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A favourite and a retweet by me from my Twitter feed this afternoon.
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Bristol Post exclusive: city has a literate cricket ground
Ever since I arrived in Bristol, I’ve been both dismayed and amused in equal amounts by the abysmal standards of English in the local press.
This ancient tradition’s greatest proponent has been the alleged local paper of record, the Bristol Evening Post, whose publication is now reduced to 5 days a week as sales of the dead tree edition decline; its name has likewise been truncated to the Bristol Post.
Today the Post revealed an exclusive. Bristol has a literate cricket ground, presumably able to speak and write, as evidenced by the following Post quote:
The ground, in Nevil Road, St Andrew’s, released a statement this morning.
If the ground really does talk, Gloucestershire [County] CC should be very proud of it since this particular skill is far more impressive than its cricketing record. 😉
Update: 6th November 2012: Jon Eccles has since remarked that the County Ground is “the first sports facility of any kind to pass the Turing test“.
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The coalition at half time
On Friday I received an invitation to a Bristol Festival of Ideas event, “The Coalition at Half Time“, at At-Bristol, featuring Gruaniad journalist Polly Toynbee, fellow journalist David Walker and a panel of local MPs – Kerry McCarthy (Labour), Charlotte Leslie (Conservative) and Stephen Williams (Liberal Democrat). The invitation was extended to me so I could cover proceedings live via Twitter and I duly tickled the laptop keyboard as quietly and unobtrusively as I could for the next hour and a half.
After a brief introduction, proceedings started with a two-handed critique by Toynbee and Taylor of the coalition governments record to date, as reflected in their new report, Dogma and Disarray: Cameron at Half-Time. Taylor and Toynbee opened by taking the pre-election rhetoric of Cameron & co. and contrasting it with the reality since the election, including such clangers as the pasty tax and U-turns too numerous to mention. Toynbee and Taylor also drew attention to the opinions of the Tory Young Turks (those who thought Thatcher didn’t go far enough and who consider Cameron to be too soft) and their desires to dismantle and privatise the state. In addition, the ineffectiveness of the Labour opposition was also mentioned: for instance Toynbee opined that Labour were paralysed on opposition to benefit cuts, possibly due to public opinion; the demonisation of claimants as ‘scroungers’ has evidently been successful.
Following the Toynbee-Taylor double act, each of the local MPs was invited to respond in turn, starting with Charlotte Leslie. She had a hard job to start with, defending the indefensible. However, she didn’t do herself any favours by starting off insulting the intelligence of the audience, suggesting that anyone who didn’t vote Tory was brainless. The exact words Charlotte used were: “If you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when old, you don’t have a brain”. Charlotte’s love of boxing also got a mention later on. However, for all her love and knowledge of the pugilistic arts, she did a lot of leading with her chin.
After Charlotte came Stephen Williams, who impressed me by his skill in making sweeping statements without providing any empirical evidence to back them up. One such sweeping assertion was: “What we have done is stabilise our economy and earned international respect.” We’re still waiting for the figures, Stephen. Perhaps Alex, your bag carrier, who was sitting next to me could oblige.
Kerry McCarthy, last of the MPs to speak, had perhaps the easiest job of the night, gained the largest rounds of applause, and was not heckled by members of the audience shouting ‘rubbish’ or ‘nonsense’. Opening with, “Needless to say I disagree with pretty much everything Stephen Williams just said,” her commentary then went on to feature words we’d already heard from Toynbee and Taylor about the government: incompetence, ideological desire, Stalinism.
Part three of the event was audience questions, which likewise proved awkward for Leslie and Williams and a walkover for McCarthy. Charlotte’s naivety on tax avoidance, loopholes and corporation tax was breathtaking. Answering one point, Kerry described workfare as ‘slavery’: immediately Williams tried to leap in to defend it; a Bristol MP defending slavery has not been seen for nearly 2 centuries. However, there was worse for Williams. One audience member prefaced his question, “I voted Lib Dem in last election and Stephen, I feel deeply betrayed by you and your party”. The room exploded in applause.
My verdict: a most enjoyable event if you enjoy politics; supporters of the two coalition parties may have found themselves in a minority in the audience and might not have felt very comfortable. My verdict on the coalition at half time: the ref should abandon the match and take all the players off the pitch.
My sincere thanks to Andrew Kelly and the Bristol Festival of Ideas team for the invitation. Next time you want an event covered live via Twitter… 🙂
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Reading for boys
Looking back over the best part of 5 decades, it’s hard to remember what I read as a boy. Of course, there were the regular weekly reads courtesy of The Beano and The Dandy and their host of colourful characters, plus other comics, but when it comes down to actual books, the memory gets a bit hazy.
However, I do remember that Robert Louis Stevenson‘s canon came in for lots of reading and I remember paying regular visits to the local lending library in Market Drayton where we lived, as well as burrowing under the bedclothes with a torch and book after lights out.
I also recall both my sister Hilary and I used to tease our younger brother Andrew unmercifully about his love of Enid Blyton when we believed there was better ‘quality’ literature available for children. Maybe we should have been more generous: at least he was reading something.
Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons All of which brings me to the point of this post. Via Twitter contacts in Shropshire I’ve been made aware of The Boy Reader Blog written by Matthew Swain of Shrewsbury.
The Boy Reader Blog’s byline is: “A blog written by a 10 year old boy Matthew to try and encourage more boys to read.” Apparently, boys are less inclined to read than are girls and Matthew, who loves reading, has bravely decided to stick his head above the parapet in the hope of giving his male contemporaries a bit of encouragement and providing them with an example.
Or to put the paragraph above in Matthew’s own words from his first post:
Hi I’m Matthew I’m 10 and I LOVE READING. I have decided to write a blog about reading from a boys point of view. My aim is to get boys to cut down on the video games and read a little bit more. To be honest I never used to like reading myself, the Biff and Chip books at school were boring, but the 2009 world book day is where it all began with a short Beast Quest book by Adam Blade which my mum bought for something different to read at bedtime. Mum or dad always read me a story at bedtime but I liked the look of this book and decided to try and read it myself. Ever since then I’ve never wanted to stop reading (and still don’t) I’ve noticed that a lot of other boys prefer video games than reading and that is why I have started this blog to try and help them on the reading journey.
Matthew also makes regular suggestions and recommendations for reading, such as the Book of the Week for 7th October.
I’d like to wish Matthew every success with his efforts to get his peers reading, not to mention keeping up a regular supply of posts! 🙂
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Social media induces municipal schizophrenia in Clevedon
Clevedon on the Somerset Coast is not noted as a place of controversy. Indeed, the last earth-shattering event in Clevedon was perhaps when its Victorian pier collapsed one October night in 1970 during stress testing.
However, in August 2012 the town made the national and international headlines when Clevedon Town Council, in an act of bureaucratic perspicacity, banned councillors from tweeting during council meetings.
The main person affected by the ban is Councillor Jane Geldart.
Since Clevedon Town Council enacted its ban, legislation has come into effect under which local councils are expected to provide reasonable facilities for members of the public to report the proceedings of council meetings as they happen. Indeed, the legislation was devised to “make it easier for new social media reporting of council executive meetings, thereby opening proceedings up to internet bloggers, tweeting and hyper-local news forums”.
Tomorrow, 3rd October, Clevedon Town Council has its next meeting and the Bristol Democracy Project is urging people to turn up to help tweet about Clevedon Town Council.
However, while members of the public will be able to report freely during the proceedings, Cllr. Jane Geldart has told me she will still be silenced, as per the following conversation on Twitter:
@JaneGeldart I just read that Clevedon Town Council will allow live tweeting by public. Does ban on councillors tweeting still apply?
@wood5y It does sadly. Despite new legislation they (Town Council) are hiding behind an Act from 1960 …….
Given that MPs and peers regularly tweet the proceedings of Parliament and council meetings everywhere else in the country are covered by webcasts, local bloggers and Twitter, one must wonder what motives Clevedon Town Council has for its schizophrenic attitude.
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Does Eurospeak = newspeak?
Here’s a fine example of obscurantist Eurobabble from Twitter.
George Orwell, the originator of newspeak in 1984, his dystopian vision of the future, would have been proud.
