I found this consultation on the Bristol City Council website. If you're from Bristol then I would really suggest filling it out with your views as I already have done. But what struck me about a lot of this survey was that it was inherently negative about alcohol. I'm not necessarily suggesting all the questions should have asked people to praise alcohol to high heaven but I believe this to be a poor survey worded in such a way that simple positive answers are being sought from complex questions. Read on for some of the questions and what I feel about them.

I am fairly certain I've mentioned this before but thankfully the news has FINALLY picked up on this bullshit policy change by First Bristol that has hidden motives written all over it. This change is that when bus drivers don't have enough money on them to give you the change you are due, they can give you change tickets as they always have done, but now you can only redeem those at a travel store that are located in only two places in the City of Bristol.

Two news items came up yesterday around the same time, both about Bristol City Council that didn't put them in a favourable light. The first is about further movement on the idea of congestion charging in Bristol city centre, and the second is about the council apparently toying with the idea of not giving money to charities that are critical of them. Now I was not a fan of the Lib Dem council that was in place up until the last election, it was far too soft on corporations that effectively held monopolies in the area and seemed to be doing far too little. By contrast this new council headed up by Labour talks a lot but seemingly only to hide the fact they are being so god damn authoritarian on issues.

I don't want this place to become a haven for lambasting the BBC's poor quality of news reporting, but sometimes I'm just in one of those moods. In fact I'm not sure if the quality is necessarily that bad all told but my yearly head-cold is making me distinctly grouchy

First up in this potential repeat series is local news for me about Bristol's waste problem. Apparently it is getting worse, though no studies have been cited whatsoever as of course with the BBC biased sources of information are perfectly acceptable. What gets me though is that there is no reporting whatsoever into Bristol City Council's inability to deal with the waste problem. On the nights I go out I usually end up sharing a pizza from Pizza Palace, a pizza takeaway holding up the end of a row of about 4 or 5 takeaways, across the road from at least three officially council licensed fast food vendors that seemingly have no obligation to bring waste management solutions along with their trailers. The council is happy to pick up their rent but not the responsibility for picking up the rubbish they haven't made provisions for it seems.