Bristol

  • Turnip Prize awarded

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities

    News can sometimes travel slowly in the West Country, so it’s only this afternoon that I’ve become aware of this year’s Turnip Prize – the antidote to the better known Turner Prize.

    The magnificent Turnip Prize trophy
    The magnificent Turnip Prize trophy

    The Turnip Prize is awarded annually at the New Inn in Wedmore on the Somerset Levels, far away from the glitz of metropolitan London.

    This year’s winner was midwife Sarah Quick, from Clutton, who was presented with the award’s customary winnner’s trophy of an old turnip mounted on a six-inch nail, as seen above. Sarah’s winning entry was entitled ‘The Three Tenas’ and consisted of a pack of women’s Tena incontinence pads with three sticking out of the top.

    Three Tenas - thias year's Turnip Prize winner
    Three Tenas – thias year’s Turnip Prize winner

    Competition must have been more intense this year with 86 entries, 17 more than last year. Popular rumour has it that Bristol’s famous son Banksy has entered in the past, but has been disqualified for making too much of an effort!

    Hat tip: Rich Higgs

  • News from the (male chauvinist) pigsty

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Tech

    Q: What do the Bristol University Christian Union and the village of Suderbari, in the Indian state of Bihar have in common?

    A: They both treat women as second-class citizens.

    The Bristol University Christian Union has passed a ruling that women are not allowed to teach at its main weekly meetings, as well as making it clear that women will only be able to teach as principal speakers at away weekends and during its mission weeks if they do so with their husbands, according to a report posted today on Bristol 24/7.

    This action has since led a Christian Union committee member to resign and prompted one CU member to write to Bristol University’s independent student news site Epigram, saying:

    On a personal note, I believe that Jesus was a feminist and that women should be allowed to teach.

    Up in its Clifton eyrie, the University of Bristol Union is examining whether this move by the Christian Union falls foul of its equality policy (hint: it undoubtedly does. Ed.)

    However, it’s not just the Abrahamic religions that are treating modern women as second-class citizens.

    In Suderbari, as today’s Guardian reports, women in the village have been barred from using mobile phones since mobiles “pollute the social atmosphere” by encouraging women to elope. If women are caught using a mobile, they risk a fine of Rs. 10,000 if they are unmarried and Rs 2,000 if they are married (so much for equality before the law. Ed.).

    The reason given by the village’s leadership was summarised by Manuwar Alam, president of the local social advisory committee, who stated the following:

    Unrestricted use of mobile phones is promoting premarital and extramarital affairs and destroying the great institution of marriage. We are extremely worried.

    However, the real reason is likely to be that traditional male authority in India is now being challenged due to improved education for women and, as Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army used to say: “They don’t like it up ’em!”

    Update 06/12/12: An item has now appeared on Epigram to the effect that Bristol University Christian Union has issued a statement which says they will extend invitations to both women and men to speak at any of their events without exception. However, this might just be a little too late to save their reputation.

  • Snooper’s Charter – my letter to my MP

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Tech

    Below is the text of an email I’ve written today to my constituency MP, Stephen Williams, regarding the coalition Government’s vastly invasive draft Communications Data Bill, also known as the Snooper’s Charter.

    Dear Mr Williams

    Subject: Draft Communications Data Bill

    I am writing to you express my concerns about the draft Communications Data Bill, also known popularly as the Snooper’s Charter, and how I regard it as harmful to the interests of the UK population in general. I understand that the joint Lords and Commons Parliamentary Committee examining the draft Bill will be reporting shortly.

    At this point I wish to point out that I’m also the Company Secretary of Bristol Wireless, a community co-operative that functions as a small ISP (which resells bandwidth to clients who are our network) and telecommunications provider (supplying VoIP telephony services) which is based in Bedminster. I have already written to Bristol Wireless’ constituency MP, Dawn Primarolo, to make her aware of the concerns of the co-operative.

    The draft Communications Data Bill raises significant issues connected with human rights, privacy, security and the nature of the society in which we wish to live. These issues are raised by the draft Bill’s fundamental approach, not its detail. Addressing them would, in our opinion, require such a significant re-drafting of the bill that the better approach would be to withdraw the bill in its entirety and rethink the way that internet security and monitoring are addressed.

    According to Liberty, the draft Bill will turn a nation of 60 mn. citizens into a nation of 60 mn. suspects. It won’t matter if citizens have never got so much as a speeding fine, personal information about them will be stored just in case it may prove useful one day. Put in another way, would you – as an upright, law-abiding citizen – be happy if the police popped by tomorrow to install a CCTV camera in your living room just in case they one day suspect you have committed a crime? Crime prevention arguments must not unquestionably trump the privacy of law-abiding citizens.

    The general public has been misled by the government and the mainstream media as to the purpose of the draft Bill. It is not about tackling serious crime, paedophilia or terrorism. Access to communications data is granted to local authorities and hundreds of other public bodies for a wide range of purposes that have nothing to do with crime fighting.

    The Government assumes too much in assuming it has an automatic right to keep track of all of citizens’ electronic communications with each other: what we’re looking at online and who we’re emailing, talking to on Skype or texting. It doesn’t. If this is HMG’s logic, why does it not demand that we all report to it every day, telling them who we’ve met for lunch?

    Stockpiling large amounts of data indiscriminately simply amounts to blanket surveillance. Experience shows that amassing large databases of personal information inevitably leads to discrimination. The retention process lends itself to the great temptation of “data mining” – fishing expeditions based on clumsy stereotypes rather than reasonable suspicion of individual wrongdoing. In addition, there are already problems with unauthorised access to sensitive information with existing systems such as the Police National Computer DVLA database and local authority and health records. These problems would be multiplied many times over with the amounts of stored data envisaged by the draft Bill.

    Furthermore, any increase in the level of surveillance would inevitably result in an increased use of encryption (and other circumvention techniques too) by ordinary internet users, thus rendering the surveillance useless, unless public sector technicians are skilled in the art of cracking encryption. Moreover, those alleged terrorists and organised criminals – if they are using the internet at all for their nefarious activities – are probably already using encryption and other security measures to obfuscate their activities.

    Finally, I’d point out that given the technology that’s likely to be needed, the Government may well end up building the technical infrastructure to intercept all our communications.

    I would be happy to discuss these matters in further detail with you should you so wish. In addition, there is plenty of other information available via the Open Rights Group website (http://www.openrightsgroup.org).

    Yours, etc.

  • Bristol Festival of Economics

    Steve WoodsBristol

    It’s nigh on four decades since I was taught basic economics by Lew Davies at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in the first year of my degree. Lew, who always described himself as a ‘labour economist’ (by which I’ve always understood to be related to toil rather than anything partisan), didn’t have an easy job, trying to instil an understanding of economics into a diverse bunch of freshers who’d never encountered it before; and let’s face it, economics can be terribly dry and dusty.

    However, Lew did a splendid job. For instance, he taught us all about the law of diminishing returns with an anecdote about a favourite nephew and his love of strawberry ice cream! I still have a collection of his more outrageous sayings from his lectures; even nowadays these raise a wry smile.

    Since those undergraduate days economics has not featured largely in my life. Until now.

    Tonight the Bristol Festival of Economics starts and I’ve been kindly offered a season ticket by organiser Andrew Kelly (thanks Andrew!). The first session starts at 6 pm tonight with a panel session entitled ‘The Future of Capitalism’.

    I shall be covering the festival live on Twitter, using the festival hashtag #economicsfest.

  • Little Brother alive and well in North Somerset

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    North Somerset strikes me as a somewhat ambivalent area of the country. On the one hand, it has town councils eager to indulge in Luddism and hold back the tide of technology (posts passim). On the other, the unitary authority – North Somerset Council – seems eager to do its bit for Orwell‘s dystopian vision of the future in its own Little Brother-ish way.

    North Somerset Council is apparently compiling a database of email addresses of people who choose that means of contacting it, according to a report in today’s Bristol Post.

    According to the council, this database is for use to contact people in an emergency and will not be passed on to third parties.

    However, the council has only just released details of the existence of this email address database once it had already collected 20,000 entries.

    According to a council spokesman: “The central database complies with data protection and email addresses will not be shared or sold to third parties (now where have we heard that before? Ed.).

    “This is just another way of the council being able to communicate with its residents should an emergency situation arise.

    “The addresses will not be used for any other reason. People who do not want to be contacted in this way can ask to have their details removed from the database.”

    Isn’t that reassuring? People can have their details removed from the database if they don’t want to be contacted by this means. This means North Somerset residents will have to take action themselves to be removed from a list that they probably didn’t want – or consent – to be added to in the first place.

    There’s far too much of this kind of data scraping going on. It would have been better if North Somerset Council had sought the informed consent of its email correspondents before adding them automatically to its database, but then again that would involve treating people like intelligent human beings. However, this is a highly unlikely prospect given that North Somerset Council has an even greater propensity than its big neighbour Bristol to refer disingenuously to its residents as ‘customers’. 🙁

  • Election special: 80% of voters don’t bother

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    It cannot have escaped anyone’s notice that there was an election for an elected Mayor in Bristol on Thursday.

    The fact that George Ferguson – affectionately known as Red Trousers after his preferred choice of leg coverings – received a total 37,353 votes and was declared the winner.

    George’s win is being described by all the political pundits as a consequence of the people of Bristol being fed up with party politics.

    However, there’s another analysis. Turnout in the mayoral election was under 28%. That means George was elected by a tiny minority of electors who could be bothered to turn out and vote for him. Indeed, George’s winning total means just 11.7% of Bristol’s 320,000 voters put a cross next to his name.

    Meanwhile the vast majority of voters – 78% of the on Bristol’s electoral roll – stayed away from the polls.

    The figures for the Police and Crime Commissioners suffered from even lower turnouts right across the country, with a national average of 15% in the 41 English and Welsh police areas. In the Avon and Somerset area, turnout was 19.59%, meaning 80% of the electorate didn’t bother and winning candidate Sue Mountstevens, who received a total of 125,700 votes, was likewise given a mandate by about 10% of voters.

    Representative democracy doesn’t seem to be faring very well at present and one must question the legitimacy of the mandates received.

  • “Cutlass supplied”

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities

    Skull and crossbonesEvery now and again there’s a job advertisement that’s so unusual it deserves wider circulation: and there’s a great example on the tourist business website Destination Bristol at the moment.

    Bristol Pirate Walks are looking for an Assistant Pirate to join Pirate Pete.

    The Assistant Pirate should be confident and outgoing with a bubbly personality and be ready to meet and greet visitors to Bristol from across the world, from children and families to corporate groups.

    This is a part-time role with full training given on the history of this port, and would be of interest those who enjoy meeting people and leading walking groups around the harbour.

    Cutlass supplied

    As pirates are typically portrayed as folk whose speech requires little grammar, I wonder if the “full training given” will include lessons in ignoring English syntax. 😀

    Of course, Bristol, being a port city, has close associations with the sea and hence maritime crime of all kinds, including piracy, as well as having pirates amongst its sons and daughters. Edward Teach, otherwise known as Blackbeard, was born in the (now comfortably fragrant and middle class) Redland area of the city in 1680.

  • Bristol Post exclusive: city has a literate cricket ground

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

    Ever since I arrived in Bristol, I’ve been both dismayed and amused in equal amounts by the abysmal standards of English in the local press.

    This ancient tradition’s greatest proponent has been the alleged local paper of record, the Bristol Evening Post, whose publication is now reduced to 5 days a week as sales of the dead tree edition decline; its name has likewise been truncated to the Bristol Post.

    Today the Post revealed an exclusive. Bristol has a literate cricket ground, presumably able to speak and write, as evidenced by the following Post quote:

    The ground, in Nevil Road, St Andrew’s, released a statement this morning.

    If the ground really does talk, Gloucestershire [County] CC should be very proud of it since this particular skill is far more impressive than its cricketing record. 😉

    Update: 6th November 2012: Jon Eccles has since remarked that the County Ground is “the first sports facility of any kind to pass the Turing test“.

  • The coalition at half time

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

    On Friday I received an invitation to a Bristol Festival of Ideas event, “The Coalition at Half Time“, at At-Bristol, featuring Gruaniad journalist Polly Toynbee, fellow journalist David Walker and a panel of local MPs – Kerry McCarthy (Labour), Charlotte Leslie (Conservative) and Stephen Williams (Liberal Democrat). The invitation was extended to me so I could cover proceedings live via Twitter and I duly tickled the laptop keyboard as quietly and unobtrusively as I could for the next hour and a half.

    After a brief introduction, proceedings started with a two-handed critique by Toynbee and Taylor of the coalition governments record to date, as reflected in their new report, Dogma and Disarray: Cameron at Half-Time. Taylor and Toynbee opened by taking the pre-election rhetoric of Cameron & co. and contrasting it with the reality since the election, including such clangers as the pasty tax and U-turns too numerous to mention. Toynbee and Taylor also drew attention to the opinions of the Tory Young Turks (those who thought Thatcher didn’t go far enough and who consider Cameron to be too soft) and their desires to dismantle and privatise the state. In addition, the ineffectiveness of the Labour opposition was also mentioned: for instance Toynbee opined that Labour were paralysed on opposition to benefit cuts, possibly due to public opinion; the demonisation of claimants as ‘scroungers’ has evidently been successful.

    Following the Toynbee-Taylor double act, each of the local MPs was invited to respond in turn, starting with Charlotte Leslie. She had a hard job to start with, defending the indefensible. However, she didn’t do herself any favours by starting off insulting the intelligence of the audience, suggesting that anyone who didn’t vote Tory was brainless. The exact words Charlotte used were: “If you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when old, you don’t have a brain”. Charlotte’s love of boxing also got a mention later on. However, for all her love and knowledge of the pugilistic arts, she did a lot of leading with her chin.

    After Charlotte came Stephen Williams, who impressed me by his skill in making sweeping statements without providing any empirical evidence to back them up. One such sweeping assertion was: “What we have done is stabilise our economy and earned international respect.” We’re still waiting for the figures, Stephen. Perhaps Alex, your bag carrier, who was sitting next to me could oblige.

    Kerry McCarthy, last of the MPs to speak, had perhaps the easiest job of the night, gained the largest rounds of applause, and was not heckled by members of the audience shouting ‘rubbish’ or ‘nonsense’. Opening with, “Needless to say I disagree with pretty much everything Stephen Williams just said,” her commentary then went on to feature words we’d already heard from Toynbee and Taylor about the government: incompetence, ideological desire, Stalinism.

    Part three of the event was audience questions, which likewise proved awkward for Leslie and Williams and a walkover for McCarthy. Charlotte’s naivety on tax avoidance, loopholes and corporation tax was breathtaking. Answering one point, Kerry described workfare as ‘slavery’: immediately Williams tried to leap in to defend it; a Bristol MP defending slavery has not been seen for nearly 2 centuries. However, there was worse for Williams. One audience member prefaced his question, “I voted Lib Dem in last election and Stephen, I feel deeply betrayed by you and your party”. The room exploded in applause.

    My verdict: a most enjoyable event if you enjoy politics; supporters of the two coalition parties may have found themselves in a minority in the audience and might not have felt very comfortable. My verdict on the coalition at half time: the ref should abandon the match and take all the players off the pitch.

    My sincere thanks to Andrew Kelly and the Bristol Festival of Ideas team for the invitation. Next time you want an event covered live via Twitter… 🙂

  • Aspiring

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities

    Bristol may be unique as a city for many reasons. One of these is the city’s tallest building: how many others can boast their tallest edifice dates back to the 12th century? Well, complete with its spire (built 1442), St Mary Redcliffe church – the one the tourists mistake for Bristol Cathedral and the selfsame one described by Queen Elizabeth I as “the fairest, goodliest, and most famous parish church in England” – still towers over every other building in the city at 89 metres (or 292 ft if you still work in old money. Ed.).

    Every now and again, some work needs to be done on the building’s fabric and I was extremely fortunate on Wednesday to spot some in progress way above my head.

    image of spire of St Mary Redcliffe complete with steeplejacks
    Bristol’s tallest building complete with human ants

    If you squint up the spire, you can see two steeplejacks at work, with the lower one actually carrying a ladder.

    The steeplejacks are from the family firm of Dawson Steeplejacks of Clutton in North Somerset. To coincide with the works the Bristol Post carried a feature on the 175 years-old firm and its work. The Dawson family have been steeplejacks for seven generations: now that’s is something to which to aspire!

Posts navigation