Latest news with #Green-led
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Miami Herald
Story behind mysterious green road spots that showed up overnight
By Karen Johnson Mystery green spots that appeared on a road are a traffic calming measure by Britain's only Green Party-led city council. The dots on Greville Road in Bedminster in Bristol were painted overnight this week, leaving locals baffled. Various theories were rumored to be behind them and Bristol City Council initially said it was 'investigating'. But it has now been confirmed they were painted after a joint effort between community members and the Green-led council. Chair of the transport and connectivity committee, councillor Ed Plowden, said the dots were a way of improving "safety in the area". He said: "The newly added green markings are part of a community-led traffic calming scheme in partnership with the council, following requests from residents to reduce through-traffic and improve safety in the area. "The project is similar to several other creative traffic calming schemes in South Bristol and has also included the installation of planters. Creative road marking has been used for several years right across Bristol." The green dots are believed to be between 30cm to 1.2m in diameter Plowden further added that even though residents in the area had been consulted about the markings in 2023, "this part of the project needed to wait until the road was resurfaced, which took place as part of our citywide maintenance recently". Tracy Francis, who lives on the road and often cycles around the area, was concerned about what these dots meant for her as a cyclist. The road in question, according to Francis, was already "slippery" and she was scared that the addition of these circles would mean that her "bike tires will slide away", especially when the roads were wet. She told Bristol24/7: "I asked the people who installed them whether they knew what they were for. But they didn't. "I do know that the people who have moved into this area want to stop cars coming up and down here." The green dots can be spotted on various stretches of Greville Road Another resident also denied knowing anything about the intention behind these markings, but confirmed that it had caused a "stir" in the neighbourhood. The post Story behind mysterious green road spots that showed up overnight appeared first on Talker. Copyright Talker News. All Rights Reserved.
Daily Mail
28-04-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Father faces £85,000 court bill after suing his local green-led council for 'letting a dead tree destroy his garden'
A father who unsuccessfully sued his council over a dead tree that 'destroyed his garden' has racked up an £85,000 bill in court. James Williams repeatedly warned the Green-led authority in Bristol that the 30ft ash in public allotments next door needed to be felled. It was only when the tree came crashing down - smashing through the family's newly completed swimming pool, trampoline and summer house - that the council 'promised to cut it down'. The father-of-four, who works as a school caretaker, has claimed his family would have been killed if they were inside the pool at the time. His home insurance only covered £3,400 out of the £28,000 of damages to the garden in total, he said. But the court decided the council was 'not liable' for the damages - because the council worker's decisions over the tree were 'competent' and 'appropriate'. This left the 45-year-old more than £85k in debt - £8,000 quoted for garden repairs and £77,000 owed to the council in court costs. He said: 'We could have been killed by it if we were outside - I still have nightmares about it.' In May 2019, a representative from Bristol City Council visited the family home after Mr Williams' wife, Leanne, 43 reported that large branches from the tree in the council-owned allotment were falling into their garden, he said. 'They came out, looked at it, and promised to cut the tree down,' Mr Williams claimed. A month later, Leanne made another complaint after hearing the tree might have had ash dieback disease and that it was 'dead'. The council's tree officer visited again in June, and in their assessment said there was 'die present in the upper and middle canopy'. But that there were 'no other signs of significant disease' - and 'no imminent risk of failure to the stem of the tree'. The tree officer suggested the tree should be 'monolithed' that September. This involves the removal of all the branches and the reduction of the tree trunk to a height of four metres or less. Despite these assurances, the tree was never felled - or monolithed - and it became an increasing worry for the Williams family. On October 3, 2020, the tree fell. 'We were literally going to fill the pool that morning to use with our children - I still have nightmares about the fact that if it had held on for another 12 hours, it may have killed us all as we would have been in the swimming pool,' he said. Commenting on the fall, Leanne, a stay-at-home mum, said: 'It was like a scene from The Wizard of Oz. 'The pool and trampoline had been completely crushed and there was smashed glass and wood everywhere from the summer house.' Initially, Bristol City Council sent someone round to remove the tree and admitted liability, Mr Williams said. However, a few hours later, he alleged that a council member, the same one who assessed the tree months prior, arrived and denied the council's responsibility, attributing the fall to a storm. Mr Williams was left 'furious' and said the garden had been 'basically ruined.' He lodged a civil claim at Bristol County Court against the council which went to trial in February this year. The Williams claimed the tree officer sent to the property was 'negligent' in their assessment in that they did not decide to undertake further 'urgent' investigations. Despite this, the judge was 'not persuaded' that the council's tree officer had 'missed anything visually', according to the court's judgement. The judge further stated that the decisions made by the officer were within 'a range of reasonable decisions' a body of tree officers would regard as appropriate. Subsequently, the case was dismissed and the council were deemed not liable. The ordeal has reportedly been stressful for Leanne and her two children from a previous partner, Sienna, 15, Scarlett, 12, as well as Mr Williams and Leanne's children Emmi, four, and baby Maya, one, all of whom live in the same house. Leanne had only just given birth days before the tree came down, with it also being during the peak of lockdown. 'It was the worst possible timing to not have a garden,' Mr Williams said. 'We were going to fill the pool that day - I got up early in the morning, and when I looked out, it was a shock.' 'The tree had hit the wall of our daughters' bedrooms, It has all been a nightmare.' Four years later, Mr Williams said: 'The garden is still dishevelled and we've started clearing away the brambles and debris. 'But considering we now have to do this all on our own, it's going to take even more time.' Bristol City Council declined to comment.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
It's all French to Boris Johnson
João Vale de Almeida, the EU's former ambassador to the UK, United Nations and United States, launched his memoir The Divorce of Nations at the Portuguese Ambassador's residence in Mayfair on Thursday night, with happy memories of his encounters with former Daily Telegraph Brussels correspondent Boris Johnson in the Brussels press room when he was an EU spokesman in the late 1980s. The pair would engage in 'frank dialogue', Vale de Almeida said, adding: 'The rule at the time was that you had to ask questions in French and the answers had to be in French. Boris would ask questions about straight bananas in his shaky French and I'd do my best to answer.' This may have led to some of the EU's explanations in Johnson's stories about bonkers Brussels Eurocrats being lost in translation. Trouble in the West Country where Arron Banks, who is running as the Reform UK candidate to be mayor of the West of England, says the local Green-led council has banned him from referring to himself as 'Banksy'. Banks, one of the original 'Bad Boys of Brexit', who helped fund Nigel Farage's campaign in 2016, says it is 'for fear of upsetting the other 'Banksy' who makes his money from stencilling buildings with witty doodles. Banks is not ruling out legal action. 'I've been called Banksy as a nickname for 40-plus years; the other Banksy is a street artist that illegally paints on property,' he says. Banks is now considering stencilling Bristol council offices with a 'Banksy for Bristol' stencil. 'What's good for the goose, is good for the gander,' he says. Under-threat hereditary peers lack a North-South balance. 'So far as I am aware, at present we have only one hereditary peer in the House from Yorkshire,' Liberal Democrat peer Lord Wallace of Saltaire told peers. 'The North of England is very under-represented.' Wallace blames 'a tendency for young generations to move to the Home Counties over the years and to go to school in the Home Counties as well. So the regional representation of the hereditaries is not particularly good.' Time for some levelling-up? Veteran actor Nigel Havers, 73, about to tour the country in a one-man show called Talking B-ll---s, says: 'I wrote an autobiography a few years back and I wanted to call it B-ll---s, and the publisher said 'You can't say that!' I said, 'Why not? It's not a swear word.' Havers points out that it can be uttered in the House Of Commons. Havers is right. Former deputy speaker Dame Eleanor Laing ruled in 2021 that 'b-ll---s' was acceptable in a Commons debate if not aimed at another MP. Shadow chancellor Mel Stride's job is to scrutinise the work of Chancellor Rachel Reeves whenever he can. But the pair get on well, and met for a cup of tea last month. And he does not like the 'Rachel from Accounts' nickname. 'No, I don't particularly,' he told me on GB News' Chopper's Political Podcast yesterday. 'Personally, my kind of politics tends to be a little bit less personalised. I'm more interested in tackling the things that people are doing or not doing.' I fear Stride's decency is from a different political time. Sunderland's most unlikely celebrity football fan Sir Tim Rice, who grew up in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, has been explaining his allegiance to the North-East club since the age of seven. 'I saw the name Sunderland... a beautiful sounding word, conjuring images of beaches and palm trees. I thought, 'My team's Sunderland!' he says. With the club currently pinning hopes on a Premier League return, Rice says: 'You can change everything in life, but you can't change your football team. I have remained loyal.' An early Easter egg has been delivered to Salisbury Cathedral, produced by a peregrine falcon in the cathedral tower. Falcons first nested there in the 1860s and are back again after disappearing for 90 years. Members of the congregation are watching the peregrines sitting on the egg on a webcam. But congregants hearing the flap of mighty wings should be advised that it is not necessarily a Lenten angel but more likely a bird of prey looking for some lunch. Ladies of a certain age are advised not to wear rabbit or fox fur to Easter morning communion. Veteran BBC broadcaster Edward Stourton, 67, tells the Oldie magazine that Radio 4 is getting more middle class. 'I think all of us have become less posh as the years have gone by. When I hear old archive bits of myself, I sound like the Queen.' Still, Stourton is having fun. Asked what he takes with him on his travels, he replies: 'A book. And a sarong, which I wear at home in the evening.' What's wrong with a kilt? Peterborough, published every Friday at 7pm, is edited by Christopher Hope. You can reach him at peterborough@ Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
It's all French to Boris Johnson
João Vale de Almeida, the EU's former ambassador to the UK, United Nations and United States, launched his memoir The Divorce of Nations at the Portuguese Ambassador's residence in Mayfair on Thursday night, with happy memories of his encounters with former Daily Telegraph Brussels correspondent Boris Johnson in the Brussels press room when he was an EU spokesman in the late 1980s. The pair would engage in 'frank dialogue', Vale de Almeida said, adding: 'The rule at the time was that you had to ask questions in French and the answers had to be in French. Boris would ask questions about straight bananas in his shaky French and I'd do my best to answer.' This may have led to some of the EU's explanations in Johnson's stories about bonkers Brussels Eurocrats being lost in translation. The real Banksy Trouble in the West Country where Arron Banks, who is running as the Reform UK candidate to be mayor of the West of England, says the local Green-led council has banned him from referring to himself as 'Banksy'. Banks, one of the original 'Bad Boys of Brexit ', who helped fund Nigel Farage's campaign in 2016, says it is 'for fear of upsetting the other 'Banksy' who makes his money from stencilling buildings with witty doodles. Banks is not ruling out legal action. 'I've been called Banksy as a nickname for 40-plus years; the other Banksy is a street artist that illegally paints on property,' he says. Banks is now considering stencilling Bristol council offices with a 'Banksy for Bristol' stencil. 'What's good for the goose, is good for the gander,' he says. Peers' North-South divide Under-threat hereditary peers lack a North-South balance. 'So far as I am aware, at present we have only one hereditary peer in the House from Yorkshire,' Liberal Democrat peer Lord Wallace of Saltaire told peers. 'The North of England is very under-represented.' Wallace blames 'a tendency for young generations to move to the Home Counties over the years and to go to school in the Home Counties as well. So the regional representation of the hereditaries is not particularly good.' Time for some levelling-up? Parliamentary language Veteran actor Nigel Havers, 73, about to tour the country in a one-man show called Talking B-ll---s, says: 'I wrote an autobiography a few years back and I wanted to call it B-ll---s, and the publisher said 'You can't say that!' I said, 'Why not? It's not a swear word.' Havers points out that it can be uttered in the House Of Commons. Havers is right. Former deputy speaker Dame Eleanor Laing ruled in 2021 that 'b-ll---s' was acceptable in a Commons debate if not aimed at another MP. Mel's pulled punches Shadow chancellor Mel Stride's job is to scrutinise the work of Chancellor Rachel Reeves whenever he can. But the pair get on well, and met for a cup of tea last month. And he does not like the ' Rachel from Accounts ' nickname. 'No, I don't particularly,' he told me on GB News' Chopper's Political Podcast yesterday. 'Personally, my kind of politics tends to be a little bit less personalised. I'm more interested in tackling the things that people are doing or not doing.' I fear Stride's decency is from a different political time. One club Rice Sunderland's most unlikely celebrity football fan Sir Tim Rice, who grew up in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, has been explaining his allegiance to the North-East club since the age of seven. 'I saw the name Sunderland... a beautiful sounding word, conjuring images of beaches and palm trees. I thought, 'My team's Sunderland!' he says. With the club currently pinning hopes on a Premier League return, Rice says: 'You can change everything in life, but you can't change your football team. I have remained loyal.' Easter egg An early Easter egg has been delivered to Salisbury Cathedral, produced by a peregrine falcon in the cathedral tower. Falcons first nested there in the 1860s and are back again after disappearing for 90 years. Members of the congregation are watching the peregrines sitting on the egg on a webcam. But congregants hearing the flap of mighty wings should be advised that it is not necessarily a Lenten angel but more likely a bird of prey looking for some lunch. Ladies of a certain age are advised not to wear rabbit or fox fur to Easter morning communion. Radio 4's declining standards Veteran BBC broadcaster Edward Stourton, 67, tells the Oldie magazine that Radio 4 is getting more middle class. 'I think all of us have become less posh as the years have gone by. When I hear old archive bits of myself, I sound like the Queen.' Still, Stourton is having fun. Asked what he takes with him on his travels, he replies: 'A book. And a sarong, which I wear at home in the evening.' What's wrong with a kilt?
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Evict the Charleston Scroungers': row in Lewes over the Bloomsbury group's legacy
When the doors closed on two art shows in the Sussex town of Lewes last weekend, a record number of people had crossed the threshold of Southover House to look at works by Picasso and Grayson Perry. For 18 months, the former council office building has housed a pop-up outpost of Charleston, the former home of key members of the Bloomsbury group, which is nearby in the village of Firle. But despite its popularity over half-term, Lewes's new Charleston site is at risk. District councillors are to decide on Thursday whether to pull the plug or extend the lease on the site for another 25 years. A fresh lease would allow for a collaboration with three prestigious cultural institutions; the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate. While many who live in Lewes and the surrounding area at the foot of the South Downs hope that Charleston wins the day, members of a vociferous local campaign group are dismayed to see a council property given over to what one told the Observer he regards as an old-fashioned 'legacy', or establishment, arts organisation. Other protesters have argued that the site should be given instead to the NHS, or to a youth organisation – or perhaps used to create much-needed housing. A few angry fly posters have encouraged local people to rise up and 'Evict the Charleston Scroungers', urging the council to give health professionals the keys to Southover House, which they claim has 'inexplicably been given to a group of undeserving conceptual artists'. Nathaniel Hepburn, Charleston's director, knows that some will be against a longer lease but said he hopes the district council will see the risk of ending the self-funded cultural project after 'an amazingly successful first 18 months'. The leader of the Green-led Lewes district council, Zoe Nicholson, is a fan. 'It's done a fantastic amount, but one of the most important things to me is the amazing job they've done of exposing our young people to what the arts can be, especially when the government funding for this area has dropped away,' she said. 'As a small local authority, we would be doing something that really makes a difference, without any grant funding or national funding and yet with some great partnerships.' Charleston, the historic home of painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, took over the 23,000 sq metre site when the district council offices moved to Newhaven. Within a few months, at a cost of less than £1m – raised largely from local donations – it set up a venue that now attracts about 2,000 visitors a week and runs an educational partnership with the neighbouring further education college. While it receives no public subsidy, almost half its visitors enter for free, or on concessionary tickets, due to a monthly 'pay what you can' scheme. At the heart of the row is the popular image of the Bloomsbury group as an entitled cluster of indolent aesthetes. In fact, although largely well-born and London-raised, Grant, Bell and their frequent visitors, Roger Fry and Bell's sister, Virginia Woolf, had all turned their backs on respectable society and material comfort to pursue art, learning and their radical theories in peace. Woolf was anti-authority and evangelised for public access to books and art, once writing: 'To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries.' Nicholson said the factors being weighed in the renewal decision are the likely benefits to the town's economy and the work planned to make the site accessible to low-income families. 'We don't want to sell off our assets if we don't have to,' she added. 'If we can do something for the public good, we will try to protect it in perpetuity. I've heard people asking why this shouldn't be a place for our youth or perhaps new council houses. They are good questions, but we looked at converting it into housing – and we'd have to spend a lot to make it acceptable. Anyway, we are doing that in other places.' A new health centre, she added, is also planned in the area. Charleston, close to the home of Woolf and her husband, Leonard, was once a centre for discussion and creativity in the 1920s and 30s and is now the custodian of the Bloomsbury collection of art. Among its portraits is one of another regular guest, the philosopher and economist John Maynard Keynes, currently on loan to Sotheby's. 'When Keynes was conceiving what later became the Arts Council, he lived at Charleston and then at nearby Tilton,' said Hepburn. 'He was thinking of towns like Lewes when he wrote: 'Certainly, in every blitzed town in this country one hopes that the local authority will make provision for a central group of buildings for drama and music and art. There could be no better memorial of a war to save the freedom of the spirit of the individual.' Now, more than 80 years later, the new arts centre he dreamed of might be about to happen.' A plan to develop the site as the National Bloomsbury Gallery, agreed with directors of the three national museums, would see large Bloomsbury group collections being taken out of London storage for display. Hepburn might well use Woolf's own words this week when he tries to persuade Lewes to secure a building he argues will bring treasure to their doorstep. 'Never pretend that the things you haven't got are not worth having,' Woolf wrote.
