Another Evading Agency masterstroke of planning. Put thousands of tonnes of SHITE in the open air and mince it up ruining the amenity of thousands of homes and businesses.
When are the EA going to admit they are nothing but a QUANGO and have no experience in managing anything? How many more people’s lives must be RUINED before we collectively get rid of these parasites who do nothing but ponce about painting yellow fishes on drain covers while the country gets flooded with water and waste?
ALAS, after just 18 months of ineffectual bureaucratic middle management in the dull style, it’s time to bid farewell to the city council’s apprentice of the dark arts, babyfaced chief lawyer, LIAM “MALFOY” NEVIN.
This is a very quick exit indeed for the Warwickshire country boy as he becomes the first of Chief Exec LADY GAGA’S expensively assembled senior management team, just launched in the new year, to head for the door.
But why? Did Malfoy JUMP or was he PUSHED? Well, while it’s virtually impossible for a chief legal officer to be fired, rumours persist that Lady Gaga’s dark lord – ‘He Who Will Not Put Anything In Writing’ – private sector-friendly Business Change director MAX WIDE “BOY” was less than impressed with Malfoy’s style in general and his outmoded insistence on adhering to the law in particular.
Clearly such a dated attitude to government isn’t suited to ‘Uncle’ George’s ‘whacky’ buccaneering style of politics where nothing can stand in the way of getting jugglers on street corners to replace traditional public services.
Meanwhile we’re starting to get an insight into WIDEBOY. Trousering a healthy six-figure bung every year to take responsibility for ‘business change’, ‘efficiency’ and other euphemisms for the destruction of public services, Wideboy – a former outsourcing salesman for BT – isn’t one for explaining to the electorate exactly how he’s slicing £80m out of the council’s budget.
At a recent meeting – conveniently arranged in the MIDDLE OF AUGUST – of the new Business Change and Resources Scrutiny Commission of councillors, Wideboy had to deliver THREE reports to councillors detailing his various cuts packages.
However, no written reports were forthcoming from Wideboy. Instead councillors were treated to VERBAL PRESENTATIONS, allowing Wideboy to dodge any accountability whatsoever for what he’s up to.
This characteristic brew of arrogance, idleness and mendacity from a senior boss, being paid a fortune, didn’t seem to trouble our gormless councillors, however, who all seemed happy enough with the dodgy arrangement.
John ‘FUHRER’ Hirst
You expect to read crap in the Bristol NAZI POST all year round but they really excelled themselves in August with an endless stream of aimless stories about a naff plan to put a pointless ZIP WIRE across the Avon Gorge as some kind of tourist attraction.
The plan seemed to be the brainchild of JOHN “FUHRER” HIRST, the former Broadmead Fuhrer who has now been handed strategic command of the DESTINATION BRISTOL Reichsbunker to promote tourism.
In a blitzkrieg of drivel, der Fuhrer detailed his plan to climb up Uncle George’s backside and get on the mayor’s crappy circus bandwagon of turning the centre of our city into an enormous and slightly crap Disneyfied theme park:
“My dream is that someone who lives in Clifton and works in Bedminster could get there by zip wire!” waffled the Fuhrer.
What a splendidly practical and inclusive idea that is. Touted to be just £25 a go, the Fuhrer and his creative hipster constituency must be really raking it in if they can spend £25 on just getting to work every morning!
MAYOR AT CENTRE OF FINANCIAL COLLAPSE OF DOCK’S FERRY SERVICE
A scandal is emerging around Bristol Mayor, “Uncle” George Ferguson’s role in the failed BRISTOL FERRY BOAT COMPANY LTD. The company, which ran the blue and yellow ferries around the docks and received considerable council and government subsidies, crashed with £300K DEBTS, no paid-up basic insurance cover for passengers and owing Bristol City Council £11k in mooring fees at the time Ferguson was elected in November 2012.
Indeed, on his very first day at work at the Council House on November 18 2012, it seems super successful businessman Uncle George, who owned A 40% STAKE in the company, was busy planning to LAY OFF 30 STAFF at his failed company and calling in the administrators! Although he blustered to gullible Nazi Post reporters at the time, “I have never been involved in the day-today running of the company.”
Then things get murkier. By early January 2013 a new company, with a remarkably similar name, FERRYBOATS BRISTOL had appeared and was running the very same boats on the very same routes around the docks. This new company, operated by what was described as “a consortium of investors”, curiously, was managed by one of the directors of Ferguson’s failed ferry company, IAN ‘BUNGLE” BUNGARD.
However, Bristol Ferry Boats Ltd didn’t last long either. By May 2013 a third entity, this time a cooperative venture, with yet another similar name took over the boats and the operation, BRISTOL COMMUNITY FERRY BOAT COMPANY.
Again the director from Ferguson’s failed ferries, BUNGLE, was aboard along with his wife, PHILLIPA, and they were joined by Ferguson associates like his old WELLINGTON SCHOOL chum, Sustrans twit JOHN “REALLY” GRIMSHAW; local urbanist and architect twerp KEITH “TIMMY” HALLETT; Merchant Venturer JAY TIDMARSH and, our favourite, SUE LEARNER, described in the company prospectus as Phillipa Bungard’s midwife!
A lot of questions can be asked about what this gang of posh Bristol establishment insiders, random midwives and ‘FRIENDS OF GEORGE’ were up to.
Not least, how did they manage to obtain a series of PRIME FERRY ROUTES around the city docks without having to go through a city council tender process against the vastly better run NUMBER 7 FERRY company?
This tender process, coincidentally, is the direct responsibility of our old friend, the city council’s dribbling mentally ill loon of a docks boss, CAP’N TONY “AHAB” NICHOLS.
Legally, neither of these new ferry companies had any right whatsoever to routes that were awarded by open tender to a completely separate legal entity. Public procurement rules forbid this. So why didn’t Ahab RETENDER the routes as he’s LEGALLY OBLIGED to do rather than hand them quietly over to a local group of wealthy and influential individuals who just happened to be very friendly with the mayor?
Another unanswered question is what happened to all the PUBLIC MONEY that went in to the original basketcase ferry boat company, 40% owned by the mayor? Hundreds of thousands have been poured in by the city council since 2002 and the company even received a government development loan of £125k in 2009.
How were DEBTS OF £300K ever run up? How was the company able to obtain city council tenders while being FINANCIALLY UNVIABLE? Especially strange when you consider that rival firm, Number 7 Ferries, operates similar routes on the same waterway at a PROFIT.
The final question arises over the use of so-called “PHOENIX COMPANIES”. These are new companies set up to trade in the same activities as a former company so it looks like “business as usual” to customers. Phoenix companies can also use directors from a former failed company.
However, while this is legal in certain cases if investors have been properly notified of the circumstances, elsewhere companies that have carried out this DODGY PRACTICE have attracted criticism in the media and parliament as it allows companies to effectively dump their liabilities, walk away from debt and start all over again at an unfair advantage.
The formation of a Phoenix Company is subject to regulation by the DTI. So watch this space …
City’s Housing Benefit service is collapsing thanks to cuts while bosses hide in cupboards and do nothing!
The BRISTOLIAN has been contacted by numerous housing officers, advice workers and claimants who tell us that Bristol’s HOUSING BENEFIT system is CLOSE TO COLLAPSE.
Due to local government cuts, staff numbers are down and those left cannot process the work in time so new claimants are having to wait THREE MONTHS to receive any money in most cases. This is leading to EVICTIONS of claimants and landlords refusing to take tenants on benefits, including Working Families Tax Credits (WFTC).
As a result, Housing Benefit staff are under INCREASING PRESSURE, missing more deadlines and having to deal with angry service users who are FACING HOMELESSNESS. Many staff are going off sick or just jacking it in. Meanwhile their managers barricade themselves in their back room offices.
Worse is to follow for the staff, as the council now has yet another admin review on the go, having decided that all admin jobs are the same and they can FORCE DOWN rates of pay further. This also means that admin workers from different parts of the council are being forced to work in housing with no experience of housing or benefit claims. This will make the situation worse.
Furthermore, if there are ANY changes in your circumstances, your housing benefit will STOP and have to be reprocessed. For example, if you are working and getting WFTC and your hours increase or decrease, you have to tell the benefit officers who will STOP THE CLAIM altogether, even if the change is only slight.
You will then wait THREE MONTHS – and the backlog is growing – before you get your benefits back. Landlords are evicting claimants during this period and even the council are sending eviction notices for those in local authority housing despite the fact it’s down to their own mismanagement…. idiots!!!
Also of major concern is the AUTOMATION of many services. People threatened with homelessness have to spend long periods on the phone, being passed from one pointless robotic voice recording to another. One elderly lady racked up £8 in telephone bills! Some kind advice workers have advised us that you can apply for an interim payment, but many do not know this, and the fucking robots on the blower won’t tell you!!!
This is affecting THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE across the city. In the meantime the police, who apparently cannot investigate your crimes, are evicting tenants and squatters while thousands of properties are left vacant in the city as rich property speculators wait until the price is right; nice one!!
What is NICK “LORD SNOOTY” HOOPER, head of housing doing about all this then? What is the red trousered fuckpot doing about this? A big FA. Thousands of families could end up homeless in our city and don’t ignore this – because it could soon be you.
Climate change activists in Bristol took aim at GLOBAL CAPITAL yesterday and then shot themselves in the foot …
Photo courtesy of Bristol 24/7
3,000 ‘climate change activists’ marched through the city yesterday as part of some sort of global day of climate change action.
Only to wind up at College Green listening to a keynote speech from George Ferguson in NEW YORK CITY where he had just arrived on a planet-wrecking, carbon-rich long haul flight to join world leaders and corporations for a United Nations-sponsored climate change CONFERENCE-ABOUT-A-CONFERENCE scheduled for 2015!
Perhaps this kind of HYPOCRISY is acceptable to the one per cent of Bristolians who bothered to turn up to this march? Maybe they support a wealthy, self-selecting GLOBAL ELITE jetsetting around the globe, getting their PALMS GREASED by high finance and living it up in the lap of luxury promoting policies – that conveniently don’t seem to apply to themselves – for the MASS IMPOVERISHMENT of the English working classes through increased taxation, increased food prices, increased energy costs, increased housing costs and restricting access to transport?
UN boss, useless underachiever, “Wanky” Ban-Ki Moon, takes a short, well-deserved break from constant, utterly pointless globetrotting via long haul flights to lecture us on climate change while looking ridiculous.
However, we doubt that this transparent pile of bullshit appeals to the average Bristolian or to the majority of any of the other 99% of people who didn’t attend this march. Aren’t people more likely to say “FUCK THAT SHIT” and just carry on doing exactly the same like the bosses do?
That’s certainly what we think at The BRISTOLIAN. Any response to climate change requires a new mass social movement and the dismantling of existing elites and their interests, not some crude rearrangement betweeen these elites (who have already trashed the planet) backed up with a novelty global PR campaign aimed at GUILT TRIPPING US.
Ferguson in NYC with Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director, Oxfam International. He’s invited this overpaid, self-regarding nonentity and leading member of the wholly ineffectual and toothless international voluntary sector to take a long haul flight to Bristol to hector us about climate change!
If we want to protect humanity from climate change, we have to TAKE CONTROL of business and industry ourselves, not leave it to profit-hungry corporations or a bunch of rich hippy clowns. We don’t want a nicer shinier ‘green capitalism’, we want to DESTROY it, their class system and protect our future in one shot. You know it makes sense …
So come on idiots. Get yer heads out yer arses and give us some climate change politics we can all sign up to – not just a load of self-serving hypocritical PR twaddle from the people responsible for trashing the planet.
“LADY GAGA” DISHING OUT THE GAGS
Looks like council Chief Exec NICOLA “LADY GAGA” YATES has been living up to her name. The BRISTOLIAN can EXCLUSIVELY reveal that over the last year the city council has gagged at least TWELVE departing members of staff, preventing them discussing any aspect of their employment with the council in exchange for CASH.
The total amount of our money spent removing former employees’ human rights is not clear.
However we’ve tracked down a few payments.
One recipient was former finance boss PETER “ROBBIN-US” ROBINSON. Despite resigning last autumn to take up a post in Herefordshire, the sleazy Freemason, notorious at the Council House for corruption COVER-UPS and BULLYING of honest internal audit investigators, was handed £52k in exchange for his silence.
This is someone who resigned. Why are council bosses being paid for resigning? What happened to efficiency and austerity? or is that only for the little people?
The BRISTOLIAN also has traced a further THREE leaving payments to senior bosses last year totalling £389k, only one of which can be identified as a redundancy payment. That’s two more payments of over £100k each.
Senior bosses who have scarpered in the last year include village idiot and (mis)communications expert PETER ‘CLAUDIA-JEAN’ HOLT and belly-flopping major projects manager ALUN ‘IT’S A FUCK UP’ OWEN. Did they receive six-figure payouts? Funny, ‘cause last we heard there were STRICT LIMITS on leaving payments to senior managers ensuring all payments were capped at a maximum of £42,000.
What has Lady Gaga got to hide then? And how much is it costing us?
NEWS that the 2015 Green Capital nonsense had attracted major corporate sponsors FIRST GROUP buses and accountants KPMG was greeted with much excitement by the usual gullibles of the city’s press and establishment.
While the amount the corporations were handing over to get their logos plastered all over the year long greenwash non-event had to remain secret due to “commercial confidentiality” we were told.
However, we can reveal the reason for the secrecy. The “major sponsorship” adds up to a free audit from KPMG and a couple of new hybrid buses from First that they were introducing anyway!
Clueless, interfering councillor supports high rents in Bedminster and low rents in Redfield.
Decent homes for everyone, but not for Bedminster.
GORMLESS Green councillor, ROB “BEMMIE BOY” TELFORD, Sir Gus Hoyty-Toyty’s Ashley Ward mini-me, has been practising u-turns.
For some reason, back in March, Bemmie Boy took it upon himself to comment on the controversial proposed 15 storey high tower block development at ST KATHERINE’S PLACE at the top of East Street in Bedminster, some TWO MILES from his leafy ward.
“I think the scheme would have a detrimental effect on a lot of the local character, with surrounding trees blocked out from many vistas. The buildings are simply too high and block many other vistas,” pronounced the resident of, er, ST WERBURGHS in a formal letter about the application.
But not only is Bemmie Boy interfering in South Bristol where he’s not wanted, he can’t make up his mind up either. Five months later, just before the planning meeting, he wrote formally again: “Having MET WITH THE ARCHITECTS of this scheme and discussed some of the contentious issues surrounding it, I would like to withdraw my previous objection to this planning application,” he announced.
Why the architects were meeting with the councillor for Ashley to discuss a development miles away in Bedminster isn’t clear.
And neither is it clear why the Bemmie Boy’s Ashley Ward colleague SIR GUS HOYTY-TOYTY also waded into this SOUTH BRISTOL PLANNING ISSUE on the Bristol 24/7 news site with one of his semi-literate internet hissy fits aimed at local, south Bristol Lib Dems who are unhappy with this risible, though highly profitable, scheme that will deliver luxury flats and absolutely No AFFORDABLE HOUSING.
Why have this pair developed such a passionate interest in a multi-million pound property development on the other side of town all of a sudden?
Meanwhile Bemmie Boy, while promoting luxury private developments with high rents for the wealthy in Bedminster, is also fighting “to end rip-off tenancy fees and insecure renting”.
in EAST BRISTOL. Again, an area some two miles from his ward.
Bemmie Boy was spotted in July joining a protest in Redfield organised by the Easton based Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now (ACORN) against estate agent Holbrook Moran and their ripping off of private tenants.
We wonder whether Bemmie Boy informed his fellow protestors about his support for luxury
private developments in South Bristol?
An as yet unidentified farming collective have again been tipping grain on the quayside at Avonmouth under the watchful eyes of the Quay Wall Safety Supervisor without using SUPPRESSION TECHNOLOGY that has taken many years of pressure by residents to actually get provided by the Port to its tenants.
A telephone call was made immediately to the Port Safety Manager who then telephoned an associated minion on the dock itself and you can see by the photos appended to the video that a sub-minion was then dispatched to plug a mister unit, which had not been used, into the water supply. Presumably to save money?
The Port has been contacted many times over this activity and the WILLFUL TRANSGRESSION of the law by the Port’s tenants. Will there be any firm public action by the Port to restore residents’ confidence?
WAYNE “DEE” HARVEY and MATT “DUMB” MELIAS, as elected councillors for Avonmouth also must take action. It is not acceptable to tell residents “to put up with it”; “it’s a dusty port” or “they have been doing it for years” or any of the other bollocks received when residents raise issues with them in regard to law breaking at the Port.