This is the first time that Stokes Croft has anything vaguely resembling positive coverage, so it's worth a read.
Sadly, it's flawed. As we've stated before stokes croft is not Bohemian.
Yes, it does have a flower shop, so the "A revolution must have flowers" quote is correct -yet the author of the article completely omits the adjacent retail outlet, Slix -the food of the revolution, or how this so-called revolution will impact the paid-sex industry of the area.
For claims that the croft is gentrified, we are pleased to reassure people that the coloured paint is, literally, a thin layer of paint over the cracks. Nor did the article mention the familiar sound of the A38 -the sirens- or the fact that for many of the residents, Alcoholism is in fact a career choice. there was lots of praise for the Post Office, : "the lovely folk at the post office". Yet the article implied that walking and cycling were the way to get around. Regular readers will know that the cycle lane is for short-stay visitors to the post office, while the recommended transport for the area is in fact a van.
On the topic of stokes croft vans, can we ask the driver of the red van turning right into Ashley Road at about 4:30pm today, monday Jul 2, what did that female pedestrian in the grey jacket do that merited you getting out and trying to start a fight with her? Pedestrians can damage your paintwork if they hit your van or wingmirrors, so we are sure that whatever she did it was deserved.
We were just suprised, watching it from our own van, that the first road-rage incident of the evening rush hour was starting that early on in the evening. Usually the fights don't kick off until after 5pm.
The news is now out that he's been sentenced to 17 months in jail after pleading guilty to dangerous driving and GBH, which, given the video, was hard to defeat with the "I didn't see him" defence.
The video is pretty awful for anyone to watch: if you want to know what it looks like when a bus sideswipes someone on a bicycle -when the bus isn't even going that fast.
The evening post says that the bus driver, Gavin Hill, has been disqualified from driving for 30 months, and will have to take an extended driving test afterwards. Apparently the action was "a moment of madness".
Well, we hope that Phil isn't suffering long-term consequences, and that the outcome does provide some reassurance that society frowns on such explicit attempts to cause death and injury.
When we heard the "someone to lie for him" phrase we checked to see if David Lowrey was on the coalition cabinet, but no, he was someone who started a fight with someone on a bicycle who had the audacity to make some kind of gesture to the car as the car encroached into the cycle lane.
Again, "a moment of madness", this time with four months jail; no mention of driving penalty or what penalty he or the "independent witness" get for trying to pervert the course of justice (*)
If these court cases weren't in the papers on the same day, the "moment of madness" defence might sound somewhat realistic. As it is, it comes out looking a contrived.
For that reason, we had a look around to see where else the "moment of madness" defence had cropped up.
Ron Davies, welsh secretary, robbed at knifepoint by a some people he went down to Clapham Common with"a moment of madness"
Sir John Guielgud, set up by the police who actually had undercover police trying to entrap men seeking a bit of discreet consensual sex, again "a moment of madness".
Hugh Grant getting caught paying a prostitute for a bit of entertainment in a public lavatory while on a business trip without his wife.
There we have it then, two separate scenarios where defence lawyers recommend the "moment of madness" defence
You've rammed or assaulted someone on a bicycle and want to make it clear that normally you are a safe and docile driver and suddenly "a moment of madness" came over you. You didn't mean to cause physical injury and hope to be let off lightly.
You got caught by the police engaged in some outdoor sex act which the legal system at that time and place considered illegal. You want to imply that the fact the police caught you with your trousers down was not because you do it very often but because you "had a moment of madness" and you were very unlucky. You also don't want your political/acting/religious career ruined, so you have to pretend it was somehow an accident.
There you have it then, two situations where the "moment of madness" defence crops up. Can we note, then, that for the second of these sets of legal cases, nobody gets hurt. In fact, most of the participants in the situations seemed, at least to an extent, engaged in consensual acts. Whereas nobody volunteers to be run over by a bus at the bearpit, or head-butted by a complete stranger.
Either way, it's become a bit of a cliche. Please, defence lawyers, come up with some new phrase.
(*) On the topic of independent witnesses, can we remind everyone that not only do ex-spouses turn on you, but if you are having someone pretend to be a complete stranger so as to devalue the line up evidence, remember that as covered in Ugander et al., The Anatomy of the Facebook Social Graph, it's fairly easy to determine if the pairwise distance between you and the independent witness is only one or two hops, or the you are both parts of the same clique of acquaintances. Less formally: you can't say "I have never met this person" if you keep identifying each other as friends in facebook photos.
Update: for anyone in the mainstream media who is not actually appearing in the Leveson inquiry or in a 1:1 meeting with Don Murdoch, trying to contact us -please read more than one article on this site, especially the media corner, before emailing us. You will discover that you wouldn't consider us a serious and unbiased news outlet. Which, coincidentally, is exactly how we view the television and printed news outlets.
"were you the idiot driver of the grey van who on Wed Feb 1 was swearing at me down at Muller Road because all the way down Romney Ave he hadn't been able to pass me, because I didn't get out of the way of traffic?"
"If you were, can I point out that I was doing 30 mph, so you had no justification to pass me, and as I was following a car doing the same speed about three bike lengths in front, you had nowhere to go anyway."
"I hope you enjoyed the long traffic jam on Muller Road with no bicycle in your way to get upset about"
We have looked at our van and no, it doesn't look grey, more a white with a brown layer on top, "dirty!" written on the back. (that's our brand, incidentally).
We understand the grey van driver. We don't think bicycles should be on the road, so the fact that you were there -and the fact that he couldn't get past- made it very frustrating. If you had cycled slower and stayed to one side he would still have hated you, but a bit less.
That's something the advocates of "vehicular cycling" don't understand. They think if you imagine that you are a car, and position yourself appropriately, you will recognised as a vehicle and made welcome. Not so: you will just become an arrogant cyclist who doesn't know their place -and deserves the abuse they get.
It is your very presence that is the issue, not just your positioning.
When we get asked "Why are you taping my wife" its usually related to some late evening encounter on the downs in our van, but here we see it on the streets of Bath in broad daylight. Its long, but funny to listen to.
We particularly like the bit in the conversation where she threatens to report him to the police for assault:
'I'm going to say you were assaulting me!' 'Fine, I've been filming the whole thing' 'I don't care!'
If there's a moral here, don't get upset that someone films you in public. Getting upset just makes it funnier when the video goes online, and more people see it.
24/jan/2012 update; the video has been made private. Sorry.
The court case against the driver is scheduled for Wed 4th January, at Bristol Crown Court No 7, at 11:00 or later -more details welcome. We'd also hope the cyclist involved has recovered.
Unlike the Evening Post, we do cover such things, and would welcome a full summary to bristol.traffic at gmail dot com, where it will make its way online.
Bristol has -despite some serious incidents- a better year. We also wish everyone that 2012 continues to not only have the same -zero- pedestrian and cyclist deaths, but that the number of injured drops too. If there is a difference between London and Bristol, it is that the police here are more supportive.
By way of the Legacy Printed Press, we see this video of a car being forced to push a Ford Ka out onto the road by the school entrance to Cabot Primary School.
The comments on the E.P. Article are pretty polarised.
On the one hand, this is someone exerting their right to get their car out of the garage despite the selfish actions by lazy parents who themselves park on the keep clear zones just to drop the kids off faster. On the other, this is someone potentially endangering children who if not walking to school, are being dropped off by their parents outside it and expected to walk across a road. It's hard to say who is most wronged here.
