North Somerset (parish) Council posts

[whole diary]

[Bmblbzzz]

I've just been reminded of this phrase used by someone here (Chris from Nailsea? Or I am just assuming it's him because of Nailsea?) to describe the, erm, parochial tendency of North Somerset District Council, on reading this:

The mayor will be subject to the usual petty local rivalries as leaders used to their own fiefdoms suddenly find a big new player but they need to get over themselves and co-operate. Durkheim once said that not everything contractual is in the contract, and that is the case with the new mayoral powers. The scope of the powers available will rather depend on how effectively they are wielded. Rather than obstruct and declare a kind of political independence from Manchester, the mill towns of former Lancashire would be well-advised to pitch in.

Particularly that last sentence.
http://www.citymetric.com/politics/manchester-shows-why-english-devolution-should-be-city-regions-3387

Ok, I should probably find out about this Durkheim character now.

[Yes, there must be somewhere more appropriate for this, but I don't know where. Admins please do move it!]

[Red Squirrel]

Thing is, West of England (or 'Bristol' as sane people call it) isn't surrounded by independent mill towns - it's surrounded by satellites that were deliberately developed to facilitate its growth. As far as I can see, Bristol's boundary has not changed significantly since 1951, so we now have a situation where the region's economic engine is managed independently from its fuel supply, as it were. To make things worse, it seems South Glos would always rather compete than cooperate.

Perhaps we should be grateful that North Som (lovely though many of its people surely are) is, politically, nothing more than a bad joke.

[Bmblbzzz]

Bristol's equivalent of mill towns would be in the coalfields of, you guessed it, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset: Coalpit Heath, Pensford and so on. And Keynsham of course – it's only a matter of convention that a place making chocolate is called a factory not a mill. Well, apart from the lack of milling.

But the Western Super Mayor (the Mayor of Woe?) seems so far happier to read his contract than use it.

[Red Squirrel]

The bigger population centres - Nailsea, Clevedon, Keynsham, Thornbury and Yate - were all quite small before their postwar expansion as satellites; Bradley Stoke, Emerson's Green, Warmley, Longwell Green and Patchway are straightforward contiguous suburbs.

Here's a modest proposal: Why not expand Bristol's boundary to follow the M4 from the Severn to the old Midland line at Westerleigh,  then more or less follow this and the A4174 down to Keynsham; leaving out Dundry Hill, it could loop south of Bristol Airport, then make a beeline for the coast somewhere just south of Clevedon.

Oops, I just annexed the Nordzomerzetland.

[Bmblbzzz]

Why leave out Dundry? Anyway, what you've described is my idea of some sort of Greater Bristol. Maybe that would need to include Yate and so on as well. Probably not just my idea either. But Bristol, as in the Bristol City Council area, would be ridiculous that big; however, atm it's ridiculously small, excluding almost half the contiguous urban area.

Another question is whether "Bristol", "Bath", "South Glos", should still exist as separate LAs post-WoE (and obviously similar for Greater Manc, West Mids and so on). Maybe they should, on the subsidiarity idea, but as currently set up it seems to involve either crazy fragmentation (such as TfL^» (Transport for London - about) not being able to implement its own schemes because most of London's roads belong to Boroughs) or duplication (everywhere else).

[stuving]

Bristol's equivalent of mill towns would be in the coalfields of, you guessed it, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset: Coalpit Heath, Pensford and so on. And Keynsham of course – it's only a matter of convention that a place making chocolate is called a factory not a mill. Well, apart from the lack of milling.

Well ... actually the production of chocolate does involve milling, both early on (when it's called cocoa) and at the refining step of making confectionery. On the other hand, an early cotton mill was called that because it had a water wheel on its end wall, and had nothing to do with what happened inside it. the name stuck, perhaps also because millwrights would have erected them (at least until the age of steam and the later bigger machinery).

[Red Squirrel]

Why leave out Dundry?

Have you been there? Actually you're right, we may need to keep the high ground for defensive purposes when Rees-Mogg establishes Gilead with its capital in Clevedon.

...the Bristol City Council area, would be ridiculous that big;

I've always thought of Bristol as being more-or-less comparable to Nottingham - you know, that city in the East Midlands, about the same size as Bristol, with a spiffy new tram system? But until you said that it'd never occurred to me to look at that city's boundary:

http://open.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/ROCertificates/NottinghamCityCouncilAdministrativeBoundary.pdf

For 'Arnold' read 'Bradley Stoke'; for 'Carlton' read 'Emerson's Green'... what are they doing right that we aren't?

[trainer]

For 'Arnold' read 'Bradley Stoke'; for 'Carlton' read 'Emerson's Green'... what are they doing right that we aren't?

Thinking outside the parochial boundary and not shouting, 'Gerroff my land!'  Or to put it another way, they don't think they're something special and different and need to remain unsullied by 'the others'.

[Red Squirrel]

Or... oh, I get it; there's a thing called 'Nottinghamshire', which - who knew? - turns out to be like a county that goes like all the way round Nottingham. Maybe Bristol could do with one of them? Now lessee, what could we call it..?

[Bmblbzzz]

Why leave out Dundry?

Have you been there? Actually you're right, we may need to keep the high ground for defensive purposes when Rees-Mogg establishes Gilead with its capital in Clevedon.

Was there last Saturday. And in Clevedon! Scarlet's, yummy cafe with a view of the pier. No cafe in Dundry but the views are better.

...the Bristol City Council area, would be ridiculous that big;

I've always thought of Bristol as being more-or-less comparable to Nottingham - you know, that city in the East Midlands, about the same size as Bristol, with a spiffy new tram system? But until you said that it'd never occurred to me to look at that city's boundary:

http://open.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/ROCertificates/NottinghamCityCouncilAdministrativeBoundary.pdf

For 'Arnold' read 'Bradley Stoke'; for 'Carlton' read 'Emerson's Green'... what are they doing right that we aren't?

Nothing, if that map's anything to go by. They have areas of their city which are excluded from the administration, comparable to the ones we have.

[JayMac]

No cafe in Dundry but the views are better.

The pub opposite the church is quite agreeable.

[Red Squirrel]

Why leave out Dundry?

I went for a walk along East Dundry Lane the other week. It brought to mind my mental image of what the Northern Irish border must have been like in the early eighties, with massively reinforced farm gates, fly tipping and signs of burnt out cars all along the way. I wasn't aware of any snipers, but then I wouldn't have been, would I?

For 'Arnold' read 'Bradley Stoke'; for 'Carlton' read 'Emerson's Green'... what are they doing right that we aren't?

Nothing, if that map's anything to go by. They have areas of their city which are excluded from the administration, comparable to the ones we have.

All depends on who 'they' are in this context. My understanding is that NET was born out of cooperation between Nottingham City and Notts County. And there's the rub. I don't give a monkey's who empties the bins in Warmley, nor do I care if worshippers in Patchway consider Gloucester Cathedral to be their Mother Church. We need something like Avon, but smaller and not gerrymandered to ensure the tail wags the dog. The problem is neatly summed-up, I think, by this editorial from the Bristol Mercury in 1888:

Everyone who considered the question on its merits was convinced of the justice of the demand for a Greater Bristol, but... the interests of the Tory party were put before every other consideration and we do not think there is any endeavour to conceal the fact.

Edit: Fixed quotes, hopefully

[Chris from Nailsea]

I've just been reminded of this phrase used by someone here (Chris from Nailsea? Or I am just assuming it's him because of Nailsea?) to describe the, erm, parochial tendency of North Somerset District Council, on reading this ...

[Yes, there must be somewhere more appropriate for this, but I don't know where. Admins please do move it!]

Hmm. 

While I didn't invent the phrase, I do acknowledge that I adopted it, and indeed defined it in a previous post on the Coffee Shop forum.

I've therefore now moved a few previous posts, from various existing topics, and merged them here in this combined topic - which isn't specific to bus or rail, but hopefully explains what the 'Dibley' reference means.