Nick Clegg yesterday, in his capacity as Minister for Things That Don’t Count For Very Much In The Real World, announced that Chelmsford, Perth and St Asaph have been awarded city status to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, while Armagh will be getting a Lord Mayor.The first reaction may well be to ask why oneContinueContinue reading “When Fair’s Unfair”
Tag Archives: Bristol
Keeping Up With The Joneses
A letter in the Bristol Evening Post this week berated the ‘South West’ zone’s MEPs for not stemming the flow of Bristol jobs across the Severn. The problem is real enough, as south Wales has long benefited from regional development money in one shape or another. But to define the problem as being about howContinueContinue reading “Keeping Up With The Joneses”
Experimental Subjects
The local press today quote one of the Occupy Bristol folk as saying they abandoned their College Green camp after discovering they’d all been part of a sinister ‘social experiment’. The mind boggles.
The Consolation Prize
On Thursday, voters in Salford decided in favour of having a directly elected mayor. It was also a local decision to call the referendum in the first place. Bristolians are being forced to hold a poll whether they like it or not, under the so-called Localism Act. The £475,000 it will cost has to beContinueContinue reading “The Consolation Prize”
Needling Doubts
News reaches us that Occupy Bristol are finally departing from College Green, after weeks of treating PUBLIC open space as somewhere to set up their own Third World shanty town, having first failed to find anywhere more relevant to squat. Surprise, surprise, there are syringes all over the place. It seems that those who wantedContinueContinue reading “Needling Doubts”
Missing the Obvious
There’s a water crisis looming. The Coalition wants us all to be more careful. Hippy conservationists seem to agree that water meters, dual-flush toilets and garden water butts will take the pressure off. Maybe sharing showers or bathwater would help. All of which is nonsense. It’s nonsense because we would actually have more than enoughContinueContinue reading “Missing the Obvious”
Crooks In Command
The Western Daily Press leads today with a story about an open letter from wildlife groups in Wessex and Cornwall “incredulous” about the Coalition’s “stunning disregard” for the natural environment, citing the Chancellor’s recent description of it as a “ridiculous” barrier to economic growth.Tony Richardson of the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds)ContinueContinue reading “Crooks In Command”
Cycling At The Edge
“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993), founder of evolutionary economics and co-founder of General Systems TheoryOne of the philosopher Bertrand Russell’s best analogies was ‘the inductivist turkey’. A repeated experiment apparently gives the same answer every time. Has anContinueContinue reading “Cycling At The Edge”
Urban Harvesting
Much has already been written about the unrest that has struck Banbury, Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford, Reading, Southampton and other places since the weekend. Over a long, hot summer, many more words will appear, whether or not the events themselves recur. After the political debate, the weighty inquiry will ponder and pontificate. Recommendations will be insubstantialContinueContinue reading “Urban Harvesting”
The Hollow State
Privatisation is the social equivalent of selling a kidney to pay the mortgage. Except that, under current circumstances, it’s not even your mortgage you’re paying but that of some crook you’ve never met but whose well-being you’re assured is fundamental to economic stability.It was no accident that the real start of the privatisation drive co-incidedContinueContinue reading “The Hollow State”
Wessex Regionalists 