Politics

  • Stolen sculpture – city council prevaricating over return

    Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities, Politics

    Bristol museum's Benin bronze head of an ObaIn 1897 British troops attacked, burned down and looted the palace of the Oba (king) of Benin in West Africa. The former Kingdom of Benin (1180–1897) is now part of present-day Nigeria.

    Amongst the squaddies’ loot was a huge haul of bronze sculptures, many of which found their way into museums, galleries and onto the western art market.

    One of these was acquired in Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery in 1935, where it is described as Object Number Ea7821.

    Back in 2020 Prince Edun Akenzua of the Royal Court of Benin made a direct appeal to Bristol to return the looted artwork to Nigeria, as reported at the time by the Bristol Post.

    Since then many fine words have been written by the city council about repatriation both on the museums website and the museums blog with the latter stating the following regarding the fate of the sculpture:

    Although we have still not been able to make contact directly with Royal Court officials, we have been looking at the work of the British Museum and the Benin Dialogue Group and discussing options with the Legacy Restoration Trust. To be clear, we are not bound by the thoughts or decisions of any of these bodies, nor the UK government.
    We have been gathering information about the best way to take on board the variety of thoughts and concerns of different groups in Nigeria. There has been a lack of consensus about the best place to hold objects that return to the country. The new, but yet to be built, Edo Museum of West African Art is one option that many do agree with.

    Since then things have gone very quiet indeed. Bristol University student newspaper Epigram has even accused the city council’s museums service of “heel-dragging“.

    Your ‘umble scribe also believes the city council’s museums service could have moved a little quicker and has today filed the following FoI request with the city council.

    Dear Bristol City Council,
    This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.
    The City Museum & Art Gallery contains in its collection a Benin bronze head (Object Number: Ea7821) looted by the Oba’s palace in 1897 and acquired by the museum in 1935.
    Some years ago, the local media reported that this object was to be repatriated to Nigeria.
    There have been no subsequent reports of its repatriation, so I am assuming this has still to happen.

    Kindly provide an explanation for the delay in repatriating this object to where it belongs despite the city museums website (source: https://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/collections/action-on-decolonisation/repatriation/) stating: “Bristol City Council acknowledges and recognises that the possession of historic Benin Bronzes is highly contentious and that there are calls for repatriation to Benin (Nigeria). As a consequence, Culture team staff are establishing contact with the interested parties in Nigeria and those who are currently negotiating with them across Europe as part of the Benin Dialogue Group and through the Legacy Restoration Trust in Nigeria”.

    Yours etc.

    In the past couple of months museums in the United States of America and Germany respectively have repatriated far more Benin bronzes than one bronze head, so come on Bristol, it’s time for you to exdigitate or if you can’t manage that, get your finger out! 😀

  • Fools and social media

    Steve WoodsMedia, Politics, Social Media, Tech

    Your ‘umble scribe has not bothered with social media since the obscenely wealthy and undertaxed man baby masquerading under the name Elon Musk took the helm of Twitter and promptly set about trashing it with his control freak approach to company management, sacking lots of the tech staff that keep the platform running and demanding those that survive show their dedication to the company by working excessive hours.

    This was a big wrench for your correspondent, as time not spent working was generally filled with social media discussion and debate, and so entailed a wholesale change in his daily activities (Note to self: must get round to getting on Mastodon some time soon. Ed.).

    Following his acquisition of the platform, Musk installed himself as Twitter’s CEO and now seems to have reached the conclusion his rather doubtful skills are up to the job.

    In recent days Musk held a Twitter poll to ask Twitter users whether he should remain as the platform’s boss. The results were not flattering if Musk has – as I suspect – a narcissistic streak.

    Poll shows 57.5% of Twitter users saying Musk should go
    On your bike, laddie!

    Musk has now confirmed he will indeed step down as CEO as soon as he can find someone ‘foolish enough‘ to replace him.

    One candidate springs to my mind immediately: an egomaniac with current experience of running a social media platform (albeit one misnamed Truth Social. Ed.). Step forward one Donald John Trump, disgraced 45th president of the United States, who spends a large share of his time playing golf (as he did whilst supposed to be occupying the Oval Office. Ed.).

    I do hope these two prime examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect play nicely with one another. 😀

    PS: The Register is also joining in the fun with its own poll.

  • Defensive on donations

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    Today’s Guardian reports that donations to the alleged natural party of government (©: the CONservative Party. Ed.) have declined by 40% in just 3 months (although in that quarter it still managed lay its paws on £3m.), according to the latest figures released by the Electoral Commission.

    By way of contrast, donations to the Labour Party have risen by almost 25%.

    Fifty pound note
    “Hello! Let me introduce you to the powerful and influential person holding me…”

    During this time the Tories have worked their way through 3 prime ministers – the disgraceful Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, one Elizabeth Mary Truss and now Goldman Sachs cheerleader Rishi Sunak – and two budgets, including a fiscal disaster from short-lived Chancer of the Excheqeur Kamikwasi Kwarteng.

    The Tory spokesperson quoted by The Guardian seems to be very much on the defensive, if your ‘umble scribe’s reading between the lines is accurate.

    The Conservative party only accepts donations from permissible sources, namely individuals registered on the UK’s electoral roll or UK registered companies. Donations are properly and transparently declared to the Electoral Commission, openly published by them and comply fully with the law.

    If as stated the Tories are only accepting donations from permissible sources, that represents a quick volte-face from six months ago when, as Open Democracy reported, it was still donations from Russian sources linked to the gangster regime of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

  • A tale of two cities

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    Bristol’s so-called Clean Air Zone, which has been long delayed and much contested, comes into force at the end of the month, with the usual doom-mongers predicting it will spell the death of the city centre and its shopping facilities in particular. Leaving aside those whose idea of transport policy involves sitting at the steering wheel of a mostly empty motorised three-piece suite, the scheme has caused some concern, particularly when coupled with the city’s dreadful public transport, exacerbated as it is at present due to a shortage of bus drivers.

    A map of Bristol’s Slightly Less Polluted City Centre Air Zone is shown below.

    Bristol's central clean air zone
    Image courtesy of Bristol City Council

    Some might consider it timid and unambitious, especially if the aim is to get people out of their cars and walking and cycling (so-called active travel. Ed.) or using public transport.

    The argument is that the city vastly needs to improve facilities for cycling and walking* – providing far more dedicated infrastructure for both – as well as doing rather more in the way of enforcement against pavement parking (posts passim). As regards public transport, millions of pounds in public money have been poured into the city’s bus network over the years (e.g. Metrobus) with very sign of improvement and with the whole system now suffering from a driver shortage, the area’s bus network is even more unreliable than it has ever been. As for local rail services, Bristol’s are a disgrace compared with other major cities. It took decades of campaigning just to get a reasonably frequent service on the Severn Beach Line, whilst improvements to services to towns and cities surrounding local authorities have hardly improved at all. Then there’s the long-running saga of the reopening of the Bristol to Portishead railway line, where in over 2 decades progress can only be described as sub-tectonic, i.e. the earth’s tectonic plates, which shift by mere millimetres a year, are outstripping the bureaucrats. Meanwhile, the country is also failing to deal with a record cancellations of train services.

    Could these be the real reasons why Bristol’s implementation of a congestion charging scheme looks so timid and unambitious?

    Looking around the country, Bristol’s congestion charging zone appears to be trifling, a mere inconvenience to the majority who can continue to drive without impunity, particularly when one looks at what is being proposed in Cambridge, for example, as shown below.

    Map on Cambridge congestion charging zone covering most of the city's built-up area
    Cambridge’s congestion charging zone. Somewhere under the dark green shading is (most of) the city.

    As can be seen, the Cambridge scheme covers most of the city’s built-up area, as well as some surrounding villages. It too has attracted criticism, with it being described as town versus gown and car versus bike, pitting the city’s ordinary residents against the dreamers in the spires of Academe.

    Your ‘umble scribe just wonders what the reaction of Bristol would have been, had a Cambridge-style scheme been proposed for the city.

    * = One of the biggest changes that the council could do to make walking a more practicable mode of transport would be to change the timings on pelican crossings so that the signals change to allow pedestrians to cross within seconds of the button being pressed. This was first suggested over 30 years ago by one of the city’s cycle campaigners, the late Chris Hutt of Cyclebag. The council is keeping it persistently out of sight, having filed it in its bureaucratic oubliette otherwise known as its extensive Not Invented Here filing system.

  • Goodbye Snowdon. Hello Yr Wyddfa

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    Snowdonia National Park Authority committee members have voted to use the Welsh names of Eryri (Snowdonia) and Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) in both Welsh and English contexts Nation Cymru reported on Wednesday.

    Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) from Crib Goch, Parc Cenedlaethol Eryri National Park
    Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) from Crib Goch,<br /.
    Image from Llywelyn200 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    The receipt of a five thousand signature calling on the authority to formalise the use of the Welsh names Eryri and Yr Wyddfa helped to prompt the latter to take decisive action. The petition was received after the authority had already established a commission to examine the use of place names.

    Cardiff University’s Dr Dylan Foster Evans was was asked to compile a series of principles for use as guidance when referring to geographical names in the Eryri / Snowdonia National Park.

    A start on using the Welsh names in an English context started some years ago when many of the park authority’s English versions of publications and digital media started using the names Eryri and Yr Wyddfa with the English names following in brackets.

    Naomi Jones, the Snowdonia National Park Authority’s Head of Cultural Heritage remarked:</p

    Many public bodies across Wales have moved to use both the Welsh and English names, or the Welsh name only, when referring to Yr Wyddfa and Eryri, as have many of the mainstream English-language press and filming companies.
    This is very encouraging and gives us confidence that this change in the authority’s approach will be accepted for the benefit of the Welsh language and as a mark of respect to our cultural heritage.

    Update 20/11/22: This news has not been universally welcomed east of Clawdd Offa/Offa’s Dyke. A typical reaction comes from monoglot, prejudiced Shropshire Star ‘readers‘. Take and look below the piece and cringe.

  • German Federal Ministry promotes open source

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

    Min. of Economic Affairs and Climate Action sponsorship logoThe German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action’s Sovereign Tech Fund (STF) is promoting seven open source projects in a pilot round. The Fund shall therefore be increasing safety and data security on the internet, as well as digital sovereignty, according to German IT news site heise.

    A vulnerability in the Log4j open source Java library at the end of last year resulted in millions of potentially endangered systems. A discussion ensued about open source projects, which often represent crucial elements of the digital infrastructure.

    In the pilot round the Fund is supporting the OpenMLS library, which is used for end-to-end encryption, curl, the popular command line data transfer tool and an open implementation of the BGP internet routing protocol, which communicates between network segments and autonomous systems. The Ruby package manager RubyGems and Bundler, which facilitates the integration of Ruby packages in applications will also be supported, as will the WireGuard VPN software. In addition to this, the Fund is supporting GopenPGP, a modern OpenPGP implementation in Go, and OpenPGP.js, which can be executed in the browser. Furthermore, a projects is being promoted with OpenSSH, which is the standard for secure remote connections and is one of an administrator’s most important tools. STF pilot round projects as shown on STF website

    Software must adapt

    The STF characterises the projects as software belonging to digital base technologies and used extensively in business, the public sector and civil society. In a feasibility study (DE, PDF) the STF justifies the need to promote open basic technologies by the fact that although the importance and use of open source software is high, the projects nevertheless do not ‘adapt‘ accordingly and maintenance is often dependent upon committed individuals, thus increasing the risk of safety-critical vulnerabilities.

    In their coalition agreement, the SPD, the Greens and the FDP emphasise the importance of open source software for strengthening digital sovereignty.However, no funds were originally earmarked for the Sovereign Tech Fund in the federal government’s draft budget for 2022. In the end, coalition partners increased the funds provided so that the fund can now get started.

    The STF is promoting the above-mentioned projects until the end of the year with a total of €1 mn. Fiona Krakenbürger, the STF’s joint chief executive said: “This pilot round makes a small contribution to the sustainability of these important projects, which we hope to be able to expand in the years to come.” Projects worth funding will in future be determined in future by a committee of experts and an open application process. The STF intends to publish details of the application process in 2023.

  • COP27 – a laugh from the past

    Steve WoodsMedia, Politics

    The world’s top greenwashing event COP27 is currently taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt.

    To give an idea of the under-achievement of previous UN conferences on climate change, it’s worth pointing out that activist Greta Thunberg is boycotting the event, stating that it will be an opportunity for “greenwashing, lying and cheating“. Greta is famously critical of politicians as her “blah, blah, blah” speech showed.

    Anyway, in anticipation of a lack of any serious commitments and outcomes from the world’s political elite allegedly having a conferenceshores of the Red Sea, here’s a reminder from the past, in the shape of Ronnie Barker’s Ministry of Pollution sketch from the second season of The Two Ronnies, first aired in 1972.

  • Badly raised boys

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    Official portrait of over-promoted fireplace salesman Gavin WilliamsonYour ‘umble scribe likes to think he was properly brought up: polite, courteous, not swearing people, particularly women, and such like. As regards swearing, his sister has more than once revealed that when she and my late father were on a bus once, he admonished fellow passengers for swearing because women were present.

    As regards swearing, step forward over-promoted former fireplace salesman “Sir” Gavin Alexander Williamson CBE MP, the dishonourable member for South Staffordshire who has been inexplicably elevated to cabinet rank (again!) as Minister of State without Portfolio, who appears to have been taught and abide by completely different standards of social conduct to those of your correspondent.

    News has emerged over the weekend that Williamson sent ‘expletive-laden’ text messages to the then Conservative chief whip Wendy Morton all moaning about not being invited to attend the late queen’s funeral.

    The right dishonourable Oliver DowdenAccording to the messages published by today’s Sunday Times, Williamson accused Morton of exploiting the Queen’s death for political purposes, particularly as he was out of favour at the time with the English Empire’s shortest serving ever prime minister, one Elizabeth Mary Truss, now safely removed from high office and returned to the back benches.

    The actual words quoted by the press reveal that Williamson has a fine command of monosyllabic swear words having their roots in Old English (which some still call Anglo-Saxon. Ed.), particularly ones beginning with f and s.

    Not only did Williamson use foul language towards a woman, but this morning his cabinet colleague Oliver Dowden (also inexplicably honoured with a CBE like Williamson. Ed.)defended Williamson on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, claiming Williamson’s offensive text messages were sent ‘in the heat of the moment‘.

    I blame both of their sets of parents.

  • Celebrity?

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    Matt HancockThe disgraced former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, one Matthew John David Hancock, has lost the Conservative Party whip for agreeing to take part in trash TV show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, The Guardian reports.

    Tory chief whip Simon Hart is quoted as saying, “Following a conversation with Matt Hancock, I have considered the situation and believe this is a matter serious enough to warrant suspension of the whip with immediate effect”.

    The dictionary definition of a celebrity is someone who is famous, especially in areas of entertainment such as films, music, writing, or sport. Unless politics has become a branch of the entertainment business, classifying Hancock as a celebrity is a tad far-fetched, even though politics has previously been described as show business for ugly people.

    Your ‘umble scribe would contend that Hancock is no celebrity. However, what he does have is notoriety, particularly from his term of office as health secretary. In June 2021, after it was shown he had breached COVID-19 social distancing restrictions by kissing and embracing an aide, Gina Coladangelo, in his Whitehall office, Hancock resigned as Health Secretary, having been caught not only cheating on his wife, but also breaking his own social distancing rules. At the time Ms Coladangelo was a non-executive director at the Department of Health and Social Care. She was also an old college friend of Hancock’s from his time studying PPE at Exeter College, Oxford.

    However, Ms Coladangelo’s appointment to the DHSC is not the only example of Hancock’s cronyism. There was the revelation of his ownership of shares in a family company used by the NHS, not to mention the award of an NHS contract to a neighbour. Furthermore, Hancock is the member of parliament for the West Suffolk constituency, which includes Newmarket, capital of the country’s horse-racing business. One of the reasons the pandemic took such a strong hold in the country was the delay in locking the country down, which allowed such superspreader events as the traditional March Cheltenham Festival to take place.

    Of course, Hancock is not the first MP to be lured onto I’m A Celebrity. There was of course the notoriously useless Right Dishonourable Member for Mid-Bedfordshire, one Nadine Vanessa Dorries. Dorries also famously lost the whip for appearing on the show (where she famously ate ostrich anus in the bushtucker challenge. Ed.), apparently for committing the ultimate discourtesy of not informing the whips’ office of her absence from Halitosis Hall. However, this disciplinary action did not do much to dent her career prospects as she was subsequently and inexplicably elevated to the cabinet position of Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport by disgraced former alleged party-time prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

    Come the next election, will the good burghers of West Suffolk decide that Hancock belongs on a show entitled He’s A Calamity… Get Him Out Of Here!?

    Update 5/11/22: Hancock’s decision to take part in the show and leave his constituents without parliamentary representation while he earns a fat fee – rumoured in the media to be £350-400K – in addition to his £84,144 p.a. salary as an MP has not gone down well with some constituents, The Guardian reports.

  • Bristol pavement parking petition

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

    p>Bristol Green Party is currently collecting signatures for a petition seeking to ban pavement parking within the city. It’s a major problem, particularly in those parts of the city where streets are narrow and footways (aka pavements. Ed.) are even narrower.

    Pavement parking makes it hard to walk safely, especially for those with disabilities, those pushing prams and buggies and those with low vision. People in wheelchairs or on mobility scooters are also badly affected. On top of this, the city is supposed to be promoting what’s called active travel, i.e. walking and cycling, as opposed to the use of tinned 3-piece suites, particularly those powered by fossil fuels.

    Pavement parking on Bannerman RoadPavement parking on Bannerman Road

    The text of the petition is as follows.

    To: Bristol City Council
    From: [Your Name]

    We’re calling on Bristol City Council to take action on pavement parking in Bristol by:
    1. Using its existing powers to ban pavement parking in Bristol now, where it can and where it’s needed; and
    2. Calling on the Government to strengthen councils’ powers to ban pavement parking where bans are needed.

    Sign the petition.

Posts navigation