Here’s today’s greeting for our hapless mayor. It’s appearing at College Green opposite his office:
Got a message for Marvin you would like to see at College Green? Line 1 – 17 characters; line 2 – 18 characters.
Having had the grand global green sustainable smart city visions courtesy of the progressive parties, it’s time for the Tories to enter the election fray as their manifesto finally appears.
At just ten pages long, they’re doing us, at least, one massive favour. By way of comparison, the Green’s Squire Bufton-Tufton treated us to 36 pages of his Clifton drawing room progessive piffle. The Tories, in contrast, leave few populist cliches unturned in a short booklet that’s quite hard to find and called ‘Our plan to build back better in Bristol’.
Big ideas are thin on the ground here. Apart from wanting to scrap the mayor and save money by not pissing millions up the wall on energy companies, there’s nothing much in the way of grand schemes to catch the eye. Instead it’s just a list of local bugbears with a few law ‘n’ order shapes thrown in
The most noticeable of these is a clear threat of some social cleansing: “Use the Council’s powers to move van dwellers to permanent sites rather than allow informal sites to develop on local roads.”
They’re also quite keen on having an ongoing passive/aggressive conversation about your your safety. “We want people to be safe and feel safe where ever they live”; “We will listen to communities on how to make neighbourhoods safer for all” and “We will work with the Police Commissioner to ensure safer streets across Bristol.”
All of which actually makes you start wondering if you are safe? Especially when their seemingly endless safety concerns are washed down with a further mild threat/message from their thuggish looking ex-squaddie Police and Crime Commissioner candidate, Mark Shelford. He promises with menaces to “drive down crime and make our streets safer.”
Although judging by Mark’s general tone and demeanour, it seems highly unlikely that our streets will be safer for anyone who wants to protest on them. The rest of the manifesto is lists, dog whistles and mood music clearly aimed south of Southville where the progressive manifestoes abruptly stop.
In the Tories’s words it’s a manifesto that “delivers on the basics that matter to our residents, prioritises funding for our communities and doesn’t ignore the suburbs”!
This means public toilets will be reopened; libraries kept open; the Jubilee Pool saved; pavement parking tackled; “more will be done to preserve and improve our local amenity such as the Western Slopes in South Bristol”; “licensing for all ‘houses of multiple occupancy’ across the city not just in certain areas” introduced; an “end to over-development of some of our key sites such as the Cumberland Basin and Hengrove Park” and “we will fairly distribute money across the City so communities have a real chance to improve their area rather than fighting over funding scraps.”
Will the public find this thunderously low key and ordinary municipal vision with a blatantly populist edge that promises to preserve services and protect communities more appealing than the progressive ‘big project men’ and their weird ‘visions’ that can only be delivered through large faceless corporations seeking profit?
We’re overwhelmed with choice at this election aren’t we?
Here’s Monday’s greeting for our inadequate mayor appearing at College Green opposite his office:
Got a message for Marvin you would like to see at College Green? Line 1 – 17 characters; line 2 – 18 characters.
This has appeared on College Green directly opposite the mayor’s office at the Council House:
How long before the thin-skinned Reverend Rees tries to get some bent Arup-led planning enforcement team on the case?
Hats off to our local Green Party for finding such an ORDINARY MAN OF THE PEOPLE to be their mayoral candidate next year. Please step forward Sandy Hore-Ruthven “Bufton-Tufton”, who, it says here, “comes from a family which OWNS THE PICTURESQUE NORTH DEVON VILLAGE OF CLOVELLY”. Whose family doesn’t own a picturesque village, losers?
Bufton Tufton’s grandfather was the dashing Colonel Malise Hore-Ruthven, 3RD SON OF THE 8TH LORD OF RUTHVEN, who after schooling at Wellington College (George Ferguson’s alma mater) joined the Blackwatch for a little murderous fun in the colonies, some thrillingly brutal outings against the Boer and, not least, a crack at the Hun in the First World War. When he finally retired from SHOOTING foreigners, Malise took the post of Secretary to the Governor-General of South Africa where he could TORTURE them instead. Reassuringly, the Colonel only ever listed the one hobby – ‘hunting’ – in Who’s Who?
Bufton-Tufton’s daddy, James, took a slightly different tack to his twirly moustachioed soldier-adventurer father and after ESTABLISHMENT BRAINWASHING at Wellington and Oxford, he enlisted in ‘Moral Re-Armament’. A campaign of “MORAL AND SPIRITUAL REARMAMENT” aimed at the colonies and with ties to British Intelligence. The group was launched by American, Frank Buchan who once said, “I THANK HEAVEN FOR A MAN LIKE ADOLF HITLER, who built a front-line of defence against the anti-Christ of Communism’. Celebrity members of this shower included Mary Whitehouse.
Actor Glenn Close, whose father was closely involved in Moral Re-Armament when she was a child, bluntly describes the operation as “A RIGHT-WING RELIGIOUS CULT“. Although to give it more of a secular, technocratic feel and, possibly, to help distract from Buchan’s presence at the NUREMBURG RALLIES, it was rebranded Initiatives of Change in 2001 and daddy, James Hore-Ruthven, was a trustee until his death in 2011.
No surprises, then, that in 2002 Bufton-Tufton, who carefully hides his schooling, got a very HELPFUL HAND-UP from his upper class crackpot daddy when he got the posh sounding job of ’RECONCILLIATION COORDINATOR SOMALIA AND HORN OF AFRICA’ for, er, Initiatives of Change! Not bad for someone who had previously been a lowly volunteer coordinator for Young Bristol!
On his return in 2006 from this peculiar reinvention of the traditional family profession of REACTIONARY COLONIAL THUG, Bufton-Tufton was appointed Chief Exec of the Creative Youth Network, a charity that specialises in cut price bids for the small local authority budgets now available for the tiny amounts of outsourced youth work happening in the city.
It’s yet to be confirmed if Panjandrum Bufton-Tufton will be donning traditional garb to come in peace to parlay in the Asda Bemmie car park with the natives of south Bristol to warn them of the “ANTI-CHRIST OF COMMUNISM” and “MORAL BOLSHEVISM“. Or if he’ll go on to explain to the great unwashed that economic recession “is God’s way of reminding us to change our temperament and our environment”.
Vote Green get upper class twit promising austerity and poverty ordained by god!
Number four on the Rev Rees’s list of ‘Our seven commitments to you…’ contained in his expansive and farcical ELECTION MANIFESTO of around 168 proposals was “WE WILL PROTECT CHILDREN’S CENTRES”.
So what’s this we find hidden away as proposal number 97, aiming to save a cool £1.5m, in the ‘Saving proposals recommended for approval‘ document the Rev’s PERSONALLY signed off to balance his Tory budget?
“Reshape Children’s Centres’ services,” it says here. “We will review management structures and combine some services to create EFFICIENCIES. We hope to keep 18 CHILDREN’S CENTRES open and find alternative ways to provide some of the existing services.”
There’s currently 23 CHILDREN’S CENTRES in Bristol, which means the Rev Rees is CUTTING Children’s Centre provision by 22%. Although the upbeat liar claims, “this proposal keeps our commitment to those services and the value they bring, and recommends a change to the way that we organise our offer.”
Not quite what the Rev’s manifesto promised is it?
Another week, another daffy policy from Labour’s Martin “Luther” Rees, the man who LOST the last mayoral election for a reason.
“BRISTOL SHOULDN’T BE RUN FROM THE COUNCIL CHAMBER,” boomed a headline on Luther Rees’ website last month before it was rather hastily removed a few hours later.
Perhaps after it was pointed out to Marv and his hapless trade union communications gurus that they’d effectively instructed Bristolians NOT TO BOTHER VOTING for councillors in local elections as they would no longer be running the city as they’ve been traditionally elected to do.
With a brand new headline in place – “Mayor is about the city not just the city council” – the SOCIALLY CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN explained he would open a “city office” to run the city instead of relying on old fashioned councillors directly accountable to the electorate.
“The City Office, he breathlessly explained, “would be a real city team made up of representatives from every major sector in the city, including politics, health, local government, business, unions, education, criminal justice, and the community, voluntary and faith sectors.”
In other words Marvin intends to ignore elected councillors and invite a load of UNELECTED AND UNACCOUNTABLE bureaucrats and businessmen to run our city. Many of whom, no doubt, will turn out, entirely coincidentally, to be close personal associates of Labour Party luvvie and public sector equalities middle manager, Luther Rees!
What a fabulous idea. Cut out the middleman altogether and just give all the LOBBYISTS and VESTED INTERESTS after our public money an office at the Counts Louse and let them run the bloody show and dish the money out to themselves!
This will end well won’t it?
The absolute fiasco of SECRET and CLOSED hustings featuring only carefully selected candidates from the establishment political parties continues to blight the mayoral elections.
We have already reported in The BRISTOLIAN how BUSINESS WEST invited just the Tories, Labour and George Ferguson to some very hush-hush hustings at their Leigh Court Mansion in March where, no doubt, the Merchant Venturers issued their orders to candidates.
We also reported how, at least, one hustings on housing run by crappy homeless charity, ST MUNGOS, was kept secret to keep independent candidates and their opinions out of the way and tricky questions at bay.
Now we’ve uncovered a whole series of hustings where independent candidates, UKIP and TUSC (Trade Union and Socialist Colaition) have been DELIBERATELY EXCLUDED by the organisers.
Among these was a hustings instigated by the TUC at the Unite Union HQ, Tony Benn House, on Victoria Street in early April. This turned into a major humiliation for the TUC, however, when the excluded candidates organised a PROTEST outside Tony Benn House (pictured).
“Who made the TUC gatekeepers of democracy”
Surely this protest marks a significant NEW LOW in this city’s fine trade union tradition? And maybe it’s something the union bureaucrats and bosses responsible need to think long and hard about. Once ordinary people are protesting about you isn’t it time you carefully considered your position?
Especially after the TUC’s shitty little BIASED and MANIPULATED hustings only managed to attract about 30 people from a trade union membership in the tens of thousands in Bristol. Are these self-appointed trade union bosses in touch with anyone in the city outside their FRIENDS in the local Labour Party?
On the plus side, it seems the teachers union, the NUT, learned from the TUC’s huge EMBARRASSMENT and avoided a further HUMILIATING protest against trade unions. They hurriedly arranged invites for ALL the candidates for their hustings at Tony Benn House a few weeks later.
Not so, however, from other so-called progressive organisations in the city who seem desperate to control any political debate and EXCLUDE any troublesome views that might fall to the left of Labour’s right wing candidate Marvin “Luther” Rees.
Hustings organised by the CREATIVE YOUTH NETWORK for young people; VOSCUR for community and voluntary organisations; ACORN, the direct action tenants organisation and even hustings on disabilities organised jointly by The National Autistic Society, Royal National Institute for the Blind, Mencap and the Bristol Centre for Deaf People all EXCLUDED legitimate mayoral candidates.
In the case of the disability hustings, it’s nothing short of extraordinary that organisations supposedly dedicated to preventing exclusion should OPENLY EXCLUDE people! The other organisations involved are, mainly, thinly disguised LABOUR SUPPORTERS obviously petrified of giving a platform to any of the many left wing critics of Marvin “Luther” Rees among the mayoral candidates.
Mayor Loser’s supporters appear to have been getting in on this act too. A hustings at the Analphoney art gallery organised by the RIDICULOUS POSH BOYS running the POINTLESS Bristol Pound project also FAILED to invite most candidates because there wasn’t “enough time”. Although it looked more like a last ditch effort to keep the wheels on Mayor Massive Defeat’s car crash campaign by banning all his more open and aggressive critics.
Welcome to progressive politics in Bristol where dissent will be quietly suppressed and democracy overlooked due to time constraints.
This Saturday (April 30), THE FLY was buzzing around College Green in the aftermath of the ‘Homes For All’ march to College Green by homeless support groups.
With only a week to go, many candidates for Bristol Mayor were there and even the Tory had come along to “show his support”, but THE FLY’S compound eyes focused in on an interview being given by Marvin ‘Luther’ Rees to a team of documentary film makers.
THE FLY hovered in and waited for any particularly tasty morsels of Bullshit that might be in the offing. It turned out that the interviewer was asking Marvin what he intended to do for Bristol’s homeless upon taking office.
Marv gave the usual CLAPTRAP about “deals over affordable housing” but whenever the interviewer asked for specifics he became twitchy and stated: “Look if we were in a boxing match, then I’d hardly tell you I was about to land you a right hook, now would I?” (ignoring the fact that neither were in a boxing match. Ed.)
Then the interviewer mentioned the huge and disproportionate salaries that council executives were being paid and whether THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE intended to cut them as mayor.
Marv was seen to visibly recoil in horror. “No no,” he protested, “Be reasonable, I can’t do that! The next day I’d have to face a fleet of lawyers and their unions* would go on strike!”(Presumably the UFCPP Union of Fat Cats on the Public Payroll? Ed.)
When the interviewer remonstrated that other candidates were considering this very move, Marv guffawed and spat out, “Well they aren’t going to be elected, are they? To be elected mayor, you have to be seen to act responsibly…”
At this point THE FLY decided to depart and land on one of the (by now many) smoking, wet turds roundabout. Lapping up the heavenly moisture with its proboscis.