media | Steve Woods

A sad day in BS5

25/08/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Politics

Friday 25th August 2023 marked the end of an era and a sad day for Easton in Bristol. After 14 years of serving the public St Mark’s Community Café based at St Mark’s Baptist Church opened for the very last time after 14 years.

Of the local media outlets, only the BBC appears to have covered this event, but gave it a very sympathetic write-up.

Your ‘umble scribe has been going there 2 or 3 times a week for the past few years to enjoy baked potatoes, good cooking and the undisputed best cakes in all BS5, the latter baked by the remarkable Lesley, whose baking skills put my own late mother’s to shame (and that’s saying a lot, coming from a loyal eldest son!). My own particular favourites amongst her regular baked wares were farmhouse fruit, barra brith and anything with gooseberries or ginger. Furthermore, all the food served and the ingredients used to prepare it were ethically and locally sourced wherever possible.

However, this was a café with a difference: paying customers like your correspondent meant that the homeless could eat there for free. Below is a short video with interviews of both customers and café staff/volunteers to give an idea of what has now entered the annals of local history.

Although I’ll miss you all terribly, here’s wishing Lesley a happy retirement and I’d like to express my thanks to you, Nettie and all the café volunteers for keeping me fed over the years and being such wonderful people.
Daily Brexit – crime against syntax

23/08/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics

As a title in the Reach plc newspaper stable, the Daily Brexit (which some still call the Express. Ed.) has long inhabited an alternative reality, a world where the economic disaster otherwise known as Brexit is a roaring success (e.g. ‘Global Britain is thriving’).

In recent times the title has gained a reputation more of right-wing posturing than for the factual reporting of news and current affairs

A new charge must now be added to the title’s many crimes against reality and journalism – a crime against English, as seen in the headline below posted today on the paper’s website in its continuing campaign of hate against Harry Mountbatten-Windsor and his wife.

Wouldn’t it be a boon to journalism if those who write for the fourth estate – even on trivial, gossipy matters – had a basic level of competence in the language in which they are writing?

Your comments would be welcome below.

PS: for any passing illiterate Reach plc hacks in search of enlightenment, the grammatically correct version of the headline would read: “Harry’s six word response as to why he and Meghan won’t give up titles“.
English linguistic chauvinism defeated twice in Welsh courts

06/08/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

A little over a year ago, this blog covered the case of a Welsh court dismissing the case of a Welsh motorist prosecuted for not paying a parking charge because the notice and other correspondence were all in English and the refusal of the parking management company’ – One Parking Solution (whose registered office is in Worthing, West Sussex. Ed.) to provide the court with Welsh translations thereof. (posts passim).

When a judge dismisses the case, that’s the end of it, isn’t it?

Usually.

Nevertheless, in this instance the monoglot English parking company decided to appeal the original judge’s decision, as Nation Cymru reports.

A bilingual car park sign in Caernarfon. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The case at Aberystwyth Justice Centre did not go well for One Parking Solution, even though the company had in this instance bothered to send legal counsel to the court.

Deputy judge Owain Williams decided the company had delayed for too long before launching its appeal and introduced it under incorrect rules.

In addition, the judge ordered that One Parking Solution pay Mr Schiavone’s travel expenses. The defendant said that this money would be donated to Cancer Research Wales.

Mr Schiavone was triumphant, stating:

The travel costs of the counsel alone are more than the cost of translating the fine and the cost of conducting the case are a hundred times or more the cost of providing a Welsh fine.

The company’s attitude has been completely contemptuous and completely against the rights of Welsh speakers.

Siân Howys, of Cymdeithas yr Iaith’s Welsh Language Rights Group, stated the following after the hearing:

“We are pleased that the judge ruled in favour of the defendant, as in a similar case in Caernarfon, where the judge Mervyn Evans-Jones ruled that the defendant did not need to pay an English-only fine.

It is becoming increasingly evident that these companies need to change their attitudes towards the Welsh language. To put pressure on them we will today be launching a campaign encouraging people not to pay for parking in car parks with English-only signs, nor to pay the resultant fines.

The Government should set Standards in this area and for other businesses, such as supermarkets and banks, so that there is a requirement for the private sector to provide their services in Welsh.
New Twitter logo – a suggestion

23/07/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Tech

Today’s Grauniad reports that Elon Musk, the super-rich man-baby allegedly in charge of social media platform Twitter, wants to change the company’s famous blue bird logo. Announcing his intention, Musk is said to have tweeted: “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”.

Since being acquired by Musk in October 2022, Twitter has had its business name changed to X Corp and it is on a design involving an X that Musk wishes logo efforts to be concentrated, with him also announcing the following:

“If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make (it) go live worldwide tomorrow.”

As someone with an intense dislike for Musk and all he stands for, your ‘umble scribe has not been on Twitter since his takeover and has deleted his account* despite the large number of friends and contacts I’d made on the platform all over the country and the rest of the world.

Nevertheless, your correspondent would like to suggest to Musk not to bother with a logo featuring an X, but something far more familiar to those with whom Twitter comes into contact, particularly if they are from the fourth estate or the media in general. It’s shown below for the benefit of Musk and his cultists.

No, your eyes are working perfectly. It is the turd emoji. And it’s appropriate for many reasons. Firstly, there’s the mismanagement of the platform since Musk’s acquisition, including allegedly unlawful sackings of staff and the reinstatement of accounts of previously banned persons (such as that of the deeply unpleasant disgraced former 45th president of the US of A).

Furthermore, press and media inquiries to Musk/Twitter now receive the turd emoji as their sole response to him/the company. It is hence far more representative of what the company has become under its present ownership, not to mention the mindset of its billionaire proprietor.

However, if brown’s not your favourite colour, an alternative could be to tint the turd emoji the shade of blue used by the social media platform.

* = Now on Mastodon, but that’s the subject of a future blog post. 😀
Strike at Auntie’s Bristol base

20/07/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Politics

Walking up Whiteladies Road this morning, your ‘umble scribe spotted a picket line outside ~~Broadcasting~~ Brainwashing House as local radio journalists down tools for the third time in recent months to protest about cuts to jobs in the corporation’s local radio stations.

NUJ picket line on White ladies Road, BS8

According to the NUJ, “Despite the dispute winning huge support among the 5.4m loyal local radio listeners, MPs and councillors of all parties, a huge range of charities, non-league football fans, and community groups, the BBC is going ahead with plans to cut local content by almost half, with many popular presenters losing their jobs or choosing to go“.

Solidarity! 😀
Bristol Live: lost – one dog

28/06/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

Quality control at Reach plc regional press titles does not seem to be getting any better.

Ample evidence of this is provided by a story in today’s Bristol Live/Bristol (Evening) Post, which features a non-existent dog in one photograph, as shown by the screenshot below.

Spot the canine

To be fair to Bristol’s newspaper of (warped) record, the dog does appear in a subsequent uncropped version of the same photo with an identical caption.

Why the editor tolerates such duplication and lack of quality control is beyond the imagination of your ‘umble scribe. Perhaps s/he would care to explain in the comments below.
Bristol Live exclusive – war and mass killing in Dorset

17/06/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

Bristol Live, the Reach plc local news title that serves Bristol (badly. Ed.) is not know for the restraint of its headlines; and one of yesterday’s was definitely what one could classify as sensationalist.

Indeed, judging by the headline war and mass killing have recently occurred in Studland in Dorset, if one takes the standard definition of carnage, i.e. “the violent killing of large numbers of people, especially in war“; and all relating to a car ending up in the sea.

Needless to say there is no mention of mass killings or hostilities in the report itself, only the minor inconvenience of cancelled ferry services. Could it be yet more evidence that the residents of the city’s Temple Way Ministry of Truth have a very poor understanding of the English language? They definitely have a tendency to use it like a blunt tool instead of a precision instrument.
Brave Sir Boris

11/06/2023 Steve WoodsMedia, Politics

On Friday disgraced former alleged party-time prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson resigned as a member of parliament with immediate effect rather than face the sanction of parliament for lying to it and possibly losing a by-election for the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency he has ignored since 2015 and held with a slender majority of 7,210

The Monty Python team had Johnson’s pusillanimous character type down to a tee way back in 1975 in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Like Sir Robin, “Sir” Boris has plenty of previously form, as recorded by the minstrels of the fourth estate.

“Sir” Boris is first and foremost famous for evading a journalist by hiding in a fridge; and while he was Foreign Secretary in Theresa May’s administration, Johnson typically avoided a Commons vote on the expansion of Heathrow airport (concerning which he had previously vowed to oppose, saying he would “lie down in front of the bulldozers“. Ed.) by disappearing to Afghanistan for the day
.
Bristol Live exclusive – Scillies move south

14/05/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

Today’s Bristol Post contains a hidden exclusive tucked away in an article about the local weather forecast.

Tropical Isles of Scilly?

Last time your ‘umble scribe looked, the Scilly Isles were an archipelago 45 km south-west of the Cornish peninsula. This means either the British Isles have migrated south towards the equator or the reverse has happened, i.e. the equator has moved north towards dear old Blighty, as there’s is now way in which the Scillies merit being defined as tropical. In either case plate tectonics has been working overtime or planet Earth has tilted drastically on its axis recently.
The definition of tropical is from or relating to the area between the two tropics.
The two tropics are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at 23°26′10.5″ (or 23.43625°) N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at 23°26′10.5″ (or 23.43625°) S. The Scillies lie at a latitude of 49°55′N. On the other hand, it’s not a hidden exclusive but bad journalism, possibly influenced by belonging to the Reach plc stable, which also includes the Daily Brexit (which some still call the EXpress. Ed.), a title long renowned for lurid and misleading coverage of matters meteorological.
Here is the BBC ‘news’

13/05/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

If, dear reader, you thought news content of the ‘man stubs toe on pavement‘ variety and gossip about alleged celebrities was confined to titles in the Reach plc and Newsquest Media Group media stables, it might be time to think again.

The BBC has long vaunted the quality of its news coverage. However, its reputation has long been questioned; and not merely because of its proximity to and membership of the British Establishment, about which the late historian A.J.P. Taylor once remarked:

The Establishment draws in recruits from outside as soon as they are ready to conform to its standards and become respectable. There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment – and nothing more corrupting.

Anyway, back to Auntie…

By trying to make the news accessible to all, it has invariably indulged in omission and simplification, actions that could be covered by the phrase ‘dumbing down‘. If one wants in-depth analysis of the news, the BBC is not the place to look. Try the broadsheet newspapers or weekly political and economics journals instead.

The combination of irrelevant non-news and dumbing down was exemplified this week by one article yesterday on the BBC ‘News‘ website, as per the screenshot below.

Even more remarkably, this non-story of nearly 270 words, which also drops more names than the prominent member of a 1960s tribute band mentioned in the headline, took two so-called journalists to write it.

Most likely in crayon. 😀

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