Bristol | Steve Woods

Big Retail is watching you

06/04/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Tech

Cabot Circus is hardly my favourite place in Bristol. It’s an out-of-town shopping centre with associated multi-storey car park plonked at the inner city end of the M32. It consists of 3 floors full of identikit national chain stores, plus CCTV and surly security guards to track and/or keep out those who have no intention of buying overpriced, mass-produced consumer tat they probably don’t want, definitely don’t need and most likely cannot really afford.

Today I noticed another reason for avoiding Cabot Circus – mobile phone surveillance.

Warning! Big Retail is watching you.

Note the exemplary use of newspeak: spying on your mobile is “in use at this site to improve our customer service“.

I’m not convinced by the bland assurance regarding personal data either, as will be explained below.

The Footpath technology in use in Cabot Circus has been developed by a company called Path Intelligence and is in use in a number of shopping centres around the UK, including Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth, Princesshay in Exeter, the Buchanan Galleries in Glasgow, Bon Accord & St Nicholas in Aberdeen and The Centre, Livingston, all of which like Cabot Circus are operated by Land Securities Ltd. The surveillance system works through units placed in shops which detect the changing signals of mobile phones.

Unless people entering the shopping centre happen to see the warning signs (which are conveniently placed alongside lots of others telling the public what they’re not allowed to do, such as use skateboard, take photographs. Ed.) they’re probably unaware that their phones are being monitored.

According to Path Intelligence, the Footpath technology works as follows:

The vast majority of visitors to any given location now carry a mobile (cell) phone. To be able to make and receive calls, the telephone network must understand the phone’s geographical location. The technology behind this is complicated, but in basic terms, the phone and the network continuously ‘talk’ (ping) to each other (sending a unique signal), sending and updating information every time the location of the phone changes.

Footpath technology from Path Intelligence consists of discreet monitoring units able to read the anonymous signals that all mobile phones send. So we’re able to ‘see’ where the phone is (but not the data on it) and map its geographic movements from location to location accurately to within a few meters [sic]. In isolation the information isn’t very revealing but when aggregated, patterns and trends start to emerge. It’s those patterns and trends that are of interest in business planning.

The data collected is fed back to our data centers [sic] 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to be audited and have sophisticated statistical analysis applied. This results in continuously updated information on the flow of people in any monitored location.

As no source code is available for Footpath, no check can be made on its lack of ability to collect personal data or telephone numbers.

Concerns were expressed by Big Brother Watch about the tracking of shoppers’ mobiles 2 years ago.

At present the technology is not capable of recording phone numbers or personal information, but this will probably change as the system improves and as highlighted by Big Brother Watch:

However, as technology improves, those facilities will become more accessible, and consumers need to have faith that the law protects their privacy. Uncertainty over when and how technology is being used only undermines trust and confidence in any system using mobile phones.

To avoid being tracked, turn off your mobile when visiting Cabot Circus or any other shopping centre operated by Land Securities.
A lost Bristol street re-emerges

30/03/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Tech

Avon Archaeology is currently conducting a dig on a site at the junction of Wade Street and Little Ann Street in St Judes that is going to be redeveloped for housing; it was most recently used as a secure car park.

Yesterday I managed to get a couple of pictures through the fencing around the site.

The red brickwork in the centre foreground is the remains of a collapsed vault, suggesting there was a cellar beneath the building.

The cobbled and accompanying paved footways are one of Bristol’s lost streets seeing daylight again.

The street itself was known as Pratten’s Court and can be seen on the following screenshot from the excellent Know Your Place website (posts passim) showing the 1880 Ordnance Survey map layer.

The housing around Pratten’s Court was originally developed in the 18th century and demolished some time in the first half of the 20th century. It does not show up on the 1946 aerial photographs layer on Know Your Place.

Avon Archaeological Unit carried out an assessment of the Wade Street area in 2000 which concluded as follows:

An archaeological desk-based assessment of sites on the north and south sides of the junction of Wade Street and Little Ann Street was carried out by Andrew Smith for the Avon Archaeological Unit in April 2000. The likely survival of palaeo-environmental evidence for the formation of the floodplain of the river Frome, for Romano-British activity and for the development of the area as artisanal housing in the early-eighteenth century was noted.

Further down Wade Street crosses the River Frome. Somewhere in this area a Roman Road, the Via Julia, which went from London to South Wales via Portus Abonae (now better known as Sea Mills. Ed.) crossed the Frome. In 1865 2 Roman lead pigs were discovered near the river. This find was reported in Part 23 of the Archaeological Journal in 1866. Know Your Place records this find as follows:

In 1865, during commercial excavations in Wade Street possibly associated with the construction of a stone revetment wall for the river Frome, two lead ingots of Roman date (one weighing 76 pounds and the other 89 pounds) were found. Both carried inscriptions with identical damage, which was taken to suggest that the ingots had been cast from the same mould. The inscription read “IMP’ CAES’ A[NTON]INI’ AUG’ PII P’ P”. One (89 pounds) passed into the possession of a Mr. Edkins and the other was taken to Sheldon, Bush shot works on Redcliff Hill. Mr. Arthur Bush subsequently donated this ingot to the British Museum (Anon. 1866). Elkington (in Branigan & Fowler, 1976 195) implies that the ingots were almost certainly produced by the Mendip lead-mining industry and points out that flaws on the Wade Street ingots establish that they were cast in the same mould as two of the four ingots found at Rookery Farm, Green Ore, near Wells in 1956 (Anon. 1957, 230-231). However, sampling of the ingot held by Bristol Museum and Art Gallery in 2001 by Vincent Gardiner as part of his postgraduate research into the technology and distribution of Romano-British lead pigs found that the isotopes present suggested an origin in the Bristol/Frome/Weston-super-Mare area.
Crash course in language

28/03/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

Have you ever noticed the language used when road traffic incidents are reported?

As a typical example, look at this story from Wednesday’s Bristol Post.

The headline reads:

Man taken to hospital after his car collided with road sign in Avonmouth

The first sentence outlines how the incident occurred:

A man in his 40s had to be removed on a spinal board after his car collided with a road sign in Avonmouth.

Note how the car’s occupant – presumably its driver – plays a passive role; the car apparently collided with a road sign of its own volition without any human intervention. One would almost think that cars and other motor vehicles are so capricious and flighty that conscious action by human beings is imperative to stop the public highway becoming a large linear scrapyard in next to no time and remaining such permanently.

Perhaps a more accurate headline would have been Man taken to hospital after driving into road sign.

Similar examples of this use of English can be found in any local paper in the country.

However, such language is not confined to the print media. An similar example from inside the BBC in Bristol was posted on Twitter this morning (screenshot below).

Note the absence of any human involvement in the incident: a horse was killed by a fast car. Was it an unoccupied, autonomous vehicle? A more accurate rendition would be that a horse was killed by a fast driver.

Then there’s the way large swathes of the media report collisions using the noun accident to describe them. In the vast majority of cases, there’s nothing accidental about them. According to RoSPA, 95% of all road ‘accidents’ involve some human error, whilst a human is solely to blame in 76% of road ‘accidents’.

According to the Collins English Dictionary, accident has the following definitions:

an unforeseen event or one without an apparent cause
anything that occurs unintentionally or by chance; chance; fortune
a misfortune or mishap, esp one causing injury or death

It would seem that the third definition is the one relied upon by the media. Interestingly, the British police stopped using the term Road Traffic Accident (RTA) some years ago; the police now refer to a Road Traffic Incident (RTI) instead.

Perhaps the media should follow the example of the police if they wish to retain their alleged reputation for truth and accuracy.
Virtute et Industrial

19/03/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Language

The motto of the city of Bristol is Virtute et Industria (Virtue and Industry).

However, one feature of Bristol’s local dialect is the addition of a final, intrusive ‘L’ – a so-called terminal L – to words ending in a vowel.

Consequently, area, say, becomes ‘areal‘, whilst Clifton’s Princess Victoria Street mutates into Princess Victorial Street, so Industria naturally becomes Industrial.

The terminal L is beautifully illustrated in Virtute et Industrial, a song written by Adge Cutler (posts passim), and sung here by the late Fred Wedlock.
Thee’s got’n where thee cassn’t back’n hassn’t?

16/03/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Language

As with elsewhere in the country, the Bristolian dialect is not as strong as it once was, mainly due to the influence of mass media and the spread of received pronunciation.

Here from a few years ago is a fine example of the local dialect delivered in song by Adge Cutler & the Wurzels many years ago at the Webbington Country Club, Loxton, Somerset.

Adge was born in Long Ashton, just outside Bristol.

Hat tip: Patrick Wise.
Parking meters arrive in Easton

11/03/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Politics

On 1st April – April Fool’s Day – Bristol City Council’s Easton & St Philips Residents’ Parking Scheme comes into operation. (Some would consider the choice of date most apposite. Ed.)

Does Easton have one resident? Do you proof-read your signs, Bristol City Council?
This is just one of many Residents’ parking schemes being introduced by the council at the instigation of the autocratic elected Mayor, George Ferguson, the man in red trousers (posts passim).

Needless to say, the schemes haven’t exactly received universal support from the residents of a city with a high level of car ownership and an abysmal level of public transport provision. Overall, it’s been condemned by residents as a ‘parking tax’ as residents will have to acquire permits, both for their own vehicles, as well as for visitors arriving by motor vehicle.

There has been consultation, of course. However, as is usual with Bristol City Council, consultation is a portmanteau word, a crafty elision of ‘confidence trick’ and ‘insult’. With a city council consultation, the stress is always firmly on the first syllable. When something goes out to consultation, what the council wants to do is usually a fait accompli.

There have been howls of protest about the Residents’ Parking Schemes in the local press, particularly the car-loving Bristol Post, which has even enlisted the odd high-profile petrolhead to trash the Mayor’s plans.

A new parking meter on Stapleton Road
As this post is being written, the streets of Easton are being prepared for the arrival of the new parking regime. New double yellow lines and parking bays marked on the streets. In addition, there’ll be parking charges for visitors and parking meters have started to make their appearance both on main thoroughfares like Stapleton Road and the backstreets.

Bristol’s residents’ parking schemes programme is very flawed.

One of the justifications for implementing them is to dissuade the thousands of daily commuters from outside the local authority area clogging up residential roads by parking there all day. As the scheme doesn’t cover the whole city, the thousands of commuting motorists will just park a bit further out in districts not covered by residents’ parking schemes, such as the area where your ‘umble scribe happens to live.

Where I live, it’s the residents that are guilty of problem parking; the streets are Victorian, narrow and were intended for use by horse and cart, not 21st century motor vehicles. Pavement parking is rife in the backstreets, making pavements impassable to wheelchair users and parents with children in prams and pushchairs. There’s minimal enforcement to combat such anti-social parking. Indeed, the police often contribute to the problem themselves (posts passim).

If Mayor Ferguson really wanted to stop Bristol being choked by out of town commuting motorists, his counterpart in London came up with an alternative that was introduced 11 years ago. It’s called the London Congestion Charge Zone.
Spring’s golden heralds

07/03/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Language

It’s a bright, sunny day in Bristol and there’s a hint of spring in the air. In addition, the daffodils are out in their brazen glory, like these fine examples planted by Bristol City Council in Castle Park.

Along with the blossom of the cherry, in honour of which A.E. Housman wrote “Loveliest of Trees” (posts passim), daffodils are another spring favourite celebrated in poetry, in this case William Wordsworth‘s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Addio XP

07/03/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Linux, Open Source, Tech

It’s not just the Bristol & Bath Linux User Group (LUG) that’s organising an event to mark the end support for Microsoft’s superannuated Windows XP operating system (posts passim).

In Italy a consortium of the Perugia GNU/Linux User Group, LibreUmbria, the Perugia Centro di Competenza Open Source and Girl Geek Life is also organising a half-day event to inform people that they don’t need to buy a new computer to have a modern, secure operating system again; all that’s needed is a change to a free and open source Linux operating system and its vast range of software.

Addio XP, ciao software libero!

The Perugia event takes place at Perugia University on Saturday, 5th April 2014 from 9.00 am to 1.00 pm. Full details can be found at http://xpaddio.perugiagnulug.org/.

Install Linux: don’t end up with an operating system that should died years ago!

Support for XP (and MS Office 2003 too. Ed.) ends on 8th April 2014.
It’s Bristol Radical Film Festival week

03/03/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Politics

Bristol Radical Film Festival is on this week with a wide choice of events from today, 3rd March until 8th March. The films will be screened in a wide range of venues, which include and have in the past included digital outreach projects, social centres, political squats, radical bookshops, community bicycle hubs, trade union buildings, etc.

The Festival first took place in 2011 and showcases contemporary and historical works of overtly political documentary and fiction film-making. Organised by staff, students and alumni from the Centre for Moving Image Research and the Film team at the University of the West of England (UWE), the Festival also aims to draw attention to a range of other progressive, community-based initiatives in the city.

Two of this year’s offerings in particular take my fancy.

Firstly, there’s a screening of McLibel, the David and Goliath story of two people who fought back against one of the most powerful corporations on the planet. Ronald McDonald may have won their libel case against Helen Morris and Dave Steel, but it was very much a Pyrrhic victory. McLibel is being shown at Knowle West Media Centre, Leinster Avenue, Knowle West, Bristol BS4 1NL (map) on Thursday, 6th March at 7 pm. Entry is free.

The second offering to take my fancy is Uomini contro (English title: Many Wars Ago), produced in 1970. The film is set in Italy in 1917. Society is violently split down the middle over the question of whether to continue intervention in the war. Anarchists and socialists are intent on causing so much trouble that continued intervention is impossible. Railway lines are ripped up, battle lines are drawn. On the Isonzo front a General smells socialism behind the troops reaction to his orders and a disastrous Italian attack upon the Austrian positions leads to a mutiny among the decimated troops. The screening is being hosted by Bristol Radical History Group as part of its World War 1 series of events. The film will be screened at 5.00 pm on Saturday 8th March and the venue will be 2nd Floor, The Arc, 27 Broad Street, BS1 2HG (map) and there’ll be a £4 admission charge.
Let Bristol be Bristol

02/03/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

Within 2 days last week, we had the latest pair of proposals from a member Bristol’s great and good and a London property developer to try and turn the city into somewhere else.

On Monday last week Bristol 24/7 carried a story entitled “Bristol… the ‘New Orleans of the UK’?”.

According to the article, local businesses are being urged to help elevate Bristol to a world-class centre for jazz and blues music as part of Mayor George Ferguson’s ambitions to make the city the ‘New Orleans of the UK’.

By the end of the week, apparently plans had shifted from trying to turn Bristol into a city founded by French colonists in 1718 on the banks of the Mississippi to property developers and their scheme to convert some of the city into Shoreditch, now an inner city part of London in the borough of Hackney, which was originally named after Edward IV’s mistress, Jane Shore, who was reputedly buried in a ditch in the area.

This news appeared on Bristol Business News, which reported as follows:

Verve Properties, the niche developer behind Bristol’s highly-successful Paintworks creative quarter, has started work on the first speculative office refurbishment in the city for five years as the market recovery continues to gathers pace.

London-based Verve said it saw a gap in the Bristol office market for trendy office workspace of the type now common in the Shoreditch/Tech City area of East London that would appeal to the Bristol’s vibrant creative sector.

What I like about Bristol is precisely that it is Bristol. It’s quirky, diverse and has its own unique features not found anywhere else, like the centuries of architectural variety on display on Old Market Street and West Street, the City Docks and the wealth of green, open spaces which the public can enjoy, even in the city’s less prosperous parts.

A Bristol montage: image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Where attempts have been made to turn the city into somewhere else, it’s been a disaster. One only has to look at Bristol’s so-called ‘Shopping Quarter’ – Broadmead, Cabot Circus and the Mall Galleries – to see the result: bland and unedifying. The area is filled mostly with identikit local branches of national retail chains. Rearrange the shops and you could easily in another large UK town or city.

I like Bristol because it’s Bristol and it should furthermore be left to be itself and not try to be somewhere else.

One has to ask the question: do those who profess to love the city but want to turn it into somewhere else really love the city; or do they actually hate it?

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