Category: Bristol

Grappling with big ideas

I’ve just published some thoughts on last night’s Bristol Festival of Ideas event over at Medium.com: Last night I attended a cracking event to mark the relaunch Pelican books, organised under the auspices of the Bristol Festival of Ideas. The authors of four of the initial five volumes published […]

European Parliament – election debate

If you’re in or around Bristol on 28th April you might find the following event of interest. It’s being organised by Dr Diego Acosta Arcarazo, of the University’s Law School. I’m not involved, but I’ll be there. European Parliament elections 2014: join the debate The European Parliament election […]

Mixed messages

Yesterday I had a meeting with someone about a thing. Before we got started my interlocutor looked at me rather accusingly and, apropos of nothing at all, said “Someone tells me you’re a member of the Liberal Democrats”. This was a decidedly unexpected turn of events. I felt […]

George Ferguson’s Vision for Bristol: A response

Last night George Ferguson gave his first Mayoral State of the City address in the Great Hall of the Wills Memorial Building. This launched both the Mayor’s Vision for Bristol and the consultation on the local authority budget. Following the Mayor’s presentation there were brief responses from Alexandra […]

Keeping up with the Bristol Bloggerati

Bristol has a lively bunch of bloggers. Keeping up with what’s being posted can be a bit of a struggle. We now have a new resource in the form of www.bristolblogs.com. Bristol Blogs brings together more than 80 different feeds from bloggers in and around Bristol, blogging about […]

Who is social housing for, and who should it be for?

Yesterday I participated in a consultation event organised by Bristol City Council. it was designed to start a debate locally about the revision of social housing allocations policy. My talk, which ranged rather more broadly than simply allocations policy, is a bit too long to include in a […]

On local governance and elected mayors

On Friday we published a report on the prospects for an elected mayor in Bristol. It is the first report from the Bristol Civic Leadership Project. The prospects report was based primarily on views collected from around Bristol prior to the mayoral election in November. It drew on […]

Economists in reflective mood

Next weekend Bristol will host the Festival of Economics, organised under the auspices of the Festival of Ideas. The programme for the Festival of Economics has been assembled by Diane Coyle of Enlightenment Economics. It brings together economic journalists, applied academic economists, and economists in the think tank […]

The future of local democracy

Participation in representative democratic processes at local level is on the wane. Not just in Britain but in several other western democracies. There is plenty of cause to reflect on why that might be, and what might be done about it. How can more local people become engaged […]

Challenging Corporate Coffee

Thursday’s G2 magazine featured an article about the imminent arrival of Costa coffee in Totnes in Devon. John Harris recounts the opposition to the move among local independent coffee retailers and local residents. Totnes has a distinctive culture: people fear that Costa will undermine it. This act of […]