A response to a B24/7 article about the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood

Below is a response by a member of Keep Bristol Moving to this piece: ‘We shouldn’t stop the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood but we have to listen to its detractors’ - T H Cuthbertson | B24/7 | 15.11.24 . Cuthbertson is a member of the Green Party and resides in the area covered by the Liveable Neighbourhood. The article from Keep Bristol Moving reproduced below was submitted to B24/7 for publication in the interests of providing a balance to Cuthbertson’s piece. At the time of writing, B24/7 have yet to publish this response. We are more than happy to publish it.

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I would like to respond to Tom Cuthbertson's article on the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood (EBLN) scheme from Friday 15th November. That article is a masterclass in how to avoid the substantive issues regarding the pros and cons of the EBLN, while claiming a spurious moral high ground. Appeals to the righteousness of a cause are typically relied on when addressing concrete issues proves to be too difficult. I met Tom at the meeting he refers to in Café Conscious in July. I did not notice a sense of trepidation in him about meeting the group gathered there that evening. He appeared keen on dominating the conversation and showed little curiosity regarding the group's views. He stated at the meeting that he wished to bring people together to find common ground, but we heard nothing more from him until very recently, after the implementation of the scheme had begun. His article is a disappointing continuation of his disingenuous claims of concern for residents’ feelings.

His condescending explanation of the academic theory behind urban planning consultations and his purported aspiration to achieve its participatory ethos ironically serve to confirm the failure of the process. The EBLN is, to use his words, being ‘paternalistically imposed’, and no amount of alleged ‘well-meaning’ intentions can compensate for this. Accusing the protest movement of ‘seizing its best opportunity to recruit disgruntled drivers’ is a cynical denial of the very real opposition that the EBLN has engendered. We are not in a position to manufacture disgruntlement, and Tom’s insinuation is not only unwelcome, but is in fact an admission of the failure to adopt a democratic consultative approach.

When he talks of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face by turning down a 'significant funding package', he indulges in the idea that if you receive money for a specific purpose, you should use the money regardless of whether the purpose is useful, healthy, practical, wise, desired, or an efficient use of the funds. Employing his logic, if I am given money to cut off my nose, I should go ahead and do it on the grounds that turning down a ‘significant funding package’ is pure folly. According to his logic, to do otherwise would be cutting off my nose to spite my face! This is obviously a nonsensical non sequitur.

Underscoring the undemocratic and paternalistic approach adopted in the scheme’s implementation, Tom expresses a strong desire to get the ‘finalised version’ of the scheme in place. Once in place, we will all simply have to ‘begin the process of adjustment to a new normal’, irrespective of any valid popular resistance to the scheme. This is problematic in itself, but the reference to an imposed 'new normal' is well known to originate from the World Economic Forum (WEF). One can be for or against what the WEF represents and dispute how big a role it should be permitted to play in our lives, but most are aware that the ideas currently emanating therefrom are not everyone's cup of tea. It is therefore a fairly contentious phrase to use in such an article if Tom wishes to gain friends who are currently sceptical of the EBLN scheme. In any case, he makes clear where his allegiances lie.

He is right that there is an imperative to find common ground in the community, and at the same time this is something Bristol City Council (BCC) should have been engaging in right from the start. The council claims to have been listening to citizens, but this is clearly not the lived experience of a vast majority of residents in Barton Hill, St George and Redfield. This is quite evident from the explosion of the Stop the EBLN Facebook group over the past couple of weeks. As I have said, this is not the result of ‘efforts to recruit disgruntled drivers’ as Tom cynically suggests.

Tom is correct in suggesting that the language used by the council during the 'consultation' phase was misleading. Not only words like 'modal filters' were confusing, though, but also the whole concept of 'co-design', used throughout council documents on this scheme. The only co-design that occurred was in deciding WHERE new Traffic Regulation Orders would be implemented, and not IF or WHAT.

He goes on to state that road closures 'work', without saying what they 'work' for. It is certainly evident that they work for creating traffic chaos, frustration, stress, increased journey times and therefore increased traffic pollution and the likelihood of accidents. I am not sure that this is what he meant, however.

I wonder who has been characterising the protestors as 'an angry mob'? To me this sounds like Tom is using the phrase to give readers the impression that the protestors COULD be 'an angry mob' when nobody until now had even thought of that being the case.

People are not 'feeling' ignored: they are BEING ignored, and have been for at least two years now. There are for example many eloquent people with disabilities and members of the Somali community in Barton Hill who have been spending much time and energy trying to tell BCC what they think, and they have most certainly been ignored, because the scheme is going ahead anyway.

I would be grateful if Tom could explain what he means in this paragraph: 'Those who feel hard done by understandably want to achieve some degree of citizen power over the process – and see protest as their only route to this – but I’m afraid that was never likely within the confines of this LTN scheme.' If he means that it was never likely that some degree of citizen power could have been achieved in this scheme, then can he explain precisely what the several rounds of 'consultation' with the frequent insistence on 'co-design' were for? I don't think it is a good look for BCC if they were just an expensive box-ticking exercise using tax-payers’ money.

Tom goes on to take it as a given that LTN schemes do always work (again he doesn't state what he thinks they work FOR), without providing a shred of evidence for this. A brief web search will find numerous examples of such schemes that haven't 'worked' and have had to be removed again. This has happened in Streatham, Exeter, Newcastle, Manchester and Edinburgh, to name just a few examples.

I wonder if the residents of the EBLN area have that bit of extra time Tom says is needed to 'get their heads around' concepts like 'induced traffic'. It is possible they might have had this time, but now many are having to waste it on longer journey times as they try to go about their daily business and generally live what were, until the scheme’s recent implementation, their already liveable lives.

I am sure the many members of the Facebook group would be grateful if Tom could explain to them exactly what the 'misinformation' around the scheme is. He does not attempt this in his article, but simply makes the allegation that people have not understood properly. I suspect it might take a while for him to unpick this with them.

He makes the claim that Bristol is the 'cycle capital of the UK'. I am wondering if he has ever been to Cambridge, or noted that Manchester is currently bidding to become the cycling capital of Europe? Bristol's hills, narrow roads, pot holes and weather patterns (as I write it is bitterly cold outside and has been snowing for several hours today) do not make cycling conducive to a large section of the population, and in fact make the push for everyone to get on a bike extremely exclusive.

Tom views a possible future state of 'begrudging acceptance' amongst unhappy residents as sufficient to justify a permanent scheme. And for this to be achieved by, for example, granting them more 'concessions', for 'a small yearly fee', after the council has listened more 'compassionately' to the people it is supposed to be serving. Again, the offering of sops dressed up in feigned compassion will not make the neighbourhood more 'liveable'.

His seeming unawareness of his advocacy for a ‘compassionate’ dictatorship is bemusing and disturbing. At no point does he consider the possibility that the scheme might have to be abandoned in the face of opposition from residents. After a ‘placatory’, not democratic, outcome, ‘confrontation’ will be transformed into ‘begrudging acceptance’. In Tom’s view, the BCC machine will, in the end, grind the residents down.

Tom ends with a classic rhetorical nudge: he insinuates that the situation is 'already getting dangerously out of control' and uses the sinister metaphor of a petrol fire, to link the danger of motor cars with the idea that the general public are becoming a dangerous threat to society. This tactic is unlikely to come from the place of ‘compassion’ that he purports to represent.

I request that, in the name of fairness, inclusion and democracy, you publish this rebuttal of Tom’s article. The majority of the residents of East Bristol are currently in a state of shock and disbelief regarding the effects of the implementation of the EBLN. Their voices must have equal representation in the local press.