Oddities | Steve Woods

Mr Gove pays a visit

23/07/2017 Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

Yesterday the BBC reported on the visit of DEFRA Minister Michael Gove (the man who, when Education Secretary, wanted all schools to be “above average”. Ed.) to the Antrim Show in the company of DUP MPs Paul Girvan and Ian Paisley.

The DUP are of course the minority Conservative government’s new best friends, having bribed them with £1.5 bn. from the “magic money tree” (© Prime Minister Theresa May) to prop it up in crucial parliamentary votes.

Whilst courting his party’s new best pals in the DUP, Gove managed at the same time to snub half of the Northern Irish electorate by pulling out of a meeting with Sinn Féin at the last minute.

However, the BBC fails to make mention of the sterling groundwork done by DEFRA civil servants in communicating the pre-visit wisdom of the Minister to the local media. In this context we should be grateful to Belfast freelance journalist Amanda Ferguson for posting the following on her Twitter account.

No, you didn’t misread the above. Gove mentioned Welsh lamb, a product with a protected food name, the implication of this being that he believes this fine product from west of Offa’s Dyke actually comes from even further west from over the Irish Sea.

One has to wonder whether Mr Gove could find his backside with both hands with such a poor grasp of geography. It was evidently not a subject at which he excelled at Aberdeen’s independent Robert Gordon’s Academy, to which he won a scholarship.

For your ‘umble scribe this is yet further proof that the government in Westminster and their sidekicks, the mandarins in Whitehall, care little for anywhere in the country outside the M25 and the metropolitan commuter belt and tend to view the devolved regions of the United Kingdom and the English regions too as little more than colonies of London and therefore ripe for exploitation and patronising treatment.
Ambiguity

18/07/2017 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Tech

Throughout my professional life, writing so that one’s meaning is clear and there is no room for misinterpretation has been of paramount importance.

However, writing without ambiguity is a skill that’s evidently bypassed those who currently write the news headlines for Yahoo’s UK website…

Enquiries are continuing as to how the cops came to be in the woman’s pyjamas in the first place. 😀
Post politics

03/07/2017 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Politics

The Bristol Post, the city’s newspaper of (warped) record, hasn’t had and doesn’t have a reputation for accuracy in reporting – a situation which has not improved since it and all the other Local World regional newspaper titles were taken over by Trinity Mirror.

This is more than evident in the title’s reporting of politics today.

The last (New) Labour government had a reputation for authoritarianism and what can best be described as “control-freakery“, so it is no surprise to see the Post assigning the comrades an authoritarian and control freak role amongst today’s headlines.

Mind how you go now! 😉

Furthermore, for the sake of balance and impartiality, the Post also includes some news of the Conservatives, as per the following screenshot.

At this point, a small history lesson might be in order.

The nickname of the Conservative and Unionist Party – to give them their full name – is the Tory Party.

As a piece of English vocabulary, Tory has interesting origins. Etymologically, it’s derived from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe, which equates in modern Irish to tóraí and to tòraidh in modern Scottish Gaelic. It has the meaning of outlaw, robber or brigand, from the Irish word tóir, meaning “pursuit”, since outlaws were “pursued men”.

It appears that since the term was coined, the Conservatives’ outlawry has expanded to encompass vandalism and careless driving. 😀

If more classes of crime can be ascribed to the party, please mention them in the comments below.

Update: as of this afternoon, one of these howlers has been corrected by the residents of the Temple Way Ministry of Truth. However, the Conservative Party are still responsible on the Post website for robbery and mayhem. 🙂
Election special: Corbyn crosses the floor

21/05/2017 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Politics

[Update at end]

There’s a phrase in English politics – crossing the floor. The floor is that of the House of Commons and it means that an elected MP has switched allegiance from one party to another.

One former MP – Sir Hartley Shawcross – was rumoured to be constantly on the point of changing allegiance throughout the early and mid-1950s and was consequently nicknamed Sir Shortly Floorcross. 😀

It is a practice normally indulged in by rank and file MPs, not party leaders, unless Bristol’s newspaper of (warped) record is to be believed as per the following screenshot.

A proper Red Tory?

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. According to the Bristol Post, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has joined the Conservatives just 3 weeks away from a general election.

Your correspondent is now awaiting confirmation of this report from other mainstream media outlets.

Update: 14.00 hrs, 21st May – The header over the link has now been changed to read “Politics”. However, use of a special creative writing technique would have avoided the original gaffe. Its name: proofreading! 😀
From our Welsh correspondent

29/04/2017 Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities

It must have been a particularly slow news day that day in Abergavenny as can be told from this headline from the independently-owned Abergavenny Chronicle! 😀
Vocabulary – what a bummer

23/04/2017 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

It’s a well-known adage that Britain and the United States are 2 countries divided by a common language.

However, that doesn’t seem to stop constant encroachment from over the other side of the Atlantic, as illustrated by the following letter from yesterday’s The Grauniad (dead tree edition).
Saints, dragons and public holidays

23/04/2017 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics
Today is St George’s Day, the saint’s day of England’s patron saint and the purported day of Shakespeare’s birth (as well as being the day of his actual death in 1616. Ed.).

George was first adopted as England’s patron saint in the 14th century, when he was given the job and his predecessor St Edmund the Martyr, the 9th century king of East Anglia, was given the medieval equivalent of his P45. Nevertheless, traces of a cult of St George in England are discernible from the 9th century onwards in the form of a liturgy used at that time at Durham Cathedral, a 10th century Anglo-Saxon martyrology and in dedications to Saint George at Fordington in Dorset, Thetford in Norfolk, Southwark and Doncaster.

According to legend, George was a Roman soldier of Greek origin and officer in the guard of the Roman emperor Diocletian, who ordered his death for George failing to recant his Christian faith.

Looking at patronage, George is much more than the patron saint of England. Four other countries also have him as their patron saint, i.e.:
- Georgia;
- Malta;
- Portugal; and
- Romania.
Furthermore, George is also the patron saint of Spain’s autonomous communities of Aragon and Catalonia.

The best known feat about St George is his alleged dragon slaying. Just like his being a member of Diocletian’s guard, this is also legend. In the medieval romances, the lance with which Saint George is said to have slain the dragon was called Ascalon after the Levantine city of Ashkelon, which is in the modern state of Israel. As regards any factual basis for the legend, some evidence links the legend back to very old Egyptian and Phoenician sources in a late antique statue of Horus fighting a “dragon”. This links the legendary George – who should not be confused with the historical George – to various ancient sources of mythology around the eastern Mediterranean.

George slaying the dragon as painted by Raphael

Speaking of dragons, the Old English Wordhord Twitter account came up with “ligdraca” – a fire-drake or dragon vomiting flames – for St George’s Day.

Celebrating St George’s Day has been more common in the past in England, although there have been times when it was celebrated less or not at all.

Indeed, Keith Flett informs us that its celebration was popular until the Reformation, but it was still marked. Under the Commonwealth, its celebration was banned in 1645 under the Long Parliament which sat from 1640 to 1660. When the English in their folly decided to invite Charles Stuart back in 1660 after the death of Cromwell, celebrating St George’s Day was restored.

Unlike St Andrew’s Day in Scotland, St George’s Day is not a public holiday (confusingly called a bank holiday in British English. Ed.). Indeed the countries of the United Kingdom have amongst the lowest numbers of public holidays in the developed world, whilst the UK as a whole has the the fewest of any G20 country or EU member state.

Whether to respond to this shortcoming or not, it’s been reported today that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will announce that Labour will introduce four new bank holidays – one for each of the patron saints of the countries making up the United Kingdom – if the party wins the forthcoming general election. This will be sold on the doorstep as a measure “to give workers the break they deserve“: and that’s definitely something for which I can vote.
Conservative manifesto shocker

21/04/2017 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

When the UK’s not at all unelected Prime Minister announced her intention to seek parliamentary approval for a snap general election earlier this week, I asked my Twitter followers via a poll who was likely to be writing the Conservative Party manifesto.

The poll is now closed and there’s a surprise winner.

Your correspondent was fully expecting the party’s manifesto to be written by the usual suspects – the owners and editors of the British right wing press, but alas Twitter – or the part thereof with which I’m in touch – thinks differently.

The question that must now be asked is whether Conservative Party Central Office have time to translate the party’s manifesto into English and Welsh (if for once the Tories have stopped treating Wales as an English colony. Ed.) from the original Russian once Vladimir Vladimirovich has completed his draft? In the immortal words of Private Eye: I think we should be told! 😀
Post exclusive: broadcaster now runs Bristol hospital

12/04/2017 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities, Tech

The Bristol Post, the city’s newspaper of warped record, has recently revamped its website, which now uses the standard template for Mirror Group titles.

In addition, the standard of what passed in recent decades for journalism from the title seems to have taken a dive too. Whether this is related to the change of template cannot be corroborated.

One thing that has not changed is the inability of the Post’s reporters to concentrate on the most relevant facts of a story.

An example from today is shown in the screenshot below.

The story itself relates that the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) suffered 3 cyber attacks involving ransomware last year.

This is only to be expected if major organisations continue to base their IT infrastructure on Microsoft’s insecure operating systems.

For me, the important point was on the front page as shown in the screenshot, according which the BRI now comes under the aegis of the National Health Service, although for some unfathomable reason, there is no mention whatsoever in the article itself of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

To echo the purported words of a proper, old-school journalist, the late Bill Deedes, “Shome mishtake shurely?” 🙂
Recognition

12/04/2017 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities, Politics

On Tuesday March 21st, your correspondent had a special appointment to keep up at the Mansion House in Clifton, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of Bristol.

The occasion was the presentation of Lord Mayor’s Medals to what Jeff Lovell, the current Lord Mayor, described in his opening remarks as “community champions”.

Only some 20 medals are awarded each year and your ‘umble scribe was a recipient this year.

Receiving the medal from the Lord Mayor. Picture courtesy of Up Our Street

According to the citation, I was commended for my work in the voluntary and community sector in East Bristol, including all the Tidy BS5 efforts to make Easton and Lawrence Hill a cleaner, more pleasant environment.

However, I was not the only recipient with a BS5 postcode. Three other locals received recognition.

Hannah Crudgington was recognised for her work for Tidy BS5 (particularly her videos. Ed.) and her efforts to show a more positive side to Easton than is generally given by the local media.

Bruce Yates was commended for his work in turning around local youth organisation Baggator at The Pickle Factory in All Hallows Road, as well as his work for RADE Bristol, which campaigns for inner-city clean air and against efforts to install polluting standby electricity generating plant in the city.

Last but not least, Amy Harrison received a medal for her work for Up Our Street.

All four of us are shown in the photograph below.

The BS5 recipients of the Lord Mayor’s Medal. Picture courtesy of Up Our Street.

It was, all told, a lovely afternoon, which was made even more special by a surprise visit by my eldest niece Katherine and boyfriend Martyn, who were subsequently treated to a night on the tiles in Easton.

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