Culture Northern Ireland borrowing Orangefest photos from Flickr?

Reading through Culture Northern Ireland's latest newsletter, I clicked on the link to an article titled Orangefest. And was surprised to recognise one of the photos half way down the page.

As part of a concerted effort to discover what the Twelfth was about - which had included some history, launches, bonfires and later on a trip to the field - I spent the morning of July 12 last year perched on a traffic island just outside the BBC in Belfast, watching and snapping the (large) bands and (small) lodges as they split and marched past on either side. (It's an excellent spot if anyone wants a good vantage point this year!)

For a while, a girl who'd been standing with her family on the roadside, came across and sat on the traffic island, joining our crowd of mad people and the odd press photographer who came and went. She was decked out in Twelfth clobber, yet had none of the celebratory attitude to do with her fashion. Instead, she sat and looked into the distance. I held the camera to one side and surreptitiously (sounds better than "sneakily") took a couple of shots.

Now I've never got around to choosing and applying a license to my photos on Flickr. One of those many things I've never quite got around to. For now, the're all sitting there with a copyright symbol beside them. I've never refused anyone permission to use a photo who's asked ... and when I've wanted to use someone else's for the blog, I've learnt to pop a comment on to say and ask if they mind.

So I was surprised to find that Culture Northern Ireland had filched a picture from my Flickr feed without asking, and without acknowledging. Particularly hypocritical given the link at the bottom of each page to their strong copyright statement that covers the CNI site, and the individual copyright link up at the top of the article!

Of course, maybe they just nicked it off the blog post and not Flickr?

I wonder who supplied the other shots the illustrate their piece?

And in case they're wondering - they are welcome to use the shot - just would have been nice if they'd asked.

Torchwood season :: 1-10 July

Never mind creation and dinosaurs, Torchwood is back!

There was an interview with Russell T Davies about Doctor Who and Torchwood on Front Row last night. And for three days this week, Radio 4’s Afternoon Play (14:15-15:00) is running a sequence of 45 minute dramas featuring the regular cast.

• Wednesday 1 - The Torchwood team investigate after a strange teenage girl is arrested (Anita Sullivan)
• Thursday 2 - The Torchwood team go to Delhi on the trail of a dangerous energy field (James Goss)
• Friday 3 - Torchwood investigate when people start falling into coma -like trances (Phil Ford)

Update - the R4 plays are available to download as mono MP3s for three days after broadcast - easier to listen to on your MP3 player than online ... and there's a how-they-recorded-it post on the Radio 4 blog.

And then next week, Torchwood is striped across BBC One and BBC HD from Monday to Friday at 9pm (and repeated at 23:45 on BBC Three, 00:15 on Friday). The story arc follows is summed up in the press pack:

An ordinary day becomes a world of terror, as every single child in the world stops. A message is sent to all the governments of Earth: “We are coming”.

But as a trap closes around Captain Jack, sins of the past are returning, as long-forgotten events from 1965 threaten to reveal an awful truth.

Torchwood are forced underground, as the government takes swift and brutal action. With members of the team being hunted down, Britain risks becoming a rogue state, with the mysterious and powerful 456 drawing ever closer.

There's No Candidate As Honest (in North Norwich) as Craig Murray? and a mention of Catholic Orangemen in Togo

Parliamentary by-elections on average attract more candidates than a constituency would at a general election.*

The cause of the day – like a hospital under threat in the area, some local political fallout, or some national issue – attracts independent candidates to the ballot paper like flies to a soft banana.

The North Norwich constituency is due a by-election fairly soon. The date hasn’t been set, but any time from mid-July to September is possible, but before the August holidays is the most likely time for Labour to get it over with.

The sitting Labour MP Ian Gibson resigned “accused of claiming £80,000 of taxpayers' money on a London flat that he later sold to his daughter, below the market price”.

With a majority at the 2005 election of just under five and a half thousand, Craig Murray is targeting the seat under an anti-sleaze banner as the first ever candidate for the Put An Honest Man Into Parliament party. (He reckoned that there could be other Independents on the ballot paper, so he wanted to make sure he’d be identifiable.)

You may have heard of Craig Murray before. As well as being a blogger, he is better remembered as Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan who was sacked “for making a stance against torture” and “for failing to toe the British line on intelligence obtained under torture”. I remember listening to him at that time being interviewed on Newsnight and Radio 4’s Today programme, and he came across as a sensible and principled character. (How easily I’m impressed by a voice on the radio!)

While he didn’t do so well standing against then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in the 2005 election in Blackburn, Murray is hoping his Norfolk roots and previous work as a Labour party activist in the area will count for him.

And he’s been given a leg up by the Corrigan Brothers – the group responsible for the ditty There's No One As Irish As Barack Obama – who this time have penned The MP Expenses Song.

It’s a terrible tune, and an even worse video, but it might provide the novelty value that Murray needs to pick up a few votes.

Not that Murray is unfamiliar with novelty. As well as his memoir of what happened between the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and Uzbek in Murder in Samarkand, he went on to publish a book online (after being dropped by his publisher) and later in self-published print curiously titled:

Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known

You can follow his campaign on his blog.

* Like 80.2% of good bloggers - and many bad bloggers too - I can make up believable statistics at the drop of a hat. Though I reckon this one is true!

Apple returns: would you like a bag for that?

It's happened before and it'll happen again. Apple's lanyard headphones for first and second generation Nano iPods have some kind of inherent weakness that means that one earpiece silences after six or so months before the other ear gives in a month or so later. So I've been around the loop a time or two to get Apple to repair them

The lanyard headphones - they hang the iPod around your neck with the ear buds built into the next strap - unusually don't have an individual serial number. So the warranty repair is handled against your iPod. Problem is that once your iPod is out of warranty, you have to prove when you bought the lanyard headphones, and email through your proof of purchase.

It would have been nice if they'd given me the correct email address on the first two phone calls. And nice if after the third call they hadn't returned a terse email to say that the warranty date of the iPod couldn't be updated .. when I only needed them to record the purchase date of the headphones.

Fourth call, someone was going to talk to their boss and call me back.

Fifth call, and they could see I'd emailed in the proof of purchase - rejected a second time with a different terse email - and agreed to ignore that and send out the replacement.

You have to send in the old bust ones otherwise they charge you for the replacements.

The size of the prepaid return envelope? Larger than an A3 piece of paper! You could fit a Macbook in there ...

Update - Tuesday - The problem of Apple sticking the sender's address on the front of the envelope is that the Royal Mail delivered the bust headphones back to me today, instead of using the Apple's "to" address ...

The '59 Revival ... Coming soon

Has iPlayer developed a theological sense of humour?

Or was there something particularly shocking in the third of William Crawley's weekend documentaries looking at the 500th anniversary of Calvin's birth and the 1859 revival! As usual with iPlayer vagaries, the explanation is usually closer to cock-up than conspiracy.

Note that for the next three weeks this slot - Sunday at 13:30 and the following Thursday at 19:30 - in the Radio Ulster schedule will be filled by Gerry Anderson:

Work! Work! Work! investigates the hidden lives of the Polish community, one of Northern Ireland's biggest ethnic groups.

Update - Monday - The '59 Revival is now available to listen again online until 2pm on Sunday 5 July.

What are your options when a TV breaks after 18 months

Buy an LCD TV and you expect that it will last five or six years if not longer. So it was disappointing to realise that a TV I’d bought as a gift for someone back at Christmas 2007 had stopped working.

Like most electrical goods, TVs tend to come with a one year warranty from the manufacturer. But just because it breaks down outside the warranty – in this case 18 months after purchase – doesn’t mean to say you have no right of redress.

The Sale of Goods Act (and associated legislation) offers consumers some protection. The Department of Business Innovation & Skills website sums it up in their fact sheet.

Now you can’t take this as legal advice as it’s only my personal reading of various sites and information, but goods bought must “conform to contract” and be fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality. For up to six years after purchase (five in Scotland) purchasers can request their money back (“damages”) from the retailer (not the manufacturer) “within a reasonable time”. Now that’s not to say that all items are built to last six years. So a “reasonable person” would accept that shoes have a much shorter life.

But a TV is meant to be a durable item. And if it fails after 18 months, it might be reasonable to suggest that the failure was a weakness in manufacturing, a substandard component that later failed. The "fault" may not become apparent immediately but it was there at the time of sale and so the product was not of satisfactory standard.

So I wandered into Argos this morning, set the TV down on the counter along with the remote and its receipt, and explained that it was no longer working, was outside its one year warranty but well under the normal expected lifetime, and asked if I could have a repair or refund under the Sale of Goods Act.

All very calm. No challenge. No quibbling. Receipt checked, passed to a colleague who said that since the TV had worked ok for one year (out of its six year life expectancy), he’d offer a five sixths refund. Just like that.

Now reading the fact sheet more carefully tonight, perhaps Argos still got one over on me by giving the refund in the form of a credit note rather than as cash? Or by not offering repair or replacement, but defaulting to damages instead. Difficult to tell – but anyone reading this post from the Northern Ireland Consumer Council or Trading Standards is very welcome to comment or email me the answer!

Until a couple of days ago, I’d no idea that there was any course of redress beyond a manufacturer’s guarantee. A single case was highlighted in the Daily Mail and Radio Five recently – also involving a TV. But reading through material on the local Consumer Line website, I was surprised to find that although there are mentions of “the time set by the guarantee is not necessarily reasonable”, it is less than clear or consistently explained across their wealth of consumer advice.

Seems that there’s an EU directive 1999/44/EC which states that “a two-year guarantee applies for the sale of all consumer goods everywhere in the EU. In some countries, this may be more, and some manufacturers also choose to offer a longer warranty period.” The EU directive does not require the buyer to show the fault is inherent in the product and not down to their actions. However, there seem to be large variances in how the EU directive has been incorporated into individual country legislation.

My challenge to the NI Consumer Council would be to tidy up their consumer advice and incorporate the implications of the EU Directive and examples of what people should state when seeking redress into their material as soon as possible.

Anyway, thank you Argos for being straightforward.

Just for completeness: when the TV owner walked into a local independent retailer to ask if TVs could still be repaired, they were told it would be out of warranty, TV workshops had closed down, and promptly sold a new one (at least twice the spec though still missing key features of the original and "a bargain" at twice the price).

They were also told that digital switchover in Northern Ireland has been postponed until 2014 ... which is complete rubbish!

But when we returned the TV and explained that it was an unnecessary (due to ability to ask original retailer for repair) and inappropriate (less/more function than required) sale, they did offer a full refund.

Lisburn, Creation, Environment Minister Edwin Poots and dinosaurs

Lisburn is famous for a number of things: flax, linen ... and its council.

Over the years the council have hit the headlines, usually for fractious reasons. There seems to be a lack of practical cooperation, trust and humanity in some reports.

And while the proportion of people in Northern Ireland who believe in a literal seven day creation is actually greater than any other part of the UK, Lisburn Council - and in particular its unionist politicians - seem to be a particularly dense statistical anomaly that bucks the trend.

So it was no surprise to see a trailer parked up in Bow Street advertising the Creation Weekend being organised by the Lisburn and Hillsborough Free Presbyterian Churches in September in conjunction with Answer in Genesis (who for me leave more questions than answers).

Having picked up one of their leaflets (click on the images below to see larger versions) which explains the Giant's Causeway is "Evidence for Noah's Flood", I noticed Lisburn Councillor, MLA, and member of the NI Executive (formerly as Minster for Culture, Arts and Leisure and most recently as Minister of the Environment) wandering down the street. His theological views and their overlap with his ministerial role have been noted in the media. And he took the time this afternoon to have a good chat with the team manning the roadshow.

NI will count overnight at next General Election

Northern Ireland’s Chief Electoral Officer, Douglas Bain, confirmed this morning his intention to count the votes from the next General Election overnight, with constituency results expected to be “available in the early hours of the morning”. So Northern Ireland will no longer be the last to declare in the UK-wide vote.

He was speaking at the Electoral Commission’s post-election seminar attended by candidates (one - Steven Agnew), agents, Electoral Office staff, Commission staff and other stakeholder groups including RNIB, Disability Action Ofcom and Royal Mail.

Referring to one of this year’s electoral innovations, he commented that “the significant change to poll cards was that we included a map and in most cases it was correct” though the River Bann was briefly rerouted through Kilkeel on some voters’ cards!

And the change to allow Smartlink passes to be used as identification, and the withdrawal of the need for ID to be current on the day of the election, had been an unqualified success.

For the first time, late voter registration was possible in Northern Ireland during the run up to the European Election. So while the normal registration process closed on 7 April, 12,000 late registrants (with brand new or amended details) were processed before 19 May and issued with polling cards, subject to increased scrutiny and unable to request a postal ballot.

Despite the low turnout, the registered (potential) electorate was up by over 69,000 when compared to the 2004 EU election.

The number of permanent absent voters (often due to illness) increased by over 7%, in stark contrast to one-off absent votes which reduced by 76%.

And although it was the first time that the scheme was in operation here, Northern Ireland had more election observers (36 of us) than any other part of the UK. And one even got twenty minutes in the agenda to reflect back to the seminar about his experiences.

trans festival - urban arts academy

Every summer I wish I was twenty years younger. While I availed of IT camps out at UU at Jordanstown – still remember my first mainframe account on UPVAX with user name CB2126MNA as well as learning about Lotus 123 and programming BBC Micros - there was nothing like the trans festival or the associated Urban Arts Academy. It’s something I’m really glad that Belfast City Council support – particularly as I’m still paying rates in East Belfast!

Urban Arts Academy offers in depth courses (usually one to three weeks long). Quite a lot of courses are already booked out, but there are still places radio production, journalism, music production, DJing, comic book illustration, street theatre, 3D animation and urban dance. As long as you’re 15+ (with no upper age limit) you can apply. There are also short two day courses looking at developing iPhone apps, Alternative Reality Gaming, music videos, and lots lots more.

If you know someone who’d be interested, or if you’re interested yourself, get your application in quickly.

With the courses and workshops dealt with, the main trans festival has plenty to offer.

The Electronic Creche is back on Saturday afternoons in the Ulster Hall cafe. 4, 11, 18 and 25 July. Newspapers, free wifi, Wii, coffee and music. A paradise of grown up calm in the middle of the city centre?

Having seen them at the recent Belfast Children’s Festival, I’d highly recommend a trip along to Cotton Court on Sunday 5 July (1pm, 2pm, 3pm or 4pm) to see the high fashion and hire wire antics of the incredible Barren Carrousel Aerial Circus Troupe along with Seamus McJuggler.

Starting at the City Hall at noon on Saturday 18 July, there will be a Flickr meetup going across to tour the less spotted areas in Victoria Square. And it’s free!

During the first two weeks of the festival, you can log onto the trans website and download a scavenger hunt that will take you all over Belfast to search for images and buildings and who knows what else. You can also pick up the instructions at the Waterfront Hall ticket desk. But if you’re less of a loner and want the full group experience, meet up in front of the Waterfront Hall on Sunday 26 July at 3pm, and you can collaborate in a much larger group. Sounds fun.

During the fringe events around the time the Ulster Hall reopened, Sunday Service redelivered important speeches from history (usually anti-establishment ones like Martin Luther King and Hitler) together with music that fitted the theme. Well Sunday Service is back, and on Sunday 26 July at 7pm, the Black Box Café will host words from Harvey Milk (read the film review to find out more). Given Northern Ireland’s attitudes to gay and immigrant issues – a third of those surveyed in 2007 wouldn’t want to live next door to someone who was homosexual, the highest figure for any country in Europe, and the figure for immigrant intolerance topped Europe too – could be a timely intervention. Koko and the Boomtown Cats provide the music.

Between the 4 and 31 July, the Ulster Hall Group Space will hosts an exhibition of photos taken at the Do You Remember the First Time concert on the opening weekend of the refurbished Ulster Hall. And it’s not too late to mail your snaps through to info AT transbelfast DOT com along with your name for a credit.

Across in the Waterfront (possibly in the toilets if I read the festival guide correctly) between 4 and 31 July, the Anti exhibition will look at Belfast’s alternative heritage adopted by those (often young) people who rejected the two traditional tribal cultures. Iconic people, places, events – narrowed down to a dozen subjects.

Saturday's anti-racism rally in front of Belfast City Hall

Turn on the breakfast radio news each morning and you’ll still sometimes hear the results of the continuing low level of beatings and intimidation. Our violent past hasn’t gone away. But I seem to have got used to that. But individual misery and abuse seems to wash over me.

A different thing to realise the same violence - maybe some of the same people - had turned on an entire community, twenty families singled out for sustained abuse?

It was awful to see pictures during the week of families scared to stay overnight in their homes. Terrorised. A week old baby unable to go home from hospital to a warm secure home, but spending a night in a church hall and then temporary accommodation.

I wouldn’t want that for my family. And not for theirs. So it felt important to attend today’s rally, and important to go as a family.

I don’t want my four year old daughter to grow up in a society that is intolerant and racist. And I don’t want her to end up intolerant or racist herself. She wanted to go to the swimming pool this afternoon. But when she asks why we went to Belfast first, to stand with all those people with banners and flags, we can tell her that it was to support Romanian families who we let down last week.

To say sorry and stand up to the handful of people who singled them out. And to support the Irish travelling community who we continue to let down. And the Chinese families who speak with Belfast accents but were told a year or two ago where they couldn’t build a community centre unless they wanted it burnt down.

Northern Ireland’s spent too long labelling people as different and then telling them to go away. That’s got to stop.

Return to Sender

Can’t really let this one go past, even it could at a stretch be a bit of viral marketing.

Living in a rented house and getting a lot of mail for the previous tenant - not to mention the phone calls from companies seeking repayment for their debts - I’m well use to writing "return to sender" on pieces of mail. (Hint: write it on a label and stick it over the original address otherwise the same letter will return through your door every three days.)

But this post on the New Humanist magazine’s blog takes the biscuit.

We rediscovered this while tidying up the New Humanist office – if anyone has ever received a wittier piece of returned mail, I can't wait to hear about it.

H/T to Tim.

Out of the Box - behind the scenes film of the European election in NI

During the build up to the recent European election, Francis Gorman filmed behind the scenes as the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland selected polling stations, registered candidates, arranged to print ballot papers, and prepared the Kings Hall for the verification and count.

He also caught polling stations being readied for the surge steady stream of voters who would come through their doors, and was in the Kings Hall to capture the atmosphere as the verification (Friday) and count (Monday) progressed.

Out of the Box was broadcast in the Sunday evening Politics Show slot on Sunday night. After not immediately making it onto iPlayer, it has now appeared. Available until its seven day window expires at 22:39 on Sunday night (21 June).

For political nuts and anyone intrigued by the process, it's an interesting 19 minute film. A great credit to Francis Gorman's skill as a one man film maker and editor, and a great piece of public service programming which opened up the normally closed world of the Electoral Office to public scrutiny.

Belfast's shame

I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you took me into your home. I needed clothes, and you gave me something to wear. I was sick, and you took care of me. I was in prison, and you visited me.

The story has been escalating in the media and public awareness since the weekend, but it’s been building up over months and years. I’m not sure there is such a thing as low level intimidation, or that what’s happened to the Romanian community living in south Belfast can be described as sporadic attacks. And shamefully, I’m sure the incidents are a lot more widespread than just the one area or the one minority community.

Having abandoned their homes, twenty families came together in one house, hoping for safety in numbers. The police decided last night that 115 residents of Belfast (including a five day old baby) needed to be sheltered overnight somewhere safe.

And so the call was made to City Church to see if their hall could be used. By the sounds of the news reports this morning, it happened quickly.

There was no need for a church community consultation. No need for a lengthy risk assessment to evaluate the chances of damage to the fabric of the building or indeed future reprisals. No need for a meeting of office bearers to vote on whether this fitted with the church’s mission and vision statements. No need to check the hall booking spreadsheet to see if it was really free or whether the flower arranging group already had first dibs.

No. Someone simply said yes ... and then went about making it happen. (Update - City Church's Trish Morgan explained what happened in Thursday morning's Belfast Telegraph.) The words from Matthew’s Gospel above sum it up well.

With help from the church, neighbouring congregations, the local community as well as statutory and humanitarian organisations. Turns out that the local Red Cross are equipped in “first world” Northern Ireland to support displaced residents just like any other country they operate in.

Belfast’s Lord Mayor Naomi Long summed it up well on Good Morning Ulster as I drove into work. Articulating the shame she felt, Naomi went on to say:

“They have a right to be in Belfast they are part of the fabric of this city. I want to see them treated with the respect and dignity that I would demand for any other citizen.”

And the BBC’s Mark Simpson summed up what he saw last night:

“Looking at 115 Romanians huddled together on the floor of a Belfast church hall, it was possible to see the worst side of Northern Ireland - and the best - all at once.

The speed with which Pastor Malcolm Morgan and his team created a temporary home for 20 families was remarkable.

At the same time, the sight of men, women and children looking so helpless and scared was a stain on Northern Ireland's international reputation.

Many of the families came to Belfast believing that the years of prejudice and narrow-mindedness were over. However, it seems that in some parts of the city, racism is the new sectarianism.”

Looking forward, twenty families can’t live in a church hall forever, nor in the Ormeau Park’s O-Zone. Surely they need to be welcomed back into the community, shown great love and assured of their safety.

Is one of the practical solutions not that the local community, so outraged by this incident, host individual families in their own homes. What a way to show sacrificial love and solidarity, by sharing food, rooms and families. And any stones that do still get thrown while all this gets sorted out longer term will no longer just be hitting the windows of a minority.

Update - Crookedshore posted about the recent One Hundred Thousand (ways to) Welcome event, and finished with something that reminds me that God had already prepared for the eventuality that newcomers and visitors might be treated less well:

The community is to have the same rules for you and for the alien living among you; this is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. You and the alien shall be the same before the Lord. (Numbers 15:15)

The dinosaurs have left the building ... RIP Primeval

Primeval was seen as ITV’s response to the BBC’s successful reintroduction of Doctor Who into the Saturday night family science fiction schedule. And while the show never grabbed me enormously - though I do admit to at least flicking through most episodes to see how they could possibly introduce another CGI variant of a dinosaur - it was pretty successful with audience, with the latest series averaging 4.5m viewers (23.25% share). It was even announced that a Primeval film is being made in the US.

However, ITV have today confirmed that they won’t be making a fourth series of Primeval stating:

“high quality drama remains a key part of the ITV schedule, although our current focus is on post-watershed production.”

So the dinosaurs are dead at last. Let’s hope Doctor Who and Torchwood don’t suffer the same fate.