Bristol

  • Little Brother alive and well in North Somerset

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    North Somerset strikes me as a somewhat ambivalent area of the country. On the one hand, it has town councils eager to indulge in Luddism and hold back the tide of technology (posts passim). On the other, the unitary authority – North Somerset Council – seems eager to do its bit for Orwell‘s dystopian vision of the future in its own Little Brother-ish way.

    North Somerset Council is apparently compiling a database of email addresses of people who choose that means of contacting it, according to a report in today’s Bristol Post.

    According to the council, this database is for use to contact people in an emergency and will not be passed on to third parties.

    However, the council has only just released details of the existence of this email address database once it had already collected 20,000 entries.

    According to a council spokesman: “The central database complies with data protection and email addresses will not be shared or sold to third parties (now where have we heard that before? Ed.).

    “This is just another way of the council being able to communicate with its residents should an emergency situation arise.

    “The addresses will not be used for any other reason. People who do not want to be contacted in this way can ask to have their details removed from the database.”

    Isn’t that reassuring? People can have their details removed from the database if they don’t want to be contacted by this means. This means North Somerset residents will have to take action themselves to be removed from a list that they probably didn’t want – or consent – to be added to in the first place.

    There’s far too much of this kind of data scraping going on. It would have been better if North Somerset Council had sought the informed consent of its email correspondents before adding them automatically to its database, but then again that would involve treating people like intelligent human beings. However, this is a highly unlikely prospect given that North Somerset Council has an even greater propensity than its big neighbour Bristol to refer disingenuously to its residents as ‘customers’. 🙁

  • Election special: 80% of voters don’t bother

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    It cannot have escaped anyone’s notice that there was an election for an elected Mayor in Bristol on Thursday.

    The fact that George Ferguson – affectionately known as Red Trousers after his preferred choice of leg coverings – received a total 37,353 votes and was declared the winner.

    George’s win is being described by all the political pundits as a consequence of the people of Bristol being fed up with party politics.

    However, there’s another analysis. Turnout in the mayoral election was under 28%. That means George was elected by a tiny minority of electors who could be bothered to turn out and vote for him. Indeed, George’s winning total means just 11.7% of Bristol’s 320,000 voters put a cross next to his name.

    Meanwhile the vast majority of voters – 78% of the on Bristol’s electoral roll – stayed away from the polls.

    The figures for the Police and Crime Commissioners suffered from even lower turnouts right across the country, with a national average of 15% in the 41 English and Welsh police areas. In the Avon and Somerset area, turnout was 19.59%, meaning 80% of the electorate didn’t bother and winning candidate Sue Mountstevens, who received a total of 125,700 votes, was likewise given a mandate by about 10% of voters.

    Representative democracy doesn’t seem to be faring very well at present and one must question the legitimacy of the mandates received.

  • “Cutlass supplied”

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities

    Skull and crossbonesEvery now and again there’s a job advertisement that’s so unusual it deserves wider circulation: and there’s a great example on the tourist business website Destination Bristol at the moment.

    Bristol Pirate Walks are looking for an Assistant Pirate to join Pirate Pete.

    The Assistant Pirate should be confident and outgoing with a bubbly personality and be ready to meet and greet visitors to Bristol from across the world, from children and families to corporate groups.

    This is a part-time role with full training given on the history of this port, and would be of interest those who enjoy meeting people and leading walking groups around the harbour.

    Cutlass supplied

    As pirates are typically portrayed as folk whose speech requires little grammar, I wonder if the “full training given” will include lessons in ignoring English syntax. 😀

    Of course, Bristol, being a port city, has close associations with the sea and hence maritime crime of all kinds, including piracy, as well as having pirates amongst its sons and daughters. Edward Teach, otherwise known as Blackbeard, was born in the (now comfortably fragrant and middle class) Redland area of the city in 1680.

  • Bristol Post exclusive: city has a literate cricket ground

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

    Ever since I arrived in Bristol, I’ve been both dismayed and amused in equal amounts by the abysmal standards of English in the local press.

    This ancient tradition’s greatest proponent has been the alleged local paper of record, the Bristol Evening Post, whose publication is now reduced to 5 days a week as sales of the dead tree edition decline; its name has likewise been truncated to the Bristol Post.

    Today the Post revealed an exclusive. Bristol has a literate cricket ground, presumably able to speak and write, as evidenced by the following Post quote:

    The ground, in Nevil Road, St Andrew’s, released a statement this morning.

    If the ground really does talk, Gloucestershire [County] CC should be very proud of it since this particular skill is far more impressive than its cricketing record. 😉

    Update: 6th November 2012: Jon Eccles has since remarked that the County Ground is “the first sports facility of any kind to pass the Turing test“.

  • The coalition at half time

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

    On Friday I received an invitation to a Bristol Festival of Ideas event, “The Coalition at Half Time“, at At-Bristol, featuring Gruaniad journalist Polly Toynbee, fellow journalist David Walker and a panel of local MPs – Kerry McCarthy (Labour), Charlotte Leslie (Conservative) and Stephen Williams (Liberal Democrat). The invitation was extended to me so I could cover proceedings live via Twitter and I duly tickled the laptop keyboard as quietly and unobtrusively as I could for the next hour and a half.

    After a brief introduction, proceedings started with a two-handed critique by Toynbee and Taylor of the coalition governments record to date, as reflected in their new report, Dogma and Disarray: Cameron at Half-Time. Taylor and Toynbee opened by taking the pre-election rhetoric of Cameron & co. and contrasting it with the reality since the election, including such clangers as the pasty tax and U-turns too numerous to mention. Toynbee and Taylor also drew attention to the opinions of the Tory Young Turks (those who thought Thatcher didn’t go far enough and who consider Cameron to be too soft) and their desires to dismantle and privatise the state. In addition, the ineffectiveness of the Labour opposition was also mentioned: for instance Toynbee opined that Labour were paralysed on opposition to benefit cuts, possibly due to public opinion; the demonisation of claimants as ‘scroungers’ has evidently been successful.

    Following the Toynbee-Taylor double act, each of the local MPs was invited to respond in turn, starting with Charlotte Leslie. She had a hard job to start with, defending the indefensible. However, she didn’t do herself any favours by starting off insulting the intelligence of the audience, suggesting that anyone who didn’t vote Tory was brainless. The exact words Charlotte used were: “If you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when old, you don’t have a brain”. Charlotte’s love of boxing also got a mention later on. However, for all her love and knowledge of the pugilistic arts, she did a lot of leading with her chin.

    After Charlotte came Stephen Williams, who impressed me by his skill in making sweeping statements without providing any empirical evidence to back them up. One such sweeping assertion was: “What we have done is stabilise our economy and earned international respect.” We’re still waiting for the figures, Stephen. Perhaps Alex, your bag carrier, who was sitting next to me could oblige.

    Kerry McCarthy, last of the MPs to speak, had perhaps the easiest job of the night, gained the largest rounds of applause, and was not heckled by members of the audience shouting ‘rubbish’ or ‘nonsense’. Opening with, “Needless to say I disagree with pretty much everything Stephen Williams just said,” her commentary then went on to feature words we’d already heard from Toynbee and Taylor about the government: incompetence, ideological desire, Stalinism.

    Part three of the event was audience questions, which likewise proved awkward for Leslie and Williams and a walkover for McCarthy. Charlotte’s naivety on tax avoidance, loopholes and corporation tax was breathtaking. Answering one point, Kerry described workfare as ‘slavery’: immediately Williams tried to leap in to defend it; a Bristol MP defending slavery has not been seen for nearly 2 centuries. However, there was worse for Williams. One audience member prefaced his question, “I voted Lib Dem in last election and Stephen, I feel deeply betrayed by you and your party”. The room exploded in applause.

    My verdict: a most enjoyable event if you enjoy politics; supporters of the two coalition parties may have found themselves in a minority in the audience and might not have felt very comfortable. My verdict on the coalition at half time: the ref should abandon the match and take all the players off the pitch.

    My sincere thanks to Andrew Kelly and the Bristol Festival of Ideas team for the invitation. Next time you want an event covered live via Twitter… 🙂

  • Aspiring

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities

    Bristol may be unique as a city for many reasons. One of these is the city’s tallest building: how many others can boast their tallest edifice dates back to the 12th century? Well, complete with its spire (built 1442), St Mary Redcliffe church – the one the tourists mistake for Bristol Cathedral and the selfsame one described by Queen Elizabeth I as “the fairest, goodliest, and most famous parish church in England” – still towers over every other building in the city at 89 metres (or 292 ft if you still work in old money. Ed.).

    Every now and again, some work needs to be done on the building’s fabric and I was extremely fortunate on Wednesday to spot some in progress way above my head.

    image of spire of St Mary Redcliffe complete with steeplejacks
    Bristol’s tallest building complete with human ants

    If you squint up the spire, you can see two steeplejacks at work, with the lower one actually carrying a ladder.

    The steeplejacks are from the family firm of Dawson Steeplejacks of Clutton in North Somerset. To coincide with the works the Bristol Post carried a feature on the 175 years-old firm and its work. The Dawson family have been steeplejacks for seven generations: now that’s is something to which to aspire!

  • Bristol City Council – heritage vandals

    Steve WoodsBristol

    Take a look at the picture below, taken in Bristol on Monday 8th October. Fairly unremarkable isn’t it? What’s the most interesting thing about it? The digger perhaps?

    No, the most interesting aspect of the picture is what isn’t there. However, before we come to that, a bit of history and context is required.

    Lower Castle Street, Bristol
    Lower Castle Street, Bristol showing the old alignment (cobbled) and the new alignment (asphalt)

    As the caption states, the image shows Lower Castle Street in central Bristol. The cobbled surface near the foot of the picture shows the street’s old alignment hard by the moat and outer defensive walls of the now demolished Bristol Castle; the modern asphalt surface beyond is the modern alignment of Lower Castle Street designed to accommodate modern motorised traffic. The old cobbled bit of what was Lower Castle Street has been incorporated into Castle Park, which occupies the site of Bristol Castle and what was Bristol’s main shopping area until the Luftwaffe razed it during the Blitz in the Second World War.

    Bristol City Council has recently commissioned some works in the corner of the park occupied by the old alignment of Lower Castle Street, as the picture shows. New flowerbeds or grassed areas (it is not yet obvious what they’ll be) have been laid out and the cobbles relaid. So far, so good.

    However, before Bristol City Council sent in its contractors to do the works, the old cobbled bit of Lower Castle Street held what some would regard a significant element of the city’s transport heritage: one of the last set of tram rails visible in any road surface in the city and, as can be seen from the picture, these have now vanished; this leaves just one place in the city where tram rails can still be seen set into the road surface – Bristol Temple Meads station, where the tracks are part of the former tram terminus between the ramp and the old station.

    Perhaps the City Council thinks that ‘heritage’ is something that belongs in a museum. It doesn’t: it’s part of everyday life in a city like Bristol which has existed since Saxon times; and some parts of the city are even older than that. By its vandalism the City Council has shown it is not a fit and proper curator of the city’s history and heritage.

    There’s yet one more place in central Bristol where a tram rail – a single one – can still be seen; it’s in the churchyard of St Mary Redcliffe. During the Second World War a bomb exploded in a nearby street, throwing a rail from the tramway over the houses and into the churchyard, where it remains to this day.

    (I am indebted to Pete Insole for information re Temple Meads.)

  • Bristol Mayor – employment special

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    If you’re a Bristol resident, it cannot have escaped your notice – unless you’ve been on a drink and drugs bender for the last 6 months – that the city is due to go the polls in November to choose its first elected mayor, following an underwhelming referendum result in May 2012.

    My home has been mercifully spared too much attention to date by party animals, canvassers and leaflet drops. In fact, I only recently received my first leaflet, as it happens from Labour mayoral candidate Marvin Rees.

    Marvin Rees
    Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    As usual, the leaflet contains the conventional promises about how wonderful life would be if only the reader could be persuaded to vote for the candidate concerned, including the following about local employment:

    We are living in tough times. I will work to get jobs and growth in Bristol.

    That’s a very laudable and important aim to have for someone seeking election to a major public office in the city on a salary that will probably be in the region of £1,000 a week.

    However, Marvin’s commitment to “work to get jobs” in Bristol is shot totally out of the water by the very end of his leaflet.

    Yes, Marvin’s leaflet is printed in the far-flung Bristol suburb of Forest Farm, Cardiff, providing employment in CF14 in these “tough times”.

    Is it really difficult to get printing done in Bristol? Not really: a quick Google using the words Bristol, UK and “leaflet printing” returns over 2,300 results in a fraction of a second.

    However, Marvin is not alone in supporting employment anywhere but Bristol. The city council, of which Marvin will be in charge if elected, has form here too, as in spending £73,000 with a Manchester firm for logos.

    Update 6/10/12: Yesterday I received a joint leaflet featuring Marvin for mayor and John Savage for the elected Police & Crime Commissioner. This one was printed in an outlying district of Bristol, i.e. Laindon in Essex.

  • Local youngsters get chance to win a Raspberry Pi

    Steve WoodsBristol, Linux, Open Source, Tech

    Although my postal address says Easton, I’ve lived in Bristol’s Lawrence Hill ward for 35 years now and was delighted to see there was a competition to win a Raspberry Pi in the latest edition of Up Our Street, the quarterly regeneration and community matters magazine produced by Easton and Lawrence Hill Management.

    The Raspberry Pi is of course a small Linux computer available at pocket money prices and aimed at young people who wish to learn programming.

    Raspberry Pi in a case

    To be eligible for the competition, entrants must be under 25 years of age and live in either Lawrence Hill or Easton ward in Bristol.

    Entries stating why you would like to win the Raspberry Pi should be sent by email to stacy (at) eastonandlawrencehill.org.uk by the closing date of 30th November and should also include your name, date of birth and address.

  • Gert lush

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Tech

    The story that the fair city of Bristol is to see the roll-out of 4G mobile access has not escaped the eagle eyes of The Daily Mash, as the screenshot below shows.

    Screenshot of Daily Mash news piece

    4G is shorthand for the fourth generation of mobile telecommunications standards and the successor to third generation (3G) standards.

    Urban Dictionary defines ‘gert lush’ as: “The highest form of praise that can be given to anything by a Bristolian.”

    Proper job, says I. 😉

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