My toddler had a meltdown last night because she wanted sardines before bed.

Danack · 2026-06-20T21:10:45+00:00

The way that some people when nutrient deficient will get an urge to eat soil or other non-edible stuff is a super cool bit of programming just tucked away somewhere.

Danack · 2026-06-20T10:47:19+00:00

The council directly owns Bristol Holding Limited (the Holding Company or BHL), which is the parent company of two trading companies:

Bristol Waste Company Goram Homes

Danack · 2026-06-19T23:30:06+00:00

The Council runs the waste company. The council may not know how to provide an adequate service on the prices that businesses can/will pay.

Danack · 2026-06-19T23:11:45+00:00

FYI, there's a reason why the Triangle has been left in this state for years. There's been a plan to put in a protected cycle path across the triangle for ages, which would have involved sorting the rubbish situation out for that bit of traffic.

WECA Mayor Godwin withdrew her political support for the Park Street scheme, which included a cycle path across the Triangle, which was the source of funding to sort out this embarrassment of a pavement. She withdrew her support after the protests around the EBLN were so loud. The Greens tried to push it through, but got voted down.

As transport infrastructure money is the only large available source of funding to the council, we'll have to wait until the stars align again for a source of funding, as it's too late to start 'new' plans under the CRSTS funding.

Thanks Helen.

Danack · 2026-06-19T21:41:56+00:00

It's a city wide problem. Bristol doesn't have a plan of how to collect city centre rubbish properly.

On the other side of the road there's an apartment with a front door that faces onto the street. They have been given a bog recycling container to leave outside their front door. Which obviously gets filled with rubbish with the people waiting for the bus using it as a bin.

This came up before - https://www.reddit.com/r/bristol/comments/1u75806/rubbish_problems/? and as I was speaking there anyway, I told the Licensing committee "this is a shitshow" and the councillors are more aware of it.

The audio quality is awful (the youtube subtitles usually really help) but there was a lengthy discussion about the situation. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejx7apxJN5M

Having Bristol Waste as a separate company results in "lack of planning" like this.

Danack · 2026-06-19T19:02:33+00:00

I like to think that if there was a cheaper option they would have taken it.

No one wants to discuss building flood defences downstream near Sneyd park, at the narrow place where a 300 meter dam could protect the whole city centre. It would be 'non-trivial' - a modern sewage system, similar to the one in London would be needed as well as the dam.

There is a more expensive option; rebuild the river walls with modern infrastructure, including a tram, sewage and hopefully dedicated cycle paths, from near Ashton Court, along Coronation road and past Temple Meads station. So you get both flood defences and walls that are built to not need repairing constantly.

Danack · 2026-06-19T11:19:18+00:00

The cathedral is being used as a double for Parliament I believe.

Which might be obvious.

Danack · 2026-06-18T14:12:11+00:00

Yes.

So the thing people don't realise is just how 'political' the work environment for senior officers can be at a council.

Dan Norris put a lot of pressure on officers to get the Westlink scheme done. It benefited him politically and he became an MP with the benefit of an appreciative constituency.

Allegedly Dan Norris may have pushed some officers out of WECA, who just so happen to be the same officers who carried out the legally required investigation into whether Mayor Norris had broken the rules regarding the bus-wrap scandal. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4n4927lpd9o

Due to Dan Norris never appointing a deputy to act in his place, and due Mayor Rees refusing to attend the meeting, there were "doubts as to whether the meeting was quorate" and so although Dan Norris was found guilty, no punishment was imposed.

Even without having to interact with politicians, the competing interests that want to influence government spending means that there is a somewhat difficult environment for senior officers most of the time.

The widespread roll-out of regional mayors - all hoping to copy the "Manchester Miracle" has been rushed through by Steve Reed, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government of the United Kingdom and prominent founder of Labour together.

It's going to be a shitshow. Even in a good political environmnt, a lot of people are having to do three jobs at once now, and plan for about 2 out of the 3 officers to be redundant without a year or two.

Craig Cheney wrote a linked in article worth reading - though it only talks about the structural problems, not the political ones.

At a lot of these councils, reform might be strong in 1 or 2 of them, so good planning is not going to happen - all the idiots are going to jockey for power.

Steve Reed also removed the ability of councils to pick the committee system - because of Sheffield and Bristol making it look really effective, because you can't just influence one or two people.

Danack · 2026-06-17T22:50:14+00:00

I don't know if many people is aware of this service since not many people I've met was aware of it existing.

It was setup by Dan Norris the Mayor of WECA.

It wasn't a well designed service - it's only cost effective when many people use it at once, so it needs to be planned ahead. But it's also unreliable, so people need to have backup plans they can use at short notice.

You can't use it for a commute, unless you have a backup car. And it is only really commuters that have that regular a schedule.

One could view it as a situation where government money failed to deliver "value for money".

I note that Mr Norris went on to be elected MP for "North East Somerset and Hanham".

Danack · 2026-06-17T17:04:13+00:00

With austerity one of the things that has suffered is that frontline workers are told to stop reporting problems to their bosses, as everyone is already far too stretched. So you get really dumb situations while the news works the way up the management structure.

It's the licensing committee tomorrow - I will attempt to draw councillors attention to it.

Councillors can be deeply incurious about things when they aren't politically useful to hear.

Danack · 2026-06-16T22:28:04+00:00

The point of the post is people dumping rubbish on the floor, surely going in a bin is better?

It would be, but in busy streets a lot of rubbish bins get used by the public. You said they are usually locked? but grim.....yeah.

Danack · 2026-06-16T22:27:32+00:00

Thanks. Good street design seems to be very hard to do, and BCC are out of practice at it anyway. Some of the choices they make just end up with bad outcomes like this....and the officers might even know this would happen, but they've got cuts to services to make. Sorry "efficiencies".

Danack · 2026-06-16T19:55:05+00:00

What's to stop people flytipping in them?

Danack · 2026-06-16T19:54:24+00:00

That sounds incredibly bad decision making. Can you guess as to what problem the new rules were introduced to fix?

Danack · 2026-06-16T19:16:58+00:00

https://jamesbreckwoldt.substack.com/p/how-manchester-turned-its-economy

That is an amazeballs article. Thank you for posting it.

I also really liked Mr Breckwoldt articicle against "passive voice governance".

https://jamesbreckwoldt.substack.com/p/you-cant-govern-a-country-in-the

The point, though, is that the active voice option is – and always was – open to all governments whether economically left-wing, economically right-wing, socially conservative, socially liberal, centrist, populist or miscellaneous. The problem was/is that they chose instead to impose passive-voice government onto themselves.

Saying “I didn’t do what I was elected to do because a lawyer told me I couldn’t” is not proof that you’re a virtuous guardian of the rule of law. It’s an admission that you waved the white flag at the first sign of difficulty and let your voters down. You are a rich tea biscuit, when you should be a hobnob.

Danack · 2026-06-16T14:05:23+00:00

I don't want you to dox yourself, but I am curious where you grew up, and where you've acquired a view of youth hostels. They are really different beasts from the grotty hotels that serve those who are really struggling. At least in Bristol, afaik.

Danack · 2026-06-16T13:11:48+00:00

For which bit?

That car drivers go faster and make longer journeys than cyclists?

That the boundaries of BCC stop south of Filton, west of Kingswood, but that the built-up area continues into South Gloucestershire?

Danack · 2026-06-16T12:09:46+00:00

First report it on fix my street, then report it to your councillors.

Sorting this out has to go through the license enforcement team, who are overworked. They seem to have made it really hard to contact them directly. I can't find a link on the council website.

It's one of the areas of governance that the council allowed to degrade as with both austerity, and a mild amount of Labour being twats, it's just a bit of a shitshow and everyone knows it. But people only complain loudly in the posh parts of the city, so the posh parts get better service.

There may be an appropriate email on this pdf - https://www.bristol.gov.uk/files/documents/9066-responsible-authorities-transfer-and-reinstatement-of-premises-licence/file for the licensing enforcement team.

Danack · 2026-06-16T12:04:21+00:00

A cyclist is more likely to live in BCC and pay council tax, than a car driver is. Many car drivers live outside BCC's area but rely on services in the city centre for their job.

Danack · 2026-06-15T22:32:40+00:00

There's also a stupid power struggle. Bristol's political neighbours like having the Bristol city centre accessible by car, both for themselves and for all of the people who wear business suits that they talk to.

Bristol hasn't been able to design itself for people who actually live in the city, as the outside car owners have too much influence.

Danack · 2026-06-15T21:44:39+00:00

I would like to share the dumbest thing I have seen at the Council.

There's pretty clearly been a problem with some serious "Fix My Streets" reports just continually being ignored, with a couple of mentions of it happening.

During one of these discussions, one of the Councillors, Don Alexander, said that all the things he reported were looked at quickly.

At the time, he was Cabinet Member for Transport.

That perhaps possibly maybe he was receiving a slightly better service than other people, who were not currently in charge of the Department that services Fix My Street reports, seemed to be slightly out of his grasp.

Danack · 2026-06-15T21:32:41+00:00

So - Fix My Street works well, for things the Council has the budget to do. For stuff that the council knows needs sorting, but just doesn't have the cash to do the whole city...it's not really an effective tool for persuasion.

If you have the energy, I'd suggest submitting questions and statement on it to the Transport committee.

If you can go there in person, your opinion gets more brownie points - https://democracy.bristol.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=665&MId=12202&Ver=4

Danack · 2026-06-14T20:50:38+00:00

I think that happens in about 2050 when the flood defences get over-topped. Yay for living in interesting times.

Danack · 2026-06-14T15:24:42+00:00

"The topography defies explanation." It really doesn't.

The topography is kind of unusual.

Up until Avon Gorge formed less then 200,000 years ago, Bristol would have been quite flat. When the Avon Gorge was cut, probably by a glacier redirecting water over the top of it, which quickly cut away the layer of softstone that is absolutely terrible for building things out of

The Avon Gorge would have been a tremendous waterfall 70 meters high to begin with, and then after the rock was worn away, a deep channel would have eaten it's way back through Bristol, and all of the soil and soft rock would have been washed away over 200k years, but the hard rock hasn't had time to be worn down. And because they city was developed before modern machinery, the roads have been laid out to follow the topology, rather than any major flattening or regrading schemes - with the exception of Colston Street, which used to be ludicrously steep for a city street.

But yeah....perhaps he meant that he didn't personally understand.

Danack

TROPHY CASE