Stat Porn: 100,000 Up!

Posted on November 9, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Fireworks - Celebration 100,000 hits

On Thursday The Bristol Blogger got their 100,000th hit. This has taken 33 weeks and means that The Blogger is averaging over 3,000 hits per week since it started in March.

However the blog is currently getting between 5-6,000 hits per week which puts it within range of Venue’s reputed circulation of around 7,000 copies per week. Not bad for an amateur working in their lunch hour.

The next target must be the Evening Cancer. Their thisisbristol site currently gets around 232,000 hits a month, which means The Blogger’s readership is about a tenth of theirs at present. Although at the current rate of growth we should overtake them in around six years!

This is all being done, of course, on a tiny fraction of the budgets available to the city’s traditional media outlets. If I were one the boss dinosaurs in the dead tree press I’d be taking a lot of notice of this and be getting quite worried indeed.

Posted in Blogging, Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Media | Tagged | There are 17 comments

Transport round-up

Posted on November 9, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

First Bus protest

Minister of State for being an unpalatable shade of orange, Peter Vain, was in town yesterday making one of his stupid, posh foghorn-voiced announcements.

And what tremendous news he brings! Yet another Labour government subsidy, no less, for Bristol’s most hated firm, First Bus. Basically what will be happening is that we, the tax payer, will now pay for and provide the initial training to First’s drivers and in return they promise to give the trainees an interview.

It’s another nice little earner for the city’s most reviled and incompetent firm courtesy of their New Labour friends. First, as usual, pocket enhanced profits by dumping more costs on to the tax payer while continuing to provide their same old pisspoor failed service.

Of course the tax payer is already paying out multi-million subsidies to fund the firm’s staffing costs anyway through the tax credit system. First effectively pay rock bottom wages to their drivers knowing full well that New Labour will pick up the tab and provide the workers with a living wage.

In another piece of transport news, that no doubt will be an EXCLUSIVE in next week’s Evening Cancer, car drivers and commuters will be ecstatic to learn that Bristol City Council is raising long-stay parking charges by 25%. It’ll now cost £5 instead of four pounds to park in a city council car park in town for up to four hours and £10 instead of £8 to stay all day.

Naturally not all of Bristol City Council’s parking spaces will be subject to these charges that are allegedly designed to reduce congestion. Parking spaces for senior managers and councillors at the Council House, for instance, will continue to be free and now represent a £50 a week – or £2,600pa – tax free perk. (Which is actually worth £75 a week or £4.5k a year before tax – the amount we would have to earn to afford the council’s new charges to park our cars five days a week)

What an excellent example of leadership from the Council House. Presumably the city council’s managers’ and councillors’ cars aren’t the ones causing any of this congestion they’re so desperate to reduce then?

Posted in Bristol, Environment, Global warming, Local government, The Centre, Transport | Tagged , | There are 7 comments

Educashion today

Posted on November 8, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

On one of the more obscure outposts of the council’s website you can find details about something called ‘Buggybuddies’, publicly funded keep fit sessions for yummy mummies. If you really feel the need to look it up yourself it can be found here:

You are here > Home > Leisure and culture > Fitness > Activities in the parks.

And here’s what it’s all about:

Buggy Buddies is a fun social activity for mums who are looking to get back in shape whilst exercising with their babies on a regular weekly outing.

Mums push their children in their buggies along a planned route with regular stops for warm-up stretches, circuit exercises, core training and cool down stretches.

When the session is completed mums usually ‘refuel’ and have a chat at a nearby baby-friendly café!

So far, so what? Just another absurd, small-scale city council job creation scheme for a middle class Southville mum and more of our council tax going on slightly daft, dubious and low priority activities for the middle classes (who the fuck else can get to the Downs or Ashton Court Estate with a buggy for a spot of exercise?).

No big deal then; just Bristol City Council business as usual. However, what really caught The Blogger’s eye was this:

Held by a degree-qualified and fully insured personal trainer

You what? There’s now a tailored degree course available in keep fit training with baby buggies? Has this got anything to do with UWE?

Posted in Bristol, Education, Local government | Tagged | There are 5 comments

Tough at the top?

Posted on November 8, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Clearly it’s not just Heather Tomlinson feeling the pressure and turning into a raving paranoid loon who’s lost all their bearings.

Mike Norton, Bristol United Press’s Group Editor responsible for all their local publications including The Cancer, The Depress and Venue, also appears to be under a little bit of strain at present. Why else would he be writing letters of complaint to one of his own publications?

Today’s Venue finds this letter (link not available because they’re still not on the bloody internet) from Norton, who actually runs the damn magazine, taking pride of place:

While not wishing to sound like one of the Evening Post letter writers you ridiculed in last week’s edition [’50 Things To Do’, issue 788], I would like to put your writer straight on some facts about our letters page and defend the 1,700 people who send us a letter, email or internet comment every week.
Your writer may be surprised to learn that: 1) All the letters are from “actual real people”. 2) None of the letters we receive are written in green crayon. 3) Far from conforming to a “reactionary” stereotype, letters from Bristolians can often be very erudite and thought-provoking.
Mike Norton, Editor, Evening Post

On the matter of point number 2 at least, Norton is entirely correct. It’s not his readers who write in green crayon is it? That’s the reporters.

Posted in Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Journalism, Media | Tagged , , | There are 5 comments

Direktive from ze Heatherbunker

Posted on November 7, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

APA - Heatherbunker

A reader directs The Blogger to this term’s edition of Herr Direktor Tomlinson’s glossy newsletter(PDF) for school governors as we “may want to read the series of crap excuses she’s concocted”! The reader continues:

No great major spelling mistakes immediately apparent (just a series of bloody buzzwords that mean nothing: “Task & Finish Group”, “fit-for-purpose”, blah, blah, blah). But it looks as though she was getting tired towards the end of the article because the last paragraph doesn’t seem to make sense: “Thank you for all your hard work and commitment, and on your achievements.” Perhaps ‘congratulations’ went AWOL from that sentence? It had probably been a long day…

Indeed the vast majority of it is a typical local government exercise in meaningless jargon and obvious swerves to avoid the bad news. However this little nugget intrigued The Blogger:

It’s great that, in 2006-07, attendance has improved across both primary and secondary schools. Improving attendance is a key factor in our ability to meet our pupils’ expected levels of attainment.

It would stand more chance of being considered great if it were true. But as we all know attendance in Bristol schools deteriorated over the last year.

Are senior local government officers allowed to do this? Just tell outright lies to avoid any news that questions their competence?

COMING SOON: “We will not accept petitions of a personal nature”. That sack Tomlinson petition latest.

(Cartoon by Evelyn Post. Evelyn Post is The Bristol Blogger’s resident cartoonist. He has a woman’s name)

Posted in Bristol, Education, Local government | Tagged | There are 6 comments

Our trough: their snouts

Posted on November 6, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

A Decent Story - Gillray

Hurrah! As part of the national Crimestoppers Conference taking place in Bristol last week on the theme of ‘Engaging Hard-To-Reach Communities’, West Country Crimestoppers held a sumptuous black tie reception on board the SS Great Britain “to thank local and national volunteers and businesses for their support”.

In an especially nice touch, the heroic and hard working crime fighters were even sailed to the reception on a flotilla of ships. How generous is that? So who were these selfless local volunteers deserving of free on-board posh nosh and a roaring piss-up for their sterling work tackling crime on our behalf?

Er, The Lord Mayor of Bristol, the Lord Lieutenant of Bristol, the High Sheriffs of Bristol, Somerset and Gloucestershire, Pig Fucker Gurney, the Chief Executive of Bristol County Council, and our glorious Labour leader Helen Holland were all there – present and correct – at the front of the freebie queue a quite breathlessly excited press release assures us.

As were “key members of the region’s business community” including Business West, the South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA), Rolls Royce and Ladbrokes. Other companies included The Bristol Hippodrome, Mercure and Original FM.

The mandatory self-congratulatory speeches were delivered by our old Merchant Venturer friend John Savage – never one to pass up a free meal – of Business West fame and a board member of SWRDA and the Broadmead brown-noser himself, John Hirst.

Keynote speaker Mick Laurie, the Chief Executive of Crimestoppers, even thanked all those present for all their hard work! Then explained how they were there to share and discuss their experiences and to learn from them for the benefit of “the communities we wish to reach to enable us to develop solutions to help those communities.”

Doesn’t it just warm yer heart?

Possibly not if you live in one of the “communities they wish to reach” such as say Easton, where the residents not only don’t get regular invites to scoff free upmarket nosh while receiving a pat on the back for being wealthy and influential but also have to put up with diabolical levels of unceasing crime.

Stats for the last six weeks show there were 50 house burglaries, 38 cases of street robbery using weapons or violence, 47 occurences of theft and criminal damage to vehicles and several attempted arson attacks in Easton alone.

Brilliant! Trebles all round!

Posted in Bristol, Harbourside, Labour Party, Local government, Merchant Venturers, Policing, SWRDA | Tagged , , | There are 2 comments

Meet the Met

Posted on November 6, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

There’s an interesting piece of film courtesy of FIT* watch on Indymedia showing what happens when a group of people attempt to try:

A minutes applause will be held outside the home of the Rt Hon David Cameron, to celebrate his remarkable achievements in this meritocratic, classless society.

FITWatch definitely look like the group to watch at the moment. There’s also some rushes of a Class War video on Indymedia and Notting Hill’s Roughler TV should be getting a film together too.

Another report of the day from Jonathan in Maryport is also now available:

The afternoon however proved to be much more fun. Class Wars’, “Bash The Rich; Toffs Out!” march started at 2pm in Portobello Road in Notting Hill. Although I’m not an anarchist like my mate I was with I am very interested in the politics of Class War. The Class War Federation were once a movement capable of mobilising thousands upon the streets such as the Bash The Rich marches and Stop The City marches of the 80’s

*FIT stands for Forward Intelligence Team, a division of the Met solely concerned with having a high visibility presence on the streets as they collect “intelligence” on political activists.

Posted in Bash the rich | | There are no comments yet

Day 4 of my experiment

Posted on November 5, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Time for an update on The Blogger’s great e-democracy experiment to get rid of Heather Tomlinson.

On Friday The Blogger fired off an email to the council’s e-democracy department requesting some simple information on their confidentiality arrangements with regards to people signing their petitions and providing them with personal information.

So far there’s been no reply – not even an acknowledgment. Presumably the fact the council spend a small fortune of our council tax constantly banging on about ‘customer services’ does not mean they’ll actually provide some by, say, acknowledging the receipt of an email within two days.

There’s three obvious reasons for this lack of a response to such a basic enquiry:

  1. Their £100k a year senior managers have instructed them not to cooperate with The Blogger on the basis that it’s not in their interests to do so. Unfortunately this is a strategy doomed to fail as it relies entirely on all of us being totally fucking stupid and not knowing that virtually everything a local authority does is in the public domain whether they like it or not. It’s actually against the law for them not to give us information!
  2. The council’s e-democracy department has been happily harvesting people’s names and addresses for years now without having any kind of confidentiality policy or arrangements in place. This is quite likely.
  3. Nobody in the department actually looks at the consultation@bristol.gov.uk email address they provide on their website.

The Blogger unfortunately has to wait five working days to pursue this further. Watch this space . . .

Posted in Bristol, Education, Local government | Tagged , | There is 1 comment

The last days of the Heathersreich

Posted on November 5, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Heather's Bunker

Sounds like it’s beginning to resemble the fall of Berlin in the Tomlinson Schoolzbunker at the Council House.

Our man with the password to the server in Bristol’s Education department says that Herr Direktor Heather Tomlinson is now so paranoid about The Bristol Blogger that orders have been handed to her IT people telling them to convince employees in her department that their internet use is now being closely monitored to see exactly who is accessing this site from Bristol City Council PCs during work time! Ho, ho, ho.

Heather, for christ’s sake get a grip girl. This is Bristol not China. You are a hopeless local government officer working for Bristol City Council not a senior communist party official and it’s the fucking internet and you can’t censor it or stop your staff looking at it you daft sod.

It makes you wonder how much longer this hopeless paranoid can last in post now. Will she finally do the decent thing and go quietly of her own accord? Will legal eagle Stephen McNamara be quietly distributing the cyanide capsules? Or perhaps Helen Holland will be tasked with handing her the ivory handled revolver? It’s only a matter of time now Heather . . .

You have completely and utterly failed. Your record proves it. For god’s sake go now with some shred of dignity. If not, you will be made to go in the most undignified circumstances imaginable.

It’s your choice . . .

(Cartoon by Evelyn Post. Evelyn Post is The Bristol Blogger’s resident cartoonist. He has a woman’s name)

COMING LATER: ‘Day 4 of my experiment’ – an update on where we’re at with the e-democracy petition to get rid of hopeless Heather.

Posted in Bristol, Education, Evelyn Post, Local government | Tagged | There are 2 comments

How the rich were bashed

Posted on November 4, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Bash the Rich 2007, Ladbroke Grove

There’s reports and comments offering a variety of perspectives on yesterday’s Bash the Rich march at London Class War, Johnny Void, Ian Bone and Indymedia.

I’ve not really got much to add to what has already been said aside from the observation that the views of people who were there are slightly more nuanced than those who weren’t.

Smart Monkey’s points on Indymedia are also worth repeating:

Everyone I knew on the march actually had jobs. The uniting view was that it is better to get out on the streets and try to do something, even if this results in failure, than to sit behind a keyboard moaning at people waiting for a ready made revolution . . .

Instead of the long list of ‘I told you so’s’ and ‘what did you expect from the police’ with the overtones that we all got what we deserve, it would be nice to have some solidarity from activists even if they did not agree with the march itself. After all it was policed in an extremely aggressive and nasty way (screaming man being dragged about by a broken arm etc.). Perhaps, if you can’t bring yourself to type words of praise for the marchers themselves, you could focus a bit more on the implications of this for wider society.

Posted in Bash the rich | | There are no comments yet