Social Media

  • Unfit for office

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

    Yet more proof emerged this weekend of the complete lack of suitability for any public office of disgraced former Defence Minister Dr. Liam Fox MP, the allegedly right honourable member of Parliament for North Somerset (aka the Clevedon Conman. Ed.).

    Foolishly appointed as Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade by Theresa May, the UK’s not at all unelected Prime Minister, Fox was appearing this weekend (and taking time off from golf. Ed.) on Sophy Ridge’s Sunday morning current affairs show on Sky.

    During the course of the interview, the small matter arose of a very inaccurate tweet sent in March 2016 arose. This is of current relevance because of the current UK government notion of a post-Brexit replacement of EU markets by enhanced access to African Commonwealth countries, an idea reportedly scorned by sceptical civil servants and thus dubbed “Empire 2.0“.

    Fox’s tweet reads as follows:

    “The United Kingdom, is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its 20th century history” #scc16

    Even when it was displayed on a big screen in the studio behind him, Fox, in a masterful display of brass neck, denied ever sending the tweet in the first place, claiming it was The Guardian that was the perpetrator, a textbook example of the “a big boy did it and ran away” defence.

    screenshot of Fox on Sophy Ridge show with offending tweet

    If the sentiment in his denied tweet is to be believed, Fox has a very selective view of British colonial history, a story of theft, plunder and conquest stretching back many centuries. Referring solely to the 20th century as per Fox’s tweet, Britain wasn’t exactly a benign imperial power, as the following list of incidents will reveal.

    As regards the non-imperial history of Britain in the 20th century, incidents of which the country should not be proud include the Balfour Declaration and Sykes-Picot Agreement (from both of which much of the conflict in the Middle East since the end of World War 2 originally stemmed. Ed.), plus wartime blunders such as the Gallipoli Campaign (posts passim) and the carnage of the Battle of the Somme, as well as atrocities such as the fire-bombing of Dresden.

    Your correspondent is well aware that history does not feature much in the curriculum of the medical course of Glasgow University, but Fox’s sweeping of so much incriminating historical dirt under the carpet in fewer than the 140 characters permitted by Twitter is breathtaking in both its audacity and stupidity.

    As with the Adam Werritty affair while he was Defence Secretary, Fox has once again proved by both his naivety and lack of ability to tell the truth that he his totally unfit for any public office

  • Bing bombs

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Social Media, Tech

    Bing, Microsoft’s alternative to Google Translate, is used by Twitter to provide instant translation for users.

    However, it isn’t very good, as this blog has repeatedly pointed out.

    And it doesn’t look as if any improvements will be forthcoming soon, if the evidence below from your correspondent’s Twitter feed today is to be believed, where Bing mistook English for Estonian, a language belonging to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family.

    screenshot of tweet with Bing mistaking English for Estonian

    If Bing cannot even identify the language correctly, one has to question the quality of any translation it produces.

  • Free digital skills session at J3

    Steve WoodsBristol, Social Media, Tech

    Your ‘umble scribe has today received an email from Kurt James, Neighbourhood Partnership Co-ordinator at Bristol City Council, announcing an event next month in east Bristol.

    get online at J3 with the Neighbourhood Partnership and local volunteers

    Bristol Libraries is organising a free (as in beer. Ed. 😀 ) digital skills workshop next month in collaboration with the Ashton, Easton and Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Partnership and local volunteers to help local residents who haven’t already done so get online.

    The event will be held at Junction 3 Library, Baptist Mills Court, Easton, Bristol, BS5 0FJ (map).

    The date and time: Tuesday 11th October, 1.30 p.m. – 3.30 p.m.

    Attendees will learn how to:

    • Get online for the first time;
    • Shop and bank online;
    • Access government services online;
    • Use social media.

    Those interested can book a space at the workshop by contacting the library by telephoning 0117 9223001. Call that number too if you want more information on the workshop.

    Originally posted on Bristol Wireless.

  • Golfing news

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

    The time-honoured business practice of top executives celebrating POETS Day on the fairway has come in for criticism from an unlikely source.

    At a Conservative Way Forward event at Westminster last week, the current international trade secretary and disgraced former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox MP is reported to have said:

    We’ve got to change the culture in our country. People have got to stop thinking about exporting as an opportunity and start thinking about it as a duty – companies who could be contributing to our national prosperity but choose not to because it might be too difficult or too time-consuming or because they can’t play golf on a Friday afternoon.

    Meanwhile in golfing “olds”, in April 2015, the disgraced former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox MP tweeted the photo below when standing for re-election.

    tweet reads latest student golfer at Tickenham Golf Club @TickenhamGolf #GE2015

    There’s an old adage about glass houses and stones, isn’t there?

  • Tidy BS5 in the Post

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

    At the weekend, Cllr. Marg Hickman, the cabinet councillor for neighbourhoods and a great supporter of the Tidy BS campaign, shot the video below at the junction of Perry Street and Stapleton Road – a notorious fly-tipping hotspot which your correspondent has been reporting to Bristol City Council for the best part of two and a half years.

    However, Marg also sent the video to the Bristol Post, which used it as the basis for a piece in yesterday’s online edition.

    The Post’s report states that Marg also sent the footage and photos to the city council in the hope Bristol Waste, which manages street cleansing and waste collections, will finally begin to get to grips with the problem.

    According to the Post a council spokesperson said:

    The refuse team emptied the bins this morning, and Bristol Waste Company have two men on Stapleton Road every week day, so they will clear up following attendance from the refuse crew.

    One of the street cleansing supervisors has been sent to check the area to make sure everything is clean and tidy.

    The council may have sent out a street cleansing supervisor yesterday to check, but one needs to be at that location 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, since your correspondent reported another load of fly-tipping had mysteriously appeared in the same spot overnight.

    Although progress on the ground may be slow, the Tidy BS5 campaign seems to be making better headway in the corridors of power since Marg’s intervention prompted Marvin Rees, Bristol’s elected mayor and past resident of Easton, to tweet on the filthy state of Stapleton Road, voicing his commitment to get our streets tidy.

    tweet from Bristol Mayor stating clean streets are a top priority

    However, Marvin and Marg have a big problem on their hands, as dumping litter and rubbish seem to be endemic throughout the city, not just in deprived BS5. Bristol’s annual Harbour Festival ended on Sunday evening and the Post noted in a separate report that the clean-up from the event is still continuing today, Tuesday.

  • Bing: tin-eared translation

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media, Tech

    When it comes to machine translation online, Google Translate and Microsoft’s Bing Translator are serious rivals, not only for custom, but also for the awful quality of the translations they provide.

    Social media platform Twitter has – for reasons best known to itself – decided to use Bing to provide translations of tweets in languages other than the user’s mother tongue.

    However, it’s not very good, suffering as it does from an inability to deal with context.

    Take the screenshot below from a tweet posted by your correspondent earlier this afternoon, who clicked on the Bing translation link out of curiosity.

    screenshot showing dreadful Bing translation

    Bing has managed to mangle my tweet, which contains a colloquial French expression (i.e. “du bidon“) into the incomprehensible “your reporting is Tin“, complete with capitalisation that was not in my original text. Bidon can indeed be a tin – or can or container – in French, but it also has the meaning of belly or stomach too. Furthermore, besides being a noun, bidon can also be used an an adjective, in which context it means phony or bogus.

    Wordreference.com has a brief forum thread on the phrase “c’est du bidon“, which passing Bing Translation developers may like to read.

    In the meantime, if any readers out there are contemplating saving money by using online translation tools instead of a human being, you may like to reconsider.

    Readers interested in why I was retweeting something aimed at the Mail Online website may like to read Tim Fenton’s post debunking the Mail’s Bataclan torture rumours.

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