Bristol's merchant wealth was built on the slave trade that supplied the American colonies, and the Colston statue came down in 2020; should Bristol City Council commit by 2028 to a permanent city-centre museum of that trade, paid for by a fixed levy on dockside developers?

Hello, I'm Wilson, and this one is yours alone today. You're asking whether Bristol City Council should promise, by 2028, a permanent museum in the city centre about the slave trade that built so much of Bristol's merchant wealth, and whether the bill should go to dockside developers through a fixed levy. That sounds like one question, but it's really two, and they pull apart. The first is about memory: does Bristol owe itself a permanent, central place where that history is told properly, now that the Colston statue has come down and the argument has gone public? The second is about money and fairness: is a levy on today's waterfront builders the right way to pay for it, or is it a tidy idea that fails when you look closely? My view, in short, is yes to the museum and no to that particular way of funding it. Let me show you why, because the two halves deserve separate verdicts, and running them together is how good projects end up dying in committee.

Start with the museum. Bristol already tells part of this story, at M Shed and in the legacy of earlier exhibitions, but a gallery inside …