Monthly Archives: October 2016

ST MARVIN’S-UP-THE-CREEK PARISH NEWS

Leave a reply

Layout 1

 

Finally – a warm welcome to all of my new flock! Even to those godless fools who made it clear you didn’t want me here. I know who you are!

(And I suggest you remember who’s signing those high-performing church school application forms now. Regardless of what I told Miss Townsend of the Dave Spart Academy School at my interview, they’ll be no free school meal tickets into the best school in my parish. All applications will be impartially judged by me on your material contribution to my parish)

To those of you unfortunate not to have met me yet and learned about my exceptional background in church hall strategy leadership in America and religious health innovation in various small village settings across the UK, an especially big hello.

But first let me mention our former vicar The Reverend Loose Canon Ferguson. Let’s pray together and bless him in his retirement. But let’s also put behind us his theologically misguided views regarding cycling to church first thing on a Sunday morning.

And, let me assure you, a full review of the Rev Ferguson’s car parking strategy is underway. If you need to drive your child ten minutes around the corner in a 4×4 to worship with me on a Sunday, then who am I to stand in the way of your imminent conversation with Our Lord by imposing silly restrictions on the use of our ample parking facilities?

To facilitate this I have already converted the Rev Loose Canon’s underused personal cycle parking into a convenient parking space for my new parish administrator, Mr Hughes from Birmingham’s, impressive limo.

Can I also request that the moaning regarding Mr Hughes from Birmingham’s competitive terms and conditions at the parish office now cease? As my mentor, the Texan psychotic preacher and notorious homophobe, Pastor Righteous Loon, told me last week when I flew in to visit him at his large mansion in New York State, “blessed are the high waged for they will profit themselves.”

BlessedCan I also remind you that any discussion of The Rev Loose Canon’s secretary, Mrs Yates’s small leaving stipend remains banned. I have received another rude letter from her solicitors Angry and Bastard on the High Street and feel we should all draw a line under this matter. We don’t want to be reading about ourselves in the newspapers do we?

However, please rest assured, as promised, I am still continuing to think about starting an independent review by my wife into last year’s church fete organised by Mrs Yates. While there’s no evidence of wrongdoing as such, let’s clear the air and find out more about the substantial donation from Parish funds to the Rev Ferguson’s daughter’s cupcake stall and creche facility and to the Bishop’s impressive private entertainment marquee.

Finally, please note, I am standing down the traditional Parish Church Committee immediately. It is out of date, inefficient and full of non-professionals who don’t really do parish leadership for the 21st Century. Instead I’ll be introducing a Parish Office to drive my business strategy forward.

Miss Klonowski, who’s worked successfully door-to-door across the parish for Cheap Loans-4-U has already agreed to join and deliver a 360-degree review of our targeted financial improvement objectives for a very competitive fee.

I’m hoping too we’ll be joined by Mr Dim, the Head at St RiggedSATs Primary and Prof Cash from the university who has lots of land sale experience. Dr Bent, our wonderful local GP will be joining too as soon as he returns to work having sorted out those silly and unnecessary whistleblowing allegations.

I appreciate none of these people attend church as such but they’re all very active in the community even if they don’t live here.

Obviously, in principle, I look forward to meeting you all soon but due to pressures on my time, can I ask that any personal appointments are booked through Mr Hughes via the Parish’s website, which will be active very soon. Just remember that just because I’m not here among you doesn’t mean that I’m not somewhere among someone probably far more important than you preaching God’s word and enhancing my brilliant career.

THE VICARLayout 1

 

ARE THEY PULLING OUR LEGACY?

Leave a reply

“The establishment of the council’s energy company – Bristol Energy – will be one of the landmark achievements of Bristol’s year as Green Capital and one of its most significant legacies and that’s been recognised from way beyond Bristol,” blustered MAYOR NO-LONGER, George Ferguson, to any media that would listen in July 2015.

Although a somewhat lower key PR approach has been taken by Bristol City Council to the news this July that Bristol Energy – their wholly owned landmark achievement company – has made a LOSS of £3m already!

What a legacy! And you, dear taxpayer, will – of course – foot the bill.

ART FOR AUSTERITY’S SAKE

13 Replies

Having run his election campaign promising to do something about inequality in the city, Marvin “The Vicar” Rees has wasted no time in feathering the nests of the UNEQUAL in the city.

At the Cabinet meeting on 29 June The Vicar signed off spending of around £3.3m in a combination of grants and loans to the city’s “WORLD CLASS CULTURAL VENUES“.

This means more HANDOUTS to the Bristol Old Vic, the Colston Hall and the St George’s concert hall from our pockets. And it includes a cool £1.6m going straight into the pockets of CONSULTANTS to draw up designs for the refurbishment of the Colston Hall.

It also means that a small impenetrable CULTURAL CLIQUE will continue to coin it in at our expense as the luvvies don’t work for the minimum wage. Plus it’s a very neat little direct SUBSIDY to the consumer choices of Bristol West’s well-heeled middle classes who make up the overwhelming number of customers at these upmarket venues.

These HANDOUTS TO THE POSH came just weeks before The Vicar finally admitted that the council is going to have to make 1,000 REDUNDANCIES to balance the books. This is at a council, which still has services reeling from the 500 poorly executed redundancies they made in 2014 that didn’t save anything like the money claimed.

The word coming from long-suffering staff at the council is that this next round of cuts will DESTROY many of our public services as going concerns. They will simply not be able to cope. Already phones are unanswered; homeless families are unhoused; council houses lie empty flytipping is not collected. What will this next phase of this AUSTERITY MADNESS unleash?

But don’t worry, at least you’ll be able to see a crappy play at the Old Vic produced by a sensitive Oxbridge prat about the appalling ‘state of the nation’ (if you can afford it).

COMING SOON: The Rev Rees’s multi-million subsidies to the, er, film industry!

OFFSHORE REGEN SCHEME SCANDAL

3 Replies
More local gossip: Shut down and offshored

More local gossip: Shut down and offshored

We kid you not … A flagship New Labour regeneration scheme in south Bristol, once described by former MP “Dim Prawn” Primarolo as “a dream come true”, has been moved OFFSHORE to avoid tax!

Touted as a solution for jobs, long term economic decline and inequality in a deprived part of south Bristol, the Morrison’s supermarket scheme on the site of the old council-owned Symes Avenue shopping centre in Hartcliffe opened to HUGE FANFARE in 2007.

Along with a supermarket paying CRAP WAGES and an enormous and under-used car park, this “first class district centre in which we can all take pride” included a community centre, a library and EIGHT smaller shop units that were supposed to accommodate LOCAL BUSINESSES AND RETAILERS and tick the “mixed use” regeneration box.

Bristol City Council assembled the land for this scheme at considerable EXPENSE to us. Paying through the nose to buy back – through compulsory purchase – their long-term lease on the old Symes Avenue shopping centre that had been shifted to an asset stripping firm, Panther Securities.

They also used their compulsory purchase powers to seize sections of residents’ back gardens in Holbrook Crescent so that these gardens could be transformed into an unused and abandoned section of supermarket car park. Again, at a CONSIDERABLE COST to us.

Once the costly development site had been assembled, the council handed the whole lot over to Morrison’s for FREE as a ‘sweetener’ to get the supermarket and its associated ‘benefits’ built.

Fast forward to 2014 and – with remarkably little fanfare – Morrison’s engaged in their own little land and property transaction and SOLD THE LEASE for the eight ‘local’ shop units on the site to a property firm based offshore in tax haven Jersey – BNP PARIBAS!

Now, in 2016, we learn that the locally owned and run hairdressers’ on the site – ‘The Local Gossip’  – has CLOSED after they were landed with an enormous RENT HIKE by their new offshore owners. And we learn the locally owned and run Post Office on the site is on the verge of CLOSURE due to the huge RENT INCREASE!

We are happy to report, however, that the four distinctly unlocal corporate retailers occupying the remaining units, like bookies, Ladbrokes, are having no problem affording the new high cost rents.

Meanwhile, shareholders at BNP Paribas are, no doubt, appreciating the cool double whammy of easy extra rental income extracted from a deprived area while not having to bother with the expense of paying much tax to help the community they’re BLEEDING DRY.

Now that’s what we call regeneration! Trebles all round!