It’s not just fly-tipping that’s a problem in my part of Bristol (posts passim). Litter’s an associated problem that makes the place look scruffy and gives it that intimidating air.
However, some litter is not carelessly dropped, but is carefully placed – preferably off the ground – so that the perpetrator doesn’t feel so bad about being anti-social, as in the example below.
Here’s a quick reminder for the hard of thinking: even carefully discarded waste materials are still litter if not placed in an appropriate container, like a bin. Not using a bin – or mistaking the street or public open space for a litter bin – may earn you an on-the-spot fine of £75 in Bristol.
As for those who drop litter next to a litter bin, words fail me.
Anyway, that particular bottle is plastic and can be recycled, so will be out with the rest of my recycling tomorrow, ready for collection.
As a part of inner city Bristol, Easton tends to get into the papers for all the wrong reasons, such as fly-tipping (posts passim).
However, it’s a vibrant area where I’ve lived for nearly 4 decades and so it can’t be all that bad, as is shown by the fact that community campaigners Happy Easton have produced their own video version of the record-breaking Pharrell Williams hit “Happy” to show a more positive side of Easton.
The video was filmed at 18 sites around the area including Easton Community Centre, Trinity Community Arts, the soon to be shut Trinity Police Station and various local shops and takeaways.
Are the dancing cops and PCSOs as embarrassing as your relatives at a wedding? Answers in the comments below! 🙂
The Bristol Post is not renowned locally for its in-depth coverage of technology, let alone such exotic areas as crytocurrencies, but today proved an exception as it reported on the fortunes of Bristol’s only Bitcoin cash machine, which is located in Superfoods in St Stephen’s Street (review here) in the centre.
SatoshiPoint, the machine’s owners have hailed it a success after the machine processed 250 transactions and the equivalent of £38,000 in Bitcoins in the month of August alone.
SatoshiPoint’s Hassan Khoshtaghaza said: “Bristol is doing very well, in fact better than our London ATMs because there are now six of them in London so the use gets spread out. We are getting users from as far as Cardiff and Bath coming to use the machine in Bristol and our volume is increasing each month on buy and sell transactions.”
The company recently installed a Bitcoin machine in Brighton and further cities under consideration are Cardiff, Manchester and Edinburgh, plus Newcastle Airport, according to Khoshtaghaza.
SatoshiPoint’s Bitcoin machines accept £10 and £20 notes, but not debit or credit cards and users can buy anything from £10 to £1,500 worth of Bitcoins a day, at the live price plus 7% commission.
Zero Waste Week, now in its seventh year, is currently taking place in the United Kingdom between 1st and 7th September 2014.
The aim of Zero Waste Week is to “an opportunity to reduce landfill waste & save money“.
The theme of this year’s event is “One More Thing“.
Jane Street in Redfield, Bristol, shows in the picture below just what can be achieved with “One More Thing” in Zero Waste Week, in this case, one more instance of fly-tipping!
a third party smartphone app, such as My Council (which is available for both Android and iOS; and
telephoning 0117 922 2100.
The most direct reporting route is using the fly-tipping form as the report is sent directly to the department concerned, whereas the other methods require the report to be forwarded by its original recipient.
Last month Remembering The Real World War 1 re-enacted the Bristol dockers’ debate held at the start of August 1914 and featuring Ben Tillett (played by John Bassett) and Ernest Bevin (played by Roger Ball) at 2.00 pm on Saturday 26th July near the Arnolfini on Bristol’s Narrow Quay (news passim).
The video of the re-enactment has now been released.
Bristol likes to regard itself as a place of innovation.
Bearing this inventive spirit in mind, contractors working in Old Market Street for Bristol City Council have invented a new public conveyance vehicle – the bup.
A spokesperson for Bristol City Council said: “We take the misspelling of road marking very seriously and will soon be appointing an expensive CONsultant to advise us of the best possible solution.” (That quotation was made up, wasn’t it? Ed.)
One of the oldest districts of Bristol is Redcliffe (or Redcliff. Ed.).
According to its Wikipedia entry, Redcliffe – the more common spelling – was once part of the manor of Bedminster before its absorption into the city of Bristol in the 13th century.
However, the spelling of Redcliff(e) has long caused controversy.
Richard Ricart, a town clerk of Bristol, in his The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar, written between 1480 and 1508 and recording the history of Bristol since the 12th century, refers throughout to Redcliff, although there is also an occasional unusual reference to Redecliff. Both appear in this extract documenting the digging of St. Augustine’s Trench (later renamed St. Augustine’s Reach. Ed.) in 1240:
This yere was the Trenche y-made and y-caste of the ryvere, fro the Gybbe Tailloure unto the key, by the maanovre of alle the Cominalte, as wele of Redcliff warde as of the Towne of Bristowe. And the same tyme thenhabitaunts of Redecliff were combyned and corporatid with the Town of Bristowe. And as for the grounde of Seynt Austyn’s side of the forseid ryver hit was yeve and grauntid to the Cominaltee of the seid Towne by Sir William a Bradstone then Abbot of Seynt Austyns for certeyn money therfore to hym paide by the seide Cominaltee. As appereth by olde writyng therof made bitwene the forseid Maire and Cominaltee and the seid Abbot and Covent.
Redcliff these days tends to appear mostly in street names, such as Redcliff Street – the ancient road leading from Bristol Bridge to the former Redcliffe Gate in the city’s medieval walls – whilst Redcliffe is the more common version.
A couple of quick text searches via Google of Bristol City Council’s website for Redcliff and Redcliffe gives the following results.
Redcliff: 1,120 results
Redcliffe: 4,020 results
However, confusion as the spelling of Redcliff(e) has a long history. This is amply illustrated by the painting below by James Johnson entitled Redcliffe Street. It was painted around 1825 and hangs in Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Kerry McCarthy, MP for Bristol East, has now stepped into this confusing orthographic and municipal muddle via the following tweet dated August 21st.
@wood5y I'm thinking of starting a campaign for the council to agree one way of spelling Redcliffe/ Redcliff and to stick to it. Are you in?
Before boundary changes preceding the 2010 election, Redcliff(e) was part of Kerry’s Bristol East constituency.
It has to be conceded that there is plenty of merit in Kerry’s suggestion, although she maintains she was only ‘moaning in Twitter’.
Bristol is nevertheless one of those places which changes at a glacial pace and place names in Bristol are frequently named after long-vanished owners/occupiers. For instance, most older inhabitants of the city still refer to the local authority’s headquarters as the Council House (pronounced Counts Louse locally. Ed.), even though one of the first acts of elected Mayor George Ferguson was to rename it with the American-sounding City Hall in a cosmetic exercise.
Does Kerry’s campaign have any chance of success? Your views are welcome in the comments below.
Seen this morning on Church Road, Lawrence Hill, Bristol.
The person who wrote the copy must have fallen asleep in English classes when the difference between the abbreviated second person conjugation of the verb ‘to be’ and the second person possessive adjective was being explained.
Never mind, poor English skills don’t seem to have been a barrier to employment with Cleverley Builders of Whitchurch, Bristol or Swann Security; it was uncertain to your correspondent as to who had produced the sign. However, the ability to lie on signage is also valued by Cleverley Builders and/or Swann Security as no evidence of the physical presence of video surveillance equipment could be discerned.
If the author of the sign happens to read this, help is at hand to assist you in learning the distinguish them.
Neither of my parents, both of whom left school at 14 years of age and received not much more than a primary education in rural Norfolk in the 1930s and 1940s would not have made such a glaring mistake in English – a mistake which seems all too commonplace amongst the beneficiaries of the modern British education system.
The Western Daily Press is a stablemate of the Bristol Post and seems to share many of the latter’s afflictions – the same ugly Brutalist building on Bristol’s Temple Way, poor English, dodgy photo captions and the like.
It was therefore no surprise to encounter a prime example of confused reporting this morning, as illustrated by the screenshot below.
If one examines the article to which the news page above relates, three disparate elements seem to have been combined by reporter Geoff Bennett (who also writes for the Bristol Post. Ed.) and his associates, i.e.:
a headline referring to widespread outbreaks of salmonella food poisoning in hospitals in England;
a cuddly kittens picture and apposite caption; and
a report on the court case of the alleged groping barber (who was cleared by the court. Ed.) which gave rise to Friday’s sexist Bristol Post front page (posts passim).
There is nothing like good, unambiguous reporting of the news – and the Western Daily Press is capable of nothing like it!
Regular readers will be aware that the Bristol Post is not renowned for the quality of its journalism.
However, the dreadful pun and sexism of today’s front page of the dead tree edition marked a new low in the paper’s already woeful standards.
Bad puns are annoying in headlines at the best of times and sexism is tolerated far less than when the fifty-something males in charge of producing Bristol’s daily work of fiction first started out in what was then called journalism.
There has been a steady stream of criticism of the Bristol Post on Twitter throughout the day.
However, the paper has not sought to respond to any of its critics, presumably because the person in charge of the Twitter account has yet to notice the ‘reply’ button.
In addition, some of Bristol’s Twitterati have also been alerting the national media to The Post’s disgraceful front page seeking to trivialise a sexual assault.
With front pages like the one above, is it any surprise that the Post’s circulation figures (as measured by ABC) are falling by nearly 11% per year? Not to me it isn’t!
Update 18/08/14: Bristol 24-7 is reporting today that Bristol City councillor Naomi Rylatt has written to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) over the above front page headline, describing it as a “disgusting attempt at humour“.
The Bristol Post is not renowned locally for its in-depth coverage of technology, let alone such exotic areas as 
