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Swansea introduces public cottaging areas …
I kid you not. That is what this sign says.
It’s good to write something a bit lighter about a Welsh story.
From Amlwch to Magor
This sign though is a perfect example of why translations should be done by people who can speak both languages, not by an English speaker with a dictionary. Because to any Welsh speaking reader, this sign does not say “Tow Away Zone”.
It says “Wank Away Zone”.
The best equivalent English phrase I can think of is “Tug Away Zone”. This has been double-checked by a well known translator (no disrespect Hen, but it took some believing).
Perhaps someone should put one outside the Offices of whichever organisation installed the damn things to highlight the tossers within.
Tags: swansea, swansea council, tossers, tow away zone
[tags]swansea, swansea council, tossers, tow away zone[/tags]
Flexible Working
Flexible working is a good thing. It enables people to balance work and life - especially when they have children - and allows firms to keep talent and experience in the workplace.
But this new “right” over flexible working is nothing of the sort:
The right to request flexible working is to be extended to about 4.5 million parents of children aged up to 16.
Under the current rules the opportunity is limited to parents whose children are under six or disabled. (BBC)
“The right to request flexible working is to be extended.” How is this anything new? I already have the right to request flexible working from my employer. I can ask all I like, and they have the right to say “no” to me. Just as they still will be able to say no to these 4.5 million parents included under these proposals.
So it is just a gimmick, designed to grab a few headlines and make Brown look “family friendly”. It’s certainly not a serious proposal, as it does bugger-all.
Of course, had they gone any further and said that anyone has the right to work flexibly that would have been even worse. Though it is undoubtedly how many will read or assume it is meant to be read. Firms must have the ability to say no to requests for flexible working if it will harm them or make it hard for the rest of the team/business to do it’s job.
So this announcement is just a load of hot air - especially when “more than 90% of requests for flexible working were approved by employers last year,” meaning that employers are taking on their responsibilities already, without the government doing anything. So the government should stay out of it.
Kenyan And Pakistani Democracy: We The People
I hadn’t intended to start this column until next week, and not on this issue either - but rather by trying to find a working definition of democracy instead. This flurry of activity over the last week or so has prompted me to begin a bit early, and on a different topic.
Is there a Crisis of Democracy?
What could be called crises of democracy has occurred in Kenya and Pakistan, both accompanied by bursts of violence - one caused by the assassination of an opposition political leader, and another by alleged and suspected electoral fraud. Neither of these countries have a highly developed or deeply-embedded democracy, and are still riven by tribal differences. Fifty Kenyans have died in a torched church - a place normally regarded as a safe-house - because they were members of the same tribe as the President.
But is there really crises of democracy in these two countries?
We The People: A Preview
Like Mike, who posted earlier, Matt also asked me to post today, since he in incommunicado. So I thought that I would write a bit more about my new bi-weekly column starting in the new year: We The People. Even though I haven’t had the opportunity to actually start writing it yet!
What’s it all about?
The basis of We The People will be democracy - in theory and in practice. I am going to try and look at different democratic and governmental systems and analyse them together and in comparison with each other and in relation to the next section of this post.
The reason why I am going to write this column is because the term “democracy” is bandied about so much, yet every person - and certainly ever country - has a different view of what it is and of what it means.
Democracy: A Definition?
What is democracy? It is a theoretical governmental system that is so hard to define, with as many potential systems as there are stars in the sky. So the first post or set of posts will be dedicated to trying to create a working definition of democracy, of what it is, which we can then apply to existing practical definitions and see how they measure up against an ideal.
Wrapping up
The first edition of this bi-weekly column will be posted in early January, so keep your eyes peeled! Also, if you have any ideas for filling the space left in the weeks between this column, please let us know!
Welsh Voting Patterns
This is a Guest Article by Ordovicius, who writes about anything and everything in Welsh Politics and beyond. I have republished it today, as the links were stripped in the version published yesterday .
Lack of a Welsh Psephology
In the run-up to the Assembly Elections last May, it became quite evident that Welsh politics suffers from a lack of opinion polls, and what surveys there are are far from being tailor-made for Wales, as Alwyn ap Huw pointed out at the time:
UK wide opinion polls are fairly accurate; they are conducted according to a scientific discipline called psephology. Psephologists look at the make up of an electoral community and poll people by selecting respondents who reflect that balance. They try to create a gender balance, age balance, education balance, social class balance, earnings balance etc. that is the same as the balance of the electorate.
Because of a lack of regular opinion polling in Wales there is no such thing as Welsh psephology. Wales is not a microcosm of the UK it is a completely different place, one needs different polling methods in Wales than those used in the UK to get an accurate picture of voting intentions.
So how do Welsh voters vote? Well in Wales the most important factors have been and remain a) location and b) sense of identity.
The ‘Three Wales’ Model of Voting
I have translated a recent article by Richard Wyn Jones, director of Aberystwyth’s Institute of Welsh Politics, published in the Welsh magazine Barn, in which he discusses the ‘Three Wales Model’ created in the 1980s by Denis Balsom. The model is a map of Wales split into three areas: the Welsh speaking ‘Bro Gymraeg’ (The ‘old’ county of Gwynedd, Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire) where voters feel a “cultural attachment” to the Welsh language and Nonconformity, and as a result Plaid Cymru is its main party; ‘Welsh Wales’ (West Glamorgan and the Valleys) where voters have a strong Welsh identity but without such a “cultural attachment”, and where Labour dominate the political landscape; and finally ‘British Wales’ (Clwyd, Powys, Gwent and Pembrokeshire) where the voting pattern seems to reflect general British (or rather English) voting patterns.
However, in the second part of his article , Richard Wyn Jones points out that this third section of the Welsh electorate - British Wales - doesn’t quite explain voting patterns in Powys, which has been a Liberal stronghold since the Golden Age of Liberalism. He suggests that the people of Powys -who are ‘natural Conservatives’- vote Liberal because they are in fact too Welsh to vote Tory, as their neighbours in Herefordshire and Shropshire do (or did, prior to 1997). Powys then becomes the key electoral testing ground for Nick Bourne’s strategy of making the Welsh Conservatives more Welsh. Unfortunately, the actions of Wales’ three Tory MPs is set to undermine these efforts.
Localism - comparing Fianna Fail and Plaid Cymru
There is another important element in Welsh voting patterns, and that is localism. In his comparison of Fianna Fail and Plaid Cymru (which I have translated here ), Plaid activist Blogmenai describes the similarity in the nature of the support that these two very different parties have, and it is a similarity that is shared by other Welsh parties: Labour in post-industrial Wales, the Liberals in Powys and the Tories in Monmouthshire:
…there is a definite similarity in the way that the two parties’ supporters see their parties - as local entities which defend local people’s interests against impersonal forces whose source is not local.
And again:
It is seen by most of its supporters as a local party which is essentially an anti-establishment party which defends local interests against the demands of external institutions.
Indeed, there is a striking similarity between Fianna Fail and Welsh Labour: both are the largest parties in their respective countries, both are THE parties of the establishment there, yet for historical reasons and local attitudes, both are still seen as anti-establishment parties.
This is a Guest Article by Ordovicius, who writes about anything and everything in Welsh Politics and beyond.
Tags: ordovicius, transations from welsh, this is sparta, fianna fail, plaid cymru, alwyb ap huw, sanddef rhyferys
[tags]ordovicius, transations from welsh, this is sparta, fianna fail, plaid cymru, alwyb ap huw, sanddef rhyferys[/tags]
Welsh Voting Patterns
This is a Guest Article by Ordovicius, who writes about anything and everything in Welsh Politics and beyond. I have republished it today, as the links were stripped in the version published yesterday .
Lack of a Welsh Psephology
In the run-up to the Assembly Elections last May, it became quite evident that Welsh politics suffers from a lack of opinion polls, and what surveys there are are far from being tailor-made for Wales, as Alwyn ap Huw pointed out at the time:
UK wide opinion polls are fairly accurate; they are conducted according to a scientific discipline called psephology. Psephologists look at the make up of an electoral community and poll people by selecting respondents who reflect that balance. They try to create a gender balance, age balance, education balance, social class balance, earnings balance etc. that is the same as the balance of the electorate.
Because of a lack of regular opinion polling in Wales there is no such thing as Welsh psephology. Wales is not a microcosm of the UK it is a completely different place, one needs different polling methods in Wales than those used in the UK to get an accurate picture of voting intentions.
So how do Welsh voters vote? Well in Wales the most important factors have been and remain a) location and b) sense of identity.
The ‘Three Wales’ Model of Voting
I have translated a recent article by Richard Wyn Jones, director of Aberystwyth’s Institute of Welsh Politics, published in the Welsh magazine Barn, in which he discusses the ‘Three Wales Model’ created in the 1980s by Denis Balsom. The model is a map of Wales split into three areas: the Welsh speaking ‘Bro Gymraeg’ (The ‘old’ county of Gwynedd, Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire) where voters feel a “cultural attachment” to the Welsh language and Nonconformity, and as a result Plaid Cymru is its main party; ‘Welsh Wales’ (West Glamorgan and the Valleys) where voters have a strong Welsh identity but without such a “cultural attachment”, and where Labour dominate the political landscape; and finally ‘British Wales’ (Clwyd, Powys, Gwent and Pembrokeshire) where the voting pattern seems to reflect general British (or rather English) voting patterns.
However, in the second part of his article , Richard Wyn Jones points out that this third section of the Welsh electorate - British Wales - doesn’t quite explain voting patterns in Powys, which has been a Liberal stronghold since the Golden Age of Liberalism. He suggests that the people of Powys -who are ‘natural Conservatives’- vote Liberal because they are in fact too Welsh to vote Tory, as their neighbours in Herefordshire and Shropshire do (or did, prior to 1997). Powys then becomes the key electoral testing ground for Nick Bourne’s strategy of making the Welsh Conservatives more Welsh. Unfortunately, the actions of Wales’ three Tory MPs is set to undermine these efforts.
Localism - comparing Fianna Fail and Plaid Cymru
There is another important element in Welsh voting patterns, and that is localism. In his comparison of Fianna Fail and Plaid Cymru (which I have translated here ), Plaid activist Blogmenai describes the similarity in the nature of the support that these two very different parties have, and it is a similarity that is shared by other Welsh parties: Labour in post-industrial Wales, the Liberals in Powys and the Tories in Monmouthshire:
…there is a definite similarity in the way that the two parties’ supporters see their parties - as local entities which defend local people’s interests against impersonal forces whose source is not local.
And again:
It is seen by most of its supporters as a local party which is essentially an anti-establishment party which defends local interests against the demands of external institutions.
Indeed, there is a striking similarity between Fianna Fail and Welsh Labour: both are the largest parties in their respective countries, both are THE parties of the establishment there, yet for historical reasons and local attitudes, both are still seen as anti-establishment parties.
This is a Guest Article by Ordovicius, who writes about anything and everything in Welsh Politics and beyond.
Tags: ordovicius, transations from welsh, this is sparta, fianna fail, plaid cymru, alwyb ap huw, sanddef rhyferys
[tags]ordovicius, transations from welsh, this is sparta, fianna fail, plaid cymru, alwyb ap huw, sanddef rhyferys[/tags]
Show the Blogging Love at Party Conferences
I recently returned from a few days in Blackpool at the Conservative Party Conference, which, if you’ve never been, is a very interesting place. The Winter Gardens, however, failed to come up to scratch from a blogging and internet point of view.
If not for Iain Dale, we bloggers and techies would not have had a hope in hell of finding internet access. He arranged with the Party Chairman’s office for internet access and they gave us 4 ethernet connections in a small dressing room tucked away somewhere secret. It was adequate for blogging, but not much else.
On the final day, after Cameron spoke, I went down to the media area and sat with Guido Fawkes while he tried to blog from there. The connection didn’t even seem to want to work and I heard about how the journalists had been moaning all week about the poor service.
So, what can be done?
I can only speak from the point of view of the Conservative Party conference as I’ve never been to a Labour or Lib Dem one, but there is a lot that could be done.
For starters, wherever future conferences are held a good, strong, and far-reaching WiFi connection is a must for the entire conference area. I should be able to sit anywhere and access the internet at any time and for a reasonable cost too. One option might be for the Party to manage the financial side of the connections and take a slice off the top of any access fee - that might help the coffers a tiny bit.
As well as blanket WiFi I want to see a few drop-in areas, much like the “Time to Surf” booth at Blackpool. There shouldn’t just be internet terminals, but a full offering of printers, scanners, and webcams. That would enable delegates to post to YouTube from within the conference, scan in bits of leaflets they’ve been given and print out information about the local restaurant. Essentially, it needs to be a fully featured web-cafe-in-a-booth, but a few of them scattered around.
Message
The problem with providing very good facilities for bloggers and any old delegate is the loss of control over publicity that leaves the conference. By making it so easy for bloggers to blog who knows what they might put up quickly. Does that scare Central Office?
Going Nuts
What might be worth a shot is the Party investing in some cameras and streaming equipment and just broadcast the whole conference and all fringe events over the internet. That way we get to sit at home with a cup of coccoa whilst listening to John Bolton’s views on North Korea. No more leaflet-dodging, over-priced drinks, or late nights at the Imperial Hotel.
Web Telly or Telly?
The last 6 to 8 months has seen a massive explosion in the world of online tv-like video, or more in more friendly terms: web telly. 18 Doughty Street started broadcasting on 10 October 2006 and since then we’ve noticed a great array of other web telly operations start up, some of which asked us for advice, like the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster while others were more interested in our studio space and time, which is something start-ups in this new age will still struggle with.
While it’s quite simple for anybody with a webcam to get going on YouTube things get a little more complicated when you try to take your productions to ‘the next level’ - certainly setting up a whole web telly operation has its pitfalls, as we found out at 18 Doughty Street. The production costs are probably the largest expense in a fledgling web telly operation, with distribution costs fairly low at first, but soon catching up when popularity results in higher bandwidth bills and the inevitable demands from your viewers resulting in more development costs.
But, What’s the Big Deal? Why Bother?
The movement away from schedules towards a more on-demand style of television is part of our efforts to find yet more ways to save time in our increasingly busy lives. Spearheaded by Sky Plus, the rise in consumer demand is for TV “when you want it” - no more having to wait until 9pm for your favourite programme to start and no more having to set the VCR.
The new technology means we can all watch whatever we fancy whenever we fancy it and boy are we embracing it! BT Vision recently entered the fray with their set-top-box offering Premier League action and services like 4 On Demand. Other providers are springing up too. Our very own 18 Doughty Street is already available on set-top-boxes from GDBTV and although it’s early days the kit looks amazing and I personally can’t wait to see them flying off the shelves at Christmas. When the next generation models come out in a few months they will have Freeview, internet channels, email and a hard-drive recorder built in for a shade over £100. Bargain.
With the lure of potentially big audiences for web telly delivered through the old-fashioned telly it’s not hard to see why so many online TV stations are springing up. But, with so much competition will it really be possible to achieve millions of viewers for a single programme ever again?
Join Me Next Time…
I’m Mike Rouse, the Head of Technology over at 18 Doughty Street, one of a few people standing in for Matt Wardman while he pops on holiday for a while. Today I have touched very briefly on the emerging online television market. Tomorrow I want to take a closer look at the consumption of video over the internet through a traditional browser or desktop and why its creating challenges for traditional and even new internet broadcasters. Hope you can join me.
