Yesterday evening there was dark smoke on the skyline as your correspondent returned from an early evening pint. However, it wasn’t until this morning that its full significance and exclusive nature was revealed by the Bristol Post, the city’s newspaper of warped record.
As per the screenshot above, the Post duly reported a fire at a scrapyard in the Fishponds area, although a later report moved the fire to nearby Speedwell.
Furthermore, the conflagration must have been painful on the ears for anyone in the vicinity or downwind as the smoke was “bellowing“.
However, as the witnesses interviewed by the paper make no mention of noise, it can only be assumed that the hapless hack had an unfortunate vowel movement.
The later report did state correctly that “A scrapyard in Speedwell left dark smoke billowing over parts of Bristol,” but not until the hopeless howler had caused much merriment in the reports comments section.
If the reporter in question happens upon this post, the definitions of bellow and billow are given below for future reference:
Bellow: (of a person or animal) emit a deep loud roar, typically in pain or anger: e.g. “he bellowed in agony”
Billow: (of smoke, cloud, or steam) to move or flow outward with an undulating motion: e.g. “smoke was billowing from the chimney-mouth”.
Eggs have long been associated with Easter since for Christians the Easter egg is a symbol of Christ’s empty tomb.
The custom of the Easter egg originated in the early Christian community of Mesopotamia, which stained eggs red in memory of the blood of Christ, shed at his crucifixion.
This practice still survives in Greece where hard-boiled eggs are dyed bright red to symbolise the spilt Blood of Christ and the promise of eternal life. They are also cracked together to celebrate the opening of the Tomb of Christ.
In more recent times since those of the early Christians of Mesopotamia egg hunts have become a fixture of the Easter events calendar.
However, here’s one event from recent years from Lakewood Springs in Illinois that sounded a little too intimate for comfort…
Since your correspondent starting campaigning seriously on litter and fly-tipping some 2 years ago, he’s become quite well known to the crews of the dustcarts and the local street sweepers.
Both these bodies of men (and they are all men. Ed.) quite often stop me in the street to exchange a few words and from them I’ve gleaned much valuable information, such as e.g. how there’s only one 5 tonne truck assigned to patrolling the streets of Bristol and collecting the fly-tipping that’s reported – a textbook example of woeful under-resourcing.
From these gentlemen I’ve received more reliable and concise information in a few minutes about the state of play in Bristol’s waste management arrangements than I’ve received in interminable hours of meetings with the council officers set over them who fly desks to earn their crust.
A short while ago while I was heading down the Stapleton Road, the dustcart pulled up beside me and the driver told me that he and his colleagues had received fresh instructions. They were not to pick up fly-tipping such as black plastic refuse sacks that had been dumped alongside the area’s notorious communal bins (posts passim), but this was to be left in situ for collection and examination for enforcement purposes. However, this might be a fruitless exercise, as the city council has admitted in meetings that only 3% of the fly-tipping collected off the streets comprises any evidence that might point to the criminal who dumped it.
Both the dustcart crews and I could see the result of these new orders: any fly-tipping not cleared as per the previous arrangement by dustcart crews would be left on the street for longer, making the place look grottier, as well as constituting a health risk, e.g. if it had sharp edges or was a hazardous substance; and if the fly-tipping contained food waste this would also be a health risk, as well as attracting vermin such as gulls and rats.
The result of this new policy can be seen in the photograph below, which was taken on Lawrence Hill on Tuesday after the communal bin had been emptied by the chaps from Bristol Waste.
Bristol City Council endorses institutional squalor for east Bristol. Note the added grot factor provided by the tagging and fly-posting on the communal bin.
There are times when I wonder if I’m wasting my time fighting litter and fly-tipping in east Bristol, particularly when it seems I and my fellow campaigners are also having to fight the idiocies emanating city council and Bristol Waste, its arms-length, wholly-owned waste management company as well.
For as long as I can remember in my adult life, I’ve listened to budget speeches with a mixture of incredulity and a sinking heart. This is usually because Chancellors of the Exchequer have more often than not made drinking beer – one of life’s pleasures – more expensive.
I write on the above subject to express my concerns in the wake of yesterday’s budget.
Whilst I would welcome increased public money for the area, I do feel that the manner in which this will be accomplished needs lots to be desired.
I have downloaded and read the final draft of the deal agreed between central government and the 4 local authorities and this has increased my concern.
I feel very much that this devolution deal is being done to us rather than for us residents. This feeling is reinforced by the fact that there has been little or no public consultation to the best of my knowledge, nor will the public have any say on the final outcome. It’s a prime example of top-down imposition.
When this matter was tabled by Easton ward councillor Anna McMullen at the last Ashley, Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Partnership, there was condemnation of the lack of consultation and the short amount of time remaining before this devolution deal was imposed.
At that meeting I expressed my concern that this could be regarded the reinstatement of the little-loved Avon County Council via the backdoor. In yesterday’s Bristol Post, Liam Fox MP is quoted in the Bristol Post as saying
“I will be making it very clear to all my councillors that I’m very opposed and I hope they will reject this.
“It is the recreation of the Avon and the agreement would be for a metro mayor that voter have never given their assent for.
“It is another layer of bureaucracy and it is undemocratic. It recreates the very organisation that we fought so hard to get rid of.”
It is not very often I find myself coming out with similar sentiments to that particular gentleman.
I really feel that we, those who will be affected by this devolution measure should be firstly consulted on it and secondly have the chance to vote on both the deal itself and the creation of the office of metro mayor. However, I am not very encouraged that we shall have the chance to do so as I was notified via Twitter yesterday by a contact in Manchester that their metro mayor was imposed with no public input whatsoever.
Reading today’s Bristol Post, I note that Pat Rooney in S. Gloucs. wants to see a referendum held on any metro mayor. I fully support this move.
Given the concerns of many active citizens both in the city and surrounding areas is there anything that can be done to ensure proper public input to the devolution process, which I feel is destructive of local democracy, piecemeal and ultimately bound to end in a real dog’s dinner.
Yours etc.
In the two days since the Budget, a petition has also been organised to reject the devolution deal that was concocted in secret by a bunch of middle-aged white men (who always think they know what’s best of us. Ed.).
The petition’s text reads:
The Chancellor of The Exchequer announced on March 16th a scheme to devolve powers to a Metro Mayor in Bristol, Bath and surrounding areas. Given that B&NES rejected an elected Mayoral model one week earlier, this new announcement seems to be at variance with the electorate’s preferences.
On 5th May elections will be held in England for local councils, local police and crime commissioners and in Bristol the elected Mayor.
As part of the election process, there’s a period before the announcement of the election and the final election results in which central – in the case of general elections – and local government is prevented from making announcements about any new or controversial government initiatives (such as modernisation initiatives or administrative and legislative changes) which could be seen to be advantageous to any candidates or parties in the forthcoming election.
This period has traditionally been called “purdah” after the practice in certain Muslim and Hindu societies of screening women from men or strangers, especially by means of a curtain. “Purdah” itself originates from Urdu and Persian “parda“, meaning a “veil” or “curtain“.
Earlier this month I attended the quarterly meeting of Bristol’s Ashley, Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Partnership. At this meeting attendees were clearly told by the officer serving the partnership that “purdah” was no longer an acceptable term and that the time in question should be referred to as the “pre-election period“.
This occurred after “purdah” had already been used a few times by elected councillors and makes your correspondent wonder if colourless, unaccountable, unelected council officers (whose wages we pay. Ed.) should be allowed to dictate the vocabulary which is used in meetings.
I don’t think they should.
Do you agree or disagree with my conclusion? Please comment below.
This May sees a whole slew of elections to local councils, the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and last but not least, 41 local Police & Crime Commissioners (PCCs).
As regards the election of the PCC for Gloucestershire, Will Windsor-Clive, the Conservative candidate, has decided to play the bigotry and xenophobia card early. He’s doing so by questioning the £100,000 the force spends annually on interpreters, having filed a Freedom of Information Act request on the subject, the Western Daily Press reports.
The paper reports the overall costs have remained around £100,000 a year over the three years between 2011 and 2014.
In a quote for the paper, Mr Windsor-Clive is reported to have commented: “This is an unseen cost of high levels of immigration. Taxpayers quite rightly want their money spent on keeping their community safe, not on providing translating services. I’m determined to find ways of cutting back-office costs to spend on frontline policing and this is one area that needs investigating.”
Here are a number of questions electors (and others) should ask Mr Windsor-Clive.
1. Is it right to whip up bigotry and xenophobia for electoral gain?
2. Does Mr Windsor-Clive regard the rule of law and the administration of justice as priceless commodities in a civilised society?
3. If the answer to 2. above is yes, wouldn’t any reasonable person regard £100,000 a reasonable price to pay to enable the full participation of both victims and accused persons who don’t speak English proficiently in the enforcement of the rule of law and the administration of justice?
4. If Mr Windsor-Clive were to fall foul of the police in a foreign country whose language he did not speak, would he be content to forego the services of an interpreter, as he obviously wants to do in Gloucestershire?
On Wednesday evening Bristolians had an opportunity to question the city’s elected mayor, George Ferguson, at the City Academy on Russell Town Avenue.
Your ‘umble scribe attended, hoping to ask George a question on the city council’s dreadful record on keeping on top of fly-tipping, litter and other environmental crimes within the city as a whole and east Bristol in particular.
The session was chaired by BS5 resident and freelance journalist Pamela Parkes, who did an excellent job.
Your correspondent was successful in putting his question to the mayor, which read as follows:
This year Stoke-on-Trent City Council managed to find £750K of additional funding to tackle environmental crimes such as fly-tipping. What additional budget allocations will the mayor be making this year to emulate the Potteries?
Needless to say, the mayor ducked answering the additional funding bit (from which one can infer that no additional resources will be made available in Mr Ferguson’s forthcoming budget. Ed.) and laid great emphasis on £80m cuts imposed by central govt. on Bristol and how much Bristol City Council was actually spending on waste management in Bristol. I thought most of his answer was emollient waffle, blustering about the establishment of Bristol Waste, early days for them etc. However, facilitator Pamela Parkes pointed out that despite all the campaigning by residents, both informally and formally under the banner of Tidy BS5, the situation locally hasn’t improved at all. To be fair to George Ferguson, he did make a good point about the need to promote the repair and reuse of consumer goods, to reduce the amount going to landfill.
George then handed over to the head of Bristol Waste whose name I cannot remember. She made the point that fly-tipping had remained constant in Bristol over recent years. When challenged about the level of fly-tipping – four times that in neighbouring local authorities, back came the defeatist line that fly-tipping is always higher in cities.
So overall it looks like there will be little change in the council’s competence or motivation in tackling fly-tipping in the city
Besides my question, others tackled the mayor on education, housing and homelessness, the treatment of BME communities (following the cancelling of this year’s St Paul’s Carnival and current management problems at the Malcolm X Centre) and transport.
At the end there was a lively open session, during which there was a lot of hostility to the mayor from the public on various matters – the previously mentioned carnival and Malcolm X woes, growing Islamophobia, declining community cohesion and the total waste of Green Capital (which GF characterised as the most successful Green Capital year yet. Ed.), to mention but a few.
George placed great emphasis on his listening skills, stating he’d listen to anybody. However, he has past form in his post-listening dismissals of members of the public. This was not lost on his audience on Wednesday, one of whom queried along the lines of: “You may be listening George, but are you hearing what they’re saying to you?”
A T-shirt design produced after George’s dismissal of a member of the public in 2013. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
In the end the session overran and City Academy staff were heartily thanked for sacrificing their time so generously.
Earlier this morning a man doing Prime Minister impressions appeared on the BBC’s Today programme to explain why Muslim women should be encouraged to learn English.
That person – a man called Cameron – is reported by the press to be advocating such an idea to “combat radicalisation“.
At the same time, this Prime Minister impersonator announced £20 mn. additional funding to teach Muslim women English, an initiative that applies a sticking plaster to the massive wounds inflicted to English language teaching by his governments since 2010. The most recent of these cuts was last July, involving a £45 mn. scheme that taught English to 47,000 foreigners.
Whilst I would concur that parents with a poor command of English in this country would place them at a disadvantage when it came to understanding the influences on their children, why are Muslim women being singled out for special treatment? After all, there are plenty of women of other religions – and none – with poor English skills.
Furthermore, Cameron’s pronouncement has been roundly condemned by the Ramadhan Foundation whose Chief Executive Mohammed Shafiq commented as follows earlier today:
The Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Government are once again using British Muslims as a political football to score cheap points to appear tough. There are three million Muslims in this country and the Prime Minister chooses to focus on a very small minority of extremists when clearly the majority of British Muslims reject extremism.
The Ramadhan Foundation has been clear for many years that we face an increased risk from terrorism and an ideology of hatred, the best way to confront it is to build support within Muslims and support the work done across the country and not lashing out and denigrating Muslims.
The irony of the Prime Minister calling for more resources to help migrants learn English when his Government cut the funding for English classes in 2011 has not been lost on many people.
This was a right wing, neo con Prime Minister delivering more of the same disgraceful stereotyping of British Muslims rather than focusing on the positive contribution of our faith and community he focuses on the extreme minority of issues which clearly is not representative.
Many in the British Muslim community will reject this neo con agenda and continue our work in confronting extremism and terrorism without the support of the Conservative Government.
Bristol’s wasted year as European Green Capital (posts passim) may be over, but the greenwash* continues, as shown by the advertising hoarding below by the side of the A4032 Easton Way, a dual carriageway blasted through this inner-city community in the late 1960s or early 1970s to speed motorists from one jam to another. To be more specific, the hoarding itself is conveniently situated next to the traffic lights by the Stapleton Road bus gate, where bored commuters can gawp at it waiting for the lights to change as they suffocate in their own traffic fumes and poison the rest of us.
As can be seen from the photo, at least one local hasn’t fallen for the greenwash and has said so, pinpointing the source as the trousers of Bristol’s elected mayor. 🙂
The mayor – and the local authority he runs – had an ideal opportunity during Green Capital Year to tackle some of Bristol’s endemic problems, such as the chronic over-reliance on the motor car, abysmal public transport and the unending stream of litter and fly-tipping blighting the inner city, but decided to do very little on these matters, preferring instead to spend money on pointless art projects and mutual back-slapping events for the great and good.
* Greenwash (n.), a superficial or insincere display of concern for the environment that is shown by an organisation.
Now landing on Bristol Mayor George Ferguson‘s desk are postcards from residents of BS5 to bring him back down to earth with a thump after being honoured with a prestigious award by Lord Gnome of Private Eye (posts passim).
The cards remind George that BS5 residents are fed up with the fly-tipping they have to endure every day, a problem that was neither tackled nor mitigated by council action during the city’s wasted year as European Green Capital (posts passim).
If you have difficulty getting hold of a postcard, supplies are available from the Up Our Street office in the Beacon Centre in Russell Town Avenue (map).
Your correspondent took a dozen or so with him to the pub the other night and had no difficulty coming home minus his entire stock of postcards. There are evidently lots of fed up BS5ers out there, George, so you’d better exdigitate on getting to grips with fly-tipping in East Bristol and not just send any postcards you receive down to Streetscene Enforcement to clutter up their desks, as Tidy BS5’s spies down the Counts Louse inform us you are doing. 😉
Earlier this month I attended the quarterly meeting of Bristol’s 
As regards the election of the PCC for Gloucestershire, 
On Wednesday evening Bristolians had an opportunity to question the city’s elected mayor, 
