#Bristol Balloon Fiesta, Rubbish & ‘Liveable Neighbourhoods’: The Very Latest In Hot Air From This City.🎈

A look at the latest Bristol news: How Bristol City Council's 'bold visions' for a new traffic scheme and the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood trial are leaving residents with one hell of a stink!

(image: BBC)

The Bristol Balloon Fiesta is back! For one glorious weekend, our city's hot air is put to good use, soaring gracefully over the Suspension Bridge in a spectacle of colour and physics. It’s a genuinely uplifting sight. The remaining 51 weeks of the year, however, the only place to find hot air in this city is by sitting in on a Bristol City Council meeting. The upside? Their festival of bloviating on everything from recycling policies to parking fines is completely free and, even better, it's indoors.

But what the Fiesta really signals is a more chilling phenomenon. The gentle shift in the air temperature means that summer is officially done, and the long, slow crawl towards Christmas has begun. Yes, it's time to start counting down the 138 shopping days left until the annual, spectacular, and entirely legal mugging of our collective wallets. We're talking about Jesus's birthday, of course. Who's he, by the way? Someone, perhaps, to believe in just like I believe in the local council. But with no miracles—like a perfectly balanced budget or a pot-hole-free road—coming from either direction, I suppose I'd best move on.

With all of this in mind, it's little wonder that the big names in retail are already ahead of the game. While us poor dopes are still trying to find a matching pair of socks, the retail summer, with its discounted flip-flops and half-price BBQ grills, is pretty much done and dusted. As we speak, lorry loads of fake blood, masks, and other spooky stuff are already making their journeys down numerous motorways towards a retailer near you for Halloween. You know, just like a current bicycle-riding, delivery person likes to look, but without the fake blood and cobwebs? No sooner have they offloaded it'll be time for Bonfire Night stock—minus, you know, what Guy Fawkes actually attempted to blow up Parliament with. Though, don't hold your breath for that particular explosive, as the annual summer riots are just getting underway.

The Unliveable Neighbourhood.

So, back here in Bristol, our Green, nay, evergreen council, and you know who, Cllr Ed Plowden—or L Pondweed (anagram) to his many fans on this blog—has managed to find himself with even more rubbish to report. And this time, it's personal!

You see, we’re back to the 'Liveable/Unliveable Neighbourhoods scam', or as it's officially known, the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood trial. A scheme so forward-thinking that it appears to have forgotten about the most basic of human necessities: waste disposal. For around 70 residents of a block of flats in the middle of it all, recycling and food waste hasn’t been collected for four, yes, FOUR whole months. This is a top story in Bristol news. So much for a greener city. The only green thing they'll be seeing is the mould growing on their uncollected leftovers.

But who, in the esteemed position of Cllr Pondweed, wouldn't pass the buck? He’s found a culprit! No, not the council's brilliant idea of installing a series of planters, or modal filters, that blocked the easy route for the recycling lorries, but the local residents themselves. According to the good councillor, it was their badly parked cars on the now-only-access side streets that stopped the lorries. Who’d have thought it! It’s a genius defence. You install a wall in the middle of a road as part of a new traffic scheme, and when someone finds the newly diverted route difficult, it's their fault for not parking politely enough.

The council and Bristol Waste Company are now "working at pace" to sort out a solution. You know, like the kind of pace a tortoise might use while carrying a bin bag. After four months of a communal waste store smelling so ripe that residents couldn’t open their windows, they’re finally getting around to it. The regular waste crews, to their credit, eventually figured it out, but the food waste and recycling teams found that having to actually walk a bit or, heaven forbid, reverse for 100 metres, was just a "challenge." This is a significant part of the ongoing Bristol rubbish collection issues.

Plowden's official statement, delivered with the kind of gravitas you'd expect from a man who's just discovered fire, apologised and offered assurances that they are "working at pace" to find a solution. He also reminded us all that the "trial period for the scheme allows us to monitor and assess the effects... and rectify any immediate issues." Adding to this, “Even though I’m a useless twot who knows nothing about running this department, I’m Doing my best.” Wow, did he really say this? Absolutely NOT! I just made it up for added comedic effect. Meanwhile………

Immediate issues? Four months of festering food waste? That’s not an immediate issue; that’s a new biological weapon. The air has become so toxic that Bonfire Night in November could produce a whole new outcome, meaning, and even change the course of history when gunpowder and noxious gases meet. All thanks to the council "working at pace." The only trial being conducted here is seeing how long a community can last before their "Liveable Neighbourhood" becomes an unliveable stink bomb. You have to hand it to them; it's a bold vision that this council needs a Labrador and a white stick to navigate through.

The Final Word.

So, as the last of the hot air from the Bristol Balloon Fiesta drifts away, we’re left to contemplate the rest of the year. The relentless retail clock is ticking down to Christmas, the government is poised to deliver another budget of imaginative cruelty, and our local council is still navigating its own bold visions with a Labrador and a white stick. The seasons may change and the days may grow shorter, but one thing remains utterly constant: in this city, there’s always a new source of hot air just waiting to be inflated.

That said, we'll be back on a more serious note tomorrow to talk about the planned national migrant protests, which I referred to here: The Bristol Protests: Why The Labels. Come back tomorrow!