comment | Steve Woods

Election special: language Luddites ban purdah

18/03/2016 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

On 5th May elections will be held in England for local councils, local police and crime commissioners and in Bristol the elected Mayor.

As part of the election process, there’s a period before the announcement of the election and the final election results in which central – in the case of general elections – and local government is prevented from making announcements about any new or controversial government initiatives (such as modernisation initiatives or administrative and legislative changes) which could be seen to be advantageous to any candidates or parties in the forthcoming election.

This period has traditionally been called “purdah” after the practice in certain Muslim and Hindu societies of screening women from men or strangers, especially by means of a curtain. “Purdah” itself originates from Urdu and Persian “parda“, meaning a “veil” or “curtain“.

Earlier this month I attended the quarterly meeting of Bristol’s Ashley, Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Partnership. At this meeting attendees were clearly told by the officer serving the partnership that “purdah” was no longer an acceptable term and that the time in question should be referred to as the “pre-election period“.

This occurred after “purdah” had already been used a few times by elected councillors and makes your correspondent wonder if colourless, unaccountable, unelected council officers (whose wages we pay. Ed.) should be allowed to dictate the vocabulary which is used in meetings.

I don’t think they should.

Do you agree or disagree with my conclusion? Please comment below.
PCC candidate queries paltry interpreting bill

27/01/2016 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

This May sees a whole slew of elections to local councils, the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and last but not least, 41 local Police & Crime Commissioners (PCCs).

As regards the election of the PCC for Gloucestershire, Will Windsor-Clive, the Conservative candidate, has decided to play the bigotry and xenophobia card early. He’s doing so by questioning the £100,000 the force spends annually on interpreters, having filed a Freedom of Information Act request on the subject, the Western Daily Press reports.

The paper reports the overall costs have remained around £100,000 a year over the three years between 2011 and 2014.

In a quote for the paper, Mr Windsor-Clive is reported to have commented: “This is an unseen cost of high levels of immigration. Taxpayers quite rightly want their money spent on keeping their community safe, not on providing translating services. I’m determined to find ways of cutting back-office costs to spend on frontline policing and this is one area that needs investigating.”

Here are a number of questions electors (and others) should ask Mr Windsor-Clive.

1. Is it right to whip up bigotry and xenophobia for electoral gain?

2. Does Mr Windsor-Clive regard the rule of law and the administration of justice as priceless commodities in a civilised society?

3. If the answer to 2. above is yes, wouldn’t any reasonable person regard £100,000 a reasonable price to pay to enable the full participation of both victims and accused persons who don’t speak English proficiently in the enforcement of the rule of law and the administration of justice?

4. If Mr Windsor-Clive were to fall foul of the police in a foreign country whose language he did not speak, would he be content to forego the services of an interpreter, as he obviously wants to do in Gloucestershire?
Tidy BS5 at the Mayor’s Question Time

22/01/2016 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

On Wednesday evening Bristolians had an opportunity to question the city’s elected mayor, George Ferguson, at the City Academy on Russell Town Avenue.

Your ‘umble scribe attended, hoping to ask George a question on the city council’s dreadful record on keeping on top of fly-tipping, litter and other environmental crimes within the city as a whole and east Bristol in particular.

The session was chaired by BS5 resident and freelance journalist Pamela Parkes, who did an excellent job.

Your correspondent was successful in putting his question to the mayor, which read as follows:

This year Stoke-on-Trent City Council managed to find £750K of additional funding to tackle environmental crimes such as fly-tipping. What additional budget allocations will the mayor be making this year to emulate the Potteries?

Needless to say, the mayor ducked answering the additional funding bit (from which one can infer that no additional resources will be made available in Mr Ferguson’s forthcoming budget. Ed.) and laid great emphasis on £80m cuts imposed by central govt. on Bristol and how much Bristol City Council was actually spending on waste management in Bristol. I thought most of his answer was emollient waffle, blustering about the establishment of Bristol Waste, early days for them etc. However, facilitator Pamela Parkes pointed out that despite all the campaigning by residents, both informally and formally under the banner of Tidy BS5, the situation locally hasn’t improved at all. To be fair to George Ferguson, he did make a good point about the need to promote the repair and reuse of consumer goods, to reduce the amount going to landfill.

George then handed over to the head of Bristol Waste whose name I cannot remember. She made the point that fly-tipping had remained constant in Bristol over recent years. When challenged about the level of fly-tipping – four times that in neighbouring local authorities, back came the defeatist line that fly-tipping is always higher in cities.

So overall it looks like there will be little change in the council’s competence or motivation in tackling fly-tipping in the city

Besides my question, others tackled the mayor on education, housing and homelessness, the treatment of BME communities (following the cancelling of this year’s St Paul’s Carnival and current management problems at the Malcolm X Centre) and transport.

At the end there was a lively open session, during which there was a lot of hostility to the mayor from the public on various matters – the previously mentioned carnival and Malcolm X woes, growing Islamophobia, declining community cohesion and the total waste of Green Capital (which GF characterised as the most successful Green Capital year yet. Ed.), to mention but a few.

George placed great emphasis on his listening skills, stating he’d listen to anybody. However, he has past form in his post-listening dismissals of members of the public. This was not lost on his audience on Wednesday, one of whom queried along the lines of: “You may be listening George, but are you hearing what they’re saying to you?”

A T-shirt design produced after George’s dismissal of a member of the public in 2013. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

In the end the session overran and City Academy staff were heartily thanked for sacrificing their time so generously.
Why pick on Muslim women, Mr Cameron?

18/01/2016 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

Earlier this morning a man doing Prime Minister impressions appeared on the BBC’s Today programme to explain why Muslim women should be encouraged to learn English.

That person – a man called Cameron – is reported by the press to be advocating such an idea to “combat radicalisation“.

At the same time, this Prime Minister impersonator announced £20 mn. additional funding to teach Muslim women English, an initiative that applies a sticking plaster to the massive wounds inflicted to English language teaching by his governments since 2010. The most recent of these cuts was last July, involving a £45 mn. scheme that taught English to 47,000 foreigners.

Whilst I would concur that parents with a poor command of English in this country would place them at a disadvantage when it came to understanding the influences on their children, why are Muslim women being singled out for special treatment? After all, there are plenty of women of other religions – and none – with poor English skills.

Journalist Fleet Street Fox of the Mirror has labelled Cameron’s announcement as “breathtakingly cretinous“, in addition to which he’s come under fire from his own ranks, including via social media from a former Minister, Sayeeda Warsi.

Furthermore, Cameron’s pronouncement has been roundly condemned by the Ramadhan Foundation whose Chief Executive Mohammed Shafiq commented as follows earlier today:

The Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Government are once again using British Muslims as a political football to score cheap points to appear tough. There are three million Muslims in this country and the Prime Minister chooses to focus on a very small minority of extremists when clearly the majority of British Muslims reject extremism.

The Ramadhan Foundation has been clear for many years that we face an increased risk from terrorism and an ideology of hatred, the best way to confront it is to build support within Muslims and support the work done across the country and not lashing out and denigrating Muslims.

The irony of the Prime Minister calling for more resources to help migrants learn English when his Government cut the funding for English classes in 2011 has not been lost on many people.

This was a right wing, neo con Prime Minister delivering more of the same disgraceful stereotyping of British Muslims rather than focusing on the positive contribution of our faith and community he focuses on the extreme minority of issues which clearly is not representative.

Many in the British Muslim community will reject this neo con agenda and continue our work in confronting extremism and terrorism without the support of the Conservative Government.
2016 – the greenwash continues

16/01/2016 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

Bristol’s wasted year as European Green Capital (posts passim) may be over, but the greenwash* continues, as shown by the advertising hoarding below by the side of the A4032 Easton Way, a dual carriageway blasted through this inner-city community in the late 1960s or early 1970s to speed motorists from one jam to another. To be more specific, the hoarding itself is conveniently situated next to the traffic lights by the Stapleton Road bus gate, where bored commuters can gawp at it waiting for the lights to change as they suffocate in their own traffic fumes and poison the rest of us.

Picture credit: StapletonRd

As can be seen from the photo, at least one local hasn’t fallen for the greenwash and has said so, pinpointing the source as the trousers of Bristol’s elected mayor.

The mayor – and the local authority he runs – had an ideal opportunity during Green Capital Year to tackle some of Bristol’s endemic problems, such as the chronic over-reliance on the motor car, abysmal public transport and the unending stream of litter and fly-tipping blighting the inner city, but decided to do very little on these matters, preferring instead to spend money on pointless art projects and mutual back-slapping events for the great and good.

* Greenwash (n.), a superficial or insincere display of concern for the environment that is shown by an organisation.
Send George a Tidy BS5 postcard

11/01/2016 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

Now landing on Bristol Mayor George Ferguson‘s desk are postcards from residents of BS5 to bring him back down to earth with a thump after being honoured with a prestigious award by Lord Gnome of Private Eye (posts passim).

Photo credit: @StapletonRd

The cards remind George that BS5 residents are fed up with the fly-tipping they have to endure every day, a problem that was neither tackled nor mitigated by council action during the city’s wasted year as European Green Capital (posts passim).

If you have difficulty getting hold of a postcard, supplies are available from the Up Our Street office in the Beacon Centre in Russell Town Avenue (map).

Your correspondent took a dozen or so with him to the pub the other night and had no difficulty coming home minus his entire stock of postcards. There are evidently lots of fed up BS5ers out there, George, so you’d better exdigitate on getting to grips with fly-tipping in East Bristol and not just send any postcards you receive down to Streetscene Enforcement to clutter up their desks, as Tidy BS5’s spies down the Counts Louse inform us you are doing.
Bristol Mayor wins greenwash award

09/01/2016 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Politics

As a fitting end to Bristol’s year as European Green Capital, Mayor George Ferguson has won the Greenwash Award in Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs awards for 2015.

From your correspondent’s vantage point in the inner city, it has to be said that Bristol’s year as Europe’s beacon of best environmental practice has hardly been crowned with glory, with money wasted on pointless art projects, widespread wildlife habitat destruction and the continuing blight of fly-tipping.

Will George Ferguson be collecting his award in person from Lord Gnome?
Rustic riposte

09/01/2016 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

Only a couple of days after hearing of the creation of a giant statue of Mao Zedong (posts passim), reports have been received that the statue of the so-called Great Helmsman in Henan province has been destroyed.

Pictures such as the one below have been posted on Chinese social media.

The statue’s hands, legs and feet appear to have been hacked off and a black cloth draped over its head.

According to an unnamed local delivery driver, it was destroyed because it had occupied a farmer’s land.

This destruction brings to mind the traditional farmer’s challenge to trespassers: “Get off my land!”

Another reason for the destruction could be that Henan province was one of the regions worst hit by China’s great famine, a catastrophe that claimed tens of millions of lives that was caused by Mao’s disastrous “Great Leap Forward” – a bid for rapid industrialisation.

The official Chinese line is that the statue had not gone through the correct approval process before construction, according to The People’s Daily.
Chinese village creates a modern Ozymandias?

05/01/2016 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

News emerged today in the British national press of a 36-metre tall statue of the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong being built in a village in China. Here’s The Guardian’s report of this story as an example.

The statue of the so-called “Great Helmsman” is being constructed at Zhushigang village in Tongxu County in Henan Province.

It is reported to be costing some RMB 3 mn. (approx. £312,000). The materials used in its construction are steel and concrete, with the exterior being coated in gold paint.

History is looking on your works and despairing, Mao! Photo: CFP

Reading about the statue and thinking about its future, not to mention what has happened to statues of past powerful leaders (particularly dictators. Ed.) around the world, Percy Bysshe Shelley‘s 1818 sonnet, Ozymandias came to mind.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—”Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

In antiquity, Ozymandias was a Greek name for the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. Shelley began writing Ozymandias soon after the announcement of the British Museum’s acquisition of a large fragment of a statue of Ramesses II from the thirteenth century BC, leading some scholars to believe that this had inspired Shelley.

In more modern times, Mao’s record is chequered. His supporters credit him with driving imperialism out of China, modernising the country and building it into a world power, promoting the status of women, improving education and health care, as well as increasing life expectancy as China’s population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million during his leadership. Mao is also known as a theorist, military strategist, poet and visionary.

On the other hand, his critics consider him a dictator comparable to both Hitler and Stalin who severely damaged traditional Chinese culture, as well as being a perpetrator of systematic human rights abuses who was responsible for an estimated 40 to 70 million deaths through starvation, forced labour and executions.

Look upon my works and despair indeed!
No fossil fuel power plant in St Werburghs

11/12/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

On Wednesday councillors on Bristol City Council’s Development Control Committee B voted overwhelmingly – by 8 votes to 2 with one abstention – to accept the planning officers’ recommendation to refuse an application filed by UK Power Reserve Ltd. for 14 gas-fired generators with 11 metre high flues for a site off Gatton Road.

The recommendation for refusal was soundly based on both national and local planning guidelines for reasons of noise and air pollution, plus visual amenity.

One of the 14 generators refused planning permission

The application attracted nearly 700 objections and over 50 personal statements by members of the public, including your correspondent, whose statement is reproduced below.

I have been a resident of the Easton area for nearly 4 decades.

I have read the case officer’s report on this application and am pleased to note he has recommended its rejection since it contravenes both local and national planning policies in many regards.

It should be pointed out that this speculative application – one of 3 for fossil fuel generating plants in Bristol’s less prosperous communities – is being driven by central government’s ideologically-driven mismanagement of electricity production in the UK.

I live downwind of the proposed facility and feel the air quality in my part of Easton is already bad enough with the traffic pollution from the M32 and Stapleton Road, plus diesel fumes from the nearby railway line.

By filing this application in the way it did, the applicant has shown contempt both for the local authority and local residents in St Werburghs and Easton.

Contempt to the local authority is demonstrated by the application’s filing during Bristol’s year as European Green Capital. Nothing further need be said on that point in respect of a generating plant powered by polluting fossil fuels.

As regards local residents, consultation has been minimal and I believe that the applicant is guilty of what is called “environmental racism”. This is a concept from the United States defined as: “is placement of low-income or minority communities in proximity of environmentally hazardous or degraded environments, such as toxic waste, pollution and urban decay”.

If this facility is so clean and aesthetically pleasing to the eye, why did the applicant not decide to site in, say, Stoke Bishop?

Any future applicant thinking of indulging in further environmental racism in Bristol’s inner city communities will be told very firmly what they can do with their applications and where they can stick their proposed facilities.

Three local councillors – Rob Telford and Gus Hoyt from Ashley ward – and Lawrence Hill’s Marg Hickman also spoke against UKPR’s plans.

There was only one speaker from the public gallery in support of the application; and that was from UKPR’s agent. He urged the committee to defer a decision to allow them to mitigate the air quality impact by fitting catalytic converters, reduce noise problems and reduce the height of the chimneys. However, the councillors on the committee gave this late concession short shrift.

Indeed, the only councillor on the committee to speak in favour of the application was Conservative Richard Eddy (described as a ‘dickhead’ by a fellow councillor. Ed.). He and fellow Tory Kevin Quartley voted in favour of the power plant, whilst Chris Windows, the third Tory on the committee, abstained.

Two further planning applications for similar plants powered by dirty diesel in Lockleaze and at Avonbank (posts passim) were withdrawn a few days before the meeting. Along with the St Werburgh’s application, they would have formed part of the STOR back-up energy programme subsidised by the Government.

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