Bristol: The Bricklayer versus the Chippy.

Bristol City Council, modal filters, and the Liveable Neighbourhood nobody asked for.

May 14, 2026

A Bristol City Council document headed Strategic Habitation Implementation Targets pinned to a wall. On top of the document sits a copy of Feng Shui By Numbers showing fish and chips on the cover, with a brass compass placed on top. The compass needle points east. A red road marking is visible at the bottom of the frame. Image relates to Bristol City Council's East Bristol and South Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood schemes and modal filters programme-thealmightygob.com

[Bristol City Council — Strategic Habitation Implementation Targets, Phase One: Colour Coordination. The complete framework for the East Bristol and South Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood schemes. Should have hired the consultant.]

Picture the scene. A private chamber at City Hall. Tony Dyer and Ed Plowden, seated at a table with a mood board, a compass from Wilko, and a copy of Feng Shui By Numbers — the instruction book. Probably 50p from the Gloucester Road Oxfam.

The consultant from Guangzhou would have cost considerably more than 50p.

Bristol and Guangzhou have been sister cities since 2001. When you need someone who genuinely understands the ancient art of harmonising urban energy flow, you know where to look. However, budget restraints being what they are — and Bristol City Council‘s budget restraints being what they very much are — the flight, the hotel, the day rate, and the inevitable PowerPoint surcharge were binned.

Tony Dyer had the instruction book. Ed Plowden had the compass. A compass from Wilko, as it happens — back when Wilko still existed.

Even Wilko couldn’t sustain itself.

The compass was purchased, the instruction book was open, and the mood board was ready. How hard could it be? Surely only painting by numbers would prove harder than this. Wouldn’t it?

All of this could have been avoided if they’d just hired the consultant.

The first thing Feng Shui By Numbers will tell you, somewhere around page one, is that green is the colour of growth, abundance, healing, and the wood element. It belongs to the East. Tony Dyer read that and nodded. Green. East. Obviously.

The scheme had begun under Labour. Tony Dyer inherited it, embraced it, and made it entirely his own. Which is why the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood arrived first — Barton Hill, Redfield, St George — the compass pointing east, the mood board covered in green, the ancient wisdom being followed to the letter.

Except Feng Shui By Numbers is quite specific about red. Avoid red in areas of passage. Hallways, for instance. Roads, for instance. Tony Dyer painted the roads red anyway. Page one, and already off-script.

The consultant from Guangzhou, had he been in the room, would have said something at this point. He was not in the room. He was in Guangzhou, unaware that Bristol was doing his job with a 50p instruction book and a compass from a shop that couldn’t sustain itself. The roads stayed red. The chi, as any qualified practitioner could have predicted, remained thoroughly blocked.

The invoice — “Strategic Habitation Implementation Targets, Phase One: Colour Coordination” — was absorbed into the transport budget without apparent irony. S.H.I.T., Phase One. The instruction book had cost 50p. The modal filters alone had cost considerably more.

Should have hired the consultant.

Then came the installation. Planters. Bus gates. Modal filters. The full furniture rearrangement package, delivered to the streets of Barton Hill at three in the morning with dozens of Avon and Somerset Police officers in attendance — sixty, one resident told the subsequent committee hearing, though nobody in authority confirmed the number.

In Chinese numerology — had anyone reached that chapter of Feng Shui By Numbers — 6 means smooth flow and well-being. Zero doubles it. The headcount, at least, was numerologically immaculate. And three in the morning? In Feng Shui, three means birth, life, and good fortune. The perfect hour to bring a neighbourhood into being. Whether the neighbourhood agreed is another matter.

The neighbourhood, having not been issued with its own copy of the instruction book, responded by lying in the road.

Residents spray-painted the cameras. Someone tagged the signs on Avonvale Road with “No poor people allowed.” The council cleaned it up and pressed ahead. The relevant chapter on community harmony was presumably the one Tony Dyer had skipped.

Should have hired the consultant.

Bristol was not the first city to try this without reading the manual properly. And Bristol was not the first to pay for it.

Croydon tried it — a High Court judge ruled the schemes unlawful, finding the real purpose was collecting fines, not managing traffic. Newcastle tried it — three Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes scrapped in under a year when the traffic simply moved streets and cycling fell below pre-trial levels. Ealing tried it — seven schemes gone, no measurable change in air quality in any of them.

The map of failure was already drawn. Bristol City Council read it, looked at the instruction book, and pressed on regardless. Clearly.

The council has data showing internal road traffic fell inside the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood. It is considerably less forthcoming about where that traffic went. Church Road will tell you, if you ask it nicely.

Then came South Bristol. Southville, Totterdown, Bedminster. Same mood board. Same colour-coded tarmac. Same compass — purchased from a retail chain that went into administration. Same instruction book, now with coffee stains and a broken spine from repeated consultation.

Over 3,000 residents signed a petition. A hundred marched to City Hall in February 2026. One hundred. In Chinese numerical culture, 100 means 100% love. The consultant in Guangzhou, had anyone in that chamber thought to make the call, would have been genuinely moved. Bristol City Council was not.

The furniture pushed back hard enough this time. Plans for modal filters in Southville and Windmill Hill were scrapped — a retreat so rare that residents briefly wondered if they’d misread the email. They hadn’t.

However, across the city in Barton Hill, the planters remained, the cameras went in, and the Bristol Liveable Neighbourhoods programme continued its city-wide rearrangement without so much as a glance at the instruction book.

There is a word for institutional decision-making that is indistinguishable from self-serving nonsense dressed as governance. Bristol City Council has been providing the definition, chapter and verse, since the mood board went up.

Nobody is arguing against safer streets. The argument is about whose streets they are and who gets to decide. Ask the disabled residents of Barton Hill how that question has been answered so far. That is a different question entirely. And it is the one Bristol City Council has been avoiding since the mood board went up.

Which brings us to Hamblins Fish and Chips. 154 Avonvale Road, Barton Hill. Serving East Bristol for over seventy years. No mood board. No compass. No instruction book. No assistance whatsoever from the ancient Chinese art of harmonising urban energy flow.

Armin Ahmadi didn’t need Feng Shui By Numbers to know where his front door should be. He’d known for over seventy years. Bristol City Council knew better.

The bus gate on Avonvale Road had already devastated trade. After two years of chaos, 243 formal objections, residents blockading contractors in the road, and a local MP declaring Hamblins “arguably the best chippy in Bristol” — Bristol City Council’s considered response was to move the bus gate.

Not remove it. Move it. From one side of the junction to the other. Directly outside Hamblins’ front door.

The bricklayer versus the chippy. Tony Dyer trained as a bricklayer before he went into IT. He knows what it takes to build something that lasts. Armin Ahmadi has been proving it on Avonvale Road for over seventy years. One of them had a compass from Wilko. The other had a fryer.

Feng Shui By Numbers is quite clear on this point, had anyone reached that chapter — a space that resists every attempt to impose order upon it is not a space with bad energy. It is a space that is telling you something.

Barton Hill has been telling Bristol City Council something for two years. The message has been spray-painted on the signs, blockaded into the road, delivered in 243 formal objections, and served across the counter at Hamblins every night since the year Bristol City Council’s current transport policy was a twinkle in nobody’s eye.

The Almighty Gob has previously documented the enforcement revenue model underpinning the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood — the financial architecture that makes keeping the cameras running considerably more attractive than listening to the people living behind them. That piece — Bollards Out. Cameras In. Same Jail, New Bars — is on the record at thealmightygob.com.

Tony Dyer picked up the instruction book. Ed Plowden picked up the compass — from Wilko, back when Wilko still existed, because even Wilko couldn’t sustain itself.

Between them they rearranged an entire city, painted the roads the wrong colour, sent dozens of police officers to install planters at three in the morning, and moved a bus gate onto the front door of a chippy that has been there for over seventy years.

The consultant from Guangzhou was available the whole time.

Should have hired the consultant.

There is little point attempting Feng Shui from a 50p instruction book when the qualified consultant is sitting in your sister city waiting for the call. Bristol City Council saved the flight. Bristol paid for it instead.

The bricks and mortar wouldn’t cooperate. The Lego set didn’t have the right pieces. The evidence from Croydon, Newcastle and Ealing said stop. The residents of Barton Hill, Southville, Totterdown and Bedminster said stop. Hamblins Fish and Chips said stop.

So they went back to the mood board instead.

And somewhere in Guangzhou, the consultant is still waiting for the call.

He’ll be waiting a while yet.

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