The time-honoured business practice of top executives celebrating POETS Day on the fairway has come in for criticism from an unlikely source.
At a Conservative Way Forward event at Westminster last week, the current international trade secretary and disgraced former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox MP is reported to have said:
We’ve got to change the culture in our country. People have got to stop thinking about exporting as an opportunity and start thinking about it as a duty – companies who could be contributing to our national prosperity but choose not to because it might be too difficult or too time-consuming or because they can’t play golf on a Friday afternoon.
Meanwhile in golfing “olds”, in April 2015, the disgraced former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox MP tweeted the photo below when standing for re-election.
There’s an old adage about glass houses and stones, isn’t there?
The latest Easton & Lawrence Hill Forum held on Wednesday evening at Easton’s Pickle Factory attracted some 40 lively, vocal residents who’d come along to the event whose theme was waste management and its attendant problems such as litter and fly-tipping.
After the initial announcements, your ‘umble scribe was first out at the front of the hall to administer death by PowerPoint, giving a brief history of Tidy BS5, its activities and successes over the past two and a half years and calling for residents to act as the eyes and ears of Bristol City Council to combat fly-tipping, report litter and urging them to report other environmental crimes that blight the inner city such as fly-posting, dog fouling and graffiti. The Tidy BS5 slot finished with a showing of the “Green Capital Tale of Two Cities” video produced for viewing at full council last year.
I was followed on the microphone by Tracy Morgan, CEO of Bristol, the wholly-owned council waste company responsible for keeping the bins emptied and the streets tidy.
This was the main talk of the evening and Tracy gave some background of Bristol Waste’s work, which stretches from carrying out some 17 mn. waste collections around the city to clearing its streets of dead animals. Those collections yield an annual total of 140,000 tonnes of waste and recycling, of which 53,000 tonnes is sent for recycling or composting.
Tracy remarked, “We want to create a cleaner, greener Bristol… but waste is a shared responsibility,” before going on to the main point of her presentation – the 12 weeks-long trial to remove communal bins (otherwise known as skipbins or 1280l Eurobins. Ed.) from the Stapleton Road corridor.
The communal bins were introduced some years ago with a typical botched BCC consultation to attempt to tackle the problem of fly-tipping in the area. The communal bins consultation carried out last year (posts passim) clearly revealed that the introduction of the communal bins had failed in this respect.
Instead of the thrice-weekly communal bin collections, those streets where residents have sufficient storage space will be issued with 180l wheelie bins to be emptied fortnightly. Where this is not possible, residents will be given rubbish bags (hopefully gull-proof. Ed.) for collection on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, to be put out at a certain time.
After Tracy’s presentation came questions and comments from the audience to a panel comprising, Tracy, Tom Ward from enforcement and myself.
There was lots of intelligence offered to Tom, particularly as regards fly-tipping along the Lawrence Hill/Church Road corridor, although the main concern was the Stapleton Road trial and the communal bins.
One resident spoke passionately for retaining on Claremont Street and Seymour Road (which are regularly abused, like all the other communal bins within the proposed trial area. Ed.). However, I feel she’s on a hiding to nothing with her desires and she was the only person in the room defending the communal bins that other residents described as the bane of their lives and a health hazard since they attracted rats.
Other residents wanted to see more litter bins, particularly in parks and along the Bristol & Bath Railway Path, whilst the operation of the St Philips Recycling Centre (e.g. no pedestrian access) and the surly, unhelpful attitude of the Centre’s staff were also mentioned to Tracy for attention, as were the habit of recycling crews leaving “offerings” in the streets for the local gods and the reaction of certain street sweepers to local residents trying to help them.
No doubt this will be a matter to which forthcoming Neighbourhood Forums will return.
The photos used in the post are by kind permission of Up Our Street.
The right-wing Daily Mail national newspaper group – consisting of the Daily Mail and its sister publication, the Mail on Sunday – is not known for its love of foreigners.
The Mail group has been a consistent campaigner against Britain’s membership of the European Union, whilst in recent years it has consistently whipped up hysteria against migrants coming to Britain and/or the EU and foreigners in general.
As regards migrants, the Daily Mail was heavily criticised at the end of last year when a carton by Stanley McMurtry (“Mac”) linked the European migrant crisis (with a focus on Syria in particular) to terrorist attacks and criticised EU immigration laws for allowing Islamist radicals to gain easy access into the United Kingdom.
The New York Times compared the offending – and offensive – cartoon to Nazi propaganda, whilst Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International stated the following to The Independent:
The Daily Mail’s cartoon is precisely the sort of reckless xenophobia that fuels the self-same fear and hate loved by those responsible for atrocities in Paris, Beirut, Ankara and elsewhere. Now more than ever is the time to stand together in defiance of the perpetrators of violence with all of their victims and reject this disturbing lack of compassion.
Another frequent target for the Mail group’s bile has been Britain’s overseas development aid programme, currently accounting for £12.2 bn. of the government’s budget, about which it has been moaning (although the Mail would call it campaigning. Ed.) for nearly as long as Europe.
According to figures from the government, the UK’s overseas development aid budget accounted for under 0.7% of gross national income in 2015. Today’s Independent reveals that foreign aid accounts for just 1.1% of the UK government’s expenditure.
However, such largesse is anathema to the Mail and Mail on Sunday and the latter has put its latest outpouring of bile against foreign aid on today’s front page, as shown below.
The Mail on Sunday – free xenophobic bigotry for every reader
Was the editor asleep when the front page was put together? Or is editor Georgie Greig blind to the irony of splashing a banner announcing the giving away of a “Free Giant Glossy Wall Map” above an attack on foreign aid. The map giveaway also proudly announces the reverse of the map shows “every flag”. This is presumably so Mail on Sunday readers will be able to identify both the countries and their flags to which foreign aid will no longer be going if it gets its narrow-minded, isolationist way.
Arts Side West and SPACE will continue to provide community arts at 6 West Street in Bristol’s Old Market area following after its online and paper petition (posts passim) gathered more than 1,000 signatures, Bristol24/7 reports today.
The venue was threatened with closure after Bristol City Council announced it wanted to rent the premises out commercially for £15,000 per year – not even petty cash in view the £60 mn. in budget savings (i.e. cuts) the council is stating it will have to find in the next few years.
The council went back on its original decision after a series of meetings was held with deputy mayor Cllr. Estella Tincknell.
Emma Harvey of Trinity Community Arts, which manages the venue, is quoted as follows by Bristol 24/7:
The support we’ve received from the public has been amazing…a big thank you to those involved who have helped us to achieve this fantastic outcome for Old Market.
The British government is to ban all Latin abbreviations on all its websites, allegedly to save confusion amongst users of accessibility software and non-English speakers.
Writing in a post on the gov.uk blog, Persis Howe writes that he and his colleagues have several programs that read webpages for those with visual impairment read ‘eg’ incorrectly and that while ‘e.g.’ gets read correctly by screen readers, there are better, clearer ways of introducing examples for all users.
Howe goes on to say that:
We promote the use of plain English on GOV.UK. We advocate simple, clear language. Terms like eg, ie and etc, while common, make reading difficult for some.
Anyone who didn’t grow up speaking English may not be familiar with them. Even those with high literacy levels can be thrown if they are reading under stress or are in a hurry – like a lot of people are on the web.
Those in charge of the gov.uk website are therefore changing the site’s style guide and phasing out their usage, which will take some time as some 4,000 instances alone of eg have been found.
Abbreviations such as eg and ie should be written properly with full-stops as e.g. and i.e. and the fact they are being allowed on government websites is a sign of the fall in standards of both writing and teaching English since I finished my formal education some four decades ago. The fact they these erroneously-written abbreviations are getting misinterpreted by software such as screen readers is a symptom, not the disease.
While confusion amongst non-English speakers may be a valid reason to curtail the use of e.g. and i.e., meaning respectively exempli gratia (for the sake of an example) and id est (that is), etc. does not deserve to be lumped in with them as its use has spread around the world far from its origins in ancient Rome.
One field in which the use of Latin phraseology abounds is the law and the administration of justice. However, it seems likely that Whitehall’s mandarins will be reluctant take on the horsehair wig and gown brigade on their use of terms from an empire that ceased to exist over 1,600 years ago.
Commenting on the changes, the Daily Telegraph reports that campaigners said the decision was to give up Latin was “short-sighted” because they have been part of common parlance for hundreds of years.
The Telegraph quotes Roger Wemyss Brooks of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, who said the following:
Latin is part of our cultural heritage and it’s part of the basis of English. It unites us with other cultures throughout Europe and the world who have a connection with the Romance languages.
It’s a very concise language which is used specifically for its precision and I think it’s short sighted to be giving it up.
An Albanian man charged with two counts of murder has refused to appear in court until an Albanian interpreter is present so he can understand the proceedings, today’s East Anglian Daily Times reports.
A man appearing on the charge sheet as Ali Qazimaj was due to appear before magistrates in Ipswich this morning in connection with the murder of elderly couple Peter and Sylvia Stuart of Mill Lane, Weybread, Suffolk.
In the defendant’s absence, his solicitor Stephen Harris expressed his frustration with Capita which is alleged to provide courts with interpreters. Mr Harris also informed the bench that his client’s name was Vital Dapi, not Ali Qazimaj.
Magistrates referred the case to Ipswich Crown Court for a hearing this afternoon.
Ipswich Crown Court. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The defendant was subsequently brought before the Crown Court this afternoon and the case was adjourned until 19th August for a plea and trial preparation hearing.
At the weekend, Cllr. Marg Hickman, the cabinet councillor for neighbourhoods and a great supporter of the Tidy BS campaign, shot the video below at the junction of Perry Street and Stapleton Road – a notorious fly-tipping hotspot which your correspondent has been reporting to Bristol City Council for the best part of two and a half years.
The Post’s report states that Marg also sent the footage and photos to the city council in the hope Bristol Waste, which manages street cleansing and waste collections, will finally begin to get to grips with the problem.
According to the Post a council spokesperson said:
The refuse team emptied the bins this morning, and Bristol Waste Company have two men on Stapleton Road every week day, so they will clear up following attendance from the refuse crew.
One of the street cleansing supervisors has been sent to check the area to make sure everything is clean and tidy.
The council may have sent out a street cleansing supervisor yesterday to check, but one needs to be at that location 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, since your correspondent reported another load of fly-tipping had mysteriously appeared in the same spot overnight.
Although progress on the ground may be slow, the Tidy BS5 campaign seems to be making better headway in the corridors of power since Marg’s intervention prompted Marvin Rees, Bristol’s elected mayor and past resident of Easton, to tweet on the filthy state of Stapleton Road, voicing his commitment to get our streets tidy.
However, Marvin and Marg have a big problem on their hands, as dumping litter and rubbish seem to be endemic throughout the city, not just in deprived BS5. Bristol’s annual Harbour Festival ended on Sunday evening and the Post noted in a separate report that the clean-up from the event is still continuing today, Tuesday.
Two of Bristol’s key arts providers – Trinity Community Arts & Artspace Lifespace – have launched a petition to save SPACE & Arts West Side, both located at 6 West Street in the Old Market area. The petitioners are urging Bristol City Council to keep the property as a space for community arts.
The two groups recently applied to the Council to keep Arts West Side for community arts use, but the city council has decided it wants to let the premises commercially, which the council estimates will generate £15,000 per year in rent – not even petty cash considering the council is facing an estimated budget deficit of £60 mn. forecast for 2019/2020.
This decision will have a huge impact on the grass-roots community art work taking place in the Old Market area, which sits in Lawrence Hill, Bristol’s most deprived council ward.
Trinity has been running the venue since August 2011 through Bristol City Council’s Community Asset Transfer Policy (CAT). The policy seeks to make publicly owned spaces across the city available for community use.
Emma Harvey of Trinity said: “We’re surprised by this decision, given the lack of commercial value of the premises and how it seems to conflict with the city’s vision of Bristol as an inclusive city of culture. We opened Arts West Side to support regeneration of the area. At a time when communities in Bristol are concerned that they are being left behind as other parts of the city prosper, it is sadly ironic that the Council themselves are acting as an agent of gentrification.”
New residents on the island of Anglesey who are not Welsh speakers could be targeted with welcome packs from the local council urging them to learn to speak Welsh, the Daily Post reports today.
The Post continues by stating that councillors on the Isle of Anglesey County Council (Welsh: Cyngor Sir Ynys Môn) will next week discuss a report on the authority’s new Welsh language strategy which aims to increase the percentage of islanders using Welsh in their daily lives.
This is in part to counter a decline in the percentage of Welsh speakers revealed by census statistics. In the 2011 census, 57% of Anglesey residents were Welsh speakers, compared with 80% in the 1950s. In 2001, the figure was over 60%, whilst back at the start of the 20th century, the 1901 census recorded that nearly 91% of Anglesey’s population spoke Welsh.
According to the Daily Post, the lowest percentage of Welsh speakers is found in the popular seaside village of Rhosneigr with a mere 36%.
One of the major challenges facing the Welsh language is the new nuclear plant at Wylfa, which is likely to bring thousands of non-Welsh-speaking contractors to the island during the construction phase.
As someone who’s worked with language for the best part of four decades, your correspondent recognises the importance of correct spelling.
One area where this matters more is people’s names, something which the fourth estate doesn’t always manage correctly; for instance, a couple of years ago in a piece in the Bristol Post in which I was quoted my surname mysteriously changed from Woods to Wood halfway through.
However, it’s not just journalists who get proper names wrong. Here’s a fine blunder from former Labour leader Ed Miliband on Twitter.
