Resolve various pylint warnings
This branch updates the code to resolve a range of pylint warnings - specifically:
redefined-builtin
pointless-statement
unused-private-member
unused-argument
anomalous-backslash-in-string
unreachable
unused-variable
unused-import
dangerous-default-value
useless-parent-delegation
redefined-outer-name
Some other warnings are left disabled for now - they would either take too long to address now, or addressing them is of debatable benefit.