What staff shortages?
Q: When is a staff shortage not a staff shortage?
A: When the organisation involved is facing ‘workforce challenges‘. 😀
What’s wrong with plain speaking nowadays?
Answers in the comments if you have any please!
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Standards?
The government’s Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is based in Croydon Street in the Easton area of Bristol. It is based in Berkeley House (not to be confused with its city centre namesake which houses students. Ed.), former headquarters of the Bristol Omnibus Company.According to its Wikipedia page, the DVSA is responsible for:
- setting the standard for safe and responsible driving and riding;
- carrying out theory and practical driving tests for all types of motor vehicles;
- maintaining the register of approved driving instructors;
- approving training bodies and instructors to provide compulsory basic training and direct access scheme courses for motorcyclists;
- running the tests that allow people to join and stay on the voluntary register of driver trainers who train drivers of car and van fleets;
- setting the standards for the drink-drive rehabilitation scheme, running the scheme and approving the courses that offenders can take;
- conducting annual testing of lorries, buses and trailers through authorised testing facilities (ATFs) and goods vehicle testing stations (GVTS);
- conducting routine and targeted checks on vehicles, drivers and operators ensuring compliance with road safety legislation and environmental standards;
- supervising the MOT scheme so that over 20,000 authorised garages carry out MOT tests to the correct standards;
- providing administrative support to the regional Traffic commissioners in considering and processing applications for licences to operate lorries, buses, coaches and registered bus services;
- conducting post-collision investigations;
- monitoring products for manufacturing or design defects, highlighting safety concerns and monitoring safety recalls;
- providing a range of educational and advisory activities to promote road safety.
However, judging from the present environs of Berkeley House, your correspondent wonders how good a job the DVSA is actually doing.
Firstly, there’s a toppled 20 mph sign at the junction of Lawrence Hill and Croydon Street immediately opposite the DVSA’s premises. The agency’s logo is on the sign behind the pale blue fence in the background to the crash site.
Now let’s move a bit further west down Croydon Street following the site’s blue-painted steel railings…
No further comment is necessary from your ‘umble scribe, except maybe to paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell: ‘To crash once Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to crash twice looks like carelessness.’. 😀
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Dear Bristol City Council…
FAO: Neighbourhood Enforcement Team
This morning we were surprised to see that your red and white NO FLY TIPPING [sic] sign in Ducie Road car park just off Lawrence Hill has stopped working.
We and other local residents would be most grateful if you could send an enforcement officer round as soon as possible to restart it.
Thanking in advance.
Sgd. Tidy BS5
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The tannery ghost?
Wellington Road in St Judes runs along the west bank of the River Frome (aka the Danny in east Bristol. Ed.) offering views of the industrial buildings on the far bank.
The ghost of building past in the timber yard In front of the more modern timber sheds erected by current site occupants J. Scadding & Son, are some older structures of brick and stone, which appear to be nineteenth century industrial buildings. In the 19th century the banks of the Frome were densely crowded with industrial buildings, particularly for processes that required ready access to an abundant supply of water, such as brewers and tanners.
A quick search through the vintage maps on Bristol City Council’s excellent Know Your Place website reveals that Scadding’s current site was occupied by the Earlsmead Tannery in the late 19th century, whilst Scadding’s website reveals the company only moved to the site in the mid-1950s..
Site of Scadding’s timber yard in the late 19th century. Could those standing walls be Earlsmead Tannery’s remains?
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Enforcement notices – a tale of two cities
Staying in Glasgow for a few days for my niece’s wedding, your correspondent cannot help comparing and contrasting the differences between how Glasgow and Bristol City Councils set about tackling the public nuisance and environmental crime of fly-tipping, particularly as regards the use of public notices for enforcement and dissuasion.
Exhibit A: the public notices used by Bristol City Council.
This is an A5-sized sign with no redeeming graces, which threatens the maximum possible fine under law of £50,000 (no mention of the alter#native maximum penalty of 6 months’ imprisonment or a combination of the two. Ed.). Should anyone feel public -spirited enough to fancy reporting any fly-tipping, the public is directed to the council’s main switchboard number, with no mention of the very convenient option of reporting fly-tipping online.
Exhibit B: a public notice used by Glasgow City Council, as seen in Holmlea Road.
The initial difference is the size of the notice: at least A4 instead of A5, i.e. twice the size. There’s no mention of any maximum penalty, but residents are encouraged to report Dumb Dumpers via a 24-hour 0845 number. 0845 telephone numbers are “business rate numbers” (otherwise known as “non-geographical premium rate phone numbers“, for which the charge for mobile telephones and landlines is “up to 7p and your phone company’s access charge“. The UKPhoneIfo website warns that “charges for dialling 0845 numbers can be significantly higher – up to 41p per minute” when calling from a mobile number and that “when an 0845 number is called, the call recipient receives a small share of the call cost.” This number is a Scotland-wide number for reporting fly-tipping (there’s also a pan-Scottish Dumb Dumpers reporting website too, Ed.), in addition to which Glasgow City Council website also offers online reporting of fly-tipping and other environmental crimes.
Two more differences to Bristol are apparent: the locations of the council rubbish tips (civic amenity sites) are given in a further attempt to change anti-social behaviour, whilst finally residents are reminded that the state of the neighbourhood is their responsibility, as well as that of the council.
There are lessons that Bristol City Council could learn from Glasgow, as long as it ditches the not invented here attitude that seems to pervade the corridors of the Counts Louse.
One final note: even though the city is still being tidied up following the end of the recent Scottish bin collectors’ strike, your correspondent’s overall impression is that the streets of Glasgow are not as filthy as those of Bristol. Whether this is due to belittling and disparaging those who despoil the urban area as Dumb Dumpers has yet to be proven empirically, but is another tactic BCC could try, if so inclined.
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Gentrification reaches fly-tipping
Like many other parts of the city, the Easton area of Bristol has been subject to an immense wave of gentrification in the last decade or so, with all the usual signs: rocketing house prices, overpriced bacon butties made with sourdough, etc.
Indeed, local house prices have risen so dramatically within the city that an old college mate’s son and his partner couldn’t afford to buy anywhere in BS5 and eventually had to move to Cheltenham in order to find somewhere more affordable than Bristol’s inner city.
Last year the Bristol Post/Live published its own guide on how to spot the signs of gentrification.
It would be fair to say that gentrification has given rise to some local resentment on the streets, as shown below.
The signs of gentrification have even started showing in the types of items fly-tipped on local streets (in a sort of waste-related version of trickle-down economics. Last month your ‘umble scribe reported his first ever fly-tipped futon base and one of his other tasks today is to notify the council of this morning’s sighting of a fly-tipped golf bag on St Mark’s Road.
Fore!
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Bristol Post/Live exclusive: music venue moonlights as property developer
As a linguist, your ‘umble scribe has, during his working life, always used language as a precision tool. Were using le mot juste can mean the difference between a one-off job or repeat business is confined to linguists is unusual or not, is a matter for conjecture, There are certain other professions where the use of the right vocabulary is vital, particularly in the law and in the field of intellectual property (e.g. trade marks, patents).
It often does not apply in the world of journalism, where a columnist may be taking a deliberately ambiguous angle.
This accuracy of language definitely does not apply to the titles of the Reach plc stable of local news titles, including Bristol’s (news)paper of warped record, the Bristol (Evening) Post and the accompanying Bristol Live website.
As a prime example of this is contained in Thursday’s piece about the redevelopment of Trinity police station.
The headline implies that the as-yet unnamed music venue itself will be building the housing, not some developer who has just realised that, due to the proximity of entertainment, the building bill will now be augmented by the addition of acoustic insulation.
The police station to be demolished and redeveloped just happens to be over the road from the Trinity Centre, with which your correspondent has a long association (posts passim).
What is obvious from perusing the article is that the person(s) writing the headline is/are different from the one who write the article. This seems to be standard practice.
Furthermore, it is also evident that the headline writers do not carefully read what reporters have written, as shown by the latest version of how the story is presented on the paper’s website, with the soon-to-be former cop shop itself transformed a new music venue.
Sacking all those sub-editors a few years ago to save some money has really paid off in terms of the quality of your ‘journalism’, hasn’t it, Reach plc?
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BS5 bilingualism
Bristol is a city in which, according to the 2011 census data, more than 90 languages are spoken: no surprise for the UK’s tenth most populous city.
Given its proximity to Wales – a mere train ride or short drive away over one of the two bridges spanning the Môr Hafren (aka the Severn Sea. Ed.), there’s always been more than a bit of friendly rivalry between the city and county and South Wwales, with a topping of mutual parochial condescension reserved for near neighbours.
Given the diverse nature of east Bristol’s population, it’s not unusual to see shop signs in languages other than English, but the Tenovus Cancer Care charity shop in St Mark’s Road (kindly note the apostrophe you prefer to ignore, Bristol City Council. Ed.), has achieved what to your ‘umble scribe’s recollection a first for BS5: a Welsh/English bilingual sign offering – on one side at least – a free health check. The reverse of that bilingual offer is in Welsh only.
Cymraeg /Sais 
Cymraeg yn unig This is not the time that Welsh signage has turned up in use to the east of Offa’s Dyke. Back in June a Welsh bilingual road works sign was observed doing splendid work in Coventry, as Wales Online reported.
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Cost of living crisis worsens
Bragg’s Lane, Bristol, BS2.
No further comment necessary.
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Local trees decide it’s autumn
According to the Woodland Trust, “Horse chestnuts, with their mahogany-bright conkers, are the very essence of autumn.
Here in inner city BS5, the local horse chestnut trees in the centre of Lawrence Hill roundabout and on Lawrence Hill itself have decided that autumn has come already, judging by their dry and brown falling leaves and general frowzy appearance.
Horse chestnuts in autumn colours on Lawrence Hill roundabout 
Ditto about a hundred metres from the roundabout The horse chestnut is native to the Pindus Mountains mixed forests and Balkan mixed forests of south east Europe; it was first introduced to the UK from those areas then under the administration of the Ottoman Turks in the late 16th century, being widely planted in parks, gardens, streets and on village greens.
The tree gets its English name of horse chestnut from the scars the leaves leave on the twig when they fall, which resembles an inverted horse shoe with nail holes.
Besides the children’s game of conkers, conkers are also used horse medicines, as additives in shampoos and as a starch substitute. Chemicals extracted from conkers can be used to treat strains and bruises.
Just like the local hawthorns are an indicator of the approach of spring for your ‘umble scribe (posts passim), the these horse chestnuts fulfil a similar role for the approach of autumn. Below is a Woodland Trust video of the life of a horse chestnut throughout the year.