“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.
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? 🙂
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.
One perennial problem in the Easton district of Bristol where I live is fly-tipping, the illegal dumping of waste.
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.).
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.
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.
West Mids Police are reviewing their interpreting contract. Officers completing questionnaires. Sgt I spoke to said no improvement in 2 yrs.
All election materials delivered to my home are recycled and those containing my personal detailed are shredded before recycling.
Each election I keep a tally of the number of communications received from each candidate or party, which has acquired the name of the shredder poll over the years.
On Friday evening the Open Rights Group organised one of a series of nationwide European Digital Rights hustings at St Werburgh’s Community Centre in Bristol. This was a chance for local people to quiz MEP candidates from the South West about their views on digital rights and ask them to sign up to the 10 point Charter of Digital Rights.
Green European Parliament candidate Audaye Elesedy signs the Charter of Digital Rights at St Werburgh’s Community Centre. Picture credit: Brent Longborough
As Chair of St Werburgh’s and having a keen interest in digital rights, I volunteered my services and was surprised to be asked to chair the event.
When I arrived, Ed Paton-Williams from the ORG had already shown up and there was little to organise in the room apart from setting up the wifi, a couple of notices with the wifi details and the last minute provision of water for the top table.
In alphabetical order, the candidates who attended were:
Hadleigh Roberts (Labour) (who, incidentally, is a fellow translator. Ed.).
We were supposed to have been joined by Julia Reed from UKIP, but she pulled out at the last moment. Could this have had something to do with a little Twitter bother?
After a brief introduction from Ed Paton-Williams and a warm welcome to all to the Centre from me, we were off with candidates’ opening statements. All stuck fairly well to the 2 minutes limit for speaking (and many thanks to Hadleigh for the use of his phone with the stopwatch app! Ed.).
As chair I got to ask the first question: has the EU done enough to allow open source software to compete with proprietary products such as Microsoft Office?
Some interesting answers followed: Hadleigh and Jay both raised the cost of licensing for small businesses; Audaye raised the use of open standards such as Open Document Format.
The meeting was then thrown open to questions from the floor. The first concerned data protection and the UK’s government’s desire to make money from selling data provided by citizens. Once again there were some fascinating answers of which I’m reminded of two points in particular: Jay believed people should be compensated financially for the use of their data, whilst Hadleigh stated that companies shouldn’t be buying people’s data. A point made from the floor was that people are very mistrustful of the way the government uses – and loses – data.
The next question from the floor raised the matter of TTIP. Some candidates, particularly those with links to business, favoured TTIP’s implementation; Georgina said it should be given a chance. Other, more wary candidates feared the consequences of TTIP’s proposals to allow corporations to take governments to court for changes to the competitive commercial landscape. TTIP was also seen as a big threat to personal control of data. Snowden’s revelation of US spying on the EU during TTIP negotiations were mentioned by Audaye.
This led neatly into the next matter: surveillance. Georgina thought there was too much scaremongering going on about data collection. It’s there to protect us from paedophiles and terrorism, adding: “States knew perfectly well that surveillance happening… on the internet there’s no such thing as privacy.” Jay responded that we’re struggling with oversight in the UK and that access to communications data shouldn’t be a habitual thing. Hadleigh remarked that the public have to be given a guarantee that they won’t be spied on unless they’ve committed crime. Audaye stressed that Germany has gained a competitive advantage in digital sector because its far stronger privacy culture compared with the UK.
Thangam Debonnaire, Labour’s candidate for the Bristol West parliamentary constituency and a former musician, asked about how the EU should make sure copyright law helps creators protect their income. There was general agreement in the responses that Digital Rights/Restrictions Management (DRM) hadn’t really done anything to stop so-called ‘piracy’, (better known to some of us by its correct definition of ‘copyright infringement’. Ed.). Furthermore, artists deserve better compensation from the likes of iTunes and Spotify. The general impression is that this area still needs attention as the music and film industries are still struggling to come to terms with the internet after a couple of decades.
In one of the final questions, the power of the UK in the EU was raised from the floor. Candidates pointed out that the UK hadn’t really lost any power, but had lost influence due to its attitude. As regards attitude, the behaviour of UKIP in the European Parliament was criticised severely by the candidates. Proceedings in the Parliament were described as generally civilised and polite. However, UKIP’s MEPs were criticised for being rude to their fellow parliamentarians and failing to do any work on the committees on which they are supposed serve.
The hustings concluded with closing statements from all candidates and a vote of thanks to them from the chair.
For me it was a baptism of fire, never having chaired a hustings event before. But the candidates were – apart from a minor bit of mudslinging – models of politeness and made my job in the chair a pleasure. There was none of the two speakers talking at once that I witnessed the previous week at Radio 4’s broadcast from Bristol of Any Questions?
The tenor of the meeting is perhaps summarised by this tweet from local councillor Rob Telford.
Very open debate this evening, lots of audience participation and intelligence, more of a conversation really! #EUDigitalDebate
Crapita’s mismanagement of the courts and tribunals interpreting contract for the Ministry of Justice may not be getting as much publicity now as previously (posts passim), but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t stopped wasting public money, as the tweet below from yesterday reveals.
@TheCriminalBar Husband's trial with t/e 2-3 days has not yet started and day 3 tomorrow.Reason: #crapita not provided interpretor #mojwaste
As Leisha doesn’t mention the type of court involved, there’s no certainty how many thousands of pounds this laxity has cost, but once again justice is being delayed, contrary to one of the few clauses of Magna Carta still in legal effect (posts passim).
One might even think that the one organisation that should be concerned about this – the Ministry of Justice – seems to be less concerned with justice and more with covering up its own and Crapita’s serial incompetence.
The Wig and Pen public house in Truro, Cornwall had some unexpected publicity earlier this week when a badly temporary temporary sign was snapped by an amused regular before being hurriedly removed by embarrassed staff, according to yesterday’s Western Daily Press.
By the time the sign came down, its fame had spread round the world by social media; and it’s easy to see why.
However, according to the Western Daily Press article, the sign itself was not the only linguistic clanger involved in the episode:
But a remember [sic] of staff named Georgie-Tim later took to Twitter to say: “Well, it got you’re attention!
Man taken to hospital after his car collided with road sign in Avonmouth
The first sentence outlines how the incident occurred:
A man in his 40s had to be removed on a spinal board after his car collided with a road sign in Avonmouth.
Note how the car’s occupant – presumably its driver – plays a passive role; the car apparently collided with a road sign of its own volition without any human intervention. One would almost think that cars and other motor vehicles are so capricious and flighty that conscious action by human beings is imperative to stop the public highway becoming a large linear scrapyard in next to no time and remaining such permanently.
Perhaps a more accurate headline would have been Man taken to hospital after driving into road sign.
Similar examples of this use of English can be found in any local paper in the country.
However, such language is not confined to the print media. An similar example from inside the BBC in Bristol was posted on Twitter this morning (screenshot below).
Note the absence of any human involvement in the incident: a horse was killed by a fast car. Was it an unoccupied, autonomous vehicle? A more accurate rendition would be that a horse was killed by a fast driver.
Then there’s the way large swathes of the media report collisions using the noun accident to describe them. In the vast majority of cases, there’s nothing accidental about them. According to RoSPA, 95% of all road ‘accidents’ involve some human error, whilst a human is solely to blame in 76% of road ‘accidents’.
an unforeseen event or one without an apparent cause
anything that occurs unintentionally or by chance; chance; fortune
a misfortune or mishap, esp one causing injury or death
It would seem that the third definition is the one relied upon by the media. Interestingly, the British police stopped using the term Road Traffic Accident (RTA) some years ago; the police now refer to a Road Traffic Incident (RTI) instead.
Perhaps the media should follow the example of the police if they wish to retain their alleged reputation for truth and accuracy.
This tweet from @Case4theCrown just shows the exasperation the judiciary – a body not normally known for making its feelings known – feels with regard to the continuing farce that is Capita’s courts and tribunals interpreting “service” for the Ministry of Justice.
On Friday evening the 
