Bristol Live (formerly the Bristol (Evening) Post. Ed.) really has form when it comes to writing ambiguous headlines (posts passim).
Attempting to drive whilst giving birth is extremely dangerous! Do not try it on the roads! 😀
The BBC reports that Tesco is to introduce collection points for soft plastic packaging such as crisp packets, pet food pouches and bread bags at its stores in England and Wales.
This follows a successful trial in 2018 at 10 stores.
The roll-out will start with facilities being installed in 171 stores in south-west England and Wales.
Tesco is hoping to collect 1,000 tonnes of soft plastic a year and customers may return packaging from other retailers as well as its own packaging provided all packaging presented for collection is clean.
Soft plastic is notoriously hard to recycle and most currently ends up going to landfill or being incinerated.
Given Bristol’s wide range recycling collections, this type of plastic makes up the majority of my residual waste collected by the refuse lorry.
With this move, Tesco is finally living up to its “Every little helps” motto.
Another day and every regional newspaper in the country is replete with examples of one of its mainstays – reports of criminal cases being processed through the local courts of justice.
The details of one case in particular on the Bristol Live (formerly the Bristol Post. Ed.) website caught my eye for one single sentence.
In the relevant sentence we are told that the defendant*
stole his dad’s car keys without consent last October.
I have never before heard of an item being stolen with its owner’s consent, so let’s examine that sentence in detail.
We are told the defendant “stole his dad’s car keys“.
The dictionary definition of the verb to steal is “to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force“. That definition includes the words without permission, i.e. without consent.
The lack of consent is implicit in verb’s definition, hence the qualification without permission is superfluous.
This brings us to another concept with which the author of the piece in question will be unfamiliar: tautology, i.e. “needless repetition of an idea, especially in words other than those of the immediate context, without imparting additional force or clearness“.
To some it may seem that I’m being overly pedantic, but as a linguist I’m all too aware that words matter as they are the only tools we have to convey meaning and in being the main source of information the press has a duty to use them properly.
* = Name omitted as having his name pop up once for a youthful misdemeanour in search engine results is enough without my adding to his woes.
Yesterday, like 8th March every year, was International Women’s Day, this year focussing on the theme #ChooseToChallenge.
To quote from the IWD website:
A challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change.
So let’s all choose to challenge.How will you help forge a gender equal world?
Celebrate women’s achievement. Raise awareness against bias. Take action for equality.
Easton Way in Bristol was yesterday sporting some new challenging stencil art in celebration of IWD near its junction with Easton Road.
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Towards the end of last week The Document Foundation (TDF) announced the release of LibreOffice 7.1.1, the first point release of LibreOffice 7.1, which is available for immediate download.
This release over contains 90 bug fixes and improvements to document compatibility.
As usual, TDF suggests that this release is aimed at technology enthusiasts and power users, rather than more conservative business users for whom an older release is recommended.
This latest release is available for all major desktop operating systems (Linux, MacOS and Windows), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) and the cloud. Instead of downloading via the link above, Linux users might like to wait until the update is provided directly via the repositories of their individual distributions, whilst those for mobile devices can be obtained via the app stores for their respective operating systems.
TDF’s wiki charts the changes and improvements in the latest release via the changes made in the two release candidates: RC1 and RC2.
LibreOffice users are invited to join the community so they can both get and provide individual support. Those willing to contribute their time and professional skills to the project can visit the dedicated What Can I Do For LibreOffice website.
Finally, LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can give financial assistance to The Document Foundation with a donation via PayPal, credit card or other means.
Local councillor Marg Hickman, who is also one of the trustees of Eastside Community Trust, has launched a crowdfunder to raise funds for Felix Road Adventure Playground, one of the Trust’s 2 sites in Easton, Bristol.
Felix Road has been in existence for nearly as long as I’ve been in Bristol and provided a much-needed safe space for generations of local children to play, socialise and develop.
Marg writes:
Felix Road Adventure Playground is an inner-city playground supporting some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, young people and families in Bristol. Felix Road is an inspiring beacon of inclusive play, a space where children and families can come together and celebrate diversity.
We need resources to continue to run our busy kitchen staffed by volunteers and providing much needed healthy and nutritious meals for children and families every day, and to help run a girls’ group for Somali young women.
I plan to walk or dance 10,000 steps each day in March. I would so appreciate you sponsoring me to reach my goal. Follow my progress on my Facebook page. Much love.
If you would like to support Marg, please visit her crowdfunding page and kindly give what you can.
Update: Marg’s efforts ended up raising over £2,500 for Felix Road. Well done if you also contributed.
Amazon was forced to apologise and blamed a “technical error” for a customer being unable to post a review in Welsh of a novel written in Welsh, Wales Online reports.
Cathryn Sherrington of Cardiff had submitted a Welsh Language review which she then translated to English of the book Lladd Duw, by Dewi Prysor.
The book is described by its publisher as a “hefty, ambitious novel set in London and an imaginery [sic] seaside town. It deals with the destruction of civilisation from the standpoint of the working class. An intense, dark novel but with the usual humour from Dewi Prysor.“
Cathryn’s review reads as follows:
Gwych Brilliant. I haven’t read a Welsh book for years – sometimes the formality of written Welsh puts me off – this is brilliant though.
Hawdd i ddarllen, stori gyffroes, cymeriadau diddorol. Wedi joio fo gymaint dwi’n mynd i ddarllen mwy o lyfrau Cymraeg.”
In English the review’s second sentence reads: “Easy to read, exciting story, interesting characters. Have enjoyed it so much I’m going to read more Welsh language books“.
However, Amazon which employs 1,000 people in Swansea, emailed Cathryn implying her review might have broken its guidelines.
There then followed a social media and email exchange between Cathryn and Amazon at the end of which the latter relented, stating: “This was due to a technical error for which we apologise. It has now been resolved.”
The inspiration to write this post was what an old friend referred to on social media as the Town Planners’ Little Book of Tired Clichés.
We were discussing a press report on long-term plans for Bristol Temple Meads, the city’s main railway station and its environs.
The report itself was written up from a press release issued by the literary geniuses employed in the Bristol City Council Newsroom down the Counts Louse (which some people now call City Hall. Ed.).
Whilst avoiding clichés has long been a given as advice for good creative writing, the various actors quoted in the Temple Meads piece seem to relish in their use.
Thus the surrounding area “will be rejuvenated with housing, shops and hospitality outlets creating a new area of the city where people can live, shop, visit and socialise”.
Note the exemplary use of rejuvenated.
In addition, how a new area of the city can be created by covering an existing but derelict city area in architecturally contrived arrangements of building materials is beyond me. If you have any clues, dear reader, please enlighten me via the comments.
Then there’s that essential element for anything involving urban planning – the vision thing. This is ably provided in this case in a quotation by Network Rail’s spokesperson: “We are delighted to be working with our partners on this significant regeneration project and Bristol Temple Meads station is at the heart of this vision.”
Helmut Schmidt, who served as the West German chancellor from 1974 to 1982, had a thing to say about visions: “Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen“. In English: People who have visions should go to the doctor. Genau! Sie haben Recht, Herr Schmidt.
Needless to the whole glossary of hackneyed phraseology seems to have been upended into the phraseology mixing bowl to create something not only unappetising, but indigestible: ambitious; innovative; rejuvenate/rejuvenation; regeneration; gateway; transformation/transformative; integrate; blueprint; showcase.
And on the clichés go, marching tediously across and down the page.
There are nevertheless a couple of absolute gems in the piece to compensate for all this guff.
Firstly,there’s the timescale for the plans. We are are informed that “work is not expected to start for another decade with the expected completion not until 2041 at the earliest“. Thus all that hot air is being expended on something whose actual implementation is two decades in the future; if not more.
A well-known adage springs to mind: pigs might fly.
Secondly, there’s the promise of an integrated transport hub. Basically this means creating a major public transport interchange (as seen in sensible city’s where the local bus/tram serve the railway station). To my knowledge, there’s been talk of a transport hub/interchange at Temple Meads for at least 3 decades already, so for it actually to become a reality within 5 decades would entail the city’s infrastructure planning process moving at more than their usual slower than tectonic plates speed.
In a
historic judgment in Italy, Lenovo was ordered to pay €20,000 euros in damages for abusive behaviour for refusing to refund the price of a pre-installed Windows licence in a case initiated by Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) supporter Luca Bonissi, the FSFE reports.
A grateful Luca is donating €15,000 of the award to the FSFE.
It should go without saying that everyone should be able to freely choose the operating system to run on their personal computers.However, this freedom is regularly abused by hardware suppliers to such an extent that it is almost impossible to buy a new or used system without having to pay the so-called Windows tax for an unwanted OS. Some computer manufacturers still make it very hard for consumers, forcing them to assert their rights in expensive and exhausting lawsuits.
This is what happened to Luca Bonissi.
In March 2018, Luca bought a brand-new Lenovo Ideapad and decided he didn’t want to run Windows on it. He therefore contacted Lenovo to request a refund for the pre-installed Windows system.
This initiated a lengthy two-year bureaucratic and legal all because the company twice refused to refund the €42 Luca had been charged for the unwanted Windows system. After having his requests denied twice by Lenovo, Luca tried to seek help from the Italian Competition and Market Authority (AGCM). However, when he realised that these efforts were fruitless, Luca decided to take legal action against Lenovo.
He therefore initiated proceedings in a small claims court without legal assistance, but soon sought professional aid when Lenovo proved obstinate.
In June 2019, the Justice of the Peace of Monza upheld Luca’s right to reimbursement and ordered Lenovo to refund €42 for the Windows licence and also ordered the company to pay €130 in legal costs
However, Lenovo was dissatisfied with the verdict and appealed, citing 15 grounds for appeal, implicating Luca in further legal proceedings and yet more expense for legal advice.
Finally, in December 2020, the Court of First Instance in Monza rejected all Lenovo’s arguments, upholding the consumer’s right to a refund for the unused pre-installed operating system. The court noted that the manufacturer itself had expressly assumed this obligation in the Windows licence. Furthermore, in a historic decision, the court imposed punitive damages of €20,000 on Lenovo for abusing the appeal process.
Commenting on his victory in court Luca stated: “The Monza decision demonstrated that is possible to reverse the unacceptable behaviour of big techs. What was taken away from the Free Software community has now been returned to it. I encourage everyone to fight back for their legitimate rights!”
Walls made of stone blocks are not unknown in Bristol. Since medieval times the local grey Pennant sandstone has been a common building material, as in the wall shown below, which is situated in All Hallows Road in the Easton area.
Please note the second block down in the centre of the photograph; the purply-black one that isn’t Pennant sandstone.
It’s a by-product of a formerly common industry in Bristol and the surrounding area that only ceased in the 1920s – copper and brass smelting. Brass goods in particular were mass-produced locally and traded extensively, especially as part of the triangular trade during when Bristol grew rich on slavery.
Indeed it’s a block of slag left over from the smelting process. When brass working was a major industry in the Bristol area, the slag was often poured into block-shaped moulds and used as a building material when cooled and hardened.
Stone walls were frequently capped with a decorative slag coping stones, as can be seen below on one of the walls of Saint Peter & St Paul Greek Orthodox Church in Lower Ashley Road. Otherwise the blocks were just used like ordinary stone blocks in masonry as above. In some instances, the blocks have been used as vertical decorative features in masonry.
The finest example of the use of slag as a building material within the Bristol area is Brislington’s Grade I listed Black Castle pub (originally a folly. Ed.), where slag has been used extensively.
So if you see any slag blocks in a wall in Bristol, you can be sure it usually dates to the 18th or 19th century, more usually the latter, when Bristol underwent a massive expansion.
Moreover, these blocks are apparently referred to as “Bristol Blacks“.
There’s a link between Bristol’s brass industry and my home county of Shropshire in the shape of Abraham Darby I.
In 1702 local Quakers, including Abraham Darby, established the Baptist Mills brass works of the Bristol Brass Company not far from the site of today’s Greek Orthodox Church on the site of an old grist (i.e. flour) mill on the now culverted River Frome. The site was chosen because of:
In 1708-9 Darby leaves the Baptist Mills works and Bristol, moving to Coalbrookdale in Shropshire’s Ironbridge Gorge, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. In Coalbrookdale, Darby together with two business partners bought an unused iron furnace and forges. Here Darby eventually establishes a joint works – running copper, brass, iron and steel works side by side.
Below is the site of Darby’s furnace in Coalbrookdale today.
By contrast, here is what occupies the site of the brass works in Baptist Mills – junction 3 of the M32.
