Thursday 7 January 2010

How Many More before Bristol Council Act?

As warned on this blog on Monday and again this morning, the junction of Richmond Hill and Queen's Road is proving lethal with walkers falling like nine pins. In about 20 minutes this evening I witnessed dozens of slips, half a dozen falls and one suspected broken bone requiring an ambulance. In addition almost every car emerging from Richmond Hill was sliding on the ice into Queen's Road, unable to stop.



It was all pretty sickening, watching and knowing some were going to fall, knowing that each car was going to slide out of control on the ice. And all avoidable, if only we had a Council able to listen to a simple bit of advice and act on it. But instead we have a Council suffering bureaucratic rigor mortis, unable to respond even at this most elementary level of human decency. You take pictures, you explain the problem, you put it on a public blog, representatives of the Council see it and - nothing.



So now we have real injuries, fractures, confirmed by photographic evidence. Will this be enough to inject some life into this moribund council? Probably not, so alienated are they to feeling anything resembling empathy with the public they are supposed to serve. I despair, this is just a simple matter of spreading some grit. Is that so difficult? Do I have to go and do it myself? Oh for a spade and wheelbarrow (which I haven't got). Can I bear to go back again, knowing that it is just a matter of minutes before I see another fall?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hooligans. They should all be made to wear helmets.

Anonymous said...

Can I bear to go back again, knowing that it is just a matter of minutes before I see another fall?

You'd be useless in a time of crisis!!!

Jon Rogers said...

Where is the nearest grit bin? I'll walk over from St Andrews and you and I can do some gritting, then perhaps a warming drink in a local hostelry afterwards?

Chris Hutt said...

Well you can't call Cllr Jon Rogers apathetic. He challenged me to go out with him to grit that pavement and we did. Quite a pleasant bit of exercise too, followed by a hot chocolate.

One grit bin emptied, another proved to be rock solid (last winter's crop?) and largely unusably, but we managed to deal with the worst of it in about 40 mins. Now we need to get the grit bins restocked.

Adam said...

Well done. Get some brandy in that hot chocolate!

David Sloly said...

i fell in this very spot and am still in pain now.

Chris Hutt said...

Hi Dave, sorry to hear that. From what I saw there must have been literally hundreds slipping and falling around there.