Social Media

  • Budget shocker: “one pence”

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Social Media, Tech

    Gidiot Osborne looking smarmyToday was a momentous day for George Gideon Oliver Osborne (aged 41 and three-quarters), a man who does Chancellor of the Exchequer impressions. Firstly, he joined Twitter. Needless to say, there was the usual warm Twitter welcome for politicians, as evidenced by the use of the hashtag #gidiot. Those using the hashtag were slightly more polite than other reactions to George’s embracing of Twitter.

    Secondly, it was also the day of the Budget. In summary there was very little to cheer about, except the abolition of the beer duty escalator.

    However, what made me cringe while listening to the Chancellor’s speech live on radio (apart from his whining, grating tone. Ed.) was his language: at one point near the end, I distinctly heard him refer to the amount of “one pence“.

    Now, George isn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, but one would at least expect the Chancellor of the Exchequer to know the difference between penny and pence.

    Since the end of the budget speech itself, BBC Radio 4 news readers have also reiterated Osborne’s ‘one pence’ blunder – repeatedly. 🙁

  • Parliamo Shropshire!

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Social Media

    flag of Shropshire
    Floreat Salopia
    One can’t help where one’s born and that often affects how one speaks. It certainly did for me. Until I left home to go to do my degree, I spoke Shropshire dialect.

    On 5th February I tweeted the text below to link to a report in the Shropshire Star about a new project which is going to be mapping Shropshire dialects:

    I started out saying anna, cunna and wunna and went to Shoesbree for a treat. #Shropshire dialect

    .

    Today I was delighted to note I’d received the response below in dialect from the @shroppiemon Twitter account.

    @wood5y yer munna say cunna it inna polite and yer munna say wunna cos that inna roite*.

    * For non-Salopians: “You mustn’t say cannot, it isn’t polite and you mustn’t say won’t because that isn’t right”.

  • French invent their own word for hashtag

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Social Media, Tech

    image of hash symbolAccording to the German IT news website Heise Online, the guardians of the French language known as the Commission Générale de Terminologie et de Néologie have thought up (PDF, French) their own word for the English term “hashtag” which is widely used on the internet, particularly on the social media site Twitter. In the language of Voltaire the term for the keyword in tweets will in future be officially termed “mot-dièse”. “Dièse” is French for the hash symbol “#”, with which keywords in tweets are labelled, whilst “mot” is “word”, of course.

    This attempt to preserve the purity of the French language was mainly met with ridicule on the internet. Heise’s report states that one Twitter user’s reaction after the publication of the new word in the French Official Journal on Wednesday, 23rd January was: “Apart from people of 70, who is seriously going to use this term?”

    Will it catch on? Only time will tell; ultimately it’s those who use the language that determine its direction rather than any committee.

    Update: since I first posted this article my French friend Julien has emailed to say: “Why the heck didn’t they choose the same word as Canada? “Mot-clic” makes way more sense…”. I cannot argue with that. 🙂

  • Call to action for Capita/ALS interpreters

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

    As an increasing number of court interpreters working for Capita/ALS have decided to withdraw their services, the following call to action has now gone out to interpreters signed up to the Ministry of Justice’s contract with ALS/Capita as part of the ongoing fiasco of court interpreting services in England and Wales (posts passim). The strike call – for that’s what it is – has been reproduced “as is”.

    Dear ALS/CAPITA colleagues,

    How have you embraced the ‘reward’ offered to you by Capita (former ALS) for all your hard work over the last 13 months or so? This so called ‘reward’ now translates into you having to drive long distances day or night for actually less than 20p per mile and robbed of your travel time every time (the calculation is made on the basis you are not paid for the first 2 hours and the first 20 miles of your return journey to the assignment venues). What rights or authority does ALS/Capita have to help themselves to the money they charged HMCTS for travel expenses whilst those amounts have not been paid to us in full from the very beginning and slashed furthermore with effect from January 8th 2013?

    If we were to quantify the number of miles and hours of travel time they have not paid us in the last 13 months, we would quickly see that the amounts they help themselves to on our backs are quite copious to say the least. These amounts may well be part of the hundred millions of pounds in profit they parade on their website as being a financial success.

    We, a large and increasing group of CAPITA (former ALS) interpreters covering different
    languages in various parts of the country have decided that enough is enough and since the
    January 7th 2013 we have stopped providing any kind of assistance and/or interpreting. We strongly believe that most of you one way or the other have already informed CAPITA’s language coordinators that you simply cannot afford to carry out any assignments at their imposed shameful rates of pay but despite that they have still pestered you with calls offering you even more interpreting assignments. The number of assignments offered to most of you has increased simply because a large number of interpreters like us have refused to take them on.

    We have been informed that after the January 7th on numerous occasions some of our colleagues interpreters have been pressured and psychologically intimidated by the language coordinators and/or management by being told that ‘a note of your refusal to cooperate will be added to your profile which may affect your chances of getting any interpreting assignments for a long time’. This in itself is unacceptable and should be reported to the appropriate authorities with utmost haste. If you have suffered this kind of bullying please report it to us as soon as possible. It is time for all the appropriate bodies/govt. agencies to see CAPITA’s steel claw wrapped in velvet cloth and the proverbial bull set free in a China shop. It is time to join our brothers on NRPSI and it is now time to join their admirable efforts to show the entire political echelon what kind of ‘beast’ of a company they have entrusted to provide such an important public service and to look after the professionals and skilled linguists doing the ‘foot soldier’s work’.

    We also ask ourselves how on earth did we fall for some of their pitiful tricks they have been playing on us – i.e. posting a job for a couple of minutes only to withdraw it or make it look as if it had been assigned to an interpreter only to create pressure and a false feeling that if you did not accept the assignment immediately no matter what conditions there would be others willing to jump at the opportunity.

    How many times did we have to query payments which had already been purposely miscalculated by staff (‘because Google says so’) only to find that the travel allowance was ridiculously low? How many times were your payment queries ignored for days or weeks on end with for sole purpose to mentally wear you down and make you give up contacting them again which resulted in you accepting any payment just to spare yourself the mental torment.

    Despite all criticism launched at us (in the forums we have been called all sorts of names such as “capita slaves”, “terps”, etc.) and despite the unacceptable rates of pay we have been conditioned to accept we are confident that most of us have put in a lot of effort and dedication and we have strived to provide the best service we could have provided. We must think of the public we have served so far, we must bear in mind that whilst we interpret at police stations, courts, tribunals, etc. other people’s future is at stake and we have to admit that an unmotivated, despised and unrewarded professional will not provide the best service. We would not allow a relative or a family member to be offered the services of a low paid, unmotivated, stressed individual so why should we carry on pretending that it is all fine when deep inside we are all totally unhappy and disgusted with the way ALS and Capita has treated us. We are at risk of jeopardizing and possibly ruining other people’s life by carrying on working for such a dismal pay.

    We hope that you join the movement and follow our action and we take this opportunity to reassure you that we share your concerns and anger caused by the unacceptable way you are being treated. Looking back we realise and feel ashamed about how easily and unconditionally we all blindly accepted the payment ‘leftovers’ they threw at us and the endless lies they have been feeding us with from the very beginning. If you have read this far we are confident that you identify yourselves with the situations we highlighted and we hope you have the strength to join us in order to regain our self-respect.

    PROPOSALS

    • CPD training as mentioned in the agreement;
    • mileage to be paid at 40p per mile (which just covers the cost of fuel) as stated in February 2012 and promised to be permanent;
    • two or three hours minimum payment for all local jobs;
    • door to door mileage for all assignments;
    • full travel time paid;
    • public transport expenses paid on submission of relevant receipts;
    • Reassessment of travel allowance each year in line with real cost increases.

    This can only be achieved by joining forces.

    We plan to stage a strike for two weeks or more during which we will ask all interpreters to refuse any interpreting assignment. We all have families to support, rents to pay, heating bills, car insurance and petrol costs, car maintenance, etc. and we understand it is going to be tough but it cannot be tougher and it cannot cost us more that it has cost us so far as you will probably agree. We need to stand together in solidarity to protect and promote our common interests in the future. E-mail us to discuss the proposals and receive further information on how you can take part in our action and express any concerns or ideas you may have. A Twitter account will soon be set up to coordinate our actions and our quest for JUSTICE! Do not feel intimidated by Capita, they don’t own you, slavery has long been abolished and modern slavery
    must not be tolerated any longer!

    Signed

    LIN/ I/CANNOT/BE/BULLIED

  • Are social media destroying the rest of the internet?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Social Media, Tech

    That was one question discussed yesterday evening over a couple of pints of Cotswold Spring’s Stunner ale in Bristol’s Seven Stars pub with a couple of friends from the Easton Cowboys. More specifically, it the question could be rephrased as: are the likes of Facebook and Twitter pulling in so much traffic that they detract from everyone else’s content?

    Two of us run websites, so the matter is quite pertinent and can be broken down into a couple of simple aspects.

    Firstly, some people thank that if they just post on their organisation’s Facebook wall, everyone in that organisation will see it. They are, of course, mistaken. Some people avoid Facebook for privacy reasons, in addition to which Facebook’s APIs are so obscure, it’s difficult for an organisation’s webmaster to scrape content from Facebook and place it on the organisation’s website.

    Turning to Twitter, is the ubiquitous 140 character tweet replacing proper debate on blogs? We noted that if one blogs and tweets a link to the post, feedback is more likely these days to come via tweets than from actual comments on the blog. One of the great aspects of blogging is that comments on posts can encourage debate. This debate has now been reduced to soundbites of no more than 140 characters. However, the situation is more complicated than that. Whereas at one time, the ability to comment was restricted to blogs, the traditional media have now started to catch up, allowing comments on articles and thus have more interaction with their readers instead of just broadcasting at them.

    In answer to the question of whether social media are destroying the rest of the internet, only time will tell and the jury is still out. You can help the deliberations by commenting below.

    Finally, note that this discussion took place down the pub. Don’t forget that pubs, cafés and their cultural equivalents elsewhere in the world are the original social networking sites. 🙂

  • Bristol Post exclusive: city has a literate cricket ground

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

    Ever since I arrived in Bristol, I’ve been both dismayed and amused in equal amounts by the abysmal standards of English in the local press.

    This ancient tradition’s greatest proponent has been the alleged local paper of record, the Bristol Evening Post, whose publication is now reduced to 5 days a week as sales of the dead tree edition decline; its name has likewise been truncated to the Bristol Post.

    Today the Post revealed an exclusive. Bristol has a literate cricket ground, presumably able to speak and write, as evidenced by the following Post quote:

    The ground, in Nevil Road, St Andrew’s, released a statement this morning.

    If the ground really does talk, Gloucestershire [County] CC should be very proud of it since this particular skill is far more impressive than its cricketing record. 😉

    Update: 6th November 2012: Jon Eccles has since remarked that the County Ground is “the first sports facility of any kind to pass the Turing test“.

  • The coalition at half time

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

    On Friday I received an invitation to a Bristol Festival of Ideas event, “The Coalition at Half Time“, at At-Bristol, featuring Gruaniad journalist Polly Toynbee, fellow journalist David Walker and a panel of local MPs – Kerry McCarthy (Labour), Charlotte Leslie (Conservative) and Stephen Williams (Liberal Democrat). The invitation was extended to me so I could cover proceedings live via Twitter and I duly tickled the laptop keyboard as quietly and unobtrusively as I could for the next hour and a half.

    After a brief introduction, proceedings started with a two-handed critique by Toynbee and Taylor of the coalition governments record to date, as reflected in their new report, Dogma and Disarray: Cameron at Half-Time. Taylor and Toynbee opened by taking the pre-election rhetoric of Cameron & co. and contrasting it with the reality since the election, including such clangers as the pasty tax and U-turns too numerous to mention. Toynbee and Taylor also drew attention to the opinions of the Tory Young Turks (those who thought Thatcher didn’t go far enough and who consider Cameron to be too soft) and their desires to dismantle and privatise the state. In addition, the ineffectiveness of the Labour opposition was also mentioned: for instance Toynbee opined that Labour were paralysed on opposition to benefit cuts, possibly due to public opinion; the demonisation of claimants as ‘scroungers’ has evidently been successful.

    Following the Toynbee-Taylor double act, each of the local MPs was invited to respond in turn, starting with Charlotte Leslie. She had a hard job to start with, defending the indefensible. However, she didn’t do herself any favours by starting off insulting the intelligence of the audience, suggesting that anyone who didn’t vote Tory was brainless. The exact words Charlotte used were: “If you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when old, you don’t have a brain”. Charlotte’s love of boxing also got a mention later on. However, for all her love and knowledge of the pugilistic arts, she did a lot of leading with her chin.

    After Charlotte came Stephen Williams, who impressed me by his skill in making sweeping statements without providing any empirical evidence to back them up. One such sweeping assertion was: “What we have done is stabilise our economy and earned international respect.” We’re still waiting for the figures, Stephen. Perhaps Alex, your bag carrier, who was sitting next to me could oblige.

    Kerry McCarthy, last of the MPs to speak, had perhaps the easiest job of the night, gained the largest rounds of applause, and was not heckled by members of the audience shouting ‘rubbish’ or ‘nonsense’. Opening with, “Needless to say I disagree with pretty much everything Stephen Williams just said,” her commentary then went on to feature words we’d already heard from Toynbee and Taylor about the government: incompetence, ideological desire, Stalinism.

    Part three of the event was audience questions, which likewise proved awkward for Leslie and Williams and a walkover for McCarthy. Charlotte’s naivety on tax avoidance, loopholes and corporation tax was breathtaking. Answering one point, Kerry described workfare as ‘slavery’: immediately Williams tried to leap in to defend it; a Bristol MP defending slavery has not been seen for nearly 2 centuries. However, there was worse for Williams. One audience member prefaced his question, “I voted Lib Dem in last election and Stephen, I feel deeply betrayed by you and your party”. The room exploded in applause.

    My verdict: a most enjoyable event if you enjoy politics; supporters of the two coalition parties may have found themselves in a minority in the audience and might not have felt very comfortable. My verdict on the coalition at half time: the ref should abandon the match and take all the players off the pitch.

    My sincere thanks to Andrew Kelly and the Bristol Festival of Ideas team for the invitation. Next time you want an event covered live via Twitter… 🙂

  • Reading for boys

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Social Media

    Looking back over the best part of 5 decades, it’s hard to remember what I read as a boy. Of course, there were the regular weekly reads courtesy of The Beano and The Dandy and their host of colourful characters, plus other comics, but when it comes down to actual books, the memory gets a bit hazy.

    However, I do remember that Robert Louis Stevenson‘s canon came in for lots of reading and I remember paying regular visits to the local lending library in Market Drayton where we lived, as well as burrowing under the bedclothes with a torch and book after lights out.

    I also recall both my sister Hilary and I used to tease our younger brother Andrew unmercifully about his love of Enid Blyton when we believed there was better ‘quality’ literature available for children. Maybe we should have been more generous: at least he was reading something.

    image of boy reading
    Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    All of which brings me to the point of this post. Via Twitter contacts in Shropshire I’ve been made aware of The Boy Reader Blog written by Matthew Swain of Shrewsbury.

    The Boy Reader Blog’s byline is: “A blog written by a 10 year old boy Matthew to try and encourage more boys to read.” Apparently, boys are less inclined to read than are girls and Matthew, who loves reading, has bravely decided to stick his head above the parapet in the hope of giving his male contemporaries a bit of encouragement and providing them with an example.

    Or to put the paragraph above in Matthew’s own words from his first post:

    Hi I’m Matthew I’m 10 and I LOVE READING. I have decided to write a blog about reading from a boys point of view. My aim is to get boys to cut down on the video games and read a little bit more. To be honest I never used to like reading myself, the Biff and Chip books at school were boring, but the 2009 world book day is where it all began with a short Beast Quest book by Adam Blade which my mum bought for something different to read at bedtime. Mum or dad always read me a story at bedtime but I liked the look of this book and decided to try and read it myself. Ever since then I’ve never wanted to stop reading (and still don’t) I’ve noticed that a lot of other boys prefer video games than reading and that is why I have started this blog to try and help them on the reading journey.

    Matthew also makes regular suggestions and recommendations for reading, such as the Book of the Week for 7th October.

    I’d like to wish Matthew every success with his efforts to get his peers reading, not to mention keeping up a regular supply of posts! 🙂

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