We have questions...

On this blog, we’ve written a fair bit about movement. These posts are linked to on this page - Posts about movement. In amongst those posts, we’ve written about the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood scheme, the trial phase of which is now being implemented. To say this scheme has been controversial is an understatement. It has certainly generated a fair bit of coverage in the local media, mainstream and independent. We’d like to carry on discussing the implementation of the Liveable Neighbourhood scheme and the impact it’s having on the area it covers and also, on other people trying to move through the east of Bristol, on its own terms. However, due to a bizarre set of circumstances, we’re obliged to discuss how one section of the local media, B24/7 are covering matters rather than the issue itself. Let’s just say we’ve been taken down a bit of a rabbit hole with this - we’ll explain as best we can...

A short while ago, we published this post - A response to a B24/7 article about the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood 20.11.24 - written by Helen Hughes, a member of Keep Bristol Moving, which was a response to this piece written by Tom Cuthbertson and published by B24/7 - ‘We shouldn’t stop the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood but we have to listen to its detractors’ 15.11.24. We published Helen’s article because at that point, B24/7 had yet to publish her response to Cuthbertson.

Over the course of last weekend, B24/7 finally got round to publishing Helen’s response to Cuthbertson. Here it is - ‘Begrudging acceptance among unhappy residents is not sufficient to justify a permanent liveable neighbourhood scheme’ 30.11.24. All well and good, better late than never many might say. If only life were that straightforward. Life isn’t straightforward and, there are complications leading to a number of questions we would love some answers to. Editors have a right to apply changes to a submitted piece to correct grammar and spelling and to ensure readability. We can live with that although it should be noted that Helen’s piece was professionally proof read and checked before it was submitted to Stirrings from below for publication.

We had a look at the version of Helen’s piece that B24/7 published and our alarm bells went off pretty much immediately. The most glaringly obvious thing that struck us was the insertion of a number of images to illustrate the article. Fair enough you may well say, online articles do need images to break them up a bit. Who wants to look at massive slabs of text while they’re online? The problem is that a fair number of those images came with captions that most reasonable people would see as having a distinct pro liveable neighbourhood bias. Helen’s text says one thing, the captions to the images could well be seen to say the opposite. Does that not strike you as pretty disingenuous?

Then there’s the complete erasure of Cuthbertson’s name in the B24/7 version of Helen’s piece. This stands in stark contrast to the version we published here on Stirrings from below. In the B24/7 version, any mention of Cuthbertson’s name has been replaced by ‘the author’ and his pronouns have been changed from ‘he’ to ‘they’. That’s quite a major editorial change isn’t it?

It get’s even more baffling… When you now look at this piece - ‘We shouldn’t stop the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood but we have to listen to its detractors’ 15.11.24 - the byline has been changed from TH Cuthbertson to Ash Lindisfarne. A change that has only recently been made. Unfortunately you have to take our word for that because we didn’t take screen shots to show Cuthbertson’s byline. We didn’t do that because we thought there was no good reason to do so. In retrospect, we may have been a bit naive to not do so. So, we’re left with the original of Helen’s piece on Stirrings from below referring to Cuthbertson while anything B24/7 have published has completely eliminated his name. We are well and truly baffled by this and would be grateful for an explanation. Suffice to say, unless we’re threatened with legal action for whatever bizarre reason may be cited, we will not be changing Cuthbertson’s name on the original version of Helen’s piece that we published.

This quote about Cuthbertson by someone from the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood WhatsApp group, which we’ve been given permission to reproduce, is telling:

His home address is publicly available on the Internet. After he stood on TV posing as a pro resident in favour of the scheme. With his name on TV.

As is his right to do. What he didn't say was he's a former Green Party candidate and actor.

The true victims here are those who feel trapped in their homes. Those who worry how they will get to work. Get their children to school. Lose hours in their day. Who are not listened to. Those are the real victims here.

But nice try at blaming framing and shaming, playing the victim and a nice bit of deflection.

Tom isn't the victim here. Right on queue lets play victim those terrible people I am unsafe.

They should change the playbook. This is tactical trying to divide the group.

Other tactics are joining the group as concerned members. Writing seemingly innocent comments. To try to stir division.

It's all part of the game they play.

What should have been a straightforward case of B24/7 publishing Helen’s response to Cuthbertson’s piece about the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood has turned into a saga that’s getting weirder by the day. On the basis of what we’ve documented above to the best of our ability, we’d like some honest answers to the questions we’ve posed above. Not least because we now find ourselves discussing B24/7’s editorial policy and Cuthbertson’s seemingly sudden desire for anonymity instead of the issues surrounding the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood.

The conspiracy minded would see all of the above as classic diversionary tactics. It would be hard to disagree with that to be honest. The problem is, given the weird turn of circumstances outlined above, we’ve had little choice but to allow ourselves to be dragged along by these tactics. We could find this somewhat irksome but, given how bizarre things are getting, we’re actually finding all of this highly amusing:)