South Bristol Voice Bedminster November 2016

southbristolvoice November 2016 No. 13

www.southbristolvoice.co.uk

INSIDE: Your guide to fireworks p37

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Mayor wants Bristol to grow – up MAYOR Marvin Rees has vowed he will see the arena built, and he will deliver on his pledge to build 2,000 homes a year by 2020 – partly by building higher.

The news won’t be welcome in Bedminster Green, where campaigners have released their own planning brief that seeks to limit buildings to five storeys.

But the mayor told the Voice he is not thinking of building “cities in the sky”.

“I’m not saying we should be like Manhattan,” he said. “I grew up at the bottom of two tower blocks, and I didn’t aspire to live in them – although many people made good lives in them.”

Any changes will involve the community, with a bigger role for councillors and local voices, he promised. But change looks certain: “We are a crowded city with limited land available. I think one of the freedoms that we need is the ability to build up.”

In his first annual address to the city on October 6, Mr Rees said he would look at changing Bristol’s local planning policies to allow “tall buildings in the Continued on page 14

Putting us on the map

Action promised at the stadium Page 3 Air pollution making us ill, says poll Page 4 Hate crime on the rise, figures show Page 6 Half South Bristol’s pharmacies ‘at risk’ Page 7

Map makers: A new embroidery is being made by volunteers, led by Vicky Harrison of Paper Village, to tell a historic tale • Story: page 4

MP’s new role

High St hero

BRISTOL South Labour MP Karin Smyth has taken a new job in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow team, despite resigning her first role in June. Ms Smyth is parliamentary private secretary to shadow Brexit minister Sir Keir Starmer.

“There is no more important matter facing the country and I believe it is vital that we in the Labour Party play a full role in influencing the agenda,” she said.

SHOPPERS are being urged to vote for Simon Dicken, boss of Bedminster’s Wilko store, who has reached the final three in a poll to find the UK’s best store manager.

Simon is chair of Bedminster Town Team, credited with bringing £500,000 of investment to the East Street area. “He truly is a high street hero,” said the Town Team’s George Grace.

• thegreatbritishhighstreet.co.uk

Arena: delayed, and will it harm the bats?

Pages 11-13 Libraries, parks face £92m cuts Page 13 West St in new homes squeeze Page 22 www.facebook.com/ southbristolvoice Twitter: @sbristolvoice

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Planning a move

this Autumn?

You’ll be

Paul Breeden Editor & publisher 07811 766072 paul@southbristolvoice.co.uk Ruth Drury Sales executive 07590 527664 sales@southbristolvoice.co.uk Editorial team: Beccy Golding, Alex Morss & The Wicked Witch.

Deliveries: Greg Champion

Intro

THE ARENA will be built. That’s the promise from the two people in ultimate control of the project, mayor Marvin Rees and Helen Holland, cabinet member for “place” (who dreams up these titles?).

But neither of them is disguising that there are lots of questions to be answered.

Another year’s delay means extra costs: yet clearly the contractor, Bouygues UK, is having problems drafting a plan that meets the new, higher £94 million budget.

Bouygues was due to present its timetable and costs in the summer, then the autumn. Now it may be ready

by Christmas, but even then we may be no clearer on the

November 2016 You can find South Bristol Voice on Facebook and Twitter facebook.com/ southbristolvoice Twitter: @sbristolvoice Next month’s deadline for editorial and advertising is November 16th feasibility of the £28m plan for the rest of Arena Island.

Mr Rees and Cllr Holland are right: Bristol needs the arena as the centrepiece of the Temple Quarter, which over 25 years will become virtually a new city centre, bringing 25,000 jobs and new waterside plazas for work, homes and leisure.

But 25 years is a long time to live next to a building site. Is South Bristol ready for what’s about to hit it? Our first taste will come in the new year when the Temple Circus roundabout is removed, with the inevitable months of traffic disruption.

We need to be informed and consulted about these changes.

The mayor promised the Voice he’d arrange a meeting where the community can air their concerns to him. We’ll hold him to that.

How do I get in touch with ...

...on our service 0117 953 5375 165 East Street, Bedminster, Bristol BS3 4EJ

My MP? Karin Smyth MP By email: karin.smyth.mp@ parliament.uk By post: Karin Smyth MP, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA By phone: 0117 953 3575 In person: Surgeries on Friday November 11 and 25 and 22 at Knowle West Health Park, Downton Road, BS4 1WH, 9.1510.45 am. Call 0117 953 3575.

My councillor?

All councillors can be reached by post at Brunel House, St George’s Road, Bristol BS1 5UY

Celia Phipps Labour, Bedminster By phone: 07469 413312 By email: Cllr.celia.phipps@bristol.gov.uk Mark Bradshaw Labour, Bedminster By phone: 0117 353 3160 By email: Cllr.mark.bradshaw@ bristol.gov.uk Stephen Clarke Green, Southville By email: Cllr.stephen.clarke@ bristol.gov.uk Charlie Bolton Green, Southville By email: Cllr.charlie.bolton@bristol.gov.uk By phone: 07884 736111

USEFUL NUMBERS Bristol City Council www.bristol.gov.uk 0117 922 2000 Waste, roads 0117 922 2100 Pest control and dog wardens 0117 922 2500 Housing benefit 0117 922 2300 Social services 0117 922 2900 Police Inquiries 101 Emergency 999

Fire Inquiries 0117 926 2061 Emergency 999 Greater Bedminster Community Partnership The local forum that brings the public together with councillors, police, council officials and other bodies.

Next meeting Monday January 16, 7pm, Windmill Hill City Farm, Philip Street, Bedminster BS3 4EA

EDITOR’S NOTE: South Bristol Voice is independent. We cannot take responsibility for content or accuracy of adverts, and it is advertisers’ responsibility to conform to all relevant legislation. We strive to conform to the NUJ Code of Conduct for journalists: • nuj.org.uk/about/nuj-code Feedback is welcomed: call editor Paul Breeden on 07811 766072 or email paul@southbristolvoice.co.uk.

All stories and pictures are copyright of South Bristol Voice and may not be reproduced without permission in this or any other plane of the multiverse.

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November 2016

n NEWS New group to support Parson Street station

southbristolvoice AS Ashton Gate stadium attracts more fans, the pressure on Parson Street station is increasing. After some matches, the platforms have been dangerously crowded.

The station has been starved of investment and there may be

calls for Bristol Sport to contribute to improvements.

There is no disabled access, and the steep steps are a hazard.

A Friends of Parson Street Station group is being set up – more news in the next Voice.

Bristol Sport: We’ll try to be better neighbours in future Complaints about the louder PA, parking and fans will be listened to BOSSES at Bristol Sport have promised to talk to residents affected by problems around Ashton Gate stadium as the number of fans increases.

The revamped stadium is still not fully finished so cannot reach its 27,000 capacity.

But football crowds so far this season have been as many as 22,000 – around 10,000 more than the average gate when the building work was going on.

Neighbours in Ashton and Southville have noticed the difference on their streets, with multiple complaints of bad behaviour, and cars parked dangerously on corners and yellow lines.

“The behaviour of the fans against Aston Villa [on August 27] was the worst I’ve seen since living here,” one man living near the ground posted on Facebook.

People also complained that police did nothing when they were blocked in their own drives – though officers told the Voice that this should merit a police reaction.

Many have also noticed that

WHEN IS A RESERVED SEAT NOT RESERVED? ONE RUGBY fan is fed up with Bristol Sport’s online booking system after he bought what he thought were five reserved seats.

But when the £160 tickets turned up they were marked “unreserved”, meaning his friends couldn’t sit together at the Exeter Chiefs match on September 23.

In an email to the fan, Bristol Sport admitted “people are often tripped up by the way the system

the PA at the ground is louder.

“We can hear it by the Malago roundabout in Bedminster Road, never heard it before,” said one resident on Facebook.

Another complained that he could hear the “tribal roar” of the crowds from half a mile away when he hadn’t heard it before.

Several residents responded that noise is to be expected near a football ground.

But the Voice has found out that the council is liaising with Bristol Sport over the operation of the new PA system. It is thought that the new steel stands are amplfying the noise and when the wind is in the right direction, it carries much further.

A spokesperson for Bristol Sport said the stadium was aware of some complaints about the PA. “It is effectively a new stadium and our sound specialists are working with us to adjust the levels,” the company said.

Bristol Sport said it wants to establish a regular forum in which stadium issues can be raised by local residents. The first of these will take place in November – though details were not available as the Voice went to press.

Martin Griffiths, the Bristol Sport chairman, promised the Voice in August that he would invite residents in to the stadium to hear their views in September.

But that didn’t happen. The delay has been due to the drawn-out process of getting the stadium finished, the company said.

Meanwhile Mark Bradshaw, Labour councillor for Bedminster and also cabinet member for transport, says he will set up a meeting involving the council, Bristol Sport and the police to start to find answers on the stadium’s transport issues.

The three new bus services set up by First and Bristol Sport are well used, he said, but he wants to see the community better informed about stadium events.

3

Consultation is extended CONSULTATION on the resident parking zones in Bedminster East and Southville has been extended. It was due to end on October 21 but will now run until November 11. Mark Bradshaw, cabinet member for transport, also altered some of the questions after criticism that the original survey was inadequate.

A survey for Bower Ashton RPS will run until December 2.

• bristol.gov.uk/parking/residentsparking-scheme-local-reviews

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is laid out.” The Voice tried the booking system – and found that it was possible to select a numbered seat and then be shown a booking form with the seat number still visible, giving the impression that this seat was reserved.

Bristol Sport told the Voice it was working on a system that gives clear warnings that seats are unreserved. Many regular fans know that for rugby games only, some seats can’t be reserved, said a spokeswoman.

Got a story or any other inquiry? Call Paul on 07811 766072 or email paul@southbristolvoice.co.uk

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November 2016

n NEWS

It was left off the map – so we embroidered our own HISTORIC Ashton Gatehouse is now back on the map thanks to the creative mind of all-round artist Vicky Harrison.

Vicky, who runs the Paper Village art shop in North Street, is behind many community art initiatives including Briswool, the famous woolly recreation of the city and all its popular features, from the zoo to the harbour and the suspension bridge.

Asked to contribute to the celebrations to mark the restoration of the gatehouse – now nearing completion – Vicky first looked online for information, and found it wasn’t

marked at all on Google Maps.

The obvious things to do was to create a new map – so Vicky decided to embroider one.

Created with the help of volunteers, it includes Bower Ashton, Ashton Vale, Southville and Bedminster. Scattered over it are points of interest such as peregrine falcons in the Avon Gorge, deer in the park and hot air balloons floating above Ashton Court. Other familiar sites include the Clifton Suspension Bridge, the Matthew sailing up the docks and Clifton Observatory.

“So far we have run six very

Caravan factory can roll ahead BAILEY Caravans in South Liberty Lane has been granted permission to be rebuilt to make it the largest and most modern caravan factory in the UK. Planners gave the go-ahead for a 15,000 sq m factory which

will replace a number of smaller buildings, with outline approval for new offices and a smaller factory block. There will be 235 parking spaces. Neighbours have complained about workers parking in the nearby Victory Home Zone.

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Nearly finished: the gatehouse successful workshops during which volunteers learn various stitches and gain ideas about how to turn little doodles into beautiful elements for the map.

It’s fun and we are all learning lots of new things as well as eating biscuits!” Vicky said.

Tamsin Mosse, community project officer for the restoration, said the map will be finished in the New Year and will be put on show in the gatehouse.

“Ashton Gatehouse will be the only gatehouse open to the public and the map will help demonstrate the community involvement that is at the heart of this beautiful building’s redevelopment,” she said.

The building is being restored with the help of a £550,000 Lottery grant and other funds from donors including the Architectural Heritage Fund.

• ashtongatehouse.org

Half think Bristol’s poor air quality is making them ill Green Party survey reveals concern at city’s air pollution HALF of people surveyed by Bristol Green Party believe their health has been affected by air pollution.

Residents complained that poor air quality is causing a long list of medical problems, or making them worse.

Symptoms include asthma, shortness of breath, coughing or choking, dry mouth and throat, stinging eyes, allergies, chest infections, headaches, rhinitis, hay fever and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The survey has so far been completed by 540 people, of which 52 per cent blamed poor air for making them ill. The poll is still open (see link below).

Much air pollution in cities is due to traffic. In Bristol, the problem is worst in the city centre but 30 places record illegally high readings of NoX, or nitrous oxide. In South Bristol these include Bedminster Parade, Parson Street, and the Three Lamps junction on Bath Road.

The pollution is so bad that some of the new flats to be built in the old tobacco offices on

Bedminster Parade will have their street-facing windows sealed shut. The flats will need artificial ventilation.

The same windows-shut rule was due to be imposed on new flats to be built on the site of the APC workwear shop at Bedminster Down Road, though this plan was turned down for a variety of other reasons.

Charlie Bolton, Green councillor for Southville and current leader of the party in Bristol, said: “It is extraordinary that such a percentage of local people tell us their health is being damaged by poor air quality. Far and away the most common problem has been to do with asthma. Our poor air quality either causes it, or makes it worse.

But the survey shows that there are a whole host of impacts.”

It is believed that 300 people a year in Bristol die as a result of poor air. Another worrying pollutant is particulate PM2.5 – particles so small they can evade the body’s defence systems.

Greens are launching the #LetBristolBreathe campaign for better air quality in the city. They want the council to designate central Bristol a Clean Air Zone.

• bristolgreenparty.org.uk/ tell-us-what-you-think-about-airpollution-in-bristol

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November 2016

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n NEWS

Open day: Adults from left: head teacher Sandie Smith, teaching assistant Danielle Tuvey, teacher Sally Greenwood and Karin Smyth MP

Nursery opens its doors CHILDREN at a new nursery have been showing off their modern facilities to their MP. Karin Smyth, MP for Bristol South, officially opened the new class for 3 and 4 year olds at Southville primary school.

The pre-school has half-time places for 60 children, run by a qualified teacher and early years practitioners. Year 6 pupils Maddie and Nia gave Ms Smyth a tour by of the whole of the Merrywood site, which caters for the school’s younger children.

The school, which is rated “Good” by Ofsted, says it wants to provide an easy transition from pre-school to the primary years.

Fifteen hours of free funding a week per child is available.

Southville Primary head Sandie Smith said: “We were thrilled to welcome Karin to our new pre-school, which fulfills a need for the growing numbers of young families in this area.”

To find out about places, email southvillep@bristolschools.uk, or call 0117 377 2671.

Flats set for old brewery FORMER Bristol mayor George Ferguson is seeking planning permission for three flats in the disused tower of his historic Southville brewery.

Mr Ferguson opened Bristol Beer Factory at the Old Brewery in Durnford Street in 2004.

He also wants to use part of the old Brewery Theatre – closed unexpectedly in January – as a visitor centre for the brewery, with a shopfront on North Street.

The theatre space acted as a second performance area for the Tobacco Factory theatre until it closed. The move was blamed on licensing and insurance problems with the smaller theatre sharing an entrance with Mark’s Bakery.

In January it was stated that plans would be drawn up for a new small theatre within the Tobacco Factory – a building also owned by Mr Ferguson, and where he lives on the top floor.

Under the new plans the main theatre space in the Brewery will remain for community use, but

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Brewery: The view from North St the smaller theatre studio will be a brewery shop, museum and bar.

Three flats, on the first, second and third floors, will each have three bedrooms and a parking space, accessed via St Francis Road. One will have a first floor roof terrace with a privacy screen. There will be solar panels on the roof but the shape of the buildings would be unchanged.

Mr Ferguson told the Voice he had put his business interests on hold when he was elected mayor in 2012. “Now I’m able to return to some of my own entrepreneurial interests including expanding our national award-winning brewery, of which these plans play an vital part,” he said.

Support with daily routines Overnight support Socialising and leisure activities Accessing the community

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Got a story or any other inquiry? Call Paul on 07811 766072 or email paul@southbristolvoice.co.uk

n NEWS

Hundreds of hate crimes, but Brexit increase has tailed off

Victoria Park: Lovely calendars

Park shows off with 2 calendars THE Victoria Park Action Group has produced not one but two calendars for 2017. One has images of events and seasons, while Voice contributor Alex Morss of the park’s Wildlife Group has provided images for the Wildflower Calendar. Both are on sale online and at Mrs Brown’s café in the park, at £7 each or both for £12.

• vpag.org.uk

Park staff cut GREVILLE Smyth Park in Ashton is now sharing a park keeper with Victoria Park thanks to the council’s emergency redundancy programme.

Victoria Park’s much-loved park keeper Ray has taken retirement, with a tribute from the park’s action group saying that he did the work of two men.

The council says that with new shift patterns it will be able to maintain standards at both parks. But far deeper parks cuts are being planned: see page 13.

ASK A VET Is my cat suffering from cystitis?

C

November 2016

southbristolvoice

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YSTITIS is essentially inflammation of the bladder.

Cats are more prone to developing cystitis than dogs and it generally affects females more frequently than males.

The symptoms of cystitis can include pain when passing urine, straining, blood in the urine, inappropriate urination and more frequent urination.

Cystitis can be both chronic or

POLICE have recorded more than 400 hate crimes across South Bristol in the past year – but there does not seem to have been a long-term increase since the Brexit vote.

Inspector Nigel Colston, in charge of neighbourhood policing across South Bristol, told the Voice that there had been a spike in reports of hate crimes in the weeks immediately after the referendum vote to leave the European Union on June 23.

But the number of incidents is back to the levels seen over the past year – 414 in the year to July 2016. The vast majority were racially motivated.

“Brexit has probably led a minority of people to voice their opinions which were previously privately held,” said Insp Colston.

“But it could also be due to a few people being idiots, and better mechanisms for reporting these incidents.”

Recorded hate crimes have doubled across Bristol in five years, but police say this may be because people are more willing to report it, and police are now better at recording it.

A highly-publicised series of four graffiti and brick-throwing attacks in Bideford Avenue, Knowle West, in July, resulted in a swiftly-organised community “peace-nic” on Filton Broadway.

There were no further incidents in the area.

However, the last Voice reported the story of a woman who saw four girls of between eight and 10 years of age verbally abusing an Eastern European man and throwing stones at him in Victoria Park. The girls wore a red school uniform and were with a woman.

Police launched an investigation but have not identified the culprits because the victim did not come forward.

Insp Colston cited another case where the victim has not come forward.

“We had another incident where a member of the public reported a taxi driver being racially abused, but we had no report from the victim,” he said.

Without evidence from the victim of a hate crime, it is hard

come on all of a sudden (acute).

Much like in humans, it can be a very uncomfortable and painful condition if not treated.

It is thought that stress is often a major factor in developing cystitis. As you know, cats can get stressed by the slightest thing, such as minor changes in their environment, visitors or even a new cat nearby in the area.

Cats who suffer from diabetes are also at more risk of developing cystitis due to higher levels of glucose and protein in the urine which can prompt the growth of bacteria.

There are a number of things you can do at home to help

prevent your cat from developing cystitis: • Help to reduce stress in the household as much as possible – ensure there are plenty of safe places for them to hide away; • Have plenty of clean litter trays around the house; • Provide fresh clean water on a daily basis; • Consider using a feline pheromone diffuser.

If your cat is displaying the symptoms of cystitis, book an appointment to see your vet at Ashton Veterinary Surgery by calling 0117 953 0707 for treatment.

However, if you notice your

HATE CRIMES, SOUTH BRISTOL, 2015-16

GENDER 0.2% AGE 1%

HOMOPHOBIC 11% DISABILITY 14%

RACIAL 67%

TRANSPHOBIC RELIGIOUS 2% 5%

Source: Avon & Somerset Police

Number of hate crime incidents in year to July 2016 RACIAL.................278 DISABILITY.............56 HOMOPHOBIC.....45 RELIGIOUS.............22 TRANSPHOBIC........8 AGE.............................4 GENDER.....................1 TOTAL.. ............414 Most cases (83%) were classed as violent – mainly for causing intentional harassment.

for the police to build a case.

“We welcome the community making these reports, but we do need the victims to report [as well],” said Insp Colston.

“It enables us to build a picture of what’s happening, and the problems that victims are experiencing, and it tells us where we should be targeting our work.”

The top trouble spot identified was Bedminster East, with 23 incidents, followed by several areas of Knowle West, Hartcliffe and Withywood with 10-20 incidents each, and Bedminster West with 10 incidents.

The trend in the year to July 2016 is upward: from an average of about 3o each month in most of 2015 to a high of 51 in June 2016, the month of the Brexit vote.

In July the number fell to 35.

Jenny Hamilton-ible MRCVS, Veterinary Surgeon male cat straining to urinate, please contact your vet immediately as this could be a sign of a blocked bladder, which is a veterinary emergency.

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November 2016

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n NEWS

Half our pharmacies at risk of closure after Govt cuts AS MANY as half of the 31 pharmacies across South Bristol could be at risk of closure following the announcement of a cut in budget of up to seven per cent over the next two years.

Protection will disappear for chemists within a mile of each other. The Government is presenting the changes as a drive for efficiency.

Health minister David Mowat announced on October 20 that chemists will lose 4 per cent of their funding in 2016-17 and a further 3.4 per cent in 2017/18.

Health ministers have previously hinted that one in four chemists could close, or about 3,000 across the country.

But award-winning chemist Ade Williams, who runs Bedminster Pharmacy in Cannon Street, believes the effects here could be much worse.

“The local impact of the cuts in South Bristol will likely exceed the 25 per cent closure risk the minister expressed earlier in the year,” said Mr Williams.

“This is due to our high density of pharmacies, which means our 31 pharmacies are not protected by the Government’s one-mile proposal. We are likely

Karin Smyth: Cuts will drive patients to overburdened GPs to face similar to the 50 per cent closure risk that London is facing.”

Bristol South MP Karin Smyth believes the savings will be selfdefeating. If people can’t get help from a pharmacist they are more likely go to an overburdened GP or even to A&E, she said.

“Research indicates a third of people who seek initial advice from a pharmacy would make a GP appointment instead if it shut, and in areas of high deprivation this rises as high as 80 per cent,” said Ms Smyth, who was an NHS manager before she was elected as MP in 2015.

“South Bristol residents value pharmacies as vital additions to local shopping streets in places like Bedminster and Filwood.

Women aim to celebrate their new stage in life A SOUTH Bristol woman has been awarded a grant to run a Menopause Support Day. The idea is to invite women from all over South Bristol to share experiences and learn how to take care of themselves through the “change of life”.

Organiser Beccy Golding said: “Menopause is something that happens to every woman, but it is rarely talked about. The idea of the day is for women to meet up and share their experience and expertise. There will also be practitioners giving information and self-help techniques.

“This is not about medical advice or diagnoses, it’s about coming together for support.”

The grant of £500 came from

the Filwood, Knowle & Windmill Hill neighbourhood partnership Wellbeing Fund.

Beccy added: “The day is for anyone interested in or going through the menopause – even if you feel it’s a while away yet, or you’ve been through it but want to say there is light at the end of the tunnel!

“We know menopause can come at all ages, so there is no age limit, or any other restriction on who is welcome other than they identify as female. We also plan to have fun. Let’s celebrate our ageing selves!”

It will be on Sunday December 11 from 10am-3.30pm, at a local venue. Cost will be £20. Details: email beccy@makeamove.org.uk

“They link to GP surgeries, have strong relationships with all the doctors, know their communities well and, like any good business, tailor their offer to changing need and demand,” she said.

Many South Bristol chemists offer help in quitting smoking, offer flu jabs, and give advice on all kinds of conditions from asthma to disability aids.

Some, like Bedminster Pharmacy, can even offer free access to slimming classes if people need to lose weight.

Mr Williams and his team were nominated for four awards in June at the Chemist & Druggist Awards – more than any other chemists in the UK. They won Pharmacy Team of the Year. The judges said they were impressed by “a team philosophy focused on improving outcomes for individuals and the community.”

Did anyone see Parson St attack?

POLICE are asking for witnesses after a woman was attacked in Parson Street, Bedminster.

Officers want to hear from anyone who saw a dispute between a man and a woman at about 3.50pm on Wednesday October 19. Both people left the scene in an old black Ford Fiesta.

Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call 101.

A 42-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of assault and released without charge.

Alice is the panto lead PANTOMIME is a Southville traditions and this year’s show will be Alice Takes a Trip. The shows will be on December 2, 3 and 4. Casting has begun, but if you want to take part email Gill on recessiongill@gmail.com. The first meeting at the Southbank Club in Dean Lane is on Monday November 14 at 7pm.

Are you looking to develop your career in CARE or NURSING whilst supporting people with mental health needs?

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Text ICARE to 66777 Search MILESTONES TRUST JOBS Call 0117 970 9333

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November 2016

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n NEWS

PLANS to replace advertising hoardings across South Bristol with digital screens have met a mixed reaction.

Advertising giant JC Decaux is seeking planning permission to put up two digital screens, each 12m long by 3m high, in Totterdown, and another 6m by 3m in Bedminster Road next to Bridgwater Road.

Another firm, Turnkey Design, wants permission to put a 6m by 3m digital screen next to 46-48 Winterstoke Road, facing south.

In all cases the digital screens would only show static images, which would change to a new picture about every 10 seconds.

But some fear they are more distracting to drivers than traditional billboards – and they also seem to use a lot more electricity.

The site in Totterdown is at 164-188 Bath Road, at either end of a vacant site that used to be a used car lot, next to the bottom of Thunderbolt Steps.

Owner JC Decaux, the French advertising giant, said, “The display will not cause detriment to the amenity nor would it affect public safety.”

Turnkey said in its planning application: “Such a familiar illuminated urban feature would not constitute a potentially hazardous distraction to anyone

exercising a reasonable standard of care.”

The two Labour councillors for Windmill Hill, Jon Wellington and Lucy Whittle, have so far raised no objection.

But Green councillors, who tried to get the council to outlaw digital advertising boards last year, don’t like the idea.

Southville Green councillor Steve Clarke told the Voice: “I feel quite strongly about them on the grounds of road safety and visual pollution. They are ugly.

“Other cities around the world, from Europe to South Africa to South America, are rejecting them just as we are adopting them.”

The LED screens also use more energy. The Voice asked JC Decaux how this compared with the energy used for an ordinary hoarding. We received no reply.

However, an article on the US website Billboard Insider reports that digital billboards typically use twice as much energy as ordinary billboards. This is also twice as much power as used by the average US home.

The website reports that some US cities are demanding that for every digital advertisement erected, between two and four static billboards should be taken down – thus cutting the total energy used.

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November 2016

n NEWS BRISTOL will get its arena, promise the council’s leaders.

But it will be two years later than planned – and with the bill already standing at £94 million, costs look certain to rise further.

Behind the scenes, council officials are working with contractor Bouygues UK to find every way they can of saving money on the scheme.

But the latest delay, pushing completion of the arena back by a year to 2019, spells further uncertainty for a scheme which has been in the planning for 13 years. The latest plan was to open in 2017, then 2018 – now 2019.

A report from Bouygues UK on costs and a timetable will be six months late by the time it is delivered this winter.

There have been rumours that the project would be cancelled.

But mayor Marvin Rees insisted it would go ahead.

“The commitment to the arena is 100 per cent,” he told South Bristol Voice. But, he said, “Do we have [to have] all the bells and whistles?”

Mr Rees gave few clues about where money might be saved.

But the arena’s eye-catching perforated stainless steel cladding may be one target.

Details like whether it has 4D or 5D cinema screens on the outside may not be important, he said.

Bristol’s Lib Dem leader, Knowle councillor Gary Hopkins, said problems with the arena’s budget were small compared to the huge overall deficit faced by the council.

“They don’t know where they are generally [on the budget],” he said. “They are in a right mess.”

The extra delay for the arena spells more trouble because it will only increase the final bill, he

southbristolvoice

11

Arena will be 2 years late – but will it save any money?

Fancy: Will the arena’s shimmering stainless steel skin be for the chop? said. “The inflation rate in Bristol for construction work is huge because there’s a desperate shortage of tradesmen,” said Cllr Hopkins. “The costs are going up and up. They might shave off some specification but they are not going to save much money.”

However, Helen Holland, a Labour councillor for Hartcliffe and the cabinet member in charge of “place” – otherwise known as development – insisted that time has to be taken to get the plans for the arena and the area around it right.

The Temple Quarter enterprise zone, with the arena and revamped Temple Meads station at its heart, is hoped to provide 17,000 jobs over 25 years.

“What we don’t want to do is to waste money that doesn’t need to be spent. But we don’t want to lose the ambition of making it a liveable area. We are working very closely with the developer on the costs.

“It’s not because we are going cold on it at all, we will deliver it

and do all the things to make sure that local people are involved in building it and operating it,” she told the Voice.

Bouygues UK has promised to provide 48 apprenticeships among the 650 jobs in building the arena.

But much more is at stake than providing Bristol with a long-awaited entertainment

venue. Plans for the enterprise zone will pull the centre of gravity of the city towards Temple Meads. The zone has recently been extended to include vacant sites near the Old Market underpass, and parts of Redcliffe.

Crucially, the council gets to keep the business rates raised in the expanded zone, and it hopes to use this to help transform Temple Meads station.

Network Rail will pay for the electrification of the London line and platform work, but the council wants to see new entrances east and west of the station. The tunnel under the platforms that used to lead to the old sorting office could become an underground street that exits near the arena onto a new part of Bristol’s harbourside, Continued on Page 13

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November 2016

n NEWS

Ever wondered how bats commute?

Along the river – right next to the site of the arena THE MYSTERIES of one of Britain’s most rare and cryptic bats have been uncovered in Arnos Vale Cemetery – and raised concerns about nearby building developments.

The small and elusive population of lesser horseshoe bats was stalked through the darkness each night during summer, as they emerged from their hidden roosts amid the tombstones.

Ecologist Dan Flew, from Totterdown, and his 15-strong team of local helpers from Avon Bat Group, used specialist radio-tagging equipment and bat detectors. Their quest was to find out how the species uses the river, railway, parks and darker green spaces that form a shadowy network through South Bristol, all the way from Totterdown, Windmill Hill and Bedminster through Southville to Long Ashton and Avon Gorge.

“We did think they were probably trapped in their cemetery island of darkness, but we have proved they do leave, cross the busy road and get to the river,” revealed Dan. “We now know they can use the river to get elsewhere.”

Their results are good news for the lesser horseshoes, with

WILL THE ARENA UPSET THESE RARE BATS? THE River Avon and its banks are a Site of Nature Conservation Interest.

Permission was given for a new arena footbridge over the river from Albert Road on condition that light falling on the river is minimised to 0.5 lux, to avoid disturbing bats – and, surprisingly, otters.

Kingfishers have also been seen on the river. The planning

A fascinating study finds lesser horseshoe bats flourishing in South Bristol – but for how long?

Alex Morss reports the Bristol population now estimated at 1,000, more than previously thought, making the area important nationally. But the team has highlighted concerns about how nearby developments may affect them.

Dan told the Voice: “These bats are extremely difficult to record on bat detectors because they are often silent and cryptic.

It is often presumed that they won’t be present and the likelihood of picking them up is quite low, so they can get missed when developments are planned, and I think this is a problem.

“For example, it is presumed the development areas across the road from Arnos Vale, at Paintworks and the arena, are not highly used by lesser horseshoes, but I have found they permission calls for bird and bat boxes on the bridge, and the creation of an artificial kingfisher nesting bank on Arena Island.

However, work by Dan Flew and his team has shown that lesser horseshore bats use the river for commuting far more than was thought.

Dan said: “The only way we will know the impacts of development is if in a few years time they have gone.”

Tracking device: Dan Flew and his bat detection equipment in Arnos Vale. Inset: A lesser horseshoe bat BAT PICTURE: ©John Black/www.bats.org.uk do go over there from the cemetery. I have seen them crossing the busy, highly-lit A4 road by Paintworks. You could tell this was not a frequent or preferred choice, but they would venture out if they had to.”

Dan’s team used giant aerials to pursue the bats on bicycles, in cars and on foot, but were often blocked by railway lines, fast tides and steep riverbanks.

“With the difficulties of recording along the river, and also because lesser horseshoes are so quiet, it is difficult to prove to developers that they are there.

The only way we will know the impacts of development is if in a few years time they have gone from Arnos Vale because of the lighting,” he said.

Dan said even close-up monitoring can miss them: “On a couple of occasions a male bat, wearing our radio tracker, flew out of his roost and sneaked right past three people in the graveyard and they all missed it.

That’s why I think they are under- recorded, and there is potential for there to be a lot more in Arnos Vale than we found.”

Dan was able to show that the River Avon is a bat highway – but frustratingly too dangerous to monitor in depth. “Lesser horseshoes use the river to get from east to west, but trying to record this is difficult because it is too dangerous for us to get on a railway line or the river. At the moment the river and railway are perfect for them. Coronation Road is tree-lined pretty much all the way up to Avon Gorge.”

Dan’s project also discovered some bizarre bat trivia: “These bats seem to have an in-built

barometer – they knew when low pressure was coming. They foraged longer on dates before big weather pressure changes, when torrential rain was on the way. Male and female bats would forage and roost at the same times at different ends of the cemetery, moving in synch, almost like they had a timer.”

The team found the bats had various day-time and night-time roosts around Arnos Vale. He said the 1km zone around Arnos Vale is critical for this population, as that’s the preferred foraging range, but they can travel further.

LESSER HORSESHOE BATS – SOME TRIVIA • Lesser Horseshoes are among the smallest bats in the world, being roughly the size of a plum.

• They emerge half an hour after sunset, and forage for flies, moths, spiders, beetles, wasps and other invertebrates.

• This rare species is restricted to the milder South West. The Bat Conservation Trust says numbers have fallen a lot, due to more intensive farming, pesticides and roost disturbance. They are very sensitive to lighting and noise.

• Lesser Horseshoes make loud echolocation calls at a frequency of 110khz, far too high for the human ear. They call less often than other species, so even with a bat detector they are easy to miss.

• They roost and hibernate from about October until April. They breed in winter, with the young born the following summer.

• avonbatgroup.org.uk

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November 2016

southbristolvoice

13

n NEWS n ARENA – Continued from Page 11 Totterdown Basin, with waterside cafés and flats. It won’t be all offices, said Cllr Holland.

“I don’t want Temple Quarter to be a sterile CBD, or central business district, as the Americans call it,” she said. “It feels a bit like that at the moment. We are thinking about how we integrate housing and draw more people through the area.”

The framework plan recently approved by the council cabinet calls for 2,500 homes in the enterprise zone – an increase of 500. Most of the zone will have buildings of 6-8 storeys. But the

mayor wants to change planning policy to allow more tall buildings, so some of the new homes may well be in taller blocks. Arena Island is expected to have around 300 homes.

Both Mr Rees and Cllr Holland are adamant the arena will be built. But they would not be drawn on details of the next phase, to transform Arena Island.

This £28m plan calls for every local asset the council owns to be developed to the max, including the former sorting office and the Temple Gate building opposite Temple Meads. Even then it needs £8m from the community

infrastructure levy, which is meant to benefit the whole city.

Cllr Holland said she was talking to developers who are now convinced the city means business about providing housing and jobs.

The arena will have to be part of a rounded community: people will not want to “pick their way across a building site,” she said.

But it seems certain that much work will remain to be done when the arena opens in 2019. The Bath Road Promenade, a new walkway from Temple Meads, won’t exist, and arena crowds will have to be shepherded away from traffic on the A4 by stewards. Many feel

this is a recipe for disaster.

Cllr Holland pointed out that the arena plaza will provide a new route for pedestrians, diverting many off Bath Road if they are heading for Old Market.

A new car park – maybe at Fish Dock, where Kwik Fit is – has not been ruled out. But visitors can be persuaded not to drive, she said, as they have been at Cardiff’s Millennium stadium.

Improvements like the recently announced rail platform at Portway Park & Ride will help.

Consultation on residents parking zones for the area near the arena is due next year.

How will we pay for libraries and parks?

Options such as getting volunteers to run parks show how serious the financial crisis is FOR THE mayor and his cabinet of senior councillors, problems with paying for the arena are overshadowed by the massive hole in the council’s finances.

Late in the summer, a deficit of £32m was discovered in the current financial year alone. It led to a desperate call for 1,000 voluntary redundancies from the council’s 7,000-odd staff.

But only 737 applied for severance, of which 284 were approved and 357 rejected; others are still being considered.

Over the next five years, there is a predicted budget gap of about

£92m. Mr Rees has ordered an inquiry into how the council’s financial controls failed so badly.

The cutbacks in our box, below, are only some of those proposed for next year, 2017-18.

More cuts are listed for future years – for example, more than £1.2m from spending on parks in 2018-20. The council talks of community groups taking on running some parks.

It also proposes cutting the library budget by £1.1m by 2020.

The savings proposed could amount to £27m over five years – not enough to plug the gap.

The council also aims to save £29m through efficiencies.

Cllr Gary Hopkins, Bristol’s Lib Dem leader, said the survey did not range far enough, covering only a third of the spending affected.

Council tax next year may rise by 3.95 per cent, including a 2 per cent hike to help pay the

How the council might make ends meet Savings proposed totalling £27m for 2017-18 include: Reducing subsidies for bus routes £450,000 Axing companion passes for carers on buses £400,000 End funding for neighbourhood partnerships’ local traffic works £410,000 Homelessness spending, reducing stays in hostels £250,000-£500,000 Alcohol & drug abuse services £552,000-£1.1m Charge £200 for disabled parking bays £34,000 “Reorganise” school lollipop crossing patrols £360,000 Changes to Neighbourhood partnerships £20,000-£618,000 Crisis fund for people in need

£475,000-£4.2m Reduce no. of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) £0-£572,000 End council tax discount on empty property £420,000 Reduce adult day services £413,000 Reduce Early Help services to families

£550,000 Community meals (meals on wheels)

£420,000 Cut arts & culture grants £500,000 • The Mayor wants your views on the budget: Page 26

rising costs of social care for the elderly and disabled. A council tax bill for an average Band D home would rise by £60 a year.

Mr Rees has asked Bristolians to have their say on how the budget should be balanced by taking a survey – web link below

– and at four public meetings which he will attend. The nearest is at John Williams Oasis Academy, Hengrove at 7pm on Thursday November 17. Tickets must be booked at: • http://bit.ly/2eH8NnI • bristol.gov.uk/corpstrategy

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southbristolvoice

14

November 2016

n NEWS

Free school breakfasts, tower blocks n MAYOR – Continued from Page 1 right place” and create “a bolder skyline”. The council has already upped the housing plan for Temple Quarter enterprise zone from 2,000 homes to 2,500 – presumably to be achieved by building higher.

Could tall buildings here bring even more growth, and potential disruption for those

living in South Bristol? The Voice put it to the mayor that thousands of people living near Temple Quay and Bedminster Green face huge disruption in years to come from the many developments planned.

Mr Rees promised to set up and attend a meeting for the South Bristol community where these concerns can be addressed

– an idea the Voice will be following with interest.

Growth is key to the mayor’s pledge to reduce inequality in the city. Though Bristol is one of the most productive and innovative cities in the UK, it also has some of the fastest-rising housing costs.

Developing the enterprise zone will bring vital business rate income to help fund the mayor’s

other ambitions. Bristol is the 10th worst city in the country for affordable housing, the mayor told the October 6 gathering at the Wills memorial building. He plans to build 2,000 homes a year by 2020, 800 of them affordable, and says that developers are already in talks.

Among other initiatives he announced was the offer of a free

Low-rise, high density family homes are ANY development of Bedminster Green needs to respect its neighbours, keep buildings low and create an attractive community, say residents.

WHaM – the Windmill Hill and Malago planning group – has released its own planning brief for the site, which has been the subject of controversy since developer Urbis revealed plans for around 800 homes in buildings of up to 12 storeys.

Enormous backing for our ideas, says WHaM The group points to urban sites where a high density of homes is achieved without building above six storeys.

Wapping Wharf, the recently

Monday

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completed development the other side of the Avon from Southville, has an attractive, active streetscape which manages 200 homes per hectare.

Nearby, The Point achieves 100 homes per hectare. Both developments have “high density, sustainable and enjoyable housing, with low rise buildings, while enhancing the character of the area,” says the planning brief.

“WHaM ... supports higher

Tuesday

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Wednesday

Bedminster St Francis Church, North Street, Bedminster BS3 1JP

density new housing, but this has to be in the context of the existing character of the surrounding neighbourhood,” says the report from the community group, which has a core membership of 30 and a Facebook membership of 400.

The report was created with input from the BS3 Planning group, Create Streets and Clear Village, among others.

“Development will be mainly

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November 2016

southbristolvoice

15

n NEWS

and the return of power boat racing school breakfast for every primary school child.

Part of his drive against inequality will involve appointing council leaders “from Hartcliffe and Avonmouth as well as Clifton”.

He has already set up a City Office that brings together the police, businesses, transport networks and community players

with a combined budget of £4bn to forge a single plan for the city.

Also announced: • A task group to examine road congestion; • Freezing the cost of resident parking permits until 2020; • A review into housing for domestic abuse survivors; • New homes in Hengrove; • A City Poet, Miles Chambers.

One surprise from Mr Rees was the announcement that he is in talks about bringing back power boat racing to the harbour.

Hugely popular from 1972 to 1991, the races brought up to 250,000 visitors to the city but also claimed seven lives.

But the sport has moved on, Mr Rees told the Voice. Officials are in talks about safety, about

Marvin Rees: Road task force to look into congestion

new technology now available, about the harbour and how the races could return, he said.

community vision for Bedminster Green Group calls for cabinet to oversee development Detailed: The brief looks at roads, homes, open spaces and more family housing and long term accommodation and expected to be delivered as a range of housing types, sizes and tenures. Private rental sector housing should be minimised as it does not create a sustainable community. Home zones and residential for families that exclude cars would be welcomed,” said WHaM. It also wants to see roads made safer and pollution cut – which will be more difficult with tall buildings as they concentrate air pollution, it says.

The document also calls for green spaces “designed to work with the urban context, not as unplanned afterthoughts” and “a place that encourages interactions between neighbours and visitors; and cares for the most vulnerable residents.”

New homes will bring the need for a dental surgery and a health centre, including GPs but with more services. Bedminster East

BREXIT VOTE PROMPTS NEW TOWER SALE ST CATHERINE’S Place, the tower block on the corner of Malago Road, is about to be sold to a developer. Urbis obtained planning permission for 188 homes on 16 storeys in 2014, and always planned that another firm would buy it from its investor

THE PROPOSAL to build 800 or more homes on Bedminster Green (called Malago Green by many residents) is so significant that the council cabinet should take control of it, suggests WHaM. “Any project of the scale of Bedminster Green should be overseen by the cabinet as a major development,” said WHaM spokesperson Dianne James.

“At the moment Bristol city council appear to be leaving it up to the developer to determine what happens in Bedminster. We would like a comprehensive plan is one of the two per cent most deprived areas in the country for health deprivation and disability, WHaM points out.

Tall buildings would also spoil some of Bristol’s classic views, including from Victoria Park and views of Windmill Hill which are noted as part of the appeal of Bedminster Conservation Area, says the group.

WHaM’s Dianne James said reaction to the proposals had been very positive when the brief was unveiled at Windmill Hill owner to develop it into private rented flats.

But a deal with a previous developer fell though amid economic uncertainty following the Brexit vote.

A second round of bidding is under way and ends on November 4. If a new owner changes the plans, it may need new planning permission from the council.

Wapping Wharf: Seen as a good example of dense inner-city housing that will deliver much more community-focused housing to the area, a plan that strengthens the community.

“Development on this scale should not be seen as an opportiunity to maximise profit at the expense of the health and wellbeing of the community.”

WHaM members are putting questions to the council cabinet

meeting on November 1. Members want to challenge the assumption that the Green needs to be developed at high density, when it is surrounded by low-density housing, mostly terraces.

WHaM is holding a launch party for its planning brief at the Windmill pub in Windmill Hill on Friday November 4. It will also celebrate the group’s first birthday.

community centre on October 8 and 10. “People were very thankful, and very positive about a lot of the things in the brief,” she said. “People are in favour of development. Everyone wants to see more housing, but at what cost?”

The Urbis plan “will significantly change the nature of the area. If it was already an area of high rise it wouldn’t be such a concern,” she said.

The group is now waiting to hear from the council how its planning brief will be used as part of the neighbourhood planning process.

However, mayor Marvin Rees clearly sees tall buildings as a way to deliver housing the city desperately needs. He is prepared to alter the city’s Tall Buildings policy, which largely restricts high-rises to the city centre.

Richard Clarke, managing director of Urbis, which has produced a masterplan for

Bedminster Green, believes low-rise buildings cannot deliver the housing that is needed, or pay for the riverside open spaces that will make the area attractive.

Wapping Wharf and The Point count as only “medium density”, he said.

The proposal by developer Paul O’Brien’s firm Rollo Homes, for Plot 1 at Bedminster Green, is over 350 homes per hectare.

Meanwhile, Urbis has made a planning application for its district energy centre on Malago Road, though details weren’t available on the council website as the Voice went to press.

A pre-planning application for Plot 5, around Bedminster station, has also been submitted but won’t be made public.

However, public consultation on Plot 5 will begin before Christmas, said Mr Clarke.

You can see WHam’s planning brief, and comment on it, at • whambristol.org.uk

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November 2016

southbristolvoice

17

n NEWS

You wait years for a school, then three come at once Now Oasis plans two secondaries in South Bristol PLANS for two more secondary schools for South Bristol have emerged, joining the proposal from Bristol Grammar School.

The latest proposals are from Oasis, a Christian group which is the second largest academy provider in the country and runs eight schools in Bristol already.

It plans one new school next to an existing academy – Oasis John Williams in Hengrove.

The other is earmarked for the Temple Quarter enterprise zone – though no one has been able to tell the Voice where it would be sited.

The enterprise zone has recently been extended towards Old Market and includes part of St Philip’s. It is assumed that this school would mainly serve central Bristol, Barton Hill and Lawrence Hill – though it would be within easy reach of South Bristol.

Like the grammar school plan, all three proposals are for

FACT FILE: NEW SCHOOLS

Oasis Academy Temple Quarter Site: None identified Students: 1,800 inc sixth-form Forms in entry year: Eight Open: 2018 Full capacity: 2022.

Oasis Academy South Bristol Site: Next to Oasis John Williams

free schools. They would be funded by the Department for Education (DfE), which is considering all the plans and will give a verdict in the spring.

Parents in Totterdown, Knowle and Windmill Hill have lacked a local secondary school since Merrywood school – now The Park community centre – closed in 2000. Many appeared to welcome the prospect of a new school at a public meeting hosted by grammar school head Rod MacKinnon at Redcatch community centre in September.

However, the grammar school has pulled back from early suggestions that The Park was its favoured site for a school. It now says the DfE will find a site if the plan is approved.

“With rising numbers across all areas it is likely to be the Filwood, Knowle and Windmill Hill children that will find it difficult to secure a place at a school of choice, as they will always be furthest away from existing schools,” says a council report.

Currently, Oasis John Williams is oversubscribed but Bedminster Down and the Bridge Forms in entry year: Six Students: 900 Open: 2019 Full capacity: 2023.

Bristol Grammar School Site: None identified Forms in entry year: Seven (at Y7) Students: 1,000 age 4-16 Open: 2019 Full capacity: 2023.

Learning Campus in Hartcliffe both have spare places.

Bristol city council believes that only three new schools will be needed across the whole city to meet the predicted shortfall in secondary places in 2019. It sees a need for one school in the south, one to cover the central area, and one in the north.

Council projections show a need for 42 secondary places in South Bristol in Year 7 by 2019, rising to 142, or about five classes, in 2022.

These figures are based on a rising population of children, but they do not include any new housing in South Bristol, such as the 107 homes being built on Bedminster Road. This is because new homes generate few schoolage children for the first five years.

All three new free schools would be open to all, with no selection criteria.

Oasis Academy South Bristol would work closely with its neighbour, Oasis Academy John Williams, under its executive principal Vicky Boome.

Both Oasis plans are for secondary schools, while the grammar school plans a school for ages 4-16. But as council projections show no need for primary places in 2019, the secondary school may open first.

Bristol South MP Karin Smyth told the Voice last month that the grammar school plans had “come as a shock”, and she wanted to see genuine local involvement.

School’s appeal to seniors BEDMINSTER Down School is on the lookout for people aged 65 or older to take part in a new project to improve relationships between them and teenagers.

Inspired by the BBC’s Old School programme that featured the Oxford Academy and the Hairy Bikers earlier this year, the aim is to find older people to become regular visitors to the school as “senior partners”. They will sit in lessons with their “junior partner” and attend school activities and events.

The project is backed by Link

Age and the Royal British Legion and a meeting has taken place to recruit volunteers at the Royal British Legion in Bishopsworth.

Old School co-ordinator and teacher, Steve Priday said: ““I’m hoping that we can play a role in dispelling myths around the behaviour of teenagers, sharing IT skills and help our senior partners look forwards rather than towards the past.

“If you live in South Bristol and would like to get involved please contact me at the school on 0117 353 2800.”

Homeless could do with some more help VOLUNTEERS are being sought to work with homeless people as the number sleeping rough in the city continues to increase.

Official figures peaked at 97 at the last street count in November 2015, up from 41 rough sleepers on any one night in 2014, and fewer than 10 in 2012.

Homelessness charity St Mungo’s is working in a Rough Sleeping Partnership with the city council. The partnership has opened 65 extra bed spaces since Christmas, some in unused council buildings. The shelters rely heavily on the goodwill of volunteers to stay open.

Volunteers work in pairs.

Richard Drake and Heather Lister, who work once a fortnight at the night shelter in St Judes, said: “It’s a very straightforward and practical way to help make a difference. We also share the charity’s vision that everyone should have a safe place to stay.”

On a typical night, the couple greet people as they arrive, help them sort out their bedding, and offer them tea, as well as talking to them about their concerns.

To find out more, call 07736 887052 or email volunteers@ mungos.org • mungos.org.uk

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18

n FEATURES He has made frequent radio appearances and runs workshops for schools and other organisations. He is often titillating but never trivial and continues to fearlessly confront the difficult questions in a style that is thought provoking and entertaining. This is his fourth collection.

Politics, comedy, and a love poem to an apple: Trevor Carter spreads his net wide, finds Beccy Golding recording history in a concise form. Indeed, he has condensed weighty history books into just a few pages. “My interest is political history, with some social history. But philosophy, religion and psychology are all represented in my work,” he told me. He has written profiles of

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REVOR Carter, originally from the north-east, has lived in Windmill Hill for more than 40 years. His title – the Bard of Windmill Hill – was self-selected. Or rather, someone suggested it to him and “it’s got a ring to it – it’s more memorable than my name” – so he took it on as his stage name – a public persona that he uses to comment on history and political events.

“People may assume my concerns are only local, but I have never written anything about Windmill Hill!” he told me (although he has taken part in the Art on the Hill art trail, and plays tennis regularly in Victoria park). Instead he writes about “the big picture stuff” and enjoys

Some sayings are cathartic; they go straight to the heart.

And when it’s time to stop and think they nudge us all to start.

The Bard of Windmill Hill

Author photo by Philip Clark ISBN 978-0-9557426-3-7 Windmill Hill Publishing

£8.00

Where There’s Tea, There’s Hope

Where There’s Tea There’s Hope

T G Carter

‘Wit and social comment in ideal combination.’

Warwick Folk Festival ‘What a fantastic storyteller.’

The Acoustic Festival of Britain

Where There,s Tea There,s Hope

Meet the Bard of Windmill Hill, poet laureate of BS3

As readers of previous collections will be aware, the Bard of Windmill Hill has established himself as a poet of many parts. In 2014 he was crowned Bristol Storyteller of the Year - the first poet to win this prestigious prize. He is also poet in residence and co-organiser of Bristol’s longest running variety show, Lansdown Cabaret.

T G Carter

It’s the verbal panacea, the all purpose antidote; it’s echoed down the ages: ‘Where there’s tea, there’s hope’.

Storyteller award: Trevor Carter spins a yarn politicians including Thatcher, Corbyn, Mandela and Obama.

Carter has a degree in history and politics and sees the role of historian and story-teller as part of the same thread. He is proud of two prizes he has been awarded – one was Student of the Year, in 1989, while studying for his degree at UWE, the other was Bristol Storyteller of the Year in 2014. This was for his performance of his story Meeting Mr Hog “a modern parable, with jokes, about a nocturnal visit and the repercussions of it.”

So while he sees himself as a story-teller, it’s in the widest sense, with his work including book reviews, stories, articles, academic work, teaching, poetry and performance. “I see myself firstly as a writer. My performances are dramatisations of what I have written.”

Carter preforms to all sorts of groups, from WIs, to rowdy pubs, to church services, and adapts his content accordingly. “My favourite love poem is one I wrote,” he said, “called Mother Nature. It’s very raunchy. And can be read on a number of levels, like a lot of my work.”

Other poems are more comic.

And probably his oldest poem is Ode To A Pink Lady, “a love poem to an apple.”

Trevor has a background in construction. “I like the satisfaction of precision, getting things to work.” His poetry reflects this, written to certain forms of rhythm and rhyme, like anapastic tetrameter, with two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one, repeated four times in each line. This complex form

Excerpt from the title poem of Trevor Carter’s most recent book

gives momentum and “is hard to do right. I am an admirer of Betjamin,” he told me, who had the philosophy of “don’t let it out till you think it is as good as its going to get. I like to teach this in schools.”

Carter’s work in schools includes writing and performance workshops. “It is lamentable that the English education system tends not to teach speaking.” His workshops address this. “I like working with children. They are honest audiences,” he said.

The Bard has four collections of poetry, all released by small independent Windmill Hill Publishing. His latest, Where There’s Tea, There’s Hope, came out in 2015, and is available at the Arnolfini bookshop or online.

Carter’s current workload includes planning his festival circuit for next year (he has organised the word stage at Priddy folk festival for the last three years), and working on a new poetry collection for 2017.

In the future the bard would like to “do more collaborative things – I like working with musicians, magicians, circus and other entertainers – I like variety and I like the unexpected.”

Next on his agenda are the Lansdown Cabaret (“Bristol’s longest running and best variety show”) in Clifton on Friday December 2, at which he is resident poet, and the bard’s own Christmas Cabaret at Alma Tavern on Wednesday December 21, promising “preposterous poems, scintillating stories and irreverent songs.”

• windmillbard.co.uk

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November 2016

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19

LETTERS Send letters to paul@southbristolvoice.co.uk or to 18 Lilymead Ave, BS4 2BX effectively doubling the amount occasions I heard owls hooting in approach to her job. I for one Labour: stop of pollution these blocks would that area and now no longer. It welcome the discussion and add to Bedminster, as electricity was a veritable owl hotel, which openness she encourages. is currently produced outside has been rendered a mere the Tory party the easy tweets hasHistorically, the city. fragment of memory to those known how to bend and go YOUR article in October on Karin Smyth’s congratulations for Jeremy Corbyn reflected the dismay of his supporters that she urged the party to work together with him.

Anyone attending the South Bristol Labour Party meetings in the past year will acknowledge Karin’s openness and well-argued concerns about the leadership and functioning of the party. She is not alone in her fears that Labour have made themselves unelectable, almost certainly in the short term if not longer.

It was not hypocrisy to resign her post and to declare for her preferred candidate (come the vote, he was not mine – nor was Corbyn). She did that from a perception of local and national needs.

The party has much to do to develop coherent, developmental and fundable policies based on its values of equality and social responsibility, all within an assessment of current and future needs. This is not achieved by doctrinaire assertions. It will require hard and courageous work, soul-searching, analysis of current trends in economics, technology, business, defence and the rest.

There are no easy answers and much will depend on the willingness of MPs and membership to work collaboratively, as Karin Smyth has urged. She has a sense of the practical as well as a vision grounded in long party commitment in Bristol and a compassionate and hard-working

with the flow for its own advantage and electabilty. Now witness the well-managed Tory divisions (who would now know that there are any!) and the overt bid Theresa May is making for the centre ground and the disaffected former (and current) Labour and UKIP supporters by reorientating her policies. So cease the easy Twitters and come to the constituency meetings and help formulate policies on a value-laden approach to today’s needs. There is much to fight for.

Ben Mackay Windmill Hill

who knew this area.

There was other bird life in that area as well – swallows, blackbirds, blue tits, wrens and many more. This has now been reduced to the odd pigeon pecking at crumbs left by the affluent customers of Better Food et al. The developers seem to think that planting a small number of stunted trees covers the environmental damage they have wreaked.

Hopefully I am not alone in drawing attention to this. It is all very well mentioning that owls are “thriving” in other areas but I am not sure if this sufficiently covers their rapid decline elsewhere.

Name supplied Southville

Inconsiderate Tawny owl

PICTURE: Chris Sperring

What happened to harbour owls?

I READ the owl article in the latest edition with interest and concern. What is not mentioned is the development by the harbourside at Wapping Wharf. I am convinced that owls and their owlets once nested there.

Owls are of course associated with the presence of other species, including the endangered vole, and their disappearance marks a decline in biodiversity. On numerous

EVERYONE lives somewhere; yet drivers who use our narrow residential streets as rat-runs seem to forget this.

It’s so frustrating when you stop so that you can reverse into a parking space, only for an impatient driver to stop right behind you and refuse to move to allow you to park. You know who you are. Numpties.

DR, Windmill Hill

Energy centre will be polluting I AM concerned about the energy centre that Urbis is proposing to build on Malago Road. This will create both heating and electricity for new apartments –

Burning natural gas produces nitrogen dioxide, which is extremely harmful to health.

How is this appropriate when Malago Road is in the Bristol Air Quality Management Area because of the poor air quality?

SW, Address supplied

Send us your old stamps CAN YOU read this? Would you like to help those who can’t?

Well, you can: please send us your used postage stamps.

Money used by RP Fighting Blindness goes to fund a helpline service and research into a cure for the disease retinitis pigmentosa, which affects 25,000 people in the UK. We have raised £3,304 to date.

For anyone wishing to know more, we do a 35 minute talk to groups and clubs to promote awareness of the condition.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us. You have made a difference. Stamps cut outside the perforations will earn the charity more. We are also grateful for any unwanted stamp collections, old and foreign coins.

Ron & Gina Pritchard 22 Huckford Road Winterbourne, Bristol BS36 1EA; 01454 772927 n We welcome your views on anything that’s happening in South Bristol, to be sent to the addresses above. Please keep letters short; they may be edited.

Got a story or any other inquiry? Call Paul on 07811 766072 or email paul@southbristolvoice.co.uk

November 2016

southbristolvoice

20

n PICTURE SPECIAL

... Windmill Hill arts trail

Glasswork by Simon Alderson • aldersonglass.com Robin and Emma-Jane Richards make prints on Bristol themes and their native St Helena. EmmaJane also makes vintage cushions • bemmie.co.uk

Historic park views glass-etched by Jon Pigott

Soulful, jazz-inspired tunes from Charlie and Jake

... October 1 & 2

... the 1

Artist, photographer Samantha Gilraine •samanthagi

Carla Cosgrove and mum Helena’s cake sale in aid of a school aid trip to Tanzania

The first aid lesson that saved dad ONE FATHER of a Bedminster Down schoolgirl is grateful that every pupil learns what to do in a medical emergency.

That’s because Stephen Downs had his life saved by daughter Mia. Stephen started complaining of chest pains last month. It was Mia who realised that the pains should be taken seriously and insisted that he went to hospital by ambulance. Thanks to her quick actions he was quickly diagnosed as experiencing a heart attack and is now recovering.

Since 2012 every student in Year 11 at Bedminster Down school has been been taught cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and how to deal with bleeding and choking casualties.

Now students in Y8 are also having lessons in first aid.

Headteacher Gary Schlick said: “At Bedminster Down we believe that practical life skills are part of a rounded education.

Our students show a lot of interest in the first aid courses. In

Grateful: Dad Stephen visits Bedminster Down school to tell his story with daughter Mia, 14 Mia’s case her quick actions, learnt at school, potentially saved the life of her father. We’re very grateful that he could come into school and share his story with our students.”

Mia, 14, said: “As soon as my dad was complaining of a tightness in the chest as well as feeling sick I knew I had to do something straight away.

“I stayed on the phone with the ambulance dispatcher and did everything they asked. It was a shock to us all and I’m glad that he was able to be treated so quickly in hospital,” she said.

To advertise, contact sales@southbristolvoice.co.uk or Ruth on 07590 527664

Stu W

November 2016

southbristolvoice

10th Art On The Hill

21

... artonthehill.org.uk

Something for everyone: The team behind the new Padfields café

Service and smiles at new café

ilrainephotography.com Music on the Victoria Park stage from Fools on the Hill

Watkin, aka Oshe • oshedesign.com

Cushions by Dear Gussie (on Facebook)

A NEW café for the community will be open every Wednesday, promising home-made cakes and tea served with a smile.

The Padfields café is based at Victoria Park Baptist church, on the corner of Sylvia Avenue and St John’s Lane, and is staffed by people with learning disabilities.

They come from all over South Bristol and attend outreach sessions run by Silva Care at The Park centre in Daventry Road, Knowle.

Organiser Beth Hemmings explained: “It builds up their

confidence massively – everyone loves helping out. We wanted to be a bigger part of the community.

“We have lots of different roles – some people are working behind the scenes, making the food and delivering it, and others are serving or being cashiers. We are making it as accessible as possible so that everyone feels included.”

Padfields is open 11am-2pm every Wednesday and everyone is welcome to pop in. You can follow Padfields Café on Twitter and Facebook.

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Got a story or any other inquiry? Call Paul on 07811 766072 or email paul@southbristolvoice.co.uk

November 2016

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22

n NEWS

Yet more homes for West St Former pub and garage set for redevelopment

Play time: Joel and Lindsay

Toy shop opens SOUTHVILLE has its own toy shop, with the emphasis not on computer games but on practical toys that encourage creativity.

Joel and Lindsay Meyer Nicholas both gave up corporate careers to open Toyville in North Street in the former Bubbahub.

Opening night was packed, and the pair are hopeful the shop will be a hit with the kids of BS3.

• toyvilleshop.co.uk

TWO planning applications in West Street, Bedminster, are causing controversy with proposals to squeeze in more homes – putting more pressure on parking.

One is to make the Plough & Windmill pub into new houses and flats, with the bar of the pub retained as a community café.

The other is to replace the former garage and car sales site at 54 West Street with three three-bedroom townhouses and a block of five one-bedroom flats.

The eight homes will share only five parking spaces.

At the pub – now closed by former owner Enterprise Inns – the plan is for six two-bedroom flats, a single one-bedroom flat and three three-bedroom houses.

Two of the houses will be designed to merge with the terrace on Hengaston Street. Six parking spaces will be provided for the 10 households.

Two neighbours have objected to the plans for West Street. Both say the development will badly rob them of light.

Another, who lives in Cromwell Street, objected to the lack of parking. “I don’t have parking provided with my flat, so have to park on the surrounding streets. This is already difficult as there is already more demand for spaces than those that are available,” she said. “Too many flats have been built in this area over the last 10 years without adequate provision for parking.”

Another resident slammed the plan for the Plough & Windmill, saying it could still be a thriving pub if Enterprise Inns hadn’t neglected it.

Stef Brammar, secretary of community group Way Out West,

said she personally welcomed the pub’s historic bar being kept for community use.

But she criticised the lack of parking in both plans.

“We are very concerned about the impact on street parking,” she said. “It is not enough to assume that new residents will use public transport or cycle – our experience with other developments is that sadly this is not the trend. Therefore we would ask that on-site car parking is increased.”

Way Out West (WoW) is fighting to improve the standards of development along West Street, one of South Bristol’s main arteries and now a prime target for new housing.

New sites should have waste and recycling bins out of sight of the road, says WoW. They should also increase the green landscape of West Street by ensuring that small trees and shrubs are visible from the street.

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southbristolvoice

RSPCA UPDATE

23 From Bristol Dogs & Cats Home

Winter warmth is vital to residents such as Ronnie

E

VENINGS are getting darker, jumpers have come out of cupboards and winter is well on its way. Instead of letting this get us down, we are getting excited about our annual Christmas Fair! We think the Christmas Fair is a great way to begin the festive season and raise vital funds for the animals in our care. Colder weather means extra food and extra fuel is needed to keep all our animal residents happy, safe and warm.

This year, the fair is being held on Sunday November 20 from 10am-3pm at Bristol Dogs and Cats Home. Come along to enjoy the Christmas atmosphere, while supporting animals in need. There will be something for everyone: fun festive games, stalls selling gifts, decorations and Christmas cards, and a

Cold weather means our bills keep rising

grotto with a very special guest.

And it wouldn’t be a Christmas event without mince pies and mulled wine aplenty!

All the money raised goes to our Winter Warmer Appeal. This helps fund the extra costs we incur in the winter. Everyone likes to snuggle up when the temperature drops and all our residents, whether cat, dog or small animal, like a cosy bedroom.

Heating is also essential for our RSPCA Bristol Clinic. It is

POLICE REPORT

O

A decent bike lock is well worth it Contact Us page of our website (avonandsomerset.police.uk).

Alternatively, if you don’t want to speak to the police directly, you can contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

They never ask for your name or trace your call.

W

vital to ensuring a safe recovery for many of our patients. One such animal was little Ronnie who was found after being abandoned and who needed life-saving heat therapy in order to survive. Luckily, thanks to the hard work of our clinic team, he’s

With Sgt Caroline Crane Broadbury Road police station

Your tip-offs really do help us fight crime N MY mind this month is how the community can help us to beat crime by acting as our eyes and ears on the ground. Information from local people is what drives a good deal of our work, but unfortunately there has been a decline in the amount of this info coming through to us lately.

If you have suspicions about anything or anyone, please let us know. You may be worried that someone is dealing drugs out of a property, or have spotted people going door to door trying to sell things to elderly or vulnerable people. There may be a suspicious vehicle parked in your road, or you may have been approached by someone trying to sell what you think is stolen property. It doesn’t matter how small – your information could be the key to us stopping crime in your street.

You can report any of these things to us online by visiting the

Snug as a bug in a rug: Little Ronnie the kitten needed heat therapy to save his life

e had a good result in Beauley Road in Bedminster last month, after a bike was stolen. The bike was chained to some railings but thieves had cut through the chain. My officers spotted four men in the area who ran off, but were later detained, and they found the bike hidden behind a wall close by. As the victim had

reported the theft to us promptly, we were able to reunite them with their bike within a few hours.

This gives me a good opportunity to remind all bike owners in the area (and I know there are a lot of them) to make sure that they secure their bikes properly, with a good quality D lock, rather than a cable or combination lock. Expect to spend around 10 per cent of the cost of your bike on a lock.

Always secure your bike to a proper stand or immovable object, wherever you are, and make a record of your serial number, just in case the worst happens. That way we may be able to return your bike to you if it’s recovered.

On the subject of bikes, I am starting to notice a lot of them on the roads without lights. It is an offence to use a bike without lights at night. You could face a fine if stopped, and more to the point, cycling without lights puts you in danger, as other road users can’t see you. Make sure if you use a bike you have the correct lights – it could save your life.

Until next time, Sergeant Caroline Crane

now on the road to recovery.

If you can’t make the Christmas Fair, you can support our Winter Warmer Appeal by texting COSY16 £5 to 70070 or online: • campaign.justgiving. com/charity/bristoldogs/ winterwarmer2016

Plea to parents to get flu jabs for children

PARENTS across the city are being urged to get young children vaccinated against flu in order to help stop the spread of the virus.

Flu can be very unpleasant for children and it can lead to serious complications such as pneumonia and sepsis.

Getting children vaccinated can reduce the amount of flu circulating and help to protect the community, including older or more vulnerable relatives.

The vaccination is available free on the NHS as a quick and painless nasal spray for children who were aged two to seven on August 31 this year.

All children across Bristol aged two, three, and four – including those in reception class at school – can get the vaccination from their GP. Children of school years one, two and three will be vaccinated by school nurses.

Others who can get free flu jabs include pregnant women, over 65s, those in long-stay care homes, carers and fontline health and social care workers.

• nhs.uk/child-flu

Got a story or any other inquiry? Call Paul on 07811 766072 or email paul@southbristolvoice.co.uk

November 2016

southbristolvoice

24

n NEWS ADVICE FROM A PHARMACIST MORE stewards are needed to make Bedminster’s famous Winter Lantern Parade a success.

North Street, Cannon Street, British Road and South Street will be closed from 3pm on December 10. Thousands of spectators are promised the best display yet with new animated lanterns and more musicians.

For the first time Ashton Park secondary school will join 10 local primary schools in taking part. But 30 more volunteer stewards are needed to help at the event: details on the website.

• bwlp.org.uk

Social invitation THE Bedminster Social Club is an opportunity for older people to get together over a cup of tea or coffee. Meetings on Tuesday November 8 at 2pm; Wednesday November 16 at 10.30am and Thursday November 24 at 2pm.

All are in the Mezzaluna Cafe on West Street, next to Tesco.

High blood pressure is the silent killer

I

N SOUTH Bristol, at least 60 per cent of all deaths from cancer and heart disease, half of deaths from lung disease and 90 per cent of liver disease deaths can be prevented with a healthier lifestyle.

Smoking, excessive consumption of alcohol, physical inactivity and a poor diet are contributing factors.

We know that around 16,000 people, one in five adults in South Bristol, live with severe debt. Sadly, lower socioeconomic households are more likely to have the worst lifestyle choices. Southville has one of the lowest life expectancies for women, 11 years less than the highest-scoring part of the city.

Alarmingly, poor lifestyle choices and bad health can become embedded in families. As local champions of health, pharmacies work to reverse this trend. Bedminster Pharmacy is

committed to supporting our local population. Take our Blood Pressure Awareness campaign: high blood pressure is the biggest cause of disability and premature death in the UK through stroke, heart attack and heart disease.

One in three UK adults have high blood pressure, usually with no symptoms: it’s called the silent killer.

It is also a major factor in kidney disease and dementia. Everyone should check their blood pressure regularly. Several lifestyle changes will lower your blood pressure: • Cut down on salt, which raises your blood pressure. This means eating more natural foods and fewer processed ones, and not adding any salt to meals or during cooking.

Eat more fresh fruit and vegetables – aim for at least five, or better still, seven to nine portions a day. Fruit and vegetables contain potassium that counters the effect of salt.

• Drink alcohol in moderation: drinking more than the recommended limits will raise your blood pressure. Don’t wait to read the drinks chart while on a stretcher in A & E after your heart

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attack! Not sure about the limits?

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• Increase your level of activity – aim for 30 minutes of moderate activity five times a week. Being active gives your heart a workout and makes you better able to cope with daily life. Lose weight if you need to. We can discreetly advise you on your ideal weight. Excess weight puts strain on your heart.

• Give up smoking.

These tips are useful to all, especially if you already take medication for blood pressure, if you have had a heart scare or have a family history of heart problems.

We also offer an NHS Quit Smoking service, free 12-week vouchers for Slimming World or Weight Watchers, and free blood pressure checks. The good news is that these changes really do help lower your blood pressure. We are here to support you all the way.

• This column, by Ade Williams and Michelle Leow of Bedminster Pharmacy, aims to show how all local pharmacies can offer help with a range of conditions, helping to ease pressure on GPs

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10.16.49

Lantern plea

November 2016

southbristolvoice

n NEWS

We’ve got talent!

Perfect timing: Youngsters from SBY show that South Bristol’s got talent at their end-of-year show in Clifton PUPILS from schools in South Bristol took to the stage to showcase some of their talents.

The youngsters had taken part in year-long programmes organised by South Bristol Youth (SBY), which includes six schools – Ashton Park, Bedminster Down, Bridge Learning Campus, Brislington Enterprise College, Merchants’ Academy and Oasis

Academy John Williams – along with Bristol University and the University of the West of England and community groups.

One of the programmes seeks to increase the speaking and listening skills of children while improving their self-confidence.

It led to some of them showcasing their musical, dancing, singing and public

www.kipmcgrathbristolcentral.co.uk

speaking abilities at the Victoria Rooms, Clifton.

Camilla Chandler-Mant, chief executive of the SBY, said: “One of the fantastic things about our charity is that we have six schools and two Bristol universities working together to make the most of the potential of the young people in South Bristol.”

• southbristolyouth.org.uk

25

Finding answers on transport A NEW group aims to get to grips with the transport issues facing Bedminster.

Organisers are thinking about how roads, cycleways and pavements are working. They will also consider the impact of buses and trains, soon to be joined by Metrobus, and eventually a new station at Ashton Gate.

They ask: “What do you think about the way Greater Bedminster is set up for getting around, travelling out and back again?

What improvements need to be made here and now?

“What are the key issues that transport planners, operators and decision-makers need to take on board to develop a better mobile Bedminster for the 21st century?”

The transport sub-group meets at the Acta Centre, Gladstone Street, Bedminster at 7pm Monday November 21. It’s part of Greater Bedminster Community Partnership.

www.kipmcgrathbristolnorth.co.uk

Got a story or any other inquiry? Call Paul on 07811 766072 or email paul@southbristolvoice.co.uk

November 2016

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n THE MAYOR

MARVIN REES Mayor of Bristol

I need to know what you think about our plan

Y

OU MAY have already heard about the financial challenges being faced by the council over the coming years and the launch of our five-year plan for the city, including possible solutions to close a budget gap of at least £92m between 2017 and 2022.

I’m asking everyone to join me in a city-wide conversation about our future. We don’t just need your views – we need your solutions and we need to know if you can get actively involved in your community and services people might traditionally associate with the council.

We’re bringing the conversation out of City Hall and nearer to your doorstep in November, with a series of events across the city to discuss your feedback and ideas.

You can join us from 7pm on the following dates, but make sure to book your place by visiting bristol.gov.uk/corpstrategy, where you can also find our draft plan,

proposed savings and questionnaire: • Thursday November 10 – The Station, Silver Street, BS1 2AG; • Tuesday November 15 – Henbury School, Station Road, Henbury, BS10 7QH; • Wednesday November 16 – Bristol Brunel Academy, Speedwell Road, BS15 1NU; • Thursday November 17 – Oasis Academy John Williams, Petherton Road, BS14 9BU. The conversation may have only just started, but one of the most common questions people have been asking is how we can afford to build an arena when we need to save so much money.

It’s a valid question, the answer being that

if the money came from our normal budget, we couldn’t. However, the facts are more complex and mean we cannot use the vast majority of the arena funding in other ways.

The council is borrowing the money to build the venue, with the funding coming from two main sources. The first is retained business rates from the Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone. The second is borrowing against the future rental income from the operator of the arena.

If we do not build an arena, the offer of £53m from the West of England Partnership would be withdrawn and the £38m income from the operator would never exist.

Moreover, in difficult financial times, it is important to continue to invest in these kinds of projects, which will deliver future growth, investment and job opportunities.

Not everything is so simple. The conversation we need to have is about new ways of providing services, including more roles for our partners, community groups and volunteers. This can be challenging, but it can also give more power to local people and provide health and social benefits. This isn’t just about ‘cuts’, it’s about redefining what we all do as part of normal city life.

Together we can make the best of a really challenging situation, and now is the time to get involved in defining our future.

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n PLANNING APPLICATIONS Ashton Gate Stadium, Former Hire-Rite Building & 65 Ashton Road BS3 2EJ Revised northern spectator entrance to Dolman Stand.

Revision of louvered openings to northern facade of Williams Stand. Omission of video screen from north-west corner of Williams Stand. Pending consideration Plough and Windmill, 194 West Street, Bedminster BS3 3NB Demolition of rear extensions and outbuildings; change of use and extension of pub building to accommodate one 1-bedroom and six 2-bedroom flats, three 3-bedroom dwellings; car and cycle parking; refuse and recycling store; use of the ground floor for commercial/community space in the use classes A1, A2, A3, B1 or D1. Pending consideration 26 Merrywood Road BS3 1DX Single storey infill extension. Pending consideration Windmill Hill City Farm, Philip Street, Bedminster BS3 4EA Extension and refurbishment of cafe to provide additional seating, additional storage and staff facilities, and toilet facilities for visitors.

Pending consideration 2A North Street, Bedminster BS3 1HT Infill single storey rear extension. Pending consideration 55 Sion Road Bristol BS3 3BD Side dormer loft conversion. Withdrawn 27 Dean Lane Bristol BS3 1DB Conversion of house into two 2-bed maisonettes. Granted subject to conditions 16 Duckmoor Road Bristol BS3 2BY Two storey side extension. Granted subject to conditions

102 West Street, Bedminster BS3 3LR Shopfront alteration to allow independent access to maisonette. Granted subject to conditions Land on corner of Herbert Street and Catherine Mead Street, Bedminster Two-storey block of 10 flats and associated access. (Major Application) Withdrawn 47 Bedminster Down Road BS13 7AB Mixed use development for seven flats and two retail units. Withdrawn Land between 10 & 11 Derry Road BS3 3JB Two-storey live/ work unit with parking space.

Withdrawn Storage yard, South Liberty Lane, Ashton Two storey building comprising one 2-bedroom house and two 2-bedroom flats. Granted subject to conditions 24 Greville Street BS3 1EF Erection of dormer window in rear roof slope. Granted subject to conditions 46 Ashton Vale Road BS3 2HQ Extensions at first floor level to raise the height of two workshops and proposed external staircase; creation of mezzanine floor office space. Granted subject to conditions Flat B, 9 Friezewood Road, Ashton BS3 2AD Rear roof extension and installation of front roof lights. Withdrawn Avonleigh, Parklands Road BS3 2JW T1: Oak: reduce crown by 25% or to previous reduction points to allow more light to the area around the house. G1: 3 Leyland Cypress: cut to ground level. Granted 44 Merrywood Road BS3 1DU Mountain ash, rowan tree: fell. Granted

46 South Liberty Lane Bristol BS3 2SY Two storey detached house. Granted subject to conditions

28 Risdale Road BS3 2QT Extend existing single storey rear extension. Granted subject to conditions

Bedminster Cricket Club, Clanage Road BS3 2JX Extension of existing groundskeeper store. Granted subject to conditions

17 Duckmoor Road BS3 2DD Change of use of part of ground floor for access into residential area and the first floor and second floor from office use (Use

Bedminster, Southville, Ashton

Class B1) to residential dwelling (Use Class C3). Granted

storey rear extension. Pending consideration

16 Parson Street BS3 5PT Conversion of business premises (class B1a) and flat above to three flats with alterations, including external stairs. Withdrawn

62 Foxcote Road BS3 2BZ Rear single and two storey extension. Pending consideration

18 Parson Street BS3 5PT Demolition of single storey rear building and garage and erection of two-storey rear extension; change of use from hot food takeaway, with flat above, and conversion to two 1-bed flats and a 2-bed maisonette. Granted subject to conditions 157 Coronation Road BS3 1RF Demolition of detached rear garage and erection of mews dwelling. Pending consideration 27 Dean Lane BS3 1DB Two storey dwelling in rear garden.

Pending consideration 10 Silbury Road BS3 2QD Two storey side and single

S

ice osp H er’s t P et

mar B ristol Gram l Schoo

157 Coronation Road BS3 1RF Demolition of detached rear, garage and erection of a self-contained mews dwelling.

Pending consideration 76 and 78 North Street, Bedminster BS3 1HJ Change of use of vacant lower ground floor rear storage area of No. 78 to one 1-bed apartment with access from 76 North Street.

Pending consideration 63 Mansfield Street BS3 5PS Two storey side extension.

Granted subject to conditions • The status of these applications may have changed since we went to press. Check for updates at planningonline.bristol.gov.uk

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Got a story or any other inquiry? Call Paul on 07811 766072 or email paul@southbristolvoice.co.uk

n YOUR COUNCILLORS

M

November 2016

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28

OST of my time in politics involves people who are complaining about something Charlie (frequently parking), Bolton moaning at other Green politicians, or Southville seeing something being cut. So it was cheering to go to a talk by Life Cycle during Healthy City Week. Life Cycle, in case you don’t know, is a Bristolbased cycling charity.

I know Life Cycle well – I worked for them for a number of years. I was always struck by what a fantastic group of people they are. The talk was about a project called Bike Minded, aimed at people with mental health issues. It revolves around doing all things cycling. Life Cycle say it brings the benefits of cycling to anyone in Bristol experiencing wellbeing issues.

A key part of this is just getting people out on cycle rides.

They go to all sorts of places, in

Southville

and out of the city. But it is also about getting cheap bikes to people in the first place. Life Cycle have a bike recycling project based at Horfield prison.

They also give people skills in bike maintenance; and offer them a secure, shared and positive experience.

They welcome anyone experiencing stress, anxiety, depression, or any condition that affects their wellbeing.

The project makes a real and positive difference. Some people have had their lives improved significantly. Even cycling in Bristol’s congested traffic is preferable (to me) to going by car. Being out in the countryside – well most of us know how uplifting this can be. Add to that being with a group of people who want to help, get given skills and confidence – well, its all good.

This is just one of a number of great projects they run. And they are all great. They make Bristol a better place. They make all our lives better. So Life Cycle, I salute you.

S

How to contact your councillor: p2

OME of you may have noticed that the council is trying to get your opinions on its Corporate Stephen Strategy 2017Clarke 2022. This is the Green budget for the Southville next five years’ spending. I know it sounds boring (and in many ways it is) but there are some really big changes in how the council manages and delivers its services, and this is your big chance to have some influence. The consultation document is at the web link below. Give your opinion or forever hold your peace, as they say.

The budget numbers can be confusing: there are lots of them but actually there are really only two that you need to know to understand what is about to happen. Firstly; central Government funding to the council will be reducing from £60m at the moment to zero by

2020/21; that’s right, a big fat zero. Secondly; there will be an estimated £92m budget gap in five years time.

We have already had years of cutting by the Tories and all the “efficiency savings” that can be made have already largely been made. What will happen in the next few years (unless the Government can be persuaded to change their minds) is that really essential services will be cut and the most vulnerable people in our society – people with learning difficulties, with dementia, the old and the sick – are going to suffer. Also leisure centres, art events and libraries will see large cuts coming their way.

What can you do? Protest!

Write to me, write to the mayor, to your MP, petition the council (it tells you how on the website), protest in any way you can to let the Government know that this is just not acceptable.

Also be clear about where the blame should be put: this Tory administration.

• bristol.gov.uk/corpstrategy

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November 2016

southbristolvoice

n YOUR COUNCILLORS

T

HE COUNCIL has published its annual public health report, which makes interesting reading. You can find it on the council website (address below) and it will give you detailed information about the area in which you live. The report is called Living Well for Longer – The Case for Prevention, and emphasises the need for the NHS, the council and the voluntary sector to work together to keep people fit and active in their communities.

The report clearly shows the inequality across the city with some surprising statistics for Southville and Bedminster, perhaps the legacy of the tobacco industry. The four groups of diseases which contribute to early death are cancer, heart disease and stroke, respiratory diseases and liver disease. Many of these conditions are seen as preventable, for example by health screening and supporting people to follow healthy lifestyles.

The council has launched a new website, LiveWell Bristol,

Mark Bradshaw Labour Bedminster

29

Bedminster

Celia Phipps Labour Bedminster

making it easier for people to find health advice and local services.

This was launched during Healthy Cities week and will help anyone looking for advice on local stop-smoking services, weight management, support with alcohol and general wellbeing.

We are lucky to have a Healthy Living pharmacy: you can find Bedminster Pharmacy on Cannon Street and the staff there will be able to advise you on a number of health issues. It’s not too late to have a flu vaccination.

W

alking is an excellent way to keep fit and stay healthy and costs nothing. Celia is part of

How to contact your councillor: p2

Bristol Walking Alliance, a volunteer group who are working with the council and other organisations such as Sustrans, Bristol Ramblers, Bristol Health Partners, Bristol Older People’s Forum and the neighbourhood partnerships. Greater Bedminster Community Partnership has linked up with the group to share both Let’s Walk Bedminster and our street scene activity.

If you wish to contact them or become a supporter, they will be happy to hear from you if you email supporters@ bristolwalkingalliance.org.uk

H

ealth and the place where you live are linked.

Housing remains our top priority and two council housing developments are now finished in Fishponds. As part of the new build programme, another 11 sites are under construction, which will provide a further 65 homes by May 2017.

Current home owners who are struggling to keep homes warm as the weather becomes colder

will benefit from contacting the Warm Home Discount Scheme: • gov.uk/the-warm-homediscount-scheme

T

here is still a chance to comment on the council’s Corporate Strategy and budget proposals. It’s online at bristol.gov.uk/corpstrategy; if you are not online, please ring 0117 922 2848 for a paper copy.

Your views on this do matter as you can help influence what the future looks like.

M

ark and I are always happy to hear your suggestions about how we can make our community better so why not drop us an email. We join Ashton Vale Hub when sessions are running at Ashton Vale Community Centre and drop in to Acta community theatre on the first Friday of the month between 10.30 and 11.30am, so look out for a notice through your door, or contact us direct.

• bristol.gov.uk

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November 2016

n HISTORY Tales from Arnos Vale cemetery Swept away: Alfred was one of hundreds

T

HIS month’s tale is frustratingly incomplete.

It’s the story of the life and tragically early death of a Victorian seaman.

Alfred Fairbrother gets only a passing mention in any written record during his 32-year life. We know when he was born, and where and how he died, in a cataclysmic storm in the Bristol Channel in 1872. But his death, coming among a tide of shipwrecks and disasters on the same day, merited only a few lines in the newspapers.

Even his inquest was reported in just a single paragraph. It’s a great shame to remember someone only for the manner of their death. So often in this series of articles it’s been hard to find out about the character of the person whose gravestone at Arnos Vale only hints at the hole they left in the family home.

In Alfred’s case, however, we

Merchant ships were the lifeblood of the Victorian economy – but they were the death of many of their seamen have a little more information, because his tragic death inspired a poem. Not a great work of art, certainly, and we don’t even know who wrote it, but it’s surely a mark that someone close to Alfred wanted him remembered long after he died.

A

lfred Robert Fairbrother was born in 1840 to Edward and Elizabeth Fairbrother in Ashton-under

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Lyme, Lancashire. His father was a boiler-maker; for reasons unknown the family moved to Bristol. The 1851 census shows Alfred, at 11 the oldest child, living with his parents, brother Edward, 3, and sister Sarah, 7.

They were one of two families – a total of nine people – living at 8 Crosby Row, Clifton Wood.

No. 8 does not survive but it was presumably a modest terraced dwelling like the surviving Victorian houses in the area.

Sarah is listed as a “scholar” but Alfred has already been put to work: occupation “errand boy”, which probably meant he was employed to fetch and carry, perhaps for one of the shops in the city centre.

From the Fairbrothers’ home on the hillside above the harbour, they would have seen a forest of masts and the constant clangour of one of the busiest ports in the kingdom. Britain in the mid-19th century was the wealthiest, most technically advanced country in the world, and its prosperity rested on its ships – not only the mightiest navy in the world but the thousands of merchant vessels which carried our industrial manufactures around the world and brought back to Bristol sugar, tobacco, wine, spirits and other riches.

Was this what tempted young Alfred away from his tiny wage and uncertain prospects as an errand boy to the excitement of a life at sea?

It’s a choice he certainly made – or was made for him – but we know nothing of the how, why or where. In 1854, when Alfred was 13, the Merchant Shipping Act enforced the registration of merchant vessels for the first time. This was intended to improve reliability and safety, partly though registering the tonnage of each ship, to prevent it being overloaded by unscrupulous owners.

Training became more and more rigorous. Alfred may have joined one of several training ships where teenage boys were taught the basic skills of seamanship. There were none in Bristol, but from 1861 there was an industrial training ship in Cardiff, and there may have been facilities there earlier. If Alfred was a youth prone to bad

Imposing: The marble gravestone where Alfred and his wife were re-interred by their son in 1934 behaviour, he might have been sent to one of the reformatory ships in Liverpool, where, if he survived five years of beatings, he could make a career in a merchant vessel or the fishing fleet.

One thing is clear: Alfred had ambition. Two of the few documents that survive are his certificates of qualification in the Merchant Service (as it was then known). In December 1862, under regulations laid down by the vital 1854 Merchant Shipping Act, he was awarded his Second Mate’s certificate.

The was a step up from being an ordinary seamen. “Mate” was not a chummy title but a qualification showing that Alfred had learned the mathematics of navigation, and was probably in charge of making plans for his ships’ route. The second mate was the third most senior officer in charge of a ship and had major responsibilities, making sure all charts were up to date and often plotting the course. He also needed a good knowledge of how to handle cargo and direct the crew, taking charge of lowering the anchor and other vital duties.

Alfred didn’t stop there. In June 1866 he won a further certificate making him a First Mate, meaning he could now command a merchant vessel subject only to the authority of the Captain. The first mate was in charge of cargo and deck operations and supervising the crew. He would also have stood

To advertise, contact sales@southbristolvoice.co.uk or Ruth on 07590 527664

November 2016

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n HISTORY Tales from Arnos Vale cemetery who died each year in service on the sea

A three-masted barque probably similar to the Gracie, which sank on December 9, 1872. A painting by George Gregory in 1892 of the barque Lady Blackwell. Painting owned by the Dibbs family of Sydney. watch on the bridge for his turn at command in concert with the second mate and the captain.

It all sounds very well regulated – shipshape, in fact.

But the reality was far from benign. The phrase “shipshape and Bristol fashion” was first recorded in the 1840s and referred to the high standards of neatness and stowing of cargo demanded of ships that docked at Bristol. The reason was that the River Avon has the second highest tidal range in the world, of 13m (43ft). Until the Floating Harbour was opened in 1809, every ship had to tie up at high tide and would then fall sideways on its keel when the water ebbed.

So everything had to be stowed properly, or there would be chaos.

Bristol ships also had to be especially well made to withstand the strain of this tidal fall on their timbers.

But we can be pretty sure that Bristol standards didn’t persist across the whole of the nation’s fleet. In fact, much of it was in a disgraceful state. Maritime writer and novelist Antoine Vanner reports that many ships were so rotten and worn out that they would simply break apart.

They were known to sailors as “coffin ships”. A seaman would often agree to a voyage without

having seen his vessel – or how heavily it was loaded. But once signed up he was legally obliged to serve – or face imprisonment with hard labour for 12 weeks.

In the 1850s a prison inspector reported that three out of four prisoners held in jails in the South West were seamen who had refused to serve on vessels they believed were unseaworthy or undermanned.

We don’t know the circumstances in which Alfred Fairbrother sailed – whether his ship was overladen or undercrewed. We do know that conditions for British seamen were often terrible, and worse than those of ships from other nations (see panel overleaf).

But it was not just a tough job in uncomfortable surroundings: it was also a deadly occupation to an extent that would not be accepted today. In 1873-74, the year after Alfred died, 411 ships sank around the British coast with the loss of 506 lives, according to Vanner. Many were wrecked not by storms or bad seamanship but because they were so weak they broke up.

T

he weather in the Bristol Channel on the night of Sunday December 8, 1872, was, however, so vicious and

exceptional that even wellmaintained ships could not be certain to survive it. All hands were lost on the brig Wallace when she turned over and quickly sank. A barque, or cargo sailing ship, from Nova Scotia in Canada was driven by the wind across the path of another ship and also sank, with the death of all on board.

A naval cutter called Mystery set off from the small island of Flat Holm, near Weston-superMare, heading for the fort at Brean Down. The deepening gale soon forced her to seek shelter

and heading across the Channel she got behind Penarth Head, south of Cardiff, but then grounded and lost her small boat.

Later she refloated but lost her anchor then drifted, out of control, and hit the mizzen boom of the schooner John Pearce, tearing off Mystery’s mast and some of her deck.

As the cutter began to fill with water, a boat was launchd from the John Pearce and threw a rope to the navy men. They were able to pull alongside the John Pearce and 12 men jumped across.

But the remaining two fell between the vessels into the sea.

Richard Johns, mate of the John Pearce, straightaway pulled his small boat between the two large vessels, at great danger, and rescued them. For his bravery Johns was given the RNLI Silver Medal.

The strength of the storm was “unexampled,” wrote the Cardiff Times, summing up the damage.

“Circumstances have happened in Cardiff alone which almost transcend belief,” it said, citing a woman crossing St Mary Street lifted by the wind and carried 12 yards. A man trying to post a letter at Cardiff Post Office fought the wind for five minutes before reaching the post box – when he was flung in the air and slammed across the road.

Churchgoers could not hear the services, the wind was so loud, and they had to dodge flying roof tiles and other debris as they struggled home.

In Bristol there was similar Continued on page 32

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n HISTORY

As the ships collided, one man was thrown onto the deck of the other – the Gracie’s lone survivor Continued from page 31 destruction, with many buildings damaged. There was disaster for the Totterdown engineer William Brock, after whom the new bridge to the arena has recently been named: the factory of his firm, Brock and Bruce, next to Totterdown basin, was needed for the expansion of Temple Meads station, and a new factory had been erected opposite the station. On the night of the gale it was almost complete, but lacked windows. All appeared well until four days after the gale, when at 6am a sudden crash signalled the collapse of the roof and all three floors of the vast, 120ft building.

The latest methods of construction using concrete beams were not enough to save it. Luckily no one was inside.

S

November 2016

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32

o what of Alfred? There were no witnesses to his death; but his family had the small consolation that his was the only body recovered from his ship.

Alfred was chief mate on the barque Gracie, a Canadian ship with a multinational crew which carried timber across the Atlantic.

An inquest held in Westonsuper-Mare, close to where his body was found, heard that he had left his Bristol home to join the ship at Sharpness Point.

His captain, Alfred Johnson, was in Cardiff, where he left the Windsor Hotel at 3pm to board the Gracie.

The Cardiff Times reported what was told by the sole crew member to survive. Gracie was carrying ballast – a dead weight to make her handle better before she picked up her timber cargo in Canada. When the gale picked up, she sheltered with many other ships behind Penarth Head.

But the anchor chain broke, and the sailing ship drifted out of control into the Channel and on to the Cardiff Sands.

Her ballast shifted, making her unstable, and the storm tore her off the sands and onto the bows of a Norwegian ship, the

Tales from Arnos Vale cemetery

Tribute: An unknown poet – a relative? – wrote this appreciation of Alfred, “generous, true and brave” Gefle. The Gracie’s side was stoved in and she almost turned over. But she did not; and with amazing luck Marcius Cook, 20, an American seaman who was climbing her rigging, was thrown onto the deck of the Gefle.

It was his salvation. The Gracie broke free from the Norwegian ship but was filling with water. Caught by a gust, she was driven clear but then turned over and instantly sank. Nothing more was seen of the Grace or her 10 remaining crew until the next day. when some fishermen on Birnbeck Island, Weston, saw floating wreckage. They launched

a boat and found part of the poop deck of the Gracie with the body of Alfred Fairbrother on top.

But was he dead? The inquest was told that the body was warm.

But it took two hours for medical assistance to arrive, and when it did Alfred was pronounced expired. “A verdict of ‘Found dead on a portion of wreck in Sandy Bay was returned’,” reported the Western Daily Press tersely, adding: “Deceased leaves a widow and three young children to mourn their loss.”

Alfred’s death was one of scores that night. He received the dignity of a swift inquest because

his body had been found quickly.

It’s hard to piece together a picture from the newspaper reports, as several ships were simply missing, but many were lost or severely damaged by the gale. The Penarth lifeboat rescued five from the Eleanor of Quebec, and reported that “during the whole of the night signals of distress were continually being shown.”

An Austrian and an Italian ship lost their anchors and were badly damaged. Two barques, one French, became waterlogged and were abandoned, their crews rescued by other ships and

A wretched life for the British sailor

T

HE WRITER, artist and explorer Frederick Whymper noted that even on many “superior vessels” in the 1870s the seaman “may, and often does, wade to his bunk through water, and the forecastle is too often a miserable hole, full of dirt and filth, where the men are packed like herrings.”

Says maritime expert Antoine Vanner: “Whymper was particularly critical of the food, mainly ‘salt horse’ and hard biscuit of the most inferior type. Even at

this late stage scurvy was still often a problem, not least because the lime-juice that should have prevented it was frequently grossly adulterated. Whymper claimed that there was little or no scurvy in the Russian and French merchant navies.”

Whymper went to London’s West India Docks, and found, according to Vanner, that most vessels were “small, with wretched accommodation, badly manned, provisions indifferent in quality and deficient in quantity”. Cases

Exposed: Frederick Whymper showed how badly seamen were treated occurred on “first-class ships” in which “seamen’s’ chests were black from the gas which rises from the cargo, and which smells like sewage, which is especially the case in sugar ships.”

• dawlishchronicles.com

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November 2016

southbristolvoice

n HISTORY

33

Tales from Arnos Vale cemetery

‘Dear brother, we thy early death deplore, Thy cheerful voice will be heard no more’ brought to Bristol. The crew of another barque was rescued off Swansea by the Mumbles lifeboat.

It was estimated that 400 vessels sheltered from the storm in the Penarth Roads, but by the morning only half were still there, many of them dismasted.

“Many of them had broken from their moorings and driven up the Channel, and some had run ashore on the English and Welsh coasts to prevent entire loss,” said the Cardiff Times.

Ships were not safe even in Cardiff Dock; many were pulled from their moorings. “The steamship Clifford took the iron mooring ring away with her, and ran foul of several other vessels,” said the Cardiff Times, listing scores of ships badly damaged. In a report obviously written rapidly as news came in, we learn that the Eleanor, mentioned in a separate report for the lifeboat rescue of her crew, had been the subject of a court case a week before and had been recorded as a “wrecked vessel”. First the Eleanor was stated to have run ashore on Cardiff Sands; then, several lines further on, we learn it had been towed into harbour.

Was the Eleanor a rotten or overladen “coffin ship”? The reforms of Bristol-born Samuel Plimsoll, who fought for years to outlaw overladen vessels, would not take effect for several years (we’ll tell his story another time).

A

t the time of his death Alfred had been living with his wife Elizabeth at 2 Greenway Crescent, Bedminster, a road that no longer survives – was it near Greenway Bush Lane? They had married in 1867 in Clifton. The next year their daughter Mary was born, followed by a son, Alfred, in 1870. When the 1871 census was taken Elizabeth and the children were living on her parents’ farm at Rodford, Westerleigh, to the north of Bristol.

A third child, Arthur, was born in Bedminster in June 1872; he would never get to know his father,

Dedicated: Alfred was a First Mate, enabling him to command a ship who was dead by Christmas that year.

In 1881 the widow Elizabeth was living at 72 St Thomas Street, Redcliffe, working as a dressmaker to support her children. Did she receive any compensation for her husband’s death?

Her son Edward was later apprenticed as a jeweller in Worcester; Arthur emigrated to South Africa but later returned; daughter Mary became a teacher.

In 1901 Elizabeth was living in Downend with Arthur and his wife and daughter; by 1911 she had moved in with Mary and her husband and two daughters at a different house in Downend. She died in 1914 and was buried in Wick. In 1934 her son Arthur had her reinterred, to be with Alfred in Arnos Vale.

his loved ones when he was at sea.

Alfred, the upstanding ship’s officer, was “generous, true and brave” and “oft risked” his life to save his fellows.

The family was obviously grateful that they had a body to mourn over, unlike so many others: “One bitter dreg was taken from our cup, That thy wrecked body was not swallowed up.”

The poet assures us that religion is a comfort to the grieving family, although “many eyes were dim with gushing tears For thee, and one that to thy heart was dear” (presumably Elizabeth).

“The ways of Him who rules the raging winds, Mysterious seems to our dark finite minds”, says ML, registering a very Victorian acceptance that death was for many part of God’s mysterious plan.

The family have faith Alfred didn’t die alone; though “no earthly friend was near”, “thy mother’s God was there, To bend o’er thee and hear thy dying prayer.

“Dear brother, although gone, thy memory’s dear,” says the poet. Classic poetry it isn’t; but it’s a touching tribute to a man we’d otherwise hardly know.

W

e are left with a life of scant facts – and with the poem, Lines Suggested on the Death of A R Fairbrother, published in an unknown newspaper 12 days after the storm. Signed “ML”, it could be by one of Alfred’s brothers-in-law, for Elizabeth’s maiden name was Lidyard.

At any rate, the author calls Alfred “brother”, and was obviously close to him. “Dear brother, we thy early death deplore, Thy cheerful voice will here be heard no more,” it begins.

Alfred used his “manhood’s strength, striving with all thy might” to build a home for his family, writes the poet, who says Alfred’s thoughts were often with

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n YOUR MP

35

KARIN SMYTH Labour MP for Bristol South

Problem debts are not going to disappear before Christmas

W

HETHER meeting household bills and credit commitments troubles you personally or not, everyone knows people who struggle with debt. We’re unlikely to know the extent of the problem, because it’s often a hidden one.

But it’s very common in South Bristol.

One in five adults here is classed as overindebted, well above the national average.

This means people who find meeting payments a heavy burden, often falling behind in recent months.

It can of course feel easier not to face up to it. Even if you haven’t done so yourself, chances are you know someone who’s chosen instead to re-mortgage or take another credit card.

Even if you do want to tackle debts, it can

be hard to know where to turn. Some people wrongly think getting advice will cost money.

It means only 17 per cent of over-indebted people seek help.

So 83 per cent - over 13,000 people in South Bristol – do nothing. Identifying where they are and how to reach them is a major challenge.

Research shows a number of factors that are linked with debt problems. If a community has high levels of rented housing, for example, larger families, and low incomes, there’s a tendency towards higher debt levels.

These factors won’t cause debt, but can usefully indicate how and where support should be targeted: debt advisers need to forge partnerships with housing associations, for example.

As a local MP I think it’s important to use my position to bring together those that can reach out proactively to provide advice which could turn out to be life-changing. It’s why I’m working with Money Advice Service, last month calling a special meeting of debt advisers, housing associations and organisations to which residents end up owing money, to find and share ways to encourage more local residents to get quality advice.

I’ve also raised the issue in Parliament but was disappointed that the Government’s position appears to hand responsibility squarely to voluntary agencies, rather than taking any itself. Don’t get me wrong: the voluntary sector does a terrific job advising people who approach them, but if we’re to get people to come forward for help a joined-up government strategy can only help.

With Christmas coming, the issue won’t go away soon, so I’ll be keeping on top of it in the months ahead. As ever I welcome Voice readers’ views. You can email me at karin. smyth.mp@parliament.uk or write to The House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA.

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southbristolvoice

36

November 2016

n WHAT’S ON Tuesday October 25 n The Weir Tobacco Factory.

By Conor McPherson, coproduced with Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre. In remote rural Ireland, Brendan’s bar is a shelter and solace for lonely souls. A chilling contemporary classic, directed by Rachel O’Riordan.

Until November 5. Tickets £16 and £13. BSL interpreted performance on November 2.

• tobaccofactorytheatres.com Thursday November 3 n After school club Windmill Hill City Farm, every Thursday during term time 3.45-5.15pm.

Outdoor fun and fresh air for six to nine year-olds with pizza making, feeding and putting the animals to bed, crafts, shelter and fire building. Drink and snack provided. £5. Details: 0117 963 3252 or email julie.thorpe@ windmillhillcityfarm.org.uk • windmillhillcityfarm.org.uk n Blitzkrieg City + Scout Killers + Daily Thompson Thunderbolt, Bath Road, Totterdown, 7-11pm. Blitzkrieg City are back after line-up changes and a new EP while Scout Killers are a five-piece alternative indie rock outfit with a powerful sound. £5 • thethunderbolt.net Saturday November 5 n Science for Kids Zion Bristol, Bishopsworth Road. Join Bill Bailey (no, not that one) from 10.30-11.30am for a fascinating and fun journey into science, this time with a fireworks theme! For ages 4+ but all ages welcome, £2 per child, cafe open till 1pm.

• zionbristol.co.uk n Fleetwood Bac The Tunnels, Temple Meads. Billed as the world’s first and best Fleetwood Mac Tribute Band, endorsed by Mick Fleetwood himself, the only Mac tribute band to authentically replicate the classic Rumours line-up. 7.30pm, £10.

• thetunnelsbristol.co.uk n Go, Go Children 60s soul, funk and r’n’b classics played on original vinyl. Fiddlers club, Willway Street, Bedminster. £5, 8pm-2am.

• fiddlers.co.uk Monday November 7 n Farm Adventurers Stay and Play Every Monday 9.30-11.30am at Windmill Hill City Farm. Outdoor fun at the farm for under-fives and their parents or carers with nature play, animal care, music and crafts. Drop-in, but places are limited. £5 per family (up to two

Incredible feats kept us rapt the whole time REVIEW Berlin Continental Circus, Durdham Downs THE BERLIN Continental Circus is a reasonably priced, well paced and good-natured night out for all of the family.

In the large performance tent, a live band sit above the entrance to the main ring. The show is a series of short performances from a variety of traditional acts, ranging from trapeze and rope artists to contortionists, strong men to children), £1 for any additional children (max 3 children per family).

• windmillhillcityfarm.org.uk n Secrets of Storytelling Tobacco Factory theatre. Part of the Take It On series of skills classes for ages 8-11, 4.155.45pm. £6 (limited places so book in advance).

• tobaccofactorytheatres.com n Argentine tango beginners course at Saltcellar, Totterdown Baptist Church, Wells Road, Totterdown; entrance off Cemetery Road. Every Monday 6.30-7.15pm, practice until 7.30pm. £7 per class on the door or £30 for six. Email info@ thetangoroom.co.uk • thetangoroom.co.uk n VPAG meeting for those concerned about issues affecting Victoria Park. The Bowling Club, 7.30pm, everyone welcome.

• vpag.org.uk

n Coulrophobia Tobacco Factory theatre. Two clowns trapped in a cardboard world.

They know something sinister is afoot. Join Bristol’s own Pickled Image puppetry company on a hysterical and sometimes terrifying quest for freedom.

(Coulrophobia is a fear of clowns.) Over 16s only: contains nudity. 8pm; £13 and £9.

• tobaccofactorytheatres.com

jugglers. Each act is selfcontained with a clown performing characterful tricks between acts to join them up (he was my favourite). This format meant that our young children

were mesmerised for the entire show. However it did mean that the feats of skill or strength were the star of the show, not the performers; you just didn’t get to know them.

The second half of the show was faster paced than the first, starting with a laser act and ending with an incredible, slow motion dance from two incredibly strong men. At the end we got to see all of the performers, each with a flag indicating their nationality.

Overall, it was great for our young children with some fantastic demonstrations of human concentration, strength, and skill.

David Drury

Thursday November 10 n Martin Turner, exWishbone Ash The Tunnels, Temple Meads. An evening of classic Wishbone Ash music from Martin Turner, the lead vocalist and key creative force on all the band’s definitive album releases.

7.30pm, £12.50.

• thetunnelsbristol.co.uk Friday November 11 n The Internet and Family History Knowle & Totterdown History Society presents Bob Lawrence, of Bristol & Bath Family History Society, who will describe how the internet has changed the search for our ancestors. 7.30pm, Redcatch community centre, Redcatch Road, Knowle. Members £1.50, visitors £3.

• knowleandtotterdownhistory. org.uk n Seann Walsh: One For the Road Comedy Box at the Tobacco Factory theatre. The Lie-in King returns. “However dishevelled he may be, the Foster’s Comedy Award nominee is one of the best comics in the country.” Fresh from C4’s Virtually Famous and a regular on ITV’s Play To The Whistle. £15.50, 8pm.

• comedybox.co.uk Saturday November 12 n Christmas Bazaar Totterdown Methodist church, Bushy Park, Totterdown, from 10am-3pm. Seasonal stalls including gifts, cakes, pickles, refreshments, home cooked lunches, Asian food, home made cakes and jams. Raffles and games.

• southbristolmc.org.uk

n Tim Brine & Sue Franklin Saltcellar Folk Club, Totterdown Baptist Church, Wells Road, Totterdown; Entrance off Cemetery Road. “A return of this popular duo who play guitar, mandolin and recorder to accompany their excellent vocals.” 7.30pm, £5.

• saltcellarfolk.org.uk n Shappi Khorsandi: Oh My Country Tobacco factory theatre. “Shappi is celebrating the 40th anniversary of her arrival in Britain. She’s reclaiming patriotism, sending a love letter to her adopted land.” Star of Live At The Apollo, Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, and more, she’s also president of the British Humanist society. £15.50, 8pm.

• comedybox.co.uk Monday November 14 n Totterdown Gardening Club in Totterdown Square.

Volunteers needed to clear the raised beds near Tesco, plant some bulbs and aAlliums for the spring. 11.45 am-1pm followed by group lunch. Please bring gloves and gardening tools.

• tresa.org.uk Wednesday November 16 n Black Mountain The Vancouver band visit Fiddlers as one of only four UK dates.

Fiddlers club, Willway Street, Bedminster. £5, 7.30pm-1am.

• fiddlers.co.uk Friday November 18 n Front Room Arts Trail Totterdown. Also on Saturday and Sunday. See page 4 • frontroom.org.uk n Angie Belcher’s Comedy Depot Zion Bristol, Bishopsworth

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November 2016

southbristolvoice

37

n WHAT’S ON BONFIRES AND FIREWORKS Local events headed in purple Wednesday November 2 n Inns Court Centre Marshall Walk, Knowle. Food and fireworks: homemade food from 2.30pm plus cookery demos, tea and cakes. Fireworks 6pm. Children’s activities, bouncy castle, bric a brac. 0117 910 5200 or email sara@ediblebristol.org.uk Friday November 4 n Knowle Cricket Club Broad Walk, Knowle. Gates open 4.30pm, fireworks 6.30pm.

Food & drink available. No sparklers. Adults £5, children £3, family (2+2) £12. n Downend Round Table King George V playing fields, Sutherland Avenue. Bristol’s biggest bonfire event with two firework displays – children’s 6.30pm and main show 8pm.

Gates 5.30pm. No sparklers.

Live acts, bar, burgers, pulled pork, sweets, candy floss. Tickets £6 adult and £5 child on gate; in advance from traders or website.

• downendrt.co.uk/fireworks

n Cleve RFC The Hayfields, Cossham Street, Mangotsfield BS16 9EN. Gates 6pm, fireworks 8pm. Funfair, food, stalls and bar. Adults £6, children £3.50, family 2+2 £15.

0117 957 5775, email enquiries@ cleverfc.co.uk Saturday November 5 n Victoria Park Bonfire, no fireworks. Organised

by VPAG. Volunteers build the bonfire from 3pm, Guy Fawkes judging 6pm, fire lit at 6.15pm.

Hot dog stall and bar. Free.

• vpag.org.uk n Compass Point School South Street, Bedminster. Gates open 6pm, fireworks at 7pm.

Tickets £10 for a family of up to 5 people. Hot food, drinks, entertainment. 0117 377 2340 • compasspoint.bristol.sch.uk n Hungerford Community Centre, Brislington Hungerford Community Centre and Social Club, Hungerford Road, Brislington BS4 5EX. Small firework display with sparklers, barbecue and bar. Free entry. n St Werburghs City Farm Watercress Road, Bristol BS2 9YJ. 3-8pm. Fireworks after dark. Adults £5, under 12s free.

Free glowsticks. 0117 942 8241.

• swcityfarm.co.uk n Fireworks To Music at Avon Valley Country Park Pixash Lane, Bath Road, Keynsham BS31 1TP. 5.30-9.30pm. Display at 7.30pm.

Funfair, food and bar. Tickets £2 in advance. Parking £12.50 car up to 5 seats, £20 for 6 seats+.

• avonvalley.co.uk n Canford Park Canford Lane, Westbury on Trym, BS9 3NX Gates open 6pm, display at 7pm.

Presented by Bristol Round Table and Clifton Rotary Club.

Tickets: £5, under 3s free. n Puxton Park Puxton Park, Cowslip Lane, Hewish, Weston-

super-Mare. Gates open at 5pm, fireworks at 7pm. Tickets in advance only: £6 (adults and children). 01934 523500.

• puxton.co.uk/Events n Thornbury Round Table Mundy playing fields, Thornbury BS35 2AE. Gates 5.30pm.

• mythornbury.co.uk n Winterbourne Scouts Sunny Acres Farm, Winterbourne BS36 1QL. Gates open at 5.30pm. Bonfire lit 6pm, fireworks 7pm. Barbecue. £4 adults, £3 under 15s. No parking at the venue. 1st Winterbourne (St Michael’s) Scouts. 01454 775024 or email winterbournesmgsl@ cotswoldedgescouts.org.uk n Bishop Road School School Field, off Bishop Road, Bishopston BS7 8LQ. 5pm.

Twitter: @BishRdFireworks • bishoproad.bristol.sch.uk Sunday November 6 n Bradley Stoke Town Council Jubilee Centre, Savages Wood Road, Bradley Stoke. Gates open 4.30pm, hot food from 4.45pm, fireworks 6pm. No alcohol on site and no sparklers. Park in Willow Brook Centre. Free entry.

• bradleystoke.gov.uk

Road. Headlined by charming West Country storyteller Cerys Nelmes with award-winning Damian Kingsley, dependably hilarious Radio Wales regular Sarah Bridgeman, Funny Women finalist Janet Garner and charming Welsh comedian Drew Taylor. £5, 7.30pm.

• zionbristol.co.uk n Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Tobacco Factory. This show sold out a run in Bristol in April; now it’s back after a UK tour. The average person will speak 123 billion words in a lifetime. But what if we’re forced to say less? This taut two-hander is about what we say and how we say it. £12 and £8; 8pm; also on November 19.

• tobaccofactorytheatres.com n Nish Kumar: Actions Speak Louder Than Words A comedy show about history, democracy and capitalism from the Radio 4 favourite, as seen on Live at the Apollo & Have I Got News For You. Comedy Box at the Hen & Chicken, North Street, Southville. 8.30pm, £14.

• comedybox.co.uk Saturday November 19 n Christmas Fayre Knowle Methodist church, Redcatch

Road, Knowle. 10am-2pm • southbristolmc.org.uk Monday November 21 n Transport issues in Bedminster Planning for the future inaugural meeting of the new Greater Bedminster Community Partnership Transport sub-group. 7pm, Acta theatre, Gladstone Street, Bedminster.

Tuesday November 22 n 20/20 Visions exhibition preview, 6-8pm, Knowle West Media Centre, Leinster Avenue, Knowle. “Camera technology is now so cheap and pervasive that taking a photograph no longer holds an intrinsic value.

As part of our 20th anniversary celebrations, we’ve invited 20 photographers who have known Knowle West Media Centre through the years to reflect on how photography has changed over the past two decades.”

Exhibition open November 23 to February 28, 2017.

• kwmc20.eventbrite.co.uk Thursday November 24 n John Otway Big Band + The Worried Men Thunderbolt, Bath Road, Totterdown, 7.30-11.30pm, £12. John “Two Hits” Otway returns to the

Thunderbolt without Wild Willy Barrett; the Worried Men have supported names such as Wilko Johnson and Nine Below Zero.

• thethunderbolt.net Friday November 25 n Broken Biscuits Tobacco Factory theatre. Three uncool kids in a garden shed plot their transformation through the power of song. New play from Tom Wells, author of Jumpers for Goalposts. Also on November 26. 8pm, £14 and £10.

• tobaccofactorytheatres.com n Quiz and supper night Windmill hill community centre, Vivian Street. Last Friday of every month, 8.30pm-late.

• whca.org.uk n Nathan Caton: Straight Outta Middlesex Comedy Box at the Hen & Chicken, North Street, Southville. “Laidback, on-the-nose material, chopping down fools of all colours, both in day-to-day life and in the media,” says the Guardian. 8.30pm, £12.

• comedybox.co.uk Saturday November 26 n Children’s stories, songs, crafts and costume-making with BraveBoldDrama at Ashton Vale Community Centre, Risdale Road, 10-12noon. Free as part of

the Ashton Vale Hub. • brave-bold-drama.co.uk n Christmas Fair Bedminster Methodist church, British Road, Bedminster. 11am- 2pm.

Stalls, refreshments and Father Christmas, in aid of the Jessie May Trust and church funds.

• southbristolmc.org.uk n The Monochrome Set + The Peerless Pirates Thunderbolt, Bath Road, Totterdown, 7.30-11.30pm. £12 and £10. The Monochrome Set formed with Adam Ant as a member in 1976, then became a staple of the post-punk circuit.

They reformed in 2010 and have since released two albums.

• thethunderbolt.net n Doreen Doreen Bristol’s devoted crowd-pleasers return to the Fiddlers club, Willway Street, Bedminster. £8 advance, £10 on door, 8pm-2am.

• fiddlers.co.uk Saturday December 3 n Christmas Bazaar St Martin’s Community Hall, St Martin’s Road, Knowle. With Father Christmas in his grotto, and stalls including needlework, pickles, toys, plants and grand prize raffle. Refreshments, hot food and home-made cakes.

Got a story or any other inquiry? Call Paul on 07811 766072 or email paul@southbristolvoice.co.uk

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39

n ARTS Stories of the Bristol seafarers IN BRISTOL, you are never far from the sea, and many families have a connection with a maritime life. Now Acta theatre, famous for creating drama out of real experiences, has made a show, Sailor’s Tales, about local people’s lives at sea.

The evening is built on the

recollections of people from Avonmouth and North Bristol like Pat Wheeler, who was married to a Merchant Navy man who was once on a ship that ran out of every food except corned beef – which he hated!

Pat worked her way up from being a cleaner to a Customs officer, where he learned of the dodges that the dockers used to smuggle goods out of the docks, from cutting out secret compartments inter cars to

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