Media | Steve Woods

Day against DRM

09/07/2017 Steve WoodsMedia, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

Today, Sunday 9th July, is the Day against DRM.

DRM is the software that comes bolted to your digital media and computerised devices and tries to police your behaviour. The major media companies are its masters, and they justify it as a necessary evil to prevent file sharing.

However, it does more than that and also does worse than that: DRM gives its owners power over our cars, medical devices, phones, computers and more; in addition, it opens a deep crack in our digital rights and freedoms – a crack will only get wider and more dangerous as our societies continue to interweave with technology.

I support the global campaign led by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to raise the awareness of issues related to the so-called Digital Rights Management software. As any other proprietary technology, DRM is killing user freedom of choice and should therefore always be avoided.

For more details, see Defective by Design’s dedicated Day Against DRM page.
Post politics

03/07/2017 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Politics

The Bristol Post, the city’s newspaper of (warped) record, hasn’t had and doesn’t have a reputation for accuracy in reporting – a situation which has not improved since it and all the other Local World regional newspaper titles were taken over by Trinity Mirror.

This is more than evident in the title’s reporting of politics today.

The last (New) Labour government had a reputation for authoritarianism and what can best be described as “control-freakery“, so it is no surprise to see the Post assigning the comrades an authoritarian and control freak role amongst today’s headlines.

Mind how you go now! 😉

Furthermore, for the sake of balance and impartiality, the Post also includes some news of the Conservatives, as per the following screenshot.

At this point, a small history lesson might be in order.

The nickname of the Conservative and Unionist Party – to give them their full name – is the Tory Party.

As a piece of English vocabulary, Tory has interesting origins. Etymologically, it’s derived from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe, which equates in modern Irish to tóraí and to tòraidh in modern Scottish Gaelic. It has the meaning of outlaw, robber or brigand, from the Irish word tóir, meaning “pursuit”, since outlaws were “pursued men”.

It appears that since the term was coined, the Conservatives’ outlawry has expanded to encompass vandalism and careless driving. 😀

If more classes of crime can be ascribed to the party, please mention them in the comments below.

Update: as of this afternoon, one of these howlers has been corrected by the residents of the Temple Way Ministry of Truth. However, the Conservative Party are still responsible on the Post website for robbery and mayhem. 🙂
Lincoln Blue

02/06/2017 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

There are 6 days to go until the polls open for Theresa May’s snap election that she wasn’t going to call and the war of words is really hotting up.

This blog has previously drawn attention to Theresa May’s description of the Conservatives as the “Nasty Party” (posts passim) and how under her premiership, she and her members have striven to be as nasty as they can.

This has continued with increasing fury during the election campaign and has intensified as the Tories’ lead in the opinion polls has narrowed, as shown by this series of tweets by the party’s faithful in Grantham, birthplace of the grocer’s daughter who went on to become the Conservatives’ revered Leaderene (once known as the “Milk Snatcher”. Ed.).

In that series of postings, Lincolnshire Tories have been faithfully parroting the bile the party has been encouraging their allies in the right-wing mainstream media since their return to government in 2010.

Note too, the spelling error in the final tweet: “rouges” instead of “rogues“. It must be an orthographical error as I can conceive of no predictive text application that would come up with such a substitute.

Any rouge, otherwise known these days as blusher, is a cosmetic product and thus quite appropriate to this load of made-up nonsense. 🙂

Since the posting of those tweets, the account has been suspended by Twitter, most likely for abusive tweets and/or behaviour.
Mumblin’ Harry Wales

25/05/2017 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

Who’s he?

Some obscure blues artist?

Not quite.

Read on.

Germany’s federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) has decided to cut out part of an English exam including a speech by a a member of Britain’s so-called royal family after thousands of students complained that they could not understand him, The Local reports.

On Tuesday North Rhine Westphalia’s school ministry announced it would be discarding part of a final English exam for 100,000 16 year-olds which involved their listening to a speech by young ‘Arry and then answering questions on it.

More than 45,000 examination candidates signed a petition after the test last week calling for a retake because of Mr Wales’ “mumbly” enunciation and the recording’s poor quality.

Regional teachers’ organisation Lehrer NRW commented that even mother tongue English teachers struggled to understand what he was saying.

There were also complaints about poor vocabulary preparation for other parts of the examination.

In response to the controversy, the NRW education ministry explained that markers would be given more leeway in assessing other areas of the test to account for what was taught in class.

In a press release (German), Lehrer NRW said that what was being proposed was a “fair solution“.
Election special: Corbyn crosses the floor

21/05/2017 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Politics

[Update at end]

There’s a phrase in English politics – crossing the floor. The floor is that of the House of Commons and it means that an elected MP has switched allegiance from one party to another.

One former MP – Sir Hartley Shawcross – was rumoured to be constantly on the point of changing allegiance throughout the early and mid-1950s and was consequently nicknamed Sir Shortly Floorcross. 😀

It is a practice normally indulged in by rank and file MPs, not party leaders, unless Bristol’s newspaper of (warped) record is to be believed as per the following screenshot.

A proper Red Tory?

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. According to the Bristol Post, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has joined the Conservatives just 3 weeks away from a general election.

Your correspondent is now awaiting confirmation of this report from other mainstream media outlets.

Update: 14.00 hrs, 21st May – The header over the link has now been changed to read “Politics”. However, use of a special creative writing technique would have avoided the original gaffe. Its name: proofreading! 😀
Election special: Tory buzzword bingo

03/05/2017 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

Cricket fans have long been acquainted with the delights of Boycott Bingo (posts passim), where the regular verbal mannerisms on Test Match Special of the greatest living Yorkshireman have been turned into a game.

Following the recent announcement of the snap general election next month, followers of politics can now play their own game of buzzword bingo with the stock phrases and soundbites of the nation’s political leaders and election candidates.

Expect these buzzwords to be wheeled out until everyone is absolutely fed up with them, usually after about 48 hours.

The Conservatives’ soundbites are particularly limited in scope and number and, from what I’ve seen and heard, to call their candidates’ and leader’s performance wooden would be an insult to trees.

Below, courtesy of The Guardian, is your very own buzzword bingo card for use with Tory leader Theresa May (whose main method of operation seems to consist of avoiding saying anything of substance. Ed.) and her colleagues.

Good luck!
From our Welsh correspondent

29/04/2017 Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities

It must have been a particularly slow news day that day in Abergavenny as can be told from this headline from the independently-owned Abergavenny Chronicle! 😀
British press puts truth in intensive care

24/04/2017 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

In 1918 US Senator Hiram Warren Johnson is purported to have said: “The first casualty when war comes is truth.”

There may not be a war, but classifying the status of truth as a mere casualty may be insufficient and it now finds itself on life support in intensive care when the predominantly right-wing British press is reporting politics, particularly politics abroad.

Yesterday saw France go to the polls in the first round of the 2017 presidential election, with 11 candidates standing.

Under the French system, the 2 front runners in the first round of the election go forward to a straight winner takes all ballot in the second round.

In yesterday’s ballot the independent candidate Emmanuel Macron polled around 23.7% of vote with Marine Le Pen, leader of the fascist Front National coming in second on roughly 21.5%.

Early opinion polls also give Macron a lead of over 20 percentage points over Le Pen with regard to second round voting intentions and he’s currently predicted to garner 60% of second round votes, thus excluding Le Pen from the Elysée Palace.

However, looking at certain sections of the British press, anyone would think right-wing intolerance had triumphed in this first round.

Here’s The Times, formerly regarded as Britain’s newspaper of record, now reduced to a sad mouthpiece parroting the extreme right-wing agenda of the deeply unpleasant Rupert Murdoch.

Note the large photograph of Marine Le Pen. It’s also worth noting that despite the hype from right-wing media around the world, a $9.8m loan to the FN from a Russian bank with Kremlin links and alleged Russian social media support, Le Pen polled little better than in the 2012 presidential election when she finished third with nearly 18% of the vote.

However, The Times was not alone in its stilted coverage. Here’s the Daily Mail’s front page.

All that can be said is that editor Paul Dacre has presided over misinformation and distortion on a massive scale, but then again the Mail has decades of experience in promoting fascism dating right back to the 1930s and its founder Viscount Rothermere’s infamous “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” piece.

Comme on dit en France, plus ça change…
Vocabulary – what a bummer

23/04/2017 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

It’s a well-known adage that Britain and the United States are 2 countries divided by a common language.

However, that doesn’t seem to stop constant encroachment from over the other side of the Atlantic, as illustrated by the following letter from yesterday’s The Grauniad (dead tree edition).
Je suis saboteur

19/04/2017 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media, Uncategorized
Today’s Daily Mail front page is in full censorious mode following the announcement yesterday morning of a snap election by the UK’s not at all unelected Prime Minister.

As can be seen, those who voted remain in last year’s EU referendum have now been reclassified by the Mail. We’re no longer Remoaners, but Saboteurs.

Indeed the Mail headline has been greatly exercising the Twittersphere this morning, with its wording being compared with both extreme wings of politics (the phrase “Crush the Saboteurs” was first used by Lenin in January 1919. Ed.), with several reminders of the Mail’s infamous Hurrah for the Blackshirts headline from January 1934.

Since this morning Mrs May has defended the Mail’s intemperate stance and headline, pleading “freedom of the press”. Some would argue freedom comes with a sense of responsibility attached, Mrs May.

As someone who voted remain in the referendum and still regards the course towards a so-called hard Brexit favoured by the Prime Minister and entailing leaving the Single Market, the course of action she is advocating looks to me like the ultimate sabotage.

As a person whose life is built around words, the definition and etymology of the word sabotage interests me.

According to Dictionary.com, sabotage has the following meanings as a noun:
- any underhand interference with production, work, etc., in a plant, factory, etc., as by enemy agents during wartime or by employees during a trade dispute; and
- any undermining of a cause
Sabotage can also be used as a verb, meaning to injure or attack by sabotage.

As regards the origins of sabotage, it came into use in English in the late 19th/early 20th century, emanating from the French, equivalent to sabot(er) to botch, orig., to strike, shake up, harry, derivative of sabot, which dates back to the 13th century and denotes a clog or wooden shoe. Sabot originates from an unidentified source that also produced similar words in Old Provençal, Portuguese, Spanish (zapata), Italian (ciabatta), Arabic (sabbat) and Basque (zapata).

As regards sabotage in the context of the UK’s relationship with the European Union/EEC, it must be remembered that the Europhobes (later called Eurosceptics. Ed.) were moaning even before the ink was dry on the signatures of Edward Heath, Alec Douglas-Home and Geoffrey Rippon on the 1972 Treaty of Accession.

The Europhobes have consistently sabotaged Britain’s relationship with Europe ever since and, as someone who is diametrically opposed to their plans, I am therefore proud to declare: “Je suis saboteur!”

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