“Day after day council staff witness the blatant disregard, lawbreaking and contempt with which citizens like myself are treated. It’s hardly surprising that less than half of staff trust senior leaders to act with integrity, and that just over half feel confident using whistleblowing policies without fear of retaliation.”
A parent of a disabled child spied on by council bosses has published, on Twitter/X, a public statement that council Monitoring Officer, ‘L’il’ Tim O’Gara, banned from the council’s last Human Resources Committee meeting.
The statement reveals that the parent has started legal action against the council for their weird and unlawful surveillance of her and her family.
This legal action was the final resort after the council, under the Reverend Rees and, now, the Greens reneged on a promise to set up an independent investigation into their surveillance of residents.
The statement also explains that the council has failed to provide a response to this parent’s formal legal letter in seven months.
The officer accountable for that response is Monitoring Officer ‘L’il’ Tim O’Gara. Never one to let a blatant conflict of interest get in the way, he has enthusiastically banned a statement, highlighting his self-serving negligence, from being heard by a committee of councillors responsible for employing him.
To add insult to injury, the parent further reveals that the Reverend’s appalling cabinet sidekick, Asher “The Slasher” Craig, told a meeting of local community groups that the parent was “hysterical”.
How long before the council denounces her for witchcraft and sets up witch trials with O’Gara as judge?
As a statement bannned by the council’s chief legal officer to cover his own bent arse is unlikely to appear in any other local press, here’s the full statement:
With the vote by councillors to trash Bristol’s only remaining working farm and a Site of Nature Conservation Interest, Yew Tree Farm, due on Friday, Green Party councillors are gearing up to break one of the few manifesto commitments they managed to make.
The manifesto the Greens ran on in May promised they would, “Protect Sites of Nature Conservation Interest (SNCI) that Bristol City Council controls by preventing development on them.”
The policy seemed to be confirmed as recently as August 22. Green council leader, “Tory” Tony Dyer, huffed and puffed at Bristol 24/7 that he had been ‘misrepresented’ in an interview with BBC Points West the day before when he had appeared to support plans to expand the South Bristol Crematorium onto Yew Tree Farm SNCI.
Dyer whined at 24/7, “Yesterday in an interview with BBC Points West, I reaffirmed the Green Party’s opposition to development on SNCIs in response to a question on Yew Tree Farm. This was edited out of the broadcast interview.”
Now in October, developing the farm seems to have been edited back in. Four Greens on the Public Health and Communities Policy Committee are being asked to consider a council officer report proposing to expand South Bristol Crematorium on to Yew Tree Farm, a site ‘Bristol City Council controls’.
And these councillors – Abdul “Dull” Malik and Fi “Fie Foe” Hance, a couple of dodgy old Lib Dems mainly loyal to their own ambition, and rookie councillors Cara “Caravan” Lavan and Ed “Fuk” Fraser – appear to be getting cold feet about saving this council controlled SNCI.
All four councillors have point blank refused to visit the farm to meet the farmer Catherine Withers and learn about the importance of the site and three of them – Abd-dull, Fi and Ed – have refused to meet with independent ecology experts. Labour, Lib Dem and Tory councillors have all visited the farm to learn more before voting on this crude act of environmental destruction.
Ab-Dull has even gone one step further, ignoring both his boss, Tory Tony and the manifesto he ran on just a few months ago, publishing a rambling piece in Bristol 24/7 about Muslim burials and claiming that ‘we must balance the need for burial space with protecting the environment’.
The article was accompanied by one of the weirdest publicity shots ever (see above). An uneasy pastoral like something out of the 17th Century, the gloomy folk horror tableau features Ab-Dull stood solemnly in front of a coffin flanked by male counterparts. Any women present are stood ten metres back and off to the side of Ab-Dull and the boys.
Is this weird shit the progressive new look for Tory Tony’s not very greens?
“Where funding is granted and where it is not, is not directly comparable”?
Please find attached statement from Youth Moves regarding the Youth Zone: All The Wrong Moves Article which I have been asked to forward to you. [signed by the admin manager]
Artists impression of Bristol’s forthcoming Merchant Venturers Zone
The horrifying reality, being built on open space at Inns Court, about Bristol’s Youth Zone, a giant shed for the youth of Bristol that no one in youth works wants, is emerging.
Now chairing Youth Moves, the charity managing this public-private partnership big project that’s swallowing Bristol City Council’s entire youth services budget whole, is Heather Frankham, a Merchant Venturer and, until July, a director of the miserably failing Venturers Trust. The local academy trust so useless it has had to disband and hand their work over to a competent body, the national E-ACT academy trust.
The Venturers Trust’s recent handiwork includes transforming the Merchants Academy in Hartcliffe into a OFSTED-rated ‘inadequate’ school and shutting the school’s sixth form at a week’s notice in September 2023 leaving sixth formers in Hartcliffe without a sixth form to attend. Just the track record required to be trusted with further large sums of public money for youth services in South Bristol then.
Frankham has wasted no time in appointing a snooty twit from Clifton to support her Youth Zone madness. Please step forward newly installed interim chief executive for Youth Moves, Guy Cowper. This former Operations Manager at posh and private Clifton High School will now be responsible for delivering youth services in south Bristol. What on Earth qualifies him in any way for this role is not clear.
Mystery, meanwhile, surrounds the sudden departure of Youth Moves’ former CEO, experienced Knowle West youth boss Ali Dale who suddenly quit in May explaining “it is time for me to move on” after 13 years running the popular charity.
Having wrecked a generation’s education in South Bristol, are the Merchant Venturers and their friends and relatives about to wreak their incompetent havoc on youth services in South Bristol?
Watch this space.
***CORRECTION*** an earlier version of this story said that Guy Cowper and Heather Frankham were partners. This is not the case.
The Smiter has informed readers about the Venturers Trust (VT) academy schools shitshow on many occasions. So there were few surprises when the useless multi academy trust run by wealthy idiot Merchant Venturers announced it was “to merge” with E-ACT, a large national multi academy trust (MAT) last September.
Few surprises except, perhaps, at E-ACT? Who were quick to confirm that they were not merging but that the arrangement was “a take-over”. Presumably so that E-ACT could distance themselves swiftly from the Venturer’s disastrous reputation?
E-ACT have taken further action to distance themselves from anything associated with the Venturers by making the trust’s senior leadership team redundant and replacing them with E-ACT recruited managers and head teachers. Hopefully with a modicum of knowledge on how to run a school?
The final stage was to transfer the hard working and long suffering teachers and support staff to the new MAT under transfer of undertakings protection of employment legislation (TUPE). This should have happened in May. Eagle-eyed readers will note, however, May is now over and the transfer has not occurred. The TUPE was postponed until June, due to issues with the roof on Montpelier High School, previously Colston Girls School.
It appears that this roof has been removed, which has had a bit of a negative impact not only on the school but on adjacent shops and flats. At the time of writing the roof is still missing while groups of Merchant Venturers, E-ACT managers and Bristol City Council education bosses sit around the table arguing about who is going to pay for it.
The bill runs into the millions and those of you who have bought property before might wonder about a pre-purchase surveyor. Did E-ACT not employ a surveyor or did the surveyor miss the fact that the school roof was missing?
This is, of course, the oldest building trick in the book. Put a price in, rip the roof off and then, while looking concerned, add a few zeros to the original price. The customer, whose property is roofless, then has no choice but to cough up. If you have not heard of this trick, ask Marv about the Bristol Beacon eventually costing us £135m during major cuts to services.
Latest news is that the TUPE has now been postponed until September. But privately, when asked, E-ACT managers are reluctant to make assurances of when the transfer will take place. But they are “hopeful” it will happen, “in the future”.
Where does that leave the seven schools, their pupils and prospective new students hoping for some type of education in the next academic year? Arguments over who’s going to pay for the roof continue with little sign of a resolution.
Meanwhile all the Venturer’s Trust bosses have been made redundant and paid off. If E-ACT pull out, they will take their newly appointed bosses with them. Leaving current Venturers Trust teachers and support staff in limbo, wondering who is going to pay them or line manage them.
This is a total clusterfuck. One hope is that another MAT will step in, take over a massive deficit, pay the millions of pounds for a new roof on a crumbling building and recruit some education bosses capable of turning these failing schools around. Good luck with that.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to let the private sector run education for a profit because they are more ‘efficient’ is demonstrably a fucking idiot.
The welcoming architecture of Trinity Road Police Station
Passing by the piles of rubble that were once Trinity Road police station in east Bristol the other day took me back to some nightmares of the 1980s. Opened in 1979, the station was built in with riot in mind or as one Bristolian described it:
Is this the barracks of some continental-style gendarmerie, which takes to the streets only in armoured cars and with plenty of truncheons, riot shields and tear gas? Are we looking at the headquarters of some Soviet bloc secret police, with its interrogation rooms and execution cellars? No, this inscrutable, windowless, doorless, inward-turned building is the new Trinity Road Police Station, put up at the end of the 1970s for the greater convenience of our increasingly deskbound, paperwork-ridden policemen …or “police officers” as they like us to say now. Somehow this building is the perfect expression of modern policing, with its high-powered pursuit cars, speed cameras, shapeless bulky uniforms, hi-vis jackets and Heckler & Koch semi-automatic submachine guns.
In April 1980, Trinity was where the battered Avon and Somerset police officers retreated and regrouped after being chased out of St Pauls after their overpoliced and disastrous raid on the Black and White Café. Over the following years the station began to develop a dark reputation for weird, ritualised violence against those who ended up in its cells.
In 1986 after the bombing of Libya by the US Airforce a mate of mine went out to graffiti against the escalation of what looked like a coming war. He was nicked in the Bear Pit and taken to Trinity where he was banged in a cell overnight. After refusing to give his finger prints (which had been a right in those days for minor offences) a bunch of cops came into the cell, grabbed him and began singing a song whilst an older, grey-haired officer used him as a punch bag.
The senior cop was no fool, never hitting him in the face but hitting his body ‘til it was black and blue. My mate still refused to give his prints, so they dragged him out using some keys to smash his finger nails as he desperately held on to the cell door frame. By this stage he had enough, gave his prints, was released without charge the next day, and staggered home.
You might say it was a one off? A few years later, one evening another mate who I played football with was walking back from the pub along Stapleton Road when he was kerb crawled by a police car. After refusing to stop, saying he was on his way home, the two cops grabbed him and in the scuffle that followed he kicked the car door shut. This was enough for them to nick him, and he was soon in a cell at Trinity. That night, once again a load of cops came in to the cell, held him and sang a song whilst a senior officer beat his body black and blue. He was released without charge the next day.
The experiences of what happened to my mates soon got around. Many of us knew that Trinity was the last place you wanted to be taken if you were nicked. Far better to be in Bridewell, where at least there were senior cops who might not want beatings of prisoners (or worse) on their hands.
On Saturday 10 July 1994, Mark Harris a 31-year-old black man from Cardiff, was arrested for ‘suspected cheque book theft’ at 8.30pm and taken to Trinity Road police station. Three hours later he was found unconscious on the floor of his cell and rushed to the BRI where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
The results of a postmortem were not released to the public and a coroner’s inquest found an ‘open verdict’, meaning that jury confirmed the death is suspicious but could not find a cause. The suggestion was that Harris had hanged himself.
In 1995 there were protests outside Trinity Road led by Harris’s family, but like almost all deaths in police custody the killer cops were never brought to justice. I like to think that the only good thing to come out of the death of Harris is that it might have brought the ritualised beatings at Trinity Road police station to an end…but who knows?
So goodbye and good riddance to Trinity Road police station, and its dark history.
Bristol North West MP, Darren Jones, is on the panel for the launch of Fujitsu-backed ‘Labour Digital’ at the Labour Party conference in 2018. A brand new initiative from Labour to “reboot their digital policy.”
Lucky families out walking at Leigh Woods on Boxing day were treated to the sight of a deer caught in a fence with flesh ripped off its leg right down to the bone.
The fence was around new allotments run by for-profit company, Allotta Futureland Ltd, trading as old friends Roots Allotments. This controversial company’s private allotment site sits between two SSRIs full of wild deer.
Roots Allotments’ fence is far too low to keep deer from trying to jump it. If it was larger they’d have to apply for planning permission, including a full environmental impact assessment. Something Roots are avoiding by claiming their allotments are “agricultural use”.
As the fence is low, deer try to get over it but misjudge it because it’s made of thin cheap wire that the deer can’t quite see.
The deer on Boxing Day suffered. Flesh was ripped from its leg down to the bone by its own weight. Members of the public had to use wire cutters to cut it out and then humanely euthanise it with the help of a vet as its leg was totally destroyed.
Roots Allotments list their aims as “improve biodiversity”, “build community” and “create good vibes”.
Following Labour’s lead, the Greens have gone some of the way to ditching the long list of expensive and undeliverable promises approach to manifesto writing.
Perfected by their centrist dad mayoral candidate last time round in 2021, Lord Sandy Bufton Tufton of India seemed to promise everything from reopening your local corner shop as boutique vegan food pop-up to sending an ambassador for Bristol to the UN. The Greens, this time, have gone for a stripped down version of the Bufton Tufton list approach.
‘Disappeared’ leader, Emma Edwards – confined to the attic for the duration in case she disturbs anyone from Business West with some dangerous off-message tree hugging hippy shit – has been briefly reanimated and wheeled out for the manifesto’s Foreword written for her by bland copywriters.
“Bristol Green Party has a vision of hope for the city and highly experienced candidates,” she enthusiastically assures us. That’ll be ‘highly experienced candidates’ like their current councillors who don’t understand the basic legal responsibilities of company ownership or the necessity to take action when the council acts unlawfully. There’s a thin line in local politics between ‘highly experienced’ and ‘reckless amateur’ isn’t there?
The main manifesto is divided into ten sections beginning with a ‘Getting the basics right‘ section. Here we’re threatened with that old chestnut “genuine engagement on key Council proposals” and decision-dodging “demographically representative Citizens’ Assemblies.”
“Ensure decisions about community facilities and community asset transfers have a more consistent and transparent process,” also pops up. Meaning community facilities and assets will be transferred to the Greens’ mates rather than Labour’s.
On to transport where, like everyone else, they’re going to improve the buses and – this is their one standout policy – they’ll fund this from a Workplace Parking Levy, if, presumably, Business West lets them?
Other keynote transport policies are the introduction of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, which will “make traffic flow better on main routes”, apparently, and reviving Mayor No More Ferguson’s residents’ parking schemes, now redesigned as high tax revenue earner for the council.
In housing, the headline is to increase the city’s target of affordable homes from the current 600 homes per year to 1,000 per year. As no housing target in the city ever gets reached you wonder what the point of this actually is?
There’s also an odd and unexplained major outsourcing plan sneaked in, to set up an “arms length company to own and rent out council-owned housing”. This, the Greens allege, will create more “genuinely affordable homes” while also, conveniently, achieving the Thatcherite dream of moving social housing out of the council’s hands altogether. An old Lib Dem policy and one to watch.
Under the heading ‘A Great Start in Life’ we get a load of retreads of Labour’s failing Children’s Service policies where costs are going south fast. So they’ll increase special school places; somehow reduce costs of home to school transport and recruit more foster carers as they’ve been doing unsuccessfully for the last ten years.
Despite being a major budgetary pressure, there’s nothing on the subject of the rising costs of private sector out-of-county children’s care placements at all. Neither is there any mention of the Tory ‘Safety Valve’ SEND cuts programme the council is now signed up to for the next five years if it doesn’t get cancelled immediately.
For young people, there’s a vague “aim” with no resource attached to “increase the provision of youth services”. On knife crime it’s equally vague and totally under-resourced. They’ll “work with young people themselves, with the police, schools, youth services and other community organisations.”
On adult care there’s some warm words for staff and social workers and then this, “investigate a council-funded capital grant programme or loan scheme to assist care homes to be more efficient to save money in the long run.”
Are they really proposing to use our money to subsidise private care homes’ profits?
Sections on public health and “a clean city” provide airy lists of stuff “aiming to”; “exploring”; “enhancing”; “joining up” with no firm commitment to anything very much. The language indicating the lack of resources to make any of it happen.
On culture we get that old manifesto money-wasting favourite, “lead a Bristol regional bid to become the UK’s city of culture” along with a vague threat of a raid on the Local Government Pension Scheme to fund pet culture projects.
The final section of the local authority manifesto is on our old corporate friend ‘net zero’. Basically the ‘billion pound’ City Leap is still the only game in town delivering small scale publicly funded insulation, energy and EV projects. But it wouldn’t be a Green manifesto without developing a way to waste money the council hasn’t got on a pointless ‘net zero’ measure. So please step forward “a carbon budget process alongside the annual financial budgeting process.”
The idea here seems to be to employ people to add up the carbon costs of what the council does each year while cutting actual useful public services to the bone. Bravo!
