Search Terms

Here's one of our intermittent lists of search terms that bring visitors to the site. No particular order, just interesting ones

• readers wifes at #9. New one this. Popular. Who knew?
• clevedon viewers wives. special interests. Clevedon is very dark at night.
• mod abbey wood, abbey wood mod, mod abbey wood parking, parking at abbeywood: the exclusion zone is still there.
• bri bristol parking,
• site:.com inurl:blogspot "post a comment" -"comments closed" -"you must be logged in" "driving schools" -got a lot of comment spam on the 2nd2none driving schools argument.
• parking near cabot circus, free parking near cabot circus, free parking bristol city centre, secret parking near cabot circus: as if.
• are quads allowed in bus lanes in bristol - good q. Don't know. Maybe if they are minicabs.
• can you get a speeding ticket in a 20mph zone. Theoretically.
• cotham cpz progress: the paint is up
• found all four tyres slashed in wordsworth road, bristol. Not good. 
• how bad is the traffic on the ringroad around bristol. just dont.
• accident in ashley hill bristol: going to cover this. Pedestrian death, not in the 20mph stretch.
• learner driver on strange three wheeler motorbike on henleaze road bristol uk shouting at drivers. News to us, but we can believe it.
• men take up too much space. The country is split 50/50 on this one.
• my car has been towed by dvla avonmouth Better visit Avonmouth then.
• short cuts fishponds to bristol airport: ask a minicab driver.
• the bristolian cafe: re-opening soon
• unicycle lessons bristol. Why?
• was the bearpit bristol used as a bear pit: it still is on a friday night.
• what does a yellow hatched box mean painted on the road. Somewhere you can stop and legally text.
• why has ashley road bristol uk became so congested with traffic. Become? You've not lived here long enough.
• how to complain against a ticket parked with one or more wheels on the pavement if my car don't fit. Tell the judge you need the range rover to get to the family estate during the grouse season -and would he like to come? Works every time.
• 4x4 funeral car where the coffin goes. On the roof. Deer Body bags work here. If stopped, tell the polis you are returning from a trip to estate.
• bristol escorts 24/7 yate. Fuel costs making city trips too expensive?
• safe dismounting a horse correctly. No idea.
• persecution for parking on a dropped kerb. Exactly. It's the war on motorists. 
• mighty banana van -that's Chris Chakley's -emperor for life of the PRSC. Often found in St Werburghs too.
• traveller vans st werburghs. See above
• news college road clifton bristol car wing mirror. Wing mirror "events" aren't news in the rest of the city. Maybe clifton is being anti-gentrified. 

Referral-wise:

1. google.co.uk
2. waronthemotorist.wordpress.com.
3. google.com
4. crapwalthamforest.blogspot.co.uk
5. thisisbristol.co.uk
6. facebook.com
7. blogger.com
8. t.co (twitter redirects)
9. cycling-embassy.org.uk
10. madcyclelanesofmanchester.blogspot.co.uk

It's only taken a month or two and Crap Walking and Cycling is up there as a key referrer; Joe Dunkley's War on the Motorist site still ahead.

Not participating in the daily mail survelliance infrastructure

The Bristol Traffic Project is, as we have repeatedly declared, a community-sourced police state, using the datacentre infrastructure of our strategic partners Google. Google have published some of their datacentre photographs, for people to look at while reading about how google use atomic clocks to implement causal consistency between locations. The reason that Google's "Spanner" system does this is to ensure that all their computers round the world have a consistent view of "when" they are.

The Bristol Evening Post, with whom we no longer have any strategic relationship, hasn't needed atomic clocks to implement a global-scale consistency model; indeed their articles do not usually implement causal consistency; the notion that actions (e.g burning carbon fuels) have side effects that happen afterwards (climate change). Nor are they eventually Consistent: at no point in the future will the various articles and newspapers of the daily mail portfolio ever make coherent sense.

This is not news; it is not important. Except now, anyone logging in to the thisisbristol web site to add a balanced comment about how Cllr Gollop is going back on his word of being an anti-cycling councillor and now pandering to the lycra-criminals is, if they use a gmail.com email address, asked to sign in with their "google ID".

And when you do that, what rights does Google say the thisisbristol web site -hence the Evening Post and the rest of the Daily Mail portfolio say that they want to have to your account:

TINReg is requesting permission to:

•     Manage your tasks
•     View your email address
•     View basic information about your account
•     Manage your contacts
•     Know who you are on Google

What does that mean? It means the Daily Mail/this-is- set of web sites want to:

Manage your tasks
Have the ability to read and update your todo list in google calendar.

View your email address
See your email address

View basic information about your account
See what your claimed gender and age is.

Manage your contacts
see below

Know who you are on Google
See who you say you are

It's that "Manage your contacts" one that worries us. Because Gmail builds up a list of contacts automatically, based who sends you email and who you email yourself, the google contact list is really "a list of who you communicate with".

That's a really interesting piece of information. Know that and they can start comparing your contacts list with the other people who comment on the paper.  And because they have the contacts list of those commenters, the site could even find common contacts between two commenters  -even in the case where the two commenters do not know each other directly. That is, in graph-theory terms, one degree of separation. Before long they'll have built up a graph of the communications between people in the city, which is pretty valuable stuff. Facebook have that to an extent, but only between people who explicitly declare each other as friends. Even so, that subset of links was enough for Facebook to show that there is usually a four-hop connection between any two people in the US: four degrees of separation. 

If the entire portfolio of the Daily Mail web sites start collecting your email address and those of all you talk to, they stand a good chance of building up a map of who talks to who amongst all people who log in and comment in any of their web sites.

We don't trust the organisation. It's not that we don't agree with their political objectives: the imprisonment of subversives, the stance they take against lycra-criminals, 20 mph speed limits and other potential criminals. It's just that we don't see why they need to go behind our backs and build up a graph of everyone who comments on the paper to achieve those goals. It's the people who don't read the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, the Evening Post, and their other regional counterparts that we need to worry about.

This is what Bristol Traffic is: a police state run by volunteers! There is no need for the DM sites to spy on us -not when we report the anti-motoring activities that the city is up to.

suboptimal data collection strategies - or a secret plan to spy on us

A strange sight: four people wearing hi-viz sitting on the St Werbughs crossing of the M32

What are they up to? The "Highways Agency" text on the back gives the game away -they are monitoring traffic flow, with multiple people to independently monitor different lanes,
 
Some questions spring to mind

1. Why hi-viz? Really? It's a pedestrian footpath that some cyclists also use. Unless you have a fear of being run over by one of those two-kid-wide pushchairs, its the safest place in the city to sit. 
2. Counting traffic by hand? Why not just go to the bit of the Highways Agency that collects the ANPR data and use that instead. If you hook the M32 data up with those of the M4W, M4E and M5 feeds, you can even work out where people go to after leaving the M32. As any vehicle not found on those other feeds must have got off at Eastville or the North Fringe, you get those figures for free.

The fact that they aren't using the ANPR data may be sign that the UK Government police-state-on-motorists isn't as all encompassing as the daily mail and daily telegraph warn us of; that there isn't any coverage of the M32 at all. The four people on the footbridge are therefore implicity sharing a secret with us.

That or there is ANPR scanning of every vehicle entering or leaving the city, and those four people are sitting there to pretend that there isn't -they think they are counting traffic but their numbers are being discarded in preference for the machine-collected statistics. Only someone very paranoid would think that. Which is precisely why we suspect it.

Generated EP article of the day

Fresh from our article factory, comes another one

"It got to the point where we were too afraid to go out. Also, they will congregate in groups to have a natter and in doing so, they take up half or more of the path. THERE has been a lot of banter on these pages between cyclists and drivers. The young, the old, the infirm, the family and pets must all be socially cleansed so that cycling hobbyists can come first. Great emphasis on safety there chaps. Only 15 were caught today, as opposed to the 44 who were spoken to at the same time last week. They stick their fingers up and adopt such a bullying manner with people who challenge them. 8 million pounds was spent on cycling infrastructure, such as 13 miles of off-road cycle tracks including the Festival Way to Ashton Court and a route from the centre to Bristol's northern fringe through St Werburgh's and Lockleaze. I only wish this was the case but it happens on a daily basis. Just as a start, when can we have registration plates on bicycles, so these morons can be identified and prosecuted. "

If there's one fault of the system it is that we need more hand-written articles. We've only got 500 sentences right now, and they tend to get a bit repetitive. Given the Evening Post suffers from the same problem -repetitiveness- we are starting to suspect something even more profound.

1. Has the Daily Mail Group, at some point in the recent past, replaced all their journalists in the Bristol Evening Post with a hundred lines of Python code that can generate new articles based on the entire past archives of the paper?

2. How can we determine if this is or is not the case? The standard "turing test" does not apply, because the BEP article portfolio has always been so limited. What else can we do to determine the secret of how Evening Post articles get generated?

Introducing the Evening Post Article Factory!

When introducing our automated bingo card generator, we mentioned that an ultimate goal was to generate whole articles. This actually turns out easier than expected. Rather than use stochastic Markov Chain modelling to predict the follow-on words from an initially n-tuple of corpus-extracted words, we can just use the sentences extracted from the evening post articles and pick some in a random order, initially making sure not to repeat any. This works so well that we cannot even believe it ourselves:

"There are more motorists than cyclists, it makes perfect sense to just ban them. Dark clothing, no lights and certainly no sense but, incredibly, he shouted at me as if I was at fault for not wearing my night vision goggles. As soon as I moved here I started having issues with cyclists, she told the Evening Post. We all aspire to live in attractive, liveable cities where it is safe to get around by foot and by bike, and so we need to encourage people to take up these modes of transport. There were also a couple of pedestrian crossings where cyclists just didn't stop. How about spending some money on the poor down-trodden motorist. But a bit of tolerance might help matters a little. I don't think there are any particular blackspots in the city for riding on the pavement - the whole city is a blackspot. Motorists don't pay enough attention towards cyclists and they seem to forget that we are very vulnerable. If Bristol is the first cycling city then there needs to be more education out there. "

Even though there's been no attempt at finding some coherence between individual sentences, it turns out not to matter. Look at this one. You could get this as a letter in the evening post without even bothering to do any proof-reading:

"Do all this and we can all be friends. Cyclists going on the pavement is really quite dangerous. ). Cyclists shouldn't expect respect from motorists if they can't even be bothered to wait for the lights to go green before launching themselves forward. I have yet to hear of a cyclist that rides according to the law. It's illegal to ride without a helmet and high visibility clothes. The lad was without lights or reflective clothing, and clearly also a responsible adult to look after him. Not so much hug a hoodie but cuddle a cyclist perhaps. And what would have ensued had he collided with me. Whatever happened to the old 'Be safe, be seen' advertising campaign. "

And again.

'Cyclists should observe the highway code just as motorists do. I have yet to hear of a cyclist that rides according to the law. If a driver hit him off his bike they would no doubt get charged with driving with undue care and attention. Concerned residents made their points to MPs from across the region at a meeting of the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). Cyclists need to realise that the road is for motorists and cyclists and the pavement is for pedestrians. I realise not all cyclists behave like this, just the vast majority, especially the Lycra ones who think they are as wide as cars. There desperately needs to be something shown on TV perhaps to illustrate these dangers. Bristol cyclists still running red lights. I personally think a Cyclist free week would be far more beneficial. We are working with the police to try and overcome this problem. '

This is transformational. We can use the past works of the Evening Post article and letter writers to actually render themselves obsolete. It takes 17 milliseconds to generate one of these articles on a four year old laptop, which means that five million articles can be pushed out every single day. The evening post web site could be set up to generate one every time a visitor hit "reload" on the anti-cycling page. Then, once the comment generator was hooked up to generate comments from the collected comment articles, we could go on to simulate an entire Evening Post comment argument. Finally, the same code could be hooked up the Ashton Value stadium dataset and the whole town green/football stadium battle could be fought to the death between two competing servers. Like skynet only more provincial.

To close, then, with a fifteen sentence article:

"That is very dangerous because you expect to be able to cross safely without watching out. 20 billion pounds of damage to business is caused by traffic jams and cyclists are the main cause. The old Bristol to Bath railway track, Leigh Woods, the Avon Walkway and Ashton Court estate have all been badly scarred by cycling louts as they trash pedestrian paths making them fit only for cyclists, or gouge cycle tracks through the woodland for their hobby. Sometimes this has been where small children are present or when people are walking their dogs. Bodywork repair costs a lot these days. Every single one I see cuts through red lights like a knife through butter. They give me the impression that it is only them on the track and seem blissfully unaware of the fact that there are other 'freelance' cyclists and pedestrians who have just as much right as they have. Mr Drummond said the police seemed to turn a blind eye to cyclists on the pavements, too. It's illegal to ride without a helmet and high visibility clothes. Then, as I reached my destination another cyclist ignored the rules of the roundabout and pulled out straight in front of me. If something isn't done soon, I am afraid there is going to be a terrible, terrible accident. I do think that I will get hit at some point, especially if the number of cyclists in the city keeps increasing. We won't be coming again. I have nothing against cyclists and if I could see properly I would be one, but I would like to think I would be a considerate cyclist. "

Bristol will never be the same again

Evening Post bingo: the keywords

Last week we introduced Evening Post Bingo.

In a comment, someone called Downfader announced that they had the same idea -presumably from our initial proposal the week before- and had produced some cards.

Well, we appreciate the artwork, but note that Downfader's effort shows both selection bias in the form of the writer, and doesn't scale to working with other newspapers or article types.

Being a data-centric company, along with strategic partners like Google and Facebook, we have designed a system that will scale. The process is straightforward -use the articles on the evening post web site which we have already covered as the source of our content -and have machines to the heavy lifting for us.This will not only aid other regions, but apply just as well to the Ashton Gate and Bristol Mayor discussions.

While the sentence/phrase extraction process is underway, here is the initial output -the entire list of words in the Evening Post cycling article corpus, sorted by frequency. Everything is in lower case, so the 124 instances of "i" really translate to "I", and presumably indicate that an opinion is about to appear.

Cleanup is incomplete, apostrophes aren't being stripped of the ends of works, singular and plurals aren't being merged. Keeping the apostrophes in provides extra information, as it usually implies some kind of wittiness from the writer, like 'sui-cyclists' and 'supervision'. This actually makes us feel sorry for these letter writers, as their humour is clearly limited. Once our automated-evening-post-article-generator is completed they can entertain their friends with their humour, rather than inflict it on the rest of us.

For the reader's enjoyment then, the initial output of the Bristol Traffic mine-the-evening post Bingo card and Letter Generating system:-

the, 420
to, 267
and, 228
a, 222
of, 166
cyclists, 135
in, 127
i, 124
on, 107
is, 89
for, 78
they, 77
that, 75
it, 74
as, 71
are, 68
have, 64
cycling, 61
be, 60
was, 53
with, 53
we, 51
not, 50
who, 49
bristol, 49
but, 48
this, 47
city, 46
by, 46
at, 42
all, 42
road, 40
or, 38
lights, 36
there, 35
people, 34
pedestrians, 34
he, 34
has, 32
from, 32
their, 31
do, 29
cycle, 29
were, 29
would, 28
cyclist, 28
been, 27
one, 27
more, 27
if, 26
out, 26
should, 26
them, 25
about, 25
-, 24
so, 24
you, 24
me, 23
just, 23
pavement, 23
way, 22
my, 20
said, 20
an, 20
some, 19
time, 19
car, 18
council, 18
motorists, 18
police, 18
said:, 18
get, 18
these, 18
no, 17
when, 17
can, 17
ride, 17
will, 17
had, 16
bike, 15
think, 15
pounds, 15
very, 15
see, 15
illegal, 15
could, 15
how, 14
law, 14
say, 14
where, 14
many, 14
number, 14
also, 14
need, 14
dangerous, 14
like, 14
every, 13
pavements, 13
down, 13
than, 13
only, 13
traffic, 13
through, 13
up, 13
red, 13
other, 13
new, 12
same, 12
week, 12
last, 12
our, 12
it's, 12
mr, 11
project, 11
make, 11
right, 11
going, 11
being, 11
his, 11
use, 11
which, 11
even, 10
then, 10
good, 10
seen, 10
cars, 10
any, 10
pay, 10
without, 10
am, 10
us, 10
another, 9
years, 9
million, 9
take, 9
sure, 9
between, 9
around, 9
children, 9
what, 9
don't, 9
safety, 9
money, 9
dark, 9
having, 9
go, 9
tax, 9
must, 8
over, 8
drummond, 8
bikes, 8
still, 8
blind, 8
come, 8
using, 8
feel, 8
him, 8
towards, 8
hit, 8
centre, 8
group, 8
made, 8
i'm, 7
old, 7
clothing, 7
routes, 7
first, 7
laws, 7
walking, 7
before, 7
helmet, 7
your, 7
her, 7
lot, 7
everyone, 7
pedestrian, 7
spent, 7
run, 7
safer, 7
something, 7
she, 7
off, 7
street, 6
campaign, 6
travel, 6
safe, 6
too, 6
target, 6
against, 6
yet, 6
post, 6
says, 6
change, 6
may, 6
year, 6
enough, 6
across, 6
those, 6
drivers, 6
past, 6
needs, 6
that's, 6
done, 6
fine, 6
bristol's, 6
often, 6
users, 6
ago, 6
young, 6
few, 6
high, 6
light, 6
doing, 6
fact, 6
riding, 6
respect, 6
because, 6
transport, 6
under, 5
give, 5
want, 5
after, 5
break, 5
each, 5
gloucester, 5
rogers, 5
despite, 5
much, 5
couple, 5
night, 5
along, 5
making, 5
st, 5
half, 5
now, 5
killed, 5
thing, 5
11, 5
track, 5
nearly, 5
lanes, 5
city's, 5
public, 5
family, 5
eye, 5
two, 5
coming, 5
signs, 5
its, 5
evening, 5
since, 5
issue, 5
part, 5
paths, 5
8, 5
please, 5
rules, 5
used, 5
back, 5
into, 5
day, 5
why, 5
problem, 5
know, 5
does, 5
stay, 5
own, 5
three, 5
partially, 5
whether, 5
education, 5
accidents, 5
told, 4
path, 4
work, 4
keep, 4
turn, 4
fit, 4
little, 4
manner, 4
stop, 4
considerate, 4
bad, 4
protect, 4
near, 4
left, 4
possible, 4
cooper, 4
sighted, 4
such, 4
maybe, 4
realise, 4
crossings, 4
anyone, 4
black, 4
morning, 4
outside, 4
period, 4
dangers, 4
myself, 4
driver, 4
seems, 4
start, 4
trying, 4
again, 4
small, 4
pass, 4
attitudes, 4
taken, 4
22, 4
might, 4
someone, 4
insurance, 4
really, 4
officers, 4
chairman, 4
idiots, 4
both, 4
point, 4
else, 4
themselves, 4
once, 4
others, 4
danger, 4
majority, 4
move, 4
junction, 4
south, 4
gear, 4
let's, 4
wear, 4
well, 4
add, 4
avoid, 4
pressure, 4
getting, 4
roads, 4
authority, 4
dressed, 4
friends, 4
understand, 4
child, 3
four, 3
consider, 3
school, 3
clothes, 3
above, 3
increasing, 3
ever, 3
met, 3
i'd, 3
until, 3
damage, 3
badly, 3
wrong, 3
regularly, 3
driving, 3
encourage, 3
got, 3
free, 3
dogs, 3
likely, 3
mind, 3
seem, 3
responsible, 3
regular, 3
dog, 3
wearing, 3
result, 3
seven, 3
months, 3
support, 3
head, 3
daily, 3
did, 3
groups, 3
live, 3
believes, 3
claim, 3
pulled, 3
seriously, 3
quite, 3
care, 3
training, 3
massive, 3
saving, 3
vote, 3
given, 3
15, 3
especially, 3
drive, 3
cannot, 3
wheels, 3
can't, 3
situation, 3
middle, 3
railway, 3
accountable, 3
foot, 3
legal, 3
rush, 3
wife, 3
rogue, 3
mps, 3
large, 3
streets, 3
further, 3
experience, 3
action, 3
sustrans, 3
near-misses, 3
sense, 3
breaking, 3
compulsory, 3
help, 3
attitude, 3
encouraging, 3
15am, 3
stopped, 3
expect, 3
funding, 3
7, 3
highway, 3
louts, 3
station, 3
behind, 3
double, 3
vulnerable, 3
most, 3
scooter, 3
rest, 3
sustainable, 3
set, 3
meeting, 3
straight, 3
user, 3
spend, 3
love, 3
projects, 3
continue, 3
behave, 3
long, 3
crackdown, 3
planet, 3
called, 3
bishopston, 3
lane, 3
gloucestershire, 3
menace, 3
code, 3
arrogance, 3
jump, 3
let, 3
great, 3
next, 3
doubling, 3
started, 3
visibility, 3
train, 3
plate, 3
counted, 3
including, 3
hands, 3
front, 3
cause, 3
priority, 3
clearly, 3
able, 3
areas, 3
progress, 3
avon, 3
taking, 3
walk, 3
perhaps, 3
injured, 3
effect, 3
government, 3
proper, 3
home, 3
obey, 3
count, 3
wish, 3
limited, 2
aim, 2
never, 2
ignoring, 2
hospital, 2
call, 2
aware, 2
adult, 2
hold, 2
room, 2
err, 2
route, 2
end, 2
jumping, 2
appreciate, 2
green, 2
keeps, 2
better, 2
tourist, 2
represents, 2
side, 2
schemes, 2
carry, 2
turning, 2
enlightened, 2
days, 2
caught, 2
unlit, 2
top, 2
took, 2
outlaw, 2
matter, 2
mine, 2
causing, 2
responsibility, 2
roundabout, 2
14, 2
ban, 2
fail, 2
best, 2
tolerance, 2
however, 2
here, 2
accident, 2
reported, 2
planned, 2
high-visibility, 2
rather, 2
catch, 2
rnib, 2
motorist, 2
launched, 2
suggest, 2
several, 2
published, 2
meads, 2
failing, 2
yes, 2
royal, 2
possibly, 2
officer, 2
pushbike, 2
footway, 2
efforts, 2
bath, 2
hear, 2
lorry, 2
evidence, 2
felt, 2
hurt, 2
assume, 2
certainly, 2
environment, 2
bicycles, 2
cool, 2
team, 2
cost, 2
stands, 2
shared, 2
address, 2
wait, 2
boy, 2
funded, 2
example, 2
law-abiding, 2
country's, 2
visit, 2
today, 2
riders, 2
following, 2
didn't, 2
winter, 2
guarantee, 2
spot, 2
designed, 2
man, 2
werburgh's, 2
remember, 2
course, 2
councillor, 2
main, 2
lycra, 2
tried, 2
living, 2
earlier, 2
remainder, 2
cycles, 2
place, 2
spoken, 2
message, 2
millions, 2
redland, 2
10, 2
sat, 2
paid, 2
later, 2
abraham, 2
spaces, 2
aggressive, 2
regarding, 2
reading, 2
miles, 2
vision, 2
seat, 2
encouraged, 2
blame, 2
cities, 2
among, 2
zetland, 2
3000, 2
couldn't, 2
sensible, 2
collided, 2
reflective, 2
observe, 2
case, 2
everyday, 2
running, 2
charged, 2
actions, 2
death, 2
thinking, 2
4, 2
read, 2
either, 2
always, 2
central, 2
act, 2
area, 2
sides, 2
condone, 2
certain, 2
important, 2
starting, 2
forget, 2
caused, 2
off-road, 2
acting, 2
sitting, 2
20mph, 2
hartas, 2
behaviour, 2
tracks, 2
advertising, 2
amenities, 2
knows, 2
excuse, 2
stick, 2
particular, 2
hour, 2
patrols, 2
749, 2
huge, 2
court, 2
plans, 2
rude, 2
soon, 2
disabled, 2
24, 2
style, 2
20, 2
travelling, 2
return, 2
propose, 2
association, 2
occasions, 2
level, 2
lycra-clad, 2
england, 2
hard, 2
idea, 2
missed, 2
terrible, 2
year's, 2
least, 2
costs, 2
park, 2
sometimes, 2
particularly, 2
impact, 2
meanwhile, 2
during, 2
attention, 2
incident, 2
invisible, 2
whole, 2
throughout, 2
weaving, 2
due, 2
lives, 2
look, 2
while, 2
obviously, 2
readers, 2
tell, 2
march, 2
big, 2
bid, 2
bit, 2
essential, 2
one-way, 2
per, 2
temple, 2
anything, 2
nothing, 2
we're, 2
forward, 2
boys, 2
properly, 2
unsafe, 2
reflectors, 2
ashton, 2
2008, 2
issues, 2
concerned, 2
friendly, 2
sent, 2
try, 2
race, 2
giving, 2
access, 2
growing, 2
consideration, 2
involved, 2
opinion, 2
residents, 2
apply, 2
doubt, 2
charity, 2
junctions, 2
democracy, 2
brian, 2
abuse, 2
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flout, 2
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identified, 2
crossing, 2
33000, 2
improvements, 2
nobody, 2
afraid, 2
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eight, 2
face, 2
parked, 2
longer, 2
won't, 2
local, 2
meant, 2
jon, 2
etc, 2
figures, 2
safely, 2
wall, 2
cent, 2
moved, 2
policy, 2
frustrating, 2
almost, 2
cross, 2
proficiency, 2
lobby, 2
sets, 2
five, 2
walkway, 2
martin, 2
operation, 2
leader, 2
although, 2
letters, 2
registration, 2
biggest, 2
gain, 2
squeeze, 2
incredibly, 2
rule, 2
raining, 1
sleek, 1
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woods, 1
hate, 1
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teaching, 1
slowest, 1
instincts, 1
risk, 1
regional, 1
car-free, 1
vast, 1
tickets, 1
amenities/green, 1
wednesday, 1
enforce, 1
subsidising, 1
convenience, 1
'solution', 1
flashy, 1
heading, 1
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force, 1
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phones, 1
horn, 1
second, 1
implemented, 1
machines, 1
pace, 1
two-wheeler, 1
spokesman, 1
bonuses, 1
absolute, 1
better-spent, 1
drew, 1
protection, 1
kids, 1
daughter, 1
jams, 1
oxford, 1
study, 1
credit, 1
suitable, 1
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julie, 1
feelings, 1
total, 1
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spoke, 1
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crossbar, 1
warm, 1
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hurl, 1
90, 1
ward, 1
94, 1
join, 1
cuddle, 1
ms, 1
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horfield, 1
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rise, 1
description, 1
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third, 1
maintain, 1
frequent, 1
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whizzing, 1
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somewhere, 1
highlights, 1
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writing, 1
fig, 1
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educating, 1
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downright, 1
structural, 1
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rant, 1
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tom, 1
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7am, 1
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wide, 1
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169, 1
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58, 1
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bert, 1
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sachs', 1
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figure, 1
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1, 1
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ensure, 1
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edinburgh, 1
144, 1
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cascade, 1
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plea, 1
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13, 1
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17, 1
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illingworth, 1
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no-one, 1
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26, 1
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pot, 1
68, 1
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corduroys, 1
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cheltenham, 1
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speed, 1
nick, 1
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ross, 1
real, 1
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mot, 1
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photographs, 1
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mood, 1
confirm, 1
retinitis, 1
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knife, 1
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seconds, 1
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strangled, 1
throw, 1
fringe, 1
obeys, 1
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decimated, 1
on-the-spot, 1
supervising, 1
hey, 1
low, 1
somerset, 1
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two-thirds, 1
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month, 1
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tv, 1
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scout, 1
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worst, 1
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colossal, 1
zero, 1
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section, 1
racing, 1
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healthier, 1
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caravan, 1
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6, 1
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door, 1
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owners, 1
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doom, 1
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phillip, 1
harbourside, 1
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nine, 1
dem, 1
history, 1
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states, 1
collision, 1
minimum, 1
numbers, 1
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needy, 1
speeding, 1
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concentrating, 1
short, 1
co-exist, 1
privileges, 1
handlebars, 1
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arrogant, 1
fined, 1
late, 1
attended, 1
stephen, 1
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socially, 1
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perkin, 1
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holroyd, 1
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£30, 1
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ashley, 1
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wayne, 1
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activity, 1
bars, 1
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close, 1
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pictures, 1
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probably, 1
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creating, 1
missing, 1
half-hour, 1
8am, 1
context, 1
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community, 1
hadn't, 1
church, 1
patiently, 1
finally, 1
pc, 1
reduction, 1
fights, 1
pedals, 1
what's, 1
whatever, 1
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budget, 1
institute, 1
fun, 1
use', 1
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vanish, 1
grant, 1
widely, 1
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banter, 1
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southport, 1
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person, 1
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gripe, 1
stunt, 1
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injuries, 1
tables, 1
shouting, 1
oldland, 1
deliberately, 1
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'shared, 1
matters, 1
knock, 1
imposed, 1
d, 1
obliged, 1
magnificent, 1
litter, 1
mighty, 1
examples, 1
sight, 1
trendy, 1
delivered, 1
decision, 1
prosecuted, 1
anna, 1
blackspots, 1
lose, 1
confidence, 1
relating, 1
cigarette, 1
classics, 1
seeing, 1
well-organised, 1
contributor, 1
alison, 1
gouge, 1
habitat, 1
spending, 1
syllabus, 1
himself, 1
invite, 1
uk's, 1
registered, 1
hail, 1
upright, 1
liveable, 1
2mph, 1
uk, 1
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single, 1
warning, 1
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fears, 1
excuses, 1
points, 1
recognition, 1
organise, 1
nice, 1
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visits, 1
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age, 1
'humble', 1
stephen's, 1
far, 1
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kate, 1
seemed, 1
chaps, 1
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black-riders, 1
shock, 1
michael, 1
they've, 1
fewer, 1
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slogan:, 1
odd, 1
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man's, 1
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33, 1
gent, 1
30, 1
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62-year-old, 1
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jonathan, 1
sort, 1
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occurred, 1
account, 1
f, 1
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arches, 1
anywhere, 1
control, 1
wharf, 1
patrol, 1
tar, 1
rode, 1
policing, 1
30cm, 1
sit, 1
six, 1
animal, 1
instead, 1
tension, 1
administrator, 1
cycle-free, 1
by-law, 1
bothered, 1
they/we, 1
1885, 1
9am, 1
crazed, 1
'be, 1
mentioned, 1
wife's, 1
perfect, 1
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hobby, 1
2011, 1
dad, 1
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stunts, 1
masters, 1
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lawful, 1
staying, 1
matt, 1
playground, 1
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ipod, 1
surely, 1
collection, 1
steering, 1
'supervision', 1
2009/10, 1
times, 1
adrian, 1
mad, 1
scene, 1
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quality, 1
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management, 1
sadly, 1
festival, 1
enforcement, 1
regards, 1
colleagues, 1
holland, 1
bother, 1
car-park, 1
providing, 1
coronation, 1
beggared, 1
false, 1
westbury, 1
parks, 1
co-ordinator, 1
unless, 1
so-called, 1
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upset, 1
astonishing, 1
occasion, 1
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anyway, 1
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well-being, 1
fear, 1
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decade, 1
promote, 1
pigmentosa, 1
hope, 1
handle, 1
means, 1
lucky, 1
scott:, 1
99%, 1
ones, 1
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magistrate, 1
approach, 1
watershed, 1
affluent, 1
taxed, 1
fixed, 1
national, 1
lazy, 1
operated, 1
kingswood, 1
closer, 1
written, 1
email, 1
disgruntled, 1
deliver, 1
david, 1
45am, 1
admit, 1
hi-viz, 1
comment, 1
co, 1
tuesday, 1
commend, 1
allocated, 1
waste, 1
mike, 1
arises, 1
controlled, 1
finishes, 1
finished, 1
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general, 1
present, 1
unlike, 1
dodge, 1
harder, 1
nobody's, 1
workplaces, 1
helped, 1
began, 1
pauls, 1
member, 1
party, 1
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difficult, 1
eccentric, 1
disagree, 1
variety, 1
thought, 1
less, 1
increasingly, 1
executive, 1
rooms, 1
protecting, 1
blackspot, 1
ill-educated, 1
smith, 1
arrest, 1
vent/put, 1
attractive, 1
wet, 1
match, 1
tests, 1
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supervise, 1
whopping, 1
necessary, 1
taxpayers, 1
become, 1
page, 1
motorcyclists, 1
grids, 1
scared, 1
library, 1
redress, 1
peter, 1
happens, 1
pedestrianised, 1
reaching, 1
carried, 1
introduces, 1
beige, 1
outset, 1
congregate, 1
brush, 1
van, 1
noticed, 1
invisibility, 1
north, 1
i've, 1
bus, 1
brand, 1
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plague, 1
signed, 1
volvo, 1
below, 1
this;, 1
bpa2011@live, 1
minutes, 1
urging, 1
goodness, 1
commentators, 1
eric, 1
compared, 1
49, 1
44, 1
monday, 1
frustrate, 1
gap, 1
baker, 1
britain's, 1

Introducing : Evening Post Bingo!

We are excited to announce -in collaboration with our partners the Bristol Evening Post, a new form of entertainment: Evening Post Bingo!

The basic concept is simple, here is the outline

1. Every few days the Evening Post will print a fictional letter or article pretending to be an ill-informed rant against bicycles. They are clearly spoofs, but some people, motorists and tax-dodgers alike, fall for them and try to argue the details with each other in the comments.
2. This week, for example, we have made one up called "they should pay road tax!". 
3. Evening Post Bingo! players look in the article for the key phrases on their bingo sheets, then the comments
4. If all of them are found -either in the article or comments, enter your own comment, "Bingo!", and the list of phrases you were looking for.
5. Do not attempt to engage in any form of debate in the comments itself, as this is like trying to explain Quantitive Easing to a chimpanzee -or what a Pasty is to a member of the cabinet.
6. In our weekly round-up of the evening post articles, we will credit the first Bingo winner of every article.

Bingo card generation will be fully automated; the code will be open sourced on Github shortly.Participants will be able to generate their own bingo cards at home, and other regions will be able to provide their own keyword lists that don't refer to Gloucester, Stapleton, or Coronation Roads

For now, here are some example cards, each of which can be used by anyone. These have all been machine generated, and are free from any human bias.

mandatory insurance
lycra-lout
abusive
unlit
criminals

against the law
selfish
council conspiracy
pavement cyclist
injure pedestrians

pavement
cause congestion
selfish
persecuted motorists
spoiled by the council

government money wasted
free-loaders
mandatory insurance
tax-dodgers
lawless

20mph
smug
gloucester road
these cyclists
cause congestion

stay in the cycle lane
danger to others
persecuted motorists
time someone stood up to them
some of my best friends are cyclists

We'll be publishing the source and keyword list later -the keyword list is where we'd like some extra contributions.

We are also considering fully automating our Evening Post article writing process. This would be based on that work by our strategic partner, Google, as discussed in The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data [Norvig 2009]. The idea is that with enough of a collection of evening post, daily mail and other articles on cycling, it will be possible to generate valid sentences based purely on statistical knowledge of past sentences. The bingo cards are merely a first step in this process.

The AA street watch

Apparently the AA were doing some study last week, trying get some statistics on what people in cities do that is technically "illegal", despite the war on motorists being over.

We think their crowd-sourced approach, while clearly based on our own world-leading experiment, is valid, we do like asking the machines for the data too. It scales better in space and time, generates more defensible data,  suffers from less self-selection bias, and is easier to go through in bulk.

This is why we think the best way for the AA to gain some statistics of where drivers bend the "so called law" would simply be to collect the satnav statistics of their own vehicles, correlating vehicle speeds and parking events with the "legacy" speed limits, double yellow line map, yellow-boxed junctions, etc. This would provide a year-round source of data, completely independent of any selection bias of the reporters.

We invite the AA to provide the Bristol Traffic team with an anonymised copy of such a dataset. Even if our multi-terabyte distributed filestore lacks the storage and compute capacity, we are sure that our strategic partners like Yahoo!, Google and Facebook,  do, and we will apply our world class datamining and Hidden Markov Modelling techniques to show the AA we are pretty good at guessing where their vans and driving school vehicles will park (hint: double yellow lines and pavements, such as here, the double yellow lines of St Michael's Hill).

A lot of people dismiss the AA for being lost in time, pining for the 1950s when cars only made it ten miles before a breakdown, and you'd send a telegram to let your family know you'd made it all the way from Bristol city centre to Filton without a catastrophe. We criticise them for something else: inability to grasp the opportunities that modern technologies bring. Never ask the people, when you can ask the machines.

Facebook Issues

The Bristol Traffic team met many of our strategic partners in California, too many to mention. One thing we will flag up is our concerns about the Facebook visit. The Non-Disclosure Agreement prevents any discussion about what went on indoors, what their offices look like, or whether or not the team met The Man. It's not important; what matters is that two of the world's best datamining organisations got together to discuss areas of mutual interest. And the Bristol Traffic logo (a stylised version of Southwell Street) is now on graffiti wall on the right past security.

What we will raise is this. The entrance, of 1601 California Avenue. HQ.

This in the head office, the developers all work here, with Mark in the private room in the middle. Someone worth many billions of dollars, hosting Obama shortly after our visit. But where is the fancy parking area? There is more prestigious parking are outside the UWE vice chancellor's office than here, where the vehicles that can get closest to the entrance are a shuttlebus and bicycles.

It is trends like this -giving bicycle parking pride of place in the foyer of the global web companies- that worry us.

At the junction of Google and Ampitheater

Over in Waltham Forest, Freewheeler has been expressing some concerns about google.

We too have issues, which, during the teams visit to our strategic partners in California, also cause us to question our long term relationship with them.

Ampitheater Parkway. Like the Bristol M32 Parkway except less congested, and there's a bike lane in the hard shoulder for pickups to sideswipe. All is well.

Ahead, the centre of Google-land, with a little "google maps" pin to show you where the Google maps team is based. All is well.

But what's this we see from our SUV?

That's right: it's a Google employee, on a Google staff bicycle, cycling between offices, while holding a phone.

This is Google, not just encouraging their employees to ride bicycles, but to check their email as they do it. And they aren't even wearing a helmet!

It is unacceptable, and concerns us deeply. Is Google really on our side. We know Microsoft are, because they gave the internet the Comic Sans font, the official font of the Association of British Drivers, Drivers Protest and the like. But Google? By encouraging such reckless behaviour by their staffers, we now have doubts.

Queries that Bring visitors

As part of our "watching you, watching us" series, here are some of the keywords that brought visitors to the site. Stokes croft was the main bringer of visitors, more about the riot than the wonders of Slix. Comments appear after the "-" symbols.

• stokes croft riot -481 visits with the word stokes croft
• stokes croft tesco
• bristol stoke gifford riots -got some bad news for you there: nothing happens in S Gloucs.
• coronation road cycle path bristol -we call it the farm pub path
• bri parking -70 visits on this
• dropped kerb kingsdown-yeah, they ticket you for parking there
• vertical parking technique
• "the aa" -we are coming up in the first page of results here!
• cllr gollop cycling
• parking near cabot circus -walk from the stokes croft bike lane. 50 hits for this last month.
• parking near primark bristol -see above
• brunel ford -ooh, top five there.
• cabot circus free parking -not any more
• cheap parking near cabot circus -for shoppers, the big multistorey car park
• hack tachographs -always use a TOR proxy when planning to break the law
• hiviz fetish - still?
• aa driving school -top 5 there too
• bristol massage parlour extras - get in touch, we have a special on Keith Chegwin accessories
• british school of motoring how to park -if they knew, they'd tell us
• bus lane fine in bristol if dropping someone off - possibly
• can i turn right from zetland road to gloucester road -yes
• eric pickles declares war - we are #1 on google on this now
• free parking in bristol st michael's -yes, on evenings and weekends
• free parking near college green -only for councillors
• is it illegal to block a junction on a road in standing traffic -yes, but it doesn't stop the AA doing it, so it must be OK
• is stokes croft a bad area? depends: good for drugs and paid sex, some of the bars are OK.
• kingsdown parking permits for sale -yes, we found that out, didn't we?
• mr ahmadou spiritual healer - but can he fix speeding tickets?
• parking at abbeywood b&q - bills come in the post if you do this all day: the students learned this a while ago
• stapleton road bristol sex for sell -apparently so
• prostitutes and truck parking -see above
• ubht staff parking -lots.
• will my car get towed in st pauls bristol -try it and see
• can you get done for 30 mph in a 20 zone -yes, and we hear they are issuing tickets now

Remember: if you are researching illegal acts, always use an anonymising proxy server. We do.

Hello to Van Hire Bristol!

A quick hello to Van Hire Bristol who added a comment to our co-existence post, the one that showed a white van turning into Cotham Hill without bothering to look, because the driver knew that mostly only people on bicycles come down the hill, and any pedestrians crossing at that point are students and therefore liabilities on the state.

Whoever it was that posted the comment made some well informed comments showing their mastery of the the English language, and their complete failure to read the bit where we warn that anyone posting adverts will be publicly criticised, along with ignorance of the nofollow attribute hence the fact that adding comments to a high page-ranked site like ours does nothing for their own ranking:

Hey I like the post very much. This is really a very good post with very good information.


Thanks a lot for sharing the post very much. You know what I like the title of video very much which insist to watch the video to me. :)


Keep sharing such stuffs.

Well, we don't care whether you like the title or whether you think it's a really good post with very good information, and we shall keep sharing such stuffs without being asked. What we want to know is this? Is the white van YB06BDO one of the Van Hire Bristol fleet?


Furthermore, if we rent a van from you:

1. Does it automatically come with pre-insurance cover for running over bicycles and pedestrians?
2. Will you be upset if comes back with scratches and blood on the bumper?
3. Does it have a tow bar to provide audible feedback when reverse parking (crunching sounds)
4. What driver training will you provide showing us how to drive and park such vehicles, especially while texting?

Regarding the comment itself, a few more questions

• Did you actually pay somebody to write such an atrociously badly written comment?
• What did they promise in return? 
• Did they read the warning notice before they commented, and did they understand the consequences of their action, namely that they consented to have your site discussed in a posting all of its own?
• How does it feel to have a web page making fun of you (as promised in the comment form) come back ahead of you in searches?
• Given that some people may view the video as portraying a mildly negative opinion of white vans in the city -despite our own view that they are an essential part of the national economy- do you feel that it is wise to have your brand associated with such incidents?
• Did you ask the person who promised to boost your page to read the pages first? Will you request this in future?
• Have you asked your outsourced SEO agent about nofollow tags and the fact that they mean that none of our google pagerank (5) transfers to yours (0) -and that the comments have at best no effect whatsoever?
• Are you aware that because Google own blogspot, there is the possibility that at worst they will use the URLs in postings downgraded as spam to actually penalise such sites in their search engine?
• Have you a way of asking for your money back?

Remember, the Bristol Traffic project is a data gathering and datamining organisation that views Google and Yahoo! as strategic partners; Game Theory  and Graph Theory key branches of mathematics to model traffic movement around cities. We do not yet see any value in strategic or tactical alliances with Van Hire Bristol, whoever you are, so will be forced to block any further attempts to add comments to our site.

Thank you for your participation in the Bristol Traffic Project.

A polite refusal

Sachin,

Sadly, we must decline your offer to write articles on our site in exchange for links back to some paying customer of yours for the following reasons

1. You have not spent enough time reading the articles, merely searched for driving school on blogspot, observed our pagerank and thought that you'd like some of it. If you had spent more time on our site, you would have realised that your underpaid copy-editors will not be up to the high standards maintained by our volunteers.
2. We have quite enough high quality content of our own, and more in the pipeline. The problem we have is not in getting photographs or videos, it is in coming up with prose that is entertaining enough to accompany it.
3. On our comments page, we explicitly say "No adverts, no spam, no requests for cross linking. We will only be rude." You have fallen foul of this clause, hence this online feedback session.
4. We like to consider Google and MSFT/Bing strategic partners, while also maintaining a good working relationship with Yahoo! and Facebook, with whom we share a common codebase for our data mining activities. Linking to tier-three Australian driving school web sites would damage these relationships.
5. Your SEO customer's web site -to which we graciously link to for free- appears to be smug bollocks. This gives us the impression that your driving instructors are the kind who witter on about he correct colour of driving gloves to wear, not today's problems of how to post a positive comment on Facebook from your phone about the woman on the crossing you nearly hit without crashing into the car in front of you in the traffic jam.

Rest assured, there is a special place for driving instructors on our site, and we look forward to the opportunity to cover your customers there at some point in the future. Perhaps one of our Australian readers can provide some photographs for the coverage.

Yours,

The Bristol Traffic Project

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sachin sachin@webprofits.com.au
Date: 19 October 2010 08:33
Subject: We would like to write an article for your site
To: bristol.traffic at gmail dot com


Hey there,

We have been reading the articles on your website and are very impressed with the quality of your information.

We have a team of copywriters who specialize in writing articles on various topics and would like to write an original article for you to use on your website – this article will not be used anywhere else on the Internet.

In exchange all we ask is that we can have one or two links within the body of the article back to one of our sites. You can view a sample of the quality of our articles at

If you are interested in having us write an article for your website please just let me know and we would be more than happy to have one written for you within two weeks.

Kind regards,

Sachin