The news is breaking that a Planning Inspector has recommended Town Green status for the Ashton Vale land that was targetted for Bristol City's new stadium (plus assorted other developments).
Spare a thought for the City fans whose hopes of a new stadium have been so carefully cultivated, and ruthlessly exploited, by the club as it pursued this speculative high-risk business venture.
It's those emotions that are football clubs' real stock-in-trade, the loyalties and goodwill without which the team and the stadium mean nothing. Just like money, the goodwill can be manipulated as part of a negotiation - and BCFC have certainly been doing that, aided and abetted by the Evening Post and certain senior politicians, in each of the somewhat suspect linked deals that underpinned the stadium project.
Now comes the big let-down for the fans whose ambitions had been raised, and probably brings on the anger that goes with it. The club, responsible for the whole fiasco in the first place, will certainly want to divert blame onto the Ashton TG objectors, the Inspector, and anyone else who's raised their head above the parapet.
It will be fascinating to see whether the promoters accept that the whole matter has been fairly and lawfully dealt with, or whether they go back to offering carrots to the fans and taking sticks to the objectors in an effort to get their way.
[Added 10.20pm]
They're wasting no time....
"There are a variety of options open to us and we will use all these options to fight this report. The anger must rest with the inspector and the evidence used to support it.
“This is a clarion call for Bristol not to be tramped upon this way. We need the people of Bristol to say this is absolute madness.
Colin Sexstone, quoted on Bristol 24/7
Cllr Simon Cook's not taking a very balanced view either. "The law behind this application is a complete nonsense, but I am utterly determined to find a way through it."
That's the official Bristol City Council / Commons Registration Authority view then?
The report itself - all 250 closely argued pages of it - can be read from the same official page.
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Friday, 10 September 2010
Thursday, 9 September 2010
The yellow line cover-up
Ward councillors are still denying any suggestion of wrongdoing, after getting the threat of yellow lines outside a colleague's house withdrawn, and claiming the Neighbourhood Puppetship backed their decision.
The charge, as I described to the September NP meeting for Hengrove and Stockwood, was:
"The minutes record the very special treatment that the voting councillors gave to one public forum statement ; they agreed to reverse a recommendation for yellow lines at a road junction, at the sole request of the resident whose property fronts the junction. I (and I am sure most of those present) did not see any such decision being made, or any opportunity for residents or officers to give an opinion on it, or the agenda item it should relate to. It is all the more alarming that the resident making the statement - and winning instant councillor support - is an Alderman and a party colleague of the two Stockwood councillors."
This brought a heated, but wholly unconvincing, response from the councillors involved.
Cllr Jay Jethwa (who'd spent much of the previous 48 hrs calling a fellow councillor a liar) complained that my remarks were 'personal'
Cllr David Morris attempted an explanation to exonerate him: his original bid for yellow lines was at the request of another resident, but it wouldn't be considered anyway because that area's not in the Traffic Dept's programme, so reversing the decision wasn't necessary.
Their LibDem counterpart from Hengrove, Cllr Jos Clark, said the Minute must be right, because the minuting officer is good at his job.
None claimed that the decision had been made openly, or even attempted (given the Morris version) to explain why they'd bothered to take it. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no members of the public there who'd been at the previous meeting (that must say something...) so no-one else could challenge the written record.
The police intervened in the shape of Insp. Colin Salmon, who knocked our heads together (coppers can still do that, as long as they do it metaphorically). He suggested a simple word change ('could' for 'would') in the Minute that should make everyone happy. But the councillors wouldn't even make that concession. The official record remains intact. They took an unnecessary decision that no-one else saw, outside the agenda of the meeting, and which just happened to do a favour to a party friend.
So the charge remains. Until we know better, this was a blatant bid to give Neighbourhood Puppetship authority to a councillors' uniquely generous treatment of a party colleague.
The charge, as I described to the September NP meeting for Hengrove and Stockwood, was:
"The minutes record the very special treatment that the voting councillors gave to one public forum statement ; they agreed to reverse a recommendation for yellow lines at a road junction, at the sole request of the resident whose property fronts the junction. I (and I am sure most of those present) did not see any such decision being made, or any opportunity for residents or officers to give an opinion on it, or the agenda item it should relate to. It is all the more alarming that the resident making the statement - and winning instant councillor support - is an Alderman and a party colleague of the two Stockwood councillors."
This brought a heated, but wholly unconvincing, response from the councillors involved.
Cllr Jay Jethwa (who'd spent much of the previous 48 hrs calling a fellow councillor a liar) complained that my remarks were 'personal'
Cllr David Morris attempted an explanation to exonerate him: his original bid for yellow lines was at the request of another resident, but it wouldn't be considered anyway because that area's not in the Traffic Dept's programme, so reversing the decision wasn't necessary.
Their LibDem counterpart from Hengrove, Cllr Jos Clark, said the Minute must be right, because the minuting officer is good at his job.
None claimed that the decision had been made openly, or even attempted (given the Morris version) to explain why they'd bothered to take it. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no members of the public there who'd been at the previous meeting (that must say something...) so no-one else could challenge the written record.
The police intervened in the shape of Insp. Colin Salmon, who knocked our heads together (coppers can still do that, as long as they do it metaphorically). He suggested a simple word change ('could' for 'would') in the Minute that should make everyone happy. But the councillors wouldn't even make that concession. The official record remains intact. They took an unnecessary decision that no-one else saw, outside the agenda of the meeting, and which just happened to do a favour to a party friend.
So the charge remains. Until we know better, this was a blatant bid to give Neighbourhood Puppetship authority to a councillors' uniquely generous treatment of a party colleague.
Just One Songsheet for the Neighbourhood Partnerships
This round of the quarterly Neighbourhood Partnership meetings all have a couple of things in common.
One's that the agenda is virtually identical for each. What we can talk about has been decided by unnamed people at the council house, not by the neighbourhood, not even by the ward councillors.
The other's that the 'Public Forum' has been quietly dropped. No announcement, no explanation, no source; it just ain't there - whatever the NP constitution might say to the contrary.
I became one of the first victims of this remarkable turnaround at the Hengrove and Stockwood NP meeting this evening. I'd filed a 'Public Statement' a week or two back, offering suggestions for getting residents more involved and citing some of the things we'd been getting wrong so far. Bits of it were contentious, with suggestions of abuse of power and cronyism. So instead of the Statement, I had to bring that bit up as a challenge to the accuracy of the last meetings minutes.... but I'll save that side of it for another post.
Anyway, I wasn't allowed to present my statement. After prolonged exchanges, I did get a promise that it will be included in the minutes, and so be part of the public record; but it'll be the last one.
No more public statements, no more public forum. Who knows whose idea that was, but, well, that's democracy, Bristol fashion.
............
Later in the same meeting, we, like every other NP, were asked to form an 'environmental subgroup' to advise on local aspects of several council services.
I'm glad to say we went a little bit further, settling for separate groups for each ward, a real effort to publicise it and recruit members, and to invite wider public participation through the medium of the internet. Most of this was on the lines of what I'd suggested.
So watch this space. Somehow, stay optimistic.
One's that the agenda is virtually identical for each. What we can talk about has been decided by unnamed people at the council house, not by the neighbourhood, not even by the ward councillors.
The other's that the 'Public Forum' has been quietly dropped. No announcement, no explanation, no source; it just ain't there - whatever the NP constitution might say to the contrary.
I became one of the first victims of this remarkable turnaround at the Hengrove and Stockwood NP meeting this evening. I'd filed a 'Public Statement' a week or two back, offering suggestions for getting residents more involved and citing some of the things we'd been getting wrong so far. Bits of it were contentious, with suggestions of abuse of power and cronyism. So instead of the Statement, I had to bring that bit up as a challenge to the accuracy of the last meetings minutes.... but I'll save that side of it for another post.
Anyway, I wasn't allowed to present my statement. After prolonged exchanges, I did get a promise that it will be included in the minutes, and so be part of the public record; but it'll be the last one.
No more public statements, no more public forum. Who knows whose idea that was, but, well, that's democracy, Bristol fashion.
............
Later in the same meeting, we, like every other NP, were asked to form an 'environmental subgroup' to advise on local aspects of several council services.
I'm glad to say we went a little bit further, settling for separate groups for each ward, a real effort to publicise it and recruit members, and to invite wider public participation through the medium of the internet. Most of this was on the lines of what I'd suggested.
So watch this space. Somehow, stay optimistic.
Sunday, 5 September 2010
Have Railcard, will travel
'Walk-on' fares for travelling any distance may make rail travel look prohibitively expensive - but there are some crazy bargains to be had, especially with a railcard. We've been doing our best to take advantage of them.
A trip back from Tenby yesterday at £3.95; a three-train odyssey from deepest Eskdale, in the North Yorks Moors, to Kings Cross (with a nostalgic walk up Roseberry Topping on the way) was a mere £7.95.
Take one Great Western train to Penzance, but buy separate tickets for the Exeter, Plymouth, and Penzance legs, and you can have a those last couple of hours in first class luxury through Cornwall for £3.95 until you sweep past St Michaels Mount (travel on to Lands End with a bus pass if you wish!) - skinflints can save another couple of quid by slumming it in second class.
For the north-west, a trip through Newport and up through the Marches gets you to Manchester more cheaply, comfortably, and probably better tempered than the orthodox Cross-Country route in a packed Voyager train. A separate ticket gets you to the Lakes for little more.
But one of the best bargains is the most local - and you don't have to buy in advance. Temple Meads to Severn Beach, £1.50 day return. Loads to look at on the way, too.
I'm not sure that we deserve all these age concessions. Chris Mullin mentions in his diaries how, after a late session in the House of Commons he, other MPs and a Lord or two would get the late bus from Victoria Street, along with one of the waiters who'd worked a late shift in the House. Only the waiter paid his own fare.
A trip back from Tenby yesterday at £3.95; a three-train odyssey from deepest Eskdale, in the North Yorks Moors, to Kings Cross (with a nostalgic walk up Roseberry Topping on the way) was a mere £7.95.
Take one Great Western train to Penzance, but buy separate tickets for the Exeter, Plymouth, and Penzance legs, and you can have a those last couple of hours in first class luxury through Cornwall for £3.95 until you sweep past St Michaels Mount (travel on to Lands End with a bus pass if you wish!) - skinflints can save another couple of quid by slumming it in second class.
For the north-west, a trip through Newport and up through the Marches gets you to Manchester more cheaply, comfortably, and probably better tempered than the orthodox Cross-Country route in a packed Voyager train. A separate ticket gets you to the Lakes for little more.
But one of the best bargains is the most local - and you don't have to buy in advance. Temple Meads to Severn Beach, £1.50 day return. Loads to look at on the way, too.
I'm not sure that we deserve all these age concessions. Chris Mullin mentions in his diaries how, after a late session in the House of Commons he, other MPs and a Lord or two would get the late bus from Victoria Street, along with one of the waiters who'd worked a late shift in the House. Only the waiter paid his own fare.
Wednesday, 1 September 2010
Another stone from the blue glass house
Stockwood's Cllr Jay Jethwa has tabled some party-politicking questions for next Tuesday's council meeting. They suggest that the LibDem administration has gone out of its way to protect its own council wards, when choosing which open green spaces to put up for sale to fund the Parks and Green Space Strategy.
If true, that would be very serious malpractice. But it looks much more like Jay's convenient political interpretation of what some of us had forecast long since. Wasn't it inevitable that sites for sale would be identified in outer, poorer, areas, to fund a strategy that largely benefits the wealthier wards of the city - which do tend to elect LibDem, or Tory, councillors? Jay and her fellow Tories chose to ignore that obvious fact when they welcomed the PGSS strategy a couple of years ago, so it's a bit late to play party games with it now. She also conveniently ignores wards like our neighbours in LibDem-held Hengrove, which is every bit as threatened by land sales as we are in Stockwood.
So try again, Jay. But remember that blue glass house that you're in. Remember how your minority group held the Labour group to ransom a couple of years ago (same time as you approved the land sale policy in the PGSS)? Your blessing for their entire city budget was conditional on including £215K on play parks - exclusively in Tory wards. That really set the standard for party self-interest.
[Good grief! That's the second time I've defended the LibDems against Tory attack! Why don't they do it themselves?]
If true, that would be very serious malpractice. But it looks much more like Jay's convenient political interpretation of what some of us had forecast long since. Wasn't it inevitable that sites for sale would be identified in outer, poorer, areas, to fund a strategy that largely benefits the wealthier wards of the city - which do tend to elect LibDem, or Tory, councillors? Jay and her fellow Tories chose to ignore that obvious fact when they welcomed the PGSS strategy a couple of years ago, so it's a bit late to play party games with it now. She also conveniently ignores wards like our neighbours in LibDem-held Hengrove, which is every bit as threatened by land sales as we are in Stockwood.
So try again, Jay. But remember that blue glass house that you're in. Remember how your minority group held the Labour group to ransom a couple of years ago (same time as you approved the land sale policy in the PGSS)? Your blessing for their entire city budget was conditional on including £215K on play parks - exclusively in Tory wards. That really set the standard for party self-interest.
[Good grief! That's the second time I've defended the LibDems against Tory attack! Why don't they do it themselves?]
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