Monthly Archives: February 2015

  • TidyBS5: pick your brains for litter pick

    Steve WoodsBristol

    The last TidyBS5 post mentioned that a community litter pick would be taking place (posts passim).

    Billed as Tidy BS5 Up, this event will be held on Saturday, 28th March from 11am to 1pm and the initial assembly point will be Lawrence Hill roundabout before volunteers disperse to clean up the grotty bits of BS5 that have been identified.

    grit bin transformed into grot bin by being used as litter bin
    Inner city grit bin transformed into grot bin

    If there’s a particular grotty bit of BS5 that you believe needs a good litter pick, then send it in as a suggestion to Lorena (email: lorena (at) eastonandlawrencehill.org.uk) at Up Our Street by Friday, 20th February.

  • Capita ordered to pay nearly £16,000 over interpreter failure

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    image of scales of justiceCapita 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.

    In his judgement (PDF) Sir James states:

    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.

  • Greenwash Capital moves to non-existent website

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Tech

    In a new move Bristol City Council has started advertising websites for non-existent domains as part of its tenure as European Green Capital 2015.

    I’m indebted to Redvee for the photograph below.

    sign for a non-existent solar park and website

    Not only does the solar park itself not exist, neither does the domain shown on the sign, as a simple whois search reveals.

    whois search for lawrencewestonroadsolarpark.co.uk

    I wonder how much money has been wasted on the publicity for a non-existent solar park and its accompanying (and equally non-existent) website.

    Would anyone from Bristol City Council care to comment?

    Update 02/02/2015: a subsequent whois search today revealed that the domain in question was registered by a PR person working for Bristol City Council this morning and that the registrant contact details are currently awaiting validation.

  • Sign of spring

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language

    As we enter another month and a chill northerly wind drives temperatures down, it’s encouraging to know that signs of spring are appearing.

    Along with the appearance of snowdrops (posts passim), the swelling of hazel catkins is another early sign of an impending change of season.

    The photograph below was taken yesterday at the junction of Stapleton Road, Trinity Road and Lawford’s Gate in Easton.

    image of catkins

    According to Wikipedia:

    A catkin or ament is a slim, cylindrical flower cluster, with inconspicuous or no petals, usually wind-pollinated (anemophilous) but sometimes insect-pollinated (as in Salix). They contain many, usually unisexual flowers, arranged closely along a central stem which is often drooping.

    Hazel catkins are the male flowers of the plant.

    The female flowers – as shown in the photo below – are much smaller and harder to spot.

    image of female hazel flower

    The change from winter to spring was admirably encapsulated by the final couplet of Percy Bysshe Shelley‘s 1819 Ode to the West Wind.

    The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind,
    If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

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