The Bristol Blogger

“Bristol City Council still plans to introduce “pay-as-you-throw” rubbish collections - and residents could end up having to buy bags for their waste,” thunders today’s Evening Cancer.

Who’d've thunk it?

Er, anyone who read The Bristol Blogger nine months ago for starters!

In recognition of this, The Bristol Blogger - in a little recycling initiative of our own - will spend the time between now and next February reprinting all its own stories all over again and call it news.

Another big shout out to our friend Farooq Siddique, Evening Cancer columnist and self-styled voice of the Muslim community. In Today’s column Farooq dished up this treat:

For every act or planned act of terrorism, it is the Muslim community that will suffer the consequences.

Really? Do we now have to believe that the consequences of, say, the 7 July 2005 London bombings were suffered primarily by Muslims rather than the 52 left dead, the 700-odd injured plus their families, friends and colleagues, all from a multiplicity of backgrounds?

Is this embarrassing self-pitying drivel supposed to improve community relations? And does Siddique intentionally set out to offend or is he simply an insensitive buffoon? You decide.

Bristol Indymedia is pleased to announce the launch of our Indycycle service.

Indycycle is a way of people re-cycling things they no longer need to people who may have a use for it. It is similar to the ideas of Freecycle.

For example, if you have an old bike you don’t need, rather than throw it out to landfill why not offer it to somebody else who may need it?

Indycycle is a great way of for us to consume less resources, stop things going to landfill and build stronger communities.

The system is based on the ideas of the freecycle movement. However we don’t aim to replace freecycle, but instead use our website to build on the idea and make it even easier to pass your items on.

All items must be offered for free – no exchanges or cash are allowed. The person offering the item gets to clear space without needing to make a journey to the tip while the person taking the item gets something they need for free.

Indycycle allows you to post about an item you don’t want (or are looking for) to the site along with a description, photo of the item and your postcode. This means users can search for and see items they may want but also how far they need to travel to pick it up.

A Bristol Indymedia volunteer said, “We are really excited about the addition to what Indymedia does. We hope it will further build on the many green projects, campaigns and initiatives in the region. We see this project as a natural evolution of what Indymedia does – trying to connect people using democratic forms of media.”

To use the Indycycle system please go to:
http://bristol.indymedia.org/indycycle/index.php

The Blogger wrote a letter recently to Venue in response to an article on local bloggers, which featured this blog. Of course I can’t link to the actual article because they still don’t put their editorial on the internet …

They featured a fairly random selection of blogs although, oddly, the article was fronted by two Tory blogs - James Barlow and Charlotte Leslie - while they found no space for Labour’s Kerry McCarthy, one of the few blogging MPs in the country.

Of The Blogger, they said because it’s written anonymously it wasn’t accountable, which elicited this response:

Thanks for the free plug in the blog article last week.

I was a bit bemused, however, by your claim that the Bristol Blogger “is anonymous and therefore unaccountable…”.

How does that work then? The last time I looked bloggers are subject to exactly the same laws - slander, contempt, copyright etc. - as any other publication such as yourselves.

And let’s be honest, even the dim and overpaid Oxbridge tossers at Carter Fuck and Partners or any other set of fancy city libel lawyers could find out who I am in the space of two phone calls if they needed to.

As for public accountability; while it ain’t perfect, I’m directly accountable to the public through the operation of an open and unmoderated comments system on my blog, which - as far as I can tell - is vastly more accessible and directly accountable to the public than anything offered by yourselves.

However much you ostentatiously publish your bylines and talk about accountability, the truth is that you - like any corporate-owned media - aren’t accountable to the public in the slightest. You’re actually accountable to a group of wealthy and anonymous Northcliffe shareholders aren’t you?

Oh, and when are you going to put your magazine on the internet?

Regards,

The Bristol Blogger

So guess what happened? The self-styled experts on media ethics didn’t print it! So much for their accountability and my right of reply then.

As one door closes another one opens …

The Bristol Blogger is pleased to announce that the ink is now dry on a deal signed earlier today with Bristol United Press, owners of the Evening Post, Western Daily Press and Venue, and the Blogger is now installed as their new and groundbreaking Transport, Regulatory Issues and Political Editor.

The deal, which could be worth up to £300k over the next five years, will find the Blogger writing political leaders and providing in-depth, local political commentary across all BUP titles as well as producing a weekly politics section for the Bristol Evening Post that will include an outspoken opinion column.

BUP Group Editor Mike Norton said: “This is a fantastic appointment for the group. It continues our commitment to bring the very best journalism and writing to Bristol and the West Country and will help to beef up our newspapers’ political coverage.”

The Bristol Blogger said, “This is great news. It’s always been my dream to work for the Bristol Evening Cancer.”

Look out for the Blogger’s first column EXCLUSIVELY in the Bristol Evening Post tomorrow, Tuesday 1 April.

From BBC Bristol …

The BBC is collecting pictures of Bristol that capture the soul of the city.

Why? Because Bristol is getting a new Chief Executive, and she’s new to the city. Jan Ormondroyd will be given the “official guided tour”, but we want to show her what Bristolians think of their city.

What are you proud of? What are you ashamed of?

What inspires you? Infuriates you?

What needs shouting about? What needs sorting?

Take a picture that says: “If she hasn’t seen this, she hasn’t seen Bristol”.

We’ll give Jan Ormondroyd the whole album of Bristol by Bristolians. And we’ll take her on a guided tour of the most challenging views of the city she would never normally be shown.

Interested? Taking Part is Easy

1. Take a picture.
2. Tell us, in a few words, what it says about Bristol
3. Send us the picture. Email or envelope, we don’t mind. Email to : mybristol@bbc.co.uk Post to : Owen Smith, Newsroom, BBC Broadcasting House, Bristol BS8 2LR
4. We’ll put them all on a website and show the Chief Executive the lot….”

It’s Tuesday. Must be time for Cancer editor News Bunny Norton to wheel out his Islamo-looney, Farooq Siddique to give us his highly personal take on Islam in his ‘A Muslim in Bristol’ column.

Strangely enough Norton’s stopped posting Siddique’s column on the Cancer website now, which is an especially nice touch this week as Siddique, in the wake of Ibrahim Mousawi’s visit to Bristol (Blogger passim), has called his column “Our rights to free speech” - which is obviously not a suitable subject for us to freely speak about on the Cancer website.

And what do you know? Siddique’s in favour of free speech. Apparently “It’s essential for the discovery of truth.”

But wait! There’s more … There are in fact limits to free speech. “Of course freedom of speech has never meant the ‘freedom to offend’,” he says as he explains why he thinks the notorious Danish cartoons mocking Muhammed are beyond the pale and should be banned.

Presumably, then, Siddique thinks nobody is offended by his Islamist friend Mr Mousawi and his Hezbollah organisation with its commitment to the destruction of the State of Israel; it’s nasty little anti-semitic TV station; it’s blackshirted Nazi saluting paramilitaries; its random firing of missiles into civilian areas of Israel and its attempts to get a notorious child killer released from prison?

What could possibly offend anyone about any of that compared to a few silly cartoons in an obscure foreign newspaper?

It’s been another big week for Bristol journalism …

“Dream Jobs! How to get them by those who know,” announces the front cover of this week’s Venue.

Sounds good. We could all do with a dream job. Here at the Blogger we’re ready and waiting to take on the chairmanship of the Committee of Public Safety (Bristol Area). So how do we do it?

To answer this burning question, Venue consults none other than “Festival Organiser Emily Eavis”. Although quite what’s so exciting about spending your life producing endless Health and Safety risk assessments so that 100,000 students can listen to Paul McCartney is anybody’s guess.

Emily is, of course, the daughter of Michael Eavis, the former organiser of, er … Glastonbury Festival! So how on earth did she ever get this dream job?

Luckily Venue hacks are on hand to interview Emily and explain this mystery: “There’s no course or qualification as such,” explains Emily helpfully.

“Get some work experience, work on different events, see how other people do it,” she sagely advises.

Oh and also make sure daddy’s a wealthy landowner who can just hand you a job on a plate …

Meanwhile - in this busy week for top journalism in the city - over at Harry’s Place they’ve been taking an interest in the vice-chair of the Bristol branch of the NUJ, Tony Gosling.

Apparently the brilliant investigative hack and public representative for the footsoldiers of our city’s media army in their endless battle to bring us the truth has decided that Wednesday’s earthquake in Lincolnshire was in fact covert underground nuclear testing conducted by the MoD at a secret airbase!!!

Blimey. If this is the best our hacks can do then you begin to see how Cancer editor New Bunny Norton has risen so far. Compared to the rest of them, arriving in town two years ago and completely not transforming the city’s ailing rag by changing its font slightly and introducing a horse and pony page on Saturdays begins to resemble journalistic genius.

Labour transport boss Bradshaw and his press spokeswoman Kate Hartas - who seems to flit from working for the city council to the West of England Partnership and back again on a regular basis without ever troubling the truth a great deal in either role - were quoted in the Cancer on Thursday.

And this week’s line to take on the railway path, it appears, is that nothing has been decided and there are plenty of other options still available. Here’s what the pair actually said:

“Mark Bradshaw, Bristol City Council’s executive member for transport, said: “These plans are only one of several options and are in a relatively early stage.”

“Kate Hartas, spokeswoman for the WEP, said: “The West of England Partnership is considering a range of options for a rapid transit route in east Bristol”

Well that’s a relief then. Officially it looks like there’s a long way to go yet and a range of other route options for BRT are still on the table. Alas not. As the next day the West of England Partnership published a glossy leaflet - dated February 2008 - which clearly tells us:

GBSTS identified four corridors for BRT and these have been assessed in comprehensive studies … From these studies, a route from Ashton Vale to Emerson’s Green has been selected as the most appropriate option for the next line of the network.

In other words these “options” Bradshaw and Hartas are talking up have already been considered and the clearly stated and published position of the West of England Partnership is:

From Temple Meads the route would run alongside the Bristol to Bath cycle path with stations serving densely populated residential centres including Lawrence Hill, Fishponds, Staple Hill and Emerson’s Green

What’s going on here? Why have we had two entirely contradictory statements, apparently from the same organisation, within less than 24 hours?

While we expect no better of Bradshaw, another in a long line of Bristol Labour deadbeats who’ll come out with any old bollocks for short term political gain, the issue of Ms Hartas is, however, of more concern.

As a local government officer she works for us, not the Labour Party, and is required to tell us the truth, not the convenient Labour Party political line of the day. How is it that as the West of England Partnership’s spokeswoman she can openly contradict, on the record in the local press, the organisation’s own clear written position?

Either she doesn’t know the position - which makes her incompetent - or she’s deliberately lying on behalf of politicians - which makes her mendacious.

We have our eye on you Ms Hartas …

Here’s the latest example of the kind of leadership found at the top of our city’s most influential institutions these days …

You might remember that the Evening Cancer, the newspaper Mike “News Bunny” Norton is supposed to be in charge of, couldn’t move fast enough to support the plans to build a rapid transit bus route on the railway path back on 1 February.

“While many … concerns may be valid to the individuals, we have to look at the wider picture. If we are serious about developing a better public transport system for Bristol then we have to accept that it comes at a cost,” the newspaper thundered.

Until, that is, they eventually noticed the major public outcry, the huge petition on the council’s website; the reams of angry letters arriving at the paper every day and finally their own poll where it turned out over 94% of their readers were actually against the scheme.

So what does the big brave News Bunny do next as realisation of this disastrous cock-up dawns? Why he blames everything on his deputy, Rob Stokes, of course!

Over the last few days rumours, quite transparently emanating from Norton himself, have been circulating that the leader in question was nothing whatsoever to do with him. Instead we’re being told the paper’s editorials are also written by News Bunny Norton’s deputies and sometimes even the subs so - get this! - editorial consistency won’t necessarily be there!

How brilliant is that? Our city’s newspaper of record, despite having what’s supposed to be an editor, apparently has no clear editorial line on major issues affecting the city and there’s apparently no communication going on at senior management level. Instead, it seems, various staff just write whatever takes their fancy in editorials.

What are we going to be told next? That the Cancer’s news room cleaner wrote the offending piece? Readers can, however, rest assured there’s no such editorial confusion here at Blogger HQ where even the fucking cat’s aware it’s a stupid idea

Norton meanwhile, presumably in attempt to shore up his shredded credibility on this issue, is now also putting it about that he’s personally decided to run the railway path story from “a different angle”.

So this week we’ve already had a ludicrous report marked EXCLUSIVE claiming that a rare breed of glow worms on the path might mean conservationists can put an end to the scheme.

This is utter bollocks of course. No sane and rational person - which is pretty much everyone in the city who doesn’t occupy a private office at either the Council House or the Lubianka - is going to attempt to stop a major multi-million pound public transport scheme on the basis that it might disturb a small colony of glow worms are they?

Besides, had the Cancer researched the matter a little further, they might have discovered that the West of England Partnership’s BRT Project Board has already done some research on nature conservation issues with regards to the railway path and declared in their big boy builder way that “there are no showstoppers”.

Norton further continued his embarrassing climbdown today with another article finally admitting his own poll found almost 95% of his readers against the plan and quoting key railway path activist Steve Meek at length.

What Norton’s up to here is what’s known as the “reverse ferret”. A term credited to former Sun editor and sick genius Kelvin Mackenzie - the man, who by a strange twist of fate later went on to invent the News Bunny.

Mackenzie, in possibly one of the most sensible pieces of advice ever handed out in human history, used to tell his political team the way to deal with politicians was to “shove a ferret up their arse”.

A strategy, that while generally commendable, could go disasterously wrong in the hands of Sun hacks and end up with that famously “hands-off” owner Murdoch getting personally involved, the odd writ arriving or even the occasional injunction being served.

At this point Mackenzie would enter his newsroom and run around shouting “reverse ferret” while hacks would urgently perform the required Orwellian-style rewrite of the paper’s entire position.