Anyone here in Bristol would not have been able to escape the bitter arguments over Bristol City’s planned new stadium, for myself and fellow Green Party members the whole process has been a dangerous farce, to summarise here are the proposed plans:
- Bristol City FC to build 30,000 seater stadium on open green space, out of town in Ashton Vale
- The council to give the football club this land in return for some access to their facilities
- A huge supermarket to then be built at the present Ashton Gate site, just at the end of one Bristol’s best high streets for independant shops.
What a mess… thankfully the Sainsbury’s planning application has been refused and now the space at Ashton Vale has been designated a village green so cannot be built on. The fight goes on though with appeals and new applications.
The main argument for this plan seems to be Bristol City’s ambition to be a World Cup venue if England get to host in 2018, a shaky ambition at best and given BCFC form of late probably the only way to fill all 30, 000 seats as they won’t be getting that sort of attendance in league one.
I also object to public land, i.e. our land, being used for private use, I am a football fan but clubs need to stand on their own two feet, giving them huge gifts like this only encourages them on their path to bankruptcy.
My main objection though is that the whole idea of moving a football club out of town is wrong, clubs should retain links to their local community and the fans that have put their money into it over the years. It’s not as extreme a move as Wimbledon moving to Milton Keynes but the principle I see as the same, it is a club that is being run as a business and not for the fans.
I’m from Southampton and a Saints fan, and during the 90s there was a similar big push to build a new stadium out by the airport, removing it from the heart of the community to some windswept no mans land between Southanpton and Eastleigh. This eventually fell through and the new St Mary’s stadium was built on and old gasworks site in the centre of town, near the main train station and within walking distance for many of the supporters, a popular choice and ensuring the club keeps it’s links with the city – does this ring any bells, have we not already spent a good deal of money on the Arena site behind Temple Meads?
Do we really all want to drive out of town to see a football game, or would we rather walk and get in a couple of pints on the way.. lets try and be sensible and keep Bristol City in the city.
There I’ve said it, I’ve had enough, yes it is rubbish. This opinion comes hard won, after three days wasted trying to install a drupal website that another developer has half done, my opinioin is now very much educated.
Questions.. why is this site taking up 188MB on my server, it’s a simple site, it’s about 6 info pages, a calendar with events and a payment system. I can’t think what it is trying to do with all this.
It won’t work unless I give it 128MB of php memory, ouch, like an unwanted drunken dinner guest it’s making all the noise and eating all the cheese, and giving only a cheap bottle of red in return.
Now I’ve tried to like Drupal, I’m a hand coder but I see the place for off the shelf CMS like WordPress of Joomla, I don’t want to rewrite that sort of stuff over and over and it’s right that being standard does make it easier for other developers to step in and take over giving the client more freedom… but I don’t see these advantages with Drupal. The site I’m taking over has so many custom modules, modules that have been patched and other crazy esoteric code that the only way to get it working is by uploading the whole lot and crossing fingers hoping it will just work.
The site requires an integration with Sage Pay, so instead of the thirty or so lines that I would normally write the developer has tried to use a module, found it didn’t work correctly, hacked it, but it’s not using the right type of Sage Pay integration which I guess just wasn’t ‘supported’ so he’s now thrown his toys out of the pram and I’ve been called in.
I understand that a lot of these problems are caused by bad development skills and there are plenty of perfectly reasonable and working Drupal sites out there, but my point is this – when your website has reached huge proportions of diskspace and memory usage you need to step back and think – is drupal right for this job? Don’t just blindly carry on hacking about trying to squeeze it into shape just because you think it’s the ‘standard’ way to do it.
Looking at Drupal it seems to have fallen into the classic bloatware trap, the principle is fine but it is now trying to do absolutely everything and websites do not need that, if users want a simple editable website then give them WordPress or even Joomla, if they want a community site then maybe Drupal is good for that, but if they want something special, write it for them.
I know by programming (and other) standards I’m an old fart, I started programming in the 70s on a Apple II, but the lessons learnt then about efficiency, elegance and simplicity in coding still hold – the rule is if it’s simple and uses as little code as possible then 99 times out of 100 it will be the best way to solve the problem.
And please do not forget the client, the standard drupal admin interface is more complicated than the bridge of the starship enterprise, remember they just want to edit their website – give them a thoughtfully designed dashboard not the whole engine.
I feel a bit better now..
Carol and I were in Brighton this week for the Drawing Research Network conference which I’ll talk about elsewhere but at the moment I want to talk about more important things – food!
We stayed at the Drakes Hotel on the seafront which was beautiful, we had lovely big windows overlooking the sea as well as a luxurious clawfoot bath that Carol made good use of.
http://www.drakesofbrighton.com/
The first night we decided to eat at the hotel restaurant which turned out to be a great idea as the food and service was wonderful,
we had:
Squid ink risotto
with grilled cuttlefish
Whole boneless quail wrapped in Parma ham stuffed with chicken and truffle mousse, creamed potato and truffle sauce
and then..
Local cod loin
with braised gem lettuce, saffron potatoes, baby leeks and fish cream sauce
Roasted rump of Salt Marsh lamb
with dauphinoise potatoes, smoked aubergine puree, baby turnips and rosemary sauce
all followed by
Apple and blackberry crumble soufflé
with clotted cream ice-cream
delicious.. and interspersed with some lovely little chef show off treats between courses .. unfortunately it’s in the basement so no sea view but don’t let that stop you, we would definitely recommend it.
http://www.therestaurantatdrakes.co.uk/
The view from our window
Had a great time at conference in Birmingham, last weekend.
For those of you who may not know, the Green Party is a grassroots organisation so all members have a say in policy and it is very much directed from the members themselves rather than by executive committees. This means even newish members like myself can input their opinions on all aspects of policy via the workshops and plenary sessions, this really engages you with the conference and you feel you are making a real difference. It also means you really get behind the policies decided as you are present when they are debated and decided upon.
My favourite workshops included our policy on the banking sector which was as lively as you can imagine, I think we still have a way to go in formulating practical policy in this area but our principles are sound and we are in the right direction. I expect a lot more on this at the Spring conference in Cardiff.
I’m now part of the Agriculture Policy Development team and we will be formulating our policy in this area over the next few months, we are all keen to get together practical evidence based policy on agriculture and rural affairs in general. I feel we are too often seen as an urban party and I would like to see policies that the rural community can engage with, we all believe in local produce, communities and small business we just need to get that across.
Caroline Lucas did a rousing speech to start the conference off and there were more than a few lumps in the throat, and tears, when we all welcomed her as our first every parlimentary MP – I don’t think many of us still really believe it! Lets hope she’s the first of many.
Lucky for Caroline she bumped into me at new members drinks!
On the subject of Leap it’s worth mentioning that one of my sites done through them, the Good Energy Shop won the Observer Ethical Award for Best Online Retail Initiative for 2009.
This was particularly pleasing for me as the original site was done in a real rush to get it to market.
Presented by actor, Oxfam Ambassador and director of Fairtrade coffee shop chain Progresso; Colin Firth, the evening also saw awards being given to Riverford Organics for best business and Sir David Attenborough for lifetime achievement.
In his acceptance speech Sir David gave a nod to the success of Good Energy by saying: “It is immoral to waste energy.” This award is doubly sweet because it was short-listed as a result of votes from Observer readers.
http://www.goodenergyshop.co.uk
If you need design work done, print or web and want to use a company with spotless green credentials (and you do) then contact http://www.leapmedia.co.uk/
A lot of my programming work is done with Leap Media based in Cornwall. They are a fantastic company let by Matt Hocking (yes I would say that but it is true) who was head of design at the Eden Project before branching out on his own.
As a design company their green credentials are second to none and their dedication to the cause exhausting.
In June I picked up a Big Tick award for action on Environmental Impact at the annual Business in the Community Awards for Excellence which had been awarded to Leap, and doing so was lucky enough to get to meet Jonathon Porrit, as well as a number of other inspiring companies in the south west.
Matt was a bit unhappy about me wearing a suit!
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