“There are three types of lies — lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
Benjamin Disraeli
Each week Bradford Council produce several communications bulletins with all the credibility of news from Pyongyang. One last week was quite spectacular ranging from claims as to our great cultural appeal worldwide to Bradford’s role in winning the Cricket World Cup! Rumours of the England team being invited to fish & chips at City Hall are unsubstantiated.
Soon we will also have a revamped Bradford Park Avenue cricket ground proclaimed the spin department to mass cheers from the populace. It remains unclear how much it will cost, who will be stumping up for it, who will maintain it and what use it could ever be put to. Still, who cares about the truth?
There was also a consultation paper on the issue of clean air. To check this out, last Monday night I enjoyed a gentle stroll around the local surviving fields to take in the air, as yet unpolluted by the new craze of multi-coloured wedding smoke often held in conjunction with Ferrari conventions.
If the inner circle were genuinely concerned about issues like air quality, then how come they continue to concrete bomb anywhere that the likes of Persimmon and the rest can make a quick buck from?
And if they were really concerned about Bradford’s housing issues they might also realise that building half a million pound homes will not solve any of these.
Pyongyang’s PR Dept – the local paper – also produced this story for the umpteenth time with a disregard for the truth that only the likes of Kim Jong-un would admire. One million bike trips taken on cycle superhighway connecting Bradford to Leeds shrieked the headline. Again, the crowds cheered the great leader as she surveyed them from her balcony.
Regardless of having blown £30m on this folly, does this justify idiotic and unquestioning journalism?
As of the end of June 1,065,300 trips had been recorded on the route since it opened in summer 2016.
Challenged as to the source of the data – presumably they have council employees with clipboards stationed on the route – there was no reply. As one reader pointed out this amounts to 1000 trips a day, seven days a week.
Can they honestly state that there are 500 cyclists risking their lives daily battling against car fumes and the ebb and flow of pharmaceutical supplies?
Politicians wonder why we hold them in contempt. It is a broken party system that explains much of why we end up with such piss poor people holding sway making it virtually impossible for truly independent voices to represent local people.
We reap what we sow.
Talking Of Reaping And Sowing…
It does not seem two minutes since the summer was in full flow and the garden abundant. Since then we have had every manner of weather possible and its not been great for the crops.
I woke this week to R4 running a story concerning the price of cauliflower increasing some 500%; sadly I was not about to be rich overnight nor need to post guards at the wall.
The broad beans have not been great either, battered by the winds, a modest crop only although hope springs eternal for the late-coming French beans which I will be exporting locally, tariff free.
The second potato crop is about to be dug up and stored ahead of the ports closing and all the supermarkets running out of food…according to the BBC.
Fortunately the winter will not be wasted as local Nob ‘Ed, Greenfingers, has given me a crop of garlic to reproduce faster than the local estates. I’m told that this will be useful to ward off the expected invasion of vampires post Brexit…by the BBC of course.
News From Snowflake Land
I could sense as I listened that even the normally combative John Humphreys could not believe what he was hearing on R4’s Today programme; still, at least it was nothing to do with Brexit. As quoted from this piece on the BBC website:
Jess Tye, investigations manager at the Advertising Standards Authority, told the BBC that gender stereotypes in advertising could cause “real-world harms”. “Ads that specifically contrast male and female stereotypes need to be handled with care,” she said.”It’s about thinking about what the cumulative effect of those gender stereotypes might be.”
I nearly fell out of my pit far earlier than intended. When pressed, Ms Tye, kept blabbing on about focus groups but what kind of people volunteer for such things? In short – morons.
three people complained about an ad for the Volkswagen eGolf car. It showed a sleeping woman and a man in a tent on a sheer cliff face, two male astronauts floating in a space ship and a male para-athlete doing the long jump, before cutting to the final scene showing a woman sitting on a bench next to a pram.
Complainants said that the ad perpetuated harmful gender stereotypes by showing men engaged in adventurous activities in contrast to a woman in a care-giving role.
Personally, I would hunt the three complainants down and slap them with a wet fish then run them over with a VW Golf, of which there are many in…{Stop – Ed}
Happy weekend to you all.
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