It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Private Eye (posts passim).
Amongst their many admirable features is a long-running lookalikes photo comparison on its letters pages.
The picture below has taken its inspiration from the Eye and features 2 lots of villains, the East End’s Kray twins and the Eton Posh Boys gang.
I’ll leave you to decide which are the nastier set of criminals. 🙂
RPSI Linguist Lounge reports that on 2nd December, the Oldham Evening Chronicle published an apology to NRPSI interpreters on Page 2 of that day’s edition.
The apology is reproduced below.
It would appear that since publication of the original article, journalists at the Chronicle have learned the actual meaning of the word ‘cartel’.
Oldham is the home town of Gavin Wheeldon, the founder of Advanced Language Solutions (ALS) which was subsequently sold to Capita and renamed Capita Translation & Interpreting. The latter is currently presiding over the fiasco commonly known as the Ministry of Justice framework agreement for courts and tribunals interpreting (posts passim).
The Ministry of Justice’s latest quarterly statistical bulletin on the use of language services in courts and tribunals (PDF), which was covered by this blog two weeks ago (posts passim), has also caught the attention of the latest issue of Private Eye.
Describing it as “the shoddy foreign language interpreter service provided by Crapita“, The Eye’s piece notes there’s a greater than one in ten chance of trouble when a court makes a booking for an interpreter via the MoJ’s contract with Capita, with the piece reaching the conclusion why bother with the contract at all?
Quite.
Below is a scan on The Eye’s article.
Castlemead was completed in 1981. The building has a roof height of 80 metres (262 feet) and consists of 18 floors. Written by an unidentified journalist, the Bristol Post article confidently describes it in its first paragraph as “Bristol’s tallest building”.
But is it?
No.
Most definitely not.
The spire of St Mary Redcliffe, is 89 metres (292 feet) high. Its height makes it the third tallest English church spire in England. The spire itself was struck by lightning in 1446 and truncated (something which can be clearly seen in the illustration of the church on Millerd’s 17th century plan of Bristol. Ed.), in which condition it remained for some 400 years before being rebuilt to its present height in 1872.
So, Bristol Post hacks, think carefully – and do the all-important background research and fact checking – before in future describing any modern edifice as Bristol’s tallest. 🙂
Horses and cattle are both ungulates, i.e. both use the tips of their toes to support their whole body weight whilst moving. Both cows and horses have hooves.
A horse is an odd-toed ungulate with a long hairy mane and tale, whilst a cow is an even-toed ungulate. They’re easy to identify, unless you’re a city-based employee of the Bristol Post.
Yesterday the Post published a tragic story of more than 100 horses having to be put down after being rescued from appalling conditions in Bridgend in the Vale of Glamorgan.
However, the picture used to illustrate the report features animals that look more bovine than equine, as revealed by the screenshot below.
Just because both beef and horsemeat taste equally good on the plate doesn’t means they are interchangeable in the field, Bristol Post. Try saddling up a cow and entering a steeplechase! 🙂
Yesterday Lincolnshire’s Spalding Guardian (not to be confused with a similarly titled, typographically challenged offering originally from Manchester. Ed.) carried not one, but two reports of interpreters who missed assignments at Spalding Magistrates Court, which only sits day per week nowadays.
Firstly, there’s the report of a 53 year-old man accused of stealing bolt croppers.
The case of a man accused of stealing bolt croppers could not be heard by Spalding magistrates because there was no interpreter present.
Secondly, the Spalding Guardian covered an adjourned drink-driving case involving a man called Piotr Nowak.
His case is due to be heard on Thursday. There was no interpreter present at last week’s hearing.
In spite of the constant stream of evidence to the contrary, the Ministry of Justice continue to assert that Capita T&I’s performance under the contract continues to improve.
By that logic 2 + 2 = 5 (at least it does in Petty France, SW1. Ed.).
Spalding may have an above average need for interpreters due to the high numbers of East European migrant workers employed in agriculture and food processing – something that must annoy the hell out of UKIP supporters.
I knew having children was expensive, but never realised cots – those small-sized beds for babies – could cost so much until I read this article in today’s Bristol Post about an expensive night out which sadly ended up in that local Palais de Justice also known as Bristol Crown Court.
Apparently, the night out resulted in a huge bill for bedding, according to the relevant sentence in the article.
The court was told Collins had to stump up £8,500 towards legal cots.
Today the Bristol Post has been occupied with faggots. It all started when Facebook, that bastion of free speech, banned the use of the word faggot as offensive. Apparently they’ve never heard of this traditional item of English cuisine over the pond, where faggot is a term of abuse for homosexuals.
As a result, Mr Brain’s – a producer of culinary products resembling faggots that started life in the Bristol area – has started a campaign to fight against Facebook’s ban, which is duly being reported by the Post.
In addition, the Post also informed its readers what faggots are. Any similarity between the Post’s article and the introduction to Wikipedia’s faggots article is presumably purely coincidental.
However, the Post hasn’t finished with faggots yet; it also tells its by now slavering readers how to make faggots. After having stated that faggots are made from pork, the Post drops a real clanger on this report, illustrating it with a photograph of a butcher (so far, so good. Ed.) posing with a joint of beef (D’oh! Ed.), as evidenced by the screenshot below.
Earlier this year I blogged about the Home Office’s so-called racist van (posts passim). Yesterday along with most of the national media the BBC reported that the Home Office had admitted that just 11 illegal immigrants had left the UK as a result of its ill-advised campaign.
Although the Home Office’s efforts were ill-advised and less than successful, its use of mobile billboards has inspired their use by others like the Tripe Marketing Board, as the picture below – allegedly from Lancashire – shows.
There are annual events that pepper the year providing easy copy for the media. One of these is Bonfire/Guy Fawkes Night on 5th November.
As 5th November is less than a week away, most media outlets are publicising local fireworks events. Here’s today’s offering of that ilk from the Bristol Post.
As usual a screenshot has been taken, just in case authors Rachel Gardner and Alex Cawthron realise they’ve posted a half-finished article. Additional black marks to Rachel and Alex too for a lower case start to the headline.
