Tag Archives: Development

The Country Diary of an Edwardian Mayor

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The Country Diary

Words on the Development of Hengrove Park

As I sit here taking air at the enervating window of my oak-panelled study and surveying the natural majesty before me, I can only express utter joy and no small sense of wonder at the good news just arrived. Nay, this is more than mere good news. It is a tumult of the most joyous news. For soon these green and pleasant tree-lined fields of west England, which impart the form of my current panorama, shall be better moulded by enlightened man’s industry into the spectacle of a housing estate.

This finest of aspects, alas, currently despoiled by no peasant ever toiling hard under the hot sun as God intended, will receive, by God’s grace, the best of human enrichment and utility. Gone from our land will be the idlers, chokers, hawkers and show men with dog, child, bicycle, car boot or ball perambulating aimlessly upon fruitless, lazy, unprofitable soil and revealing a sordid disposition toward non-labouring activity.

Instead let us rejoice as these loafers are swept beyond view to dwell in chipboard slums of their own making. In their place the hard working peasant and the labouring man will toil, sweat, struggle and overcome upon our imperial soil to yield the finest fruits for the most deserving. Oh how my heart yearns to see 850 trees uprooted and nature’s roughly arranged bounty better diminished to make way for man’s ingenious scheme of road, concrete, congestion and poison fumes.

If you’re a middle class wanker who hates south Bristol and would like Avonmouth to continue to be poisoned, you can vote for ‘Green’ Sandy in the Mayoral Election on 6 May 2020

CASTLE PARK DEVELOPMENT SHOCKER

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WANKY FLATS FOR WANKERS ON CASTLE PARK?

MORE WANKY FLATS FOR WANKERS ON PUBLIC LAND

News reaches The BRISTOLIAN that the Reverend’s council has quietly put a part of Castle Park on the market. The council’s parks department depot, which lies within the boundary of the park, is UP FOR SALE and nine developers visited the site on 7 June to measure up this prime city centre site for luxury flats.

The strategy being pursued by the council to cash in big time by disposing of our park is becoming clear. With Merchant Venturers Deeley Freed holding a development option and biding their time to grab more land at St Mary-Le-Port at the west end of the park, the council is now opening up the east end of the site for development. There’s A PINCER MOVEMENT TO BUILD ON OUR PARK!

Does anyone really believe that expensive bridge between the park and the old Courage Brewery where Channel 4 ponces are moving in to SNOOTY OFFICES soon was ever for the benefit of park users? Of course not. It’s for the wealthy to cross from one well-appointed luxury mixed-use development to another. The only playground we’ll be left with in Castle Park will be a PLAYGROUND FOR THE RICH.

Details of what will happen to the Castle Park depot are, naturally, TOP SECRET and therefore sketchy. However, expect another development based around luxury flats, open plan commercial space for ‘creatives’ and a few expensive food outlets. A further LAND GRAB from any potential developer of the depot also will be inevitable as they will claim they need more park land to make their development “VIABLE“.

They must be stopped.

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

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Another month and more greedy bastard builders are taking the piss out of our city by refusing to provide social and affordable homes on land owned by us and handed over to PRIVATE DEVELOPERS for housing by Bristol City Council who then grant them planning permission.

First, over to Speedwell where Crossman Homes, a chiselling shower of shit from Bath, are will be DEMOLISHING our amazing art deco swimming pool building and replace it with a HIDEOUS cell block of flats.

Out of the 31 flats being built on our land, Crossman Homes are providing only FOUR “affordable” – whatever that means – homes. Just 14 per cent of the total. Way below the council’s target of 40 per cent or around 12 of these homes.

Not surprisingly the Speedwell community is up in arms about this. Not only are they losing a popular and locally listed community building, they won’t even get any housing anyone in their community will be able to AFFORD. Another win for Bristol City Council?

Locally listed baths: will be demolished for flats

Meanwhile, over at REDCLIFF WHARF, council-owned and the last undeveloped site on the docks, another affordable homes FIASCO unfolds on this prime development land.

A special purpose vehicle – Complex Development Projects Ltd – quickly set up last December by businessmen from HERTFORDSHIRE in search of a fast, unaccountable buck are applying for planning permission to build a wanky mixed use development there. There’s lots of waffle (and cost) with this one about the need for a “HIGH QUALITY PUBLIC REALM” to appease Redcliff’s posh folk who want a poncy development that befits their status.

This means that, while over a MILLION QUID is poured into “public realm” improvements, granite suppliers and the provision of one tree, there’s sod all money left for affordable housing. In fact the dodgy developers are proposing NONE whatsoever!

Our brave council planners have rejected this LUDICROUS PROPOSAL out of hand, however, and told the developers that they must provide THREE one bed flats as affordable housing. Or about ONE FIFTH of the affordable housing requirement for the site.
Sod that. The council must take our land back from these dodgy developers and snooty wankers  immediately and use the site for 100 PER CENT SOCIAL HOUSING.

And, if the posh fuckers of Redcliff don’t like more council housing on their doorstep they can always fuck off to the Cotswolds.

HENGROVE HOUSING HORROR

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Reverend Rees’s housing tsar, Paul “Wolfie” Smith’s promises to “build communities not just houses” on Hengrove Park have collapsed on first contact with the public.

The recent first round of public consultation in Hengrove found Wolfie’s Major Projects Team openly admit they will be providing NO FACILITIES as part of the development because “THEY ARE ALREADY HERE“. So don’t move there expecting anything other than McDonalds, KFC and Premier Inn to service your needs.

The only public investment planners are agreeing to will be a GP surgery – somewhere – which is already urgently required in the Whitchurch/Hengrove area due to CHRONIC over-subscription of the existing GP service – and more primary school places.

 However, there will be NO NEW SCHOOLS. Instead, existing primary schools in the working class area – highly regarded for their leafy and spacious grounds – will be extended and expanded. Conveniently REMOVING playing fields and open space from the schools and leaving more prime development land for corporate developers to transform into high density rabbit hutches (surely exciting sustainable housing in the ‘Bristol Vernacular’ style? Ed.).

The highlight of this major development shambles, mainly designed to place large sums of cash into corporate developers coffers, however, is the plan to SHUT the recently opened Family Cycling Centre on the old Whitchurch Athletics Track and build a main access road over it!

Not only does this plan DEMOLISH one of the few public facilities still allowed in the area, it also demonstrates Bristol City Council’s real level of commitment to so-called “sustainable transport” and “active travel” once the hard cash for corporates is on the table.

 The council’s current Quality of Life Survey lists the number of commuters cycling to work in the area as ZERO PER CENT while 60 per cent use their car. And car use will only increase once Wolfie throws up 2,000 extra homes with car parking spaces. Why would anyone want to promote cycling here?

Residents in and around Bamfield in Whitchurch are especially up in arms since their residential road is set to become the MAIN VEHICLE ACCESS to all this new housing. Thousands of vehicles will be encouraged to drive down Bamfield every day and then drive directly over the ex-running track to access Wolfie’s new “community”. Locals predict traffic chaos and say the level of congestion and pollution likely to be generated by this plan is “HUGE“.

 Meanwhile, the obvious road access to the development, directly off Hengrove Way – a MAIN TRUNK ROAD specifically designed for heavy traffic – will be buses only and blocked to private cars!

 Who thinks this shit up?

GREEN IDIOT WATCH

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Clueless, interfering councillor supports high rents in Bedminster and low rents in Redfield.

                                            Telford.acorn

Decent homes for everyone, but not for Bedminster.

GORMLESS Green councillor, ROB “BEMMIE BOY” TELFORD, Sir Gus Hoyty-Toyty’s Ashley Ward mini-me, has been practising u-turns.

For some reason, back in March, Bemmie Boy took it upon himself to comment on the controversial proposed 15 storey high tower block development at ST KATHERINE’S PLACE at the top of East Street in Bedminster, some TWO MILES from his leafy ward.

“I think the scheme would have a detrimental effect on a lot of the local character, with surrounding trees blocked out from many vistas. The buildings are simply too high and block many other vistas,” pronounced the resident of, er, ST WERBURGHS in a formal letter about the application.

But not only is Bemmie Boy interfering in South Bristol where he’s not wanted, he can’t make up his mind up either. Five months later, just before the planning meeting, he wrote formally again: “Having MET WITH THE ARCHITECTS of this scheme and discussed some of the contentious issues surrounding it, I would like to withdraw my previous objection to this planning application,” he announced.

Why the architects were meeting with the councillor for Ashley to discuss a development miles away in Bedminster isn’t clear.

And neither is it clear why the Bemmie Boy’s Ashley Ward colleague SIR GUS HOYTY-TOYTY also waded into this SOUTH BRISTOL PLANNING ISSUE on the Bristol 24/7 news site with one of his semi-literate internet hissy fits aimed at local, south Bristol Lib Dems who are unhappy with this risible, though highly profitable, scheme that will deliver luxury flats and absolutely No AFFORDABLE HOUSING.

Why have this pair developed such a passionate interest in a multi-million pound property development on the other side of town all of a sudden?

Meanwhile Bemmie Boy, while promoting luxury private developments with high rents for the wealthy in Bedminster, is also fighting “to end rip-off tenancy fees and insecure renting”.
in EAST BRISTOL. Again, an area some two miles from his ward.

Bemmie Boy was spotted in July joining a protest in Redfield organised by the Easton based Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now (ACORN) against estate agent Holbrook Moran and their ripping off of private tenants.

We wonder whether Bemmie Boy informed his fellow protestors about his support for luxury
private developments in South Bristol?