“Knicker thief spared prison after being caught in house” is an appropriate headline for a story of lingerie larceny.
Nevertheless, I wonder if the article’s accompanying photograph is the right one.
Have Avon & Somerset Constabulary started kitting out their finest like combatants in the English Civil War?
I think we should be told.
On Tuesday 15th October, Bristol Radical History Group and Bristol Stop the War Coalition are jointly organising a public meeting entitled Remembering the Real WW1 at the Hydra Bookshop, 34 Old Market St, Bristol, BS2 0EZ (map). The event starts at 7.00 pm and entry is free, although there’ll probably be a whip-round for donations. More details here.
The talk is being organised in advance of next year’s centenary of the start of World War 1, for which The British government plans to spend £55 million marking the occasion (and the centenary of other stages of the war). Comments from Prime Minister David Cameron calling for a ‘truly national commemoration’ stressing our ‘national spirit’ already suggest what he has in mind. He has even compared the government’s plans with last year’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
What Cameron is forgetting is a phrase that I recall from 40 years ago this month, when I had just started doing political science as part of my Modern Languages degree, i.e. ‘war is the destruction of the fittest’. Indeed, the First World War is credited with being the first war in history where slaughter was conducted on an industrial scale due to advances in technology. In the Battle of the Somme alone (1st July-18th November 1916) claimed more 1,000,000 casualties, making it one of the bloodiest battles in the history of mankind.
For the majority of people in Europe, whether or not they were directly involved, WW1 was one of the twentieth century’s greatest disasters (and one whose repercussions are still being felt in international relations. Ed.). Already historians like Max Hastings have begun to argue that this was a war that had to be fought against German militarism and the costs in human life and destruction were worth paying. In contrast, radical historians have begun to uncover a multitude of both individual and mass forms of resistance to the war on all sides of the national divides. This resistance took the form of desertion, fraternisation, strikes and mutinies.
Like most families, members of my own were involved in the conflict. Ted, my paternal grandfather was involved in the Gallipoli campaign, which by itself claimed 34,072 British dead and 78,520 wounded. On my mother’s side, my grandfather Alfred was rejected for military service on medical grounds, although my Auntie Doris informed me in a letter that one of Alfred’s brothers – whose name I cannot remember – deserted in France and was never heard from again by the family.
Those British service personnel who survived the conflict were promised a ‘country fit for heroes to live in’ by ‘Welsh Wizard’ David Lloyd George‘s postwar government. They were sadly let down.
I’m not a regular reader of the minutes of meetings of Bristol City Council’s Audit Committee. However, there’s an absolute corker of a typographical error on page 3 of the draft minutes of its 24th September 2013 meeting (PDF).
Will anyone down at the Counts Louse (as real Bristolians call or) or City Hall (as the Mayor has renamed it) be eagle-eyed enough to notice?
Under no circumstances Lord Fraud should not be confused with Lord Freud, a Conservative peer who only pretends to be a Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions with responsibility for welfare reform. 😉
Bristol Radical History Group have announced their autumn programme of talks, gigs and meetings. Full details can be found at http://www.brh.org.uk/site/events/.
The events themselves are as follows:
Speaker: Alan Brown
Date: Wednesday 9th October
Time: 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Venue: The Hydra Bookshop, 34 Old Market St, Bristol, BS2 0EZ (map)
Price: Donation
http://www.brh.org.uk/site/events/we-are-all-in-the-gutter/
Date: Tuesday 15th October 2013
Time: 7.00-9.00pm
Venue: The Hydra Bookshop, 34 Old Market St, Bristol, BS2 0EZ
Price: Free
http://www.brh.org.uk/site/events/remembering-real-wwi-public-meeting/
Speakers: Jonina Abron-Ervin & Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin
Date: Wednesday 16th October 2013
Time: 7.00pm
Venue: Malcolm X Centre, 141 City Rd, Bristol, BS2 8YH (map)
Price: Donation
http://www.brh.org.uk/site/events/black-revolution/
Speakers: George Katsiaficas and Geronimo
Date: Thursday 17th October, 2013
Time: 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Venue: The Hydra Bookshop 34 Old Market St, Bristol, BS2 0EZ
Price: Donation
http://www.brh.org.uk/site/events/global-revolts-uprisings/
Speakers: Justseeds Art Collective (New York)
Date: Tuesday 22nd October 2013
Time: 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Venue: The Hydra Bookshop, 34 Old Market St, Bristol, BS2 0EZ
Price: Donation
http://www.brh.org.uk/site/events/just-seeds-radical-art-group/
Date: Wednesday 23rd October 2013
Time: 8.00 pm til late
Venue: The Plough, 223 Easton Rd, Easton, Bristol BS5 0EG ‎(map)
Price: TBC
http://www.brh.org.uk/site/events/james-connolly-songs-freedom/
Speaker: John Newsinger
Date: Thursday 14th November 2013
Time: 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Venue: Tony Benn House, Victoria Street, Bristol BS1 6AY (map)
Price: Donation
http://www.brh.org.uk/site/events/remembering-dublin-lockout-1913-2013/
Speaker: George Caffentzis
Date: Tuesday 19th November 2013
Time: 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Venue: The Hydra Bookshop, 34 Old Market St, Bristol, BS2 0EZ
Price: Donation
http://www.brh.org.uk/site/events/in-letters-of-blood-and-fire/
Vampires are a mainstay of horror films. Seemingly dead, they rise again unbidden under the right circumstances – usually nightfall – to carry on their (non-)existence.
The press equivalent of the vampire is the story which is initially posted online, only to be deleted (with its expectant reader served up a 404 error page instead. Ed.) and then reappear at a later date.
This happened with the Bristol Post story featured in the screenshot below.
This story originally appeared online first thing on Friday morning, only to be pulled a couple of hours later. It has now risen from the dead bearing a Sunday timestamp.
Why was it pulled in the first place, some may be wondering, particularly as it seems like a fairly innocuous tale of an elderly gentleman moaning about parking and especially since those with an intimate knowledge of the Bristol Post will be well aware of its passion for the motor car and all matters motoring.
Indeed, still on all things motoring, the only matter upon which the Post has not offered fawning support to Bristol’s elected mayor George Ferguson is the red-trousered one’s plans to introduce Residents’ Parking Zones, which the paper and its readers have attacked with gusto. One would have thought that George was proposing a murder of first-born children not some modest proposals to counter the dominance of the motor car in our urban environment.
Whether vampire stories feed on blood or some other substance or medium is as yet unknown.
Tomorrow (5th October) the City Academy in Russell Town Avenue (map) will be holding a free community event from 12.00 noon to 4.00 pm. All proceeds from the event will be going to the campaign to save Felix Road Adventure Playground (posts passim), which is threatened with closure.
There will be live music & performances, food, an active zone including bouncy castle & soft play and face painting.
For further information contact Ananda Kellett by email on kelleta (at) cityacademy.bristol.sch.uk or telephone 0117 9413800.
Every story needs a good, pertinent and accurate headline, as shown by this item in the news section of today’s online edition of the Bristol Post.
The headline has been corrected since the above screenshot was taken at 8.00 am.
This November Bristol Wireless is offering a week of training days in its lab at Windmill Hill City Farm, Bedminster, Bristol.
One topic will be covered each day of the week of the 25-29 November and there are four places available for each topic.
The course topic for each day is:
Tuition will start each day at 10 am and end at 5 pm.
The tutors for the week will be Bristol Wireless’ Ben Green and Julien Weston. Ben has well over 10 years’ experience as a systems administrator, whilst Julien has been an accomplished database engineer for a couple of decades.
Bristol Wireless uses Debian GNU/Linux as its preferred operating system and the courses will be taught on Debian, although participants are welcome to bring their own laptops and preferred operating systems to the courses.
Participants must have some experience of Linux systems, including at least some command line skills and should expect a fast pace of learning. Each participant will be given a virtual server to experiment with on the day with the required tools set up for the topic at hand.
Cost will be £200 per day, which doesn’t include food or accommodation, although the on-site city farm café will be open and there are plenty of other eateries in the area.
For more information please contact Ben Green at Bristol Wireless at training2013@bristolwireless.net or on 0117 325 0067.
Not only has this blog noticed that the English employed by the Bristol Post may occasionally fall below the standards required in primary school (posts passim), but regular readers of the online edition have also noticed that the code running the website is a tad dodgy. How many comments are shown below the report featured in the screenshot?
If 1 = 2 in Bristol Post land, is it any wonder its journalists regularly manage to make 2 + 2 = 5? 😉
Thursday saw the launch of the latest Apple iPhone models – the 5C and 5S – when scores of people with more money than sense queued overnight to make an elitist US technology company even richer.
Naturally the Bristol Post covered it in Friday’s edition as there’s an Apple shop in Bristol’s monument to Mammon otherwise known as Cabot Circus.
Part of the Post’s coverage consisted of a photo gallery, which featured as follows in its news section.
How does one spell queue? Certainly not how the Post has done.
This crime against orthography is also perpetuated on the gallery page itself.