Media | Steve Woods

City rejoins Gloucestershire – Bristol Live exclusive

29/09/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

One time long ago there was a county called Gloucestershire. It was a large county that included the city of Bristol as one of its major centres of population. However, that all changed in 1373 when Bristol was granted county status in its own right by the king through the usual expedient of paying him a sufficiently large quantity of cash.

However, that has now all changed and Bristol is once again in the embrace of Gloucestershire, even though the news has been suppressed and can only be found by a creful reading of the Bristol Live website, where it appears in a piece by Emma Flanagan inviting readers to vote for their favourite Chinese takeaways.

The headline to the article asks Where can you get the best Chinese takeaway in Bristol?. There’s no mention there about the city being returned to its former historical county 650 years after making its escape from the clutches of the county that grew up based on the old Roman settlement of Glevum.
The clue to Bristol returning to Gloucestershire is well concealed, hiding in the photo caption near the top of piece; it reads Tell us the best Chinese takeaway in Gloucestershire and we’ll crown a winner.

Will this mean a change in the city’s extortionate rate of council tax? Better public services? Improved public transport? Not a word mentioned.

No corresponding article asking readers to rate Chinese takeaways in Bristol has been found on Bristol Live’s sister title, Gloucestershire Live (so far. Ed.), so this dreadful piece of copy has not been shared with other Reach publications.

Moving Bristol to Gloucestershire was not the only inaccuracy of the geographical kind appearing on the Bristol Live website today. By some strange alteration in geophysical forces, the city has been moved from nestling on the banks of the Bristol Avon to those of the mighty Severn/Hafren, as per the screenshot below.

Since this morning the text of the headline has now been changed to read Five-star Severn Bore live as ‘the greatest ride on earth’ rolls through West Country.

If the Bristol Live website ever had a corrections and clarifications column, it would be several times larger than the paper’s website! 😀
Syndicated bad English

06/09/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

Local news titles owned by Reach plc, which also owns the Daily Mirror and Daily Brexit (which some still call the Express. Ed.) frequently share stories so frequently that anyone would think either that slow news days were commonplace or that the the country’s major cities had annexed vast swathes of territory well removed from their location.

An example of this practice occurred earlier this week in the Bristol Post, supposedly the city’s (former) newspaper of record, as per the following screenshot.

Last time your ‘umble scribe looked, Fowey in Cornwall was not – and has no intentions of being – a suburb of Bristol. The entire story has been copied and pasted en bloc from Cornwall Live, a sister title to the Bristol Post/Live, including a glaring spelling error – busses – in both the headline and the copy.

That spelling error is one that should have been eradicated in primary school, not allowed to persist into the professional life of an alleged ‘journalist‘.

Your correspondent recalls talking to a former sub-editor some years ago, who was then lecturing at the University of the West of England, teaching online journalism to media studies students. He remarked that before before he could start training them in how to report stuff online, he had to teach them basic English first!
A sad day in BS5

25/08/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Politics

Friday 25th August 2023 marked the end of an era and a sad day for Easton in Bristol. After 14 years of serving the public St Mark’s Community Café based at St Mark’s Baptist Church opened for the very last time after 14 years.

Of the local media outlets, only the BBC appears to have covered this event, but gave it a very sympathetic write-up.

Your ‘umble scribe has been going there 2 or 3 times a week for the past few years to enjoy baked potatoes, good cooking and the undisputed best cakes in all BS5, the latter baked by the remarkable Lesley, whose baking skills put my own late mother’s to shame (and that’s saying a lot, coming from a loyal eldest son!). My own particular favourites amongst her regular baked wares were farmhouse fruit, barra brith and anything with gooseberries or ginger. Furthermore, all the food served and the ingredients used to prepare it were ethically and locally sourced wherever possible.

However, this was a café with a difference: paying customers like your correspondent meant that the homeless could eat there for free. Below is a short video with interviews of both customers and café staff/volunteers to give an idea of what has now entered the annals of local history.

Although I’ll miss you all terribly, here’s wishing Lesley a happy retirement and I’d like to express my thanks to you, Nettie and all the café volunteers for keeping me fed over the years and being such wonderful people.
Daily Brexit – crime against syntax

23/08/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics

As a title in the Reach plc newspaper stable, the Daily Brexit (which some still call the Express. Ed.) has long inhabited an alternative reality, a world where the economic disaster otherwise known as Brexit is a roaring success (e.g. ‘Global Britain is thriving’).

In recent times the title has gained a reputation more of right-wing posturing than for the factual reporting of news and current affairs

A new charge must now be added to the title’s many crimes against reality and journalism – a crime against English, as seen in the headline below posted today on the paper’s website in its continuing campaign of hate against Harry Mountbatten-Windsor and his wife.

Wouldn’t it be a boon to journalism if those who write for the fourth estate – even on trivial, gossipy matters – had a basic level of competence in the language in which they are writing?

Your comments would be welcome below.

PS: for any passing illiterate Reach plc hacks in search of enlightenment, the grammatically correct version of the headline would read: “Harry’s six word response as to why he and Meghan won’t give up titles“.
English linguistic chauvinism defeated twice in Welsh courts

06/08/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

A little over a year ago, this blog covered the case of a Welsh court dismissing the case of a Welsh motorist prosecuted for not paying a parking charge because the notice and other correspondence were all in English and the refusal of the parking management company’ – One Parking Solution (whose registered office is in Worthing, West Sussex. Ed.) to provide the court with Welsh translations thereof. (posts passim).

When a judge dismisses the case, that’s the end of it, isn’t it?

Usually.

Nevertheless, in this instance the monoglot English parking company decided to appeal the original judge’s decision, as Nation Cymru reports.

A bilingual car park sign in Caernarfon. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The case at Aberystwyth Justice Centre did not go well for One Parking Solution, even though the company had in this instance bothered to send legal counsel to the court.

Deputy judge Owain Williams decided the company had delayed for too long before launching its appeal and introduced it under incorrect rules.

In addition, the judge ordered that One Parking Solution pay Mr Schiavone’s travel expenses. The defendant said that this money would be donated to Cancer Research Wales.

Mr Schiavone was triumphant, stating:

The travel costs of the counsel alone are more than the cost of translating the fine and the cost of conducting the case are a hundred times or more the cost of providing a Welsh fine.

The company’s attitude has been completely contemptuous and completely against the rights of Welsh speakers.

Siân Howys, of Cymdeithas yr Iaith’s Welsh Language Rights Group, stated the following after the hearing:

“We are pleased that the judge ruled in favour of the defendant, as in a similar case in Caernarfon, where the judge Mervyn Evans-Jones ruled that the defendant did not need to pay an English-only fine.

It is becoming increasingly evident that these companies need to change their attitudes towards the Welsh language. To put pressure on them we will today be launching a campaign encouraging people not to pay for parking in car parks with English-only signs, nor to pay the resultant fines.

The Government should set Standards in this area and for other businesses, such as supermarkets and banks, so that there is a requirement for the private sector to provide their services in Welsh.
New Twitter logo – a suggestion

23/07/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Tech

Today’s Grauniad reports that Elon Musk, the super-rich man-baby allegedly in charge of social media platform Twitter, wants to change the company’s famous blue bird logo. Announcing his intention, Musk is said to have tweeted: “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”.

Since being acquired by Musk in October 2022, Twitter has had its business name changed to X Corp and it is on a design involving an X that Musk wishes logo efforts to be concentrated, with him also announcing the following:

“If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make (it) go live worldwide tomorrow.”

As someone with an intense dislike for Musk and all he stands for, your ‘umble scribe has not been on Twitter since his takeover and has deleted his account* despite the large number of friends and contacts I’d made on the platform all over the country and the rest of the world.

Nevertheless, your correspondent would like to suggest to Musk not to bother with a logo featuring an X, but something far more familiar to those with whom Twitter comes into contact, particularly if they are from the fourth estate or the media in general. It’s shown below for the benefit of Musk and his cultists.

No, your eyes are working perfectly. It is the turd emoji. And it’s appropriate for many reasons. Firstly, there’s the mismanagement of the platform since Musk’s acquisition, including allegedly unlawful sackings of staff and the reinstatement of accounts of previously banned persons (such as that of the deeply unpleasant disgraced former 45th president of the US of A).

Furthermore, press and media inquiries to Musk/Twitter now receive the turd emoji as their sole response to him/the company. It is hence far more representative of what the company has become under its present ownership, not to mention the mindset of its billionaire proprietor.

However, if brown’s not your favourite colour, an alternative could be to tint the turd emoji the shade of blue used by the social media platform.

* = Now on Mastodon, but that’s the subject of a future blog post. 😀
Strike at Auntie’s Bristol base

20/07/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Politics

Walking up Whiteladies Road this morning, your ‘umble scribe spotted a picket line outside ~~Broadcasting~~ Brainwashing House as local radio journalists down tools for the third time in recent months to protest about cuts to jobs in the corporation’s local radio stations.

NUJ picket line on White ladies Road, BS8

According to the NUJ, “Despite the dispute winning huge support among the 5.4m loyal local radio listeners, MPs and councillors of all parties, a huge range of charities, non-league football fans, and community groups, the BBC is going ahead with plans to cut local content by almost half, with many popular presenters losing their jobs or choosing to go“.

Solidarity! 😀
Bristol Live: lost – one dog

28/06/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

Quality control at Reach plc regional press titles does not seem to be getting any better.

Ample evidence of this is provided by a story in today’s Bristol Live/Bristol (Evening) Post, which features a non-existent dog in one photograph, as shown by the screenshot below.

Spot the canine

To be fair to Bristol’s newspaper of (warped) record, the dog does appear in a subsequent uncropped version of the same photo with an identical caption.

Why the editor tolerates such duplication and lack of quality control is beyond the imagination of your ‘umble scribe. Perhaps s/he would care to explain in the comments below.
Bristol Live exclusive – war and mass killing in Dorset

17/06/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

Bristol Live, the Reach plc local news title that serves Bristol (badly. Ed.) is not know for the restraint of its headlines; and one of yesterday’s was definitely what one could classify as sensationalist.

Indeed, judging by the headline war and mass killing have recently occurred in Studland in Dorset, if one takes the standard definition of carnage, i.e. “the violent killing of large numbers of people, especially in war“; and all relating to a car ending up in the sea.

Needless to say there is no mention of mass killings or hostilities in the report itself, only the minor inconvenience of cancelled ferry services. Could it be yet more evidence that the residents of the city’s Temple Way Ministry of Truth have a very poor understanding of the English language? They definitely have a tendency to use it like a blunt tool instead of a precision instrument.
Brave Sir Boris

11/06/2023 Steve WoodsMedia, Politics

On Friday disgraced former alleged party-time prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson resigned as a member of parliament with immediate effect rather than face the sanction of parliament for lying to it and possibly losing a by-election for the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency he has ignored since 2015 and held with a slender majority of 7,210

The Monty Python team had Johnson’s pusillanimous character type down to a tee way back in 1975 in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Like Sir Robin, “Sir” Boris has plenty of previously form, as recorded by the minstrels of the fourth estate.

“Sir” Boris is first and foremost famous for evading a journalist by hiding in a fridge; and while he was Foreign Secretary in Theresa May’s administration, Johnson typically avoided a Commons vote on the expansion of Heathrow airport (concerning which he had previously vowed to oppose, saying he would “lie down in front of the bulldozers“. Ed.) by disappearing to Afghanistan for the day
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