The Babber-Babble of #Bristol: Why Our City is Built on Bullshit and a White Elephant.

An Investigation into the "Art in the City" Movement, Council Priorities, and the Crisis of Affordable Housing in Bristol.

I have to thank Helen, another Bristol-based Substacker (@helenitlikeitis) for bringing this to my attention earlier today. Following a spontaneous board meeting with myself, it was decided that there was a case to answer and a report to write. This, folks, is it.

I thought, “Bollocks.” If that’s what makes a good city, then we are all proper screwed. Our infrastructure is failing—streets aren’t crumbling and public transport is unreliable—not because we need more murals; they are because our local government is too busy speaking in a language I’ve finally managed to name: Pretentious Babber-Babble. You know, psychobabble, Bristol style.

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The Illusion of Progress (and the Reality of the 90 Bus).

It’s the new hustle. You’ve got these so-called intellectuals—the “Oh dahling” types who’ve upgraded from crayons and learned the subtle art of bullshit from an online course—spouting nonsense about “synergistic urban renewal” and “cultural capital.” They’ve co-opted our own local slang, turning words like “gert lush“ into some kind of elite code. They talk about “discursive phenomena” and “epistemically exploitative bullshit,” all to justify doing nothing useful.

They tell you that public art projects are going to “future-proof economies.” What they really mean is: “Look over there! A fancy sculpture! Don’t you dare think about the fact that your rent just went up 20% and essential local services are being cut.” It’s the ultimate “don’t look here, look over there” mentality, a core feature of contemporary Bristol politics.

For anyone trying to get to work from Hartcliffe or Knowle—the people worrying about getting on the number 90 bus on time or affording to put the heating on—all that talk is just noise. While officials debate “cultural amenities,” the real community needs affordable housing, reliable public services, and effective solutions for traffic gridlock.

And it’s lunacy begetting further lunacy. This all stems from a former Mayor who thought it was a genius idea to plan for a totally impractical, implausible underground railway system through solid, craggy rock. It was a pipe dream of a Tube, presented with a multi-billion-pound price tag. If you can pitch a flawed infrastructure plan like that, you can certainly get away with talking about how a new street art festival will fix the city’s problems.

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The Colour-Coded Con (The Two Cities).

They’re acting like Bristol’s local art scene is underdeveloped and needs saving. Please. We’re not short of this stuff already. Walk down Stokes Croft or even just along the harbour, and you’ll see it. This entire “Art in the City“ malarkey isn’t about adding culture; it’s about monetising local identity and driving gentrification.

We’re well on the way to a colour-coded city. It’s the perfect example of how the city’s two halves don’t even pretend to meet anymore. You’ve got the Clifton set in their Georgian townhouses, waffling on about how a new festival is going to “revitalise the community.” The community they’re on about is the one that’s already doing just fine.

The pseudo-intellectuals get their language—all the abstract words, the theses on the “socio-cultural impact” of street art. The rest of us? We get the colours. We get told what to think by a splash of paint on a wall. We’ll have the “vibrant” quarter (where property developers focus) and the “soothing” residential zone (where the budget cuts hit hardest), all designed to sell a specific city brand rather than fix core issues. They speak in paragraphs, and we’re just meant to read the picture book.

I actually managed to reduce their entire racket to a single, perfect phrase: Babber-Babble. And the utter genius of the con is that I then felt like I had to write this entire article, which, ironically, now feels like a foundation course on Babber-Babble for Beginners. We’ve accidentally mastered their technique: reducing a serious topic to the simple, ridiculous core of: “I’ve no idea what I’m talking about, but it sounds good.”

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The Inevitable White Elephant and Urban Decay

So, what’s the inevitable, final result of all this pretentious nonsense and failed Bristol urban planning?

We won’t get better services or affordable housing. We’ll end up with a huge, expensive public art installation—an Elephant—that’s supposed to be a “monumental testament to Bristol’s global connectivity” or some other nonsense. And then, some random street artist—probably someone who actually knows what they’re doing, unlike the committee that commissioned it—will sneak out one night and spray paint the whole thing white.

This, of course, won’t be cleaned up. That would be practical. No, this will be declared a “reflective conundrum of the city council to work out.” They’ll convene a three-day, fully catered symposium on the “epistemological significance of monochromatic urban sculpture,” delay the clean-up for months, and spend a fortune trying to attach academic meaning to something that only ever meant to look good on a postcard.

It’s the perfect symbol. A very expensive, very white elephant, and a never-ending cycle of meetings to justify its existence. That is the true picture of a city that cares more about the illusion of progress than progress itself.