Bristol City will be forced to step up their search for a new goalkeeper after trialist Martin Lejsal was not offered a deal at the club. The Czech stopper played three pre-season games for the Robins but, after a medical, he was released to return to FC Brno.
The 38th Bristol Harbour Festival kicked off today with crowds hoping the colours, food and music will float their boats once again. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to descend on the Floating Harbour – which is this year celebrating its 200th anniversary – to ensure that, despite the recession, it will be business as usual for one of the South West’s favourite festivals.
Supporters of the Vestas staff who have taken over the wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight have agreed to demonstrate outside the Bristol office of the Environment Agency next Tuesday. At a meeting in the Railway Club at Temple Meads on Friday lunchtime, about 50 people from the city’s trade union branches – as well as individual supporters – decided on the action to coincide with the latest court action by the company to evict the 23 remaining workers from the site.
Hundreds of jobs have been secured at Bristol’s Rolls-Royce plant after the government announced a £3bn order for 40 new Typhoon fighter jets. The engines for the Eurofighter programme are built at the firm’s new plant in Patchway. But while ministers hailed the deal for 112 new aircraft for the four partner nations as “excellent news” for Britain’s armed forces, it could be the last order for Typhoons made by the UK government.
The number of school pupils in Bristol excluded from school has dropped by almost a third, according to new figures released on Thursday. During the school year 2007/08, the number of pupils excluded fell from 4,310 in the previous year to 2,710. The number of those who were excluded for more than five days dropped by more than 80% – from 302 to 50.
Businesses in the city are being urged to plan for an explosion in the number of swine flu cases which could severely impact local firms. The advisory body Business Link has published guidelines for bosses to deal with the pandemic, which is now predicted to affect up to 100,000 people across the UK every day in August.
Somerset Sabres won only the second bowl-out in Twenty20 Cup history today, beating Lancashire to reach the finals of the tournament. After rain washed out all final hopes of play on Thursday morning, a bowl-out – cricket’s equivalent of the penalty shoot-out – was used to decide the winner.
The council’s cabinet member for transport has said plans to turn Park Street and the Clifton Triangle into a shared space for pedestrians and vehicles would dramatically reduce the number of people killed or hurt in traffic accidents. Councillor Jon Rogers told Bristol24-7 that experience from others areas of Britain and Europe showed that ‘part-pedestrianising’ main streets in town and city centres would see injuries “drop towards zero”.
A three-man team funded by Bristol City Council will visit twin-city Hannover next week to see how the city benefited from hosting World Cup matches in 2006. The group, who are working to win host-city status for Bristol as part of England’s attempt to bring the World Cup to these shores in 2018, will spend three days in Germany at the invitation ofHannover’s Lord Mayor, Stefan Weil.
Bristol East MP Kerry McCarthy has reacted angrily to a survey conducted by the Daily Telegraph into the holiday plans of the nation’s representatives. The Labour MP wrote in her blog that she thought the newspaper – which ran the long-running series of revelations into Parliamentary expenses earlier this year – had “a cheek to ask such questions”.