Bristol | Steve Woods

Peel Street meets the Globe

12/08/2022 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics

A piece of artwork has appeared on the parched grass of Peel Street Green Space, which occupies the ground between Pennywell Road and Riverside Park on the far side of Peel Street Bridge over the Frome (aka the Danny in east Bristol. Ed.).

Its arrival seems to have pre-empted the Bristol Post, which today wrote:

A new public art trail reflecting on colonial histories and the impact of the slave trade is coming to Bristol.
More than 100 artist-designed globe sculptures will appear in seven cities across the UK from Saturday and will be free to view by the public until October 31.

The project, which is organised by The World Reimagined, aims to explore the UK’s relationship with the Transatlantic slave trade, its impact on society and how action can be taken to make racial justice a reality. The designs of the globes produced by the commissioned artists explore themes such as the culture of Africa before the slave trade and an ode to the Windrush generation.

The World Reimagined has sited 103 unique Globes across the 10 trails in 7 host cities across the UK – Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London and Swansea. All the trails will be connected to a digital platform that enables visitors to explore the collection and the history it reflects.

The Peel Street globe is entitled Like The Sun and was created by Felix ‘FLX’ Braun, a Bristol-based a contemporary fine artist and muralist
© OpenStreetMap contributors

The Bristol trail is handily shown on a map by The World Reimagined on which the globe installations are termed ‘Learning Globes‘.

Click on image for full-sized map
BS5 bees

15/06/2022 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities

Bees are found on every continent except Antarctica; and they’re crucial to life on this planet since they pollinate nearly 75% of the world’s plants, which in turn produce 90% of the food consumed by humanity. Without the aid of bees plant pollination would not occur so easily, plants would die and humans and many other species of life would die out.
Generally one only notices bees in the inner city in ones and twos. However, bees establish new colonies by swarms consisting of a queen and legions of workers (her daughters). On Monday your ‘umble scribe spotted this swarm in Chaplin Road in Bristol’s inner city.

Somewhere in the seething mass is the queen

A neighbour informed me that a beekeeper was supposed to have turned up the previous evening to deal with them. S/he had evidently paid a visit by beer o’clock when your correspondent ventured forth for a pint.

Note the two hive frames inside the box taped to the railings

The bees have entered the box with the hive frames, presumably after the queen was first located and transferred to the box by the beekeeper.

Bees have long been renowned for their industry. In Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon Ed.) the eponymous hero of Beowulf has beo (i.e. bee) as the first syllable of his name; when coupled with wulf (i.e wolf, predator), this implies Beowulf was a very busy and ultimately successful hunter. In medieval times, bees themselves were regarded as a potent symbol of chastity in Christianity, whilst in Islam, honey was believed to have spiritual and physical healing powers. These religious and cultural beliefs encouraged beekeeping on a vast scale among landowners and peasants alike.
Coming up to the 18th century, the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake wrote the following of bees in his “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell“:
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.

And finally on busy bees, from the 18th to the 20th century and the late Arthur Askey.
1977 and all that

31/05/2022 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Politics, Social Media

1977 was allegedly a year for celebration as Elizabeth Mountbatten-Windsor had spent 25 years as unelected head of state of the English Empire (which some still call the United Kingdom. Ed.).

At the time I was in the final year of my degree and well remember derelict buildings in the town centre being draped in bunting in preparation for a drive-by the queen.

All the sycophancy at that time helped turn your ‘umble scribe into a lifelong republican, i.e. someone who would like to see this country abolish the monarchy and switch to having an elected – not hereditary – head of state. This is not to be confused with a right-wing US political party spelled with an upper case first letter.

Come right up to date and Elizabeth Mountbatten-Windsor has now been minding the shop for 70 years, a record for the country. However, support for the monarchy is not as widespread or whole-hearted as it was in 1977 and in Scotland support for the monarchy is now down to 45%, as reported by The Guardian.

However, that does not mean that republicans are having an easy ride for their beliefs, which they allegedly have a democratic right to express, as illustrated by the tweet below from the account of the Jeremy Vine show on Channel 5, a low point in daytime TV.

I have no intention of being quiet. Indeed, yesterday I found the Stuff The Jubilee badge I bought in 1977 and am already wearing it with pride as per the encouragement from my ex-wife.

Your correspondent won’t be the only one in east Bristol not celebrating this momentous non-event. News of three of our local pubs organising a F*ck the Jubilee punk festival has not gone down too well with some sections of the city’s populace.

At a national level, Republic, the organisation campaigning for the abolition of the monarchy, has organised a petition to make Elizabeth the second the last monarch.
And finally, now for something completely different…
More Bristol borkage

16/05/2022 Steve WoodsBristol, Tech

Yesterday’s trip into Bristol’s Quarter of Mammon (aka the city’s central shopping district consisting of the dire post-war Broadmead centre, Galleries and ~~Carboot~~ Cabot Circus. Ed.) yielded another example of borked technology to add to the collection begun last week on my visit to the City Museum & Art Gallery (posts passim).

Corporate graffiti, better known as advertising is all-pervasive and intrusive, but there’s no way I’d stand on my heads in the rain to read this bullshit. 😀
Borked in Bristol

07/05/2022 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Tech

The last time your ‘umble scribe visited Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery was before the first pandemic lockdown over two years ago. There’s always lots to see and the first thing I observed was the major changes to the art exhibits. Local talent features prominently in these, including the 19th century Bristol School of Artists and prominent portrait painter and local lad Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA. Furthermore, the ceramics section has a fine selection of ware from the late 17th and early 18th century Brislington Pottery.

However, the excellence of local art and crafts was not matched by local artefacts from the period of Roman occupation, being limited to the Thornbury Hoard (although 3,000 Roman coins on display is quite impressive. Ed.), one Samian ware bowl and a solitary drinking vessel, which is pretty poor considering the major influence and changes wrought by the Romans during the three and a half centuries that Britannia was a province of the Roman empire and ample evidence of Roman settlement and economic activity in the area. These include. for example, Abona Roman port at the confluence of the River Trym and Bristol Avon, visible remains of of Roman roads, villa sites, plus the 2 Roman pigs of lead found in 1865 in Wade Street in St Judes whilst excavations were underway on the old bank of the River Frome).

On the other hand, the museum does have a fine natural history section, especially in respect of extinct fauna – the giant Irish elk skeleton with its antlers spanning a width of 3 metres is most impressive – and fossils and dinosaurs in particular.

As is well known, generations of children have displayed a passion for dinosaurs. Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery has catered for this passion by installing interactive displays. Nevertheless, any child currently wishing to learn more of the life and times of Doris the Pliosaurus would have been disappointed at the time of my visit as Doris’ display was – to use a technical term borked.

The bottom picture clearly clearly shows Microsoft’s Windows 7 misbehaving, a not uncommon undocumented feature of the Beast of Redmond’s alleged operating systems.

If anyone desires to see more borkage in public, your ‘umble scribe would refer such readers to The Register IT news site, which has a dedicated bork section/archive.
Colston Four Road disappears

16/02/2022 Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Politics

What a difference a couple of days make.

Just yesterday this blog reported on the unofficial renaming of Slaver’s Road in Easton, Bristol (posts passim).

Today your ‘umble scribe ambled past the end of the road and observed the following where the “Colston Four Road” unofficial street sign had recently been installed.

Here yesterday. Gone today. Note the screw holes where the unofficial sign was affixed.

Officially changing a street name is a long, involved process in which an overwhelming majority of the property owners have to agree to a proposed change.

Changes are much swifter in the unofficial world.
Toppled Road renamed

15/02/2022 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Politics

Nearly half a year ago, your ‘umble scribe reported that Colston Road in Easton, a road named after Bristol-born slave trader, insider share dealer, financier, religious bigot and former Tory MP for the city had been unofficially renamed as Toppled Road (posts passim).

On the other side of the road from the crudely painted Toppled Street on the side of a house, a new more official-looking street name sign has appeared in recent days.

The original street name sign is painted out as a token of the regard in which Eddie the Slaver is held locally.

The new unofficial sign commemorates the acquittal by a Bristol jury of the so-called Colston Four who were tried for criminal damage when Colston’s statue in the centre of the city was brought down and dumped in the city docks during the course of a Black Lives Matter protest on 7 June 2020.

Local residents have been uneasy for years about living in a street named after a so-called philanthropist who made his money from kidnapping, trafficking and exploiting to death thousands of unwilling Africans and have long campaigned for it to be changed, along with other reminders of the late Victorian Cult of Colston.

Speaking to Easton councillor Barry Parsons yesterday, your correspondent asked him for an update on how the name change was progressing.

He responded that the whole matter of street renamings was one of the topics handed over to the We Are Bristol History Commission, which has just recently issued its recommendations in respect of Colston’s statue, backing the general public view it belongs henceforth in a museum.

However, any words of wisdom from the Commission regarding the fate of Bristol’s street names commemorating Eddie the Slaver have yet to be uttered and it would appear the matter has been (so to say) kicked into the long grass.

In a final twist, the Bristol Post/Bristol Live is claiming that some of its less perceptive readers are “outraged“ at the change of name, with some actually believing the new sign has been erected by the city’s perfidious council, even though the sign’s design is clearly different to that used by the local authority, whose standard modern street name signs all include the first 3 characters of the road’s postcode
No ifs, no butts

23/01/2022 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

On 21st January, Clean Up Britain launched the most comprehensive anti-cigarette litter campaign with a pilot in Bristol. Clean Up Britain eventually hopes to extend the pilot campaign to the rest of the country.

Image courtesy of Clean Up Britain Campaign

Background

Cigarette butts are the most littered item on the planet. Even in Britain some 27 billion cigarette butts littered in Britain every year. These dropped dog ends allow toxic contaminants to seep into the environment causing significant environmental pollution to watercourses and soil. Moreover, there are now three million e-cigarette users (aka vapers. Ed.) in Britain and e-cigarette waste is also very serious since it produces plastic, nicotine salts, heavy metals, lead, mercury and flammable lithium batteries, again endangering the soil, wildlife and watercourses.

Clean Up Britain states it will be providing a comprehensive programme of behavioural change interventions in Bristol aimed at reducing cigarette butt littering at its source, by encouraging adult smokers to dispose of their cigarette butts properly. This will include various campaign publicity messages aimed at deterring the casual disposal of smoking waste.

Your correspondent wonders if this initiative is being undertaken in isolation as there is no mention of it on the newsroom section of the Bristol City Council website or indeed on the wider city council website.

How well or even whether this programme will work remains to be seen. Your ‘umble scribe will watch developments with interest.
Geographical confusion plagues local Reach title

19/01/2022 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities
If there’s one thing that characterises Reach plc’s regional newspaper titles it is lack of attention to detail, whether that is their use of English, captioning of photos, geographical location and so on.

Earlier this week visitors to the Bristol Post website (aka BristolLive. Ed.) were treated to an exemplar of this poor quality media production.

It’s not unusual for newspaper sites to encourage their visitors to sign up for newsletters as a marketing tool and thus increase their traffic.

However, the Bristol Post’s latest effort, which is posted on a page that seems to be syndicated across several different regional titles, appears to have been mistargeted, landing a direct hit on the banks to the River Hull at its confluence with the Humber estuary, rather than the banks of the Bristol Avon.

Hull – Bristol’s newest suburb?

This is not the first time (and definitely won’t be the last. Ed.) that Reach titles have played fast and loose with geography. Four years ago, the Bristol Post magically transformed into the Manchester Evening News (posts passim).

This action raises a number of questions, i.e.:
- Is Hull Bristol’s newest suburb?
- Are HullLive readers being invited to sign up to the BristolLive newsletters in the interests of balance if nothing else?
- How many seconds would the average modern Reach employee have survived in post if magically transported back to the days when all regional newspapers employed sub-editors?
If you know the answer or can provide further elucidation, please comment below. 😀
Bronze lives matter

06/01/2022 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Politics, Social Media

On 7 June 2020, the statue of slave trader and religious bigot Edward Colston, which had blighted the centre of Bristol for well over a century, was assisted off its plinth and taken for a walk for a bath in the city docks near Pero’s Bridge (a bridge named after a former slave. Ed.).

Yesterday in Bristol Crown Court a jury of their peers found the defendants Rhian Graham, Milo Ponsford, Sage Willoughby, and Jake Skuse – the so-called Colston 4 – not guilty of criminal damage as a result of Eddie the Slaver ending up in the drink that afternoon a year and half ago, as The Bristol Cable reports.

The verdict has not gone down well with some right-leaning culture warriors and those whose view of history is coloured more by the propaganda extolling the virtues of the British Empire instead of the brutality of its crimes against humanity, theft, violence and exploitation. This tweet from the Save Our Statues account is a typical example.

The sense of outrage is not confined to social media. In the vanguard was the outrage of the Daily Express (which some still call the Express. Ed.) with the headline below today’s front page.

Just above the headline a small matter of media hypocrisy comes into view. Note the promotional flash for the glorious National Trust 2022 calendar. Not so very long ago the Express was one of those right-wing newspapers that were condemning the National Trust and accusing it of being woke (whatever that’s supposed to mean. Ed.) for the organisation’s efforts to learn more about the history of its properties, resulting in the Trust publishing a report last year that found 93 of its properties had connections with colonialism and slavery.

Furthermore, it was just right-leaning social media accounts and media that were outraged. Members of Parliament also joined in the outrage.

Step forward Robert ‘Honest Bob‘ Jenrick, MP for Newark and formerly Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Jenrick took to Twitter yesterday to pontificate as follows:

We undermine the rule of law, which underpins our democracy, if we accept vandalism and criminal damage are acceptable forms of political protest.
They aren’t. Regardless of the intentions.

It is encouraging to see such strong support for the rule of law from Honest Bob, a man who when occupying his lofty Whitehall perch was found by the High Court to have acted unlawfully in approving a £1bn east London development by former publisher and Tory Party donor Richard Desmond.

The Colston 4 verdict and the verdict of unlawful action Jenrick’s planning decision clearly do not sit well with the likes of Honest Bob.

However, he and others need to remember that justice – especially as perceived by juries in their verdicts – does not always match everyone’s expectations, especially where concepts of lawful and/or reasonable excuse are involved.

Justice is not like Woolworth’s Pick’n’Mix sweet counter and the likes of Honest Bob are in no position to lecture the masses about the sanctity of the rule of law.

In conclusion, here’s a wee photo for Bob, the right-wing press and social media accounts to think about. 😀

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