In which spending cuts may be a good thing
Published at 6:32 pm on May 25th, 2010
Filed under: Geekery, Political.
Following on from yesterday’s post about government spending cuts: there is, of course, one thing that would save quite a bit more money than freeing up some unused phone numbers. Regular readers of this blog will – especially if they were regular readers about a year ago – be very bored of me droning on about the West Of England Partnership‘s* ongoing guided busway scheme, which consists essentially of turning former and current railway alignments such as the Bristol-Bath Railway Path or the Bristol Harbour Railway into private roads for the exclusive use of First Group, at public cost. Rather high public cost, at that, as for any road scheme; and the first phase of the project would have no purpose other than to replace the current Ashton park-and-ride services with new, less useful, park-and-ride services from the same car park. Follow this link to read more.
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Keyword noise: Bedminster, Bristol, Bristol Post, Bristol Harbour Railway, buses, Gary Hopkins, government, guided bus, light rail, North Somerset, Parry People Movers, spending cuts, West of England Partnership.
In which we are overtaken by events
Published at 6:07 pm on May 13th, 2009
Filed under: Media Addict, Political.
It’s nice to be topical, even if it is entirely by accident. Earlier, I complained about the rather unbalanced media coverage following the recent hit-and-run deaths of Sam Riddell and Troy Atkinson. Three or four hours after I published that post, the BBC briefly announced that the city magistrates have remanded someone to await trial for Troy’s death.
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Keyword noise: BBC, Bristol, Bristol Post, Hannah Saaf, Hartcliffe, journalism, Sam Riddell, Troy Atkinson, Westbury-on-Trym.
In which we compare and contrast two recent and similar deaths
Published at 9:01 am on May 13th, 2009
Filed under: Media Addict, Political.
In which the news needs its facts checking
Published at 8:12 pm on March 18th, 2009
Filed under: Media Addict.
Long-term readers might remember that, back in the mists of time, I upset some busy bees at the Grimsby Telegraph after describing that newspaper as “rather news-thin”. Which, indeed, it is: they don’t have much news in it, because they don’t have the reporters or the money to research much news. I kept meaning to take a random copy, take it apart, and break down its content into “quality” and “filler” – the latter being things like the letters pages, readers’ photos, TV listings, local sports reports* and so on; but, not living anywhere that I can get hold of a copy easily, it has been put on the back burner.
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Keyword noise: accuracy, Bedminster, Bristol, Bristol Post, Grimsby Telegraph, journalism, news, newspapers.