translated into English as Anyone who has visions should go to the doctor. Perhaps a logician would also not go amiss. 😉

* = This count is a lot less than the instances of vision on the Bristol City Council website (posts passim).

Update 07/05/23: five weeks after the actual timetable changes were implemented, new revised timetables have finally started to appear at bus stops; see photo below. No need to rush as it appears that if you’re a local government organisation, you are at complete liberty to do your allotted tasks entirely to your own satisfaction!
Bilingual illiteracy

26/04/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Social Media

Playwright Oscar Wilde gave his character Lady Augusta Bracknell some memorable lines in his play The Importance of Being Earnest.
Of these, one in particular related to the difference between misfortune and carelessness:
To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

In the case of contractors working for gas supply company Wales & West Utilities in Abertawe/Swansea, carelessness seems to be their modus operandi, as per this report on the Swansea Bay News website.

On a job outside Llangyfelach Primary School, the utility’s contractors managed to spell school incorrectly as shcool. Sharp-eyed Cymraeg-speaking readers will aslo notice that its Welsh equivalent ysgol is also misspelt as ysool, although this appears to be from an earlier job, judging by the colour differences in the asphalt.

Image credit: Rob Jones

Speaking to the BBC, Wales & West Utilities said the cock-up had occurred during repairs to the local gas network. Its spokesman Phil Whittier said: “Unfortunately, (we) have misspelt the word ‘school'”. However, denied any responsibility for the misspelling of ysgol. The BBC reports that Swansea Council has been contacted about that incorrect spelling.

The error has gone around the world, being mocked as far afield as Australia, with some parents suggesting on social media those responsible be made to write school out correctly one hundred times.
Sunak and his low-carbon escort

25/04/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics, Security

It’s not unusual for heads of government and state to have their motorcades accompanied by motorcycle escorts, as seen in the example below from 2009 of the then Chinese president Hu Jintao‘s visit to Zagreb in Croatia.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
On Sunday – the day of the London marathon – a fleet of cars containing the alleged Prime Minister was spotted surrounded by two sets of police officers – one on bicycles and the other on foot.

Sunak has in recent months been criticised for his disproportionate use of flying, both on private aircraft and on military ones, including one of a mere 25 minutes’ duration.

The Telegraph has suggested the action was to thwart the attentions of environmental protesters from Extinction Rebellion.

If that were not the case and Fishy Rishi was making a vain attempt to reduce his carbon footprint, your ‘umble scribe would like to introduce him to a new word to add to his vocabulary: greenwash.
An honour indeed

23/03/2023 Steve WoodsOddities, Social Media
A bridge too far

15/03/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

The M4 motorway is the main road connection across the Severn estuary between England and South Wales.

Originally it crossed the river at Aust via the Severn Bridge/Pont Hafren, replacing an old ferry service .

After the completion of the Second Severn Crossing, the section of the M4 from Olveston in England to Magor/Magwyr in Wales was re-designated as the M48.

In an act of Whitehall arrogance, the Second Severn Crossing was later renamed the Prince of Wales Bridge with no public consultation, almost as if to prove that Wales is still England’s oldest colony.

Repairs are due to be carried out to potholes on the new bridge and this was duly reported on the Bristol (Evening) Post/Bristol Live website, as is also shown by the following screenshot.

A small problem occurs here. Knowledgeable readers will at once discern that the bridge used to illustrate the link from the site’s home page to the article is actually the 1960s Severn Bridge, not the Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor Bridge. Has Reach plc also dispensed with picture editors as well as sub-editors in a dual bid to reduce both costs and the quality of its so-called ‘journalism‘,

Finally it is worth noting that this story does not appear on the Post’s Reach stable companion for South Wales, the Western Mail/Wales Online website (affectionately known as Tales Online. Ed.).
Sheffield’s unique celebration of Dewi Sant

04/03/2023 Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

the first of March is Saint David’s Day and Sheffield City Council decided to mark the Welsh patron saint’s day in its own inimitable way, as reported by Nation Cymru, by flying the wrong flag from the Town Hall.

Instead of Y Ddraig Goch, Sheffield City Council ran Saint Andrew’s Cross – the flag of Scotland – up the corporation flagpole.

However, by early afternoon the Scottish Saltire had been replaced above the Town Hall with the flag of St David – a yellow cross on a black background.

The council also put out a statement declaring: “We are really sorry that the incorrect flag was flown above the Town Hall today. As soon as we knew, we rectified this immediately. We want to wish all who celebrate a Happy St David’s Day.”

Nevertheless, this is not the first time this particular local authority has been guilty of seeing all Celts as alike. In 2019, the Council celebrated St Patrick’s Day by flying Y Ddraig Goch from the Town Hall, as the BBC reported at the time, as well as being posted on social media

Your ‘umble scribe is reminded at this point of the remark of Lady Bracknell regarding carelessness in Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest.
Campbells responds to bigot

23/02/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

One disadvantage of social media is it allows hard-of-thinking bigots a platform to express their prejudices.

However, this might not always work to the advantage of the prejudiced, as the exchange below between a Tennessee redneck and Customer Service for the Campbell Soup Company re homophobia illustrates.

According to Wikipedia, chicken soup – with or without noodles – ‘has long been touted as a form of folk medicine to treat symptoms of the common cold and related conditions. In 2000, scientists at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha studied the effect of chicken soup on the inflammatory response in vitro. They found that some components of the chicken soup inhibit neutrophil migration, which may have an anti-inflammatory effect that could hypothetically lead to temporary ease from symptoms of illness’.

No research has yet been conducted into the curative properties of chicken soup on prejudice and homophobia.

However, Campbells could be onto something. In the words of the French chef and culinary writer Auguste Escoffier:

Soup puts the heart at ease, calms down the violence of hunger, eliminates the tension of the day, and awakens and refines the appetite.

Bon appétit, bigot! 😀
Calamity and music

18/02/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

An apposite quotation from Once in a Lifetime</em> off Talking Heads’ 1980 album Remain in Light captions this image which has now turned up twice this week in my Mastodon social media feed.

Stop making sense!

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