Yesterday’s Bristol Post reports on the dire state of rented properties in Morton Street, Barton Hill, just down the road from the Little Russell (posts passim).
One of the problems faced by the tenants in question is that they’re having to share their homes with sitting tenants – resident brown rats. This is hardly a conducive environment to live in, let alone one in which to bring up one’s children.
It’s said that no-one is ever more than a few yards away from a rat and these rodents do have any easy life in today’s cities. Their life is made even easier by the proliferation of fast food outlets in recent years combined with the untidy habits of their patrons.
The report really highlights the fact that Bristol is a divided city. While they city’s great and good are indulging in a year of junketing, mutual backslapping and filling each others’ bank accounts with public money courtesy of Bristol Green Capital, its poor are enduring infestations of vermin, plus the seemingly insurmountable inner-city blights of litter and fly-tipping.
Well done to ward councillors Marg Hickman and Hibaq Jama for highlighting this problem and taking up the tenants’ plight.