Bristol

  • Bristol Post exclusive: Journalist eats catering establishment

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    Today’s Bristol Post website features another of modern journalism’s highlights – the hidden exclusive (posts passim), although this particular style of hackery is not itself peculiar to publications in the Reach plc stable.

    Yesterday’s Bristol Post hidden exclusive features Mark Taylor, allegedly the title’s food, drink and restaurant critic, who seems to have eschewed protein, carbohydrates and fat for a more substantial diet, in this case the shipping container housing the soon-to-open Choux Box Patisserie down by the city docks. At Wapping Wharf shipping containers replace the construction materials of more traditional eateries.

    Headline reads: Delicious new patisserie to open in Bristol

    There’s only one place I know of where eating buildings is not unusual and that’s the tale of Hansel and Gretel, first published in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm.

    Hansel, Gretel, the witch and the gingerbread house
    Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    For some reasons known only the the residents of the Temple Way Ministry of Truth, Mr Taylor’s piece is strangely quiet about the quality of the ingredients used for the shipping container. 😉

    Finally, your ‘umble scribe must remark that given his constitution, Mr Taylor may like to start training for food challenges of the Man v. Food reality show variety, of which there are plenty to punish his palette in Bristol.

  • Priti good new stencil art

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities, Politics

    A new piece of stencil art has turned up on recent days on a wall at the junction of Russelltown Avenue and Whitehall Road in east Bristol on the building with the ever-changing messages (posts passim).

    Merely as a matter of coincidence, it depicts one of those residents of Whitehall, SW1, namely one Priti Patel, an Estuary English elocution expert inexplicably elevated to the position of Home Secretary by part-time alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, after she had previously been forced to resign in 2017 as International Development Minister for breaking the ministerial code by having secret meetings with Israeli officials while serving under Theresa May.

    stencil art of Priti Patel holding hammer with the word vandals and the Conservative Party oak tree logo beneath

    Since her return to high public office, the permanently smirking Patel has been accused of bullying her staff, resulting in the resignation of Home Office boss Sir Philip Putnam.

    I can’t help speculating if the hammer in Patel’s hand was one of the reasons for Sir Philip’s departure.

    At the foot of the stencil art the Tory Party oak tree logo and the word Vandals appear.

    I have lived most of my life under Tory governments and for the majority of that time, particularly with effect from the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, the Conservatives have not conserved anything. Indeed they’ve destroyed important ones like manufacturing industry (which used to provide millions of skilled, well-paid jobs. Ed.) and the trade union movement, whilst flogging state assets to their rich friends and supporters.

    Given the party’s record of destruction, perhaps the claw hammer in Patel’s hand should have been replaced by a sledge hammer instead. 😀

  • Trump in Bristol

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Politics

    Yesterday while walking through Riverside Park into town, your ‘umble scribe encountered some street art which immediately reminded him of Donald J. Trump, a tax dodger and serial sexual predator who was inexplicably elected as 45th President of the United States of America.

    Grafitti on street furniture in Riverside Park

    Your correspondent believes it is flattering to its subject as is shown by a comparison with a photograph of the Orange One captured in a typical denigratory pose.

    The Orange One courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    Do you agree? Have your say in the comments below.

  • Free online waste & recycling webinars

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Tech

    Bristol Waste is organising a series of monthly webinars dealing with all you wanted to know about waste, reuse and recycling in Bristol but were afraid to ask!

    Visiting Bristol Waste
    Image courtesy of Bristol Waste

    People can sign up to learn from experts about what happens to their waste and recycling once it is put out for collection.

    Since lockdown Bristol Waste has been running these very popular online sessions so as to give residents the chance to ask questions, dispel any myths and find out how to be recycling and waste superstars!

    Every other month, there’s a general Q&A session, where people can ask about anything waste related, alternating with a specially themed webinar concentrating on a specific topic.

    There is a special recycling event planned for Recycle Week and people can also sign up for a ‘festive special’ to learn how to be more sustainable over the holiday season.

    Follow this link to find out more.

    The next Q&A session takes place on Wednesday, 18th August between 6.30 and 7.30 pm. Sign up via Eventbrite.

  • Stormy afternoon

    Steve WoodsBristol, Media

    Bristol suffered heavy rainfall and a thunderstorm yesterday afternoon, resulting in some local flooding and power outages according to the Bristol Post/Bristol Live.

    And guess who was out in it?

    Never mind. It resulted in a spectacularly atmospheric photograph taken a few minutes from home and shown below in glorious black and white for additional impact.

    The shot was taken looking westwards from the top of Eastbourne Road, Easton towards the higher ground of Cotham and Clifton.

    The view looking west from Eastbourne Road in Easton

  • Games arcades for sale

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    One of the mainstays of local news reporting has been the opening of new businesses in the locality.

    And in this the Bristol Post is superficially no different from other regional titles.

    However if one looks beneath the surface of such reporting, some divergences from other local press publications may be observed, in particular the lack of copy quality control.

    Such an instance occurred yesterday in a piece on the opening of a new business in a vacant shop in The Galleries in Bristol’s Broadmead shopping centre. Whilst the headline suggests that the new business will be selling access to 1980s arcade games such as Donkey Kong and Pac-Man*, the piece’s strapline and the opening words of the third paragraph of the copy suggest otherwise.

    Screenshot of original Donkey Kong game
    Screenshot of original Donkey Kong game

    They both read as follows:

    More than a hundred 1980s retro video game arcades are on offer.

    If games arcades really are on offer rather than poorly proofread copy, the shop would need a capacious stock warehouse, slightly more capacious than the facilities usually available in BS1. 😀

    *= Pac-Man is in fact a 1990s video game, released on 31st May 1990. This other major howler in the piece could have been avoided by the use of a secret research technique know to the cognoscenti as 5 minutes’ Googling.

  • Electrifying

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    One of the staples of local news reporting is the activities of the emergency services – police, ambulance, coastguard, fire service – and in this regard Bristol Live – formerly the Bristol (Evening) Post is no exception.

    Yesterday’s online edition reported on the fire service’s attendance at a possible incident on Colston Street (soon to revert to its original name of Steep Street after the city’s Victorian great and good renamed it after a slave trader. Ed.).

    However, once again the reporter’s poor English is disappointing to read.

    In the second paragraph readers are informed that

    The alarm was sounded after what was believed to be an electric fire in Colston Street at around 8.22pm.

    Where was the said domestic appliance left? In the roadway? On the footway/pavement?

    Clarification was helpfully supplied by the fire service, whose spokesperson commented as follows:

    Upon investigation, the issue was determined to be under the pavement and originating from an area of recently excavated electrical works.

    So the fire, if it ever existed in the first place, was electrical, not electric.

    As an aid to passing hacks wishing to improve their vocabulary, there follows below a handy pictorial guide to the difference between the two. 😀

    An electrical fire
    An electrical fire. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
    Electric fire
    An electric fire (aka electric heater). Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

  • Tree catches train?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    One of the joys of reading the Bristol Post/BristolLive website is their hidden exclusives – the ones that are really newsworthy, but are buried in other pieces, such as in this example from Wednesday.

    Headline reads Woman died after being hit by branch leaning out of train window, inquest hears

    The flippant side of me wants to ask the journalist about the circumstantial details implied by the headline. What was a tree doing on the train in the first place? What kind of ticket was it sold? Where was it travelling from and to? Did it pay full price for the ticket or was it a railcard holder? Did it buy anything from the buffet during its journey? And ultimately why did it feel the need to stick a branch out of the window when the train was travelling at 75 mph, particularly as it resulted in a person’s death?

    The tragic story of a life cut short by a moment’s carelessness has been turned upside down by sloppy headline writing, which implies that part of the tree was poking out of a train window was the cause of death, rather than the deceased being careless, leaning out of a train window being struck by lineside vegetation.

    However, despite my flippancy above, I do realise and appreciate that it must be very distressing to the victim’s friends and family to have the read the circumstances of the incident so misrepresented by someone allegedly supposed to be working for an organ whic is supposed a trusted source of local news.

    As the victim came from Penarth, WalesOnline, the Reach plc’s South Wales equivalent of BristolLive, has also carried the story, but with a clear and unambiguous headline.

    Please take note, servants of the Bristol’s Temple Way Ministry of Truth.

  • The vision thing

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

    “The vision thing” is a comment made by George H. W. Bush ahead of the 1988 United States presidential election when urged to spend some time thinking about his plans for his prospective presidency.

    The embracing of vision – with or without the thing – is widespread in public life in Britain at both local and national levels. Every party leader is expected to have one; and any plans for the wholesale remodelling of large areas of our town and cities are expected incorporate vision too.

    An investigation into the prevalence of vision in the organs of the British state reveals just how ingrained use of the term is. A quick Google search for items containing “vision” on websites within the .gov.uk domain is revealing.

    Screenshot of Google search revealing 2.3m uses of vision on central and local government websites

    No, your eyes do not deceive you – 2.3 million instances of use.

    Looking more locally, a recent search (mid-April) of the Bristol City Council website for the term returns a total of over 4,200 hits. It has probably risen since last month (and with all that evident ocular deployment, one would have thought that the inhabitants of the Counts Louse – which some refer to as City Hall – would realise there’s a major cleanliness problem with the city’s streets. Ed.).

    Screenshot of Google search of Bristol City Council website for use of vision

    With all that vision in use in the country, opticians and their colleagues must be raking in the money. 😀

    Helmut Schmidt
    Sie hatten Recht, Herr Bundeskanzler!

    Or is it necessarily opticians and associated practitioners that should be profiting from this phenomenon? There is some scepticism about the benefits of visions.

    George H.W. Bush was mentioned at the start of this post. One of his contemporaries was the former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

    Schmidt was very dismissive of visions and is on record as stating the following:

    Wer Visionen hat, soll zum Arzt gehen.

    This translates into English as:

    Anyone who has visions should go to the doctor.

    Will anyone working for the British state be visiting their GP soon, either individually or en masse?

    I doubt it.

    Finally, when someone summoned up the courage to ask Schmidt what his big vision was, he is reputed to have referred them to Bush! 😀

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