Politics | Steve Woods

EU Parliament wants to protect Free Software in AI regulation

11/05/2023 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

Today the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) reports that the European Parliament’s two competent committees – the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) and the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) – today voted by a large majority to protect Free Software in the EU’s AI Regulation. Furthermore, non-profit organisations and small Free Software projects up to the size of micro-enterprises, are largely to be exempted from this regulation.

In addition, the FSFE comments that this principle must be anchored in the Cyber Resilience Act and Product Liability Directive and the parliament’s forthcoming votes.

Alexander Sander, FSFE’s Senior Policy Consultant, explains as follows:

Instead of putting the responsibility on the Free Software developers, it should be put on the companies that profit from it on the market. Smaller organisations and non-profit activities, for example by foundations, must be excluded. With this vote, the Members of the European Parliament are thus recognising the reality of Free Software development and trying to protect it. The principle of transferring responsibility and liability to those who profit on the market instead of focusing on developers must also be anchored in the Cyber Resilience Act and the Product Liability Directive. This is the only way to not only protect Free Software and its contributors but also consumers and customers.

The final vote on the AI Act is expected in the next few weeks, after which discussions on the final text will take place between the Parliament, Council of Ministers and the Commission. The Parliament is currently discussing the amendments to the Cyber Resilience Act and the Product Liability Directive which have been submitted.
The writing on the wall

09/05/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

Expressing political opinions on walls is a practice that reaches back at least 2,000 years to Roman times – as in the case of Pompeii and other Roman towns and cities – and possibly even earlier.

One wall at the start of Whitehall Road in Bristol has displayed various messages – all of them anti-Conservative – over the years (see posts passim here and here. Ed.), of which the one below is the latest.

It appeared some time before last week’s English local government elections. However, your ‘umble scribe does not know the extent to which this particular slogan contributed to the Nasty Party’s disastrous losses of over 1,000 council seats and – more locally – its loss of overall control of South Gloucestershire seeing as it lies on a well-used commuter and bus route between the city and that neighbouring local authority.
Auntie crosses the Atlantic

07/05/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

The BBC has always prided itself on the high standard of its English, both spoken and written.

However, that may well a thing of the past if one of today’s social media offerings from the BBC Politics Twitter account (byline: the best of the BBC’s political coverage. Ed.) is to be believed.

Yes, you did read that correctly; license [sic]; twice; in two sentences.

Either Auntie is employing an American to curate the BBC Politics Twitter account or an illiterate.

If the latter, some remedial English lessons are clearly needed, as well as practice, particularly if use of the verb to practise is contemplated in future. 😀

In amongst the predictable responses from licence fee objectors and refuseniks, numerous replies to the tweet pointed out the basic orthographic difference between British and American English. However, no acknowledgement or correction of the error has been forthcoming over 10 hours after the original tweet was posted.
The poorest he…

05/05/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

In 1647 during the English Civil War a series of discussions – the Putney Debates – was held in St Mary’s Church, Putney between 28th October and 8th November about the political settlement that should follow Parliament’s victory over Charles Stuart, the arrogant autocrat commonly referred to by history as Charles I.

A transcript of the discussions can be found here.

The main participants in the debates were senior officers of the New Model Army who favoured retaining a monarch within the framework of a Constitutional monarchy, and radicals such as the Levellers who sought more sweeping changes, including One man, one vote and freedom of conscience, particularly in religion.
Amongst those Levellers whose words were transcribed is Thomas Rainsborough (pictured right), a colonel in the army, who is on record as favouring government by the consent of the governed, as expressed below.
I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under; and I am confident that when I have heard the reasons against it, something will be said to answer those reasons, in so much that I should doubt whether he was an Englishman or no that should doubt of these things.
Rainsborough was in particular supported by John Wildman and Edward Sexby. Sexby’s most salient contribution to the debates is as follows:
Our case is to be considered thus, that we have been under slavery. That’s acknowledged by all. Our very laws were made by our Conquerors… We are now engaged for our freedom. That’s the end of Parliament, to legislate according to the just ends of government, not simply to maintain what is already established. Every person in England hath as clear a right to elect his Representative as the greatest person in England. I conceive that’s the undeniable maxim of government: that all government is in the free consent of the people.

These sentiments were opposed by senior officers in the New Model Army, particularly Henry Ireton, and especially as they feared universal suffrage would remove the privileges that property ownership bestowed upon them.

In saying so, Rainsborough, Wildman and Sexby were men well ahead of their time, given the extremely limited nature of the franchise in those distant days. The franchise was not really increased to any great extent until the so-called Great Reform Act of 1832, which extended the right to vote (but still limited it by a property qualification) and abolished the so-called rotten boroughs. Even after the extension of the franchise, in a city the size of Bristol with a population at the time of over 100,000, only 15,000 had the vote. Working class men like my two grandfathers did not receive the vote until after World War One. At the same time the franchise was also extended to women over 30.

The incompatibility of monarchy with democracy was highlighted and put to good comedic effect by the Pythons in their 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

You enjoy your bling bonnet day at our expense, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, but just remember one thing: WE didn’t vote for you!
Community litter pick this Saturday

03/05/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

Your ‘umble scribe will be ignoring all that nonsense in London SW1 involving Mr & Mrs Charles Mountbatten-Windsor for something far more vital to the health of the nation.

Their bling bonnet day in Westminster unfortunately clashes with a regular event of local importance – the monthly Barton Hill community litter pick.

Stuff the coronation. This IS important!

Last month four of us turned out for an hour’s cleaning, managing to clear several bags of litter (as well as reporting half a dozen instances of fly-tipping. Ed.), having a bit of gentle exercise with tea and coffee afterwards, all punctuated by good company and good conversation.

If you can join us outside the Wellspring Centre (formerly the Settlement) at 10.00 am on Saturday, we’d be very pleased to see you.
Bureaucratic logic

28/04/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities, Politics

The West of England Combined Authority (WECA) is a combined authority consisting of the local authorities of Bristol, South Gloucestershire, and Bath and North East Somerset.

The authority’s functions, as specified by the West of England Combined Authority Order, mostly cover planning, skills and local transport.

And this post is specifically concerned with transport and buses in particular.

Since passing pensionable age last year, your ‘umble scribe has been entitled to a concessionary bus pass offering him free bus travel within England, subject to various conditions.

That being so, your correspondent has found himself doing things he hasn’t done for many a decade, like running for buses. 😀

At the start of April, significant changes were made to bus services within the WECA area. To announce the changes, posters were put up at bus stops. At the foot of each poster, some useful information is given (not that the remainder of the posters did not also provide useful information. Ed.), as shown in the photo below.

Like your ‘umble scribe, readers may also be perplexed at the advice given to those without internet access to contact the Transport Operations Team by email. Obviously a kind of bureaucratic logic of which normal mortals do not wot is at work, together with a degree of perspicacity to which the fictional Yes Minister could only aspire.

That’s not to say that the authority does not have aspirations. Indeed, the term vision appears some 500 times* on the WECA website, according to a site-specific Google search.

Those working at the authority are therefore in need of a doctor in the opinion of the late West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who famously quipped “Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen“, usually translated into English as Anyone who has visions should go to the doctor. Perhaps a logician would also not go amiss. 😉

* = This count is a lot less than the instances of vision on the Bristol City Council website (posts passim).

Update 07/05/23: five weeks after the actual timetable changes were implemented, new revised timetables have finally started to appear at bus stops; see photo below. No need to rush as it appears that if you’re a local government organisation, you are at complete liberty to do your allotted tasks entirely to your own satisfaction!
Sunak and his low-carbon escort

25/04/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics, Security

It’s not unusual for heads of government and state to have their motorcades accompanied by motorcycle escorts, as seen in the example below from 2009 of the then Chinese president Hu Jintao‘s visit to Zagreb in Croatia.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
On Sunday – the day of the London marathon – a fleet of cars containing the alleged Prime Minister was spotted surrounded by two sets of police officers – one on bicycles and the other on foot.

Sunak has in recent months been criticised for his disproportionate use of flying, both on private aircraft and on military ones, including one of a mere 25 minutes’ duration.

The Telegraph has suggested the action was to thwart the attentions of environmental protesters from Extinction Rebellion.

If that were not the case and Fishy Rishi was making a vain attempt to reduce his carbon footprint, your ‘umble scribe would like to introduce him to a new word to add to his vocabulary: greenwash.
Mail continues its anti-Welsh campaign

22/04/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

Why does the Daily Mail hate Cymraeg – and by implication the speakers of that language so much?

It was one of those Anglophone media outlets that blew its top earlier this week over the decision by a second Welsh national park authority to call the national park solely by its Welsh name – a name for prominent local topographical features that reaches back over a millennium (posts passim).

Yesterday it discovered and did a hatchet job on a petition currently gathering signatures on the Senedd Cymru website calling for the exclusive use of Welsh place names,

To quote the same places named by the Mail, your ‘umble scribe sees no problem at all in Caerdydd, Abertawe, Casnewydd and Wrecsam being referred to by their names in the local vernacular, which have existed for centuries. He also believes that if the Mail is against something, what is being ranted about is inevitably worthwhile.

The Mail’s anti-Welsh piece was also boosted by Andrew RT Davies, leader of the Welsh Conservatives, who used it as a means of attacking what he called extreme policies likely to be introduced by a future Labour government, no doubt winning approval from his colonial masters at CCHQ in London SW1.

Since the Mail’s intercession the petition, which was languishing with a signature count of some 250, has now amassed over 300.

Da iawn! 😀

Update 23/04: Following coverage in the Welsh media of the Mail’s bigotry, the number of signatories this evening is now approaching 700, well above the threshold for its consideration by the Senedd’s petitions committee, if somewhat short of the 10,000 needed for a debate in the chamber.
Bore Da, Bannau Brycheiniog!

18/04/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

Yesterday the news was announced that, following the recent decision by its fellow national park authority in North Wales, the one covering a large swathe of south Wales would henceforth be called the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park in English.

There was also a video to accompany the name change.

However, the change has not gone down well, particularly in the rabid right-wing monoglot English press, as shown by the image below from yesterday’s Daily Mail website.

Snowflakes!

Not forgetting to add all their typical smears, they’re touchy souls at the Mail, aren’t they? Nevertheless, like all good Anglophone monoglots, they cannot even get the pronunciation of Bannau Brycheiniog right. In Brycheiniog, the ch is pronounced as in the Scottish loch, not like an English ck as written in the Mail.

Furthermore a ‘columnist‘ at The Independent also did not want to be excluded from being outraged and mocking the Welsh language, as Nation Cymru reports.

Nor has the change met with universal approval in Wales itself.

To being with, Reach plc’s Cardiff-based Wales Online title adopted a provocative stance with its headline at the top of yesterday’s home page (clickbait for a largely monoglot Anglophone readership not known for voicing its support for either Cymraeg or Cymdeithas yr Iaith? Ed.).

However, the all-Wales whinging trophy has to go to the Welsh Conservatives, those faithful servants of their colonial masters in London SW1, with the charge being headed by their Senedd and Welsh ‘leader‘, one Andrew RT Davies, who planted the Welsh Tories firmly in the Anglophone camp.

This earned him plenty of derision, particularly from his fellow Welsh, of which the following is typical.

If Mr Davies doesn’t like his compatriots using their own language and celebrating their own heritage (the hills were known as the Bannau Brycheiniog long before the monoglots arrived in force), perhaps he ought to relinquish his seat in the Senedd Cymru and find a nice safe Tory constituency in the English Conservative heartlands.
I for one shall look forward to visiting the Bannau Brycheiniog and Eryri (the national park formerly known as Snowdonia. Ed.).
The Galleries – Bristol’s sunlit uplands?

12/04/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

Unicorns are commonly described as horse-like creatures with a single large, pointed, spiralling horn projecting from their foreheads. They have been depicted as such in European art for at least a millennium, although their origins stretch way back into history to the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation and the Middle East.

In a more recent context, the sunlit uplands first popularised in Churchill’s “This was their finest hour” speech in 1940 was dusted off by the Brexit zealots and Europhobes to denote the boundless possibilities which faced the country once it had extricated itself from the stranglehold of the alien and oppressive European Union.

Those on the Remain side of the argument eagerly populated these mythological mountain pastures with herds of unicorns to illustrate the delusions of the Brexiteers. Those who turned the unicorns loose on the sunlit uplands have since prove correct in the mockery: Brexit has been an absolute disaster with increased bureaucracy and delays at the Channel ports, not to mention the 5% plus decline in GDP
Being built on what were the banks of Bristol’s tidal River Frome (long since culverted. Ed.), the Galleries shopping centre could not in any way be classified as belonging to any uplands, sunlit or otherwise. Nevertheless, one empty shop unit on the top floor was populated by a whole herd of unicorns.

Had they migrated from those Phoebus-favoured hills? Despite the £116.8m cost to the taxpayer and low visitor numbers of the original, was the city planning its very own Festival of Brexit?

The answer was staring your bemused correspondent in the face in one of the shop’s windows.

It was another of those local sculpture trails (posts passim), this time featuring unicorns instead of gorillas or Gromits, ostensibly to celebrate the 650th anniversary of the Bristol gaining county status in 1373, presumably by the usual practice of the time of local worthies giving the reigning monarch a large amount of cash in return for a charter or, as stated on the festival website:

Unicornfest, part of the 650th anniversary celebrations for Bristol, seeks to unite the business and creative sectors, as well as local communities and schools across Bristol and the surrounding area, bringing art, colour and fun to the streets of the city this year.

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