Today 7th December is Welsh Language Rights Day and the Welsh language Commissioner has produced a small video that both illustrates and promotes the use of Welsh in everyday life in the country.
English subtitles are provided for those with little or no facility in Welsh.
Another day, another dreadful headline from a Reach plc (formerly Trinity Mirror. Ed.) title.
Today’s comes courtesy of Wales Online and features 2 regular features: firstly the desire the pack the entire story into the headline (instead of that anachronistic practice of giving the odd hint about it. Ed.); and secondly ambiguity.
In my first job after graduating, part of the introduction to the company’s house style involved avoiding ambiguity at all costs.
This is evidently no longer the case in large swathes of the local press, especially where the titles are owned by the two big players: the aforementioned Reach plc and Newsquest Media Group Ltd.
Another day, another example of unwitting ambiguity from a representative of the fourth estate.
Step forward and take a bow, Glasgow Times.
Your ‘umble scribe has already asked the publication via social media why cars were setting fire to the road, but is not hopeful of receiving a cogent reply; or any reply at all for that matter.
Following the resignation as a backbench MP of the disgraced former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Owen Paterson, a by-election has been called for the North Shropshire constituency (where your ‘umble scribe was born and raised. Ed.), the Tory virtual one party state which has returned a Tory member in every poll bar one* since implementation of the so-called “Great” Reform Act of 1832.
Paterson decided to resign and leave what he called the “cruel world of politics” (if you want to see how cruel the world of politics is, Paterson’s voting record is online. Ed.) after public outcry following a botched attempt by part-time alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to save his pal from 30 days’ suspension from the Commons for what the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards termed an “egregious case of paid advocacy“.
The full list of fourteen candidates for the by-election has now been released, including for the Tories one Neil Shastri-Hurst, a barrister parachuted in from Birmingham into what should for them be a safe seat.
Given its history, the contest should be a shoe-in for the Blue Team, given that the disgraced former member had a majority just short of 23,000 and that the large number of candidates standing will inevitably split the anti-Conservative vote.
Campaigning has already begun, with prominent and less prominent occupiers of those green leather benches in Westminster turning out to support their chosen candidate, in this case that Brummie barrister.
At which point step forward the honourable Mr Edmund Frances Hughes, who owes his position to the gullibility of voters in the constituency of Walsall North.
Except for the fact that Eddie did not so much step forward as trip over his own two feet and end up flat on his face on social media with one tweet.
Yesterday afternoon in a tweet featuring not only the Brummie barrister, but also Oliver Dowden MP, the former Secretary of State for Culture Wars, Eddie wrote:
Very positive day campaigning in Wem for the North Staffs. by-election.
Dr. Neil Shastri-Hurst would be an excellent MP, and already has a proven track record of public service.
Yes, you did read that tweet correctly. Eddie has moved Wem from the rural acres of north Shropshire to somewhere in the vicinity of the Potteries conurbation, which might have some effect on voters as regards the competence of the Blue Team.
However, it is not just the Conservatives’ drafted-in support that seems to be having problems knowing exactly where above the centre it is. That affliction also extended to their candidate himself, Mr Neil Shastri-Hurst, if a tweet by Harry Taylor is to be believed. Harry writes:
Just read that a voter in Wem was shocked that the Tory candidate thought he was actually in Oswestry (20 miles away!). This coming after Eddie Hughes MP thought he was in North Staffs – a constituency abolished in 1885 – is sending quite a message to voters.
After all, if members of the governing party don’t even know what county or town they are in, how can they possibly be expected to cope with far more difficult stuff, like the complicated legal text of draft legislation?
*=In the first election held in the new constituency in 1832, North Shropshire was a two-member seat, returning one Tory and one Whig MP. After becoming a single member seat, the only time a non-Tory was elected was in 1904, when it was a Liberal Party seat for a mere two years.
Bristol Post/Live, the city’s warped newspaper of record, seems to regard accuracy as minor matter coming well down the list of priorities topped by enticing readers to embrace clickbait and serving up advertising.
There are times when the quality of copy that is turned out contain such basic errors that one would only expect them from a child moving from primary to secondary school, of which today’s online edition displays a fine example as per the following screenshot.
The comments below the piece really highlight how the title’s more perceptive readers regard its ability to reach any standard exceeding low.
That decision made by Post owners Reach plc some years ago to dispense with sub-editors – those whose specific job it was to check copy for accurate grammar, spelling, tone and content before publication – is continuing to pay reduced quality dividends, isn’t it?
More lazy, confusing headline writing from a Reach plc title, in this instance today’s North Wales live website.
To paraphrase a well-known advertising slogan, Beanz meanz crimez, North Wales Live? 😉
In the small hours of Friday morning, news came in that Facebook Inc. is to change its name to Meta, allegedly better to “encompass” what it does as it expands from social media to other sectors such as virtual reality.
Meta, from the Greek μετα-, meta-, meaning “after” or “beyond“, is a prefix meaning more comprehensive or transcending.
Whether the rebrand will involve the more dubious of Facebook’s more comprehensive or transcending business practices being extended to those new sectors remains to be seen.
Facebook was founded in February 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. Not long afterwards, the controversies and abuse of users started. As The Register recalled in 2010, the then 19 year-old Zuckerberg called his first few thousand users “dumb f*cks” in a private conversation with a friend.
However, even that early sign of contempt did not prevent Zuckerberg’s social media infant growing into an obese behemoth of the social media sector, with a current user (i.e. product. Ed.) base of 2.85 billion people.
Perhaps Zuckerberg is secretly delighted there are so many dumb people in the world. They’ve been paying his bills for more than one and a half decades, after all.
After those early days, Facebook’s user base grew, as did the propensity for abuse, culminating in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Cambridge Analytica was established in 2013 as a subsidiary of the private intelligence company and self-described “global election management agency” SCL Group by 3 long-serving SCL executives. The company offices in London, New York City and Washington, DC. Cambridge Analytica was implicated in affecting the results of the 2016 US presidential campaign, where data it hoovered up from Facebook users was used to build psychographic profiles, determining users’ personality traits based on their Facebook activity. These profiles were then used for micro-targeting voters displaying customised advertisements on various online platforms. The key point of this activity was to identify those who might be enticed to vote for Trump or be discouraged to vote for their opponent. In addition, Cambridge Analytica was allegedly hired as a consultant company for Leave.EU and the UK Independence Party during 2016 as an effort to convince people to vote in favour of the UK leaving the European Union in David Cameron’s amateurish EU membership referendum. However, the UK Information Commissioner’s official investigation found that Cambridge Analytica was not involved “beyond some initial enquiries” and the regulator did not identify any “significant breaches” of data protection legislation or privacy or marketing regulations “which met the threshold for formal regulatory action“. Cambridge Analytica cased operations in 2018 following the revelations of its privacy-busting operations, although firms related to both Cambridge Analytica and its parent firm SCL still exist.
Zuckerberg subsequently apologised for Facebook’s involvement with Cambridge Analytica, calling it an “issue“, a “mistake” and a “breach of trust“, as well as pledging not to let such abuse occur again.
Nevertheless, the abuse of users didn’t stop and have continued right up to the present.
The latest revelations come ex-employee Frances Haugen, who was employed by Facebook as a data scientist, leaked documents revealing that the company placed “profits over safety“. Since her revelations, Ms. Haugen has given evidence to a US Senate sub-committee and testified in person to a UK parliamentary committee scrutinising the online safety bill.
Reporting on the name change, The Register noted beneath its headline that Zuckerberg’s social network has “Meta-stasized“. Leaving aside El Reg’s overt reference to the former secret police of the so-called German Democratic Republic, metastasis is defined as a change of position, state, or form. The primary use of metastasis today is in medicine where it defines the development of secondary malignant growths at a distance from a primary site of cancer.
Finally, as a further dampener on the rebrand’s distraction value, a report in today’s Guardian reveals that Meta translates as dead in Hebrew.
Have fun in Zuck’s metaverse, y’all! 😀
Your ‘umble scribe is not a listener to Rupert Murdoch’s TalkRadio channel, being as it is top-heavy with right-wing presenters and commentators.
Furthermore, its audience compared to other national broadcasters is tiny, with Rajar figures revealing an average national number of listeners of 433,000, i.e. less than the current estimated population of Bristol.
One of those right-wing presenters had a bad day at the studio yesterday.
Step forward one Archibald Michael Graham, otherwise know as ‘Iron’ Mike, former editor of the Scottish edition of the Daily Mirror and former assistant editor of the Daily Brexit (which some still call the Express. Ed.).
Yesterday he’d invited Insulate Britain spokesperson Cameron Ford, onto the TalkRadio breakfast show, where he is currently deputising for the dreadful Julia Hartley-Brewer, ostensibly to discuss Insulate Britain’s latest protest action, but more likely so that Ford could give him a good verbal kicking for the entertainment of the station’s none too large audience.
However, matters did not progress entirely to plan, leaving Iron Mike’s carapace pitted with rust as he ended up displaying his own stupidity, which has now gone viral around the English-speaking world.
Graham’s stupidity was so egregious that the hashtag #ConcreteMike is trending on Twitter today.
The interview, which lasted less than one minute in total, starts with no style at all. Graham launches straight into an ad hominem attack on his guest – a carpenter by trade – claiming that wood is not a sustainable product, before trying to assert that concrete is a sustainable product, before being politely corrected. There then follow a period of silence before Graham ends the interview thinking he’s embarrassed his guest, whilst not having the nous to realise he has opened his mouth and inserted his foot up to the ankle, as per the video clip below.
Yesterday your correspondent took a break from the inner city and headed by rail to the North Somerset Coast at Weston-super-Mare.
Plenty of good, fresh air and healthy exercise was had, with my walking from the railway station to the far end of Weston bay at Uphill where the River Axe empties into the Bristol Channel between Brean Down and the semi-tidal Black Rock, as shown below.
The eastern limit of the Bristol Channel is defined by the International Hydrographic Organization as that area between two lines between Sand Point in Somerset and Lavernock Point and the western limit a line between Hartland Point in Devon and St. Govan’s Head. Upstream of the eastern limits, the body water is the Severn Estuary, whilst westwards of the western limit is defined as the Celtic Sea.
However, the phrase Bristol Channel has not always been used to characterise this area of water.
Until Tudor times the Bristol Channel was commonly known as the Severn Sea. Indeed, it is still known as this in both Welsh: Môr Hafren and Cornish: Mor Havren, whilst on Jacob Millerd’s 1673 map of Bristol shows the Severn Estuary in the Latin, Sabrina Fluvius, as depicted below.
One of the phrases guaranteed to dismay every regular user of Britain’s chaotic and overpriced railway network is rail replacement service. This involves taking the scheduled service off the rails (usually for engineering works at busy holiday periods when everyone either wants to get away and/or visit friends and loved ones. Ed.) and substituting the rolling stock with buses, with the inevitable increased journey times and a reduction in passenger comfort.
However, these rail replacement services do not serve Stapleton Road railway station, where the sign shown below is affixed to the Frome viaduct wing wall on the station approach.
As the station is under the management of First Great Western, an alleged train operating company, you ‘umble scribe assumes it was their staff who designed, wrote and approved the final signage.
For any passing First Great Western signage design drones, here’s a wee tip: a spellchecker now comes as a standard feature of all popular office productivity suites. 😀