Local elections 09 – Bristol City Council gets LibDem overlords, no new Green

The minority LibDem leadership in Bristol City Council has been converted into a LibDem majority after yesterday’s local elections. The Green’s targeting of Ashley ward wasn’t enough to unseat sitting LibDem Dr Jolly Jon Rogers, despite Shirley Not’s CoconutGate race shenanigans threatening to complicate matters.

I’ve been busy on other matters lately, so here’s some handy links to other Bristol bloggers on the elections:

• Bristol Blogger – ‘Vote 2009‘ & ‘Election 2009‘ posts (tag & title properly, dammit!)
• Green Bristol Blog – Chris Hutt endorses Jon Rogers
• James Barlow – unsuccessful Tory candidate displays his virtute & industria with MS Paint on an election map
• Trym Tales – Al Shaw’s poll predictions from Thursday

As a postscript, he’s the sum of all the politicking I’ve been subjected to in the trenches of St Paul’s…

Election campaign results from the BunKRS

Leaflets-through-the-door count (alphabetical):

• BNP (Euro) 1
• Green (BCC) 1
• Labour (Euro) 2
• No2EU (Euro) 1
• UKIP (Euro) 1

Leaflets-seen-in-windows etc count (alphabetical):

• All parties (BCC) 0
• All parties (Euro) 0

Canvassers for BCC elections:

• 0

Conversations about BCC elections with local neighbours:

• 0

Conversations about BCC elections with others in Bristol:

• 1

This is all down my ends of Ashley ward. Seeing as we were supposed to be some kind of battleground, I was surprised there was no doorstep business from Greens or LibDems, and only one leaflet from either! The nearest to any kind of canvassing was a Green who buzzed my flat asking to be let in to the block on a Sunday to deliver leaflets, but they didn’t knock on the door to talk or anything.

You’ve Been Framed: The Google Street View Years

Bike crash at junction of City Road, Upper York Street and Stokes Croft, as captured on Google Street View. Perhaps more astonishing than this pile-up (and exactly how did that happen? Is the chap on the left riding an invisible steed?) is that there are no tramps in the background. I guess they heard about the plans to water down White Lightning.

Tip O’ The Titfer: [underscore] via Stefan Goodchild

ETA: Chris Hutt has spotted that The Sun has picked up the picture – it’s the third one in this slideshow, and also mentioned here.

ETA: It’s also featured in this BBC article (5th image in the gallery).

ETA: I can’t find any pictures showing the pre-crash situation, but this picture shows the aftermath in a bit more detail. That skateboarder is definitely acting suspiciously!

The Bristol Web 2.0 Careers Advice Service

Following the booting out of the Labour minority cabinet at Bristol City Council, ‘transport supremo’ Mark Bradshaw has been wondering what to do with himself.

Tweet your suggestions to @mark_bradshaw

ETA:

I see Terry Cook has also discovered the jobseeking potential of Twitter.

Discussion:

• The Bristol Blogger
• Green Bristol Blog
• Stockwood Pete

Sustainable gravy transport

Josh Hart has written an interesting critique of Sustrans over at his On The Level blog:

There are an increasing number of concerns…but they centre around this: should a private charity with no accountability to the public or its membership (Sustrans calls them supporters) be given millions of taxpayer pounds every year without adequate consultation or oversight?

…It also turns out that very few Sustrans employees are personally involved in the Bristol Cycling Campaign-something I find very odd considering many of them live and cycle in Bristol. In fact, it sometimes seems that Sustrans goes out of its way to ignore Bristol, as if to prove to other areas of the country that the City that hosts their headquarters curries no special favour. When plans for a bus rapid transit route threatened the Bristol-Bath Railway Path (Sustrans’ flagship facility) they were sluggish in responding to the threat, terrified of offending the local council, actually going on record in the Evening Post saying essentially that they had “no comment” about the plans.

Though the beast finally woke from its bloated lottery-money induced slumber and opposed the plan with some force, the damage had been done. Thankfully, local activists stepped into the vacuum and formed Save the Railway Path, organised a 1000 strong march to the Council house that succeeded in getting the City Council to shelve the ill-conceived plans. We know that Sustrans knew about the BRT plan as early as July 2007 if not earlier, yet they did nothing to alert others and provoke opposition. They only jumped on the bandwagon when it was clear that their credibility was on the line if they did nothing…

Chris Hutt at Green Bristol Blog has provided some much needed (judging by some of the catty remarks already deposited on Josh’s comments section by College Green lycra-clad loyalists) back-covering; this one should run and run!

Bristol blogosphere united by the meme that cannot die… All hail CARBOOT CIRCUS!

Birth of a meme..?

• Back in June Kizzy Morrell’s Studio 7 blog posted up what appears to be a Circomedia press release : Is this the genesis of the meme?
• Then on 19th September Thomas Guest blogged these words: “Somewhere our priorities are wrong. Carboot Circus. Send in the clowns.”

Picking up the meme and running with it:

• The Angry Ginger: 1
• The Bristol Blogger: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (first reference to ‘Carboot Circus’ on TBB in comment by It’ll all END in “tears”, 26th September) 8
• Bristol Dave: 1
• Bristol Traffic: 1 2
• Twitterer Ed Mitchell: 1
• Friend & Co.: 1
• Chris Hutt’s Green Bristol: 1 2 3 4 5
• On The Level: 1
• Twitterer Wrestlevania: 1

Eyeing the meme covetously, but restraining themselves:

• Bristol Graffiti: 1
• Bristol Greengage: 1
• Evening Post Watch: 1 2 3 4 5
• Vowles the Green in Knowle: 1

Other contenders:

• Bread and Cabot Circus
• Cahoot Circus
• Carbon Circus
• Carrot Circus
• Circusmead
• Cornucopia Circus
• Jesus Building
• New Broadmead

Edited Friday 14th November to add more links