One major skill in journalism is devising an appropriate headline for any news report.
Down at Bristol’s Temple Way Ministry of Truth getting a headline to match the article occasionally seems to create difficulties! 🙂
About 5 minutes after the above screenshot was taken, the headline was amended.
What could have been a fine report on a local space technology story has been ruined by poor writing in the Bristol Post.
Yesterday’s Post carried a story on Bristol SpacePlanes and its efforts to develop a reusable orbital vehicle.
The Post’s journalist gets off to a bad start in the first sentence:
Bristolians are being invited to help launch planes into space in a new crowd-funding [sic] campaign.
Just Bristolians, Bristol Post?
I thought the idea of crowdfunding (minus the hyphen. Ed.), was that anyone can be part of the crowd that provides the funds, irrespective of geography.
This suspicion is borne out by 30 seconds research. The first item on crowdfunding I found, from Wikipedia, states: “Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, typically via the internet.”
Nowhere in the Wikipedia entry is there is indication at all that crowdfunding is to be restricted solely to Bristolians.
Or am I just misreading to local media’s propensity to find a local angle to a story? Here’s a hint: it already has one, featuring a local high technology company and doesn’t need a second one! 🙂
Yesterday’s Sentinel gave Potteries folk a chuckle at a seasonal typographical error in this story‘s headline, as shown in the screenshot below.
Let’s hope Santa’s name slims down enough by Christmas Eve so that he can once again slip down chimneys. 😉
Earlier this morning a delivery lorry for cake manufacturer Mr Kipling got stuck under the railway bridge on Stoke Road, Stoke-on-Trent, as shown below and as reported by The Sentinel.
Mr Kipling still uses the advertising slogan – as seen on the side of the trailer – “Exceedingly good…“. That phrase presumably does not extend to (one of) its drivers. 😉
One thing living in Bristol for nearly 4 decades has taught me is that Bristol City Council is profligate and lacks competence.
This was once again brought sharply into focus earlier this morning in a dead-end street called Clifton Street (map) leading to the back entrance of Easton CofE Primary School where I encountered the roadworks shown in the photograph below.
The view shows the entrance into the staff car park of the school, the approach to which has just been enhanced by 2 dropped kerbs and textured paving on each of the street’s two footways as part of works to replace the street’s kerbstones.
There are only going to be two times in the day on weekdays when there is likely to be any traffic at all on Clifton Street – before and after the school day.
As for the use of textured paving, this is generally installed to assist the visually impaired and I cannot see many visually impaired people using dead-end streets in Easton anyway.
I wonder how much this municipal largesse by the city’s highways department has cost the public purse.
If the city council really wanted to spend money on roadworks in Easton, there’s plenty of other stuff that needs attention, as shown in the example below.
The damaged pedestrian refuge shown above is on Stapleton Road, just a couple of hundred metres away from Clifton Street. Local residents have been attempting to get the council to repair it for over 6 months, after it was damaged by a bus driver with delusions of driving competence. These efforts have so far come to nought.
In the recent TidyBS5 residents’ rubbish summit (posts passim), it was stated that council officers frequently intone the words “It’s the inner city” as an excuse for lack of action. Clearly this only works one way, i.e. when the lack of action concerns something either highlighted or desired by residents; when the initiative comes from within the council, there’s apparently no object, no matter how pointless what is proposed. I’ve encountered this ‘not invented here’ syndrome before in local authorities.
It’s normal to see a spate of daft council spending in March each year, just before the municipal financial year runs out. This year it seems that Bristol City Council is providing the residents of Easton with an early Christmas present in the form of dumb expenditure.
The Cheddar Valley Gazette has announced the shortlist for this year’s Turnip Prize.
This annual award goes to the person who has created something they perceive to be rubbish art.
The shortlisted works for this year’s award are: Ewe-Kip by Drunken Shepherd; Gogglebox by Abby; Pensive by Leafy; Stick another Shrimp on the Barbie by Aunt Sponge; Ginger Nut by Trees R Green and Breast in Plant by Mike Atkinson.
The Western Daily Press has a gallery of all the shortlisted entries.
The presentation of this year’s Turnip Prize will take place at 6.30pm on Monday 1st December at The New Inn, Combe Batch, Wedmore, Somerset.
The Bristol Post has come up with a classic mix-up today. A report on the city’s Southmead Hospital has been illustrated with a photo of cars vandalised in Long Ashton, the report of which the Post carried yesterday.
Still, why let a good picture go to waste? Use it often… and everywhere! 😉
Update 28/11/14: the correct photograph has since been attached to the article.
As is well known, the world of IT is a preponderantly male world. For instance, over at Wikipedia, under 20% of users who edit articles are women. Elsewhere, women tend to be thin on the ground at any professional IT gathering.
However, telling girls and young women that IT is not a field for them is just wrong. It isn’t; I know of many excellent women coders and programmers, ranging from web developers to those who write the code for microprocessors and mobile phone chips (although I shall refrain from identifying them here. Ed.). Indeed, the person regarded as the world’s very first programmer, Ada Lovelace, was – unsurprisingly given her name – a woman (posts passim).
It’s therefore with a sense of exasperation that I came across the image below this afternoon.
Mattel, makers of Barbie since 1959, should be ashamed of themselves if they are responsible for putting out the message that the world’s most prominent promoter of all things pink needs the help of 2 men to code up her game. It helps reinforce the erroneous stereotype that IT isn’t the done thing for girls or is too hard for them, especially as Barbie is aimed at young, impressionable minds. What’s more, the gender role stereotyping is further reinforced by having Barbie sat in a kitchen… Oh dear!
Update 21/11/2014: Mattel has since apologised for its crass mistake, according to CNET, to whom Lori Pantel, vice president of global brand marketing for Barbie gave the following statement:
“The ‘Barbie I Can Be A Computer Engineer’ book was published in 2010. Since that time we have reworked our Barbie books. The portrayal of Barbie in this specific story doesn’t reflect the Brand’s vision for what Barbie stands for. We believe girls should be empowered to understand that anything is possible and believe they live in a world without limits. We apologize that this book didn’t reflect that belief.
Selby District Council’s website is not one of your correspondent’s regular online haunts. However, last week’s news section of the site carries a report with exclusive spectacular news: a Mr Steve Wadsworth has won a competition to name the new Selby Leisure Centre, which is due to open in 2015, by naming it, erm, Selby Leisure Centre!
There was even someone armed with a camera to record this historic event, whose like has probably not been equalled in that part of Yorkshire since the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. 😉
Hat tip: MJ Lee.
It’s been 10 years since Trinity Community Arts first asked me to help with their then new annual fireworks party, which has taken place ever since. Only once in a decade has the event been badly marred by rain; that was in 2013 when the bonfire had to be lit and the fireworks fired in a steady autumn downpour.
For the first time in those 10 years, Emma from Trinity had the presence of mind to take a photo of the fireworks crew. Onj – the handsome chap in the red boiler suit – is the fireworks half of the crew. Your correspondent is in charge of the bonfire department.
It was a truly great event this year with a good crowd of some 1,250 people, plus food and fantastic music (you forgot to mention the spectacular fireworks! Ed.). The event also raised £1,100 for Trinity, which will go towards buying new drapes for the main hall. Your ‘umble scribe finally got home feeling very tired but happy at 11.30 pm after extinguishing the remains of the bonfire.