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#tidyBS5 gains momentum
After the last Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Forum meeting where I talked about fly-tipping in my area of Bristol (posts passim), it was suggested to me that I devise a hashtag for use on Twitter and elsewhere to help highlight the problem. My answer was #tidyBS5.
The hashtag and its use have now been given another boost by publicity in the fortnightly Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Management email bulletin.
There’s also a meeting with councillors and officers on fly-tipping and rubbish in just over a week’s time to which I’ve also been invited. Let’s hope it ends in some proper enforcement and action to make scenes like the one below a thing of the past.
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Generational change: graffito
“Punk is dead” is a phrase recalled from my early twenties and apparently dates from 1978. Furthermore, “Punk is Dead” is also the title of a song by the legendary anarchist punk band Crass.
This morning a variation on the phrase drifted into my Twitter feed, as shown by the photograph below.
For today’s younger people, about the age that I was when punk first emerged, the leading lights of punk rock such as The Clash, Sex Pistols and their contemporaries have probably been added to the likes of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and other more typical exponents of “Dad Rock“.
Additional research has revealed that “Punk is Dad” is the title of a song by Berlin-based band Ohrbooten.
Could the graffito be cheap promotion for Ohrbooten’s offering – or is it just bad spelling? 🙂
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What’s Portuguese for “I can’t interpret?”
On Friday Linguist Lounge’s Facebook page carried a disturbing report on the abysmal quality of interpreters – or more specifically one interpreter – used by Capita Translation & interpreting. It is reproduced in its full horror below.
We’ve received a report that today Capita sent an unqualified Portuguese interpreter to a court in England. The linguist is reported to have summarised court proceedings, using English terms for unknown words such as “guardian”, “placement”, “local authority”. The judge was said to have been made aware of this after the hearing, however, the defendant was left stressed and anxious, without any understanding of what was going on inside the court room.
When is the Ministry of Justice going to terminate its failing contract with Crapita? Will that have to wait until a change of government next year?
In the meantime Crapita will continue to be rewarded for poor service and public money will continue to be wasted.
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Talking rubbish
One perennial problem in the Easton district of Bristol where I live is fly-tipping, the illegal dumping of waste.
Disgraceful! Trade & other waste dumped by communal bin for household waste in Stapleton Road, Easton Some areas – such as Stapleton Road (see above picture) – have persistent problems and last night I gave a short presentation at the latest Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Forum meeting to try and encourage other residents and those who work in the area to get involved and make Easton a tidier place.
I’m pleased to say I received whole-hearted support from local councillor Marg Hickman, who is equally concerned about the amount of litter on the streets (are fly-tipping and littering related; does one attract the other? Ed.).
Flytipping can be reported online using the council’s dedicated report form. Some people use Twitter to do so too, whilst for those with a smartphone various third party applications are available, such as My Council.
If anyone does draw attention to fly-tipping or litter on Twitter, you might like to add the hashtag #tidybs5. If you live elsewhere in Bristol you might like to adapt the #tidybs* hashtag, replacing the asterisk with the first figure of your postcode.
Yesterday I did learn prior to the Neighbourhood Forum meeting that persistence pays off: via an email from the city council I learnt that several traders on Stapleton Road are or have been served with fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping by enforcement officers. It’s a start, but I get the impression that fly-tipping will be as hard to eradicate as a Hammer horror film vampire.
Bristol will be European Green Capital in 2015. Unless it sorts out fly-tipping and other environmental problems in Easton and the city’s other less prosperous areas (like the plague of flies, dust and other industrial pollution in Avonmouth. Ed.), the accolade should be amended to read European Greenwash Capital.
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Dorchester Crown Court: Crapita found in breach
Earlier today barrister Charles MacLean Cochand tweeted the following from Dorchester Crown Court:
@Barristerblog – Dorchester crown day two no interpreter. Judge finds Capita in breach. Awaiting court fd interpreter. Arrive 1400
— Chas MacLean Cochand (@ChasCochand) June 10, 2014
It is understood that the replacement Portuguese interpreter booked via Crapita is travelling to Dorchester from Nottingham, a round trip of over 400 miles. This interpreter is due to arrive at 2.00 pm, according to Mr Cochand.
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Shredder poll: UKIP wins
All election materials delivered to my home are recycled and those containing my personal detailed are shredded before recycling.
Each election I keep a tally of the number of communications received from each candidate or party, which has acquired the name of the shredder poll over the years.
Today the UK votes in elections for the European Parliament (posts passim). In addition, one-third of the council wards in Bristol are also up for election, although my ward of Lawrence Hill isn’t one of them.
Click here for a full list of candidates for the European Parliament elections (PDF).
The lack of a council election in my ward could account for the low level of election leaflets received in the run-up to the poll: a mere 6.
The graphic below shows the results of the shredder poll.
Well done UKIP! Perhaps this win will go some way to make up for your misguided #WhyImVotingUkip Twitter campaign.
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Crapita and the MoJ: still wasting public money
Crapita’s mismanagement of the courts and tribunals interpreting contract for the Ministry of Justice may not be getting as much publicity now as previously (posts passim), but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t stopped wasting public money, as the tweet below from yesterday reveals.
@TheCriminalBar Husband's trial with t/e 2-3 days has not yet started and day 3 tomorrow.Reason: #crapita not provided interpretor #mojwaste
— Leisha Bond (@Leisha007) April 15, 2014
As Leisha doesn’t mention the type of court involved, there’s no certainty how many thousands of pounds this laxity has cost, but once again justice is being delayed, contrary to one of the few clauses of Magna Carta still in legal effect (posts passim).
One might even think that the one organisation that should be concerned about this – the Ministry of Justice – seems to be less concerned with justice and more with covering up its own and Crapita’s serial incompetence.
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The importance of the space bar and proofreading
The Wig and Pen public house in Truro, Cornwall had some unexpected publicity earlier this week when a badly temporary temporary sign was snapped by an amused regular before being hurriedly removed by embarrassed staff, according to yesterday’s Western Daily Press.
By the time the sign came down, its fame had spread round the world by social media; and it’s easy to see why.
However, according to the Western Daily Press article, the sign itself was not the only linguistic clanger involved in the episode:
But a remember [sic] of staff named Georgie-Tim later took to Twitter to say: “Well, it got you’re attention!
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Crash course in language
Have you ever noticed the language used when road traffic incidents are reported?
As a typical example, look at this story from Wednesday’s Bristol Post.
The headline reads:
Man taken to hospital after his car collided with road sign in Avonmouth
The first sentence outlines how the incident occurred:
A man in his 40s had to be removed on a spinal board after his car collided with a road sign in Avonmouth.
Note how the car’s occupant – presumably its driver – plays a passive role; the car apparently collided with a road sign of its own volition without any human intervention. One would almost think that cars and other motor vehicles are so capricious and flighty that conscious action by human beings is imperative to stop the public highway becoming a large linear scrapyard in next to no time and remaining such permanently.
Perhaps a more accurate headline would have been Man taken to hospital after driving into road sign.
Similar examples of this use of English can be found in any local paper in the country.
However, such language is not confined to the print media. An similar example from inside the BBC in Bristol was posted on Twitter this morning (screenshot below).
Note the absence of any human involvement in the incident: a horse was killed by a fast car. Was it an unoccupied, autonomous vehicle? A more accurate rendition would be that a horse was killed by a fast driver.
Then there’s the way large swathes of the media report collisions using the noun accident to describe them. In the vast majority of cases, there’s nothing accidental about them. According to RoSPA, 95% of all road ‘accidents’ involve some human error, whilst a human is solely to blame in 76% of road ‘accidents’.
According to the Collins English Dictionary, accident has the following definitions:
an unforeseen event or one without an apparent cause
anything that occurs unintentionally or by chance; chance; fortune
a misfortune or mishap, esp one causing injury or deathIt would seem that the third definition is the one relied upon by the media. Interestingly, the British police stopped using the term Road Traffic Accident (RTA) some years ago; the police now refer to a Road Traffic Incident (RTI) instead.
Perhaps the media should follow the example of the police if they wish to retain their alleged reputation for truth and accuracy.
