England won the toss, elected to bowl first and put Australia into bat. Before lunch Australia were all out for 60 runs (including extras), clocking up the worst batting performance by an Australian team in an Ashes match for some 8 decades.
If I couldn’t believe my ears, one can just imagine how well such a shambolic performance with the bat went down in the Australian media.
The Sydney Morning Herald‘s sports headline writer perhaps encapsulated feelings best with the back page headline “It’s Pomicide“, as per the photograph below.
Whilst I take a rather ambiguous attitude to newspaper headline writers and their frequently inappropriate use of puns, the invention of Pomicide strikes me as most apposite. Should I recommend it to the Oxford English Dictionary for its word of the year accolade?
Amongst some technology enthusiasts free and open source software is promoted with a zeal approaching that of Christian evangelism, i.e. the preaching of the gospel or the practice of giving information about a particular doctrine or set of beliefs to others with the intention of converting others to the Christian faith.
Does this mean that free and open source software – also referred to by the acronym FOSS – is now a religion?
Since the foundation of the FOSS movement a couple of decades ago, there have been many developments in information technology and the working of the internet.
Of these one of the most notable is the development by Google of predictive search terms; as one types, Google tries to anticipate the final search string. This can have some interesting results, as evidenced by the screenshot below.
PDF – Portable Document Format – was originally a proprietary standard developed by Adobe Systems. It was released as an open standard on 1st July 1 2008 and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008, at which time control of the specification passed to an ISO Committee of volunteer industry experts.
No information is available as to when Judaism, Islam and Catholicism are to be released as open standards under the auspices of the International Organization for Standardization. 😉
One of the great tools not available to previous generations of those producing print for public consumption is the spell checker – an application program that flags words in a document that may not be spelled correctly. Spell checkers may be stand-alone, capable of operating on a block of text or as part of a larger application, such as a word processor, email client, electronic dictionary or search engine.
However, some people and/or organisations still seem reluctant to use them, such as UK railway infrastructure operator Network Rail, which chickened out on the occasion shown below and thus qualified for a residency in Homophone Corner. 🙂
It’s the first day of the first test match in Cardiff of the latest Ashes series being played between England and Australia.
One household in Beaumont Street in the Easton area of Bristol has entered into the spirit of the occasion, as shown below.
As it’s the postage stamp-sized front garden of a terraced house, the players are a mix of Playmobil* and Lego figures, not life size.
Note the loving preparation that’s gone into the pitch, an uncovered one (naturally) in line with traditional British values and thus guaranteed to cheer the most outspoken of cricket commentators – a certain G. Boycott.
Talking of Mr Boycott, if you’re a fan of the Test Match Special radio commentary on the BBC, add to your enjoyment of the excellent commentary by Aggers, Blowers et al.; make sure you’ve got your Boycott Bingo card ready for when the world’s greatest living Yorkshireman sounds off (posts passim). 🙂
Over the weekend a new amenity – either an art installation or a new public convenience – has appeared on the A420 Lawrence Hill in east Bristol.
If the latter, it’s conveniently located next to the site of Lawrence Hill’s original Victorian public lavatories, sadly demolished some years ago by Bristol City Council and the site sold off to developers.
Public convenience or crap art installation?
Continuing with the theme of convenience, if it is a new public lavatory – whether provided at public expense or by the private sector – it will no doubt come as a relief to the thousands of commuters from Kingswood, Hanham and other parts of South Gloucestershire who clog up the A420 inbound on weekday mornings and outbound on weekday evenings respectively.
However, I suspect it is the work of east Bristol’s shadowy network of fly-tippers, in which case it needs reporting to Bristol City Council. 🙂
As a result, there have been some strange coloured – one might almost say greenwashed – buses thundering through this proud and ancient city, as captured below.
FirstGroup bus in full greenwash livery
However, FirstBus has also been able to buy a ‘greenwash-lite‘ version for its sponsorship that consists of the Bristol Green Capital logo slapped on top of its usual ‘Barbie‘ livery.
The flanks of the Barabie double-deckers now have the Bristol Green Capital logo splashed across their sides, whilst the single-deckers have a smaller version the logo above the driver’s cab.
Barbie meets greenwash
Whilst public transport is a greener option than using a private motor car, emissions from the diesel fuel on which buses run.
According to Wikipedia:
It is reported that emissions from diesel vehicles are significantly more harmful than those from petrol ones.Diesel exhaust contains toxic air contaminants and is listed as carcinogen for humans by the IARC (part of the World Health Organization of the United Nations) in group 1. Diesel exhaust contains fine particles which are harmful. Diesel exhaust pollution was thought to account for around one quarter of the pollution in the air in previous decades, and a high share of sickness caused by automotive pollution.
Any resemblance between the full greenwash livery and the British Racing Green livery of the old Bristol Omnibus Company is purely coincidental.
Do you know how many press and PR officers are employed by Bristol City Council?
Go on, have a guess!
If you didn’t know, the latest available figure is 43, according to this Press Gazette article from April 2015 on its the Freedom of Information Act request which asked 435 city, borough and district councils across the UK how many people they employ in their communications departments.
Bristol City Council actually has the equal third largest press and PR staff of all local authorities in the UK, a position it shares with Sheffield City Council:
Manchester City Council: 77
Leeds City Council: 47
Bristol City Council: 43
Sheffield City Council: 43
Glasgow City Council: 41
Remember that figure of 43. Now try and guess how many ‘streetscene‘ (litter & fly-tipping) enforcement officers Bristol City Council employs. The people that deal with prosecuting the abuse of communal bins by traders (posts passim) and the like.
Fly-tipped trade and other waste in Pennywell Road, Easton, earlier this week
The answer is 6. That’s equivalent to one council enforcement officer for over 71,600 residents.
Kindly disclose the number of streetscene enforcement officers employed by Bristol City Council during all financial years since April 2010 to the present day.
There were seven streetscene enforcement officer [sic] employed between April 2010 and March 2014. From April 2014 until present day there are six.
That’s right! Six enforcement officers for the whole of Bristol. However, there’s enough grot and bad waste management behaviour just in Easton and Lawrence Hill wards alone to keep all 6 of those officers permanently occupied.
Returning to the number of officers per head of population outlined above, Bristol City Council has one press/PR wonk per 1,000 inhabitants.
Anyone would think the local authority was suffering a public relations crisis.
Awards recognising local people and businesses which support the environment have been launched by the Bristol Post, the rag of that name reports on its website today.
The article continues that the Bristol Post Green Capital Awards will celebrate those people who are making our city a greener, healthier, happier place to live and work.
The article does quote the chairman of Bristol 2015 – a company established by the city council to run this year-long green-tinged public relations exercise – admitting that Green Capital has not reached all parts of Bristol.
That being so, I’d like to see an alternative set of awards that won’t go to the usual suspects amongst Bristol’s great and good and their pet vanity projects. Let’s call them the Greenwash Capital Awards.
Some of these can be awarded already.
For starters, there’s the Green Transport Award, for which there can only be one set of winners, namely the selfish individuals who all drive their vehicles containing just one person into the city from the surrounding areas of South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and Bath & North East Somerset, causing congestion, pollution and getting in the way of local bus services.
Selfish commuters clogging Bristol’s M32 inbound
Then there’s the Green Waste Management Award. This prize should I believe be split between the citizens of Bristol who managed to generate 18% more waste for landfill last year, Bristol City Council, which seems to be labouring under the delusion that exporting what would go to landfill to Sweden for incineration in power stations is a good idea and finally the people – both traders and others – who think that the BS5 postcode area is the natural home for the city’s fly-tipping.
One of the regular but ephemeral arts installations on Stapleton Road; is it critiquing the throwaway society?
How about the Habitat and Biodiversity Destruction Award? There’s a clear winner for this one: the four councils making up the West of England Partnership and their ludicrous transport white elephant, the Metrobus scheme.
This blog has discussed homophones before (posts passim). Homophone corner is a space to which people who cannot distinguish their homophones are banished to consider the errors of their ways – rather like the corner of the classroom to which misbehaving children were exiled during my primary school days.
It now appears as though the curse of the homophone is spreading to the giants of the technology world, as shown by the following tweet from Nix Tran Stories.
I’ve used Microsoft Word/Office since the days of Windows 3.1 and its spelling and grammar checking tools have in my opinion never been particularly good: I’ve always run rings around them; and now it appears that the spellchecker has been coded by an illiterate.
I suppose the least I could do is pat the leader of the MS Office team on the shoulder and mouth the platitude “their, there, they’re!“. 😉
It’s your ‘umble scribe’s 60th birthday this week and to mark this occasion, Hilary and Andrew, my siblings conspired to take me away from Bristol for the weekend. When we were sorting out our late mother’s estate, we all expressed a wish for a sibling saunter in Staffordshire and this proved the ideal excuse.
Andrew and Hilary made the arrangements, whilst I researched walks and gave them 2 options – one involving a circular walk round the Head of Trent (the upper reaches of the Trent before it enters the city of Stoke on Trent. Ed.), the other a walk round the site of the Battle of Blore Heath, one of the first major battles of the Wars of the Roses, which was fought on 23rd September 1459.
In the end the Blore Heath won and found the assembled siblings outside the Loggerheads Hotel in Loggerheads ready to start walking the excellent route provided by the Blore Heath website. The route comprises a circuit of the main battlefield down its eastern flank along what would have been the Lancastrian line, then down through the valley which saw the most fighting. There is then a walk through woodland and up towards the quiet village of Mucklestone, where it is said that Queen Margaret watched the battle unfold.
Battle of Blore Heath – a summary
The battle occurred when the Yorkist force based at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire (led by the Earl of Salisbury) needed to link up with the main Yorkist army at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire. As Salisbury marched south-west through the north Midlands, Queen Margaret ordered Lord Audley to intercept them.
Audley chose the barren heathland of Blore Heath to set up an ambush. On the morning of 23rd September 1459 (Saint Thecla’s day), a force of some 10,000 men took up a defensive position behind a ‘great hedge’ on the south-western edge of Blore Heath facing the direction of Newcastle-under-Lyme to the north-east, the direction from which Salisbury was approaching.
Yorkist scouts spotted Lancastrian banners over the top of the ‘great hedge’ and immediately warned Salisbury. As they emerged from the woodland, the Yorkist force of some 5,000 men realised that a much larger enemy force was awaiting their arrival. Salisbury, instead of disbanding or withdrawing his army, immediately arranged his troops into battle order, just out of range of the Lancastrian archers. To secure his right flank, he arranged the supply wagons in a defensive laager, a circular formation to provide cover to the men. Fearing a rout, Yorkist soldiers are reported to have kissed the ground beneath them, supposing that this would be the ground on which they would meet their deaths.
The two armies were separated by about 300 metres of barren heathland. A steep-sided, wide and fast-flowing brook – the Wemberton or Hemp Mill Brook – ran between them. The brook made Audley’s position seemingly impenetrable.
Initially, both leaders sought unsuccessfully to parley in an attempt to avoid bloodshed. In keeping with many late medieval battles, the conflict opened with an archery duel between the longbows of both armies. At Blore Heath this proved inconclusive due to the distance between the two sides.
Salisbury, aware that any attack across the brook would be suicidal, employed a ruse to encourage the enemy to attack him. He withdrew some of his middle order just far enough that the Lancastrians believed them to be retreating. The Lancastrians launched a cavalry charge. After they had committed themselves, Salisbury ordered his men to turn back and catch the Lancastrians as they attempted to cross the brook. It is possible that the order for this Lancastrian charge was not given by Audley but it had the effect of turning the balance in favour of Salisbury. The charge resulted in heavy casualties for the Lancastrians.
The Lancastrians withdrew, and then made a second assault, possibly attempting to rescue casualties. This second attack was more successful with many Lancastrians crossing the brook. This led to a period of intense fighting in which Audley himself was killed, possibly by Sir Roger Kynaston of Myddle and Hordley.
The death of Audley meant that Lancastrian command fell to the second-in-command, Lord Dudley, who ordered an attack on foot with some 4,000 men. As this attack also failed, some 500 Lancastrians joined the enemy and began attacking their own side. At this point, all remaining Lancastrian resistance collapsed and the Yorkists had only to advance to complete the rout.
The rout continued through the night, with the Yorkists pursuing the fleeing enemy for miles across the countryside. Salisbury employed a local friar to remain on Blore Heath throughout the night and to discharge a cannon periodically in order to deceive any Lancastrians nearby into believing that the fight was continuing.
At least 2,000 Lancastrians were killed, with the Yorkists losing nearly 1,000.
Ramsay’s map of the battlefield from 1889. Click on the image for the full-sized version
The walk
Starting from Loggerheads, we skirted the borders of Burnt Wood (called “Rounhay wood” at the time of the battle. Ed.). We were following the route that the Yorkist forces would have taken. This top end of the walk was quite boggy, so good waterproof boots are recommended. From this high point of the walk there are fantastic views across Shropshire to the mountains of North Wales, some forty miles away. The landmark of the Wrekin is clearly visible to the SW and is about 20 miles away, as is the tower of St Mary’s Church in Market Drayton, some 4 miles away.
We continued downhill to the hamlet of Blore, where we turned onto a a lane and then from the edge of the hamlet followed the line of the ‘great hedge’ behind which the Lancastrian banners were seen. The hedge has been much reduced in stature by the invention of the flail mower, but experts believe it has been in situ for 1,000 years. Halfway along the hedge is a large horse chestnut tree from which Audley’s Cross – marking the spot where Lord Audley was slain – can be seen. We stopped for lunch near the end of the ‘great hedge’ roughly at the end of the Yorkists’ left flank.
The brothers dine near the end of the Lancastrian left flank. Picture courtesy of Hilary Midgley.
From the lunch stop we proceeded downhill across the fields downhill and around the southern edge of the battlefield towards Hemp Mill Brook and a crossing of both it and the A53, the latter being particularly dangerous due to its narrowness, bends and the speed of the traffic. At this point we deviated from the route and went up the A53 for a better view of Audley’s Cross (a cross has stood on that spot since the day of the battle. Ed.) before returning to the actual route of the walk.
Once over the A53 and back on the route, we followed a lane for a short while, then proceeded through Folly Wood to the outskirts of Mucklestone, entered the village and headed for the church.
Folly Wood – signage in dire need of maintenance
It was from the top of the Mucklestone church tower that Queen Margaret is said to have stood and watched her forces defeated. She is then supposed to have made good her escape in the direction of Eccleshall by forcing William Skelhorn, the village blacksmith, to reverse her horse’s shoes, thus confusing any pursuit. The anvil in the churchyard, which was retrieved from the smithy when the latter was demolished, commemorates this legend. The anvil is sited next to the grave of another, much later member of the Skelhorn family.
Anvil in Mucklestone churchyard. Picture courtesy of Hilary Midgley.
From Mucklestone we proceeded up a rough track called Rock Lane to return to our starting point in Loggerheads.
After the battle the victorious Lord Salisbury, anxious to press on towards Ludlow and the main Yorkist forces, moved south, camping on a hill on the outskirts of Market Drayton ever since known as Salisbury Hill. When we were children, this was the main hill in the town for sledging when it snowed. This delight is now out of bounds to today’s Drayton children, as the hill has been absorbed into the land occupied by the local golf club and the stile we used for access is no longer in situ.
After a most satisfactory walk we all retired to Newcastle-under-Lyme for a night in a hotel, preceded by an excellent curry and a couple of beers in Audley.
I’d like to thank my siblings, Andrew and Hilary, for making it a memorable weekend and suggest we plan other Staffordshire Saunter sometime soon. 🙂
