Aurea Mediocritas

Back To The Future?

2011-12-04T22:34:00.003Z

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Looking back over the last 52 weeks, and using the Dow Jones index of the New York Stock Exchange as a guide, it is possible to track in broad strokes the effects of the Sovereign Debt Crisis on that crucial stock market.

The chart above (which indexes the Dow Jones based on the week of 19th September 2011 as 100) starts in November 2010 just as the 85 billion Euro bailout of Ireland was agreed accompanied by the toughest budget in the Irish Republic's history. This action itself followed on from an E110bn Greek bailout in May 2010 also accompanied by austerity measures. Following the rescue of the Irish banking system we saw the Dow Jones steadily climb until mid-February 2011 to the first of three market peaks, each of which turned out to be shortlived.

A further bout of market pessimism, despite the EU agreeing to the setting up of the E500bn European Stability Mechanism to replace the temporary European Financial Stability Framework in 2013, sees the market decline again in March.

A second peak in the Dow Jones is reached in late April, but once again Eurozone worries, with the Portuguese government admitting it cannot deal with its finances without EU help (resulting in a E78bn bailout in May) sees the market drop and economists also begin to talk about Greece being forced to leave the Eurozone.

However, the market begins to recover for a third time as new austerity measures are imposed upon the Greeks, despite huge levels of civil unrest, accompanied by the EU agreeing a second E109bn bailout. The market reaches a third peak in July.

But the respite is short-lived as August brings further doubts about the ability of the Greeks to remain in the Eurozone, and, again, opinion begins to be voiced as to whether it would be better if Greece defaulted, as concerns about contagion in the sovereign debt market lead to yields increasing on Spanish and Italian bonds.

An announcement by the European Central Bank that it will buy government bonds does not prevent a severe drop in the Dow Jones which is followed by a period of doubt and uncertainty with the market seeing alternating triple-digit falls and rallies.

Eventually, in October, a certain degree of bullishness settles into the market that the worst of the crisis is over, as an E130bn bail-out of Greece combined with a partial voluntary default on some private sector debt is agreed. This is accompanied by the appointment of an unelected technocrat to power in the cradle of democracy. A similar technocratic appointment in Italy, seen as the next domino in the bail-out stakes, accompanied by yet more austerity, sees the Dow Jones climb by some 14% before dropping back a little over the last week or so.

After a year that has saw three separate peaks, with the last followed by a major decline into a period of intense market volatility, there are those who suggest that the recent rally in the Dow Jones will be sustained - that the worse is over.

This scenario sees the Eurozone area experiencing a relatively moderate recession, and the UK and US a few years of moderate growth, but that the BRICs and other emerging nations will soon pull the World Economy back to the levels of growth experienced pre-crisis.

That might be a little optimistic.

Because we may have been here before.

Below is the same chart as above but I have now added a second set of data. This too is for the Dow Jones Index but this time covering the 52 week period up to the week of 28 April 2008 (with the week commencing 19th February 2008 set at 100).

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This time the chart begins in April 2007 by which time concerns about the subprime mortgage lending market in the United States were beginning to have major effects. By June, Bear Stearns announced the failure of two of its hedge funds and soon after the Dow Jones reached it's first peak in before declining. The hedge funds' collapse was seen as an intensification of the subprime crisis rather than something deeper, however in August the European Central Bank stepped in to offer liquidity to banks.

The Dow Jones then began to creep up again, reaching a new, second peak, and its highest ever recorded level of over 14,000 in October. But by this time the UK had seen its first run on a bank since 1866 as customers queued around the block to get their cash out of Northern Rock whilst banks like UBS and Citigroup now announced $3bn losses to subprime, with Merrill Lynch reported to have exposure of almost $8bn.

Nevertheless, perhaps buoyed by the IMF forecast of only slightly reduced World Economic growth of 4.8% in 2008 followed by 5.1% in 2009, the Dow Jones peaked for a third time in early December.

However over the Christmas period and into January, as worries about liquidity and the subprime exposure of individual banks increased, the Dow dropped by over 10%. This did not prevent Wall Street from awarding itself $32 billion in bonuses of course.

Just as now, there then followed a volatile period in which the market seemed to change direction depending on conflicting news headlines and/or pure speculation. Increasing commodity prices (Oil had been forecast to drop in price by 20%, but would instead increase in price by almost 50% by July) added to the mix, whilst the Federal Reserve reduced interest rates to 3.5%, and then, a week later, to 3%. Meanwhile in February, the nationalisation of Northern Rock by the British government was finalised.

A key moment came on the 11th March, when the share price of Bear Stearns collapsed. After a weekend of frantic negotiations a company that had a market value of $18bn a year previously was sold to JP Morgan for $1/4 billion.

Just as in November 2011, the apparent resolution of a problem with an insolvent entity (for Bear Stearns read Greece), seemed to calm the market. Over the next nine weeks, the Dow Jones steadily rose, even after the IMF published its Global Financial Stability Report estimated potential losses due to the crisis at $945 billion. By the end of April, the nine week rally saw the Dow Jones hitting the 13,000 level again, which although still short of the 14,000 it had hit in October, seemed a good indicator that the global economy - and the financial system - would soon return to business as usual.

Comparing the two 52 week periods, the track of the Dow Jones show, in both cases, three separate peaks, followed by a decline. There then followed a period of volatility, followed by a "recovery" when it was felt that the worse was over and the "bad apple" problem (Bear Stearns, Greece) had been resolved.

The difference is that for 2008, we now have the benefit of hindsight, and we can look back at 2008, and see what happened next.

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What came next, was, of course, the nationalisation of the US government-chartered mortgage institutions colloquially known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the nationalisation of RBS, the $700bn US government asset purchase system, the bailout of AIG, etc, etc, etc.

From a level of 14,000 in October 2007, the Dow Jones dropped to 6,600 by March 2009. Similar effects were felt on Stock Markets around the globe as $50 trillion worth of assets were destroyed. The effect in the real economy saw millions made unemployed as the world experienced its first year of negative growth since the end of World War II.

The OECD countries saw a drop of almost a trillion dollars in private fixed investment between the beginning of 2008 and the end of 2009. In the UK, by the first quarter of 2010, GDP had dropped by £18.6 billion with over £10 billion of fixed investment lost, while personal spending saw a decline of over £8 billion as people tightened their purse strings.

In response, politicians have inflicted austerity cuts on those least culpable whilst many of those individuals and corporations who benefited most in the years of boom continue to take advantage of tax loopholes to avoid paying taxes of between £35-£220 billion per year in the UK alone - tax revenues that could otherwise protect frontline services like healthcare, education, and welfare.

The fact that the Dow Jones in 2011 has unerringly retraced the ebbs and flows of the Dow Jones in 2007-08 does not in itself mean that we are about to have a global recession as we had in 2008/09. Past performance is, after all, no guarantee of future performance.

But there is a feeling amongst many that the financial crisis further revealed the underlying weaknesses of the current financial system that already been exposed by the Asian banking crisis and the default of Russia in the late 90's. It has demonstrated the unsustainable nature of a global economic system in which massive trade imbalances are sharpened by private consumption. Private consumption that, due to wage repression, is itself reliant on debt creation fueled by massive credit transfers from producer countries and historically cheap interest rates.

The response to the $1.4 trillion subprime mortgage shock of bailing out the banks has merely served to transfer an unsustainable debt problem from private banks to the public sector where it has exacerbated an existing problem caused by politicians caught in the trap of promising both low taxes AND decent levels of public services. In comparison to subprime, the combined sovereign debt bill of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain is in the region of $4.8 trillion, and financial institutions are placing bets on the yields from government bonds for the PIIGS just as they did on mortgage backed securities and their derivatives in the subprime mortgage sector.

It now seems that because major reforms to the global banking system have largely failed to materialise, allowing banks and other financial entities to continue with business as usual, it is likely that another global recession, one potentially even more devastating then the first, may be about to hit the world's economy.

Hydra Bookshop - opening Saturday 26th November

2011-11-18T10:43:00.000Z

http://www.hydrabooks.org/

The Hydra Bookshop will open on

Saturday 26th November 2011.

'The Hydra' is a bookshop and coffee shop by day; event space and meeting place by night situated at 34, Old Market Street (BS2 0EZ). We have a warm inviting event space suitable for groups of up to 25. As a community bookshop we aim to support local groups by creating a space were your publications can be sold, with a percentage going to maintaining the bookshop. Run by local people as a workers' co-operative, the shop grew out of the Bristol Radical History Group and similar networks across the city.

There will be an opening week of events organised by Bristol Radical History Group. The details will appear in the Events Calendar on the website shortly

Trojan Horses

2011-11-10T21:54:00.004Z

Last Wednesday (2nd November) I watched the early evening news on the BBC which described how the Greeks were being difficult about accepting a deal that will “halve their debt”. The BBC made it very clear how unreasonable the Greeks were being for looking this apparent gift horse in the mouth. A similar theme continued in the Guardian the following Monday (7th November);

“Greece received a €110bn bailout in May 2010 with the latest aid package writing off half of the country's €360bn debt load.” describing the latest aid deal as “a €130bn bailout package.”

Sounds like an offer you couldn't refuse doesn't it? (And we all know the unpleasant horse experience linked to that phrase).

The Greek people, having themselves been the provider of a dubious gift horse in the past, are perhaps more able than most to perceive the need to be weary of such apparent largesse.

Which is why our friendly neighbourhood Franco-German “kingmakers” made it clear to the Greek Prime Minister that any attempt to ask the Greek people for their opinion should be abandoned – politicians tend to only support referenda when they think they will get the answer they want.

Greek sovereign debt is in the region of 350-360 billion Euros (£300-310 billion). If there really was a 50% write-off (or “haircut”) on all Greek debt then we should see 175-180 billion Euros wiped off the Greek debt mountain. This would bring the Greek debt to GDP ratio down from a unsustainable 157%, to a more manageable 79% - a level of debt lower than that of the UK, Germany or France (but not below the level of Spain, another “troubled” country, with sovereign debt levels at only 68% of GDP).

Yet, according to the Debt Sustainability Analysis leaked to the press during the recent Euro summit, IF the “ungrateful” Greeks accept the terms of the new “bailout” deal, AND assuming there are no other shocks to the economic system, AND if other proposals go according to plan including even more austerity measures, privatisations, and reductions in Greek sovereignty, they might, just might, be able to get their debt down to 130% of GDP by 2030. A level of debt greater than that carried by Italy at 120%, which the same BBC programme described as very worrying and an indication that Italy might be the next sovereign state in the firing line.

Obviously, something doesn't add up. The most obvious questions that might spring to mind are:
1) How come a deal to “halve Greek debt” doesn't?
2) Why, if Greece has now had two debt “bailouts” totalling 240 billion Euros, is Greek debt actually getting higher rather than lower?

As we will see, those behind the new bailout know that it only provides, at best, enough funding for a E26bn reduction in Greek debt - a 7% reduction not 50% - and even this depends on the level of take-up of a haircut that is only voluntary because of fears regarding the stability of the financial derivatives market.

Unfortunately, there is no simple way to explain why the bailouts don't do what they say on the tin, so I have split my attempt at an explanation into six hopefully more digestible chunks.

Part 1 Where we learn that not all debt is created equal.

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A closer look at the components of Greek sovereign debt allows us to roughly calculate that the Greek sovereign debt includes somewhere in the region of 150-160 billion Euros worth of debt in the form of bonds and loans owed to official agencies including the EU (E47bn), IMF (E18bn), the ECB (at least E45bn), other European central banks (about E13bn), legacy loans from the Bank of Greece (E6bn) and other bilateral/special loans. None of this “official sector” debt, it appears, will be subject to the 50% haircut.

That leaves about 200 billion Euros worth of privately held sovereign debt, including debt held by Greek and Cypriot commercial banks (E60bn), foreign commercial banks (E30bn), sovereign wealth funds (E25bn), public sector workers' pension funds (E30bn) and other private sector institutions.

A 50% reduction on this would see the overall Greek debt reduced by about E100 billion (30%) and, indeed, E100 billion was the figure used by the (now ex-) Greek prime minister in a speech to his party group last Thursday (3rd November) as he tried to convince his audience that the decision as to whether the Greek government would hold a referendum was one for the Greeks alone despite the fact that everybody knew that Merkel and Sarkosy had already said Nein/Non!

In fact, the final reduction is likely to be considerably lower than the E100 billion referred to by Mr Papendreou.

Part 2 Where we learn it's not just what you owe but how much you have to pay for it.

Despite all the headlines about the overall level of Greek sovereign debt, the immediate problem for Greece is the rising cost of servicing their debt, coupled with the fact that too much of the borrowing is over a short term period.

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Some of Greece's current problems have been forced upon Greece by a market that has become more risk aware (as recently as 2009, the level of Greek debt as a percentage of GDP was still lower than it had been some 7 years previously), other problems are self-inflicted - such as the largest shadow economy in “western” Europe (at some 28% of GDP) with high levels of tax avoidance and evasion badly impacting upon the level of tax revenues collected.

As with politicians in almost every developed country, Greek politicians have promised to deliver the public services the electorate demands, whilst being unwilling to collect the tax revenues needed to pay for them.

The net result is that Greece has borrowed from the market and as the level of Greek debt has risen, so the cost to the Greek government of paying for that debt has increased which means the Greek government has increasingly been forced to borrow on shorter terms from the market because the cost of borrowing short-term is (usually) cheaper (because the investors are only committing their funding for a shorter, and thus, theoretically, less riskier, period of time).

This has a consequence in an increase in the frequency that the Greek government has to go to the market looking for “new” borrowers in order to “rollover” (ie. re-borrow) significant portions of its debt.

Because markets have (belatedly) become more risk conscious, increasing concerns about the ability of Greece to repay its debts have caused the price of Greek bonds to fall in order to sell thus forcing up the cost of borrowing for the Greek government even more.

This, in turn, forces the Greeks to borrow on even shorter terms (forcing them to “rollover” their debt ever more frequently) and at ever higher rates of interest (increasing debt interest payments and reducing the ability of the Greek government to reduce its deficit) - in other words, the Greeks are stuck in a Catch 22 situation, with their debt levels and interest payments spiralling out of control.

Therefore, part of the plan to “rescue” Greece is not just to reduce the overall level of debt via a 50% “haircut”, but also to encourage bondholders to agree to swap their short-term bonds for longer bonds with maturities of, if possible, 30 years at lower market rates than those available via the bond markets. This would reduce the frequency of Greek sovereign debt “rollovers”, relieving pressure on Greek government finances (and reducing the impact of a negative or “bear” market).

Overall, the deal will have the effect of reducing the impact of a negative market on Greek government finances by removing the need for the Greeks to repeatedly go to the market to rollover their existing debt, which in turn may help to stabilise the cost of Greek borrowing.

Part 3 Where we learn that insurance is not always worth the paper it's written on

However, the proposed 50% “haircut” and bond swap programme referred to above is intended to be voluntary which has major implications in terms of reducing the debt burden.

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The reasons for the Eurozone deal-makers wanting the debt holders to agree to a voluntary haircut rather than a forced haircut is to avoid triggering Credit Default Swaps (CDS). CDS are essentially a form of insurance against the very thing that is happening here – the potential for the seller of a bond to experience a credit event and default on all or some of their payment obligations. Therefore it would seem the most obvious course of action would be to force a 50% partial default, triggering the ability for the bond holder to claim on the CDS to recover their investment. After all, isn't that what insurance is for?

The problem is that there are major concerns about the ability of the CDS market to cope with a sovereign default, even a partial one by a relatively small country, an economy that only accounts for a tiny percentage of Europe's GDP – many senior figures in the finance industry recall how, after the Lehman Brothers collapse in September 2008, it became clear that the insurance giant AIG was exposed to tens of billions of dollars of payments for CDS due within weeks without the ability to pay them. Having allowed Lehman Brothers to fail, the officials concerned were so panicked by the potential knock-on effect of a failure in the CDS market, that they reversed their policy of not using taxpayers funds to bail-out private companies, and bailed out AIG.

As of November 4th, 2011, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) held details of over 4,400 live single-name CDS contracts directly referencing Greek government debt with a Gross Notional of $74 billion. Many CDS experts have insisted that the headline figure worth noting is the much smaller Net Notional ($3.7bn) and that the problem with AIG was because it had a high Net Notional unlike Greek CDS, but, in the end, it all comes down to levels of trust. In a largely unregulated market nobody really knows what sort of chain reaction might be sparked by the triggering of the insurance supposedly provided by CDS.

The simple fact is that many in the financial industry and in the political realm are scared stiff of the very insurance system meant to guard investors against credit events like a Greek default.

So, rather than trigger the CDS, the deal will look for a voluntary haircut from the private sector even if that means that the potential reduction in Greek debt will be considerably lower than might otherwise have been the case.

Part 4, Where we learn that you can only have the haircut you're willing to pay for.

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Back in May 2010, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund funded a E110 billion package to “rescue” Greece, by providing it with the funds to meet its obligations for 2010-2012.. The IMF pledged E30 billion, with the EU offering E80 billion provided by the other Eurozone countries.

Of the E110 billion, approximately E10 billion was allocated to recapitalise (“bailout”) those Greek banks most affected by the debt crisis.

So far E65 billion of the funding has been disbursed in 5 payouts between May 2010 and July 2011 – E18 billion from the IMF, and E47 billion from the EU supplied by the Eurozone taxpayers including Germany (13.5bn), France (10bn), as well as the Italians (E9bn) and Spanish (E6bn) who might be considered to have enough problems of their own. Included in this total is E3.5 billion that has gone directly to recapitalise the banks.

Of the other E61.5bn disbursed, most of this has gone to meet the E43bn Greek deficit for 2010 and 2011 which included E27.5bn in debt interest payments to the holders of Greek debt (including payments on the loans provided as part of the bailout package itself).

The next EU/IMF payout of E8bn is due to go to Greece as soon as it accepts the terms of the latest bailout package. This left E37 billion still in the pot (including E6.5bn earmarked for bank recapitalisations) however this has been reduced to E34bn after Slovakia declined to take any further part, and Portugal and Ireland also themselves became recipients of bailouts.

However, by July 2011, it had become clear that the first “bailout” had failed to reassure the market about Greece's problems, leading to a second proposed E109bn “bailout”, subsequently increased to E130 billion on October 26th..

Of this new funding pot of E130 billion, some E30 billion will be made available for more Greek bank recapitalisations. Added to the E6.5bn left over from the recapitalisation pot for the first bailout, this means that E36.5 billion is available to prop up the banks directly.

Another E30 billion will be made available as “sweeteners” to encourage existing private sector bondholders (including banks) to swap their existing short-term bonds at a 50% haircut for longer term bonds maturing in up to 30 years.

That leaves E70 billion, along with the remaining E27.8 billion from the first bailout for a total of E97.8 billion to keep the Greek government solvent over 2012-2014.

Over that time period, the EU/IMF/ECB “Troika” who are now effectively governing Greece, predict that the Greek government will actually run a primary balance surplus of E14bn.

However, after allowing for the Greek debt interest payments which total E49bn over the same period, the surplus turns back into a deficit of E32.7bn, to which must be added another E2.3bn due from the failure to meet the deficit target for 2011 When this deficit is added to the E6.5bn of arrears that the Greek government owes to hospitals, local government, state bodies, social security funds etc, that leaves roughly E56bn available for the 50% “haircut” that was supposedly going to halve Greek sovereign debt.

Part 5, Where we learn that the 50% haircut....isn't

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The Institute of International Finance, the organisation negotiating of behalf of many of the banks as to how the new bailout should work, estimates that there is some E150bn of the E200bn private sector owned Greek sovereign debt due to be rolled over in the 2012-2014 time period. It is this debt that will be eligible for a voluntary haircut and bond swap.

Back in July, the IIF estimated that the offer of a 21% haircut and swap to longer-term bonds would be taken up by some 90% of private sector bondholders, holding E135bn of Greek debt. The IIF proposal provided four options for bondholders, only two of which included the haircut, with a result that the overall reduction of Greek debt would actually have been just 10% of the E135bn at E13.5bn.

However, the value of the bond held by the institutions who actually signed up to the original deal would appear to have been closer to E112bn – meaning that the plan would only have seen Greek debt reduced by about E11-12bn. It is easy to see why the EU and IMF were less than impressed by this proposal and instead insisted on a bigger haircut of 50%.

If the same number of private sector bondholders are willing to accept the 50% haircut (with the added incentive of the E30bn of sweeteners referred to earlier) the cost of the haircut will be the E56bn identified earlier. Given, however, that the E30bn of “sweeteners” to encourage private sector involvement will subsequently be added to the Greek debt, the net change will, in fact, be E26bn or 7% of Greek Debt.

This assumes of course that all of the private sector bondholders who were willing to take up the July deal with a 21% haircut that became 10%, will sign up for the October deal with its larger 50% haircut that is really a 23% haircut.

In other words, it would appear that of the E240bn of taxpayers' money that have gone to “reduce” the Greek sovereign debt, only E56bn at most will actually be available to buy bonds at the haircut price of 50%, leading to a gross reduction in Greek debt not of 50% but of 7%.

However, financial industry scuttlebutt is that only 60% of the private sector bondholders are supportive of the latest "50% haircut" deal and thus the likely outcome due to the “voluntary” nature of the haircut is a debt reduction of just E15bn or just over 4% of Greek sovereign debt.

Part 6 Where we emphasise that Greece has not been bailed out

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This is not a bailout of Greece.

A real bailout of Greece might be looking at a moratorium on debt interest payments (which will see the Greek government pay out over E76bn over 2010-2014), it might look at underwriting longer term Greek private sector bonds encouraging holders of short-term bonds to swap into them to reduce the rollover effect.

In return the Greek government might have been tasked to agree binding targets to collect the taxes avoided and evaded, often by many of its wealthiest citizens, and then investing the additional revenues thus collected (in the region of E25bn/yr) into modernising and “greening” Greek public infrastructure and services, creating jobs rather than imposing austerity measures that destroy jobs often by abandoning infrastructure investment and reducing key services.

As in the UK, austerity has served to stifle the Greek economy forcing it into recession, killing off revenue generation, and creating social conflict.

This isn't a bailout of the Greek economy, it is a bailout of banks and other financial institutions - a Trojan Horse in which at least E190bn of the E240bn “bailouts” will go to compensate banks and other financial institutions in order to prevent them from forcing Greece to default on the loans that those same institutions willingly lent to Greece.

If banks continue to be compensated by the taxpayer for making “bad loans”, bad loans are what they will continue to make.

As a result it seems increasingly likely that this Greek tragedy will now be played out again in a much larger Roman arena – with the implication that Greece could merely have been playing the Bear Stearns role to Italy's Lehman Brothers.

The financial sector has become an end in itself and whole economies are being devastated to serve it (and pay for its mistakes), rather than the financial sector serving those economies in order to improve the general condition of the populace as a whole.

The road to serfdom, indeed.

2011-10-25T12:37:00.000+01:00

TRANSPORT IN BRISTOL :

THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE

A Presentation and Debate : Open and free to all

Bristol Civic Society presents

The aim of this event is to debate a transport policy for Bristol that strives to balance the wide range of interests in the city that is deliverable within the legal and financial constraints imposed largely by Central Government. The event will contribute to the Council’s Central Area Action Plan consultation.

Councillor Tim Kent, Cabinet Member for Transport

Bristol City Council

will open the meeting.

Speakers

Peter Mann, Director of Transport Bristol City Council

Robert Sinclair, Chief Executive of Bristol Airport

James Smith, Civic Society Transport Group member

Will give an overview of the current plans for transport in Bristol including the legislative and financial constraints within which transport proposals have to be developed and implemented.

The concerns of local business about the current transport situation - the importance of transport to delivering local economic growth.

A Bristol resident’s perspective - the delivery of the third Joint Local Transport Plan - what the Council should do to limit the impact of traffic growth in the city’s central area.

Following the speakers there will an hour of questions and debate.

Monday 7th November Colston Hall No 2

7.00pm (doors open 6.30pm)

We expect a high attendance, so to ensure entry please arrive in good time.

Bristol High Street survey

2011-10-21T15:20:00.002+01:00

The Council’s Sustainable Development and Transport Scrutiny Commission scrutinises Council performance and influences its policy and decision-making. It’s holding an inquiry in November to examine best practice in supporting local high streets and making them vibrant and diverse places to visit.

The Commission is keen to hear from people about their local high streets as evidence for the inquiry.

The Commission’s chair, Councillor Mark Bradshaw says:

“I’d welcome people’s views on the high streets they use, what they like about them and what can be done to improve them. The information you give will be invaluable to develop the Council’s action plan on retail for the city”.

There has already been a business survey recently carried out in Stokes Croft, Old Market, Christmas Steps/Colston Street, Old City, Park Street and East Street - information from these surveys, which include some of the same questions, will be taken into account.

Residents can give their views at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/highstreetsurvey

There’s also a business survey at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/highstreetbusiness

RESPOND BEFORE 11 NOVEMBER

Beware Banks Bearing Gifts

2011-10-07T20:03:00.000+01:00

In October 2009, the then Greek government of the central-right liberal-conservative New Democracy party were ousted in the general election by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement. When the Socialists looked at the treasury finances they found that their liberal-conservative predecessors had hidden the size of the budget deficit in order to disguise the fact that they were failing to comply with their Eurozone obligations. The new Government found out that rather than the 3.7% claimed, the real deficit was more than three times what the conservatives had said it was, at some 12.5% of GDP (this was in the first two weeks after the election, later the deficit was revised upwards again to 14%) This was hardly surprising because during the election year, the government had, as usual, pulled all its tax collectors off the streets which is apparently the norm for Greek elections (this is one of the contributors to Greece having such low rates of tax collection contributing to a shadow (black market) economy equivalent to about 28% of GDP).

What makes it worse however, was that Greece had repeatedly been warned about providing inaccurate economic data, including by Claude Trichet at the ECB as far back as 2004 in response to revelations about past Greek statistical irregularities

When the Greeks were allowed to enter the Eurozone as a late comer in 2001 it was known even then that they were massaging their debt and deficit figures. The German Chancellor at the time Gerhard Schroder has since admitted as much but perhaps he was too pre-occupied with Germany heading towards an economic downturn and itself in danger of missing budgetary targets, and thus didn't ask too many questions.

"Probably the Greeks tricked us, but......I could not say to the Greek Prime Minister, 'you are cheating us'" Schroder, March 2011 as reported by David Marsh (author of "The Euro: the battle for the new global currency") .

But here's the real kicker, I quote a 2010 Vanity Fair article by Michael Lewis, a former broker and author of the best selling "Liar's Poker" about his adventures as a bond trader;

"To remain in the euro zone, they [the Greeks] were meant, in theory, to maintain budget deficits below 3 percent of G.D.P.; in practice, all they had to do was cook the books to show that they were hitting the targets. Here, in 2001, entered Goldman Sachs, which engaged in a series of apparently legal but nonetheless repellent deals designed to hide the Greek government’s true level of indebtedness. For these trades Goldman Sachs—which, in effect, handed Greece a $1 billion loan—carved out a reported $300 million in fees. The machine that enabled Greece to borrow and spend at will was analogous to the machine created to launder the credit of the American subprime borrower—and the role of the American investment banker in the machine was the same. The investment bankers also taught the Greek-government officials how to securitize future receipts from the national lottery, highway tolls, airport landing fees, and even funds granted to the country by the European Union. Any future stream of income that could be identified was sold for cash up front, and spent. As anyone with a brain must have known, the Greeks would be able to disguise their true financial state for only as long as (a) lenders assumed that a loan to Greece was as good as guaranteed by the European Union (read Germany), and (b) no one outside of Greece paid very much attention."

This state of affairs began to unravel when the true extent of the Greek deficit was revealed. And the reverberations are threatening to sound the death knell of the Eurozone, and plunge Europe into a second recession dragging Britain and probably the rest of the world down with it.

As Angela Merkel said in Feburary 2010; "it would be a disgrace if it turned out to be true that banks that had already pushed us to the edge of the abyss were also party to falsifying Greek statistics."

The Sins of the Father?

2011-09-09T10:42:00.002+01:00

Police and unemployed marchers clash in Old Market, 1932

In an article for Bristol 24-7 called “Confessions of a failed Bristol rioter” I described the anger my father, a council tenant, felt at the rioting that took place in St Paul's in 1980. He didn't know that his 15 year old son sympathised with the rioters, let alone that he had tried to join them.

Nevertheless, my father was concerned about his son being "led astray" by others, and when I left school (without any qualifications) it was my father who arranged for me to get a "proper job" working as a labourer laying bitumen-sealed felted roofs (a skill which came in handy recently when my garage roof sprang a leak).

It was also my father who later organised for me to attend a computer course, and encouraged me get a part-time job as a postman so that I could still contribute to the family's income (I apologise now to the residents of the Turtlegate Avenue area of Withywood for the poor state of their postal services in the 1980s).

As a direct result of that one course, I ended up working for two very successful IT companies before starting an independent business consultancy and now working as a campaigner for a charity that aims to improve the pedestrian environment (I also occasionally do some political campaigning for my local Green parties).

However, IF a policy that council tenants should lose their homes if a member of the same household was involved in the recent riots had been in place in the 1980's, and IF I had managed to be more "successful" in my efforts to riot as a teenager, then that history would have been very different.

The sins of the son would have been visited upon the father (and the mother and a younger brother and sister) in the form of eviction from their council home, and it is likely that, as a result, the bonds between concerned father and rebellious son may well have been irretrievably damaged.

It is very unlikely that the lesson I would have learnt from the eviction of my family would have been one about the benefits of contributing positively to society – after all I would have just seen how my father, who had contributed positively to society all his life had been rewarded for that lifetime of civility - with enforced homelessness.

Indeed the negative effects would have extended to my wider family because it is likely that my father may well have placed some of the blame with my maternal grandfather (Granfer), who, unlike myself, had been a “successful” rioter in his past.

Most young men, at some point in their life, experience a stage when they rebel against what their father represents. My father stood for law and order and a certain respect for the establishment, along with a belief that the pen would always prove mightier than the sword.

My own developing politics were more radical, less accepting of the existing order, and greatly informed by Granfer’s recalling of his experiences growing up in the 20’s and 30’s in slum conditions in the Old Market area. He felt that often the sword was the only thing that would force those in power to take any notice of those towards the bottom of society.

In 1932, as an unemployed 17 year old, Granfer heard that there was going to be a march to support calls for government funding of “public works” to provide jobs for the masses of unemployed resulting from the Great Depression - and for those jobs to be prioritised to those amongst the unemployed who had failed the “means test” and thus were deemed ineligible for benefits.

A route for this march had been pre-arranged with the police which would see them start from the Horsefair, proceed to Lawford’s Gate and then return via Old Market Street to the Council House in Corn Street where a petition would be handed in.

When the day came, some 200 demonstrators gathered, banners waving, near the Bridewell police station and began to march. When they reached Lawford’s Gate they had grown to some 2,000+ marchers. At this point, somebody in authority decided that the march must stop.

A double row of police, batons drawn, lined up across Old Market Street. When the marchers came face to face with the police, confusion reigned and, inevitably, fighting broke out. A second group of police stationed in a side street charged the crowd trapping some of the marchers.

Many of the marchers armed themselves; a building site nearby provided bricks and scaffolding poles, chunks of coal were taken from a coal cart for use as missiles, even carts loaded with vegetables were cleared as potatoes, turnips and other assorted greens were thrown at the police.

When Granfer returned home, bloodied but unbowed, it was to the hero-worship of his youngest brother, 9 year old Stan. I imagine that others might have been calling for Granfer, his father and mother, his brother and sister, to lose the "benefit" of their council owned home.

The authorities did eventually invest in “public works” in the 1930's – including the building of affordable housing and clearing the worst of Bristol's slums. Granfer found work building the new homes and, eventually, moved into one of them in Knowle West where my mum was born in 1940.

The country was now at war - a war that had its origins in the previous war and the impact of the demands for reparations and debt repayments that followed it. The sins of the fathers were being visited upon the sons.

At the beginning of August 1944, Granfer was in Normandy. Unbeknownst to him, his hero-worshipping younger brother Stan, now 20 and recently married was also in action just a few miles away. Great Uncle Stan was killed in action on the 1st August 1944 near Caen. The story told of his death was that he was killed because the equipment he had been issued with proved completely ineffective against the German tanks attacking his unit.

After the war, Granfer returned to Bristol and bricklaying, this time building many of the houses on the new Hartcliffe estate in the 1950's once again including his own where he would spend the rest of his life, and where he would tell his eldest grandson about growing up in inter-war Bristol. There were no stories about the war – other family members filled in those gaps.

However Granfer's experiences both before and during the war had left him with a intense hatred for the "ruling classes" who he felt had speculated to get rich in the 1920's contributing to the financial crash, and then in the 1930's had completely failed to recognise or prepare for the threat of war, resulting in the lives of British troops being needlessly sacrificed when their equipment and tactics were found to be completely outclassed.

If the council had really wanted to evict the person other than myself who was most responsible for my attitudes and actions during the rioting of 1980, then they would have had to knock on the door of an OAP who had fought for his country, losing his brother in the conflict, and had helped build many of Bristol's homes either side of World War II. .

But I suspect that evicting an old soldier might not have looked good, so instead they would have had to evict my father, the man who did his best to instil respect for law and order into his rebellious son and who felt dismay and anger at the rioting. The man who offered a more restrained counterbalance to the radicalism of Granfer. It is likely that if my family had been evicted from their home, I would have moved even closer to Granfer's views whilst railing against the injustice of my family being penalised for my actions.

But that's what happens when two-dimensional politicians offer simplistic populist responses to complex problems. They produce unsatisfactory and ultimately self-defeating reactions that simply store up further problems which bubble to the surface further down the line, when the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons.

Bristol Independents - 17th September 2011

2011-08-31T20:58:00.001+01:00

Bristol Independents Day

We are asking all of Bristol to join us at the start of British Food Fortnight on 17 September to support Bristol’s Independents and…

Try something local, from somewhere local on Bristol Independents Day!

On the 17th, the Bristol Independents campaign will launch a pilot project highlighting 8 of Bristol’s local shopping areas on recipe postcards featuring ingredients that can be purchased from local shops in each area. There will also be a competition where you can nominate your favourite local food business, and in turn, be entered into a prize draw to win local goodies.

The initiative plans to include many more independent businesses and high streets in the coming months. The 17th is just the beginning of a campaign to support Bristol’s local independent traders!

Associated events and promotions will be announced closer to the day.

Why support local independent traders?

The Who Feeds Bristol? report has revealed:

Bristol has around 180 specialist independent food shops owned by 140 businesses that sell food from which you can cook a meal from scratch (includes bakers).
10 out of 35 wards have no greengrocer.
Half the wards have less than 10 independent food retailers.
Specialist independent food shops are disappearing. They generally offer competitive prices, don’t charge a premium for small volumes and can respond to requests; many buy from local suppliers.

How can I get involved?

Organise a local food event in your area on the 17th, let us know and we’ll include it in our publicity. Otherwise, visit our website (coming soon), take the ‘good food’ pledge and enter our competition.

Contact Jane Stevenson 0117 966 1639

bristol.independents@gmail.com

www.bristolindependents.co.uk

A NOTE ON ALIENATION AMONGST YOUNG PEOPLE

2011-08-14T11:05:00.001+01:00

In response to recent disturbances;

"The events of April 1980 were characterised by the number of young people involved, both black and white, and the feelings of antagonism they have to the police. No serious assessment can be made unless these attitudes are examined.

The society in which we live rules on the basis of consent, it is clear that the authorities do not have this consent as far as large numbers of young people are concerned.

The differences in attitudes between young people and the older generation towards authority, are not so much the oft quoted generation gap, but more a question of the older people having accepted their lack of power, and adopting a mode of existence that does not bring them into conflict with the establishment, some are able to sublimate their lack of power by exerting authority in the family.

Young people experience factors that do not apply to the rest of the population, they first have no independent income and have to rely upon hand-outs from their parents. Inside the family they have no power and have to accept the decisions just or unjust of parents. During their leisure hours they are the objects of criticism and hostility if they fail to conform to the dress and behavioural patterns of the adult world, although they often see the older generation themselves ignorning these standards.

Some young people of course learn at an early age to adopt attitudes that are acceptable to the dominant ideology, they are described as co-operative, normal, well-behaved, decent, etc whereas others who have not learnt this trick are called slow learners, trouble makers, yobbos. The language which we use to describe people is of course very arbitrary, in a military situation the second group of youth would be called fearless, tough, hero, etc, in fact many of the factors which we criticise in the young we would applaud in the police force. Society tends to make judgments on people by the type of clothes they wear, the type of house they live in, the car you drive; it is not surprising that young people who in the main do not possess these status symbols see themselves as quite separate from the rest of the population. To counteract this feeling of separation young people have developed their own culture, their own fashions, their own entertainments and even their own language, in an attempt to establish an identity and hence some form of status, if only amongst their own peers. Part of this culture is the challenging of the status quo and those who protect it.

The police are composed of people who hold the same views as society as a whole on young people, and because of the nature and function of the police force, tend to hold these views in a much more comprehensive form, and deviation from the norm is a threat to law and order and the "standards" of society, the police force is of course able to enforce these concepts by legal force, and their attitudes to young people always commence from the assumption that the police are correct, and the young wrong, often expressed in the phrase "they need teaching a lesson".

The fact that the police force has such powers and wears a uniform makes them indentifiable to the young as a potential enemy.

Crime, of course, does exist, and the function of the police is to prevent and detect it. Young people feel they are more likely to be harassed than are the older generation, this feeling is of course based on experience, and if your skin happens to be black, this applies even more so.

It does not require many incidents of unjustified questioning, heavy handed attitudes, sarcasm, and superior behaviour, for there to be erected a fairly unified concept amongst many young people that such attitudes are universally held by all the police, as in fact they may well be.

It would have been useful to the enquiry to have examined how widespread such behaviour is amongst the police, but it is significant that those in charge of the force in Avon refused to co-operate with us and have not appeared to give evidence or answer questions.

For black youth all the foregoing is multiplied many times, for whatever denials and assurances are made, it is clear that the police hold deep, racist views, which are expressed when they harass black people, and can be clearly seen when a crime is being investigated in which a black person may have been involved. Anyone with a dark skin in such circumstances is fair game for questioning!"

NOTE; The above is a reproduction of Appendix 3 of the report from an enquiry with the following terms of reference "to enquire into the social and economic conditions prevailing in the St Paul's area and to make recommendations which might ensure a level of communal harmony and stability sufficient to minmise the risk of a repetition of anything like the events of April 2nd 1980"

The enquiry team was established with representatives from the Bristol Trade Union Council and members of the local community, and heard evidence at St Werburghs Community Centre from local residents, Bristol City councillors, and other interested parties. Despite two separate invitations the police refused to attend, stating that they had already given evidence to a House of Commons select committee. Avon County Council also declined to take part.

A Brief History of.....BRISTOL'S TRANSPORT WOES – Part One

2011-07-29T12:28:00.005+01:00

The Rise and Fall of Rail Based Transport in Bristol 1824-1941

1) Trains Part 1 (1824-1840) Temple Meads Station – location, location, location.

The first railways in the Bristol area were powered by a combination of horse and gravity, and were designed to transport coal from the South Gloucestershire coalfield to the river Avon. The first, the Avon and Gloucestershire, carried coal from Coalpit Heath and other collieries down to the Avon at Londonderry Wharf (opposite Keynsham) where barges carried the coal along the Avon to either Bristol or Bath. Much of this route is now a linear walk known as the Dramway.

The Bristol and Gloucestershire was also a horse-drawn railway which carried coal from the collieries at Coalpit Heath, Shortwood and elsewhere to Cuckold's Pill (Avon Street Wharf). North of Mangotsfield it used much the same track as the Avon and Gloucestershire before following the route of what is now the Bristol and Bath Railway Path to central Bristol. This railway was opened in 1835.

When plans were first laid for a steam-powered railway line connecting Bristol to London (the first proposals were as early as 1824), there was much discussion as to where the Bristol terminus should be built. Many suggested that it should be near Old Market on the basis that it could make use of the existing railway infrastructure of the Bristol and Gloucestershire.

Another body of opinion suggested a site should be found nearer the City Docks in order to provide direct access to the port so that goods, the real commercial impetus for the railways, could be transferred directly from the railway to the ships - this was the solution taken by Bristol's great commercial rival Liverpool.

However, both options required the reuse of brownfield sites and demolition of existing buildings and structures, which in turn would involve some additional costs. In the 19th century just as today, greenfield sites were usually more profitable to develop than brownfield sites. In the end, ease of development took precedence over ease of inter-connectivity and a greenfield site at Temple Meads on the south side of the river next to the cattlemarket was selected as the Bristol terminus for the Great Western Railway.

As a result, following the opening of the new station the biggest growth industry in Bristol was that of the hauliers as goods were unloaded and trans-shipped by traditional horse and cart between railway and dock. By contrast, in Liverpool goods could be offloaded directly from the railway carriages into the holds of the waiting ships.

It would not be until 1872 that direct connection to the docks was provided with the opening of the first stage of the Bristol Harbour Railway from Temple Meads to Wapping Wharf (including the building of a tunnel under St Mary Redcliffe, the compensation for which allowed the church to purchase land at Arno's Vale for a cemetery). It would be 1906 before the majority of the City Docks would have a direct rail connection by which time the focus for Bristol's shipping trade was moving to Avonmouth and Portishead.

2) Trains Part 2 (1839-1854) The Gauge War - technological brilliance vs commercial pragmatism

As we have seen, there was already a railway line in Bristol before the Great Western Railway was constructed, and like almost all other railway lines in England, it was Narrow Gauge with a width between the rails of 4 foot 8 ½ inches.

Nevertheless, the GWR was convinced, largely due to the arguments of their chief engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, that Narrow Gauge was technically deficient and that a superior 7 foot Broad Gauge should be used by the GWR. The GWR accepted Brunel's arguments and proceeded to use Broad Gauge for its routes. Pretty much everybody else stayed with Narrow Gauge. Bristol and the West would thus plough a separate furrow from the rest of the country and once more the question of interchange was deemed to be of secondary importance.

Meanwhile, in 1839, an Act of Parliament had provided for the building of a 22 mile extension of the Bristol and Gloucestershire railway from Westerleigh to meet the Cheltenham and Great Western Union railway which ran to Gloucester.

The Bristol and Gloucestershire railway line, as we have seen, was Narrow Gauge. The Cheltenham and Great Western Union railway was Broad Gauge. At a meeting in Bristol on 31 March 1840, the now renamed Bristol and Gloucester railway company announced that the new extension would be Narrow Gauge to match the Birmingham and Gloucester railway due to open that same year. Where the new extension met the CGWU at Standish junction, the shared line on to Gloucester would be mixed gauge with shared maintenance and duplicated facilities. Bristol and Gloucester also announced plans to amalgamate with the Birmingham and Gloucester to form the Bristol and Birmingham railway – the merger eventually happened in 1844.

However, on 13 April 1843, it was suddenly announced that an agreement had been reached with the GWR that the entire line from Bristol to Gloucester would, in fact, now be Broad Gauge. Subsequently, Broad Gauge services from Bristol to Gloucester began in 1844. However, services north of Gloucester into the industrial powerhouse of Birmingham and the west midlands remained Narrow Gauge.

The result was chaos. Goods shipped from the west midlands by Narrow Gauge had to be trans-shipped by hand across the platform at Gloucester to the Broad Gauge trains waiting to depart to Bristol. Not only did this cause delays, but frequently goods were lost or damaged during transit. A system designed by Brunel to facilitate the transfer failed for reasons that were never properly identified but industrial sabotage was implied.

Whatever the cause of the chaos, if you were a manufacturer in Birmingham the choice for shipping goods overseas was fairly simple. You could send your goods to Liverpool where the route was entirely Narrow Gauge (thus no need for trans-shipping) and where the railways continued right up to the dockside for direct loading, or you could send them to Bristol, where the change in gauge would mean they had to be trans-shipped at Gloucester before arriving at Temple Meads where they would be trans-shipped again before arriving dockside.

Within a year of opening the entire route from Birmingham to Bristol passed into the hands of the Midland Railway. However, it was only in 1854 that the entire length of the line was converted to the same, narrow, gauge - it appears that conversion was not a priority for the Midland Railway probably because the overwhelming majority of its goods traffic now went to Liverpool not Bristol.

3) Trams Part 1 (1870-1875) – market driven or public service?

Before the 19th century, provincial British cities were small enough that urban transport was not considered to be a major need. The small size of most cities meant that residence, workplace and other amenities were within a short walking distance of each other.

However, as cities began to sprawl into suburbs in the 19th century, the need for efficient urban transportation became apparent. Horse-drawn omnibuses began to make an appearance in Britain in the 1830's but remained beyond the means of most ordinary people due to high operating and maintenance costs.

It was only in the second half of the century, when it was realised that the use of tramlines to reduce friction allowed the same team of horses to pull double the weight (and thus double the passengers per horsepower), that the possibility of cheap but efficient public transport became a possibility. The new horse-drawn trams also provided a step change in the quality of transportation with reduced noise, faster journey times, and a smoother ride in an era when most streets were cobbled.

However, Government legislation still favoured road-based omnibuses over rail-based trams and it would be nearly twenty years before the Tramways Act of 1870 was passed providing enabling legislation for urban tramways, legislation prompted by the success of the Liverpool Tramways Company. Yet again Bristol was having to play catch-up with its commercial rival in the north.

Within months of the Tramways Act being passed there were two private proposals for horse-drawn tramlines in Bristol. One was by a Bristol company, for a tram line connecting Bristol Temple Meads with Clifton and Hotwells. The second, by a London-based company, was considerably more expensive and extensive involving the construction of an entire network of lines at a cost of £120,000 (relative to share of GDP this would be equivalent to about £160m today).

There then followed lengthy debates in the local press and the council chamber about the merits of each scheme. Much of this debate had more to do with ideology than the technical merits of the individual schemes. Essentially there was one body of opinion that insisted that business ventures such as tramways should be run by the private sector responding to market forces in order to reduce the need for public subsidy – whilst their opponents felt that tramways were public services that if left to the private sector would see high fares and/or lowered safety and service standards in pursuit of profit. The debate continues to this day in one form or another.

In the end, swayed by local hostility against the rumoured London speculators said to be backing both schemes, Bristol's councillors decided to build the tramways themselves with the intention of leasing out the operation of the line to the most trustworthy bidder - leaving the council with the option of replacing the operator if it failed to meet the standards expected. Two lines were proposed - one from St Augustine's Parade to the bottom of Blackboy Hill via Perry Road. the second from Old Market Street to Lawrence Hill. Neither would connect to Temple Meads station – and costs were estimated at £14,000.

Unfortunately, almost as soon as parliamentary approval for the project was given, a rise in the price of iron led to a financial crisis and it became clear that the council's funding capabilities would not allow the building of both lines. In the end only a small section of the first line to Blackboy Hill was completed, and the resulting search for a trustworthy operator was a dismal failure.

The council was rescued by a group of local businessman who agreed to lease the existing line for 21 years (they eventually purchased it outright for £8,000 a few years later) provided permission was given to build further lines from Old Market to St George and Fishponds, as well as a link from Old Market to the original line via Perry Road.

Permission was duly given, and henceforth, Bristol's public transport service would be run by the private sector in the shape of the Bristol Tramways Company.

4) Trams Part 2 (1881 to 1910) - a successful Bristol transport story?

Despite the inauspicious start, by 1881 Bristol's tramway had expanded to provide lines to Blackboy Hill, Horfield (Egerton Road), Eastville, St George, Totterdown, Bedminster and Hotwells and was carrying over 6 million passengers per year.

One potential problem was the lack of a single central transport hub. With the obvious focus for a transport interchange - Temple Meads - being perceived as too far from the centre of the city, the less than satisfactory result was the development of three separate tram termini. South Bristol trams stopped at Bristol Bridge, east Bristol trams at Old Market, and north Bristol trams at St Augustine's Parade (which later became know as the Tramways Centre, and then just “The Centre”).

Although tramlines linking the three termini were built, journeys involving multiple trams required the purchasing of separate tickets, and a price premium. The problem of no single city centre public transport hub remains with us today.

Another key event in 1881 was the Bristol Tramways Company signing an agreement with the Great Western Railway and the Midland Railway to have the sole right to provide public hire service at Bristol Temple Meads "the base of all passenger carrying operations in Bristol". The company then leased this monopoly to third party carriage operators before eventually uniting them all into the Bristol Cab Company with the same directors and officers as the Bristol Tramways Company.

This monopoly proved devastating to the tram company's rivals who were providing horse-drawn omnibus services, and within a decade the last two independent omnibus companies in Bristol failed, at which point the Tram and the Cab companies duly merged to formed the Bristol Tramways and Carriage Company (BTC) in 1887. By 1891, the number of passengers carried by the company had almost doubled to 11.2 million.

Free of any real competition, the BTC began to address the increasingly obvious shortcomings of using horse driven trams. The cost of fodder for the almost 900 horses used by the company accounted for 34% of operating expenses, almost the same as the costs associated with it's human workforce. When veterinary fees and stabling were added, costs associated with the horses rose to some 50% of revenues.

The company began to look enviously across the Atlantic, where the success of electric tramways in the United States, especially the Richmond Street Railway opened in 1887, showed that there was the opportunity to both reduce operating costs and improve the effectiveness of tram services.

Across the Atlantic, electric trams had been shown to be clean, quiet and reliable. The ability to use double-decked carriages, with improved speeds and faster turnaround time offered considerable opportunity for cost efficiency savings. The trams had also demonstrated that they were fuel efficient enough to offer both lower operating costs and lower fares despite the considerable capital outlay required for electrifying the line.

One final advantage of particular importance given Bristol's topographical situation was the ability of electric trams to cope with steep gradients.

Convinced of the need to introduce electric trams, BTC began work on the electrification of the Old Market to St George line and its extension to Kingswood (which included some challenging gradients). The line opened on the 14th October 1895 and was a resounding success - schools and factories were closed in east Bristol as people flocked to see the new clean and innovative technology. Over a million passengers used the service in its first four months.

The "improved facilities and lower fares" (fares were lowered by a quarter) led to a public clamour for the conversion of existing lines and the building of new ones elsewhere in the city. An intense period of capital investment followed, and by 1901 the entire network had been electrified involving the conversion of 16.5 miles of existing track and the construction of 11.5 miles of new track. BTC now offered services to Staple Hill, Kingswood, Hanham, Brislington, Knowle, Bedminster Down and Ashton Gate. Later extensions were added up to Filton (1907) and Westbury on Trym (1908) whilst passenger numbers averaged almost 47 million per year between 1906-1910.

Meanwhile, BTC's operating profits, which as a percentage of revenues had averaged 19% in the five years before electrification, now jumped to an average of over 34% for the five years after electrification.

However, hidden beneath the success of the tram, could be found the causes of the tram's eventual downfall.

5) Trams part 3 - (1910-1941) - The cost of capital and market insecurity.

Although the wide distribution of shares in BTC (over 400 shareholders from a wide range of backgrounds but all from relatively prosperous areas of the city) gave it access to capital beyond the means of companies in which ownership was concentrated in the hands of a few directors, nevertheless the capital intensive nature and sophistication of creating an electrified network placed considerable strain on the company's financing.

Between 1895 and 1902, during the period when Bristol's tramways were electrified, the paid-up capital of BTC increased by 400%. On top of this, the effects on investor confidence in tramways of three separate pieces of legislation need to be considered. Firstly, in the original 1870 Tramways Act, a clause gave local authorities the power to purchase privately owned tramways after 21 years (and every 7 years after that). In Bristol, agreement had been reached which meant that this option could not be exercised until 21 years after the extensions to the line completed in 1892. This meant that the council could only exercise its right to buy the tramway in 1913, any takeover before that would have to be by negotiation.

A further development came in 1893 when the House of Lords ruled that the purchase price should be based on the cost of construction less depreciation - with no allowance made for goodwill or profitability - thus reducing the potential price of purchase considerably. This was then followed in 1896 by parliamentary legislation empowering local authorities not only to own tramways but to operate them as well. Within a year five northern cities were doing just that with encouraging results and by 1913, Bristol and Norwich would be the only major English cities which still had privately run tramways.

It was within this context that a row broke out over who should supply electricity for the soon to be electrified tramway. With Bristol having been one of the first cities to undertake electricity supply, the council argued that BTC should contract with them to supply the power for the tramway operation rather than building their own power stations.

BTC refused, insisting that they should have full control over their own power supply. In response, the council set up a Tramways Purchase Committee to look into buying the entire tramways system as per the 1870 act. The dispute continued into 1898, when eventually, under pressure from a Bristol public keen for a cheaper, faster and more efficient tramway, the council eventually backed down. BTC built its central power station on Temple Back next to Counterslip Bridge and directly across the road from the council's own central power station. The private sector versus public sector conflict set in stone.

The end result of this combination of rising capital costs, ongoing disputes with the council, and the possibility of the entire tramway being taken over relatively cheaply, meant that the appetite for further private investment in trams was at a low point. Following a decade at the end of the 19th century in which 14 separate new lines or extensions were completed (as well as the electrification of the entire network), the first decade of the 20th century saw just two further tram extensions - from Durdham Down to Westbury on Trym, and a link from Horfield to the new Bristol Aeroplane Company works at Filton - the latter largely due to the ownership links between the Aeroplane company and the Tramways company. Other less capital intensive public transport possibilities started to look more attractive.

In 1905, the Tramways company purchased a dozen double-decker motor buses for some of its tramway feeder routes. The following year it opened a bus route to Clifton following continued rejection by local residents of tram proposals for the area. As petrol engines became more efficient and reliable, and dis-satisfied with the standard of the buses purchased externally, the company decided in 1908 that instead of investing in tramways susceptible to a council takeover, it would instead invest in construction works at Brislington to produce some 300 motor vehicles (including buses) per year. It was the shape of things to come.

Although the number of passengers carried by the company continued to increase - reaching 63 million in 1916, there was no further extension to the tramway itself after 1908 whilst the trams themselves remained the same basic model used in 1895 with no real further innovation. .

Inevitably, the question of public ownership was raised again in 1913 when a report estimated the value of the tramway at £600k, and that it would produce an annual profit for the city of £37,000 per annum. It noted the increasing use of motor buses but concluded that trams offered the most effective and economic way to provide the travelling facilities required by the Bristol travelling public.

This report added weight to the results of an earlier study produced by the National Civic Federation in 1907 which found that fares in Bristol were 66% higher than for those cities where the trams were publicly owned, whilst staff were expected to work much longer hours for less pay than their public sector brethren.

In the end following a long dispute in the press and parliament, and despite a Parliamentary Act approving the purchase of the tramways and a poll showing a majority of Bristolians in favour of taking the tramway into public ownership, BTC remained a private company after the company insisted on a valuation of £2 million for its tramways and the council subsequently lost its appetite for the purchase with the onset of a recession and then war.

Discussions about ownership would be raised again in 1922, 1929 and 1936 and the indecision and uncertainty about ownership continued to have the effect of reducing the incentives for private tram investment whilst simultaneously preventing public investment. Instead, what limited investment was available for public transport in Bristol went into the expansion of the bus network.

The 12 buses in 1905, had become 44 buses by 1914 (although this compared to 169 tramcars). After World War I, the mix would increasingly be in favour of buses, and the production of Bristol tramcars ceased in the 1920's.

By the 1920's, the tram was no longer seen as a viable alternative to the bus in Bristol. This was essentially confirmed on the 11th January 1922 when proposals to construct a two lane road with a high speed tram link on its central reservation were thrown out when councillors voted in favour of buses rather than trams "to allow complete interplay of all forms of private, commercial and public transport". As a result the ensuing road became one of the first four lane highways in the country when it was opened in 1926 as the Portway.

The timing was significant – in the inter-war period, some 30,000 new homes were built in Bristol the vast majority of them on low density estates expanding out in to the surrounding countryside. With no new tramlines or railways to connect most of these new suburbs, their residents became increasing reliant on bus services as the only source of public transport.

Finally, after decades of uncertainty, on 1st October 1937, the Bristol Transport Act received its Royal Assent, and, for the price £1,125,000, the city council took over the city's tramway undertaking. It then almost immediately began to close the tram routes down, with the Westbury-on-Trym route being the first to go on 7th May 1938. The reasoning was that the bus was now the way forward - trams were no longer considered the most effective and economic way to provide the travelling facilities required by the Bristol travelling public.

As a result, the 1937 Act had also provided for the council to pay £235,600 towards half the cost of replacement bus services and the setting up of a Transport Joint Committee, with representatives from both the Council and the Bristol Tramway and Carriage Company. It would be this body that would co-ordinate Bristol's public transport services – a service entirely based on the bus and known as the Bristol Joint Services.

The planned gradual reduction of tram services was abruptly accelerated in 1941 when a Luftwaffe bomb damaged the central power station on Temple Back. Rather than restoring the electricity generation it was simply decided to abandon the trams services there and then.

The era of rail-based urban transport in Bristol was over – from now on the focus would be on the provision of road-based services both public and private with only local rail services available to offer any alternative to road transport.

Key Sources;
Nichols, Gerry: Public Transport in Bristol 1945-1965 (included in Post-War Bristol 1945-1965 – Twenty years that changed the city, editor Peter Harris, published by the Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, 2000)
Harvey, Charles & Press, Jon: Sir George White and the Urban Transport Revolution in Bristol, 1875-1916 (included in Studies in the Business History of Bristol, editors Harvey and Press, published by Bristol Academic Press, 1988)

Joining up Bristol’s local community energy groups

2011-06-24T17:04:00.000+01:00

Joining up Bristol’s local community energy groups’

Bristol Energy Network and the Centre for Sustainable Energy Present….

A meeting to hear a talk from Dan McCallum, Awel Aman Tawe Community Energy Successes from South Wales and to discuss what community groups can learn from their experiences

* Learn from what other groups across Bristol and the South West about what they are doing to help reduce energy use in their communities

* An opportunity for groups and individuals to share their projects and experiences

* Meet people from other energy groups from Bristol and the South West

* Find out how the Bristol Energy Network and CSE can support your project

Wednesday 29th June 2011 6.30 to 9pm

Knowle West Media Centre, Bristol

Refreshments and light food will be provided.

To book please e-mail Kirsty Mitchel,
Kirsty.mitchell@cse.org.uk
or phone:

0117 934 1400

www.cse.org.uk/events/

www.bristolenergynetwork.org/events

All community groups are invited

The Real Benefits Scam

2010-08-19T20:47:00.001+01:00

One rule for them…….

Last week the Prime Minister gave an interview in which he announced that his government would tackle fraud and error in the welfare system.

“Welfare and tax credit fraud and error cost the taxpayer £5.2 billion a year. That’s the cost of more than 200 secondary schools or over 150,000 nurses. It’s absolutely outrageous and we can not stand for it.”

Recent figures published (pdf) by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show that overpayment to the claimant due to error and fraud amounted to £3.1 billion (or 2.1% of expenditure). Of this £3.1 billion the reasons for overpayment were; claimant/official error £2.1bn and Fraud £1.0bn. Fraudulent claims by “benefit cheats” accounted for just 0.7% of the total benefit bill.

Meanwhile, the same document also tells us that underpayment of benefits accounts for £1.3bn (0.9%).

In other words the amount overpaid to claimants is £3.1 billion but underpayment to claimants many of whom are in desperate need is £1.3 billion which means that if the system was run at its maximum efficiency it might save £1.8 billion per annum.

The Prime Minister also referred to Tax Credits. Figures provided (pdf) by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Custom (HMRC) shows that the amounts overpaid to claimants is £2.1 billion (of which some £460 million was due to fraud). Meanwhile there were errors of some £260m where claimants were underpaid. So again, the actual net gains are £1.8 billion

The Prime Minister’s £5.2 billion - £3.1bn overpaid in welfare benefit, and £2.1 billion in tax credits - apparently only refers to overpayments made to claimants, it is the gross figure not the nett.

Left out is any reference to the £1.6 billion where the government underpaid eligible claimants – unless, of course, the government is only planning to crackdown on errors in its favour and ignore errors that leave vulnerable claimants underpaid?

The actual gain from a more efficient operation of the welfare and tax credit system would be £3.6 billion per annum not £5.2 billion. But £3.6 billion is still a lot of money, to use the Prime Minister's own analogy that is 138 secondary schools or 104,000 nurses and given the size of the deficit he can't afford to overlook any opportunities to reduce that deficit which is, of course, the gap between government receipts and government expenditure.

Of course, the mantra is that in order to make something more efficient you have to give it to the private sector - so the government is planning to recruit private credit references agencies to combat benefit fraud.

This concerns the Information Commissioner who has written (pdf) to the Welfare Reform Minister to request a meeting seeking further clarification from the Department of Work and Pensions in relation to the government’s proposal to use information provided by credit reference agencies to combat benefit fraud.

In his letter the Information Commissioner says “I hope the Government is going to hold to the good practice of considering the data protection implications of policies at the earliest stage”

The reference to the Information Commissioner allows me to mention the fact that back in early 2008, the Information Commissioner forced HMRC to admit the size of the “tax gap” caused by the practice of tax avoidance and evasion by wealthy individuals and large corporations.

This followed publication of figures (pdf) that estimated that tax avoidance was costing the country some £25 billion per annum (£12 billion from large corporations, and £13 billion by individuals).

Eventually, HMRC released an estimate (pdf) that the tax gap due to avoidance, general non-compliance, and non-payment was probably £22 billion per annum but could be as high as £40 billion per annum.

Since then a further revision (pdf) published in March by HMRC estimates that the tax gap across all HMRC administered taxes is £40 billion including £15 billion from indirect taxes, £9 billion from corporation tax and £16 billion from other direct taxes.

This adds up to 8% of the total tax liability (compared to the 2.1% of benefit payments lost to error and fraud). The other two countries that have published figures for tax gaps (Sweden and the USA) calculated tax gaps of 10% and 14% respectively, the latter percentage if applied to the UK would take the tax gap figure up to £70 billion.

Fraud is, of course wrong. But, as has been explained above the loss to the public purse caused by fraud in the benefit system is £1 billion, a third of the gross loss caused by error and fraud. Meanwhile, some £40 billion is being lost to the public purse each and every year by deliberate avoidance, non-compliance and non-payment of taxes.

Or as the Prime Minister might have put it, that's equivalent to over 1500 secondary schools or over a million nurses.
So why is the Prime Minister not implementing a tax crackdown on the rich and powerful to complement the benefit crackdown on the poor and vulnerable. Is it because it is easier to pick on the poor and vulnerable but takes more courage to take on the rich and powerful?

The reality is that we are facing tremendous cuts to public services not simply because we spend too much on public services but also because the government is inefficient at tax collection.

Reducing non-compliance and non-payment of taxes and closing loopholes that promote tax avoidance is likely to be more productive than working through the 140,000 cases where a claimant mistakenly received an average of £35 more than they should have.

Perhaps one example of the disparities between clamping down on benefit errors and fraud whilst ignoring tax errors and avoidance will suffice. The DWP published its Structural Reform Plan only last month and set the following target for itself for the end of the year:

6.4 Further reduce fraud and error in the benefits system to a maximum of 1.8% of expenditure

As pointed out earlier, the current level of welfare benefit error is 2.1% in overpayments, so a reduction to 1.8% would see £440 million recovered - except that by March 2011 it is estimated by the treasury in George Osborne's emergency budget that the level of welfare benefit payments will have increased by 2011 so that in fact a reduction to 1.8% lost due to error and fraud will see £3.05 billion lost compared to the current £3.1 billion - so a saving of £50 million then . Not quite the £5 billion headline figure quoted by the Prime Minister.

In contrast, back in 2005, a retailing business bought by “probably the greatest retailer of his generation” paid out probably the largest dividend in British business history – not to him but to his wife. The wife was a resident of Monaco so by assigning the assets to her it avoided any payment of tax to the British Exchequer.

As a result it was estimated that this single payment avoided some £300m in taxes. In other words this one transaction was worth six times the savings in public spending that the DWP expects to get from the Prime Minister’s crackdown on benefits.

The name of this “greatest retailer of his generation”? Sir Philip Green, recently appointed to advise the government on how to reduce public spending including the payments of benefits to people for whom £300 million is the stuff that lottery dreams are made of.

Blaming the referee shows how weak the Ashton Gate plan was

2010-07-26T11:57:00.000+01:00

Supporters of a supermarket at Ashton Gate now appear to have decided the fault lies with the referee rather than accept their entire game plan is fundamentally flawed.

Bristol 24-7 article here

Lost and Found

2010-07-19T21:03:00.000+01:00

The following crumpled up piece of paper was found outside the Council House by a foreign gentleman. If anybody knows who it belongs to please contact Friar Mephistopheles, c/o Borgia 5, Ottavo Cerchio, Inferno di Dante. For directions just ask a politician, they will know the way. A small "donation" may be charged for its return.

Dear My Friend Mr Bristol City Council

2010-07-10T20:02:00.000+01:00

OPPORTUNITY TOO GREAT NOT MISS!

PLEASE IMMEDIATELY RESPOND

Dear My Friend Mr Bristol City Council,

I have great opportunity for you but must act soonest as all people will want be involved.

We have great INTERNATIONAL TOP BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY to assist you help in getting rid of unwanted land. We represent big business wanting to build housing on land and able to offer great excellent opportunity. This one time offer only so no delay please.

Please send us immediately £45,000 each year for gym membership for next 30 years. In return you get back £144,000 each year gym membership for 30 years – sorry no refunds. We build houses on your unwanted land to sell (but no council house please) and promise to bring World Cup (free tickets for you and Mrs Bristol City Council with VVIP special seat soon by VVIP Mr Blatter) and we very happy. You very happy. Everybody very happy.

INVEST NOW BEFORE TOO LATE.

FIFA Guaranteed. But must say Yes by 21st July or opportunity lost. We have many other interested party.

Send deeds to land very quickly as time is urgent. We speak to Mr Cook he say you very keen, also say you would like Arena. We promise Arena too but no guarantee. But museum more hard. Please send money now.

Your obedient servant,

Mr U B’nhaad
World Utopian Bank of Football (formerly Lagos Savings and Loan)
Guernsey

This no scam, this real offer. Hurry Now.

Who will be the big 3 to decide Bristol's future?

2010-06-08T18:56:00.001+01:00

By this time next year, we could find that there will be three key individuals who will have considerable power over our city’s future development...

Bristol 24-7 article here

Who will be Bristol's champion in Whitehall?

2010-05-29T15:04:00.001+01:00

In a speech delivered in Hull on Friday, David Cameron said that

"I will be assigning Ministers and senior MPs to some of our biggest cities, with responsibility to work with local communities to help drive forward economic development by making sure blockages in Whitehall are dealt with."

Bristol is, of course, one of those biggest cities, so are we destined to get our own "champion" in the corridors of power at Whitehall?

If so, who?

Well, it would almost certainly need to be a "local" MP, and it is unlikely, for obvious reasons, to be either of our two Labour MPs in Bristol. So no championing role for Dawn Primarolo or Kerry McCarthy.

In addition the use of the words "Ministers and senior MPs" will appear to rule out "newbies" like Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West), Chris Skidmore (Kingswood), Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) or, a little bit further afield; Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset).

So who does that leave? Well, if we look at the West of England Partnership area, we get the following list;

Liam Fox (Conservative, North Somerset)
Steve Webb (Lib Dem, Thornbury and Yate)
Don Foster (Lib Dem, Bath)
John Penrose (Conservative, Weston-s-Mare)
Stephen Williams (Lib Dem, Bristol West)

Of the above John Penrose is Minister for Tourism and Heritage at the DCMS, Liam Fox is the Secretary of State for Defence, and Steve Webb is the Minister for Pensions at the DWP. Stephen Williams and Don Foster currently have no ministerial responsibilities.

The water-cooler talk is that if the UK's major cities do get a champion, that the Lib Dems will insist that Bristol is represented by one of their own on the basis that it is already run locally by a Lib Dem-led council - in which case Stephen Williams may be the favourite.

On the other hand, an alternative viewpoint is that it is the Bristol "city-region" that will be represented, in which case three of the four councils are currently run by the Conservatives - and in this scenario, Liam Fox is said to be the favourite.

So Stephen Williams or Liam Fox? Who would you prefer as Bristol's champion to unblock the bureaucracy at Whitehall?

Note: The boxing match picture at the top of this blogpost was taken from a Flickr article about Albert "Boy" Bessell, a pre-war Bristol boxer who was brought up in the same street as my nan. If you want to find out more about him, click here

Abolition of Regional Spatial Strategies

2010-05-28T12:28:00.001+01:00

Eric Pickles - Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has written to provide guidance to Chief Planning Officers regarding the Regional Spatial Strategies. Planning Authorities are no longer required to make decisions on housing supply within the framework of regional numbers and plans.

‘Make Your Mark’ mosaic to be unveiled in Bristol by Mark Watson on Tuesday 1st June

2010-05-26T20:11:00.000+01:00

At 1.30pm on Tuesday 1st June a giant West Country artwork, created by hundreds of people from across the region will be unveiled by Bristol comedian Mark Watson, who launched ActionAid’s Make Your Mark campaign to find 1,000 people in the area to make their mark on poverty by sponsoring 1,000 children in Africa and around the world. The unveiling is part of a 2 day event to celebrate International Children’s Day.

The artwork will be made up of around 800 self portraits by people across the West Country. Together they will make up the face of 5 year old Enid from Uganda, who like 72 million children around the world, cannot go to school because of poverty.

From 11am-5pm on Tuesday 1st & Wednesday 2nd June, Bristol’s College Green will come alive to the African beat as children and families are invited along by ActionAid, for a taste of life in different countries and cultures.

Highlights across the two days include live music from afro jazz band Hélélé, with percussion and singing workshops from lead singer Alphonse Daudet, story-telling and African dancing with members of Nomakanjani from Zambia, drumming workshops with Bristol’s Omer Makessa, former lead singer with Mankala, Moussa Kouate on a traditional 21 string kora harp, street dance by Easton’s internationally-acclaimed young dance troupe Hype, face painting, world food stalls, an ultra-violet, interactive den where children can discover the sounds & sights of the jungle and create glow-in-the-dark arts & crafts and a family art competition with fantastic prizes for the most creative images of Africa.

Find out more about the event at www.actionaid.org.uk/makeyourmark

Bristol Friends of the Earth objection to access road for BCFC Stadium

2010-05-26T09:21:00.000+01:00

Submission of Bristol Friends of the Earth to North Somerset P and R D Committee Wed 26th May on the planning application for the new BCFC Football Stadium

Bristol FOE strongly urge you to reject the recommendation of your officers and refuse planning permission for the access road. The Travel Plan presented by the Club as the basis for a Transport strategy for the new stadium is a piece of fiction with figures deliberately manipulated to under-represent the number of extra cars arising from the new development and so paint a unrealistically rosy picture of the traffic and parking impacts on local streets and the local highway network .

Your officers have given you poor advice in relation to the Travel Plan and in the statement that ‘to turn down the application would be disproportionate’. The traffic problems which will inevitably follow from the grant of planning permission on the basis of this flawed Plan will not stay on the Bristol side of the border and both Councils will be involved in conflict with fans and local residents, additional expense and staff time when it turns out to be unworkable. The current stadium has three entrances all in Bristol, the new one will be squarely in North Somerset.

You should turn down this planning application on the basis that the combined Traffic Assessment/Travel Plan is so fundamentally flawed that it is unreliable. Even if you support a stadium, you should ask the Club to go away and only come back with a new Plan which starts with a realistic baseline for the current number of cars so effective monitoring and enforcement can take place, contains concrete measures for travel behaviour change by its fans, evidence of current and future parking areas and costings of bus and parking arrangements. All are lacking from the current Plan. And your officers need to ensure that there are prenegotiated safeguards in the Plan which Councils can enforce in the event of failure on the part of fans and the Club to meet the Plan’s agreed conditions.

Vanishing cars

The function of a Traffic Assessment/Travel Plan is for the applicant to come up with a strategy to deal with the extra cars arising from a new development and for Council officers to assess its reliability and effectiveness to protect the highway network and adjoining residents and agree its implementation and enforcement. The role of the officers is not simply to rubberstamp. Nothing in the Club’s documents or public statements has shown a real willingness to tackle the crunch issue of how they get their fans out of their cars so that local communities are not swamped by an even bigger parking free for all than exists at the moment. Instead the main aim of the Club’s combined Travel Plan/Traffic Assessment has been to’ lose’ cars. Two independent transport consultants working with local residents have advised us how the ‘vanishing cars’ effect has been achieved by the Club’s transport consultants.

1. Organise a 2008 fans’ survey. The results show 57% are car drivers and 18% passengers. Discover that these figures give an increase in cars of a whopping 4971 extra, so ignore it and use lower figures (32% car drivers and 51% passengers plus a high passenger per car figure in 2) to show a future increase in cars of only 2769. A loss of 2022 cars.

2. Use a high figure for 1.6 passengers in each car which is also not supported by answers in the fans survey.

3. Put forward a planning application for a 30,000 seater stadium but a Travel Plan for only 23,800. Result 1,600 less cars even using the Club’s flawed method.

4. Use the 23,800 figure and 1 and 2. to conclude that the total of extra cars will be only 2,800.

5. Produce a Travel Plan which you claim reduces the extra cars by about half (1383). Do not provide any detailed figures, breakdowns or costings of how you achieve this. Fail to set any targets for increasing cycling, walking and public transport use to the new Stadium. Our calculations show that the 20 extra buses and 140 bike parking spaces in the Travel Plan (using their figure of 2.6 people in each car) can only reduce cars by 670 even if all extra 20 buses were full 80 seaters and all bike parking spaces used. What measures in the Travel Plan achieved the disappearance of the other 713 cars?

6. Stick to your claim that the Travel Plan reduces cars by 1383, this leaves just 1411 cars to use in your modelling of the impact on the road network. Use a model that deals shows only the Stadium traffic not the combined Sainsburys and the Stadium impact.

7. When the Traffic Assessment shows that even with only 1411 cars you will still have congestion and queueing at the entrance to the new Stadium, use the fallback that it is only once a fortnight for part of the year and special traffic measures will be put in place on those days.

The conclusion of our two transport professionals is that more realistic trip generation figures would render the junctions and links surrounding the proposed stadium inoperable.

BCFC’s inability to find adequate parking

It is extremely unlikely that the club will find the required extra off street parking even at the artificially low figure of 1411. The Club’s current parking policy is a ‘find your own parking space’ free for all for non season ticket holders (home and away) and a similar free for all for season ticket holders once the parking spaces arranged by the Club at sites such as Wickes and Clanage Road are full. There is certainly no information on their website to direct fans who are not in the know to prearranged sites. For example, at Wickes season ticket holders get first preference as the Club’s steward limits the cars depending on how many shoppers are using Dreams and Wickes .We were told by a fan if you don’t wear the team colours and act as if you are planning to buy a bed or some DIY equipment, you can get past the steward. If this fails, see if you can get into the Sainsburys car park as they have no attendant.

Our understanding is that the Club has 1,500 off street parking spaces arranged with local businesses and a further 451 spaces at Ashton Gate, about off street approx. 2,000 spaces in total. Within the last couple of months the Club has lost the use of the sizeable Park and Fly site at South Liberty Lane which is now to be used for rail. The 200 space Imperial Tobacco site is also up for sale or rent.

Following the recent yellow lining of Brunel Way so that fans could no longer park there, anger was directed towards the City Council. These recent events highlights the insecure nature of the Club’s current parking arrangements and does not bode well for the future. Parking space can be withdrawn at the will of the owners if arrangements don’t work out or a change of use, activity or ownership occurs.

We asked the Club to explain how they would meet the requirement for 1411 new parking spaces.

They said that the new Stadium will have 1230 new car spaces if you include 250 car spaces and 130 car spaces for 24 coaches in the Park and Ride site in the total. However,at the same time they would lose 451 parking spaces in the current Stadium and 150 cars would be displaced from Ashton vale and 90 from Long Ashton by the Residents Parking Zones. So the move to the new Stadium results in a displacement of 691 spaces where fans park now so the net increase will be only 549 spaces.

We asked for evidence of additional new parking sites and were told that an ‘extension ‘at Clanage Road has been negotiated . It is not clear if this is a extension in time or space. I investigated the further 3 sites given to me by the Club – UWE at Bower Ashton has 100 spaces and the other two were working industrial units with a total of about 30 spaces. The Club is still negotiating with all of them. The Club also mentioned additional parking spaces at the other two Park and Ride sites. Reserving Park and Ride parking spaces for football fans at a peak shopping time is we believe an issue that merits full public discussion in the context of the both North Somerset and Bristol’s future transport policy before it is agreed between the Council officers and the Club. In view of the annual subsidy of Park and Ride sites from Council funds, it is vital that any parking of football coaches and fans cars pays its way and do not hinder the current operation of sites or impact economically on tourism or shopping in the Centre of Bristol.

Flaws in the Travel Plan include manipulated results, lack of detailed costings of measures particularly Park and Ride site parking , lack of targets for increasing cycling, walking and public transport use to the new Stadium, unreliable traffic modelling and complete lack of safeguards to protect local residents and the road network when higher traffic results. Combined with the lack of real evidence that the Club can maintain its existing parking level let alone find an inadequate 1411 spaces on top, means you have more than ample grounds for rejecting the planning application. Thank you

The Not So Great Reform Act 2010

2010-05-19T19:46:00.005+01:00

I listened to Nick Clegg’s first speech as Deputy Prime Minister and found myself agreeing with much of what he said. In fact his key points - repealing of intrusive and unnecessary legislation, reforming politics to be more open and transparent, redistribution of power away from the centre – are all things that I wholeheartedly support, who wouldn't? - after all they are the stuff of Motherhood and Apple Pie.

Getting rid of ID cards, protecting the right to peaceful protest, controls on the £2 billion lobbying industry, recall of MPs, an elected second chamber, reform of party funding, revision of libel laws, and so on are also all things that can be found in my shopping list of “things I would do if I ruled the country”.

So why am I finding it so hard to get excited about this new coalition government?

The problem came when the Deputy Prime Minister referred to these proposed changes as the “biggest shake up of our democracy since 1832” which he describes as a time when “huge swathes of the population remained helpless against vested interests” before some politicians “stood up for the freedom of the many, not the privilege of the few”.

The problem is that the Great Reform Act of 1832 was not great – instead it' greatness is a myth, a scam, a swindle.

After it was passed “huge swathes of the population” still “remained helpless against vested interests” and, in fact, the Whig-led coalition government (later to become the Liberal Party) went on to introduce one of the most regressive pieces of legislation that any British government had ever introduced against those“huge swathes of the population”. This was the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 - which declared that “no able-bodied person was to receive money or other help from the authorities except in a workhouse”, and that “conditions in workhouses were to be made very harsh to discourage people from wanting to receive help”. What is the point of reform if it abandons the most vulnerable?

That any coalition led by the Whigs would not totally embrace reform might be obvious to those familiar with the writings of an earlier Whig, the MP for Bristol, Edmund Burke who stated in 1780 that “popular election is a mighty evil” before later going on to say that if the franchise was extended “learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of the swinish multitude”

And so, rather than extending the franchise to the many, the Act merely added some of the better-off to the ranks of the privileged, giving them a stake in maintaining the status quo. Before the Act, some 440,000 adult males had the vote in England, Wales and Scotland; afterwards the electorate had risen to just 720,000 men out of a total adult population of 13 million. In Bristol, where riots usually seen as in support of reform had broken out in 1831, the effect of this “emancipation” was to see its two pro-reform MPs replaced by two anti-reform MPs who campaigned hard against any further extension of the vote. If this is a progressive Liberal Democrat's idea of great democratic reform, we are in for a long hard slog to become a truly democratic modern society.

In fact, a long hard slog was what faced real reformers in 1832. It was to be another 35 years before any further widening of the franchise was pushed through parliament with the Liberal politician Lord John “Finality Jack” Russell being in the forefront of preventing any further reform – insisting that the 1832 Act was final and further reform unnecessary. It was not until 1928 that all adults, regardless of wealth, class or gender were given the vote, nearly 96 years after this Great Reform Act.

Nick Clegg’s reference to the events of 1832 should serve to warn us that we are in danger of being presented with another Great Reform swindle – one in which some of us are once again offered a greater stake in the status quo whilst others are effectively disenfranchised and/or find themselves facing great hardship as new legislation is bought in that will hit the poorest amongst our society disproportionately.

The new government’s proposal to raise tax allowances, for example, will do little to benefit the poorest 3 million households whilst the anticipated plan to increase VAT will hit those same households harder because a higher proportion of their tax is in the form of indirect taxes like VAT. Meanwhile the commitment to reducing the deficit by a ratio of spending cuts to taxation of 4 to 1 will mean that ring-fencing the NHS budget simply means larger cuts in areas such as social housing and public transport which again will hit poorer households hardest.

The fact is that there remains a body of political opinion on the right who believe that the working class housing estates of our towns and cities are still full of “swinish multitudes” for whom being on benefits is somehow a lifestyle choice – these are the same people who still believe that many young girls have only one ambition in life; to get themselves pregnant so that they can claim child benefit. For this body of opinion, a welfare system in which “no able-bodied person out of work was to receive money or other help from the authorities” and where conditions “were to be made very harsh to discourage people from wanting to receive help” seems perfectly acceptable. But the rest of Britain has moved on since the 1830s and so instead we get “The Big Society”, where those who can afford it are encouraged to help themselves, whilst those who are most in need will find it increasingly hard to find any support at all as the state turns it back on them.

Another politician with Bristol links, Henry “Orator” Hunt speaking in 1831 asked a large crowd why they were so keen to support the Great Reform bill which, he said, would give the so-called middle classes “a share in the representation, in order that they might join the higher classes to keep seven millions of the lower classes down”. Paul Foot in his book “The Vote” describes the response when Hunt asked;

“Do they propose to lessen our taxes?” (“NO!” came the roared reply.)

“Do they propose to keep their hands out of our pockets?” (“NO!”)

“To give us cheaper bread, cheaper meat, cheaper clothing, to work us fewer hours, or give us better wages?”

To the deafening crescendo “NO, NO, NO!” Hunt asked: “Then how the devil are you interested, pray?”

Sorry Nick, although I like what you’re offering if it is at the expense of the poor and vulnerable of our country, I’m not interested. I repeat...what is the point of reform if it abandons the most vulnerable?

Yo Clegg! Can the Lib Dem leader avoid being seen as Cameron's poodle?

2010-05-17T20:10:00.004+01:00

One of the most damaging episodes in the decline and fall of Tony Blair as Prime Minster involved an example of those microphone mishaps that appear to be par for the course for recent Labour Prime Ministers.

At the G8 Conference held in St Petersburg on 17 July 2006, US President Bush was overheard greeting the PM with "Yo Blair!". For many political commentators, the style of the greeting was seen as confirmation of the subservient role that Blair (and Britain) had played in its "special relationship" with Bush and the United States. To them it reinforced the image of the British Prime Minster being at the US President's beck and call; that he was, in effect, Mr Bush's poodle.

As his successor Gordon Brown's recent mishap perhaps shows, often what matters is whether the image resonates with the general public. The Sun's 1992 polling day picture of Neil Kinnock inside a light bulb with the caption "will the last person to leave Britain please turn off the lights" may not have been "wot won it" but it certainly wounded Labour whilst the cruel cartoons of John Major with his underpants worn over his suit did much to damage his public image, as he himself has admitted. Never has image and perception been so important in British politics as it is today.

Nick Clegg is now in the position of being the junior partner in a coalition government in which all the major strategic positions (Prime Minister, The Treasury, The Foreign Office, Home Secretary) are taken by the Conservatives. In order to obtain the positions of Deputy PM for himself, Business Minister for Vince Cable, Energy and Climate Change for Chris Huhne and 2 other cabinet positions, Clegg and the Lib Dems have had to make some major concessions, including; agreement to an additional £6 billion of additional cuts this financial year, abstention on the vote for introducing new nuclear power stations, agreeing to a cap on immigration, a referendum on AV rather than STV (the Lib Dem preference), agreeing not to oppose the "marriage tax", no mansion tax, and no opposition to the replacement of Trident.

Although the Conservatives have made some concessions including on capital gains tax and earnings linked state pensions, and have accepted a longer term aspiration to raise the tax allowance band to £10,000, on the whole the coalition has been mostly one of Lib Dem give and Tory take. Nevertheless, the coalition agreement was given overwhelming backing at the recent one-day Lib Dem conference with only a few dissenting voices. Having watched Cameron and Clegg take their vows, most of the Lib Dem party is still enjoying the honeymoon.

There are, however, three real tests of the Liberal Democrat support for the coalition just around the corner.

The first of these is George Osborne's announcement of how the £6 billion immediate reduction of the deficit will be implemented, probably on Monday 24th. In their respective manifestos, the Tories said they would cut £4 of spending for every £1 raised in tax, compared to the Lib Dems who wanted £2.50 of cuts for every £1 of tax. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, although both parties had identified some £11-12bn of public spending cuts they still had much higher levels of unspecified spending cuts still to identify.

In the case of the Lib Dems this amounted to another £35 billion but the Tories greater emphasis on cuts versus tax raising meant that they were looking for half as much as this again, with over £52 billion of public spending cuts needed to be found, or another £18 billion compared to the Lib Dems - so there will be close examination of the measures announced and the clues they might give to later targets for spending cuts.

Second test will be the delayed Thirsk and Malton election on May 27th . A relatively safe Conservative seat, this will be the first real chance to see what Liberal Democratic voters really think of the coalition government.

A major drop in the Lib Dem vote may well cause second thoughts in many Lib Dem ranks, especially if there is a major swing to Labour. The Greens have seen party membership jump by 10% with many of those new members being discontented Lib-Dems, whilst Labour say that they have had 13,000 new members since polling day, also including many Lib Dems. Losing members is bad enough but nothing worries politicians more than the prospect of losing votes, and the Lib Dems are no exception to this rule - a bad day in Thirsk could spell trouble for Nick Clegg.

The third test will be on June 22nd when George Osborne announces his emergency budget. Many Lib Dems are holding up the Tory commitment to increasing income tax allowances to £10,000 (from £6,475 for working age individuals) as a prime example of the concessions they have wrung from their coalition partners. Although there will not be an immediate rise to this level, many Lib Dems are expecting at least an increase of a £1,000 (which will cost some £5 billion per annum or most of the £6 billion immediate deficit reduction).

However, some commentators have speculated that the rise may only be a few hundred to around £7,000. Anything less than an increase to £7,475 for working age individuals may spark more dissent amongst the Lib Dem faithful especially if the budget aims to deliver the extra £18 billion of as yet unspecified Tory cuts referred to above. If even more additional Tory cuts are given priority over Lib Dem tax breaks, some may start to raise doubts about the level of "poodling" being done for the Conservatives.

For many Lib Dem supporters, the alliance between Clegg and Cameron may start to bring back memories of an earlier one - that between the two Davids; Steele and Owen. It may also be difficult for them to avoid remembering the images from the TV programme Spitting Image which portrayed the Liberal leader David Steele as being abject, worshiping and completely compliant to his alliance partner - in effect, Spitting Image portrayed Steele as Owen's poodle.

If Clegg fails to adequately demonstrate that the Conservatives are also making key concessions in the coalition government he may find that his fellow Liberal Democrats will start to associate his relationship with Cameron with that of the Spitting Image portrayal of the two Davids. The real disaster for the Liberal Democrats however may well be if the rest of the country start to associate Clegg with the image of Blair as Bush’s poodle.

‘Make Your Mark’ – Submit Your Self-Portrait

2010-05-15T20:48:00.000+01:00

Join thousands of others throughout the West Country who are helping to fight child poverty

ActionAid are urging people in the South West to send in self portraits for a major public artwork before it’s too late. The deadline to ‘Make Your Mark’, and send a self portrait on a specially created template is Monday 17th May.

Unveiled on Bristol’s College Green on 1st June, a sea of West Country faces will make up this giant mosaic of the face of 5-year-old Enid from Uganda.

Enid hopes to make her mark on her village by becoming a teacher. But first she needs to go to school. Making Your Mark and submitting a self portrait will help to raise awareness of the 72 million children around the world, like Enid, who do not attend school because of poverty.

West Country celebrities have already made their mark by submitting self portraits, including Bristolian comedy writer and actor Stephen Merchant; comedian Mark Watson and none-other-than Darth Vader himself (Bristol actor David Prowse).

Leading anti-poverty charity ActionAid is holding the event to help find a thousand new child sponsors in Bristol and the West Country, so they can support children like Enid and their communities. ActionAid works with communities to create an environment in which children can thrive. Regular donations from sponsors help communities turn that support into whatever’s needed most – whether it’s a new school building, trained teachers, healthcare services, clean water supplies or help to build sustainable livelihoods.

Mark Watson:

“As a comedian I spend my life talking about myself, so I thought drawing myself would make a nice change.”

Bristol writer and actor, Stephen Merchant:

“I sponsor a child in India. My donation each month helps to support her and her entire community - it’s such a rewarding relationship.”

Liz Waldy, Head of Supporter Marketing at ActionAid:

“Sponsoring a child is a unique way of getting help direct to the people who need it most. ActionAid works with the world’s poorest people, helping them access many of the things we take for granted like education, healthcare and clean water.”

More info & self portrait templates available here

Follow ActionAid on Twitter: @actionaiduk / Like ActionAid on Facebook / Watch the videos on YouTube

A More Honest Leaflet for Bristol West?

2010-05-14T10:27:00.003+01:00

Above is a possibly more honest version of the standard "X can't win here" leaflet so beloved of the Liberal Democrat Party. In case you missed the subtle change;

If you read Stephen's "three things to remember", he says:

"Only Stephen Williams or Gordon Brown's Labour candidate can win here. The Conservatives are third and have no councillors in Bristol West."

Obviously Stephen and the rest of the Lib Dems felt so sorry for the Conservatives and their lack of representation in Bristol West that they decided that they would represent the Conservative point of view themselves - even if it was at the expense of Liberal Democrat policy commitments.

So Stephen and his fellow Lib Dem MPs will absent themselves on any vote to introduce new nuclear power stations, along with his yellow colleagues. Effectively this removes the 57 Liberal Democrat MPs from the vote leaving the Conservatives with a majority over the remaining parliament - so when it comes to making decisions about new nuclear power stations the 57 Liberal Democrat MPs have effectively decided to give the Tories the majority government they didn't earn at the ballot box from the electorate of 45 million.

I am sure all those local Liberal Democrat politicians and activists who turned up for the recent anti-nuclear demonstration in Bristol will find some way to justify that position, after all this is the age of pragmatic politics, so the important thing is that the Lib Dems can still say that they didn't vote for that new power station at Hinckley Point/Oldbury on Severn in their election leaflets. Meanwhile Chris Huhne, the newly installed energy and climate change minister will hope that nobody remembers that he told the Associate Parliamentary Renewable And Sustainable Energy Group;

“Our message is clear, No to nuclear, as it is not a short cut, but a dead end”

Likewise, I am sure the local Liberal Democrats will say that the cuts to public services between now and the next local elections are not their fault either despite them supporting the agreement to go along with Tory plans to slash another £6 billion from the deficit in 2010/11, largely by increased cuts to public services. This is despite Nick Clegg making it clear at the Lib Dems conference in March that he would not support plans, backed by the Conservatives, for early cuts to public spending;

"I think, we think, that merrily slashing now is an act of economic masochism"

But that was before polling day and the offer of John Prescott's old job. Likewise, it was before polling day that Nick was telling us that a cap on immigration would not stem the number of immigrants as 80% of immigration was from the EU which had freedom of movement. But now he is Deputy Prime Minister of a government that will introduce a cap on non-EU immigration. As for the EU, well the Liberal Democrats have now agreed to toe the Conservative Euro-sceptic line by agreeing to a referendum on any further adoption of leglisation that involves further powers going to Europe (how that is defined is apparently unclear).

Returning to Stephen Williams, surely it would be churlish to remind him that he said that "the government's recent promise that it will hold a referendum on the alternative vote system some time in the next parliament is simply not good enough", now that the new Liberal-Conservative government says it will hold a referendum on the alternative vote system some time in the next parliament.

Stephen was also complaining that Labour had previously reneged on their 1997 promise to introduce proportional representation because, as Stephen also points out, the Alternative Vote system offered by Labour is not proportional representation. He is absolutely right of course, it is disgraceful the way in which political parties renege on promises made during the election campaign - it is indeed"simply not good enough"

The question is - will we, the electorate, ever learn?

Make Bristol Even Better.....

2010-05-02T13:18:00.001+01:00

Bristol Green Party Election Broadcast.

(Warning to fellow politicos: This broadcast contains policy statements rather than negative campaigning!)

Every cook can govern.....Bristol Radical History Group

2010-04-18T20:26:00.000+01:00

PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE

The Bristol Radical History Group

Election Special 2010

‘Every Cook Can Govern’

From Athens To Westminster?

Date: Wednesday 21th April 2010

Venue: The Stag & Hounds, 74 Old Market Street, BS2 0EJ, next to the Evening Post Building.

Time: 7:30pm

Price: Donation

Speakers: Dan Bennett, Tony Dyer, Dave Cullum

*Please Note That The Venue For This Event Has Changed - It Is Now At The Stag & Hounds*

Proponents of parliamentary democracy often hark back semi-legendary ‘golden ages’ as a foundation of universal enfranchisement. Do these myths have any basis in reality and what relevance do they have today? Dan Bennett and Tony Dyer follow a historical path from ancient Athens via Anglo-Saxon participatory democracy through to the French Revolution. Dave Cullum poses the question, is representative democracy necessary for modern capitalism to exist?

Every Cook Can Govern

Daniel Bennett's talk will encompass historical debates about democracy following the English and French revolutions and how aspirations about representative democracy lost sight of the Athenian ideal of real and participatory democracy. He will end with a discussion of the possibility of election by lottery, the equivalent of rule by jury.

Anglo-Saxon Democracy

Tony Dyer's talk will look at how Anglo-Saxon democracy developed out of a natural democratic system that empowered all members of a community to participate in the decision-making process - it will then look at the outside pressures that saw this participation undermined and neutered in the name of 'civilised' democracy, resulting in the electoral system today whereby power has passed from the many to a few.

An expert barrister in health and safety law, Dan Bennett is also the author of A Brief History of Corporations (reprinted by Bristol Radical History Group) a widely sold pamphlet in Britain and the US. Dan has also used his expertise at the bar to handle the town green planning applications for the several areas in Bristol threatened by development.

Bristol born Tony Dyer is an active green campaigner and frequent blogger (as Aurea Mediocritas) on local political and environmental matters.

Dave Cullum was once the Captain of the record breaking Easton Cowboys Cricket Club 2nd XI, is still a connoisseur of fine ciders and authored of Society and Economy in West Cornwall c1588-1750 (Exeter University, PhD thesis, 1994).

Do We Know What We Are Voting For?

2010-03-29T23:21:00.001+01:00

Do people vote for policies or do they vote for personalities?

To put it another way, will we vote in the General Election for the party that best reflects our own views on how the country should be governed? Or will we vote for the party leader that is on the TV a lot and appears to be slightly better (or less mediocre) than the others?

Dr Richard Lawson has pointed me in the direction of The Political Compass which has analysed the different political parties based on their policies and then assessed them against a 2-dimensional chart. Their view is that "the old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left', established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape". Essentially the old left-right line is OK if you consider it as referring only to the level of control of the economy with "left" meaning a more controlled economy why the "right" would leave more to the "free market". However, the social dimension is also important in modern politics with attitudes ranging from extremely authoritarian to extremely libertarian. Different parties have different combinations of social and economic policies, so two parties may have similar economic policies but have very different policies in terms of their approach to society.

When applied their analysis to British political parties, they found the following result;

Which would tend to imply that, as far as both society and the economy goes, the Conservatives and Labour are almost like two peas in a pod, with the Lib Dems also having economic policies of a similar type but with a more Libertarian approach to society, although not as Libertarian as the Greens who are also the most left-wing party.

The website gives you the opportunity to take an anonymous test to give you an idea of where your own political viewpoints place you on this socio-economic chart. My result is as follows;

Which apparently means I have similar socio-economic views to Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama. Who would have known? And I wonder which party has policies that best reflects my views?

There is another website worth looking at called Vote For Policies, which Charlie Bolton has mentioned. The site allows you to choose from a range of policies covering several different areas and then choose which policy options you think are best. The trick is that it doesn't tell you which party each policy is from, so you are making an objective choice.

When I looked at the site about 10,000 people had taken the test, and the breakdown of selected policies by party was;

What was most interesting was the Green Party policies were top in each of the nine categories of Crime, Economy, Democracy, Education, Health/NHS, Environment, Immigration, Europe and Welfare, in each case the Green Party policy being selected by between 25% and 37% of the survey takers.

As far as the three main parties were concerned; the Lib Dems were second on Democracy, the Economy and the Environment. The Conservatives were second on Education, Health/NHS and Immigration whilst Labour were second on Europe and Welfare.

Of course, it might well be that the site has mainly been visited by Green Party voters, but, having said that a quick search reveals the site mentioned on a number of different sites none of which appear to be particularly for Green Party voters, as well as in a couple of newspapers.

Will this transfer into votes? Of course not.....having read the comments on a couple of forums where people have discussed how they found that they had selected mainly Green votes they still say they will be voting Labour, Conservative or, sometimes Lib Dem on the basis that they will be voting for a candidate they feel is more likely to win in the First Past The Post System that doubles for democracy in this country, even when that candidate's party will be implementing policies that they have just failed to select as the best policies.

It appears that the way the democratic process operates in this country, means that we have to make do with second-best when choosing our politicians.

Let the people really decide how to change Bristol

2010-03-20T11:22:00.000Z

If Neighbourhood Partnerships are to have any chance of success they must expand their membership beyond the “usual suspects” of local democratic participation...new Bristol 24-7 here.

Would You Like To Rent My Roof?

2010-03-19T22:40:00.001Z

A small (un)civil war has broken out between some real heavyweights in the environmental world.

It all started when the UK government announced it's Renewable Energy Feed-In Tariffs (also called the Clean Energy Cashback) which will mean that home owners who install solar electric systems on their houses will be able to sell the electricity generated at a premium price. More details here

This prompted an article from George Monbiot in the Guardian about it being a solar panel rip-off that will merely see public funds that could be used to reduce fuel poverty instead siphoned off to the better-off.

This, in turn, prompted a response from Jeremy Leggett, and now Jonathon Porritt has also weighed in.

It is easy to see where Monbiot is coming from, solar electricity panels are not cheap and you need to have a reasonable amount of disposable income to be able to install them. Without the initial feed money you are a non-starter. On the other hand, any incentive that encourages the use of renewables (unless it involves turning vast amounts of rainforest into jatropha plantations) should be encouraged.

At a conference in Bristol on Thursday (18th March), another environmental heavyweight, Alastair Sawday, suggested a possible solution; renting out your roofspace to an entrepreneural solar energy company that will install the solar panels for you.

The idea is simple; the solar energy company could contract with individual houseowners to install solar panels, with the company providing the capital investment in return for a share in the revenues earned from the renewable electricity sold back to the grid at a premium.

The beauty of this, of course, is that, as has been mentioned elsewhere on this blog, the poorer a neighbourhood the lower the levels of electricity usage tend to be. Solar panels, on the other hand, generate the same level of electricity regardless of how poor the owners of the roof they are installed upon happen to be - sunlight is happy to be distributed across all classes of roof without a trace of snobbery. Common-sense would therefore imply that installation of solar panels by our solar electricity company will be most profitable if they are installed in areas where the electricity usage is already relatively low (i.e poorer areas) because this will mean a greater proportion of renewable electricity being available for selling back to the grid and thus a greater return on their capital investment.

In fact, it may even turn out to be profitable for the solar electricity company to retrofit other energy efficiency measures, such as cavity-wall insulation, additonal loft insulation and so on to maximise the amount of renewable energy being sold back to the grid. The home-owners of course, will see a reduction in their household electricity bills. There may well need to be some form of mutually agreed mechanism to counter the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate, but otherwise, for once, the poor will be the customer of choice rather than the wealthy.

Now, who would like to rent my roof-space?

"Wrong to impose nuclear on future generations but clean, sustainable energy is deliverable"

2010-03-17T14:39:00.000Z

A new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point is not needed and would leave an unacceptable legacy of radioactive waste to future generations, the leading environmentalist Jonathon Porritt told a packed meeting of the Stop Hinkley campaign in Taunton last night (Tuesday 16 March).

“It would be totally wrong to impose on future generations a problem for which we have no solution,” he said. “We don’t know how to deal with nuclear waste. There is no clear strategy. We are just hoping that the next generation can sort it out.”

This included the spent nuclear fuel which would be stored at a new Hinkley nuclear power station for as long as 160 years.

Porritt, a former director of Friends of the Earth and head of the government advisory body, the Sustainable Development Commission, said he had both practical and ethical objections to a new construction programme of nuclear plants, of which Hinkley “C” would be the first.

“I have huge concerns about the cost of nuclear power,” he said. “Don’t believe a single word that comes out of the industry. This is an industry that has obscured, concealed, lied and deviated from the truth from the 1950s onwards.” He gave the example of the £76 billion it now emerged it would cost to decommission existing nuclear facilities, let alone any new ones. This money would have to come directly from the taxpayer.

The economics of nuclear power were so unreliable, he added, that it was possible that Hinkley C would never be built because investors would have nothing to do with it.

He was also sceptical that new nuclear reactors like the ones proposed at Hinkley would help in the battle against climate change. “Even if we replaced all our existing fleet of reactors, as the government wants, we would still only cut about 4% of our 1990 level of carbon dioxide emissions,” he said. “The idea that we can wheel in nuclear power to deal with our low carbon imperative is a flawed argument.”

No new nuclear plant was likely to be up and running before the middle of the next decade, he added, which would be too little too late.

Instead, Porritt painted a picture in which Britain ’s future energy needs would be met by access to endless and clean sustainable energy. “I am absolutely persuaded that this is deliverable,” he said.

His prescription included four elements – a major campaign on energy efficiency, massive investment in renewable power, more use of combined heat and power generation and, in a transition period, the development of cleaner fossil fuels.

On energy efficiency he said that the UK could reduce energy consumption by 30 to 40% over the next two decades by measures like improving the efficiency of the existing housing stock. “The government just hasn’t done enough,” he said. “The fact that you don’t hear politicians talking about this is a nightmare.”

On renewable power he said that we were “the most blessed country in Europe ”, with tides, wind and waves waiting to be exploited round our coasts. “This is no longer a niche industry,” he added. “Renewable power has become a major international industry and now commands billions of pounds of investment around the world.”

Porritt said he was in favour of a power-generating barrage across the Severn Estuary, in spite of its potential environmental and social costs. This would meet up to 10% of the country’s electricity needs.

Porritt concluded that although “climate change is serious, we have an alternative to nuclear power. I find this hugely exciting. But there’s a battle for the hearts and minds of green activists. That’s why your Stop Hinkley campaign is so important, and it needs to get bigger.”

About 150 people attended the Stop Hinkley meeting in the Temple Methodist Hall, Taunton . They were encouraged to sign a petition against the new Hinkley “C” power station. This will be presented to the government when a planning application is submitted by Electricite de France, probably in August.

Jim Duffy, Coordinator of Stop Hinkley said: "People said they found Jonathon's upbeat talk inspirational - the way he handled the heavy subject matter was in an easy entertaining manner. Some waverers said they were convinced by his arguments. I think decision-makers should pay attention to the brighter outcome for present and future generations that this very respected environmentalist has mapped out."

Further information: http://www.stophinkley.org/

Related information;
Is Nuclear Power the Answer to Global Warming?

The Rebranding of Nuclear Power

The Struggle for Democracy; How we won it and how we lost it.

2010-03-11T16:09:00.000Z

5th - 25th April 2010

In the run up to the 2010 election this is your essential guide to how we got the vote, where representational democracy has gone wrong and possible alternatives to party democracy.

Recent British histories arrogantly claimed that the ‘we’ brought democracy to the Empire and ultimately the world in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Despite centuries of struggle to wrestle power from an elite few, the vote in Britain is still seen as a gift from the rulers to the people to help bring ‘us’ into the modern age. These days, the establishment of western style ‘democracy’ is used by Britain as a context for invasion, war and occupation.

In April this year through the media of public lectures, debates, history walks and other events, Bristol Radical History Group will be critically examining the British history of democracy and enfranchisement. Tracing a path from the English and French Revolutions via the Spencerites, the Chartists and the Suffragettes to New Labour we will be trying to answer the following questions:

How was the vote for everybody achieved?

Who wanted democracy and who didn’t? What was the composition of the movements that fought for the vote for all? What did these movements actually want?

What were the alternatives?

What did we end up with?

Is democracy historically necessary for capitalism to exist?

Does ‘democracy’, as we know it, have a future?

Join us in uncovering the hidden history of democracy and enfranchisement in Britain. A perfect antidote to the misery of "election fever".

Full details of all the events are here but, on a purely selfish note I would like to emphasise the following event in particular;

‘Every Cook Can Govern’

From Athens To Westminster?

Date: Wednesday 21th April 2010
Venue: GWRSA, Temple Meads station, BS1 6QQ.
Time: 7:30pm
Price: Donation
Speakers: Dan Bennett, Tony Dyer, Dave Cullum

Proponents of parliamentary democracy often hark back to semi-legendary ‘golden ages’ as a foundation of universal enfranchisement. Do these myths have any basis in reality and what relevance do they have today? Dan Bennett and Tony Dyer follow a historical path from ancient Athens via Anglo-Saxon participatory democracy through to the French Revolution. Dave Cullum poses the question, is representative democracy necessary for modern capitalism to exist?

Save Bristol's Libraries

2010-03-11T08:58:00.000Z

The Bristol Branch of the IWW trade union is calling for strong and decisive action from other unions to stop brutal cuts wrecking Bristol's library service as the IWW today launch their own campaign against the cuts.

Bristol's library service, run by Bristol City Council, is looking to cut £225,000 from the libraries budget this year, largely by axing nine staff across the service. This is despite the libraries budget being underspent by £181,000 last year.

Most of these cuts will be made at the city's flagship Central Library where staff say users may have to wait two hours or more to obtain books and information from a slimmed down and understaffed reference library.

The council is also proposing to spend over £0.5m providing 'self-service' facilities at libraries and will then only provide one supervisor for every two branch libraries in the city.

IWW spokesman Frank Hutchison says,"Bristol City Council have promised there would be no cuts to frontline services. They lied.

"Libraries are among our most important and much-loved public services but here in Bristol the service is being systematically destroyed to save money.

"Meanwhile, despite the huge public outcry and concern, the traditional trade unions are sitting on their hands and failing to act."

"If they won't, we will. These unions are not only letting down their members but the wider community too."

"We will therefore be holding a public meeting in the near future to bring together library staff, concerned service users, other workers worried about the threat of cuts to public services in the city and the wider public."

The IWW says it will be fully committed to any campaign that's launched as a result of this meeting and will look to resource and fund that campaign as best it can.

"Doing nothing - or worse, doing a backroom deal to sell our library service down the river - is not an option," said Mr Hutchison.

Lower taxes that are paid are better than higher taxes that are avoided

2010-03-09T16:24:00.000Z

We need to invest in this country, and close tax loopholes that cost us billions. After all, we are all in this together… aren’t we? ...Latest Bristol 24-7 article here

Proportional Representation in Bristol

2010-03-09T14:14:00.003Z

With an election approaching, the subject of how we elect the people who are our representatives in the House of Commons has been the focus of much attention - for some, like the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, the subject of electoral reform has been a long standing issue, others appear to have had an almost Damascene conversion to its merits perhaps brought on by concerns of self-preservation, whilst for some the concept that most voters should actually have an impact on the election of our representatives is a custom that appears to be more honour'd in the breach than the observance. I suspect that a few lament the passing of rotten boroughs where all this campaigning business was largely unneccessary, and they could get on with the important business of running the country without pandering to the public sensibilities of the less politically capable. Consensus politics is for wimps, after all.

Unfortunately, progress being what it is, and the result of the upcoming election being somewhat uncertain for the two main parties - and it is a well-documented fact that the more uncertain an election, the greater the interest in electoral reform because nobody almost certainly guaranteed of an election win (whether at national level or at constituency level) has much enthusiasm for giving a greater say in that election to those who will in the current system be the losers - electoral reform is on the agenda.

The map above, is one suggestion for how the country might be divided into constituencies for an election to be decided by Single Transferable Vote (STV) - explanation here. Below is the Bristol area in more detail with colour used to define different constituencies;

The system above is based on a system supported by the Liberal Democrats which also reduces the number of MPs by 20% to 500. It proposes that Bristol and South Gloucestershire be combined to create a single constituency electing 5 MPs (for the forthcoming election 7 MPs will be elected to cover individual portions of Bristol and South Glos.). My own feeling is that that it would be better for Bristol and South Glos to be treated as separate constituencies, and that the proposal to reduce the number of MPs to be retained for a time when greater levels of governance are devolved to local communities.

So in my adaptation of the above, I would have a constituency of Bristol electing four members of parliament. This is actually quite conservative - because a conservative view is one of maintaining the traditional approach, and for much of its political life Bristol has been a single constituency electing multiple members to represent the city as a whole. For 225 years from 1660 Bristol had two MPs who represented the entire city between them, it has only been for the last 125 years that Bristol has been subdivided by bad mathematicians into discrete areas apparently on the premise that Southmead has more in common with Stoke Bishop than it does Hartcliffe, or that Stockwood has less in common with Bishopworth than it does Hillfields.

So, thanks to the bean-counters, Stockwood is in Bristol East not Bristol South and Easton (the name's a clue) is now not in Bristol East but in Bristol West (which actually covers Central Bristol) and the largely Conservative voting residents of Stoke Bishop have been transferred, in the interests of equal democracy, from the constituency of a Lib Dem MP to the constituency held by a Labour MP (which most Stoke Bishopians presumably hope will soon be a Conservative constituency much to the dismay of the largely Labour voting Southmead electorate). The situation is absurd. The constituencies as defined bear no relation to the reality of any functional adminstrative and organisational boundaries.

The political party that appears to be most set against any move away from the First Past The Post system that, in my view, currently makes a mockery of much of the democratic process in all but a few marginal seats, is the Conservative Party. It is strange therefore to report that it is the Conservative Party that has, potentially, the most to gain in the Bristol and South Glos area from electoral reform.

In the 2005 election the four Bristol seats saw, roughly, 79,000 votes cast for Labour, 52,000 for the Lib Dems, and 46,000 for the Conservatives. Another 12,500 votes went to the other parties, about half of those for the Greens. The MPs elected were one Lib Dem and three Labour. If the election had taken place under STV rules, the result would almost certainly have seen the nearly 25% vote for Conservatives getting the result of 1 Lib Dem, 2 Labour, and 1 Conservative MP. In addition at least 93% of those who voted would have seen their residential area represented in parliament by a candidate from the party they voted for.

For South Glos, the MPs sent to Westminster in 2005 were 1 Lib Dem and 1 Labour despite a voting pattern that saw approx 40,000 vote Lib Dem, 33,000 vote Labour but 38,500 vote Conservative. STV would have almost certainly seen the Labour MP replaced by a Conservative MP whilst the increase to three MPs in 2010 would be likely to allow 96% of voters to be represented by the party they voted for.

In summary, a STV system would have seen the Bristol area elections that sent 4 Labour and 2 Lib Dems to parliament replaced by an election that sent 2 Labour, 2 Lib Dems, and 2 Conservatives to Westminster.

So why are the Conservative so set against any changes to the electoral system? Are they willing to sacrifice the votes of Bristol Conservatives in the cause of greater gains elsewhere? Or do they simply believe that the FPTP system is the best system there is, despite the fact that the British failed to recommend it when determining the most democratic political system for the new Germany in 1945?

More reasons why FPTP is flawed:
Mabinogogiblog: What is wrong with the First Past the Post Electoral System?

What do six of the seven most economically powerful English cities have in common?

2010-03-06T15:23:00.000Z

Spot the odd one out in the two lists below of the largest English cities by economy outside London, and their approach to integrating transport.

Urban Areas outside London and size of economy measured by GVA

1. West Midlands (Birmingham) = £44.9 billion
2. Greater Manchester = £44.8 billion
3. West Yorkshire (Leeds) = £37.6 billion
4. West of England (Bristol) = £23.3 billion
5. Tyne and Wear (Newcastle) = £19 billion
6. South Yorkshire (Sheffield) = £18.8 billion
7. Merseyside (Liverpool) = £18.4 billion

List of Integrated Transport Authorities in England

1. Centro (West Midlands)
2. GMITA (Greater Manchester)
3. Metro (West Yorkshire)
4.
5. Nexus (Tyne and Wear)
6. SYITA (South Yorkshire)
7. Merseytravel (Merseyside)

Rail patronage in Merseyside has increased by 10.1%, in South Yorkshire by 9.4%, and in the West Midlands by 5.9%

Bus patronage has increased by 7.4% in Tyne and Wear, and by 4.9% in Greater Manchester.

Manchester
"Bus operators in Greater Manchester have continued to invest in new low-floor, accessible vehicles which have raised the percentage of wheelchair accessible vehicles to 71.5% – exceeding the national target of 50% by 2010/11" -

Newcastle
"The Tyne and Wear Metro is the UK’s most cost efficient urban railway system. 69 per cent of operating costs are met from revenue alone, with only seven per cent of costs coming from local authorities. The subsidy per journey is 42p, which is up to seven times smaller than that of heavy rail systems in other UK cities"

Birmingham
"The Midland Metro line from Snow Hill to Wolverhampton, which opened in 1999, has taken an estimated 1.2 million car journeys off the roads with 15 per cent of passengers using the tram instead of their cars for the same journey. It operates at around 99 per cent reliability and carries around 5 million passengers a year."

Sheffield
"The South Yorkshire heavy rail network provides benefits of £35m and costs £20m a year in subsidy. This indicates a benefit of around £1.75 per £1 of subsidy."

Leeds
"The free buses that Metro has introduced in Leeds, Huddersfield, Wakefield and Bradford have carried almost 6.9 million passengers between them."

Liverpool
"Passenger Focus's Autumn 2008 National Passenger Survey found that, at 71%, satisfaction with value for money was higher among Merseyrail passengers than among passengers for any other train company"

(All quotes are from the Passenger Transport Executive Group)

Meanwhile.....back in Bristol;

"Bristol had the slowest average road traffic speed—16.8 miles per hour—of any of Britain’s major cities"

"Bristol, the economic heart of the [South West] region, is severely affect by road traffic congestion and is the only city in the United Kingdom where congestion is projected by the Department for Transport’s own figures to increase despite improvements already planned."

"Bristol has the lowest proportion of public transport per head of the population of any major urban area in the UK."

(Bristol quotes are from the House of Commons South West Regional Committee First Report on Transport in the South West )

Transport for Greater Bristol have more background on why the Bristol area should have an Integrated Transport Authority just like every other major city in England, and the statement they made and presented to the Joint Transport Executive Members of the West of England Partnership is well worth reading here

Bristol… A city too rich to help and too weak to influence

2010-02-27T09:45:00.000Z

New article on Bristol 24-7 by yours truly. Read it here

The Fabian Society's View of Bristol

2010-02-26T21:11:00.000Z

AN EXHAUSTIVE COLLECTION OF STATISTICAL

AND OTHER FACTS RELATING TO THE CITY;

WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR REFORM

ON SOCIALIST PRINCIPLES.

Published by

THE FABIAN SOCIETY

PRICE ONE PENNY.

MAY, 1891.

To be obtained at the Office of the Fabian Society, 276 Strand, London, W.C.; of the Secretary of the Clifton and Bristol Fabian Society, 18 Cotham Road, Bristol; or of Mr. Rydill, Bookseller, Union Street, Bristol.

I found the a copy of the above document whilst searching out some background information for a presentation that I am due to deliver.

One of the key features that stands out is how Bristol even then, and in contrast to most other British cities of the time, had put many of its key public services into the hands of private business - essentially Bristol was an example of early privatisation - and it is apparent from the Fabian Society study (who, of course, may not have been entirely neutral on the matter) that the results were not entirely satisfactory;

"BRISTOL is in many respects the most backward of English municipalities. Most important towns in England own their own waterworks: Bristol leaves this vital public service in the hands of a monopolist company earning a dividend of eight and a half per cent. Two-thirds of the gas-consumers in the United Kingdom are supplied by municipal enterprise: Bristol depends for light on a company earning ten per cent. More than a quarter of the tramways in this country are owned by public authorities: Bristol allows private adventurers to earn five per cent, by running cars through the public streets. Birmingham, Manchester, Bradford, and many other places keep all three of these public services under public control for public profit. Bristol enjoys the bad pre-eminence of being the largest provincial municipality which allows all three to remain in private hands for private advantage. Bristol can borrow capital at three and a half per cent: if the capital of these companies had been municipal stock at three and a half per cent, instead of private investments at an average of six per cent., the inhabitants of Bristol would be saving £50,000 per annum, representing a rate of one shilling in the pound."

Other issues of concern to them was the confusion caused by different parts of the city being under different administrations, and the multiplicity of local elections leading to a lack of public interest in local governance;

"Public administration in Bristol is a confused and perplexing tangle of uncoordinated authorities, exercising diverse and ill-defined powers over varying and over-lapping areas, elected on different franchises, at different dates, with different qualifications for membership. One public body spends money in opposing the projects of another.....During three years, 1881-4, no fewer than 16 elections to one public body or another have taken place.......Lack of public spirit, due largely to lack of knowledge of public affairs, is the inevitable result of this confusion. "

Later in the pamphlett, the Fabian Society says;

"The times and method of election, and the qualifications of candidates for these bodies, are in almost in each case different, and it is obvious that under such conditions, there must be waste of power, of money, and lack of interest and of harmony, and an unnecessary multiplication of officials. At present there are some 180 elected members of the various governing bodies, and with ex officio members, about 250 in all."

the study then goes on to describe how the city is divided up into four parliamentary constituencies, with a population of approximately 300,000. It estimated that there was an adult male population of about 65,000 with about a third of those being ineligible to vote (along with women, the poorest men did not get the vote until 1918). At the previous general election only 25,422 had voted, about two-thirds of those eligible.

The Fabian Society than cover in some detail, various aspects of living in Bristol in 1891.

Poverty

"it is practically certain that one in three of the wage-earners ends his or her life in a bed provided by public charity. Over a third, indeed, of these deaths were those of indoor paupers in the three workhouses."

Housing

"the people of Bristol are crowded together more closely than the inhabitants of any of the 27 largest provincial towns in the United Kingdom, with the exception of Liverpool, Birmingham and Plymouth."

The density in the city proper was estimated to be even higher, with a rate of 71.5 persons per acre, and in the 600 or so "courts" which the Fabian Society considered "mostly unfit for human habitation" they were living at a density of 4 per room.

"Notwithstanding these facts no action has been taken by the Town Council under the Artisans' Dwellings Acts to provide decent accommodation for the poorer citizens! Other municipalities have been less backward in this respect."

Education

"About two-thirds of Bristol's children attend schools over which the citizens have no control"

"Bristol compares badly with other cities with respect to the number of children at school"

Utilities

"If the water works had been constructed by the Town Council, the annual interest payable upon their cost would have been, at 3 per cent, only two thirds of the amount annually received by the shareholders"

"Why should not Bristol imitate Bradford, for instance, and, taking over its gas-works, reduce the price to the consumer, secure fair treatment of the gas-workers, improve the lighting of its streets, courts and common stairways, and make an annual surplus in aid of the rates? "

Public Transport

"The internal communications of Bristol are mainly in the hands of the Bristol Tramways and Carriage Company, which makes a profit out of its gratuitous use of Bristol streets, and pays its ordinary shareholders five per cent......To earn this profit for the tramway shareholders, the tramway workers are kept on duty over 14 hours per day."

Health

"Much additional public provision for the sick is needed before the ideal is attained of a hospital bed available for every case of serious illness in the city"

The Fabian Society also looks at the city's finances. It estimates that rental values had grown by some 50% in the two decades between 1870 and 1890 and that as "the city proper has long been entirely covered with buildings" this rental growth was an "unearned increment" which over a 15-year purchase period "represents a capital sum of nearly £2,000,000" and was "a gratuitous present from the people of Bristol to the proprietors of their homes".

"Bristolians pay every two years to the proprietors of their city, for the mere privilege of inhabiting it, as much as the whole outstanding cost of the docks, schools, public buildings, and street improvements"

It later adds;

"It is impossible to avoid the suggestion that the Bristol authorities have been less active than those of other municipalities in those departments of collective expenditure such as public sanitation, the re-housing of the people, and the common provision for the needs of crowded urban life, which, though not pecuniarily remunerative, are of such inestimable public advantage."

The final conclusion of the study still rings true, at least for me, today;

"The two signs of a free and self-governing community for which Bristol burgesses contended in the earliest days were popular elective government and municipal control of the revenues from city land and from profitable public services. A free city, in the view of our forefathers, should not be beholden to any landlord — not even a royal landlord — nor subject to any monopoly. The plain duty of the commonalty at the present moment does not differ one jot from the principles which constituted the life and breath of the patriotism of free Bristolians six hundred years ago. By a strange irony of fate, the Socialist who appears to himself, no less than to others, to be the advocate of brand-new revolutionary changes, has only to search the annals of the past to find that in his principles of municipal reform he is, after all, in truth, a most consistent Conservative. If the large income from its city property proves the wisdom of the city fathers of the past, the deficits on the Dock account prove the folly of those of the present day in allowing private competition to usurp the field and to spoil the game, when, in the end, the city was forced to step in at the eleventh hour. But, in the case of the Docks, it was the private self-interest of a number of merchants and others which forced the city into the policy of undertaking their management. This is a very one-sided application of municipal Socialism, if the city should only deal with concerns that will least pay. The public self-interest of the mass of citizens must be aroused to overcome any opposition of landholders and shareholders, and to acquire for the profit of the community those monopolies which the municipality can manage. "

Multi-million-pound stadium questions Bristol must face

2010-02-17T20:08:00.000Z

Liberal Democrat cabinet set to face multi-million pound decisions on public funding contributions to new stadium.

Article by yours truly on Bristol 24-7 website. Link from here

Does this building have Bristol's largest carbon footprint?

2010-02-12T11:51:00.003Z

A recent freedom of information request by the BBC has produced a list of the carbon emissions for some 28,000 public buildings in the UK including 280 in the Bristol area.

Standing proud(!) at the top of Bristol's list is Bristol University's Senate House which, according to the data, produces a staggering 25,107 tonnes of carbon emissions per annum.

To put this into perspective, second on the list is the MOD's Abbey Wood complex which produces 15,459 tonnes per annum.

What can Bristol University be doing in the Senate House that causes them to emit 60% more greenhouse gases than the entire Abbey Wood complex?

Can we expect to see soldiers, sailors, and pilots protesting outside the Senate House at the way students are destroying our planet?

Othe public buildings in the Bristol area that produce more than 10,000 tonnes of carbon per year are;
North Bristol NHS Trust, Southmead Hospital = 15,420 tonnes per annum
University of the West of England, Blocks A-N, Frenchay Campus = 13,066 tonnes
Southmead Health Services NHS Trust, Southmead Hospital = 12,128 tonnes
Bristol Royal Infirmary, Marlborough Street = 10,915 tonnes
and two buildiings at Frenchay Hospital which produce 10,766 and 10512 tonnes.

We then drop down to 5,557 tonnes for Bristol Uni's Churchill Hall on Stoke Park Road.

Other selected buildings include;
11, Bristol Mail Centre at Gloucester Road North = 3,946
14, Her Majesty's Prison in Cambridge Road = 2,831
26, The Council House, College Green = 1,159
30, Bradley Stoke Leisure Centre = 1,068
34, Bristol Crown Courts, Small St = 947
38, Gov Office for SW, 2 Rivergate = 904
40, Natural England, Burghill Road, WoT = 848
47, Arnolfini, Narrow Quay = 660
60, Monks Park School, Filton Road = 518

Meanwhile, I'm off to get the Royal Marines to organise a protest march on the University!

photo credit: Chris Bertram at http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisbertram/430619863/

Anglo-Saxon Democracy

2010-02-10T08:57:00.002Z

A more light-hearted post today.

During a bit of spring-cleaning, I came across some notes I made several years ago (for an aborted article) about early Anglo-Saxon local democracy, and given the level of discussion at the moment about devolving responsibilites to local communities, or improving the system for how we elect our representatives, it is interesting to see how local democracy worked a thousand years ago and to compare how we’ve progressed – or not.

Essentially the notes looked at how local administration worked via "local authorities" known as “hundreds” each consisting of a hundred households (it’s a bit more complex than that but that will do for the purpose of this post). Those households were sub-divided into groups of ten (a tithe) who then selected a representative to attend a “hundred-moot”, where they would meet up every four weeks with the representatives of the other tithes and the king’s financial officers to settle matters of taxation, law and order and legal disputes within the hundred. The representative of the king could offer advice but the decisions were made by the local people.

The neck of land that would see the birth of the Saxon town of Brigstowe was part of the hundred of Swinehead, which had its hundred moot on a small hill just outside Bitton and formed a triangle with Clifton and Winterbourne at the other corners. Other hundreds in the area included Brenty to the north west, Brislington* to the south east, and the hundred of Hartcliffe and Bedminster (which held its court on a hillside called Hareclive at the end of Dundry Hill overlooking Ashton Vale).

For matters of greater import, groups of hundreds were collected into shires and a shire-moot was held once or twice a year where representatives from the hundreds met with higher level representatives of the king such as the earldorman (from whence Alderman) and the shire reeve (from whence Sheriff). North of the Avon, this was held at Gloucester, whilst southerners had to go to Somerton.

This surprising level of local democracy was soon undermined, first by the rise of towns and their merchants, and later increasingly by the Norman aristocracy, aided and abetted by the church.

The rising town of Bristol, or rather its merchants or burgesses (literally city-dwellers), were unhappy with the restrictions placed upon them by this system and thus began their long campaign for increasing independence from the surrounding hundred so it could set its own rules independent of the local democratic process and for the benefit of business. The story of Bristol from its origins up until at least 1835, is that of an oligarchy consisting of the burgesses (from the same root as bourgeoisie) establishing greater and greater control in order to promote their commercial interests.

The Bristol merchants were aided in their objectives by the new Norman rulers keen for money to aid their extraterritorial ambitions – first to conquer Wales and Ireland, and later to finance wars of aggression with Scotland and France. The wealthy Bristol merchants provided the finance, and the Norman nobles returned the favour by providing the merchants with the legal rights to run their businesses as they saw fit, free of outside influence – it is no coincidence that the longest running non-Royal English dynastic line is that of the Saxon Bristol merchant Robert fitz Harding, who was awarded the lands and title of the Norman Berkeleys (including the manor of Bedminster, where he promoted and invested in a speculative mixed use development now known as Redcliffe) in return for his financial aid to Henry II. Examples of the privileges gained include, in 1172, the merchants of Bristol being given the rights to control Dublin turning it into Bristol’s very own medieval version of Hong Kong, and the 1373 grant by Edward III that freed Bristol’s merchants from the worries of the county courts that were beyond their influence by the simple expedient of making Bristol a county in its own right, and thus entitled to its own county court.

Meanwhile, for the Bristol peasantry, the only available source of protection from the worst deprivations was the church. Unfortunately despite repeated declarations that they were there to represent the needs of the poor, the church instead increasingly radiated towards establishing commercial relationships with the merchants, especially as the merchants saw donations to religion as a way of offsetting any sins they committed in the present against any future reckoning - one example of this is Robert fitz Harding founding a major development on green field land just outside the city known as St Augustine's. As a result the church became very wealthy indeed (in the end too wealthy, and having betrayed its natural consituents, the poor, was effectively privatised for the benefit of the very richest, with St Augustine's becoming Bristol's Cathedral). National government was also jealous of the power of the Bristol merchants, at one point establishing a separate development corporation in the east of the city outside the control of the local merchants. Temple Fee, as the area was called, was controlled by an unaccountable body with few connections to the city itself, the Knights Templar.

So, in the end a system that allowed local communities to have a decisive say in the decision-making that affected their own neighbourhoods was transformed into one where business interests had the decisive say on local events, supported by a wealthy elite who controlled most of the decision-making bodies at national level, whilst those who purported to represent the general public were more interested in establishing good relations with business and feathering their own nest eventually leading to their own demise.

Aren’t you glad we don’t live in a system like that anymore?

*Edit: Oops, they say write in haste, repent at leisure. The hundred that covered what is now south east Bristol was, of course, the hundred of Keynsham not Brislington.

Lies, Damn Lies and Transport Assessment Statistics

2010-02-09T20:50:00.001Z

(chart legend; orange colums are % fans arriving by car, purple columns are % fans driving to stadium)

What the chart above shows are the results of four surveys. The surveys asked football fans how they travel to watch football; from left to right they are;

1) a survey completed in 2006/07 of supporters in the Premier League,
2) a survey completed in 2008 of supporters in the Football League,
3) a survey completed in 2008 of Bristol City fans.
4) the figures taken from the 2009 Transport Assessment provided to support Bristol City's application for a new stadium at Ashton Vale.

In the chart above the orange columns show the total number of people who will travel by car (i.e both drivers and passengers) whilst the purple columns show car drivers only (and thus the number of cars that need to find parking).

You can see that for the first three columns the ratio between the number of cars and the number of people travelling by car is consistent. The pattern is that the more people who travel by car, the more cars there are - which is simple common sense. It also shows that, just as in many other situations, most of the cars are occupied only by a driver, with every third or fourth car also carrying a passenger - this is shown more clearly in the chart below which shows the ratio between car drivers and car passengers.

(ratio of car passengers to car drivers)

It is only when you get to the final set of figures that we see a totally different pattern. In this scenario, even through an even higher percentage of people are predicted to travel to the new Ashton Vale stadium by car, the number of car drivers (and thus cars) will apparently drop by about 40% in terms of share because every car driver will be taking 1.6 passengers compared to to a ratio of 3 or 4 drivers to every passenger in the other surveys.

The Transport Officers responsible for determining whether the Transport Assessment provided by the developers was robust concluded that the disparity between it and the other fans survey was explained by the fact that "the survey of existing fans would have overestimated the number of drivers relative to passengers who in many cases will be children".

For this statement to be valid, you will have to accept the premise that most of the difference in passenger numbers between the fans surveys and the transport assessment is made up of children. This adds up to almost a third of all supporters. In fact the percentage that are children would have to be even higher because 7% of the Football League Fan Survey responses (despite the officer comment above) were actually from U-16s, and thus are already represented. In other words the contention is that roughly 40% of those who attend football matches are under-16 - yet the Football League Fan Survey indicates that less than 25% of fans attend matches with their children or grandchildren.

Having already accepted that the number of cars will constitute a much lower proportion than common sense and regular experience for those living in the Ashton Gate area implies, the transport officers then go further and say that if a robust travel plan is implemented the number of fans driving their own cars will drop to 26%. This will be done by generating a greater use of public transport so that the percentage of fans using public transport will jump from 8% to 13% - oh, and each car driver will now deliver 2 passengers so that the ratio of drivers to passengers becomes even further removed from the results of the fan surveys.

To put this claim into perspective, let's review the evidence from the city of Dortmund in Germany. Dortmund was chosen as a host city for World Cup 2006. As a host city it committed (as Bristol has done at an estimated cost of approx £2m) to providing free public transport for all ticket holders attending matches in the 65,000 seat local stadium. The result was a great success with 55% of fans using public transport to get to the stadium (compared to the 13% target mentioned above). As a result of this the number of cars driven to the stadium was reduced to just 13,500 - or to put it another way, 21% of fans, despite being offered free public transport, still drove. Yet here in Bristol despite a "robust" travel plan that will only increase public transport use to 13%, we nonetheless expect only 26% of fans to drive, only 5 percentage points difference.

I am not the only one with concerns regarding the transport assessment.

Bob Cole, a director of eo consulting ltd with over 30 years of transport planning and civil engineering experience, was requested by one of the local groups (AVHG) concerned about the impact of the new stadium to review the transport issues related to the new stadium proposal. He reviewed issues concerning car driver and passenger trips, stadium attendance, bus travel, and car parking and expressed significant concerns about the adequacy and robustness of the proposed traffic mitigation measures.

"The consequence of these inadequacies is a high level of risk in terms of matchday traffic management, which will fall mainly to the council to resolve"

going on to say that;

"Experience elsewhere suggests that unless substantive amendments are made to the current AGP proposal there are likely to be significant operational impacts on the transport network on matchdays, with a major impact on the local residential and business community."

and that even with the car figures used in the transport assessment that some 2,000 of the proposed off-street parking is not guaranteed and that even this figure is based only on an average attendance of 23,500 and thus liable to even further increase in uncontrolled parking for capacity attendances. As a result, some 7,000 cars could end up looking to park on-street in those areas not protected by a match-day residents parking zone - and this is based on a Transport Assessment which may well seriously underestimate the number of cars.

He concludes;

"The officer report of 4 November agrees that the ‘initial ideas’ set out in the Travel Plan ‘need further development, certainty and a broader scope’. Despite further discussions, the report for 10 February 2010 reinforces the view that these measures are not yet robust or certain, they remain ideas. This is not a sound basis for giving consent to a 30,000 seater stadium and could not realistically form enforceable planning conditions or be part of any Section 106 Agreement."

"Experience elsewhere shows that it will be the council that will be faced with having to rectify the matchday travel problems, to the disbenefit of local communities and other road users."

Update: I have been informed by my colleague from Dortmund that I had used the wrong figures for the stadium capacity and number of cars driven to the games held there - these have now been corrected from a 60,000 capacity and 9,000 cars to 65,000 capacity and 13,500 cars thus making the 21% figure sensible.

Cabinet Meeting 28 January 2010

2010-01-29T13:24:00.002Z

An interesting Cabinet meeting last night - with potential for an entire week of blog posts.

However, I should start with the responses from Councillor Cook to the questions I put forward regarding Bristol's World Cup Bid 2018. Unfortunately thanks to the lamentable state of our public transport system (not just in Bristol but also beyond), I managed to arrive at the Cabinet meeting just in time to hear the leader of the Council ask if I had any supplementary questions!

As I hadn't even read Cllr Cook's answers I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and declined to ask any supplementaries - I am sure that I detected a certain note of disappointment on Cllr Cook's face upon hearing that, however upon reading Cllrs Cook lengthy responses, I am glad I did so as they deserve a more detailed response than a neccesarily hurried and hasty reading is capable of providing.

Here are the questions and the answers received - I will give my response to them in a later post(s).

Questions to Cabinet – 28 January 2010-01-29

Answers to questions (from Tony Dyer to Cllr Simon Cook)

Economic Impact of World Cup on Bristol

Bristol City Council has now submitted its bid to be a Host City for the 2018 World Cup - by doing so, the council has signed a binding legal agreement which has severe restrictions in terms of its ability to withdraw from the bid process without, potentially, facing financial penalty or loss of prestige.

The decision to proceed has been justified on the basis of potential economic benefit to the City, it's businesses, and its residents, but at present the only estimates regarding the possible economic benefits resulting from this decision appear to be a generic model produced by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in which they say that, largely based on data collected from the 2006 World Cup, a successful bid would generate £150m in economic impact for a Host City.

Question 1: Has any analysis been done on the potential economic benefits of becoming a host city based on Bristol's specific proposal and circumstances?

Answer 1: I am advised that some work has been undertaken to assess the possible value to the Bristol economy of staging World Cup matches. It is important however to state at the outset that estimating the value of events and festivals is a somewhat complex and inexact process and is based upon a number of suppositions as much as established research. Work undertaken by Deloitte, Cardiff Marketing and Cardiff City Council identified that the FA Cup Final in Cardiff in 2001generated £4.2 million of spending, based almost solely on day trippers. The PR value of that one match which was watched by 600 million people around the world was estimated at £100 million.

Each World Cup match hosted in Bristol will be certainly be worth many £millions to the economy of the city and the sub-region. It is impossible to put an exact figure on it simply because so many factors are involved:- who is playing, the amount of TV exposure we can secure, our capacity to host the thousands of fans who will want to watch the match in the stadium (42,000) or in the Fan Fests (104,000), etc. It is clear that money will be spent in hotels, camp sites, in restaurants, supermarkets, shops and on travel. This will in turn generate employment within the city and stimulate spending by local people.

In 2008/9 Bristol’s hotels estimated to take in the region of £0.75 million on room charges each night with the same guests spending a further £0.75 million on food and drink, transport and shopping. This equates to a spend profile of £375 per room per night with occupancy at an average of 76% over the June/July period. In World Cup year and assuming 100% occupancy but no increase in spend, £51.2 million could be generated over the 26 days of the tournament.

In addition, a further £74.4 million could be generated through those attending Fan Fests assuming variable occupancy rates (50% capacity for home matches, 30% capacity for final/semi-final and 25% capacity for other matches) and an average spend of £100 per day at current rates. This equates to a direct economic return of £125 million over the 31 days of the tournament.

Deloitte has produced an economic impact study of the Rugby World Cup which shows that the tournament, which is one third of the size of the FIFA Football World Cup, generates between £200 million and £800 million in additional expenditure in a host country with indirect spending pushing this to over £2 billion if the event is staged in an European host country.

Question 2: Has any reverse checking been done on the robustness of the PwC model, by, for example, feeding in the actual number of attendees at the stadium and fan parks for Hannover (a similar city to Bristol in many ways) in 2006 and comparing the results with those predicted by the PwC model?

Answer 2: No detailed comparison has been undertaken as you describe as I understand that the data is not available from Hannover for the economic effect of staging the event. In fact officers have advised that no individual city studies were undertaken as far as they have been able to ascertain. The only study that we have available is an analysis undertaken by the German National Tourist Board which was referenced in the original report to Cabinet.

Question 3: The PwC model is largely based on the economic impact of non-domestic visitors and assumes that the percentage of Fan Park attendees from overseas will be 40%. Has the executive member been given any indication by those involved in running Bristol's bid that the level of overseas visitors is likely to be lower than that figure?

Answer 3: I am advised that FIFA ticket sales for attendance at World Cup matches are controlled and that the host nation can expect to get between 33% and 40% of those available. In Germany (2006) 3.2 million tickets were issued world wide of which 1.2 million were made available in Germany. From this we can deduce that approximately 60% of match ticket holders were non German nationals. The availability of match tickets also directly impacts on the attractiveness of the FanFests as an alternative destination. In 2006 in addition to the 3.2 million who watched matches in stadia in the 12 host cities, a further 21 million (approximately) visited the official FanFests in those cities. It is highly likely that FanFests would have attracted large number of domestic visitors which would impact on the percentage of foreign visitors overall but it not possible to provide an accurate breakdown of those numbers as, to our knowledge, no analysis was undertaken. The German Tourist Board however report 2.5 million more overnight stays by visitors from abroad in the first half of 2006 compared to the same period in 2005.

Question 4: Has any estimate been made of what percentage of ALL stadium and fan park attendees will:

a) be visitors from outside the City of Bristol, both domestic and international?

Answer 4 a): Ticket sales for the World Cup normally operate on a lottery basis and fans elect to bid for tickets for whichever matches they wish to attend. Most domestic fans and all visiting fans are likely to consider travelling to a number of different venues when deciding their options. The likelihood of securing the tickets you want is governed by the demand for particular matches and the overall demand for the tournament.

In Germany demand was extremely high and many fans were disappointed in not securing all the tickets they sought. By contrast reports from South Africa in 2010 suggest that the anticipated demand from across the African continent has not been realised and as a result more ticket are being offered to countries with high demand, eg England and the USA.

An analysis of the percentage change in overnight stays in host city hotels in Germany in June 2006 by foreign visitors identified a range of returns. The cities showing the least change, eg Munich and Berlin are recognisably international cities of note, yet still showed an increase in foreign visitor numbers of 17.4% and 31.2% respectively for the period. At the other end of the spectrum, cities like Dortmund and Gelsenkirchen showed increases of 285.6% and 262.7% respectively for the same period. Bristol’s twin city Hannover saw a 56.6% increase in foreign visitors over the month of the tournament.

b) and how many of the above will stay in the City of Bristol itself, as opposed to surrounding areas or elsewhere in the UK?

Answer 4 b): It is very difficult to predict the likely numbers who will opt to stay in Bristol during the World Cup in 2018. This will be governed by a number of factors:

i The number of matches and the attractiveness of the fixtures that Bristol secures during the tournament
ii The capacity and quality of the entertainment and cultural offer at the FanFest sites and within the city as a whole.
iii The range, availability and cost of the accommodation offer in Bristol and the surrounding area.
iv The ease of travel to and from Bristol and its connectivity with other host cities by public transport.

Question 5: What is the currently capacity for overnight visitors staying within the city of Bristol?

Answer 5: Destination Bristol advise that there are currently 4,826 graded hotel rooms within the Bristol conurbation plus 9,611 university halls of residence, and 2,471 self catering apartments. In addition, Bristol’s bid assumes that we will provide quality camping facilities for 20,000 in the city.

In addition to Bristol’s offer there are approximately 4,000 additional hotel rooms within a 20 mile radius of the City Centre plus a further 4,689 units of student accommodation associated with Bath and Bath Spa Universities.

Question 6: What has been the average occupancy levels for the above for each of the months of June, July and August for the last five years?

New superstore at Ashton Gate: It's bigger and it's orange

2010-01-21T21:29:00.003Z

Sainsbury's have now got round to revealing details of their proposed store for Ashton Gate. For comparison here is the previous application;

So what's different? Well......it's orange. And it is much bigger, in fact the new store is big enough to be two stores, for example;

Existing Sainsbury's = 5,126 sq metres

Existing Asda = 4,733 sq metres

Total Floorspace = 9,859 sq metres

New Sainsbury's = 9,300 sq metres

But maybe that's the cunning plan (Baldrick is a City fan after all), maybe they think that if they say it's not a new store just a relocation of an existing store that the planners won't notice how big it is, and will change their mind about their conclusion stated in the officer's report (pdf) for the withdrawn Tesco proposal that "no need has been identified for the proposed store, and the locality of the site is already very well served for convenience shopping with two large superstores located within a mile of the site and numerous other smaller stores". Shame it will be bright orange or will orange be rebranded as Sainsburys Red ready for next seasons new kit?

They will of course be building houses and workspaces on the old Sainsbury's site which will look like this:

Oops, my mistake. That's George Ferguson's proposal for Ashton Gate.

Building houses and workspaces apparently won't work at Ashton Gate, it will only work at the current Sainsbury's site 500 metres away because it obviously makes sense to knock down a stadium to build a new supermarket and then knock down the old supermarket to build houses - that is much more sensible and sustainable then just knocking down the stadium and building the houses whilst keeping the existing store. Here is the mixed used development of the type that won't work at Ashton Gate;

The real reason why mixed use won't work at Ashton Gate is that Bristol City FC need to sell Ashton Gate for £20m as a supermarket as enabling development to fund the new stadium (apparently BCFC didn't consider to ask Sainsbury's how much they'd be willing to pay to NOT have a rival supermarket there, and then for the club to invest that in developing Ashton Gate themselves as mixed use). The problem here is that the planners have already said "taking into account the relatively limited degree to which the stadium would be reliant on the funds generated by any granting of planning permission for this application (17.5 %), the tenuous link between the stadium proposals and the extensive harm that would result from the proposed supermarket, officers conclude that its value as “enabling development” would not outweigh the extensive harm that would be caused. Therefore officers recommend that this application should be refused" So the store will have to be approved on its own merits as a superstore.

Which brings us back to whether planners (and the members of the planning committee) will perform an abrupt U-turn and approve a superstore that, to quote the BBC will, at 9,300 square metres "be larger than Asda at Cribbs Causeway which, when it was built 10 years ago, was the biggest supermarket in Europe" even though they have already said in regard to the earlier Tesco application that "no need has been demonstrated for additional convenience or comparison retail floorspace, either in qualitative or quantative terms" and that Bedminster town centre "would experience reduced footfall, and, in time, investment plans leading to increased numbers of vacancies and more poorly maintained buildings. The quality, attractiveness physical condition and character of the centre would all suffer and its vitality and viability would be further undermined."

It may well be that the most important document in all this is the one referred to in the Officer's Report for the previous application;

"The Council has commissioned a report to assess the existing centres in South Bristol, and the potential for the creation of a new or improved centre or centres. This will be used to develop the retail strategy for South Bristol and inform the further development of draft Core Strategy policy BCS 1, but this will not be completed until late November 2009 after the application has been considered by Committee."

If that report concludes that additonal retail floorspace in the Bedminster/Southville/Ashton Gate area can be provided without affecting those areas where "the Council have identified a disparity of retail provision across the south of the city, with many disadvantaged communities further to the south being poorly served in terms of access to facilities" then planners may feel that they have reason to perform a u-turn. Let's hope however, that they don't make the mistake of "providing additional retail capacity in advance of an identified need" in such a way that "the proposals may fetter opportunities for the Council to intervene in the market and provide a new or improved retail centre or centres to address these issues of deprivation" in other parts of south Bristol.

It would be embarrassing for the council if, in their efforts to promote the regeneration of South Bristol, they succeeded in competely undermining their efforts to truly regenerate South Bristol.

The Rebranding of Nuclear Power?

2010-01-18T19:40:00.004Z

Naomi Klein contributed an article in the Guardian on Saturday regarding the rebranding of America since Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential election. The US is essentially the same America it was before his election, with the same ingredients, using the same processes it used before - but Obama’s America is now cool and appreciated by people who wouldn’t have had Bush’s America if it came with a Buy One, Get One Free offer.

The nuclear power industry has also been attempting to do the re-branding thing but much less successfully and over a longer time scale. They are trying to rid themselves of their association with the nuclear arms race of the Cold War, Windscale, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and instead are rebranding themselves as providers of low-carbon energy. Instead of threatening the planet, they are now, they say, ready to save the planet.

The nuclear industry has the power to generate deep divisions and passionate arguments, both in the general public and within the environmental movement. Some well respected environmentalists such as James Lovelock are pro-nuclear as is the author and journalist Mark Lynas. Others, almost certainly the majority, are anti-nuclear.

Personally speaking, I have no ideological objection to nuclear power - I just don't think the supply-side figures add up in terms of extracting the necessary uranium. The more I look at it, the less I am convinced that nuclear fission is a long-term solution with some of the claims made on its behalf based on unproven or doubtful potential technological advances which may lead to nuclear proliferation, whilst the lead times required to build a new power station rules nuclear energy out as a short- or medium-term solution.

In the case of the UK in particular there is also the fact that we have, largely, no home-grown sources of uranium and thus will be dependent on others for our supplies, and therefore, our energy.

This weakening of Britain’s control over its own energy makes it even odder that the political party most in favour of the expansion of nuclear energy is the Conservative Party who are usually so keen to campaign against any decisions that they perceive as weakening British Sovereign powers, but in the case of nuclear energy appear happy to see the UK replace reliance on oil and gas (where supply to the UK is dependent upon the decisions of other countries beyond our sovereign powers) with nuclear power which is dependent on another fuel source (uranium) the supply of which is, once again, dependent upon the decisions of other countries. The result will be that the ability of the British Parliament to act in an independent and sovereign manner based on democratic processes and ethical considerations will continue to be constrained by the ability of other countries to switch off its energy supplies - and lead to a similar level of realpolitik decision-making that involves us in wars and the propping up of vicious and undemocratic regimes.

Unless the UK decides to start mining for uranium in the Orkneys or Caithness - a decision that even Margaret Thatcher felt was beyond the pale and which will still only supply a tiny percentage of our existing uranium needs in return for massive environmental damage - we are total dependent on foreign imports for uranium. This is repeated across the EU as a whole which supplies less than 3% of its current uranium needs from within the borders of its member states. Similarly the US only supplies 8% of its own needs domestically. Although two of the largest providers of uranium are relatively stable and democratic countries - Canada and Australia (although even here, only the result of a recent election saw Western Australia re-open its uranium mines) - any major increases in reliance upon nuclear power at a worldwide level will inevitably lead to a greater reliance on less stable, less democratic countries like Kazakhstan, Niger, Uzbekistan and so on. There is even talk of exploiting uranium deposits in Greenland by over-turning a 20-year ban and over-riding objections from the local Inuit population.

At present, Russia is the single largest supplier to both the EU (25% of the EU's uranium requirements) and the US (33%), largely from uranium released as part of the decommissioning of cold war nuclear warheads. In total, decommissioned warheads account for 20,000 tonnes of the 65,000 tonnes or so of Uranium currently consumed each year. This 65,000 tonnes provides approx 15% of World electricity generation. I have seen figures that suggest that 122,000 tonnes p.a of uranium will be required by 2030 - to increase electricity capacity by 80% if all proposed and suggested nuclear power stations are built but this will still only supply a quarter of today's world electricity production

Once the Russians have used up their decommissioned warheads, we will find Europe and the US competing for additional uranium resources both with each other and with China (which is embarking on a major nuclear expansion of its own), repeating the same scenario that has caused so much anguish in the past, except that instead of counting the body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan, they may well be flown in from Kazakhstan instead.

Wind, wave, and solar energy are delivered to this country free of charge, and free of political decision-making elsewhere, and are utilised without leaving any waste behind. To ignore these natural resources would be the height of stupidity. It is time to move on from 19th and 20th century energy systems like coal, oil and gas and move on to the appliance of 21st century science to the renewables.

Tomorrow, Tuesday the 19th January – a motion has been put forward to Full Council proposing that Bristol City Council oppose expansion of Oldbury and Hinckley Point nuclear power stations. Prior to the full council meeting (which starts at 2pm), a protest has been organised for 1:40pm at the Council House. If you too feel that nuclear energy is not the solution to the UK’s energy needs, please come along and add your voice.

Knowle West: Lessons Learned or Lessons Spurned?

2010-01-14T21:20:00.006Z

In an earlier post I described how successive generations of my family had gradually moved (or been moved) from central Bristol slums to Knowle West and on to Hartcliffe. The midpoint of that journey - Knowle West (or Filwood Park if you prefer – an early example of rebranding) - is currently the focus for regeneration efforts and I have recently been reading two documents concerning some of the issues facing Knowle West/Filwood Park and thus the challenges for those seeking its regeneration.

The first document highlights that “the area has the largest population of children and young people out of all Bristol wards” and this, combined with “a low average household income” leads to a number of resulting issues. The second document also mentions “the high proportion of young people” and refers to “exceptional proverty” due in part to the “high incidence of unemployment”.

The first document goes on to mention multiple levels of deprivation in relation to “income, employment, education, health and crime” whilst the second mentions that “nearly half” of children were actually "below the ‘poverty’ line”, and that many illnesses such as asthma were “still far too prevalent” among children, there were also concerns about women’s health issues, whilst hooliganism and crime gave the area a bad reputation the stigma of which “left a lasting impression”, the last echoed by the first document which agrees that the area “suffers a poor image and reputation”.

Both documents agree that unemployment levels in the area are well above the average for Bristol whilst other shared conclusions refer to limited community, social and leisure facilities, poor transport connectivity especially with the City Centre, and poor retail provision within the area. Another key element is that the mix of house types in the area is limited, with the second document pointing to this causing many young couples to leave the area.

Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised that two documents studying the same area should arrive at the same conclusions – except that the first document referred to here is the “Knowle West Regeneration Framework” published in 2009, whilst the second is “Housing Estates: A study of Bristol Corporation policy and practice between the wars” published in 1949 and based on studies that took place before 1939. In other words, two studies separated by 70 years but, in that time, very little appears to have changed to alleviate the poverty and deprivation suffered by many of those living in Knowle West. That must be difficult reading for all those who have been in a position of power in Bristol over the past seven decades.

Jevons and Madge, the authors of the earlier study, called for better design to include such things as better retail provision including small local shops, higher incidence of parks and play areas, provision of crèches, public amenities from the start and cheap (or even free) transport to the city centre. The authors castigate planners for failing to understand the needs of residents; “many planners have failed to appreciate the implications of living in central areas” which are “of primary importance as a guide” to what is required in [new] neighbourhoods. It also points to the need to provide choice and not to allow over-dependence on one provider - “one big pub is often a poor alternative for three small ones”. The authors' final conclusion was that “denied its traditional institutions and amenities, denied the life and variety which course through the veins of a central area, ....a neighbourhood feels the full burden of its own poverty”.

It seems that their advice fell on deaf years - within two years of the book’s publication, Bristol Corporation had, in 1951, acquired more land on the northern slopes of Dundry where it proceeded to repeat all the errors it had made in Knowle West on an even larger scale. Ironically, growing up on this new estate of Hartcliffe, I remember having to travel to Knowle for many facilities including swimming, the cinema, and for more extensive shopping than the limited choice available locally. I suspect that similar stories of lack of neighbourhood facilities can be heard from those brought up on other estates built in the 50’s and into the 60’s and 70’s. Even with the move away from council planned estates, I am sure the early residents of Bradley Stoke can empathise with the lack of local amenities and public infrastructure.

We can only hope that, this time, the regeneration (or should it be simply “generation”) of Knowle West learns from those early mistakes, that it seeks to fully understand the needs and wants of the local community, and works hard to engage that community in making real and critical decisions about the future of Knowle West. The planners may find it hard to get the local community to involve themselves, 70 years of neglect and unfulfilled promises tends to generate a certain level of understandable cynicism and wariness, but planners should not give up too easily and resort to assuming that a "silent majority" means compliancy, and it is additionally to be hoped that no promises are made that cannot be realistically delivered.

Snow Clearing, Obama and People Power

2010-01-10T12:36:00.001Z

Not wishing to be the only blogger in the village not jumping on the gritting bandwagon – although worried that, given the icy conditions, I might slip and hurt myself in the process of leaping on board - in which case, according to some, my difficulties will have just begun as I try to figure out who to sue - I have decided to join Chris Hutt, BristolKRS, Bristol Blogger and even Charlie Bolton as well as the local Twitter community in commenting about Bristol’s preparation for, and attitude to, snow and/or ice.

We are in good company with even President Obama complaining about local schools closing due to the weather;

"As my children pointed out, in Chicago school is never canceled," …..He said that in their old hometown, "you'd go outside for recess in weather like this. You wouldn't even stay indoors."

(OK, he might have been talking about Washington DC not Bristol but give me some leeway here).

All joking aside, the issue seems to be boiling down to who is responsible for the pavement being cleared of snow and/or ice?

Staying with the North American angle, my wife used to live in a semi-rural community in Connecticut. A key item kept in the garage was a snow plough ready to be attached to the front of a 4WD Pickup truck to clear a route to the nearest cleared highway. There were no concerns about pedestrian access because nobody walked anywhere. In the nearby township where pedestrian access was required, local ordinances put the responsibility for the clearing of sidewalks firmly in the hands of individual property owners (both commercial and domestic). Once snow had reached 2 inches or had begun to freeze over, you were responsible for clearing the sidewalk adjacent to your property within 24 hours. There was even a local “rat on your neighbour” phone number you could call if somebody didn’t do their part of the sidewalk. Penalties for failing to do your bit could be a hefty fine plus being charged for the cost of the local authority clearing it for you (via a private company – who could also be booked directly by businesses and residents).

My own experience of the American attitude to snow on the pavement is due to the dominance of Microsoft in my line of work which meant that for quite some time myself and several of my European colleagues spent so much time in the Seattle area that it became more cost-effective to lease a property in the city rather than pay hotel bills. As a result I became familiar with the operations of Seattle’s Department of Transport (SDOT). SDOT was very keen on communicating information (they now have a blog and also use twitter and facebook) about Winter Storms. They publish a downloadable map showing what roads would be treated and the level of treatment for those roads – all lanes cleared from kerb to kerb, one lane each way, or sanding on hills to aid tyre grip. As in Connecticut, individual property owners are responsible for clearing sidewalks including providing access to bus stops next to their part of the sidewalk and also ensuring that drains were kept clear.

In Seattle, this concept of individual citizens and businesses being at least partially responsible for their bit of the sidewalk has moved on to the idea of having a greater say in how it is used - for example for adjacent parking. In Seattle, if you have a driveway, you can pop down to SDOT and pick up a pot of “Official Traffic Authority” yellow paint with which you can paint the kerbside for 5 feet either side of your driveway to prevent cars parking there.

But that is only a small example of individual empowerment – you can also download “The Parking Tool” which is part of a much broader set of guidelines allowing communities to guide decision making on parking provision within their neighbourhoods. As long as a majority of residents and businesses in the neighbourhood can agree on a neighbourhood plan it can then be put forward to SDOT for implementation.

The “Parking Tool” is, in turn, just one small element of Seattle’s neighbourhood approach whereby funding from Seattle’s budget is matched by neighbourhood matching funding (which can be in the form of volunteer hours or donated materials not just cash) via four funds to implement initiatives determined by the local community. In the 20 years since its inception, the scheme has seen $45m transferred from the city to local districts with another $68m generated by the community themselves. 3,800 projects have been involved engaging some 80,000 volunteers donating 560,000 hours.

Back home, the Bristol Liberal Democrat cabinet have started out on a project for deferring funding and the guidance of local decision-making to Neighbourhood Partnerships – so far, it is small steps along an uncertain path. If it is successful, perhaps next winter we might not be worrying about who is responsible for clearing the pavements of snow because we will be the ones with the power to make decisions about what is allowed to happen upon our own local streets, and with power comes responsibility.

Or as Obama might have said "Can we fix it? Yes we can" (Or was that Bob the Builder?)

City Council To Become Co-Owners of Ashton Vale Stadium?

2010-01-06T18:26:00.003Z

Whilst much attention recently has been directed at divisions within Bristol City Council in general, and the Lib Dems in particular, about support for a new football stadium at Ashton Vale set to be funded by the development of a massive Sainsbury’s at Ashton Gate, it now appears that there are signs of dissension within the ranks at Bristol City Football Club itself.

Whilst Steve Lansdown and Colin Sexstone continue to publicly insist that despite planning officers already recommending refusal of a 5,500 m2 Tesco superstore, these same planners will perform an abrupt U-turn and recommend that permission be granted for a 9,000 m2 Sainsbury’s superstore, other senior figures have expressed concerns that the club, having effectively gained planning permission for the stadium itself and with high confidence of reversing North Somerset Council’s decision on the access road, are about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

A source at the club has confided that “an almost fanatical obsession with a bloody supermarket” and a distrust verging on contempt for the public sector as represented by Bristol City Council is poisoning any attempt to consider realistic alternatives – “it all comes down to egos, certain people refuse to accept that if you keep banging your head against a brick wall all you get is a headache”.

The decision that has made this well-respected insider angry enough to express his concerns publicly?

The less than enthusiastic response by Lansdown and Sexstone to an offer by Bristol City Council to become junior partners in the company that will own and operate the new football stadium in order to release significant public sector investment opportunities. The City Council proposal is also linked to a commitment towards the development of an indoor arena alongside the new stadium.

However, it appears that the top brass at Bristol City FC are reluctant to concede even a minority share to the City Council in an effort to maintain the impression of the stadium development being a purely privately funded operation - despite the fact that the project is already reliant on public sector land being provided at favourable terms below commercial valuations.

“Lansdown has no sympathy for the problems faced by the Council in selling this to the public beyond Bristol City supporters, he is only concerned with what he sees as the club’s needs and is unwilling to consider compromise – as a result we could end up with nothing”

“But discussions like this are all about compromises – both sides need to be able to walk away with something that they can go back to their side and say ‘we had to give away this but in return we got this’ – we are sending the City Council away with next to nothing”

The exact details of the proposed offer remain shrouded in secrecy but it is understood that there is increasing concern that the likelihood of planning permission for a new superstore at Ashton Gate is increasingly remote, and alternative options will fall considerably short of the estimated £20m estimated to be available from Sainsbury’s – although the shortfall will not be as great as the £15m difference previously mentioned in public. The expansion of the project to involve an indoor arena, will, it is believed, provide opportunities to release additional funding streams unavailable to a purely private sector operation as well as providing a more secure footing for attracting local business investment towards the estimated £25-£30m gross expenditure for the World Cup.

However, fears are increasing that if a deal is not done soon that the new stadium will fail to be delivered because of a funding gap, and this will signal the end of any opportunities to host World Cup games in 2018. An opportunity that has been widely touted as having considerable economic benefit for Bristol’s business community.

Update: Both Bristol City FC and a senior Lib Dem have denied that any such deal has been proposed - see Jones the News for more details.

Bristol energy usage by neighbourhood

2010-01-02T20:53:00.011Z

On the 23rd of December the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) released its latest series of data regarding energy consumption by local authorities.

The figures for metered Electricity and Gas energy usage within Bristol are also available for Lower-level Super output Areas (LSOAs) as part of a pilot project for half a dozen local authorities – essentially this breaks the local authority information down into smaller “neighbourhood” areas. For Bristol there are 252 of these LSOAs with average populations of 1,500 each. The DECC data allows us to break down the domestic energy consumption for Gas and Electricity as an average per household within each of these local areas (the figures for households estimates for the LSOAs are from the 2001 census figures).

No. 1 on the Bristol list is University Halls which is a bit of an anomaly because of the classification of the University Halls of Residence as single households. As a result the average household size for University Halls is 5.99 compared to the Bristol average of 2.35 (apart from University Halls, the next highest average household size for any ward is 2.78 for Fonthill in Southmead ward at 100 on the list). Stoke Bishop North at No.2 on the other hand has an average household size of 2.25 and thus is a good contender for Bristol's top energy guzzling neighbourhood, with a per household consumption over 40% higher than the average Bristol household, and nearly 3 times that of the average household in Redcliffe, the local area with the lowest energy usage per household.

Looking through the list below, as might be expected the top end of the list is dominated by neighbourhoods in Stoke Bishop, Henleaze, and Westbury-on-Trym wards which have 8 of the top ten energy using neighbourhoods, however there are nevertheless some thought provoking disparities further down the list.

It might be tempting to assume that the jump in household energy usage that the brief walk across Bristol or Redcliffe bridge entails (Redcliffe 9,588.80 KWh, City Centre & Queen Square 26,183.19 KWh) could be explained by the fact that since 2001, the population of the later area has increased by nearly 20% - until you realise that Redcliffe has increased by 45% over the same period. The answer must lie elsewhere than population change.

For myself, having spent 16 of the first 18 years of my life living in Fulford Road North in Hartcliffe, I find it difficult to work out why it's energy consumption is more than 50% higher per household than Fulford Road South where I lived the other 2 years - perhaps Paul Smith, a child of Fulford Road South, has a possible explanation?

You might wish to compare this post with an earlier post I did about carbon emissions by postcode in which I speculated that the level of carbon emissions had much more to do with people's level of personal wealth rather than any ideological commitment to a low carbon lifestyle. It seems that many people have relatively low carbon lifestyles forced upon them by relative poverty rather than by choice. As many of those areas in the list below that have the lowest energy usage (and, thus presumably, the lowest carbon emissions) are areas targeted for regeneration (and, hopefully, improved levels of personal wealth), then there is an onus on those of us who recognise the need for a reduction in future energy use and carbon emissions to tackle the immensely difficult task of ensuring that a low carbon lifestyle is one that people make as a choice, rather than because they had no alternative. A task that if failed has implications far beyond the borders of Bristol.

Here is the full list (if you don't know which LSOA neighbourhood you live in, the best way to find out is to use the City Council's ward finder, where, after selecting your home ward, you can download the Ward Super Output Area Map);

rank/ LSOA, Ward / kWh per household

1 University Halls, Stoke Bishop = 31,649.62
2 Stoke Bishop North, Stoke Bishop = 28,696.46
3 Sheridan Road, Horfield = 28,387.22
4 North View, Henleaze = 27,712.72
5 Henleaze North, Henleaze = 27,436.13
6 Sneyd Park & the Downs, Stoke Bishop = 27,038.87
7 Canford Lane, Westbury-on-Trym = 26,913.65
8 Cranbrook Road, Redland = 26,754.74
9 Rockleaze, Stoke Bishop = 26,754.48
10 Canford Park, Westbury-on-Trym = 26,712.02
11 Hazelbury, Stockwood = 26,574.36
12 City Centre & Harbourside, Cabot = 26,545.46
13 Stapleton Road, Lawrence Hill = 26,249.87
14 West Broadway, Henleaze = 26,229.73
15 City Centre & Queen Square, Cabot = 26,183.19
16 Upper Montpelier, Ashley = 26,168.22
17 Golden Hill, Henleaze = 25,822.47
18 Clifton Down, Clifton = 25,734.36
19 Henleaze West, Henleaze = 25,720.29
20 Robertson Rd, Easton = 25,592.11
21 Stoke Bishop South, Stoke Bishop = 25,216.05
22 St Pauls, Ashley = 25,138.23
23 Elmlea, Westbury-on-Trym = 25,129.85
24 Lower Redland Rd, Cotham = 24,884.09
25 Chester Park, Hillfields = 24,873.23
26 Cromwell Road, Ashley = 24,842.32
27 Cricket Ground, Bishopston = 24,632.99
28 Westbury Park North, Henleaze = 24,267.84
29 Ashley Hill, Ashley = 24,200.08
30 St Mark's Rd, Easton = 24,167.42
31 Henleaze South, Henleaze = 24,153.58
32 Wessex Avenue, Horfield = 24,078.80
33 Westbury Village, Westbury-on-Trym = 23,955.94
34 Upper Knowle, Knowle = 23,948.88
35 Redcatch, Knowle = 23,861.29
36 Westbury Park South, Redland = 23,849.59
37 University, Cabot = 23,827.56
38 West St, Bedminster = 23,623.29
39 Southmead East, Southmead = 23,587.42
40 Fishponds Rd, Eastville = 23,343.95
41 St Agnes, Ashley = 23,337.86
42 Talbot Hill, Knowle = 23,292.17
43 Somerville Rd, Bishopston = 23,192.63
44 Eastgate, Lockleaze = 23,173.27
45 Radnor Road, Bishopston = 23,082.77
46 Callington Road, Brislington West = 23,082.26
47 Old Sneed Park, Stoke Bishop = 22,696.95
48 Fishponds, Frome Vale = 22,614.72
49 Brentry East, Henbury = 22,558.80
50 Hengrove East, Hengrove = 22,551.31
51 Two Mile Hill East, St George East = 22,548.98
52 Alma Road, Clifton East = 22,495.90
53 Hillfields West, Hillfields = 22,442.11
54 St Bonaventures, Bishopston = 22,406.72
55 Berkeley Road South, Redland = 22,176.32
56 St Judes, Lawrence Hill = 22,101.65
57 Cotham Park, Cotham = 22,092.29
58 Zetland Road, Redland = 22,087.13
59 Hengrove Lane, Hengrove = 22,016.37
60 Easton Road, Lawrence Hill = 22,013.69
61 Manor Park, Redland = 21,942.21
62 Bridgwater Rd, Bishopsworth = 21,890.71
63 Coombe Dingle East, Kingsweston = 21,839.56
64 Eldonwall, Brislington West = 21,802.26
65 Ashley Down, Bishopston = 21,758.29
66 Avonmouth Docks, Avonmouth = 21,754.73
67 Wellington Hill, Horfield = 21,739.58
68 Seymour Rd, Bishopston = 21,543.36
69 Court Farm Road, Whitchurch Park = 21,471.04
70 Redland Court Road, Redland = 21,412.88
71 Clifton College, Clifton = 21,308.50
72 Whitchurch Road, Hartcliffe = 21,297.36
73 Downend West, Frome Vale = 21,286.99
74 Red Lion Hill, Knowle = 21,247.85
75 Wedmore Vale, Filwood = 21,189.52
76 Parson St, Bedminster = 21,184.15
77 Kensington Park, Brislington West = 21,141.23
78 Whitchurch, Whitchurch Park = 21,136.72
79 Monks Park, Horfield = 21,121.69
80 Winterstoke Rd, Bedminster = 21,115.13
81 Victoria Park, Windmill Hill = 21,037.44
82 Henbury Hill, Westbury-on-Trym = 21,033.96
83 Manor Farm, Horfield = 21,017.75
84 Birchwood Rd, Brislington East = 20,940.16
85 Brentry West, Henbury = 20,906.81
86 Bryants Hill, St George East = 20,901.41
87 Mayfield Park, Hillfields = 20,874.75
88 Bishop Road, Bishopston = 20,855.25
89 Whitehall, Easton = 20,811.38
90 Bedminster, Southville = 20,793.23
91 Blackberry Hill, Frome Vale = 20,782.83
92 Chelsea Park, Easton = 20,769.46
93 Worral Road, Clifton East = 20,744.21
94 Broadwalk, Knowle = 20,706.94
95 Hamilton Road, Southville = 20,635.52
96 Windmill Hill West, Windmill Hill = 20,630.36
97 Woodleigh Gardens, Stockwood = 20,577.17
98 Bath Road, Brislington West = 20,575.01
99 Blaise Hamlet, Henbury = 20,540.46
100 Fonthill, Southmead = 20,523.86
101 Old Market & The Dings, Lawrence Hill = 20,499.46
102 Memorial Stadium, Bishopston = 20,492.28
103 Keys Avenue, Horfield = 20,454.41
104 Kings Head Park, Bishopsworth = 20,425.01
105 Coronation Rd East, Southville = 20,407.53
106 Clifton Village, Clifton = 20,400.44
107 Nags Head Hill, St George East = 20,343.15
108 Novers, Filwood = 20,334.35
109 Westbury North, Westbury-on-Trym = 20,259.97
110 Stackpool Road, Southville = 20,256.56
111 Woodwell Road, Avonmouth = 20,241.71
112 Ashton, Southville = 20,228.48
113 St Johns Lane, Windmill Hill = 20,203.00
114 Hillfields North, Hillfields = 20,199.63
115 Sea Mills North, Kingsweston = 20,188.25
116 Two Mile Hill West, St George East = 20,185.25
117 Ilchester Crescent, Bishopsworth = 20,139.76
118 Knowle Park, Knowle = 20,132.72
119 Conham Valley, St George East = 20,093.96
Bristol average = 19,998.29
120 West St George, St George West = 19,992.66
121 Stockwood Lane South, Stockwood = 19,984.81
122 Burchells Green, St George East = 19,981.47
123 Fulford Road North, Hartcliffe = 19,948.43
124 Hotwells East, Clifton = 19,910.71
125 Whatley Road, Clifton East = 19,850.52
126 Stockwood Lane North, Stockwood = 19,762.78
127 Lower Montpelier, Ashley = 19,737.27
128 Avonmouth Village, Avonmouth = 19,734.41
129 Stapleton, Eastville = 19,713.19
130 Wells Road, Windmill Hill = 19,710.86
131 Netham, Easton = 19,677.58
132 Lodge Hill, Hillfields = 19,667.07
133 Southmead West, Southmead = 19,653.15
134 Kingsway, St George East = 19,517.58
135 Blaise Castle, Henbury = 19,475.65
136 Sandy Park Rd, Brislington West = 19,456.34
137 Imperial Park, Hartcliffe = 19,428.28
138 Bedminster Rd, Bedminster = 19,426.20
139 Manworthy Rd, Brislington East = 19,414.84
140 Leinster Avenue, Filwood = 19,400.96
141 Greenbank, Eastville = 19,391.59
142 Coombe Dingle West, Kingsweston = 19,358.97
143 Broomhill Rd, Brislington East = 19,316.46
144 Glyn Vale, Filwood = 19,250.24
145 Hotwells, Clifton = 19,246.45
146 Staple Hill Rd North, Frome Vale = 19,238.32
147 Tanorth Road, Whitchurch Park = 19,232.61
148 Highridge Common, Bishopsworth = 19,170.72
149 Southmead North, Southmead = 19,140.54
150 East St George, St George West = 19,139.13
151 Kensington Rd, Cotham = 19,087.50
152 Eastville Park, Eastville = 19,084.25
153 Kingsweston Avenue, Avonmouth = 19,070.02
154 Windmill Hill East, Windmill Hill = 19,001.10
155 Fortfield West, Hengrove = 18,972.36
156 Barrow Hill, Avonmouth = 18,945.71
157 Upper Eastville, Eastville = 18,944.90
158 Filton Ave South, Lockleaze = 18,924.63
159 Redland Grove, Cotham = 18,890.37
160 Ashton Vale, Bedminster = 18,887.83
161 Bedminster Down, Bishopsworth = 18,878.70
162 Throgmorton Rd, Filwood = 18,793.19
163 Rose Green, Eastville = 18,788.15
164 Plummers Hill, St George West = 18,710.49
165 Clyde Road, Cotham = 18,689.61
166 Headley Park, Hartcliffe = 18,670.74
167 Charlton Mead, Southmead = 18,650.12
168 Lawrence Weston West, Avonmouth = 18,626.98
169 Whiteway, St George West = 18,623.18
170 Kingsdown Parade, Cabot = 18,596.21
171 Highridge, Bishopsworth = 18,538.62
172 Mina Road, Ashley = 18,530.80
173 Gilbert Road, Easton = 18,529.64
174 Shirehampton Portway, Avonmouth = 18,511.95
175 Filwood Broadway, Filwood = 18,485.12
176 St Andrews Park, Redland = 18,445.45
177 Hillfields East, Hillfields = 18,410.99
178 Hengrove Park, Hengrove = 18,383.24
179 Whitefield Fishponds, Eastville = 18,318.17
180 Uppr Totterdown, Windmill Hill = 18,307.12
181 Trymside, Southmead = 18,249.41
182 Horfield Sports Ground, Lockleaze = 18,221.37
183 Muller Road, Lockleaze = 18,198.79
184 Filton Road, Horfield = 18,195.78
185 Oldbury Court, Frome Vale = 18,193.06
186 Two Acres, Hengrove = 18,174.45
187 Woodland Rd, Cabot = 18,170.66
188 Speedwell, Hillfields = 18,152.71
189 Cotham Brow, Cotham = 18,139.49
190 Lawrence Weston East, Kingsweston = 18,134.15
191 Newbridge Rd, Brislington East = 18,121.59
192 Clifton Central, Clifton = 17,997.51
193 Marksbury Road, Windmill Hill = 17,944.33
194 Ilminster Ave East, Knowle = 17,935.89
195 Lockleaze South, Lockleaze = 17,860.27
196 Allison Road, Brislington East = 17,852.54
197 Redfield, St George West = 17,847.94
198 Lockleaze North, Lockleaze = 17,795.61
199 Whitchurch Lane, Hartcliffe = 17,726.78
200 Fair Furlong, Hartcliffe = 17,709.95
201 Inns Court, Filwood = 17,670.52
202 Fortfield East, Hengrove = 17,656.06
203 Sherrin Way, Bishopsworth = 17,636.03
204 St Georges Park, St George West = 17,614.00
205 Crews Hole, St George East = 17,530.08
206 Broomhill, Frome Vale = 17,486.36
207 Sandholme Rd, Brislington West = 17,450.67
208 Luckwell Rd, Bedminster = 17,431.49
209 Bishport Ave East, Whitchurch Park = 17,430.68
210 Queens Road, Clifton East = 17,409.47
211 Chessel St, Bedminster = 17,399.42
212 Horfield Common, Horfield = 17,360.01
213 Henbury, Henbury = 17,328.59
214 The Coots, Stockwood = 17,245.72
215 Staple Hill Rd South, Hillfields = 17,217.15
216 Hareclive, Whitchurch Park = 17,142.40
217 Church Road, Easton = 17,099.01
218 School Rd, Brislington East = 17,049.62
219 Lake Road, Westbury-on-Trym = 17,014.86
220 Bishport Ave West, Hartcliffe = 16,947.82
221 Hengrove West, Hengrove = 16,896.48
222 Sea Mills South, Kingsweston = 16,706.05
223 Ilminster Ave West, Filwood = 16,678.47
224 Filton Ave North, Lockleaze = 16,538.43
225 Southmead Central, Southmead = 16,420.01
226 St Annes Park, Brislington East = 16,362.16
227 Whitchurch Park, Whitchurch Park = 16,146.17
228 Burnbush Hill, Stockwood = 16,066.96
229 Lawrence Weston South, Kingsweston = 16,066.26
230 Cliftonwood, Clifton = 16,064.06
231 Hicks Gate, Brislington West = 15,744.87
232 Withywood, Hartcliffe = 15,721.88
233 Wharnecliffe Gdns, Hengrove = 15,714.86
234 Four Acres, Bishopsworth = 15,571.09
235 Gill Avenue, Frome Vale = 15,445.20
236 Oakfield Grove, Clifton East = 15,381.38
237 Bower Ashton, Southville = 15,293.45
238 Cotham Hill, Cotham = 15,063.97
239 Lawrence Weston Parade, Kingsweston = 15,059.93
240 Clouds Hill, St George West = 15,028.58
241 Coronation Rd West, Southville = 14,903.25
242 Burnbush, Stockwood = 14,761.77
243 Crow Lane, Henbury = 14,574.80
244 Lwr Totterdown, Windmill Hill = 14,526.09
245 Wootton Road, Brislington East = 14,417.88
246 Lower Clifton Hill, Clifton East = 14,341.00
247 Shirehampton Centre, Avonmouth = 13,931.84
248 Barton Hill Road, Lawrence Hill = 13,773.57
249 St James Barton, Cabot = 13,070.97
250 Fulford Road South, Whitchurch Park = 12,841.55
251 St Philips, Lawrence Hill = 9,689.41
252 Redcliffe, Lawrence Hill = 9,588.80

The consumption figures for electricity and gas are based on domestic meter readings over the course of 2007.

First Bristolians in Space?

2010-01-01T17:45:00.007Z

Back in November, the Guardian published a brief article about how thousands of worms were carried into space on board the space shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-129 to the International Space Station.

What got my interest was the fact that the worms concerned were from Bristol – having been collected from a local rubbish tip shortly after the end of World War II.

This seemed like a good basis for a somewhat tongue-in-cheek New Year blogpiece that if some relatively simple creatures from Bristol can make it all the way into space, that perhaps over the course of this coming year it might not be too much to ask that some more advanced Bristolian creatures might be able to work together to solve some more down-to-earth problems – like traffic congestion, job creation, homelessness, health care provision, etc, etc.

However, it seems that I may have underestimated the Bristol worms. Space travel is just one of their achievements and perhaps not even their greatest accomplishment.

The worms concerned are nematodes known as Caenorhabdtis elegans, or C. elegans for short, and usually about 1mm in length. The Bristol strain of C. elegans was isolated from mushroom compost by the National Agricultural Advisory Service, mainly to study the effect of C. elegans on mushroom yields. By 1949, the Bristol version of C. elegans had made their way to the Universite de Lyon’s Victor Nigon. Nigon had collected another strain of C. elegans from Bergerac in France but the Bergerac strain could not be cultured at temperatures above 18 degrees as they became infertile, thus restricting their usefulness – the Bristolians on the other hand were happy to mate at temperatures well beyond this.

Nigon and an American scientist called Ellsworth Dougherty did some classic mating studies using the Bristol worms, and began to realise that they were prime candidates for genetic studies; C. elegans is a multicellular eurkaryotic organism that is relatively simple to study, cheap to breed, and able to be frozen yet still remain viable when thawed allowing for easy storage and transfer. It is also transparent allowing the study of cellular differentiation and, finally, it is one of the simplest organisms to also have a nervous system.

News of the work by Nigon and Dougherty made its way to Britain’s Medical Research Council (MRC) and, in particular, the South African molecular biologist Sydney Brenner.

In April 1953, with the support of the MRC, Crick and Watson had modelled the structure of DNA at Cambridge University. Within a few days of this discovery, Brenner travelled to Cambridge and soon realised that many fundamental genetic questions were hard to tackle by studying higher animals. Therefore, a genetically amenable and multicellular model organism simpler than mammals was required. After meeting with Dougherty, Brenner (now also working at the MRC labs) collected some nematodes from his own back garden in Cambridge which he called the N1 strain but it was only when he received some of the Bristol worms, which he rechristened N2, that his work really progressed. Virtually all C. elegans genetics has since been done with the Bristol (N2) strain.

In 1998, N2 became the first multicellular animal to have its entire genome mapped, (paving the way for the decoding of the Human Genome completed in 2003).

In 2002, Brenner and two other scientists (H. Robert Horvitz and John Sulston) received a Nobel Prize for their work on C. elegans. Their work identified key genes regulating organ development and programmed cell death and has shown that corresponding genes exist in higher species, including ourselves. The discoveries are important for medical research and have shed new light on the pathogenesis of many diseases. In his acceptance speech, Brenner said “Without doubt the fourth winner of the Noble prize this year is Caenorhabdtis elegans; it deserves all the honour”.

One of the aspects of the research was the identification of the genes involved in programmed cell death. By identifying the C. elegans genes involved in initiating cell death, and with the knowledge that a third of C. elegans genes are shared with humans, it was possible to begin research into the possibility of programming genes to initiate cell death in cancer cells – in other words a potential cure for cancer that didn’t involve being subjected to debilitating treatments.

In 2006, the Bristol worms provided the basis for research that produced another Nobel Prize, this time for Andrew Fire and Craig Mellow for their discovery of RNA interference in C. elegans. In simplistic terms, Fire and Mellow discovered that they could affect how DNA is copied and prevent some proteins from being reproduced – this has important consequences for diseases which are caused by an overproduction of a particular protein. One proposed use which is being tested is as a means to treat age-related degeneration of part of the retina. This condition is common among elderly people and can severely reduce eyesight, and is caused by the growth of blood vessels, largely due to a substance called VEGF. An injection can reduce the growth rate of VEGF. It is also being tested as a method to combat Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), which can cause severe respiratory infections in small children. The principle behind the treatment is that, via inhalation, viruses in the lung will be deactivated and the infection will be terminated.

A third Nobel Prize came the way of C. elegans in 2008. Martin Chalfie received a one third share for his work on green fluourescent protein (GFP) in C. elegans. Chalfie realised that, given the fact that C. elegans is transparent, it would be a perfect way of mapping the activities in its cells and in particular the activation of genes to produce proteins.

For instance, when you have eaten a big bag of sweets and your blood-sugar level is too high, the insulin gene in the pancreatic beta cells is switched on and the insulin gene begins to be copied. The copy of the insulin gene is used to bring the amino acids together, forming the protein insulin. The insulin is released into the bloodstream where it sticks to muscle and fat cells, which absorb and store sugar from the blood. Chalfie’s idea was that by connecting the gene for GFP with various gene switches he would be able to watch cells gene switches activate and he would be able to see where different proteins were produced. The possibilities are obvious when you realise that the C. elegans gene daf-2 bears a remarkable resemblance to the human gene that encodes the insulin receptor and thus understanding how this gene operates may help to provide a cure for diabetes.

“I consider this year’s Prize to be the third worm prize” Chalfie’s Nobel Lecture.

As well as research into potential cures for Cancer and Diabetes, the Bristol worms have also formed the basis for research into;

Aging – and in particular how the Bristol worms are able to switch from a more active genetic model to a “sleep mode” enabling longer cell life. This has implications for age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Type 2 Diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases that tend to result from cellular decay.

Muscle Atrophy – the reason for the Bristol worms flight into space mentioned earlier was to study the affect of weightlessness on muscle development – but this research is not just for astronauts, it also has useful results for the long-term bedridden and also in geriatrics.

Nicotine – a 2006 discovery is that the Bristol worms have a similar physical reaction to nicotine as humans, opening a route to the possibility of providing a quick and permanent cure for tobacco addiction.

So, to conclude, C. elegans “Bristol (N2)" has managed to travel into space, has paved the way for the mapping of the Human Genome, produced three Nobel Prizes, and may yet offer up cures for or treatments for the prevention of; Cancer, Diabetes, Alzheimers, Heart Attacks, RSV and blindness. It may even provide a quick and painless route to give up smoking.

Not bad for some worms from a Bristol compost heap.

Broadmead German Market: Planning Department turning blind eye to Council’s rule breaking?

2009-12-12T11:17:00.002Z

Throughout the new Bristol City FC stadium planning process and especially where the proposed new supermarket at Ashton Gate is concerned, Bristol City Council has gone to great pains to claim that as a planning authority their work and decisions are entirely independent from their own political, personal or corporate agenda. They even describe the city's planning process as "quasi-judicial".

So it is instructional to see how they apply this independent, "quasi-judicial process" to themselves. A Parliamentary note placed in the House of Commons library on 9 December 2008 (and updated April 2009) sets out their obligations clearly:

“The general principle underlying the 1992 regulations is that local planning authorities must make planning applications in the same way as any other person, and must apply for planning permission. Except in special circumstances, they must follow the same procedures as would apply to applications made by anyone else.” - SN/SC/1195 available here (pdf)

Meanwhile on the council's website:

“BCC is taking a pragmatic approach in terms of planning permission. Taking into account DCLG guidance, BCC will not request planning permission for ‘temporary’ uses for up to 28 days. All ‘temporary’ changes of use of more than 28 days will need planning permission.”
Application Guidance Notes: Empty Shops and Promotion Initiative (pdf)

So how have Bristol City Council, as the local planning authority, interpreted these clear rules in relation to their own 'temporary' German Christmas Market in Broadmead? Advertising for the event says it runs from 12 November to 20 December (38 days), which means that the council is obliged to obtain planning permission for the market.

If you have a look at the council's planning website, the market is indeed listed on there, although surprisingly it is still 'pending consideration'. In other words Bristol City Council has not obtained planning permission for its own temporary structure, despite it being in place for over 28 days now.

So will the council, as the "quasi-judicial" planning authority be taking enforcement action against itself "in the same way as any other person"?

Should the Council swap Hengrove Park for Ashton Gate?

2009-12-08T11:15:00.004Z

The story so far…..

Bristol City FC would like a new stadium and would like to build it at Ashton Vale. The City Council, by and large, would like them to have that new stadium, especially as this may offer the opportunity for Bristol to be a host city for the World Cup if England is selected as the host for the 2018 tournament (which, we are told, will bring untold wealth to the city). However, Bristol City FC have said that the only way that they can fund their new stadium is by selling their existing stadium at Ashton Gate for somewhere in the region of £20m.

In the current economic climate it appears that the only way to raise £20m for Ashton Gate is by getting planning permission for a new supermarket on the site. Therein lies the rub, because existing planning policy and independent surveys all point to there being no need for a new supermarket in South West Bristol or even any major expansion of existing convenience retail in that part of the city.

A previous proposal for a Tesco at Ashton Gate was withdrawn when it became clear that planners were going to recommend refusal – hence the new plan to relocate Sainsburys. However any relocation involving a significantly expanded store would come up against similar planning objections as the previous application, whilst a store of the same size could potentially fail the sequential test (because its existing site already meets the need) and would not appear to make commercial good sense for Sainsburys (why spend £20m on a site plus another £20m building a new store just to end up with what you’ve already had before?)

The Core Strategy of the Bristol Development Framework published last week, does however highlight a potential need for additional retail in South Central/ South East Bristol. A site for a new centre, to be underpinned by retail, has been vaguely identified for somewhere near the focus of South Bristol’s regeneration at Hengrove Park.

Policy BCS1 of the Core Strategy includes; “…A new centre, either on a new site or at an enhanced existing centre, may be appropriate in South Bristol, acting as a new focus for the area and helping to improve provision of shops, services, employment and community facilities”.

The exact details and location for this new centre will be guided by the results of a South Bristol Retail and Centres Study which is in the process of being completed. However, the second worst kept secret in South Bristol is that Computershare will not be moving from their Bedminster Down offices to a new 19,000m2 office and warehouse development at Hengrove Park. This, perhaps, opens up an opportunity for a new centre on the site at Hengrove Park intended for Computershare – a new centre which could include some form of convenience retail as part of a more sustainable retail-led development incorporating District Heat and Power and linked to the other public buildings proposed for the area (the community hospital, the Healthplex, and the Skillscentre).

With Morrisons at Hartcliffe, Asda in Whitchurch, and Tesco at Brislington and Imperial Park, this leaves Sainsbury’s as the only one of the Big Four retailers unrepresented in the eastern half of South Bristol and thus they could well be interested in an opportunity to move into the area. However the land involved is owned by Bristol City Council not Bristol City FC, and Sainsburys are in discussions about new retail opportunities with Bristol City FC not Bristol City Council.

Let’s revisit the original problem.

Bristol City FC own land at Ashton Gate which they want to sell to a retailer to build a supermarket, but Ashton Gate is located where a supermarket is not needed. Bristol City Council doesn’t want retail at Ashton Gate but do want retail (which will almost certainly include a supermarket) at Hengrove Park. They also want Bristol City FC to have their stadium because they feel it will benefit the city as a whole. But for Bristol City FC to get their stadium they need to sell land to a retailer and the only land they have is at Ashton Gate and we are back where we started.

I have already mentioned the second worst kept secret in South Bristol, now it is time to introduce the first. Bristol City FC and their development partners are (allegedly) in negotiations with the South West Regional Development Agency to swap the piece of land at Ashton Vale now known as “Southlands” for land owned by the SWRDA, almost certainly on the site originally identified for an Arena near Temple Meads. If the “land swap” is successful the SWRDA will seek to build an Arena at “Southlands”, whilst BCFC and their partners will be able to acquire residential planning permission for their newly acquired land at Temple Meads and sell it on to a developer to raise funds towards the new stadium (replacing the funds that they had originally anticipated coming from housing permission for “Southlands”).

What I am suggesting is that Bristol City Council and Bristol City FC pick up the phone and discuss whether a similar land swap involving potential retail land at Hengrove Park being exchanged for potential residential land at Ashton Gate is viable and offers the best consideration for Bristol City Council taxpayers and a better solution for Bristol City Football Club then squaring the circle of building a superstore where it isn't needed.

There may well be perfectly obvious showstopping reasons why my suggestion is completely absurd, but if there is even a chance that it could form a basis for a solution to the problem…….

Just one phone call…….is it too much to ask?

Land Disposal will be Cabinet Decision

2009-10-16T13:42:00.003+01:00

Over on the Bristol Blogger web-site, in reference to the disposal of council-owned land at Ashton Gate, Cllr Gary Hopkins has stated that "Any decisions on this sort of issue will be taken in open cabinet and this has already been confirmed in writing"

I suspect he may be referring, in part, to an email sent by Cllr Barbara Janke to myself and copied to the rest of the cabinet members (including Cllr Hopkins of course) which included the following statement of mine, and agreed with by Cllr Janke;

" if, as a result of the entirely separate planning process regarding the proposal for a food store at Ashton Gate, there arises the need to consider the future of the council-owned land included in that development, that the decision on this land will be taken at Cabinet level and will not be delegated down to officer level"

The email above followed on from a discussion that Cllr Janke and myself had following an event hosted by the Bristol Civic Society on Thursday 8th October.

That conversation itself followed on from the full council meeting of 15th September, where Cllr Simon Cook, in response to a question from a member of the public, provided a written statement that;

"BCFC have been in discussion with BCC officers around the possible acquisition of the freehold of land owned by BCC. These discussions are on-going and a report will be taken to Cabinet when negotiations are complete and the planning applications determined. This is likely to be in the next few months."

In that same meeting, in response to my own question;
"Has a valuation been placed upon this land by Bristol City Council in the event of it being sold for redevelopment?"

Cllr Cook provided the following written response;
"No value has been placed on this land at present as this is dependent upon any successful planning application for a change of use"

So, to summarise, BCFC have been in negotiations with BCC about acquiring the freehold of the council-owned land, but the value of the land is dependent upon any successful planning application. In addition, the decision regarding any potential land disposal will not be delegated down to officer level, but will be taken in open cabinet, sometime in the next few months but after planning permission has been determined.

If anybody thinks that I have misrepresented the statements of Cllrs Janke, Cook and Hopkins, please feel free to let me know by adding a comment below. I am also emailing the councillors concerned so that they can correct any errors on my part.

Supplementary Questions: The Lord Mayor’s Cut

2009-09-17T08:06:00.003+01:00

FAMOUS QUOTATIONS
"We believe local people know what is best for their needs and that better decisions will be taken with better services as a result."
Cllr Barbara Janke, Leader of Bristol City Council, 8th September 2009

“It is not intended to hold a public consultation on the future of this land”
Cllr Simon Cook, Deputy Leader, 15th September 2009

“You don’t know what you’re doing!”
Football fans everywhere and Bristolians especially

Below, once again, are my questions for the full council meeting of the 15th September. As the next full council meeting is not until the 10th November, AFTER the planning application is scheduled to be determined, I have now included the written answers that were provided, and the supplementary questions I would have asked of Cllr S Cook (who replaced Cllr J Rogers due to matters of individual portfolio responsibility), if I had been allowed to do so. I have emailed both Cllrs Cook and Rogers with a copy of this blog post, and they are welcome, in the spirit of openness and transparency, to respond to my supplementary questions. I am quite happy for either to respond –as the decision to proceed with any land sale will be the collective responsibility of the cabinet.

PQ4 MR T DYER TO ASK COUNCILLOR S COOK, DEPUTY LEADER AND CABINET MEMBER FOR CULTURE, SPORT, AND CAPITAL PROJECTS

PROPOSED ASHTON GATE DEVELOPMENT

In the planning application 09/03208/P for a food store at Ashton Gate, Bristol City Council are identified as holding the freehold title of part of the land proposed to be redeveloped; namely the car park between the stadium itself and Winterstoke Road - without this Council owned land the proposed retail development would appear to be unviable.

Q1 Can you confirm that this land is currently in council ownership?

A1 The council does own the car park as identified. It is let to BCFC on a 125 year lease whch commenced in 1985.

S1 Can you confirm that this lease restricts BCFC’s use of the land to car and coach parking only?

Q2 Has a valuation been placed upon this land by Bristol City Council in the event of it being sold for redevelopment?

A2 No valuation has been placed on this land at present as this is dependent upon any successful planning application for a change of use.

S2a You appear to be suggesting that Bristol City Council can only place a valuation on land when it has been the object of a successful planning application – can you clarify this, as it appears to call in to question, for example, the statement made by your colleague Cllr Hopkins to cabinet on the 30 July 2009 that the disposal of some 9.3 hectares of surplus allotment land would raise approximately £6 million despite a lack of any successful planning applications for the land concerned?

S2b If the perceived suggestion is incorrect, what is the current valuation of the land?

Q3 Will the valuation of the site be significantly greater with planning permission for a supermarket than for alternative uses, (e.g. housing and leisure)?

A3 Actual valuations will be dependent upon the particular design solutions, however, it would be anticipated that a planning approval for a supermarket would be at the higher end of any valuations.

S3 Given that the applicants have, in their planning application, described the proposals for Ashton Gate as “enabling development” whereby a development that may offer significant “disbenefits” is approved because it will provide greater “benefits” by enabling the development of another asset or piece of land, and given that this type of development is reliant upon the financial outputs from the enabling development being robust, does not the vagueness of the member’s responses regarding financial valuations, coupled with the admittance elsewhere that the value of the public land will not be calculated until AFTER any successful planning permission has been achieved, completely undermine any ability of the relevant Development Control Committee to determine whether the application will achieve this stated role as enabling development?

Q4 Does Bristol City Council intend to consult directly with local residents regarding the future use of this land prior to the 5th November when planning application 09/03208/P is scheduled to be determined?

A4 It is not intended to hold a public consultation on the future of this land. There has been considerable discussion and consultation over the development as a whole where individuals have had many opportunities to express their views.

S4 Does the executive member not accept that until the publication of the agenda for this meeting, there had been no official announcement or acknowledgement by the City Council that it was, in fact, the owner of a significant portion of the land which the planning application concerned refers to, and does he not further accept that individuals may have responded differently to consultations or offered alternative viewpoints in discussions regarding the proposed development if they were aware that a vital and necessary portion of the land was and is in public ownership as opposed to being in the private ownership of the developers themselves?

NORTH STREET: THE FILM

2009-09-16T15:15:00.004+01:00

New film to be shown at BERATE public meeting, St.Francis Church, North Street, 7.30pm.

Bedminster based documentary film maker, Lucy Swingler, has produced a new film that documents the campaign to prevent the building of a Tesco Extra superstore at Ashton Gate Stadium. During the 10 minute film, local residents and shop keepers in North Street, South Bristol, describe the history of the street, their shops and the area, and explain why its such a great community to be part of. They also explain why they don't want the new superstore at the stadium site and what they would like to see there instead.

Lucy, who has worked on a range of historical and factual programmes* says that she was motivated to create the film after talking to shop keepers about their worries over the store. "I use the North Street shops a lot, so I wanted to show the real fear that some have that a store will put their livelihoods at risk and jeopardise the regeneration thats taken place here. I also wanted to capture the central role that North Street now plays in the community."

The film will be shown publicly for the first time at the meeting arranged for tomorrow night at St.Francis's Church on North Street (7.30pm). Local politicians, councillors and members of the city's planning committee, as well as a representative from Bristol City Football Club and local community groups have been invited to come along to discuss the proposed store and see the film.

Chris Uttley, speaking for the campaign said "We hope the film will be viewed as part of our submission to the planning application. Hopefully it demonstrates to the council and others the human face behind the damage that we believe the store will do to our community and why we value what we have now a great deal"

The film is now available to watch or download on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyVG3hb-Dpk

The meeting is being held at St.Francis Church on North Street at 7.30pm.
BERATE
Bedminster Residents Against Tesco's Expansion into Ashton Gate
http://www.berate.co.uk/

Shock News; I Agree With The Lib Dems!

2009-09-12T11:36:00.005+01:00

Two Press Releases from Bristol City Council caught my eye this week.

The first one, released on Tuesday, announced plans to give Bristolians a bigger say in decisions affecting their local communities. Council leader Barbara Janke is quoted saying “We believe local people know what is best for their needs and that better decisions will be taken with better services as a result."

The second, released the day after, announced that a major new scheme for building council housing in Bristol had been given the green light after receiving funding from the Homes and Community Agency. Mark Wright, Cabinet Member for Housing and Service Improvement; "Despite the property crash we are still very short of affordable housing in Bristol, and these new council houses will, I hope, be the first of many”.

I had to pinch myself, two statements by members of the Liberal Democrat executive that, taken at face value, I find myself in full agreement with – “local people know what is best for their needs” and that we are “short of affordable housing in Bristol”. I have made a note in my diary of the date and time so that I can record it for posterity.

I am sure that the above news will be welcomed by the residents of Southville and Bedminster wards which together make up a Neighbourhood Partnership Network for Greater Bedminster, one of the local community organisations through which local residents will be given the opportunity to have a bigger say in the decisions affecting their own communities.

Similarly, given the length of housing waiting lists, the news that funding is available to build housing that the majority of local residents can actually afford is equally very welcome. The average house price in Bristol is over 7 times the average earnings, approaching 8 times for first-time buyers (A New Housing Strategy for Bristol, Paper 3: Housing Demand and Supply, figs 11 and 12 on page 13). Those most in need in Bristol simply cannot afford the overpriced houses that private developers want to build on the Green Belt.

Of course, in order to build the council houses welcomed by Councillor Wright, it is vital that Bristol City Council makes efficient use of any urban or brown-field sites that it currently owns so that it avoids the pressure to build on Green Belt land – after all, this is the same Liberal Democrat party that promised during the election campaign to “Fight Labour’s Green Belt grab and preserve our green spaces”. In the same context, in order to meet the objectives set by Councillor Janke of involving local people more fully in the local decision-making process, it will be important that the council directly consult local residents on the future use of any council-owned or managed land before they offer it to private developers.

In fact, if the Lib Dems are serious about their promises to involve local people in decisions and to build more council houses whilst protecting the Green Belt and preserving green spaces, they have an opportunity to demonstrate this on Tuesday at the full council meeting.

I have put in a number of questions regarding the future use of the council owned land adjacent to the Ashton Gate stadium, of which the last one is;

d) Does Bristol City Council intend to consult directly with local residents regarding the future use of this land prior to the 5th November when planning application 09/03208/P is scheduled to be determined?

If the Lib Dems want their promises about involving local people to be taken seriously then the only answer to the above has to be Yes. And when this direct consultation takes place, one of the questions asked should be whether, if the land is to be developed, the Council should seek a further slice of the funding from the Homes and Communities Agency to build affordable housing on that land – which at housing densities similar to those for Southville as a whole could provide another 45 affordable houses.

Let’s be blunt – many commenters have been critical of the performance of previous Labour-led council administrations, accusing them of ignoring local communities, making decisions behind closed doors, and “greenwashing” environmental issues. Many of those at the forefront of the criticisms are councillors in the Liberal Democrat party which now has majority control of the City Council. It is time for those same councillors to either deliver on their promises or to be guilty of hypocritically doing the very same things they were so loudly accusing their political opponents of doing less than 12 months ago.

September 15th, 2009 may see another entry go in to my diary for posterity. It is up to the Bristol Liberal Democrats to determine whether it will be for positive reasons or negative ones.

£3.6 million public subsidy for new stadium?

2009-09-05T16:12:00.007+01:00

The Bristol Blogger has commented on the fact that a key portion of the land that Bristol City Football Club are proposing for development as a supermarket is actually owned by the City Council.

It is in relation to this piece of land that I have submitted the following questions for the full council meeting scheduled for the 15th September;

In the planning application 09/03208/P for a food store at Ashton Gate, Bristol City Council are identified as holding the freehold title of part of the land proposed to be redeveloped; namely the car park between the stadium itself and Winterstoke Road - without this Council owned land the proposed retail development would appear to be unviable.

a) Can you confirm that this land is currently in council ownership?

b) Has a valuation been placed upon this land by Bristol City Council in the event of it being sold for redevelopment?

c) Will the valuation of the site be significantly greater with planning permission for a supermarket than for alternative uses, (eg housing and leisure)?

d) Does Bristol City Council intend to consult directly with local residents regarding the future use of this land prior to the 5th November when planning application 09/03208/P is scheduled to be determined?

To a certain extent I suspect that I already know that the answers to both a) and c) will be "yes" although I think that the differential involved in c) is not as high as people might suspect, and thus the answer might include all sorts of caveats about market conditions. Then again, it is likely that Dr Jon Rogers will be the executive member answering the questions and he does have a reputation for answering council questions with a straight Yes or No. I would also be amazed if the answer to b) is anything other than yes.

That brings us to d). I am hoping that Jon will respond with a straight Yes to this one as well. So far Bristol City Football Club have employed Trimedia to perform a "public consultation" exercise on their future plans for the Ashton Gate stadium. But many of us have serious concerns about how the response to this was interpreted. There are also concerns that other efforts to demonstrate local opinion have been undermined by the lobbying of those outside the area that will be most affected by the proposed superstore.

There is an opportunity here for the Liberal Democrats if they have the courage to grasp the nettle. An opportunity to demonstrate that, even in this age where trust in the democratic system has been undermined by the actions of so many of our elected representatives, that there still exists the ability for local communities to make their voice heard, and, more importantly, not just heard but responded to. In the face of tremendous pressure from third parties, this first-ever majority Liberal Democrat council can show that it isn't the same as those tired reactionary parties that have had control of this city for so long and that we, as law-abiding residents can, via the democratic process, make a difference to what is happening in our streets, our neighbourhoods, our community.

It is time to take the CON out of Consultation.

Banksy versus Tesco Superstore

2009-09-02T16:47:00.007+01:00

Yesterday’s copy of the Bristol Evening Post told us how the recent Banksy vs Bristol Museum exhibition attracted over 300,000 visitors in 12 weeks. It also quotes Kate Davenport, Services Director for Economic and Cultural Development at Bristol City Council as saying that “hotels, restaurants and shops had made about £10,000,000 because of the extra people coming to Bristol for the exhibition”.

Now, I have little faith in council officers who make unsubstantiated claims about the economic effects of specific events on the local economy (e.g Stephen Wray’s £100 million World Cup “benefit”) but, apparently those in charge at the council house appear to believe the figures – which leads us to some interesting thoughts. The figures would appear to imply that the average visitor was willing to spend at least £30 in order to see the Banksy exhibition, and so this might imply a potential ticket price.

There appeared to be no let up in the demand to see the Banksy show – it is quite likely that if the exhibition had been allowed to continue it would have continued to attract large crowds. As well as the 300,000 who queued to see it, another 600,000 viewed a video of the exhibition, and there have been several public comments by people who would have been happy to see the exhibition but did not want to queue for three hours or so – and would have been willing to pay to avoid the loss of their time due to queuing.

What if a large exhibition area could be found for a further run of the exhibition, perhaps with a few new exhibits (a caricature of Brian Sewell must have a chance) in which tickets could be bought, either online or by phone with a timeslot for attendance thus avoiding the queues. If the tickets were sold at £30 each, then 500,000 visitors would generate £15,000,000.

Bristol City FC say that the reason why they need to sell the existing ground to Tesco to fund a new stadium is because there is a £15 million gap between the value of the land as housing and it’s value as retail. But the site’s value as retail is reliant on it obtaining planning permission, which is why Tesco have told City that they will only buy the land if this is achieved beforehand. Colin Sexstone insists that there is no alternative to Tesco but perhaps he needs to talk to a Bristol City fan with greater imagination – someone like Banksy.

1) Bristol City FC have the Dolman Exhibition Hall with a floorspace of 1700 sq m, plus an experienced ticketing office familiar with dealing with massive demand.

2) Banksy has made no secret of his love for Bristol City and, although he insisted on free admission for Banksy versus Bristol Museum, he also held a special "charity night" which charged a £45 entrance fee.

3) Bristol City Council has said that although they would have liked to have continued the Banksy exhibition, other events were booked in preventing an extension of the exhibition.

Combine the three and you have an opportunity to generate the £15 million funding needed for the new stadium whilst also leaving something behind for the local community that does not threaten their community and their local shops. A mixed use proposal that included housing would almost certainly get local community approval AND would place fewer obstacles in the way of planning permission being granted. Even better, Bristol City FC might even discover that the best solution for the existing football stadium is to redevelop it as a new football stadium.

BRISTOL’S GREEN[WASH] CREDENTIALS

2009-08-28T22:20:00.004+01:00

Without a hint of irony Thursday’s Bristol Evening Post published another instalment in its increasing thick portfolio of promotional literature for Bristol City FC, this time about how important Bristol's "green credentials" might be in capturing the World Cup 2018 for England. A World Cup bid in which Bristol’s contribution so far consists of proposals for a superstore that will generate massive numbers of car journeys and the building of a new stadium, hotel, drive-thru restaurant, and 250+ houses on statutory Green Belt.

To heighten the hypocrisy, the article refers to Bristol's "green spaces" as being a major factor in boosting the city’s chances of becoming a host city and even illustrates the story with a photo of a green space, followed by a picture of the stadium.

It refers to FIFA's "green goal" campaign and then tells us that the greener England’s bid is the greater the chance of England being chosen to host the 2018 World Cup. It then goes on to talk about Bristol having a head start because of its “fine reputation on environmental issues”. An eclectic list of various areas where Bristol is perceived to be green ensues, before the obligatory quote from cheerleader in chief Stephen Wray:

"This is a key part of the England bid team's strategy to be ahead of the opposition. We are fortunate to have experts within the city and we are already setting new standards.”

And just in case anybody is in any doubt, the paper reminds us that “Bristol's bid hangs on the provision of a brand new stadium in Ashton Vale”.

It becomes blindingly obvious that the Evening Post and Stephen Wray have either not read the available documentation on the Green Goal programme or have simply failed to understand it. Either that or they are hoping that nobody else bothers to read it.

Let’s clarify what the Green Goal programme is and what it isn’t.

Firstly, what it isn’t. It isn’t about how many parks you have, it isn’t about how much recycling of domestic waste you do, it isn’t about how many wind turbines you have built in the city, it isn’t about how many people cycle or walk to work and it isn’t about how much of the city’s waste you send to landfill or incinerators. It isn’t even really about the level of carbon emissions per capita produced by the city – it is about the carbon emissions generated by the World Cup itself.

Green Goal is about the environmental impact of preparing for, and delivering, the World Cup. It seeks to reduce the environmental impact of the stadia themselves (construction has to be carbon neutral, materials should be recycled), the environmental effects of the usage of the stadia (carbon emissions from the stadium itself, water recycling, energy efficiency, reusable drinks and food containers) and of how fans travel to the stadia and to fan parks (minimisation of private cars, free public transport with matchday tickets).

By basing its World Cup Bid on the building of a brand new stadium on a green field site with a large amount of enabling development including a car-hungry superstore, Bristol is entering the campaign with a major handicap compared to those cities that will be extending or rebuilding existing stadia. Contrary to the Evening Post report, Bristol is already behind the game if the new stadium is, as proposed, built on green fields, and further handicapped if it is funded by the building of a giant superstore.

In Germany in 2006, only one stadium (Munich) was newly built on a new site and as a result its carbon emissions were, at 100,000 tonnes, twice as high as the next most carbon expensive stadium, and three times as high as the third. In addition another 60,000 tonnes of carbon emissions were produced constructing the car parking for the Munich stadium. As part of the Green Goal programme, the German World Cup Bid team had agreed to offset any net carbon emissions by paying for carbon offsets. Based on the 2006 financial figures, offsetting 160,000 tonnes of carbon emissions would have cost the organising committee close to £2 million. They could have reduced that risk to £380,000 simply by choosing a redeveloped stadium over a new stadium. Unfortunately for them, Munich is home to Germany’s most famous football club with a status in German football similar to that held by the Manchester area in England. They could not contemplate a World Cup without Munich, as England could not without Manchester, and thus they had to work hard to find other means to reduce the climate impact of the tournament. Bristol, on the other hand, holds no such status in English football – the easy option would be to drop the lame duck.

The Green Goal programme has four main themes; Waste, Water, Energy, and Transport which all together are targeted to provide a Carbon Neutral World Cup. As we have limited space lets look at Energy.

Energy

The Sustainability Statement for the proposed new stadium at Ashton Vale calculates that its annual energy consumption will be in the region of 2,200 mWh and that it will emit 694 tonnes of carbon emissions per year after its proposed completion in 2012/13 as a 30,000 seater stadium. The architects proudly boast that its passive design technologies and highest levels of energy efficiency will see an 11% reduction in energy use from standard stadia.

Sounds good until you realise that the Green Goal programme was published back 2004 and set a target of a 20% reduction in energy use for World Cup stadiums, which means that the Ashton Vale stadium would need to reduce its emissions by another nine percentage points to meat targets that were considered attainable 6 years ago, equivalent to an 80% increase in the level of anticipated reduced carbon emissions. In addition, the figures for energy use and carbon emissions are for a 30,000 seat stadium whereas the stadium will need to have its capacity boosted by 40% to host World Cup games, with a related increase in energy use and carbon emissions.

During his recent tax-payers funded trip to Hannover, presumably Stephen Wray visited the city’s World Cup stadium – if so, he would have had the opportunity to see the District Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system used in the stadium to improve energy efficiency, an innovation that is especially significant as District CHP is currently being promoted by his employer Bristol City Council as making a major contribution to its Climate Change Policies for the Development Framework that will guide Bristol’s future development. District CHP could have a major impact on the energy efficiency of a new stadium, despite this the Sustainability Statement for the proposed stadium at Ashton Vale says “it is not proposed to install a district energy system at this stage of design”

To avoid carbon emissions altogether Renewable Energy was also a key component of the Green Goal programme for 2006. Several stadiums had photovoltaic plants installed with the Kaiserlautern stadium seeing the largest plant ever installed in a German stadium, covering three of its stands (an area of 6,000 sq m) and generating 720,000 kWh of electricity per year, enough for 200 detached houses and eliminating 500 tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum. Furthermore Kaiserlautern municipal council used the Green Goal initiative as an exemplar model for the installation of photovoltaic plants on public and industrial buildings as well as on private houses – as of 2008, 4,300 mWh of electricity was being produced by photovoltaic plants with associated carbon emission reductions of 2,600 tonnes per annum. Despite this, Kaiserlautern did not consider entering itself for the title of European Green Capital.

As for Bristol City’s proposed stadium? “Renewable energy technologies have not been incorporated into the building design at this stage”

Meanwhile we haven’t even touched upon the energy produced in running an 110,000 square foot superstore. A 30,000 seat football stadium is quite an act to follow but a supermarket is in a different class. The proposed stadium’s 2,200 mWh per year is easily surpassed by the 4,800 mWh per year that would be produced by the size of superstore proposed for Ashton Gate (based on figures from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution).

Carbon Neutrality

Germany aimed to be carbon neutral for 2006 – they missed their target by 92,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. If just one stadium, Munich the only newly built venue, had not been selected, they would have hit their target. England’s World Cup Bid team will be aware of that, as a result those stadiums which are newly built and thus bring with them the largest carbon emissions are those most likely to hear the words “thanks, but no thanks”, especially if their efforts at energy efficiency and use of renewable energy technologies are, umm, outdated.

Bristol does indeed have a high level of expertise in environmental technologies – as normal they are being totally ignored with the result that if, indeed, green credentials are as important to the England World Cup bid as the Evening Post says it is – Bristol is in the process of entering a bid that will make England’s bid less likely to be successful.

To use another sporting analogy – if the race to become World Cup Hosts is like the Epsom Derby, Bristol look like they are about to offer a carthorse as their entry.

Three graphs that tell a story.

2009-08-26T20:41:00.004+01:00

1) Where the new Tesco expects its customers to come from;

2) Where those who have signed the No petition live;

3) Where those who have signed the Yes petition live;

It would seem that those who are supposed to “benefit” from the new store are the ones that least want it, whilst those who are outside the catchment area of the store and thus not expected to “benefit” from it are those most in favour. Or could there be another reason why so many people from North Bristol and South Gloucestershire have signed in support of a supermarket in Ashton Gate?

Ashton Gate and subjective objectivity

2009-08-24T10:22:00.003+01:00

Are Trimedia deliberately misrepresenting the results of the public consultation over the proposed Tesco at Ashton Gate or is it just a problem of lack of objectivity?

Trimedia are the PR Agency and Communications Consultancy who prepared the Community Involvement Statement (CIS) for the proposed Redevelopment of Ashton Gate Stadium on behalf of Ashton Gate Limited, the stadium owners.

In the CIS, mention is made of over 160 completed feedback forms and representations from the public. On Page 7 of the CIS, Trimedia provide a Summary of Feedback, which “considers the responses provided to each question on the feedback forms.”

The first question on the form was not about the proposal for a superstore at all, it was a leading question about supporting Bristol City’s ambition for a new stadium, and thus part of the ongoing effort by Bristol City to encourage the public and councillors to think of the separate applications for Ashton Vale and Ashton Gate as if they were one application. The second question (and the first about the development itself) was;

Q2 What are your views on the proposal to develop a food store on the existing Ashton Gate site?

In the CIS, Trimedia summarise the responses as follows;

A range of views and opinions were submitted on the proposals to develop a food store on the existing Ashton Gate stadium site. On the 153 feedback forms received, 375 separate comments looking at various aspects for the proposal were noted. Where there were clear themes, they have been grouped into headings below.

Of these, 18% of comments submitted expressed concern about or opposition to a food store on the site, and felt there was no need for this amenity in the area. This equates to the comment being made on approximately 40% of forms submitted.

After reading the above I was left a little confused, did they mean that 18% of respondents were concerned about a food store, or did they mean that 40% of respondents were concerned about various aspects of the development of which 18% were concerned about a food store? Or did they mean something else entirely?

Luckily, the feedback forms have been scanned onto the Bristol City Council online planning portal – so I decided to look at the feedback forms myself and do my own analysis.

This proved a little more difficult than anticipated – several of the feedback forms have been copied twice, and a few have attached sheets with additional comments. One or two have also only had only part of the feedback form scanned in. In the end, I managed to collate information on 151 feedback forms, with the following result;

63% of the forms objected to the proposal to build a food store at Ashton Gate.
10% of the forms, apart from those above, included comments that might be taken as objections to the proposals but either needed clarification or were associated with other comments on the same form that might be taken as supporting the proposal. Some example quotes;

"Bound to affect other stores and local shops"
"Not sure about needing another food store so near to Asda, Sainsburys and Aldi"
"I am not sure we need another supermarket"
"concerned over additional noise and traffic"
"24 hour opening must not be permitted"
"Worried that there are already lots of retail outlets and also the impact it will make on small shops in the area. Don't think it should be 24hrs"
"[prefer] new stadium on the same site"
"it will surely impact on Sainsbury, Aldi and the shops in North Street"
"Do we need another supermarket in the area?"
"Housing is needed [more] than a retail store"

9% of the forms supported a food store but expressed reservations or conditions;

"we have no objections to a store, however we would not like 24hr opening hours or 24hrs delivery
"I am in favour of a food store providing traffic concerns are solved"
"I am not opposed but concerned about 24 hour noise"
"We are happy for the food store to be built provided the new link road from the A38 to the A370 is in place, there is currently far too much traffic on Winterstoke and increased volumes would bring it to a standstill"
No objections "if provision for residents parking can be accommodated"
"I don't like the thought of a petrol station close to a residential area"
"I am concerned that your proposals show delivery vehicles/plant is situated right behind the gardens of residents like myself in Raynes Road"
"fine provided the local residents are happy with it"

Finally, 18% were fully supportive of a food store. The graph below summarises the result.

So we find ourselves in a situation where Trimedia’s analysis of the feedback forms would appear to indicate that at least 60% of respondents have no objections to the store whilst only 18% of comments were against it - whereas my own analysis shows that only 18% of respondents are fully supportive and over 60% of respondents are against the superstore. An interesting comparison!

This difference in the results of the analysis could be due to subjectivity – I have made no secret of my opposition to the superstore proposal and it may well be that, despite my best intentions, I may have allowed a certain bias to colour my reading of the comments – although it is quite hard to misinterpret the phrase “No Tesco at any cost” scrawled all over a form! Equally, Trimedia have been employed by those in favour of the proposal and may similarly be predisposed to interpret the feedback forms as being in favour of the development.

This is why we need independent and unbiased analysis of the facts – not just for comments on feedback forms in a consultation process but also for transport assessments, retail studies, environmental impact assessments, economic studies and so on. Only in this context can we have some confidence that the data is not being manipulated in some way (either consciously or sub-consciously) to fit a pre-determined conclusion. Studies funded directly by the developers themselves are unlikely to be objective. I am sure that those behind the proposal for a superstore would be unhappy if the only reports used to determine the application were based on my own efforts, because I am sure that however much I tried I would be unable to completely eliminate any element of bias against the proposal. Yet, at present, we are in a situation where the opposite is allowed – with most of the reports being used to assess the suitability of the application being provided by those with a financial incentive for supporting the application.

I would anticipate that the councillors who will be asked to make the decision regarding planning permission are unlikely to read each and every feedback form – and thus they will base their decision on the assumption that Trimedia’s conclusion that 60% of local residents held no objections to a superstore at Ashton Gate is accurate. In my view, however, Trimedia's conclusion is simply not supported by the evidence, which in fact demonstrates almost the complete opposite with over 60% of respondents to the consultation process voicing opposition to the proposed superstore.

NOTE: The feedback forms are available online here, so anybody else with a few hours to spare can trawl through the forms and make up their own minds about what percentage of respondents are for or against the superstore proposal.

Sympathy for the Devil

2009-08-17T17:23:00.011+01:00

On Saturday, Bristol City beat Crystal Palace 1-0 however the game has made the headlines nationally for a "goal" that wasn't given. A Palace shot hit the stanchion at the back of the net and shot straight back out again - this deceived the match officials who failed to award the goal. Ian Bone, on his blog, wondered if this was the hand of Bansky but, other, less forgiving views have taken hold, with the Palace chairman and several national newspapers being less than charitable and calling Bristol City cheats.

Bristol City and its fans now find themselves besieged from all sides. The press have come out in favour of the other side, providing plenty of column inches to anybody who wants to pour scorn on the Robins. Even the refereeing boss, Keith Hackett, who is supposed to take an even-handed approach and wait for the referee's report, pre-empted the normal process by apologising to the Palace manager. Bristol City meanwhile point out that their players were just doing their job and playing to the referee's whistle.

Meanwhile they ponder how different the reaction was a few years ago when the Manchester United goalkeeper Roy Carroll pulled a ball back over the line and the referee failed to award the goal. Bristol City might point out that none of their players behaved in the way that Carroll did, yet there were no similar outcries at that time in the press for the match to be replayed - it seems there is one rule for the small guys like City and another for the giant corporations of the Premier League.

At this point, Bristol City fans must be wondering if there is anybody who can empathise with their situation.

They might not have to look far: there is another group who have done nothing wrong, have merely tried to get on with their jobs and abide by the rules but now find themselves in the position of being the small guys battling against a giant corporation whilst the press runs a massive media campaign against them and even those who they hoped would take a balanced view already seem to be pre-empting any decision by making supportive comments in the press.

Somehow however, I doubt if Steve Lansdown and Gary Johnson will be contacting BERATE to say "I know just how you feel!"

INSULTATIONS: How to win funds and alienate people.

2009-08-10T18:41:00.004+01:00

As part of their plans to build a new football stadium and associated enabling development, Bristol City Football Club and their partners say that they have delivered 23,000 letters of invitations to local residents and key stakeholders inviting them to consultation events - in response they received 250 feedback forms over the three stages of the consultation process. In the first stage of this consultation process, 11,000 letters of invitations were sent to local residents regarding exhibitions of the proposals, and the events were also advertised in local libraries, community centres and the media – 450 attended the events and feedback forms were distributed, of which 104 were returned along with 20 responses by phone.

At this first stage and only at this stage was the question asked “What are your thoughts on the idea of the provision for a new stadium for Bristol City Football Club, in south Bristol? Note that the question does not ask specifically about a stadium in Ashton Vale nor a stadium on Green Belt land, merely about the concept of a stadium in south Bristol (see Framing)

Analysis of the 124 responses showed that 46% (about 57 respondents) were in favour of the new stadium, another 15% were generally in favour of a new stadium but had concerns about the proposed location (they obviously chose to interpret the question more precisely than the questioner may have wanted them to). Another 11% were against and 28% were undecided.

In other words just 124 people out of 11,000 felt that it was worth responding to the consultation, and of those only 57 people were potentially in favour of the new stadium in its proposed location. Nevertheless the 124 responses are seen by the developers as evidence that “the level of involvement in the consultation has been high throughout the process, and residents of the areas nearest to the site have contributed at all three stages” whilst the 57 people who were in favour of the new stadium in the (loosely specified) location “indicates that there are high levels of support for the proposal”. (Statement of Community Involvement)

In the meantime, in a separate but related development proposal, Tesco PLC are looking to put forward a proposal for a superstore on land that they don’t own; the Ashton Gate stadium that Bristol City FC will vacate if the new stadium is approved. In response, concerned local residents set up a campaign group – BERATE – and a paper-based petition that has attracted more than 600 signatures against the proposal. After canvassing houses around the stadium site and getting an overwhelming response against the proposals, the local Green Party councillor set up an e-petition against the superstore proposal in support of BERATE; this has now been signed to date by over 730 people of whom the vast majority live in the Bedminster or Southville wards. A counter e-petition in support of the superstore proposal, set up by a football fan living in Knowle has attracted some 70 signatures so far with only a dozen identifying themselves as residents of Bedminster and Southville.

One suspects that whilst 57 people out of 11,000 is seen as “high levels of support” for the new stadium, over a thousand against the separate superstore proposal will be labelled as unrepresentative of the local community rather than “high levels of opposition” to the superstore.

This anticipation of the developer’s response is not entirely speculation. Back in 2006, concerned about the level of bad press it was receiving, Tesco launched its “good neighbour” policy promising more community consultation when proposing new stores. But when asked what would happen if the consultation response was that a new store wasn’t wanted, Sir Terry Leahy (Tesco CEO) responded that the company would have to seek out the "silent majority" who would be in favour. In other words, the community response was only valid if it was in favour of a new store, otherwise it was unrepresentative.

The above highlights one of the fundamental flaws of the public consultation process for a specific development; by the time the developer has reached the stage where they are ready to look at consulting the public they have already decided that the development is valid: thus the question asked in the consultation process is “what modifications might you suggest for our development?” whereas the question that the petition signatories want to answer (both for and against) is “do you want this development at all?

In Bristol there is of course a structure intended to guide developers as to what sort of developments would be appropriate or acceptable to the local community – a structure that, in theory, has been created by a process of consultation with the local community. This structure is the Local Plan and consists of a series of policies covering various aspects of the potential development of the Bristol area, which have been informed by a series of expert studies and public consultations. It “provides the statutory basis for decisions on land use and development in the city” (Helen Holland, Executive Member, Environment, Transport and Leisure).

The Local Plan includes the following policies ;

S1 Protection of Shopping Facilities – which emphasises the importance of existing shopping centres and the need to sustain and enhance their vitality and viability.
S7 Local shops – which emphasises the need to restrict retail development outside of existing shopping centres if it may harm the level of shopping service provided.
S9 Out of Centre shopping – which says that the development of new retail stores outside existing centres will only be permitted where it will not affect the vitality and viability of existing centres, and
L8 Sports Stadia – which says that existing sports stadia, including Ashton Gate, will be protected from development which would erode the community’s opportunity to participate in sport and will be promoted as sports stadia.

If the Local Plan is intended to guide what type of development is put forward, at the other end of the Planning process is the Development Control Committees (DCCs) which are intended to ensure that planning applications for development are consistent with planning guidelines including the Local Plan. DCCs are made up of elected councillors who are expected to make unbiased decisions about whether complex or contentious planning applications should be Granted or Refused planning permission. For the Ashton Gate area this is the Development Control (South and East) Committee. Since June 2006, this committee has considered 105 planning applications. Of those 105 Planning Applications, Planning Officers have recommended refusal of just 10 applications. Planning Officers recommended that permission be granted on 86 occasions and the committee has refused permission against officer advice on just 7 of those 86 occasions. The conclusion has to be that, on the main, councillors serving on the Development Control (South and East) Committee generally rely upon the recommendations of the City Council’s Planning Officers who themselves are likely to be in favour of a planning application by the time it arrives at committee level..

Planning Officers are also tasked with doing their best to ensure that developments are successfully brought forward and implemented successfully. At an early stage, a developer will contact the Planning Officers to discuss a proposal, and from that stage a symbiotic relationship is established in which both developer and Planning Officer are looking to ensure the development proceeds smoothly to a successful approval of a planning application, along with any S.106 funding associated with the development.

Not only is the Planning Officer judge (they provide most of the expert opinion used to develop the local plan to guide the planning process) and jury (they provide the expert opinions on which DCC members base their decisions), they are also the lawyer advising one of the litigants essentially on a “no win – no fee” basis. Win the case (achieve planning permission), win the funds (S.106).

What of the other litigant? By this we mean the local community – who represents them?

Bristol City Council’s Code of Conduct for Members and Officers - Planning Matters includes the following statement;

“The aim of the planning process is to control development in the public interest”

The public interest obviously includes the views of the local community so the local community is represented by Councillors and Planning Officers – but as Councillors tend to follow the recommendations of Planning Officers, this means that the local community is effectively represented by the Planning Officers. Not only are the Planning Officers the judge, jury, and representing the other side, they’re also representing you, but in your case they are doing it pro bono – it is not hard to imagine a conflict of interest and also a conflict of client priorities.

The Code of Conduct continues;

“The role of members and officers in the planning process is to make planning decisions openly, impartially and with sound judgement for justifiable planning reasons.”

“When this code applies – to all members of the development control committees and officers at all times when they are involved in the planning process”

At this point it is worth noting that planning process also includes any discussion at the “pre-application stage”. In other words, as soon as a potential developer discusses proposals with the planning officer regarding a specific site the code applies and the officer is required to be open and impartial.

How does this work out in practice?

The first that the general public knew of the proposal for a new superstore at Ashton Gate was when it was leaked on 29th April on the Bristol Blogger website, but it has become apparent that Planning Officers knew of this proposal some considerable time before this, possibly in November/December of the previous year. There was thus a time-period of several months when it could be argued that Planning Officers were not operating in an “impartial and open” manner within the planning process because no attempt was made to inform the general public of the proposal for a Tesco superstore at Ashton Gate.

If the aim of the planning process is to control development in the public interest and members and officers are required to make decisions openly and impartially throughout the planning process, including the pre-application stage, then the only way to conform to this is to ensure that the general public are kept abreast of all meetings as they take place. It cannot be open and impartial to engage in discussions with one side of the process (the developer) whilst failing to inform the other side (the local community) that these discussions are even taking place.

It is bad enough that Planning Officers are both judge and jury AND the lawyer representing each side but to then find out that the lawyer whom you assumed was representing your views had been having regular face-to-face meetings for several months with the opposite side to help them build their case without your knowledge whilst you had to rely on a brief note from a third party to let you know that there is even a case against you does not meet the criteria of impartiality and openness.

Consultation on the planning process appears designed to insult our intelligence - it might help Planning Officers to win funding for required infrastructure but, in doing so, it is likely to alienate the very communities whose interests it is supposed to be representing.

Aurea Mediocritas

Back To The Future?

Hydra Bookshop - opening Saturday 26th November

Trojan Horses

Bristol High Street survey

Beware Banks Bearing Gifts

The Sins of the Father?

Bristol Independents - 17th September 2011

A NOTE ON ALIENATION AMONGST YOUNG PEOPLE

A Brief History of.....BRISTOL'S TRANSPORT WOES – Part One

Joining up Bristol’s local community energy groups

The Real Benefits Scam

Blaming the referee shows how weak the Ashton Gate plan was

Lost and Found

Dear My Friend Mr Bristol City Council

Who will be the big 3 to decide Bristol's future?

Who will be Bristol's champion in Whitehall?

Abolition of Regional Spatial Strategies

‘Make Your Mark’ mosaic to be unveiled in Bristol by Mark Watson on Tuesday 1st June

Bristol Friends of the Earth objection to access road for BCFC Stadium

The Not So Great Reform Act 2010

Yo Clegg! Can the Lib Dem leader avoid being seen as Cameron's poodle?

‘Make Your Mark’ – Submit Your Self-Portrait

A More Honest Leaflet for Bristol West?

Make Bristol Even Better.....

Every cook can govern.....Bristol Radical History Group

Do We Know What We Are Voting For?

Let the people really decide how to change Bristol

Would You Like To Rent My Roof?

"Wrong to impose nuclear on future generations but clean, sustainable energy is deliverable"

The Struggle for Democracy; How we won it and how we lost it.

Save Bristol's Libraries

Lower taxes that are paid are better than higher taxes that are avoided

Proportional Representation in Bristol

What do six of the seven most economically powerful English cities have in common?

Bristol… A city too rich to help and too weak to influence

The Fabian Society's View of Bristol

Multi-million-pound stadium questions Bristol must face

Does this building have Bristol's largest carbon footprint?

Anglo-Saxon Democracy

Lies, Damn Lies and Transport Assessment Statistics

Cabinet Meeting 28 January 2010

New superstore at Ashton Gate: It's bigger and it's orange

The Rebranding of Nuclear Power?

Knowle West: Lessons Learned or Lessons Spurned?

Snow Clearing, Obama and People Power

City Council To Become Co-Owners of Ashton Vale Stadium?

Bristol energy usage by neighbourhood

First Bristolians in Space?

Broadmead German Market: Planning Department turning blind eye to Council’s rule breaking?

Should the Council swap Hengrove Park for Ashton Gate?

Land Disposal will be Cabinet Decision

More Questions than Answers

Supplementary Questions: The Lord Mayor’s Cut

NORTH STREET: THE FILM

Shock News; I Agree With The Lib Dems!

£3.6 million public subsidy for new stadium?

Banksy versus Tesco Superstore

BRISTOL’S GREEN[WASH] CREDENTIALS

Three graphs that tell a story.

Ashton Gate and subjective objectivity

Sympathy for the Devil

INSULTATIONS: How to win funds and alienate people.