social media

  • Thank You!

    Steve WoodsBristol, Social Media

    A week ago I was honoured to attend the annual Thank You awards organised by Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Management to provide coverage of the event via Twitter.

    These awards are presented every year to people who make a difference in the part of East Bristol where I live. Nominations all come from the local community, i.e. friends and neighbours.

    This year the awards were presented by local MP Stephen Williams, whilst the event was compèred by local broadcasting husband and wife team Pat Hart and Sherie Eugene Hart. Those honoured ranged in age from people still at school to pensioners.

    The biggest cheer of the night was for Lil Stiddard, who received a standing ovation. Lili’s citation read:

    It was 32 years ago that Lil and her husband became involved in setting up a club for older people in the community. Before Easton Community Centre was built, they met at the Chelsea Road Old Co-op. The floor collapsed with all the dancing the first time they used a temporary venue. At the age of 97, Lil is still active in the club, setting out the tables and chairs, bringing the tea and assisting the treasurer. “We are all human beings,” she says, “and need to learn to pull together.”

    All the winners were photographed together at the end of the presentation.

    group photo

    Here’s a short film of vox pops shot at the awards.

    I happened to be nominated too…

    image of Thank You award

  • Jane Street, Bristol celebrates Zero Waste Week

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

    Zero Waste Week, now in its seventh year, is currently taking place in the United Kingdom between 1st and 7th September 2014.

    The aim of Zero Waste Week is to “an opportunity to reduce landfill waste & save money“.

    The theme of this year’s event is “One More Thing“.

    Jane Street in Redfield, Bristol, shows in the picture below just what can be achieved with “One More Thing” in Zero Waste Week, in this case, one more instance of fly-tipping!

    Jane Street fly-tipping
    Image courtesy of Amy Harrison

    As part of the campaign to clear up Easton and Lawrence Hill wards (under the #tidybs5 moniker. Ed.), I recently attended a meeting with Marg Hickman, my local councillor, and council officers (news passim). At that meeting I was informed by the officers that the problem of fly-tipping in Jane Street had disappeared since a local mafrish – a café used for chewing khat – had closed down following the UK’s outlawing of khat. Obviously the council officers concerned hadn’t bargained for the persistence of Bristol’s filthy fly-tipping community!

    Besides alerting @BristolCouncil via Twitter, fly-tipping can be reported to the city council by:

    • using the dedicated fly-tipping report form on the council website (which also has a mobile version that works on smartphones);
    • a third party smartphone app, such as My Council (which is available for both Android and iOS; and
    • telephoning 0117 922 2100.

    The most direct reporting route is using the fly-tipping form as the report is sent directly to the department concerned, whereas the other methods require the report to be forwarded by its original recipient.

  • NL: PSV Eindhoven introduces wifi at stadium; fans protest

    Steve WoodsOddities, Social Media, Tech

    PSV Eindhoven logoPSV Eindhoven supporters launched a vehement protest against the introduction of wifi at the their Philips Stadion ground during their side’s 6-1 home victory over NAC Breda in their opening game of the season, according to yesterday’s Guardian.

    Fans displayed one banner reading: “F*ck Wi-Fi, support the team”. Placards with crosses running through the wifi signal were also held aloft before the match. Supporters’ groups believe the introduction of wifi is just the latest of a series of decisions by the club intended to gentrify the crowd at home matches.

    However, the club’s website has a slightly different take on the introduction of wifi. The game against NAC Breda marked the test phase of the ‘Connected Stadium’ project. All visitors had free access to the internet, social media and email via the ‘PSV’ network. This is the first time in the Netherlands that a stadium has been equipped with a wifi network. The club is also asking users for feedback.

    First posted on Bristol Wireless.

  • Bristol Post Balls – bad punning and sexism

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    Regular readers will be aware that the Bristol Post is not renowned for the quality of its journalism.

    However, the dreadful pun and sexism of today’s front page of the dead tree edition marked a new low in the paper’s already woeful standards.

    image of Bristol Post front page with sexist pun

    Bad puns are annoying in headlines at the best of times and sexism is tolerated far less than when the fifty-something males in charge of producing Bristol’s daily work of fiction first started out in what was then called journalism.

    There has been a steady stream of criticism of the Bristol Post on Twitter throughout the day.

    However, the paper has not sought to respond to any of its critics, presumably because the person in charge of the Twitter account has yet to notice the ‘reply’ button.

    In addition, some of Bristol’s Twitterati have also been alerting the national media to The Post’s disgraceful front page seeking to trivialise a sexual assault.

    With front pages like the one above, is it any surprise that the Post’s circulation figures (as measured by ABC) are falling by nearly 11% per year? Not to me it isn’t!

    Update 18/08/14: Bristol 24-7 is reporting today that Bristol City councillor Naomi Rylatt has written to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) over the above front page headline, describing it as a “disgusting attempt at humour“.

  • #tidyBS5 gains momentum

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

    After the last Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Forum meeting where I talked about fly-tipping in my area of Bristol (posts passim), it was suggested to me that I devise a hashtag for use on Twitter and elsewhere to help highlight the problem. My answer was #tidyBS5.

    The hashtag and its use have now been given another boost by publicity in the fortnightly Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Management email bulletin.

    image from newsletter featuring tidybs5

    There’s also a meeting with councillors and officers on fly-tipping and rubbish in just over a week’s time to which I’ve also been invited. Let’s hope it ends in some proper enforcement and action to make scenes like the one below a thing of the past.

    image of Stapleton Rd fly-tipping

  • Generational change: graffito

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

    “Punk is dead” is a phrase recalled from my early twenties and apparently dates from 1978. Furthermore, “Punk is Dead” is also the title of a song by the legendary anarchist punk band Crass.

    This morning a variation on the phrase drifted into my Twitter feed, as shown by the photograph below.

    grafitti stating punk is dad

    For today’s younger people, about the age that I was when punk first emerged, the leading lights of punk rock such as The Clash, Sex Pistols and their contemporaries have probably been added to the likes of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and other more typical exponents of “Dad Rock“.

    Additional research has revealed that “Punk is Dad” is the title of a song by Berlin-based band Ohrbooten.

    Could the graffito be cheap promotion for Ohrbooten’s offering – or is it just bad spelling? 🙂

  • What’s Portuguese for “I can’t interpret?”

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

    On Friday Linguist Lounge’s Facebook page carried a disturbing report on the abysmal quality of interpreters – or more specifically one interpreter – used by Capita Translation & interpreting. It is reproduced in its full horror below.

    We’ve received a report that today Capita sent an unqualified Portuguese interpreter to a court in England. The linguist is reported to have summarised court proceedings, using English terms for unknown words such as “guardian”, “placement”, “local authority”. The judge was said to have been made aware of this after the hearing, however, the defendant was left stressed and anxious, without any understanding of what was going on inside the court room.

    When is the Ministry of Justice going to terminate its failing contract with Crapita? Will that have to wait until a change of government next year?

    In the meantime Crapita will continue to be rewarded for poor service and public money will continue to be wasted.

  • Talking rubbish

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

    One perennial problem in the Easton district of Bristol where I live is fly-tipping, the illegal dumping of waste.

    trade and other waste dumped by communal bin for household waste in Stapleton Road, Easton
    Disgraceful! Trade & other waste dumped by communal bin for household waste in Stapleton Road, Easton

    Some areas – such as Stapleton Road (see above picture) – have persistent problems and last night I gave a short presentation at the latest Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Forum meeting to try and encourage other residents and those who work in the area to get involved and make Easton a tidier place.

    I’m pleased to say I received whole-hearted support from local councillor Marg Hickman, who is equally concerned about the amount of litter on the streets (are fly-tipping and littering related; does one attract the other? Ed.).

    Flytipping can be reported online using the council’s dedicated report form. Some people use Twitter to do so too, whilst for those with a smartphone various third party applications are available, such as My Council.

    If anyone does draw attention to fly-tipping or litter on Twitter, you might like to add the hashtag #tidybs5. If you live elsewhere in Bristol you might like to adapt the #tidybs* hashtag, replacing the asterisk with the first figure of your postcode.

    Yesterday I did learn prior to the Neighbourhood Forum meeting that persistence pays off: via an email from the city council I learnt that several traders on Stapleton Road are or have been served with fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping by enforcement officers. It’s a start, but I get the impression that fly-tipping will be as hard to eradicate as a Hammer horror film vampire.

    Bristol will be European Green Capital in 2015. Unless it sorts out fly-tipping and other environmental problems in Easton and the city’s other less prosperous areas (like the plague of flies, dust and other industrial pollution in Avonmouth. Ed.), the accolade should be amended to read European Greenwash Capital.

  • West Midlands Police consulting on interpreting contract with Capita

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    According to a couple of my Twitter contacts, West Midlands Police are currently looking at their interpreting contract with Capita Translation & Interpreting, a name not unfamiliar this blog.

    The first indication of this came yesterday from Agata McCrindle.

    This was followed later by Geoffrey Buckingham, Chairman of the Association of Police & Court Interpreters (ACPI).

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