Council plans to close Park Street are backed by a private sector report by the council’s ‘private sector capital partner’, Arcadis – Queens Road, Triangle and Park Street – Economic Benefits Review.
The report claims that the proposal will generate a large 28.5 per cent increase in economic activity for the retail and food sector and a 19.64 per cent increase for the office sector.
Fantastic news until you learn from campaigners that the research Arcadis used to ‘prove’ these economic benefits is derived from US research from the 1960s about pedestrianising shopping malls.
The data is therefore 60 years old and, in three cases, malls were reopened to traffic to stop the economic decline caused by, er, pedestrianisation!
Hapless local party blows WECA election after member goes rogue
Quite contrary …
Why was the Green Party WECA mayoral campaign underpowered? Their candidate Mary “Contrary” Page told The Times days before the election that she had no campaign manager and was paying for leaflets from her pension for an election they could win.
The party’s presence on the ground was non-existent. Nothing like the numbers for last year’s horrific ‘Team Carla’ experience in Bristol Central. Their social media campaign was pathetic too.
A few random local party branded Tweets drifted out sporadically while councillors and activists hid away in splendid isolation on the empty Bluesky app for nonces and snowflakes.
According to an insider, the campaign was a car crash because Mary only got the nomination after lodging a formal complaint with the Green Party when original candidate Heather “Hack” Mack put her nomination papers in late. Heather was then disqualified on the technicality by the Greens.
In response, the majority of Bristol Green Party didn’t bother campaigning for Page.
The Greens have now decided to close Park Street to through traffic for reasons that nobody understands.
It’s such a crap idea that even the Greens’ WECA mayoral candidate Mary “Contrary” Page said she opposed the plan. Along with just about everyone else in Bristol.
Works will commence at the same time a liveable neighbourhood will be installed in south Bristol and something expensive and unnecessary is done to Bedminster Bridge.
Our favourite multi-named council character, Rob “Aardvark” Bryher (formerly Telford) continues to entertain.
The former Green councillor for Ashley, now pitched up in St George West, recently sneered, from the pages of Bristol 24/7, about ‘some on the left of politics in the city want to set a needs budget’ .
That’s a budget that funds what the city actually needs rather than what the arseholes in Westminster say we’re allowed to spend.
Who are these ‘some on the left of politics’ fools? Er, step forward Rob Aardvark who told the Bristol Cobblers in 2015 when asked about a needs budget for Bristol that “it could be a potentially effective strategy.”
No change in the alarming regularity of blatant cover-ups at Bristol City Council.
In the five years up to December 2024, the council forced 59 former workers to sign gagging orders when they departed the council. An average of twelve a year.
Since December 2024, under the oversight of the Greens, two further gagging orders have already been forced on former staff.
The Green administration has bought an end to a legal case against Bristol City Council for spying on SEND parents with a shabby pay-off from council funds.
Costs to the victims of continuing the case against the council for unlawfully spying on them were just too high and could not be covered by Legal Aid.
The big question now is – where’s that SEND spying inquiry the Green Party were so keen on undertaking before they got elected?
Surely they’re not perpetrating a cover-up to protect the likes of SEND spy-in-chief, senior council executive Hugh “Cares” Evans and his fat salary?
Isn’t it time we put an end to handouts to the undeserving rich?
Our favourite Green councillor, the ever entertaining Ab “Dull” Malik continues to fuck up.
Ab Dull is also a magistrate and the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO) have given him a formal warning for sharing a message supporting Hamas on his Facebook page.
Ab Dull and the Green Party had claimed that he had been “unwittingly tagged into an offensive post” on Facebook. However, the JCIO, in common with the rest of the sentient universe, rejected this nonsense claim.
Instead, the JCIO found that Ab Dull did indeed post a message from Hamas, which called the October 7 massacre a “supremely defensive act” and described Israel as “an animal state… a cancer that should be eradicated”.
The Greens have published a long and boring 10 year economic plan for the city, ‘Fair, Green and Thriving: Bristol’s Economic Strategy 2025 – 2035’.
The council officer produced report mentions ‘business’ 178 times while lowly ‘public services’ are mentioned twice. If that doesn’t convince you this is a business charter from the Greens, then how about the 100 mentions of ‘growth’; the 32 mentions of corporate-coffer filling ‘net zero’ and 8 mentions for an unexplained ‘just transition’?
Looks like another right of centre coalition aligned to local business grifters has set up at the Council House to shovel public money to the private sector.
MORE BLOODY ‘GROWTH’ The Reverend’s meaningless buzzwords ‘inclusive growth’ are revived by the Greens in their economic plan. “We will grow our global reputation for innovation, creativity and sustainability [yawwwwn, Ed.] and attract investment aligned to our inclusive growth principles” they gush.
This ‘inclusive growth’ nonsense term appears a further eight times in their strategy. Nowhere do they explain what it is or how it differs from old-fashioned growth and its reliance on “trickle down theory”. The ridiculous belief that if the rich get richer the poor benefit by magic too. They don’t tell us what these ‘inclusive growth principles’ are, either.
The report rambles on, “[We will] use our role in the Bristol Temple Quarter LLP to support the implementation of the Bristol Temple Quarter Inclusive Growth Strategy.”
Naturally, there’s no such thing at present as the Bristol Temple Quarter Inclusive Growth Strategy. Although we’re promised, “[it] will be published in early 2025,” a date that has now passed.
It’s all a load of bollocks isn’t it?
FILM FLAM “The health and social work sector is [Bristol’s] largest employer, providing 16% of local jobs in 2022,” say the Greens. Almost one in six workers in Bristol. This huge employment sector gets just seven mentions in their economic strategy.
Meanwhile, an obsession with the film industry continues. ‘Film’ gets 17 mentions, although the Greens forget to say what percentage of local jobs their Hollywood dream actually delivers. Instead we get a tired old stat: “the Bottle Yard Studios contributed almost £21 million to the city’s economy”. £21m is a little over a tenth of one per cent of Bristol’s £15bn annual turnover.
Why the exposure and subsidies for a marginal industry while the sectors people actually work in get downplayed and underfunded?
DOWN SOUTH: After a few crocodile tears about inequality in south Bristol, the Green economic plan announces nine ‘designated areas of growth’ for the city for the next ten years.
Seven of these are north of the river. Two – Bedminster and Brislington – are in the south. Bedminster is gentrifying fast while the selection of Brislington along the Bath Road looks like a sweetener to help get the greenbelt built on at Hicks Gate.
Little support from the Greens for South Bristol, then.
A long suffering trapped resident in East Bristol writes:
“Reject the South Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood now before you fall out with your neighbours!
“This is a warning to the people of south Bristol about their forthcoming Liveable Neighbourhood.
“The Greens and their supporters are vile. They will deliberately divide your community with their ideological roadblocks and then claim – without evidence – it’s OK because more people agree with them than with you.
South Bristol open space – the Northern Slopes – soon to get van dwellers moved off west Bristol’s open space
The Greens have come up with a novel solution to complaints by the posh locals about van dwellers setting up home in and around the Downs.
Council officers cheerily announced in the Nazi Post that they would seeking ‘new support sites’ for van dwellers and that “two meanwhile sites could be turned into areas where van dwellers can stay, perhaps in Knowle West and Hartcliffe”.
A typical west Bristol solution to any problem in the city, then. Dump it in south Bristol.
