Below is a picture of part of an actual election leaflet delivered recently to somewhere in South Bristol by the local Liberal Democrats.
Note that local party hacks have omitted to change this generic national leaflet’s wording from ‘Anywhere Council’ to the name of the relevant local authority.
I for one would like to wish the candidate involved – [Insert Name Here] – every success.
Hat tip: Bristol Red.
Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news website, reports that the government of Spain’s autonomous region of Galicia is recommending that the region’s public sector organisations adopt Open Document Format (ODF, ISO 26300) for editable electronic documents and PDF for non-editable electronic documents.
“This will facilitate the re-use of documents and the creation of derivative works”, the government writes in a guide which was published on 26 March, Document Freedom Day (posts passim). Public sector bodies are also being advised to make their documents available using a copyleft licence, such as Creative Commons’ CC-by-SA.
The guide ‘Boas prácticas para a liberación de publicacións da Xunta de Galicia‘ (Good Practice Guide for liberating Galicia government documents) has been written by Galicia’s free software resource centre, the ‘Oficina de Coordinación de Software Libre’ (Ocfloss). The report is available in both ODT and PDF formats is also published under the CC-by-SA licence.
The guide also contains advice for the public sector on how to manage intellectual property rights in respect of its documents, images and multimedia files, as well as guidance on the creation of derivative works.
There’s a meeting of Mayor George Ferguson’s cabinet today down at City Hall the Counts Louse today.
Amongst the items on the agenda are the sale of the freehold of Avonmouth and Royal Portbury Docks for a mere £10 mn. to the Bristol Port Company.
However, there are more controversial items to be discussed. A mole down the Counts Louse has revealed that a new coat of arms and motto for the city have been proposed. Our new elected autocrat Mayor believes “Virtute et Industrial” (Virtue and Industry) is no longer appropriate given the changes he’s made since being elected and believes the city would be better served by the more apposite “Carpe Omnium” (Grab it all). He also believes the city’s coat of arms should be redesigned too, likewise to reflect his achievements.
For the benefit of readers I’ve mocked up the new motto and a new coat of arms to show what Bristol could be letting itself in for.
The council press office is denying rumours that the Cabinet is also discussing a motion to rename the city Georgetown in honour of the Mayor.
Today is Document Freedom Day (DFD) 2014. DFD is an annual celebration of and opportunity to promote the use of open formats and standards for digital documents and takes place on the last Wednesday in March each year.
Document freedom means documents that are free can be used in any way that the author intends. They can be read, transmitted, edited, and transformed using a variety of tools.
Open standards are formats which everybody can use free of charge and restriction. They come with compatibility “built-in” – the way they work is shared publicly and any organisation or person can use them in their products and services without asking for permission. Open Standards are the foundation of co-operation and modern society.
However, don’t just take my word for it.
Below are some testimonials for open standards and document freedom from people with a bit more influence than your ‘umble scribe.
Neelie Kroes, Vice-President, European Commission
I know a smart business decision when I see one – choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed.
Stephen Fry, actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director
Open standards make sense. What makes no sense is that large companies in the field still do not understand this. It is time once and for all to end the pointless nonsense of one document sent on one platform being incomprehensible to the user of another.
Chris DiBona, Open Source Manager, Google
Over time, files that have been saved in closed formats tend to be less and less accessible to their creators. We prefer people to use modern and truly open formats like ODF whenever possible to ensure that they can continue to access and enjoy their work today and into the far future.
Happy DFD 2014!
The autonomous government of Spain’s Canary Islands has announced in a press release (Spanish) that the Directorate General of Telecommunications and New Technologies has proposed that the free and open source OpenOffice 4.0 office suite be adopted by the government of the islands as its corporate office productivity software.
At the same time it also announced a standard for web site content management systems to be preferred by all Canary Islands government departments. It decided on “Portal web Tipo”, a package built in-house as part of the islands’ Platino e-government services platform. Platino and its components are being made available as open source to other Spanish public sector organisations via the CTT (Centro de Transferencia de Tecnología – Technology Transfer Centre) software repository.
The government of Italy’s Autonomous Province of South Tyrol wants to save &euro 1 mn. per year by using free software, according to a press release issued last week.
Public sector organisations took the first step towards the use of free software nearly one year ago with the change to the LibreOffice productivity suite (news passim). On 11th March 2014 the regional government decided to continue to pursue this route and to resort to the use of open source where possible. “We are expecting savings of one million Euro per year through free software,” declares governor Arno Kompatscher.
“The use of proprietary or free software has in the meantime degenerated into almost a religious war, not only in the public sector, but also in private businesses,” Kompatscher continued, speaking after a regional government meeting.
During the preceding legislature period the region and regional government had already made a decision in principle to opt for the use of free software. In June last year the first major step towards free software was made with the change from MS Office to LibreOffice. The regional government alone migrated 7,000 to the open source office suite.
Governor Kompatscher stressed that it was not a matter of using free software exclusively, but to find the best solution as regards citizens: “We’re standing by using free software. However, it’s not a matter of deciding between free and proprietary software, but between requirements.” Free software, according to Kompatscher, is not always suitable, but: “Citizens must always have access to public sector documents without having to resort to paid-for software as well. That is the key issue”.
The city of Munich is acting as an example for the use of free software in government. “For example, Munich’s city council is using free software; in spite of this ten per cent of its computers are still running proprietary programs. We’re aligning ourselves with this. There will be no either or; the principal objective is friendliness towards citizens,” Kompatscher emphasises.
The governor also refers to the potential savings arising from free software: “A very, very large amount of money is involved. The target is savings of one million euro per year.” Just from its first major step, switching to LibreOffice should save the regional government paying Microsoft some €600,000 in licence fees in the next few years.
On 1st April – April Fool’s Day – Bristol City Council’s Easton & St Philips Residents’ Parking Scheme comes into operation. (Some would consider the choice of date most apposite. Ed.)
Needless to say, the schemes haven’t exactly received universal support from the residents of a city with a high level of car ownership and an abysmal level of public transport provision. Overall, it’s been condemned by residents as a ‘parking tax’ as residents will have to acquire permits, both for their own vehicles, as well as for visitors arriving by motor vehicle.
There has been consultation, of course. However, as is usual with Bristol City Council, consultation is a portmanteau word, a crafty elision of ‘confidence trick’ and ‘insult’. With a city council consultation, the stress is always firmly on the first syllable. When something goes out to consultation, what the council wants to do is usually a fait accompli.
There have been howls of protest about the Residents’ Parking Schemes in the local press, particularly the car-loving Bristol Post, which has even enlisted the odd high-profile petrolhead to trash the Mayor’s plans.
Bristol’s residents’ parking schemes programme is very flawed.
One of the justifications for implementing them is to dissuade the thousands of daily commuters from outside the local authority area clogging up residential roads by parking there all day. As the scheme doesn’t cover the whole city, the thousands of commuting motorists will just park a bit further out in districts not covered by residents’ parking schemes, such as the area where your ‘umble scribe happens to live.
Where I live, it’s the residents that are guilty of problem parking; the streets are Victorian, narrow and were intended for use by horse and cart, not 21st century motor vehicles. Pavement parking is rife in the backstreets, making pavements impassable to wheelchair users and parents with children in prams and pushchairs. There’s minimal enforcement to combat such anti-social parking. Indeed, the police often contribute to the problem themselves (posts passim).
If Mayor Ferguson really wanted to stop Bristol being choked by out of town commuting motorists, his counterpart in London came up with an alternative that was introduced 11 years ago. It’s called the London Congestion Charge Zone.
France’s Le Monde reports that a very powerful computer virus has infected computers in Ukraine, where 22 instances of infection has been recorded since 2013, the year that country’s political crisis started, according to a report from BAE Systems.
This virus, baptised Snake, but also known as Ouroboros after the serpent in Greek mythology, is “one of the most sophisticated and persistent threats that we track,” states BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, in a report published on Friday, 7th March.
Although it appeared as early as 2006, Snake appears to have been deployed more aggressively since 2013, according to the same source: of the 56 instances identified since 2010 throughout the world, 44 have been recorded since last year. Ukraine is the main target with 22 instances since 2013, of which 14 alone have been confirmed since the start of 2014 when that country’s political crisis accelerated with the fall of its pro-Russian president at the end of February.
Lithuania, Britain and Georgia are amongst the other countries where Snake has also shown up.
Snake’s operators act on weekdays and operate mainly from a time zone corresponding to Moscow, BAE Systems states. “Our report shows that a technically sophisticated and well-organised group has been developing and using these tools for the last eight years,” said David Garfield, the managing director of cyber security at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence.
“There is some evidence that links these tools to previous breaches connected to Russian threat actors but it is not possible to say exactly who is behind this campaign.”
Snake’s controllers can access all of the computer systems they have infiltrated, in addition to which the virus’ capacity to hibernate by remaining completely inactive for many days makes its detection complex.
According to Saturday’s Financial Times (paywall), the virus has in particular infiltrated the Kiev government’s computer systems and those of major Ukrainian organisations.
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.
Bristol Radical Film Festival is on this week with a wide choice of events from today, 3rd March until 8th March. The films will be screened in a wide range of venues, which include and have in the past included digital outreach projects, social centres, political squats, radical bookshops, community bicycle hubs, trade union buildings, etc.
The Festival first took place in 2011 and showcases contemporary and historical works of overtly political documentary and fiction film-making. Organised by staff, students and alumni from the Centre for Moving Image Research and the Film team at the University of the West of England (UWE), the Festival also aims to draw attention to a range of other progressive, community-based initiatives in the city.
Two of this year’s offerings in particular take my fancy.
Firstly, there’s a screening of McLibel, the David and Goliath story of two people who fought back against one of the most powerful corporations on the planet. Ronald McDonald may have won their libel case against Helen Morris and Dave Steel, but it was very much a Pyrrhic victory. McLibel is being shown at Knowle West Media Centre, Leinster Avenue, Knowle West, Bristol BS4 1NL (map) on Thursday, 6th March at 7 pm. Entry is free.
The second offering to take my fancy is Uomini contro (English title: Many Wars Ago), produced in 1970. The film is set in Italy in 1917. Society is violently split down the middle over the question of whether to continue intervention in the war. Anarchists and socialists are intent on causing so much trouble that continued intervention is impossible. Railway lines are ripped up, battle lines are drawn. On the Isonzo front a General smells socialism behind the troops reaction to his orders and a disastrous Italian attack upon the Austrian positions leads to a mutiny among the decimated troops. The screening is being hosted by Bristol Radical History Group as part of its World War 1 series of events. The film will be screened at 5.00 pm on Saturday 8th March and the venue will be 2nd Floor, The Arc, 27 Broad Street, BS1 2HG (map) and there’ll be a £4 admission charge.