“Can we fix it? Yes we can!” So say both Bob The Builder and US President Barack Obama – and now that they have at last won overall control of Bristol City Council, Bristol’s Liberal Democrats have a clear opportunity to fix Bristol. Their manifesto, called ‘Six To Fix’, gives six pretty specific benchmarks against which we will all be able to assess their progress (though these are mostly small scale changes, avoiding bigger/general problems and no timescale is given):

1. ‘Cut congestion and get better transport for all’: The Lib Dems propose to back suburban rail, give more money for road safety, pedestrians and cyclists and introduce a cashless ‘Oyster Card’ system for Bristol buses. The key benchmark of progress here is congestion.

2. ‘A clean and green city’: That means more money for street cleaning, getting tough on fly-tipping, a ‘parkie’ in every major park and more play areas for children, fighting the green belt grab and preserving our green spaces. Green belt preservation is an interesting one here, particularly since Bristol City Football Club propose to build a new stadium on green land. The scheme is backed currently by all party leaders and could bring World Cup football to Bristol but the Ashton Vale site is green belt. The key indicators here are green spaces and carbon emissions.

3. ‘Boost Bristol’s Bobbies’: Including a fair share of police, campaign against ID cards and new crime reduction schemes on repeat offenders. Police and Community Support Officer numbers are easily counted and tracked but this does not necessarily mean more peaceful, orderly, lower crime neighbourhoods, so the benchmark is not so straightforward. Real, effective leadership would give us less crime and more peace and order.

4. ‘Three new libraries, a new school [North Bristol] and a new pool [East Bristol]’: This precise policy includes a promise to ‘fix Labours school places mess’ which saw such chaos for parents and pupils this year. We will all be able to see whether the various facilities are built but there is no promise on an overall improvement in the quality of education. It also looks like the Lib Dems will go ahead with plans to create bigger primary schools which some see as going against the quality of the educational experience. Real, effective leadership would improve the quality of education, not that this is straightforward to assess!

5. ‘Beat Gordon Brown’s recession in Bristol’: Schemes including keeping the Council Tax as low as possible and campaigning for it to be scrapped, extra help on debt for small businesses and individuals, and investment in training and apprenticeships are more nebulous and designed to pick up votes during a time of recession. We all know that the council cannot make Bristol a recession-free zone and everybody would subscribe to the other policies under this heading the way they are worded!

6. ‘50% recycling by 2010 and no incinerator’: This means switching from an incinerator to clean and cheap new technology, free corn-starch brown-bin liner bags and reversing the recycling rate drop under Labour. These sound straightforward targets but are quite ambitious, especially the 50% recycling which would be great to achieve. We still need to push on a lot from there if we are to have a low waste city though and someone needs to get a grip on total waste, most of which is not generated in households of course.

Glenn Vowles
http://vowlesthegreen.blogspot.com