Bristol | Steve Woods

Bristol Live exclusive: abstract nouns become tool users

10/03/2026 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

Bristol ‘Live’, the city’s newspaper of (warped) record is a frequent source of exclusives, i.e. news limited to the possession, control or use by a title or group of titles. However, most of these go unrecognised or are ignored by the paper itself.

One such occurred this morning when the piece in the screenshot below was added to the title’s website.

It seems the city and county of Bristol and its forces of law in order in particular have some very skilled abstract nouns called offers. Not only can they control domestic animals – horses – but are also able to use tools/weapons (batons) at the same time.

Why have these highly talented abstract nouns not received attention the so richly merit in the past? Diligent proofreading perchance? 😀
Exclusive: Wiltshire man murdered on social media server

06/03/2026 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Social Media

One definition of the noun ambiguity in English is “a word or expression that can be understood in two or more possible ways“.

Nearly 5 decades ago, when your ‘umble scribe started his first job as a staff translator for Imperial Tobacco and was being schooled in how to write in the company’s internal house style, one definite rule that was imposed was that of avoiding any and all ambiguity.

This is a practice that does not seem to be prevalent in titles in the current Reach plc newspaper stable, including Bristol ‘Live’, the conglomerate’s newspaper of (warped) record for the greater Bristol area.

And so it came to pass that in the process of trawling social media for something that qualifies as investigative ‘journalism’, the Post looked further afield than the BS postcode and ventured into the the wilds of Wiltshire for a story.

Yes, that’s right! If one just read the headline, the impression is given that the murder victim was killed on a server in the employ of Mark Zuckerberg. However, in the actual body of the report, the copy does state that no killing occurred on Facebook itself.

The mum of a murdered teen found out about the killing on Facebook before receiving a phone call asking if it was true.

How the headline and the copy body can portray two different versions what transpired seems to have by-passed its two named authors and the SWNS news agency credited as being responsible for writing the piece is beyond belief. In the old days, this would have been picked up and remedied by a sub-editor (before Reach made them all redundant. Ed.). All 3 parties involved were obviously not paying attention either in school English classes or media studies lectures when some of the finer points of good writing were being imparted.
Saturday in Barton Hill

16/02/2026 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

Saturday last was St Valentine’s Day and the residents of BS5 decided it was time to show some love to Barton Hill in east Bristol.

Organised as part of the ‘Love Your Community‘ event, shortly before noon eight of us volunteers gathered outside the Wellspring Settlement on Ducie Road to get kitted up with gloves, fluorescent tabards, litter pickers, etc. before heading down to give Gaunts Ham Park and the adjoining streets some attention. it was a real tonic for the soul to see the early signs of spring emerging, including beds of daffodils planted by the local community.

After Gaunts Ham Park was sparkling, we retraced our steps to the fly-tipping and litter hotspot of Ducie Road car park to continue the work our regular monthly Saturday litter crew had done the weekend before (posts passim). Whilst on site we retrieved some of the heavier, bulky fly-tipping (note the shopping trolley and toilet pan in the photograph. Ed.). The rest of the fly-tipping has been reported to Bristol City Council.

Photo courtesy of Harriet Wylie

As you can see, we gathered quite a lot of grot, 5 bags each of stuff for landfill and recyclables, in addition to the bulky waste items. Riding past on the bus earlier today, your ‘umble scribe is pleased to report that Bristol Waste has collected the fruits of our labours.

Many thanks to Harriet for organising the clean-up, plus my fellow volunteers for showing up and working so hard.

Before leaving Barton Hill after the pick, your correspondent went on a walk organised by Barton Hill History Group on women who have shaped Barton Hill, a broad and fascinating topic.
Additional Barton Hill litter pick this Saturday

09/02/2026 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

Last Saturday our community litter pick team in Barton Hill held its regular monthly event. removing 6 bags of waste and recyclable materials – plus a load of bulky grot – from Ducie Road car park.

Eric, Ronit and Alex pose with the rubbish removed from Ducie Road car park

However, that was not the only litter pick planned for Barton Hill this month

Next Saturday is St Valentine’s Day and Barton Hill residents are being invited to ‘love their community‘ in a series of events planned by Barton Hill Activity Club, Bristol Somali Resource Centre, Travelling Light Theatre and Wellspring Settlement.

One of the off-site events planned is a litter pick of both Gaunts Ham Park and the Urban Park. Those wishing to help are asked to assemble at the Wellspring Settlement at 12 noon for an hour of spring cleaning before retiring for tea and cake.

Organiser Harriet has asked people to bring along their own picker if they have one. Hi-vis clothing, gloves and bags will be provided.

See you there!
Illiteracy or obstinacy?

12/01/2026 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

The Tenovus charity shop on St Mark’s Road is currently closed for refurbishment.

However, this does not seem to have been noticed by the local members of the Hard of Thinking Club, who are continuing to dump their donations outside the shop’s door.

The operators/owners of the shop have recently decided to post a notice on the shop’s door shutter informing those generous but misguided patrons of the error of their ways.

Let’s ignore the writing on the wall.

Just like other notices in Bristol, e.g. the ones that say no parking, Tenovus’ sign has been ignored.

Is ignoring the notice due to illiteracy or plain, simple bloody-mindedness? Have your say in the comments.

Meanwhile, if you see fly-tipping, any other environmental crime or something that needs fixing, you can report it to Bristol City Council here, otherwise central government’s GOV.UK site has a handy page to find your local authority in England, Scotland and Wales and notify it of such problems.
A chilly morning in Barton Hill

04/01/2026 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

Yesterday the regular Barton Hill community litter pick took place on its usual day – the first Saturday of the month.

It was a cold but fine morning with a ferocious wind chill factor, so wrapping up warm was essential.

In addition, we had our best turn-out for a while with six hardy volunteers showing up outside the Wellspring Settlement.

Some of the litter pickers and their haul.

Overall, we picked for an hour and a quarter, with the areas covered including Ducie Road, Morley Street, Cobden Street, the Urban Park, Strawbridge Road and Tichbourne Road.

A good haul of both recyclable materials and landfill were removed, 4 and 5 bags respectively, in addition to which we collected a few bulky items – suitcase, printer/scanner and broken furniture – for removal by Bristol Waste.

Whilst working around the area, we also identified other matters that needed further attention (e.g. scruffy public open space) by either the council or Bristol Waste (e.g. properties that needed help with waste management and/or recycling).

After finishing most of us returned to the Settlement to tea and biscuits, with 2 cuppas proving to be the minimum dose for unfreezing fingers.

February’s pick will be on Saturday 7th February. Note it in your diaries!

In the meantime, if you see fly-tipping, any other environmental crime or something that needs fixing, you can report it to Bristol City Council here, otherwise central government’s GOV.UK site has a handy page to find your local authority in England, Scotland and Wales and notify it of such problems.
Festive fly-tipping attracts street art

30/12/2025 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

Bristol has what could be described as a bit of form when it comes to street art, with the city being the original canvas of the artist known as Banksy.

Indeed Bristol 247 today has a piece by John Nation, described as the city’s godfather of graffiti outlining why the city continues to be defined by the art form.

Another form of art for which the city is less recognised is fly-tipping. A couple of days ago, Bristol Live highlighted that almost 200 fly-tipping incidents are reported to the city council every day. Last year the council recorded 10,268 fly-tipping incidents, an increase from 8,556 or over 20% during the previous year.

The back streets of BS5 have once again provided ample evidence of the combination of street art and fly-tipping over the festive period, with festive fly-tipping attracting the spray can school of art. Look at what your ‘umble scribe found up St Mark’s Grove this morning.

This is not the first time that fly-tipped materials have attracted the spray can crew in that particular street (posts passim).

In the meantime, if you see fly-tipping, any other environmental crime or something that needs fixing, you can report it to Bristol City Council here, otherwise central government’s GOV.UK site has a handy page to find your local authority in England, Scotland and Wales and report fly-tipping.
Bristol annexes seaside town in Cymru

27/12/2025 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

Bristol ‘Live’, the city’s newspaper of (warped) record, has an unenviable reputation for finding a local Bristolian angle to news stories, whether that be by finding some vaguely connected person who just happens to have a BS postcode or by expanding the city’s boundaries into nearby or more distant local authorities or countries, whether there is any such angle or not.

A prime example of the latter came to light today concerning the sudden appearance of lots of Victorian footwear on the beach at Aberogwr (otherwise known as Ogmore-by-Sea. Ed.) in Morannwg / Glamorgan.

How the story was announced and tagged on the paper’s main page is shown below.

Depending on one’s mode of travel, Bristol is over 100 km from Aberogwr and takes over an hour or even two. There is no way the latter falls within the civic boundaries of the City and County of Bristol, whose closest municipal boundary to Aberogwr extends as far as the low water mark on Ynys Echni / Flat Holm in the middle of the Severn Sea.

Looking at the facts of the story itself, the founder of the beach clean-up group that removed the shoes said the following:

“The strongest theory is that the shoes come from a shipwreck called the Frolic, that hit Tusker Rock about 150 years ago. It was carrying shoes and cargo from Italy. They were washed up the Ogmore River and every now and then they appear, especially when there has been erosion of the riverbank.”

It’s only when one gets to the mention of Tusker Rock (Cymraeg: Ynys Tysgr. Ed.) that the slightness of the connection becomes apparent: it’s a rock in the Bristol Channel 3.2km west of Aberogwr that’s only visible at low tide, but one that has been the end of many vessels over the centuries.
Dumb Britain surfaces in Easton

02/12/2025 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

For many years – longer than your ‘umble scribe chooses to remember – satirical magazine Private Eye has featured a column entitled Dumb Britain, which documents the hilariously wrong and ingorant answers given by contestants on television quiz shows.

However, dumbness in the form of lack of knowledge, intelligence or common-sense is not confined to the small screen; myriad examples may be found in real life, as evidenced by the photograph below taken in St Mark’s Road (note the apostrophe, Bristol City Council! Ed.) in Easton last week when the street was undergoing road works.

Maybe Private Eye should expand the criteria for Dumb Britain.
Pizza places to close in two non-existent counties

21/10/2025 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities
According to Wikipedia, “A county is a type of officially recognized geographical division within a modern country, federal state, or province.”

Within England shires were established in the Anglo-Saxon period, shires were established as areas used for the raising of taxes and usually had a fortified town at their centre. This became known as the shire town or later the county town. In many cases, the shires were named after their shire town (for example Bedfordshire).

Middlesex is one of the thirty-nine historic counties of England. Its name is derived from its origin as a homeland for the Middle Saxons in the early Middle Ages, with the county subsequently part of that territory in the ninth or tenth century. As a county it managed to survive for the best part of a millennium, finally being abolished by the London Government Act 1963, which came into force on 1 April 1965.

The cardboard county of Avon has a rather different history to the former shire named after the home of the Middle Saxons. It was a non-metropolitan and ceremonial county in the west of England which existed between 1974 and 1996. Named after the Bristol Avon, it comprised the cities of Bath and Bristol plus parts of south Gloucestershire and Somerset, which formed the other two local authorities – Northavon and Woodspring – within the county. Avon proved to be deeply unpopular, with locals bemoaning in some instances Bristol’s loss of county status in its own right, as well as traditional affiliations to both Gloucestershire and Somerset respectively. In 1996, the county was abolished and its administrative area split between four new unitary authorities: Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

Although both Middlesex and Avon have officially been abolished that does not mean their use has been discontinued, usually by the uninformed. There are still organisations out there which believe Bristol is part of Avon and that the county named after the Middle Saxons still exist. One of these is currently in the news.

One of those organisations is Pizza Hut, which has announced a number of closures of its outlets in the Untied Kingdom, as reported by the Bristol Post/Live.

All told, 68 Pizza Hut restaurants will close after the company behind its the US brand’s UK venues entered administration. These include the following five outlets in the aforementioned non-existent counties, as listed by Bristol’s paper of (warped) record:
- Bristol, Avon;
- Cribbs Causeway, Avon;
- Enfield, Middlesex;
- Feltham, Middlesex; and
- Hayes, Middlesex.
A few news outlets, such as the BBC, actually took the trouble to remove the erroneous county labels instead of blindly copying and pasting the list verbatim from the original press release.

For those still in need of a junk food fix, plenty of other pizza outlets are still open to the public in both real and non-existent counties. 😀

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