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BRISTOLIAN #76: ON THE STREETS NOW

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The ascension of the Reverend Rees to the House of Lords will not leave him short of cash and having to rely on just the £361 per day in attendance allowance with travel expenses and subsidised restaurant facilities.

His recently published register of interests to Parliament reveals he also has some other income streams. Including US multinational Ameresco, Inc, who have paid fees to the Reverend’s ‘personal services company’, Three and Two Ltd.

Ameresco was awarded a £1bn contract by Bristol City Council in 2021 on the Reverend’s watch after winning the tender to run his ‘Billion pound City Leap’ net zero nonsense.

Nothing to see here!

LEAP FLOP – IT’S A VATTENFAIL!

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Netting Zeroes

In March 2024, Ameresco’s heat network partner for City Leap, Vattenfall, announced they “expect to invest £475 million to grow the Bristol Heat Network, enabling it to provide heat to supply the equivalent of 12,000 homes.”

Now fast forward to this March and, with no sign of much invested, Vattenfall announce, “After the recent sale of Heat Berlin, Vattenfall is now looking into the remainder of its district heating portfolio.”

This includes Bristol’s heat network, sold to Vattenfall by the council at a knockdown “at cost” price in 2023 by the Reverend Rees.

We’re reliably informed private equity interests are now making enquiries about this opportunity to make a fast buck as monopoly providers of heat to customers in Bristol.

Rumours suggest Vattenfall got cold feet when plans for the government to regulate the wild west heat network sector to protect consumers started to emerge. This could result in making a tidy return on any investment tricky.

City Leap? It’s a city loss.

AI BALLS

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hal-9000


Ongoing efforts by Bristol City Council to avoid answering the phone to the public who pay them take a new turn.

The Bristolian hears that later this year the council will launch ‘a major generative AI-enhanced service’, ‘the digital assistant Briz’, in their contact centre.

It says here, “Briz will be taking calls and dealing with lots of customer requests, freeing up advisors to work from home and engage with the public as little as is humanly possible.” [we might have made some of that up, Ed].

Best of luck trying to contact the council in the future.

A READER WRITES

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quill

A long suffering trapped resident in East Bristol writes:

“Reject the South Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood now before you fall out with your neighbours!

“This is a warning to the people of south Bristol about their forthcoming Liveable Neighbourhood.

“The Greens and their supporters are vile. They will deliberately divide your community with their ideological roadblocks and then claim – without evidence – it’s OK because more people agree with them than with you.

“Who wants to live like this?”

DOWN SOUTH

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Northern Slopes
South Bristol open space – the Northern Slopes – soon to get van dwellers moved off west Bristol’s open space


The Greens have come up with a novel solution to complaints by the posh locals about van dwellers setting up home in and around the Downs.

Council officers cheerily announced in the Nazi Post that they would seeking ‘new support sites’ for van dwellers and that “two meanwhile sites could be turned into areas where van dwellers can stay, perhaps in Knowle West and Hartcliffe”.

A typical west Bristol solution to any problem in the city, then. Dump it in south Bristol.

Plus ça change.

ROAD TO NOWHERE

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Bridge_Swing!_(geograph_2460172)

The Greens are shutting Prince Street Bridge to cars travelling south. This will shut the bridge entirely to cars.

Reasoning and evidence for the closure are thin on the ground beyond that the Greens are ideologically obsessed with cars and want to snarl up traffic in the centre to piss off car drivers.

Disabled people, especially, are unhappy that another car route out of the centre is blocked with nobody asking them about it. Fit and healthy posh blokes on bikes have loudly voiced approval, however.

So that’s all right then.

COUNCIL CASH GRAB

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Cash grab

ST NICKS MARKET SHOCKER

Council bosses want to wire St Nicks Market food traders up to Electronic Point of Sale (EPO) units and grab 15 per cent of their turnover for themselves.

What’s the extra income for? The council’s own figures say their running costs were £591k last year while they earned £646k in fees. A tidy £55k profit giving a return of 8.5 per cent.

Not enough for our greedy council who’ve set a turnover target of £761k for 2025. Potentially a profit of £170k at a whopping return of 22 per cent.

No such returns are likely for traders, however. In the struggling hospitality industry 15 per cent of turnover is likely to be their entire profit.

Kerching?

CAZ-RAZY SHIT

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CAZ Advance warning sign

Farewell, then, to a Bristol institution.

Marcruss Outdoors, probably better known as “the army surplus shop on Hotwell Road’, is calling it a day in July. The grand old 18th century building will become ten unaffordable flats and three retail units instead.

Shop boss, Marcus, was concerned about the clean air zone (CAZ) in 2022: “I think it could essentially kill us off because it starts from Ashton. Unless people are allowed to come into this area, nobody’s going to shop in here.”

Death by CAZ then. Viva CAZ!

Compliance

The Bristolian hears that the parks’ vehicle fleet is not compliant with the city council’s Clean Air Zone (CAZ).

The department is therefore paying every time one of their vehicles  enters the zone. Adding insult to injury, they also have to pay fines if bosses are on leave or don’t pay the charge on time.

Money for our cash-starved parks’ is therefore being shovelled at a formidable rate into the coffers of the council’s Green Party pet project slush fund to get wasted on sustainable transport tosh.

Who needs trees?

CRUEL SPORT

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The WECA man with WECA dog

Dan “The WECA Man” Norris is a very busy WECA man indeed. As well as being the Metro Mayor and an MP, Dan is also the Chair of the League Against Cruel Sports where he has been served with legal papers for an Employment Tribunal claim by the charity’s former chief executive, Andy Knott.

Former army officer, Knott, alleges that “Dan Norris asked him to keep quiet if Labour dropped its commitment to close loopholes in existing fox-hunting laws.”

Knott then claims that when he raised concerns about this political interference to the board and senior management, “they refused to investigate”.