Monthly Archives: February 2021

  • The new benchmark – as long as you’re white

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities

    On a rare excursion into town, I happened to notice that Castlemead, the city’s tallest office block, is currently undergoing a refurbishment and is surrounded by site hoardings which have the usual aspirational developer’s blurb splashed across it, as can be seen below.

    General view of shuttering surrounding Castlemead site
    General view of the Castlemead site on Lower Castle Street

    Besides being the new benchmark, the refurbisher’s website describes Castlemead as follows:

    Castlemead is a city landmark office building and offers high quality refurbished open plan accommodation from 3,450 – 11,128 sq ft and the UK’s First Platinum Plus 100 Cyclingscore Accredited facilities.

    With 360 panoramic views over Bristol’s cityscape and Castlepark [sic] and with the Cabot Circus regional shopping, dining and leisure destination on your doorstep, why locate your business anywhere else?

    Nevertheless, a quick glance at the images chosen to illustrate this landmark office building’s quality reveals one glaringly obvious fact.

    This quality is only available to white people. All the figures shown are invariably Caucasian. There’s not a BAME face to be seen anywhere either on the site’s hoardings or in the CGIs used on the dedicated website.

    Happy office drones at Castlemead 1
    Spot the BAME face 1
    Happy office drones at Castlemead 2
    Spot the BAME face 2

    According to the city council’s website, 16% of the city’s population of 463,400 persons belongs to a black or minority ethnic group. That’s over 74,000 people.

    When will developers realise and start to portray a more accurate picture of our city in their very expensive fantasy doodlings?

    After all, this is not the first time the absence of non-white faces from new Bristol property developments has been pointed out. It is a phenomenon that was first highlighted back in 2009 by a fellow local blogger.

    One would have expected the city’s major property moguls to have learned something by now and made a start on accurately portraying all the kinds of people in the city who will ultimately be occupying their benchmark and landmark buildings.

    Sadly, nothing appears to have changed.

  • How to make a speech bubble in GIMP

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    GIMP, also known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a great free and open source graphics creation and editing suite suite, which comes as part of the standard software installation package for many GNU/Linux distributions, although it is also available for other operating systems.

    My main use for GIMP is for dealing with graphics containing text in files submitted for translation, as well as tweaking digital photographs.

    Nevertheless, every now and again the urge strikes me to learn a bit more to make the most of the software installed on my systems.

    If, like me, you have ever wondered how to add a speech bubble to an image using GIMP, help is at hand in the form of the handy video tutorial below.

    Now you too know how to put words into other people’s mouths . 😀

  • The pleasuring of St Valentine’s Day

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Social Media

    February 14th is St Valentine’s Day, a day normally devoted in non-pandemic times to the enrichment of florists and restaurateurs, and generally associated with the pleasures of romance and love.

    However, the North Wales Police Rural Crime Unit had matters of countryside damage on its mind that day, when it tweeted the following.

    Tweet reads More unnecessary damage caused by illegal off roading, this time on Moel Unben in Denbighshire Some people just simply dont care as long as they pleasure themselves If you decide to take your car or motorcycle off road on a protected area you risk losing your beloved vehicle
    Pleasure themselves? Surely not!

    Take a close look at the second paragraph of the tweet and Mr/Ms Plod clearly meant something completely different.

    The person in charge of the force Twitter account clearly spent yesterday in a state of confusion between love and lust. 😀

    I do hope they got their vocabulary sorted out by the time they came off shift and headed home to spend time with their significant other.

  • Premises, premises

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

    When related to property, the noun premises is defined by Collins Dictionary as:

    a piece of land together with its buildings, esp considered as a place of business.

    When related to property, premises has since time immemorial (or even longer. Ed.) been a plural noun.

    However, it is a source of constant surprise how many people these days regard premises as a singular noun, as shown by this recent example, courtesy of Manchester City Council.

    Banner in image reads: Machester City Council has closed this premises
    A singular example

    However, it should be remembered that premise does exist as a singular noun, in which instance it takes the following definition:

    something that is supposed to be true and is used as a basis for developing an idea.

    Local authorities are not the only people to get confused about premises and premise as regards use of the plural and singular.

    Take this example on Twitter courtesy of the constabulary in Shrewsbury.

    Tweet reads: COVID patrol 12/2/21 🚓 call to a license premise within #Shropshire. 4 persons located within drinking beer. 3 had travelled from out of county. 4 fines issued and will discuss with council over possible action on the premise licence.
    A singular licence

    That’s right. Why have a premises licence when a premise licence will do just as well? I’m sure Mr Plod meant the former, but having a licence for a premise raises many new questions indeed.

    Professor Paul Brains of Washington State University has included the confusing of premises and premise in his book, Common Errors in English Usage. Read his simple, eloquent distinction.

    Premises are also quite particular about where any action takes place too. Anything that happens always, always takes place on them, not in them.

    The introduction of a blanket ban on smoking indoors gave rise to a wave of illiteracy, as exemplified by this typical example.

    Sign reads No smoking. It is against the law to smoke in these premises
    Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    It does feel as though those of use who are held to higher standards of language use and/or were taught proper English (Ahem! Ed.) are fighting a losing battle. Will premises become increasingly singular? Will actions take place in them ( or it? Ed.) in future?

    For the answers to such questions, one must wait and see.

    Only time can tell as language always has been dynamic, i.e. a moving target: and what is regarded as proper usage will always be subject to change, just like language itself.

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