Monthly Archives: April 2013

  • “A wasteful exercise… and a recipe for miscarriage of justice cases”

    image of scales of justiceToday the Law Society Gazette published a letter from solicitor Malcolm Fowler of Dennings LLP of Tipton in the West Midlands – a solicitor with 44 years’ experience in criminal law proceedings.

    His letter is reproduced below.

    A dip in interpreter provision. And on whose figures? Even Capita is now hard-pressed to attempt to present a positive picture. I have striven again and again in letters to the Ministry of Justice, from the secretary of state downwards, to secure a straight answer to a simple though basic question: whose figures and reports is the MoJ reliant upon?

    I am far from being alone in a firmer than ever conviction that it is Capita on whom it is relying. And this to the exclusion of complaints from my branch of the profession, from the bar and from the judiciary at all levels. After all the ministry, in its present arrogant and smug mood, can be having no truck with evidence of failure of its ill-conceived contractual venture.

    Why else would it have forbidden the judiciary to disclose its own stark evidence of non-delivery both in terms of absent interpreters and abysmally poor quality among those interpreters actually attending?

    This is a wasteful exercise, first of all, and what is more a recipe for miscarriage of justice cases that will come to light in the years to come.

    Just as the MoJ failed to listen to experienced professionals, i.e. linguists, when it set up its Interpretation [sic] Project (otherwise it would not have abused the English language so woefully. Ed.), it is now refusing to listen to other professionals – lawyers – with decades of experience in courts when they warn of dire consequences if the present courts and tribunals interpreting arrangment with Capita Trarnslation & Interpreting continues. Furthermore, it is also rumoured that many judges are also exceedingly fed up with the dire performance of Capita T&I (posts passim), but, usually being rather shy of publicity, very few will actually air their grievances in public (posts passim).

    Hat tip: Madeleine Lee

  • Corsican MEP battles to protect Europe’s endangered languages

    image of François Alfonsi MEP
    François Alfonsi MEP
    The European Union has 23 official and working languages, i.e. Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish.

    However, in the countries of the EU a total of some 120 languages are actually spoken and Corsican MEP François Alfonsi believes that the Union should legislate to protect these languages just as it does to protect endangered fauna and flora, according to a post today on Euractiv, the independent specialised European Union affairs portal for EU policy professionals.

    Alfonsi argues that languages would not disappear were there not a deliberate policy to marginalise them and he has prepared a draft report (PDF) on endangered languages that will be voted in June by the full Parliament in a plenary session. Alfonsi’s draft report is also due to be presented to the European Parliament’s Culture Committee tomorrow (23rd April).

    “Languages would not experience such a recession if they were not marginalised in the education and media system and society in general,” says Alfonsi – the European Parliament’s only Corsican-speaking MEP.

    In Alfonsi’s home country of France, the Corsican, Franco-Provençal, Breton and Occitan languages are regarded as being threatened with extinction, whilst in Europe about 120 languages are considered to be threatened with extinction, according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, which estimates that somewhere in the world one language dies out every two weeks.

    Europe’s countries have a patchy record on preserving minority languages. Finland, for instance is very good, whilst others are very poor. Alfonsi says: “If we compare the resources allocated by the Finnish state to promote Saami and the resources allocated by the French state to promote Corsican, it is like a bicycle and a Ferrari!”

    At European level, many countries have signed the Council of Europe’s European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. However, the obligation to ratify the charter only applies to new Council of Europe member countries, not to existing members like France and Greece, which have both refused to sign it. Furthermore, funding for minority languages within the EU itself has also been cut in recent years.

  • Debian 7.0 due for release in early May

    Debian logoYesterday Neil McGovern posted an email to the Debian Development announce list giving the timetable for the next release of the stable version of Debian GNU/Linux, codenamed Wheezy.

    We now have a target date of the weekend of 4th/5th May for the release. We have checked with core teams, and this seems to be acceptable for everyone. This means we are able to begin the final preparations for a release of Debian 7.0 – “Wheezy”.

    The intention is only to lift the date if something really critical pops up that is not possible to handle as an errata [sic], or if we end up technically unable to release that weekend (e.g. a required machine crashes or d-i explodes in a giant ball of fire). Every other RC fix that does not make it in time will be r1 material. Please be sure to contact us about the RC fixes you would like included in the point release!

    Status
    ======

    From the usertags page you can see a total of:
    Blockers for Wheezy bugs (2 bugs)
    Planned for removal bugs (4 bugs)
    Ignored for Wheezy bugs (58 bugs)

    These have all been actioned/fixed. However, there are also about 17 bugs that have not yet been tagged and are not hinted. These will be actioned shortly.

    Awesomeness of Wheezy
    =====================

    We really need some more work on http://wiki.debian.org/NewInWheezy, please help contribute! Let’s tell everyone why Wheezy will be the best release ever.

    As well as this, release notes, installation guides and documentation in general, especially translations can always do with some work. Please see previous mails on these, and help if you can.

    I’ve been using Wheezy on my laptop for the last couple of weeks and it’s a very stable, reliable operating system. See instructions for getting Debian if you want to use or try it too.

  • Loveliest of trees

    In ‘A Shropshire Lad’ published in 1896, A. E. Housman (1859–1936) wrote:

    Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
    Is hung with bloom along the bough,
    And stands about the woodland ride
    Wearing white for Eastertide.

    Now, of my threescore years and ten,
    Twenty will not come again,
    And take from seventy springs a score,
    It only leaves me fifty more.

    And since to look at things in bloom
    Fifty springs are little room,
    About the woodlands I will go
    To see the cherry hung with snow.

    It’s a poem that has stayed with me throughout life since I first heard it and memorised it at Market Drayton Junior School in Shropshire some five decades ago: and I must agree with dear old A.E.; the cherry is a lovely tree. The Japanese even have a cherry blossom festival.

    Eastertide was early this year in March and was unusually cold, so the cherry trees still had bare boughs then.

    They’ve only just started blooming properly in Bristol now.

    Cherry trees in Castle Park, Bristol
    Cherry trees in Castle Park, Bristol

    A Shropshire Lad is available free from Project Gutenberg.

  • Open source career taster days for women

    BCS women logoIn conjunction with both Fossbox and Flossie, BCSWomen, the British Computer Society’s specialist women’s group, is organising 3 open source career taster days for women in London next month.

    The days involved are 13th, 20th and 28th May and the sessions will run from 10.00 am to 5.00pm.

    All the taster days will be held at BCS, 1st Floor, The Davidson Buidling, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA (map).

    The cost will be £10.00 plus VAT (i.e. £12.00 in total) per day, but this will include lunch and refreshments.

    The organisers are promoting these days as a series of three one-day workshops for women returners aimed at raising awareness of Open Source development as a dual skillset or second career.

    The course will aim at building awareness and confidence and help women take some first steps either towards learning to code or to update existing skills and to learn how they might contribute to open source projects. It will also aim to raise awareness of self-training opportunities and of open source career paths and entry points.

    Day 1 will include and introduction to FLOSS culture and licensing models, plus programming for Android mobile devices using MIT App Inventor.

    Day 2 will comprise an introduction to open source projects and resources, as well as an introduction to Git.

    Day 3 will give participants an introduction to programming with Python.

    Online bookings only will be accepted and those interested are advised that places are limited.

    Full details here.

    Reposted from Bristol Wireless.

  • Margaret Hodge: interpreting contract a “fiasco”

    image of Margaret Hodge MP
    Margaret Hodge MP. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
    Last June the British government introduced plans to shake up Whitehall with the aim of making the civil service smaller, less bureaucratic, faster and more accountable.

    Yesterday senior mandarins reported to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on progress to date. However, PAC Chair Margaret Hodge MP expressed concern that within the Civil Service failure frequently went unpunished, stating:

    “The mood out there is all too often people in the Civil Service don’t get held to account for performance and may get rewarded for failure; and most recently we saw the Home Affairs Select Committee report on UKBA where the head of UKBA – and this is no [sic] personal; it’s not for me to judge, but just hearing what Home Affairs Select Committee did – the head of UKBA was found more than wanting and they expressed surprise that she’d then been given the stewardship of HMRC. Now for the public that doesn’t establish great confidence.

    Margaret Hodge later listed some of the more spectacular failures in Whitehall’s record of contracting out public services:

    I remember the West Coast main line; that was a fiasco. I remember the MoJ interpreters’ contract; that was a fiasco in the MoJ. I’m afraid the DWP – you may think they’re improving – we think that the way they’ve handled the contracts on the Work Programme has been less than satisfactory.

    For the benefit of Ministry of Justice mandarins and Capita Translation & Interpreting, the dictionary definition of a fiasco is “a complete failure, especially one that is ignominious or humiliating“. 🙂

    Hat tip: Geoffrey Buckingham

  • Judge says 98% performance target is “no use”

    At the end of last week, the New Law Journal carried an interesting report on the case of R. v. Applied Language Solutions. Applied Language Solutions is better known nowadays as Capita Translation & Interpreting, the not very competent custodians of the Ministry of Justice’s contract for providing interpreting services for courts and tribunals.

    R. v. Applied Language Solutions itself concerned a disputed costs order for £23.25 imposed ALS it after a Slovakian interpreter arrived late at Sheffield Crown Court due to a communications mix-up.

    However, what is of interest are the remarks of the judge, the President of the Queen’s Bench Division, Sir John Thomas, who expressed surprise at Capita Translation and Interpreting Ltd’s argument that it need only supply court interpreters on time and in the right place 98% of the time to fulfil its contractual obligations. Bear in mind at this point that 98% is the performance target set for the contract by the Ministry of Justice – a target that Capita has never even met once during the first 12 months of the contract (posts passim).

    Delivering his judgment, Sir John said: “We cannot accept this argument…without [an interpreter] a case cannot proceed. It seems to us inconceivable that the Ministry of Justice would have entered into a contract where the obligation… was framed in any terms other than an absolute obligation. It is simply no use to a court having an interpreter there on 98% of occasions when interpreters are required, because if an interpreter is required justice cannot be done without one and a case cannot proceed.”

    Sir John, the third most senior judge in England and Wales, evidently has more faith in the Ministry of Justice than some of us; it may be inconceivable to him that it entered into a contract with a percentage obligation, but that’s what it’s done.

    Furthermore, Sir John would seem to have an absolutist view of the efficient administration of justice, first mentioned in Magna Carta to the effect that: “To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.” This principle was of course conveniently forgotten by the Ministry of Justice when concluding the ALS/Capita interpreting contract (posts passim).

  • How many LibreOffice users are there?

    the LibreOffice logoIt’s always difficult trying to work out how many users of particular software packages there are out there. Be that as it may, The Document Foundation, the body behind the open source LibreOffice suite, has made an attempt at estimating the suite’s users.

    According to a report today in Le Monde Informatique, estime that the suite has 20 to 30 million users on Linux (many Linux distributions, e.g. Ubuntu and Debian, include LibreOffice as the standard office suite in their disk images. Ed.) and another 30 to 40 million users on Windows. Up to last autumn, LibreOffice had been downloaded 20 million times.

  • A grammatical error made to last

    I was in London yesterday for an Extraordinary General Meeting of Wikimedia UK, the Wikimedia chapter covering the United Kingdom, held at the British Library.

    It was during my visit that I became aware of the existence of the Crown Estate Paving Commission or CEPC as I walked from Paddington to the library along Marylebone Road. The CEPC is a statutory body first set up by act of Parliament in 1813 to manage and maintain parts Crown land around Regent’s Park and Regent’s Street.

    One the CEPC’s railings fronting Marylebone Road, I came across the sign below.

    image of a brass plate featuring a greengrocer's apostrophe
    A greengrocer’s apostrophe that will last generations

    A brass plate featuring a superfluous or greengrocer’s apostrophe: whoever worded that made up for a lack of education by sheer class. 😉

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