Some time ago in a meeting with Bristol Waste, the council-owned company responsible for cleaning the city’s streets and emptying residents’ bins, it was revealed that the company wanted to try and find commercial customers for its services.
Evidence has emerged that the company has now started seeking business customers for its collection services.
Bristol Waste employees have started handing out flyers like the one below to local shops, businesses, voluntary and community sector organisations in the Easton area of the city, all of which are responsible for making their own waste disposal arrangements (and which can be fined by the city council if these are found not be exist or be suitable. Ed.).
My informant from whom I acquired the flyer told me that Bristol Waste is trialling this scheme in Easton. This presumably follows the same line of thinking as that for the Stapleton Road waste trial (posts passim), which is generally along the lines of “if it works in Easton, we can get it to work anywhere in the city“. 🙂
Update: Bristol Waste was contacted for a comment and replied as follows:
We are speaking to businesses in a number of locations across the city including Stapleton Road, Bedminster & Avonmouth in this first phase of our commercial roll-out. The service will be available city-wide.
Besides his less endearing qualities of bullying, sexism and xenophobia, the 45th President of the United States of America is believed by some not to be very bright either, an opinion which is reinforced by the presence of a glaring typographical error in the text on his official inauguration portrait, which must at some time have passed across his desk for approval (or even been written by him. Ed.).
Proof readers and the eagle-eyed will no doubt spot it immediately, unlike POTUS did.
However, orthography and proof reading may be the least of President Typo’s worries at present. 🙂
Fake news (also called misinformation or lies. Ed.) is a term that has come to prominence recently, even though its dissemination is a far older phenomenon.
The goods and services which could be classed as fake have now been joined by another – “fake translation“. Kenya’s Nairobi News reports that a tour guide at the Serengeti National Park in neighbouring Tanzania has been arrested after incorrectly translating a tourist’s comments about the country and its people from English into Swahili.
The guide is said to have been arrested on unspecified charges on Thursday on the orders of Tanzanian Tourism Minister Jumanne Mghembe.
In an undated video clip, the tour guide translates what an English-speaking woman is saying and instead of conveying the original message’s meaning, decides to skew the visitor’s kind remarks about country completely.
An example is given below.
Visitor: “Hi. My visit to Tanzania has been beautiful and gorgeous. The people are fabulously wonderful and friendly. Greetings are always jambo. I am happy to be here. The land is beautiful, the animals are wonderful.
Tour guide: You Tanzanians complain/cry a lot about hunger. Everyday you cry about hunger when you have flowers at home. Why don’t you boil the flowers and drink [them]. It is not good to cry/complain about hunger.
The minister may have ordered the unnamed guide’s arrest as he felt the guide was either mocking the tourist or mimicking President John Magufuli, as some of the guide’s remarks echoed those used by the president at a rally last month when he called on people to stop complaining about hunger.
Tanzania is popular with tourists due to its wildlife and stunning scenery and markets itself as “The Soul of Africa“.
Labour MP Gerald Kaufman is credited with coining the phrase “the longest suicide note in history” to describe his party’s 1983 election manifesto.
Entitled “The New Hope for Britain“, the manifesto called amongst other things for unilateral nuclear disarmament, higher personal taxation for the rich, abolition of the House of Lords and the re-nationalisation of recently privatised industries such as British Telecom and British Aerospace.
In that election, Labour’s vote fell by more than 3 million compared with 1979, with the party’s representation in the House of Commons declined from 261 to 209, whilst Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government enjoyed a 4% swing, buoyed up a wave of jingoistic fervour engendered by the conflict in the Falklands/Malvinas.
Yesterday, the House of Commons started consideration of what could be termed “the shortest suicide note in history“. Commonly known as the “Brexit Bill“, its full title is the “European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill 2017“. Its purpose is grant the Prime Minister power to notify the European Union of the UK’s intention to withdraw from the EU following last year’s disastrous and divisive referendum called by the then Prime Minister David Cameron, who foolishly put the interests of his divided party above those of the country.
Confer power on the Prime Minister to notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU.
Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
Power to notify withdrawal from the EU
(1)The Prime Minister may notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU.
(2)This section has effect despite any provision made by or under the European Communities Act 1972 or any other enactment.
The Bill’s progress through both houses of Parliament promises to be interesting, as both major parties are still riven by pro- and anti-EU divisions, as the country still is.
Finally, let’s not forget that those critical of the EEC/EC/EU, who came to be called “Eurosceptics“, were complaining even before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Accession, so it would be most unfair – and sense of fairness is allegedly an essential part of the British character – not to allow pro-Europeans (now being termed “Remoaners”. Ed.) an equally long period to express their views, however abhorrent those opposed to the EU, who are now termed “Brexiters“.
On Wednesday, Bristol Waste held a drop-in session at the Newton Hall for residents to get some (more) feedback on trial removal of communal waste bins along the Stapleton Road corridor.
Projected onto a wall was a presentation giving some facts, figures and information about the trial removal of the area’s 164 communal bins and their replacement with regular wheelie bins and bag collections (for those with no off-street storage space. Ed.).
Since the start of the trial at the end of October/beginning of November, it seems the trial has had a drastic effect, as the following figures reveal.
Recyling: up 16.7%
Refuse: down by 40.9%
Street cleansing requirement: down by 35.8%
In addition, fly-tipping enforcement in the area has been increased, with 62 notices served on individuals on how to present waste and 16 Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) served on individuals. Moreover, there are currently 35 active investigations into fly-tipping from domestic properties, whilst 8 local businesses have been served FPNs and another 8 are being investigated.
The most encouraging news came at the end of the presentation, as follows:
Due to the success of the scheme in terms of reduced waste, bulky fly-tipping and increased recycling levels we are proposing that we will continue the trial until March in order to gather more data and feedback.
In March, we anticipate recommending to the Neighbourhood Partnership that the service changes we have introduced remain in place for the area.
So it looks like scenes like the one below, taken in April 2016, will finally be a thing of the past along the Stapleton Road corridor. 😀
Somewhere under that pile of furniture is a communal bin.
An update has been received via Up our Street to questions raised by residents at the recent Neighbourhood Forum (posts passim).
The responses from Bristol Waste are reproduced verbatim below.
1. Litter bins at the Junction 3 development are reported to be too small and rarely emptied – is BWC responsible for these do you know?
Junction 3 is not yet adopted and therefore not BWC responsibility to cleanse although we did cleanse it this week due to a complaint. It would be the developer who would take up this until the road becomes adopted by BCC. It is very close to becoming adopted, so in light of this we will begin attending to avoid further issues for the community as it would appear the developer has relinquished all responsibility. It’s been added to the crew maps for this week.
2. Waverley Street communal bin is servicing some Fox Road properties from the back – a resident queried whether the replacement service brought in during the pilot could replicate this.
We have looked at this in more detail and we intend to keep the service as consistent as possible for residents so as not to cause confusion or inconvenience where a set up suits them in terms of the point of collection. We will therefore be able to empty wheelie bins and boxes from Waverley Street for the houses which back onto there from Fox Road. We have amended the pilot map accordingly.
Other updates
Reporting fly-tipping and illegal waste dumping
Tom Ward, the Streetscene Enforcement Officer for the area attended the meeting asked that local residents help him find and prosecute illegal fly tipping by reporting offences to him, try and take photos and record as much detail as possible if you witness this behaviour. Report online at https://www2.bristol.gov.uk/forms/fly-tipping#step1 or call Tom Ward on 07585307379.
Reporting issues with drains
One resident raised an issue with drains across the area – they are often blocked and smell bad. Please report any drain issues to Bristol City Council’s street issue area of the website: https://www.bristol.gov.uk/report-a-street-issue.
Finally, don’t forget the drop-in session later this week for the Stapleton Road communal bins trial (posts passim).
Bristol Waste Company, the wholly-owned council company that’s responsible for cleaning the streets, emptying the bins and collecting residents’ recycling (amongst other things. Ed.) is holding a drop-in session next week in Easton as part of the consultation on the pilot project removing communal bins along the Stapleton Road corridor.
The event will be held at Muller Hall, 39 Seymour Road, Bristol, BS5 0UW (map) on Thursday 29th September from 5.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.
Bristol Waste would like as many local residents and other interested parties as possible to come and give their views and prospective attendees are asked to confirm they will be coming so sufficient tea, coffee and biscuits can be arranged.
To confirm your attendance or for further details of the event please contact Jessica Tulit, Bristol Waste’s Community Engagement Officer, by emailing Jessica.Tulit [at] bristolwastecompany.co.uk or telephoning 0117 304 9022.
Unfortunately, your correspondent’s attendance is doubtful due to a family bereavement, but he will be there in spirit.
It’s good to see that Bristol Waste is prepared to tackled the problems that communal bins are causing locally after two and a half years of inaction from Bristol City Council, which introduced the 1,280-litre bins some years ago as a response to fly-tipping.
Despite a communal bin consultation (posts passim) last year revealed that the majority of residents believed fly-tipping had not been improved by the introduction of these monster bins: and my own fly-tipping records support this perception; communal bins are implicated in 60-67% of all the fly-tipping I report to the council.
However, despite this evidence, Bristol City Council has not had the courage to remove them, but merely tinkered with the details of their deployment.
In meetings with Bristol Waste, it has been made quite clear to both councillors and local residents that the company is just as fed up as we are with the problems caused by the local communal bins, which don’t just act as a magnet for fly-tipping. Analysis of the contents of the bins has revealed that only one-third is the stuff for which they were intended: the rest is made up of equal parts of recyclable materials and trade waste.
Those recyclable materials can still be recycled, but will attract a lower price due to the contamination to which they are subject in the communal bins.
Traders are supposed to have their own waste disposal contracts appropriate to their businesses. However, lots tend to cut corners – and their costs – by abusing the black communal bins earmarked specifically for use by residents (posts passim).
Mr. Casson used Google Translate to get his message across in te reo Maori.
As a consequence, his election address dropped through the letterboxes of Maori voters made an impact for all the wrong reasons, with the unintelligible jumble of words and phrases being described by Waikato University language expert Tom Roa as “very, very, very poor“.
Another Waikato University lecturer, Te Taka Keegan, who teaches computer science and worked on Google Translate remarked: “The gibberish that is written in the second part of this bio is barely recognisable as te reo Maori, it is disrespectful to the Maori language.”
When queried, Mr. Casson said he was unaware of how his profile was translated, stating that he gave his English version to a “Maori woman” at his office to get it done.
Stuff carried out its own test, copying Casson’s English language text into Google Translate and receiving in return “a word-for-word, error-ridden version of the official Hamilton City Council“, missing prepositions, articles and connecting words.
According to Newshub, another New Zealand news site, a translation back into English of Mr. Casson’s botched Maori translation reads as follows:
Work James 26 years inside New Zealand Police, before officer Charge of Northland, Hamilton community Police centre Flagstaff.
Work overseas like a peace keeper in Bougainville, Papua new Guinea, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Timor to the United Nations.
Return the good community, work the people work to safe. James worked for Police to build safe Hamilton for you.
Straight ahead [the text then seems to be another Pacific language]. faitotonu mo e angatonu aia takitahi. KORE ki Mita Water, paying Rate for dinner Council/feast for councillors using a free Corporate Box at Stadium Waikato or by councillors.
Free waka on some of the adds being used of Auckland.
Working towards finishing vagrants in Auckland.
Resources HCC maintenence, paddlers trying to hold into a beautiful looking Hamilton.
The moral of this story is that if you want a decent translation, you’re still better of with a human being than machine translation and this is likely to be the case for many years to come.
The time-honoured business practice of top executives celebrating POETS Day on the fairway has come in for criticism from an unlikely source.
At a Conservative Way Forward event at Westminster last week, the current international trade secretary and disgraced former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox MP is reported to have said:
We’ve got to change the culture in our country. People have got to stop thinking about exporting as an opportunity and start thinking about it as a duty – companies who could be contributing to our national prosperity but choose not to because it might be too difficult or too time-consuming or because they can’t play golf on a Friday afternoon.
Meanwhile in golfing “olds”, in April 2015, the disgraced former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox MP tweeted the photo below when standing for re-election.
There’s an old adage about glass houses and stones, isn’t there?
The latest Easton & Lawrence Hill Forum held on Wednesday evening at Easton’s Pickle Factory attracted some 40 lively, vocal residents who’d come along to the event whose theme was waste management and its attendant problems such as litter and fly-tipping.
After the initial announcements, your ‘umble scribe was first out at the front of the hall to administer death by PowerPoint, giving a brief history of Tidy BS5, its activities and successes over the past two and a half years and calling for residents to act as the eyes and ears of Bristol City Council to combat fly-tipping, report litter and urging them to report other environmental crimes that blight the inner city such as fly-posting, dog fouling and graffiti. The Tidy BS5 slot finished with a showing of the “Green Capital Tale of Two Cities” video produced for viewing at full council last year.
I was followed on the microphone by Tracy Morgan, CEO of Bristol, the wholly-owned council waste company responsible for keeping the bins emptied and the streets tidy.
This was the main talk of the evening and Tracy gave some background of Bristol Waste’s work, which stretches from carrying out some 17 mn. waste collections around the city to clearing its streets of dead animals. Those collections yield an annual total of 140,000 tonnes of waste and recycling, of which 53,000 tonnes is sent for recycling or composting.
Tracy remarked, “We want to create a cleaner, greener Bristol… but waste is a shared responsibility,” before going on to the main point of her presentation – the 12 weeks-long trial to remove communal bins (otherwise known as skipbins or 1280l Eurobins. Ed.) from the Stapleton Road corridor.
The communal bins were introduced some years ago with a typical botched BCC consultation to attempt to tackle the problem of fly-tipping in the area. The communal bins consultation carried out last year (posts passim) clearly revealed that the introduction of the communal bins had failed in this respect.
Instead of the thrice-weekly communal bin collections, those streets where residents have sufficient storage space will be issued with 180l wheelie bins to be emptied fortnightly. Where this is not possible, residents will be given rubbish bags (hopefully gull-proof. Ed.) for collection on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, to be put out at a certain time.
After Tracy’s presentation came questions and comments from the audience to a panel comprising, Tracy, Tom Ward from enforcement and myself.
There was lots of intelligence offered to Tom, particularly as regards fly-tipping along the Lawrence Hill/Church Road corridor, although the main concern was the Stapleton Road trial and the communal bins.
One resident spoke passionately for retaining on Claremont Street and Seymour Road (which are regularly abused, like all the other communal bins within the proposed trial area. Ed.). However, I feel she’s on a hiding to nothing with her desires and she was the only person in the room defending the communal bins that other residents described as the bane of their lives and a health hazard since they attracted rats.
Other residents wanted to see more litter bins, particularly in parks and along the Bristol & Bath Railway Path, whilst the operation of the St Philips Recycling Centre (e.g. no pedestrian access) and the surly, unhelpful attitude of the Centre’s staff were also mentioned to Tracy for attention, as were the habit of recycling crews leaving “offerings” in the streets for the local gods and the reaction of certain street sweepers to local residents trying to help them.
No doubt this will be a matter to which forthcoming Neighbourhood Forums will return.
The photos used in the post are by kind permission of Up Our Street.
In an undated video clip, the tour guide translates what an English-speaking woman is saying and instead of conveying the original message’s meaning, decides to skew the visitor’s kind remarks about country completely.
In 
