media

  • Juvenile errors

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Politics

    Today’s online version of the Bristol Post carried a piece with a real howler of a typo in its headline, as shown by the following screenshot.

    screenshot of Post headline stating Bristol councillors' pay is BELOW the minimum age

    After reading the headline, I was uncertain as to whether our councillors are below the minimum age or ‘earn’ less than the minimum wage for their services.

    The typographical error in the headline has since been corrected.

    By equating the councillor’s allowance with a wage or salary, the Post is making yet another juvenile error. Elected members of the City Council receive allowances in recognition of the time, work and costs involved in allegedly representing the people of Bristol; a wage is defined by Collins English Dictionary as a “payment in return for work or services, esp[ecially] that made to workmen on a daily, hourly, weekly, or piece-work basis.”

    Furthermore, yesterday the Post lifted this story from The Guardian about probable nuclear targets in the UK in the 1970s and completely misinterpreted the map (PDF) produced by The Guardian to accompany the piece, which clearly shows Bristol as a probable nuclear target, one of 106 around the UK. Instead the Post confidently proclaimed in its story that “Bristol was not thought to be important enough to be a target for Soviet missiles, according to government papers made public yesterday”.

    Fellow local blogger Stockwood Pete commented this was “Horribly inaccurate reporting even by the Post’s low standards.”

    One has to wonder if quality control is beyond the abilities of the Bristol Post.

  • Bloody Foreigner!

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    There has been much scrutiny in the media about UKIP’s xenophobia in the run-up to tomorrow’s European Parliament election.

    Indeed, party leader Nigel Farage got into a little difficulty in a radio interview on LBC last week, giving rise to accusations of racism, something he later explained away as being due to tiredness.

    The picture below (for which Ade Cooper gets a tip of the hat. Ed.) should bring a smile to the face of anyone similarly stricken to me in years who doesn’t share young Nigel’s Little Englander view of the world.

    text on image reads Bloody Foreigner coming over here wanting to know what love is

    To prevent any further incursion of foreigners and/or Foreigner, perhaps the UK should deploy a squadron of Farage balloons around the coast. Similar to the barrage balloons used in the 20th century’s 2 world wars, these isolationist windbags could soon blow any threat of invasion to the shores of Blighty back to whence it came. šŸ™‚

  • Ah! Bristo

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    One of the features of the variety of English spoken in Bristol is the terminal ‘L’ – a final, intrusive ā€˜Lā€™ on words ending in a vowel sound. As a consequence, Bristolians live in areals of the city and some of them do their shopping in Asdal.

    This terminal L found its earliest expression in the city’s name itself, which has mutated from Brigstowe in Saxon times.

    However, the terminal L is now under threat from poor writing and editing at the Bristol Post (or should that be Bristo Post? Ed.), as revealed in this blatant advertisement masquerading as news, complete with obligatory screenshot.

    Bristol Post screenshot

    More of this poorly written junk can be expected in future as the Bristol Post – along with the rest of the Local World group to which it belongs – will be making increasing use of user-provided content, presumably to save on employing trained journalists.

  • An inappropriate juxtaposition

    Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities

    The screenshot below comes from the Bristol Post website early this morning and shows 2 news items in succession about Nick Gargan, the Chief Constable of Avon & Police.

    image of 2 news items on Nick Gargan

    Is being suspended for ‘inappropriate behaviour’ part of a typical light-hearted day for Avon & Somerset’s finest?

    Answers in the comments below, Bristol Post hacks and sub-editors. šŸ™‚

  • The rustication of Clifton

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    Earlier today, the news section of the Bristol Post transported the city’s affluent district of Clifton to the countryside, describing it as ‘rural’, as shown in the following screenshot.

    screenshot of Post website showing dodgy wording

    According to the Oxford English Dictionary rural has many meanings; the one implied by the Post’s usage is the OED’s definition 1c:

    Employed or stationed in country districts.

    Are the people of Clifton yokels?

    Bristol absorbed Clifton in the 19th century, so any green wellies seen will be very clean and not covered in cow’s muck; they’ll be worn for fashion not for necessity. Although Clifton’s renowned Downs are still common land, the locals don’t seem to graze much livestock upon them. Nevertheless, some activities which may be regarded as animal take place up there.

    The word rural has since been removed from the headline.

    I always believed press articles supposed to be sub-edited before being posted. Apparently this does not seem to be the usual practice down at the Temple Way Ministry of Truth.

  • Bryan Lunduke says: “Linux sucks”

    Steve WoodsLinux, Media, Tech

    I’m indebted to Linux.com for alerting me to the video below.

    Bryan Lunduke is social media marketing manager at SUSE (the first Linux distribution your correspondent used daily. Ed.), as well as a writer and commentator.

    The talk was delivered at LinuxFest Northwest in Bellingham, Washington on Saturday 26th April 2014.

    Lunduke takes a good-humoured critical aim at some of the things that make Linux annoying, the development process which is likened to ‘herding millions of cats’, the large amount of forking that goes on, the age of the X.Org display server and the insistence of some distributions, particularly Fedora and Ubuntu on developing their own alternatives – Wayland and Mir respectively – for what is essentially something old, trusted and reliable, like X.Org.

    Fedora and Ubuntu/Canonical come in for plenty of gentle ribbing from Lunduke.

    About halfway through, Lunduke then turns the criticism completely on its head by stating that all the annoyances are actually what make Linux great and why we users love it. Furthermore, he points out that we can criticise our operating system of choice – and have it criticised – without acrimony; at this point Lunduke mentions something about Mac users… šŸ™‚

    Anyway, the video itself is 45 minutes long, but well worth it. I hope you watch it all the way through and enjoy it (you should do if you you’re more than just content with running Linux as an operating system. Ed.). I certainly did.

  • ORG: Don’t sell our tax data, HMRC!

    Steve WoodsMedia, Politics

    The current government’s asset stripping of the British state has now moved onto HMRC, according to an article in yesterday’s Guardian. To quote directly from the Guardian piece:

    The personal financial data of millions of taxpayers could be sold to private firms under laws being drawn up by HM Revenue & Customs in a move branded “dangerous” by tax professionals and “borderline insane” by a senior Conservative MP.

    The senior Conservative MP in question is David Davis, who has taken a particular interest in civil liberties in recent years. According to The Guardian, Davis has said:

    “The officials who drew this up clearly have no idea of the risks to data in an electronic age. Our forefathers put these checks and balances in place when the information was kept in cardboard files, and data was therefore difficult to appropriate and misuse.

    “It defies logic that we would remove those restraints at a time when data can be collected by the gigabyte, processed in milliseconds and transported around the world almost instantaneously.”

    HMRC logo
    HMRC – your data isn’t safe in their hands

    Outside Parliament, the Open Rights Group is campaigning against the madness that has afflicted the taxman. According to ORG, the use of personal data without consent is meant to be against data protection laws, so what are the Information Commissioner and Data Protection Registrar doing about this proposed flagrant breach of data protection legislation?

    In the meantime, the ORG has set up a petition to which you can add your name. The petition reads as follows:

    I call on the government to halt plans to sell personal tax data to private companies and researchers. Please don’t sell our private financial information to companies. Anonymisation is not foolproof and it is my right to object to my information being shared in this way.

    Any access to my personal information held by the government should only be given after my explicit personal consent.

    Sign the petition.

    I have. My financial data submitted to HMRC is meant for them alone, not to be sold to the highest bidder, even in allegedly ‘anonymised’ format.

  • Top Bristol Post headline today

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    Today’s online edition of the Bristol Post features a great headline to this story, as per the screenshot below.

    Post article screenshot

    There is however one thing wrong with the headline: it isn’t true since male tortoises – being reptiles – don’t have a penis, but a cloaca (which is the Latin word for sewer. Ed.) – an opening that serves as the only opening for the intestinal, reproductive and urinary tracts of certain species.

    To be fair the fact that male tortoises have cloacas is indeed mentioned by the Post’s unnamed author in paragraph 2:

    The four year-old spur-thighed tortoise is suffering from a prolapse of the cloaca which requires immediate treatment.

    “Never let the truth get in the way of a good headline” seems to be a maxim of the British press at both local and national levels.

    Finally, this blog wishes Cedric and his owner every success in remedying Cedric’s problem. šŸ™‚

  • BBC employs greengrocers

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

    The BBC – and Radio 4 in particular – is often criticised for being the voice of middle England speaking to itself.

    However, it seems that Auntie is now making great strides to improve the diversity of its staff, as shown by the Tweet below, which was posted during last night’s broadcast of Any Questions.

    Yes, Radio 4 is now employing greengrocers (shouldn’t that be greengrocer’s? Ed. šŸ™‚ ), or at least people who know how to use superfluous (or greengrocers’) apostrophes.

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