#Bristol — Where The Quickness Of The Cash Buys The Easily Conned.

A Council, Caught in a Crisis of Its Own Making.

Just when you thought the political clownery in Bristol couldn't get any more compelling, we have a sequel. And this one is not to be missed. While East Bristol taught us about public backlash, South Bristol is now giving a masterclass in… let’s call it “innovative synergy.”

But to truly appreciate the breathtaking audacity of the South Bristol model, we must first pay homage to the gold standard of democratic engagement itself: the East Bristol Neighbourhood Group.

Oh, the East Bristol Neighbourhood Group! A beacon of purity in a sea of political manoeuvring. A group so dedicated to true, unfettered consultation that they would sooner take a public flogging than a public pound. While their Liveable Neighbourhood project met with, shall we say, “robust feedback,” it was feedback born from a glorious, uncorrupted process. Their meetings were a crucible of passionate dissent, a free-for-all of conflicting opinions where council leaders were not just absent from the steering committee—they were, seemingly, absent of their minds. They were actively chased out of the room with pitchforks and flaming torches of civic duty. It was raw, it was messy, and it was, in its own glorious way, how democracy is supposed to work. No payment, no political allies, just pure, unadulterated community spirit.

And now, we turn our gaze south, to the land of the Action Greater Bedminster (AGB). Yes, the allegations are already swirling around.

Here, we witness a paradigm shift in political theory. Bristol’s Green-led council, a group whose very ethos is built on new ideas, has decided that the messy, unpredictable process of East Bristol was simply inefficient. Instead, they’ve unveiled a breathtakingly streamlined model.

**For a cool £8,000, AGB was allegedly tasked with generating a "groundswell of citizen engagement" for the South Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood. And who is on the steering committee of this group? Why, none other than Green Council Leader Tony Dyer, and former chair Green Cllr Ellie Freeman!

It’s a closed loop of influence so perfect, it should be framed and hung in City Hall. Here, we have the council paying a group they directly oversee to consult the public on a project they themselves designed. This isn't a conflict of interest; it's a conflict resolution. No need to worry about silly disagreements when the people running the consultation are the same people writing the policy. The lines between public duty and party interest aren’t just blurred; they’ve been lovingly erased with a freshly printed £8,000 cheque.

So, while the East Bristol Neighbourhood Group dared to face the unbridled fury of a truly engaged populace, AGB is offering something entirely different: the promise of pre-approved engagement. Why seek out dissent when you can pay your political allies to manage a "groundswell"?

A Perfect Housing Storm: The Ballet of Incompetence.

But wait, the show is not over! Because even as the council perfected its little ballet of political puppetry, they find themselves staring into the eye of a far-from-perfect housing storm, a tempest so immense it could only have been conjured by a council that could not, in fact, run a piss-up in a brewery.

The Bristol Post reports on a calamity that is not the council's fault—oh no, we're told it's a "national problem." The city's grand "masterplans" for thousands of new homes on brownfield sites are now a masterclass in failure. The grandest vision of all—the Mead Street masterplan for 900 homes in Temple Quarter—has been utterly scuppered. Why? Because the land, marketed as a prime development opportunity, was instead sold to an industrial investment firm. They were prepared to pay more to keep the site industrial than a residential developer was willing to risk, thanks to a "perfect storm" of spiralling building costs and a legislative logjam so colossal it has the House of Lords running in circles. Enter ‘Marvellous Marvin,’ perhaps? I’ll wait!

So, in a city desperate for homes, the council's grand plan for 22-storey towers is now a mirage, and the view of the Totterdown houses—which sparked a campaign to "save" it—will now be saved for years, if not forever, not by passionate citizens, but by the cold, hard logic of the market.

Meanwhile, other council-backed housing schemes are also falling like dominoes. The Bart Spices factory? Back to City Hall to ask permission to cut affordable homes. Goram Homes' project at Baltic Wharf? Also, back to City Hall, asking for a change in funding to make it financially viable. We are told, with all the enthusiasm of a funeral director, that the next major development might not be finished for another four years.

So, let's recap. On one hand, we have a council that can meticulously control a tiny £8,000 political narrative for a liveable neighbourhood, perfectly orchestrating its messaging and participants. On the other hand, we have the same council, facing a housing crisis of epic proportions, rendered utterly powerless and seemingly 'absent of their minds' by national-level factors they can neither control nor mitigate.

Bristol is now officially a tale of two liveable neighbourhoods and one perfectly unliveable housing crisis. The choice, it seems, is simple. Do you want your public consultation to be an explosive, unpredictable mess? Or would you prefer it to be a perfectly choreographed ballet of incompetence, where the only thing guaranteed to get built is a brand new layer of irony? Better still, who would be a better fit to run the council, the present incumbents, or a toilet brush?

For the Greens, the answer is clear. And for the rest of us, it’s a show that’s simply too explosive to miss.

** Source:

Green administration pays group that includes council leader