A large workmen’s hut was erected on 30th May 2008 in Grove Wood. We understand from Bristol City Council that the erection of buildings in Grove Wood contravenes this Conservation Area and that the landowner is fully aware of this restriction.
We are concerned that this could be the prelude to further infringements of this protected area - the loss of more trees and the destruction of wildlife habitat. We have posted up a notice on site to inform anyone that may be about to undertake any work that their actions will be recorded and we will provide witness statements to achieve a prosecution.
We are urging all local people to keep a close eye on Grove Wood and ensure that any activities are recorded. Anything you see could be usefully posted to the blog to build up a record of activities.
Indymedia, “Defend Snuff Mills” - read more:
The area of Snuff Mills starting from the Mill up to the first bridge is currently under attack from aggressive ‘woodland management’. http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/newswir
In case you missed it - which is highly likely as the only place it’s advertised is buried in a PDF document in an obscure corner of the city council’s website - there’s currently an “ongoing” public consultation for the West of England Partnership’s TiF (Transportation Innovation Fund) bid.
This is the council’s idea of letting you have your say on their BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) proposals, including the Bristol and Bath Railway Path plans (Blogger Passim), and on congestion charging.
If you have an opinion call 0800 0193235 between 9.00am and 5.30pm Monday - Friday.
Wonder why they’re not promoting this to the public at all themselves? No doubt there’s a simple explanation …
The piece, by ‘Tetchy Steve’, is a response to a talk at the festival pompously billed as The Second Museum of Bristol Lecture: the Historian and the City , delivered by government Heritage bureaucrat Adrian Tinniswood.
Here’s what Tetchy has to say in full:
The trouble with this talk was that the speaker seemed not to recognise any meaningful distinction between history and heritage. Obsessing about the democracy of ‘memory’ and asserting that the role of the historian is to celebrate the rich diversity of the past is just the sort of meaningless and cosy twaddle that gives history a bad name. The cacophony of past voices Tinniswood urges us to celebrate does not, of itself, constitute a history of anything, although it may have some claim on the term ‘heritage’.
Voices are the raw materials from which histories are constructed, but they come to us mediated by issues of power and agency. Sources are one thing; making history is another. Historians recognise and tackle issues of power and agency and try to interpret events as consequences. They are not simply tools of urban social cohesion, keepers of the keys to progressive shared identity, or facilitators of even-handed generalisations. The historian does not go to work each morning to make us all feel good about ourselves by suggesting that all voices are equally weighted and equally valid.
Tinniswood spent some time showing us pictures of Bristol’s architecture and urging us to consider it not only ‘wonderful’ and something with which to collectively identify, but somehow untainted by past associations with grandiose self-congratulation. To consolidate this ‘Idea’, he introduced a few cheap hits against the architecture of fascist and stalinst authoritarianism. Yes, that’s right; Bristol’s architecture is smaller. Yet to suggest that Charles Dyer’s pompous neo-Grecian Victoria Rooms are somehow unconnected to the promotion of an elite-led civic vision and that they should be read without any reference to the uneven power relations encoded in their design is just plain daft. Or rather, it’s unhistorical.
Rather than introduce a single challenging notion about the relationship between the Historian and the City, Tinniswood’s objective appeared to be the construction of a bland intellectual forum in which legions of happy Bristolians, undivided by class, ethnicity or gender, might cohesiviely celebrate their heritage and identity in a blissful cacophony of unmediated joy. Dare we hope that this is not also the objective of the new Museum planners who sponsored his talk?
Stop the Gentrification of Central Bristol
By Roger BRHG
Saturday 12th April: Protest Against Gentrification of Central Bristol
11.00am Albany Green, St. Pauls and 2.00pm Broadmead (Centre)
Bristol is undergoing massive attacks on our free spaces and culture by property developers and their friends in the City Council. Across the city green spaces, pubs, clubs and amenities are being closed and sold off with little consultation with the communities affected.
So if you oppose the…
* Threat of closure of the clubs and pubs on Stokes Croft (Clockwork, Lakota, Blue Mountain, Junction)
* The threatened sell off of Castle Park to the developers
* The loss of playing fields and green spaces city-wide
* The ‘private streets’ of Cabot Circus
* The dispersion orders on College Green
* The removal of the Bristol-Bath cycle path
* The loss of pubs and meeting spaces in our communities
On Saturday 12th April there will be street protests against the gentrification of Central Bristol. There will be two meeting points:
11.00am Albany Green, St. Pauls: Join the ‘Bristol Space Invasion’ Carnival Parade as part of a europe wide weekend of action against the privatisation of public space
Joining with…
2.00am Broadmead (Centre): ‘Save Stokes Croft from Gentrification’ party parade going to College Green
After the parades come along to Bristol Space Invasion Autonomous Zone featuring Art, performance, cinema, open-mic and live music - ALL FOR FREE! - Call 07528 953 230 or 07591 631 230 on the day for details of precise location.
Please show your opposition to the destruction of our places, spaces and culture, before its too late.
It all started so well, with Charlie Bolton’s original motion getting beefed up by a Lib-Dem amendment which he accepted. Railway Path supporters cheered and clapped. It looked for a few moments like we were finally laying the ghoul of BRT to rest.
But then came Labour’s wrecking amendment which got through with Tory support. The voting was 33 for, 30 against (all Lib-Dems and Charlie Bolton) and 2 abstentions (both Tories I think, presumably the ones who recognised what a sordid business it was).
The Labour amendment is another example of Bradshaw’s weasel words, seeming to be pro walking and cycling but effectively keeping the door open for future bus rapid transit. But instead of using the Evening Post as his gullible mouthpiece this time he used Terry Walker, who almost seemed to believe that he was offering us something better.
The full resolution is as follows -
“Council notes the strength of feeling expressed by the citizens of Bristol against the possible shared use by rapid transit of the much loved Bristol-Bath cycle path.”
“Council further recognises that walking and cycling are vital components of the strategy to encourage more sustainable and healthier travel behaviour in our city.”
“While fully recognising the vital importance of improving public transport, Bristol City Council will oppose route proposals which undermine the current and future expansion of walking and cycling in Bristol, and, in particular, will oppose any threat to the current or future use of the Bristol to Bath cycle path.”
“Council requires further information about the various route options, including those on roads and for these to be the subject of full public consultation.”
“Council fully supports the Executive Member for Access & Environment in making these views known to the West of England Partnership.”
The weasel words are “undermine” and “threat” - who is to say if a route proposal “undermines” walking and cycling or “threatens” the Railway Path? Why, the Council of course. So they simply decide that a route proposal won’t “undermine” cycling and walking and that it isn’t a “threat” to the Railway Path and away they go with BRT on the Path, or anywhere they like.
Please note moderated comments were for 1 April only.
Oh. And our man wandering around the Council House not doing very much passed the press office earlier and says Bristol City Council are preparing a press release about the path this very day … Ho! Ho! Ho!
Very rare moving pictures of Bristol (UK) filmed 80 years ago. A world in which old cars, buses, lorries and motorcycles share the roads with trams and a surprising number of horses and carts. A charabanc and even a hand-pulled cart are glimpsed. Policemen direct traffic, women exhibit the ‘flapper’ look, men wear hats or caps. Clips feature The Centre, Corn Street, Bristol Bridge, Park Street, The Docks, Bedminster Bridge, Redcliff Hill, and Ashton Swing Bridge.
Created for electricdecember.org 2002, pupils from Luckwell Primary School were invited to interview local people about their memories of the Wills tobacco factories in South Bristol (UK) - once the largest employer in the area. Using contemporary and archive photographs, I created this online story based on those recollections.
“I was at a party talking to a woman whose best friend’s flat mate’s sister knows someone who works somewhere not unadjacent to chief Bristol City Council transport officer, Colin Knight.
“She was saying that Knight and his team are currently working night and day to come up with an alternative to a BRT scheme that’s not on the Railway Path.”
And another Labour councillor jumps ship and rejects their own transport boss’s BRT plan for the Railway path …
This time, after only 40-odd years in the Labour Party, Labour’s Lawrence Hill councillor, Brenda Hugill finally manages an entirely sane, rational and commonsensical view on something.
“The people of Lawrence Hill are overwhelmingly against this proposal which seeks to destroy one of the few amenities they have. We have already seen the community divided by the M32 and the inner ring road. Now is the time to stop carving this area up.”
Brenda’s joined in her independent media photocall by Easton Councillor Faruk Choudhury and Bristol West PPC Paul Smith.
Smith is once again flogging his tired “This BRT plan’s got nothing to do with the Labour Party, honest guv” line, telling, what he hopes must be some very credulous readers, “The Path has been put under threat by consultants working for the West of England Partnership.”
As if.
Maybe Paul’s secretive consultants entered Bristol under the cover of night in order to evade all known authorities as well? And perhaps they drew up their evil, secret BRT plans using the blood of virgins on parchment made from the skin of innocent socialists from a top secret cave hidden somewhere deep beneath the Clifton Gorge too? And maybe these plans were then passed, via a complex network of agents sworn to secrecy, to those shadowy bureaucrats-of-the-night at the West of England Partnership?
Alternatively it could be that the consultants were invited by our local politicians to draw up the plans on their behalf because that’s how the system actually works.
