Bristol | Steve Woods

Bristol’s environmental crime fines raised

09/06/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Politics

On Tuesday your ‘umble scribe was at a meeting of the Bristol Clean Streets Forum, which brings together community activists, council officers responsible for waste management and enforcement and the council’s own waste management company, Bristol Waste.

A frequent plea your correspondent has been making for years was again repeated on Tuesday, namely to make greater use of the local media to deter littering, fly-tipping and other environmental crimes. as per the example of neighbouring North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Councils, who frequently have successful enforcement actions written up in the local press.

The meeting was informed that press releases were indeed issued to highlight successful enforcement actions but the local press preferred stories from the two local authorities mentioned above to anything produced in the newsroom down the Counts Louse.

Well, something finally happened yesterday. Bristol Live reported that the council had agreed to increase the charges imposed under its FPN scheme for environmental crimes such as littering. fly-tipping and fly-posting.

The Jane Street fly-tipping hotspot looking unlovely – as per usual.

FPNs for littering will be increasing from £100 to £150, with the discount for early payment rising from £65 to £75.

Councillors also agreed to double penalties from £200 to £400 for breaches of the “household duty of care”, which requires residents to take reasonable steps to ensure waste produced at home is only handed over to licensed waste carriers for disposal.

Since 2017 the council has earned a surplus of £220,000 from these fines and these proceeds have been spent on measures to keep streets clean, including removing fly-posting, anti-littering campaigns, equipment to litter-picking groups, clearing graffiti and additional enforcement according to Kye Dudd, the Cabinet member for climate, ecology, waste and energy.
Pound surges against Euro

21/05/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities, Politics

Ever since the so-called United Kingdom disastrously withdrew from the European Union, the supporters of Brexit have been promising Brexit bonuses. The first of these could have finally happened, if the photo below of a display in a foreign exchange bureau in Bristol is telling the truth.

$600 for a fiver? Your ‘umble scribe couldn’t believe his eyes! Have the economies of the EU27 gone into total meltdown in the last couple of days?

Perhaps all those air miles clocked up by Kemi Badenoch, Secretary of State for Patronising, are paying off as told to the Europhobic hacks at the Daily Brexit (which some still call the Express. Ed.)

Well, if Brexit really is going that swimmingly, your correspondent reckons he’ll shortly be seeing unicorns on the Downs – Bristol’s answer to the sunlit uplands.

Is this a Brexit bonus or a mistake? Have your say below in the comments.
The writing on the wall

09/05/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

Expressing political opinions on walls is a practice that reaches back at least 2,000 years to Roman times – as in the case of Pompeii and other Roman towns and cities – and possibly even earlier.

One wall at the start of Whitehall Road in Bristol has displayed various messages – all of them anti-Conservative – over the years (see posts passim here and here. Ed.), of which the one below is the latest.

It appeared some time before last week’s English local government elections. However, your ‘umble scribe does not know the extent to which this particular slogan contributed to the Nasty Party’s disastrous losses of over 1,000 council seats and – more locally – its loss of overall control of South Gloucestershire seeing as it lies on a well-used commuter and bus route between the city and that neighbouring local authority.
The poorest he…

05/05/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

In 1647 during the English Civil War a series of discussions – the Putney Debates – was held in St Mary’s Church, Putney between 28th October and 8th November about the political settlement that should follow Parliament’s victory over Charles Stuart, the arrogant autocrat commonly referred to by history as Charles I.

A transcript of the discussions can be found here.

The main participants in the debates were senior officers of the New Model Army who favoured retaining a monarch within the framework of a Constitutional monarchy, and radicals such as the Levellers who sought more sweeping changes, including One man, one vote and freedom of conscience, particularly in religion.
Amongst those Levellers whose words were transcribed is Thomas Rainsborough (pictured right), a colonel in the army, who is on record as favouring government by the consent of the governed, as expressed below.
I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under; and I am confident that when I have heard the reasons against it, something will be said to answer those reasons, in so much that I should doubt whether he was an Englishman or no that should doubt of these things.
Rainsborough was in particular supported by John Wildman and Edward Sexby. Sexby’s most salient contribution to the debates is as follows:
Our case is to be considered thus, that we have been under slavery. That’s acknowledged by all. Our very laws were made by our Conquerors… We are now engaged for our freedom. That’s the end of Parliament, to legislate according to the just ends of government, not simply to maintain what is already established. Every person in England hath as clear a right to elect his Representative as the greatest person in England. I conceive that’s the undeniable maxim of government: that all government is in the free consent of the people.

These sentiments were opposed by senior officers in the New Model Army, particularly Henry Ireton, and especially as they feared universal suffrage would remove the privileges that property ownership bestowed upon them.

In saying so, Rainsborough, Wildman and Sexby were men well ahead of their time, given the extremely limited nature of the franchise in those distant days. The franchise was not really increased to any great extent until the so-called Great Reform Act of 1832, which extended the right to vote (but still limited it by a property qualification) and abolished the so-called rotten boroughs. Even after the extension of the franchise, in a city the size of Bristol with a population at the time of over 100,000, only 15,000 had the vote. Working class men like my two grandfathers did not receive the vote until after World War One. At the same time the franchise was also extended to women over 30.

The incompatibility of monarchy with democracy was highlighted and put to good comedic effect by the Pythons in their 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

You enjoy your bling bonnet day at our expense, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, but just remember one thing: WE didn’t vote for you!
Behind the wheel …of a pub

04/05/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

Down at the Temple Way Ministry of Truth, the ambiguity department has been hard at work.

Again (posts passim).

One commenter rejoicing in the name saveenergy decided to have some fun with this latest illiteracy from the Post, as follows:

“beach you can drive on with a lovely pub”

What if you don’t drive a lovely pub ??

Is it exclusively for drivers of lovely pubs, or can I drive my spit & sawdust bar on this beach; Are taverns, ale houses, inns & wine bars excluded ???

We need to know.

“There is a great pub right on the sea”

How do they stop the drinks spilling when the sea is choppy ??

Well done, sir or madam. Your ‘umble scribe could not have mocked the piece better himself. 😀
Community litter pick this Saturday

03/05/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

Your ‘umble scribe will be ignoring all that nonsense in London SW1 involving Mr & Mrs Charles Mountbatten-Windsor for something far more vital to the health of the nation.

Their bling bonnet day in Westminster unfortunately clashes with a regular event of local importance – the monthly Barton Hill community litter pick.

Stuff the coronation. This IS important!

Last month four of us turned out for an hour’s cleaning, managing to clear several bags of litter (as well as reporting half a dozen instances of fly-tipping. Ed.), having a bit of gentle exercise with tea and coffee afterwards, all punctuated by good company and good conversation.

If you can join us outside the Wellspring Centre (formerly the Settlement) at 10.00 am on Saturday, we’d be very pleased to see you.
Firefox Focus – first impressions

02/05/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Open Source, Privacy, Security, Tech

Your ‘umble scribe is a great fan of the free and open source Firefox web browser and has been using the desktop version since version 0.x many years ago. One of its major attractions has been its emphasis on security and privacy.

Until recently it was also the default browser on my smartphone, until I discovered Firefox Focus. Firefox Focus is a free and open-source privacy-focused mobile browser based on Firefox which is available for Android and iOS devices. First released in December 2015, it was initially a tracker-blocking application for mobile iOS devices, but was developed into a minimalistic web browser shortly afterwards.

According to Mozilla, Firefox Focus is a dedicated privacy browser with automatic tracking protection. meaning web pages load faster and your data stays private. It’s also easy to delete history, passwords and cookies, so advertisers and other ne’er-do-wells don’t follow you around online. Just tap the erase button on the search field and all that data is gone. Tracking protection is also very strong. The browser blocks a wide range of common trackers by default, including social trackers and those sticky ones that come from things like Facebook ads.

After using Firefox Focus for one week, I can say I’m impressed with the way it works. Although it required me to learn how to use tabbed browsing (hint: hold down a link in your search results and a menu appears, offering the option to open the link in a new tab. Ed.), once that was cracked, I was away. As for fast page loading, that’s not disappointing either, even on notoriously slow-loading sites, like that of Bristol City Council, which still seems to be powered by a horse turning a shaft in the basement of the Counts Louse (which some call City Hall. Ed.). 😉

If you value your privacy and security, I’d recommend Firefox Focus on your mobile device.
Bureaucratic logic

28/04/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities, Politics

The West of England Combined Authority (WECA) is a combined authority consisting of the local authorities of Bristol, South Gloucestershire, and Bath and North East Somerset.

The authority’s functions, as specified by the West of England Combined Authority Order, mostly cover planning, skills and local transport.

And this post is specifically concerned with transport and buses in particular.

Since passing pensionable age last year, your ‘umble scribe has been entitled to a concessionary bus pass offering him free bus travel within England, subject to various conditions.

That being so, your correspondent has found himself doing things he hasn’t done for many a decade, like running for buses. 😀

At the start of April, significant changes were made to bus services within the WECA area. To announce the changes, posters were put up at bus stops. At the foot of each poster, some useful information is given (not that the remainder of the posters did not also provide useful information. Ed.), as shown in the photo below.

Like your ‘umble scribe, readers may also be perplexed at the advice given to those without internet access to contact the Transport Operations Team by email. Obviously a kind of bureaucratic logic of which normal mortals do not wot is at work, together with a degree of perspicacity to which the fictional Yes Minister could only aspire.

That’s not to say that the authority does not have aspirations. Indeed, the term vision appears some 500 times* on the WECA website, according to a site-specific Google search.

Those working at the authority are therefore in need of a doctor in the opinion of the late West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who famously quipped “Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen“, usually translated into English as Anyone who has visions should go to the doctor. Perhaps a logician would also not go amiss. 😉

* = This count is a lot less than the instances of vision on the Bristol City Council website (posts passim).

Update 07/05/23: five weeks after the actual timetable changes were implemented, new revised timetables have finally started to appear at bus stops; see photo below. No need to rush as it appears that if you’re a local government organisation, you are at complete liberty to do your allotted tasks entirely to your own satisfaction!
Public notice, public ignorance

18/04/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language

As seen in Gloucester Lane, BS2.

In the words of lots of disappointed parents trying to teach their offspring manners, “What’s the magic word?” 😉
The Galleries – Bristol’s sunlit uplands?

12/04/2023 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

Unicorns are commonly described as horse-like creatures with a single large, pointed, spiralling horn projecting from their foreheads. They have been depicted as such in European art for at least a millennium, although their origins stretch way back into history to the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation and the Middle East.

In a more recent context, the sunlit uplands first popularised in Churchill’s “This was their finest hour” speech in 1940 was dusted off by the Brexit zealots and Europhobes to denote the boundless possibilities which faced the country once it had extricated itself from the stranglehold of the alien and oppressive European Union.

Those on the Remain side of the argument eagerly populated these mythological mountain pastures with herds of unicorns to illustrate the delusions of the Brexiteers. Those who turned the unicorns loose on the sunlit uplands have since prove correct in the mockery: Brexit has been an absolute disaster with increased bureaucracy and delays at the Channel ports, not to mention the 5% plus decline in GDP
Being built on what were the banks of Bristol’s tidal River Frome (long since culverted. Ed.), the Galleries shopping centre could not in any way be classified as belonging to any uplands, sunlit or otherwise. Nevertheless, one empty shop unit on the top floor was populated by a whole herd of unicorns.

Had they migrated from those Phoebus-favoured hills? Despite the £116.8m cost to the taxpayer and low visitor numbers of the original, was the city planning its very own Festival of Brexit?

The answer was staring your bemused correspondent in the face in one of the shop’s windows.

It was another of those local sculpture trails (posts passim), this time featuring unicorns instead of gorillas or Gromits, ostensibly to celebrate the 650th anniversary of the Bristol gaining county status in 1373, presumably by the usual practice of the time of local worthies giving the reigning monarch a large amount of cash in return for a charter or, as stated on the festival website:

Unicornfest, part of the 650th anniversary celebrations for Bristol, seeks to unite the business and creative sectors, as well as local communities and schools across Bristol and the surrounding area, bringing art, colour and fun to the streets of the city this year.

Posts navigation