Monthly Archives: April 2013

LOCAL ELECTIONS: LIB DEMS IN ANTI-JOCK SHOCK!

Lib Dem Scotland

Desperate Eastville Lib Dem candidate, Steve Comer, the WEIRDO WITH THE PUDDING BASIN HAIRCUT who’s surely already assured a place in the dustbin of history, has resorted to pointing out his Labour opponent is SCOTTISH in a last ditch effort to get some votes and retain his seat.

Two years ago the Lib Dems were phoning Eastville residents to tell them the Labour candidate was a Muslim. Now this. How long before the Lib Dems start calling their opponents ‘coconuts’?

Oh, hang on a minute

FROM THE ARCHIVES: LUVVIE LISTS

The Bristol Culture Blog’s recent Bristol arts and culture power list 2013 brought back memories of the last time a meejah luvvies list was compiled in this city as the prospective membership list for the ill-fated Il Bordello club. Just goes to show the names might change but the sheer self-regard and absurdity of some people in Bristol never will. Here’s what The BRISTOLIAN had to say in 2002:

PSEUDS CORNER:

The appalling snob and social climber LIZ LEWITT has finally managed to turn her festering rustbucket into IL BORDELLO – “ARTS BAR AND VIDEO LOUNGE”. The risible project – intended to be Bristol’s GROUCHO CLUB – has membership only open to – wait for it – “MULTIMEDIA CREATIVES”. Ha! Fuckin Ha! Ha! What a wanker!

When you look at the “prospective membership list”, however – intended to coax others to join under the impression they’ll be hanging out with Massive Attack and Portishead – it’s full of interior designers, PR consultants and “LAVINIA from the Chamber of Commerce”. Just the kind of people you’d happily walk the plank to avoid!

We can pick out a few such luminaries. There’s that riveting couple Sue and John Midwinter. Lewitt boasts that “John is an entrepreneur and does interiors”, while “Sue is a PRIVATE CATERER”. What does that mean – she cooks her own fucking tea?! Emphasis on “private” to make her fascinating and not just any old caterer, you understand.

Compared to this lot any visiting Sue Pollards will be A-Listers! And there’s Roger Davis, described as a “GAME DEALER” from Cotham. What’s media-creative about that? He’s just one up from a fucking rat catcher! Your caring Bristolian exclusively publishes Lewitt’s list of “prospective members” for you, dear punters, to scan and see what you’re missing out on, and why IL BORDELLO will soon be heading for Davy Jones’ Locker!

To join Lewitt’s SNOB BOAT will cost you a mere £500 just to get in, or £1,000 corporate rate. These already represent a big drop in price from that Lewitt was originally proposing to charge – because there were predictably few takers. Lewitt wails “the membership fees were originally set in conjunction with a consultant from London but now we have decided to lower membership fees”.

The truth is that Lewitt was proposing a 3-Tier membership scheme: Silver for the interior designers, Gold for anyone vaguely to do with the media, and Platinum for Nick Park/Massive Attack/Beth Gibbons etc. When none of these showed any interest in coughing up £2,000 a year to hang out with a work experience girl from the Bristol Observer and the woman wot cooks for Aardman Animation, she realised her consultant was talking the proverbial metropolitan bollocks.

The opening of Massive Attack’s Nocturne Club was a further kick up the gunnels. She is reassured though by an endorsement from an anonymous “media solicitor”: “It would be useful to have a venue where we can present prospective legislation to our clients in an artistic ambience with no risk of marauding townies”.

To join you have to show “proof of professional integrity”, though apparently “a sample of corporate stationery will do”. How very individualistic! Expect much wailing and gnashing of teeth by about June this year when this Ship of Fools finally founders and there’s a long line of gullible Lavinias trying to get their money back!

PIE SPY SHOWS LOCALS WHO’S BOSS

Cadbury garden closed thanks to cackling posho Crispin Busk

Since starting in 2003 at a shop on Stokes Croft, posh pie empire PIEMINISTER has gone on to become rather famous, and along the way contributed to the gentrification of BS2 which saw less wealthy local people priced out by trustfunded ‘creatives’ wearing ironic facial hair. Well, they couldn’t afford the pies, so why hang around?

CRISPIN BUSK was Pieminister’s UK Account Manager until he left in 2010 to start up his own upmarket instant noodle business, Kabuto. Whilst his Kabuto noodles lack the name recognition of his old company’s products, privately-educated Cambridge graduate Crispin certainly took on board the Pieminister ethos of pitch-up-in-cheap-area-and-price-out-locals.

Having moved in next door to popular Montpelier pub the Cadbury, he decided he didn’t like hearing people enjoying a few drinks and chatting in its much-loved beer garden, so began a campaign of noise complaints to the council.

And in a VICTORY FOR BRAYING HOORAY HENRYS everywhere, Busk succeeded in almost getting the pub’s licence revoked – with the lasting result that you can’t enjoy your beer outside past 10pm.

PRATTLE ROYALE IN ASHLEY

It’s all go in Ashley ward, which covers St Paul’s, fashionable Montpelier, St Werburgh’s and upmarket St Andrews, as sitting councillor and sacked former Lib Dem Transport chief ‘JOLLY’ JON ROGERS is fighting to hold his seat from a Green onslaught. The Green’s ultra-naïve SIR GUS HOYTY-TOYTY won the ward at a canter last time out, but it seems Jolly Jon has developed a triangulation strategy to fight back…

The beleaguered paper millionaire Lib Dem can now be regularly found on Facebook breathlessly hyping the joys of Reiki, pottery and other madcap green pastimes… How long before we discover he’s converted to Buddhism or attached solar panels and a windmill to his spacious St Andrews pile? Will he be next to jump on the inflatable vegetable bandwagon?

He’s up against Green ROB TELFORD, a political anorak and desperate wannabe in the provincial Lib Dem mould, best known for running an inane Twitter account (about which he can be rather sensitive) and being prepared to turn up for the opening of an envelope anywhere, anytime in the Ashley Ward.

Despite both candidates being politically predisposed to the mayor’s proposed parking zones, strangely neither will commit to one in Ashley due to the uncertain electoral calculus involved in actually having an opinion on them! Just the kind of decisive conviction politicians we need to take the city forward. The other option for voters in Ashley, who’s also yet to express an opinion on anything, is the IndyRedpants candidate, KARL BELIZAIRE, a “social entrepreneur” and self-styled “influential force of social innovation”.

Or ‘wanker’ as we would traditionally call him.

INDY REDPANTS FOR BRISTOL!

Excitement is in the air for the forthcoming councillor elections in May after the creation of a new political party in the city that’s key selling point is that it’s really not a political party at all!

The newly formed ‘Independents for Bristol’ (IfB) party is running a slate of WELL-HEELED MIDDLE CLASS CANDIDATES across many leafy Bristol West wards – though this wholly independent, anti-establishment party does appear to have managed to avoid standing candidates against any vulnerable Lib Dem cabinet members such as Clifton East’s longstanding Minister for Culture & Junkets SIMON COOK, or over-promoted bartender-turned-Housing supremo GUY POULTNEY in Lockleaze. Now that is a surprise!

This new non-party party’s website is full of the usual inconsequential guff about integrity, openness and honesty and talks of “a new type of politician being needed” due to “widespread disillusionment with party politics in the UK”, although there’s no sign of any actual policies or beliefs they might actually pursue should they be elected.

The party-that’s-definitely-not-a-party has been set up by former BBC journalist and professional posh bloke STEPHEN PERRY, who coincidentally also set up Mayor Gorgeous’s Bristol 1st Party. It’s a fact which, when pointed out to him, gets Perry rather hot under the collar. After all, how can a self-styled anti-establishment independent posh bloke possibly have a conflict of interest or be in any way less than honest about what he is up to?

Other supporters and candidates for the party include George’s old millionaire mucker from Clifton, eco-waffler ALISTAIR SAWDAY, and one of George’s campaign workers and former Lib Dem prospect, JASON BUDD.

Independent? My arse.

ANAL PHONEY ‘INDEPENDENTS’

The ‘INDEPENDENTS FOR BRISTOL’ (IfB) – Mayor Redpants’ second crack at creating a political ‘party that’s not a party’ in under a year following his ‘Bristol 1st’ ticket – is picking up pace, with eight people so far selected to run for council seats.

A typical flavour of IfB comes from its Clifton candidate, chartered accountant Brenda McLennan, the finance & operations boss at the Arnolfini Gallery. From her £800,000 CLIFTON WOOD MANSION she is promising “to shake things up at City Hall” as one of these “new types of politician” running for the IndyRedpants. And how very, very new her personal management practices are at the Arnolfini.

McLennan’s snooty art gallery recently advertised for stewards, offering to pay them the princely sum of £6.20 AN HOUR – a whole 1p an hour more than the minimum wage! And for that “a flexible approach to working days and hours is required” as the gallery is open six days a week!

Just the kind of progressive attitude to low pay and employment this city needs more of, isn’t it?

GEORGE GETS A TASTE OF HIS OWN MARVELLOUS MEDICINE AT BOOKFAIR BREW-HA-HA

Our pal George

Bristol’s premier citizen Mayor George Ferguson made an unannounced visit to the local Anarchist Bookfair today – only to face TEA-BASED RESISTANCE to his shameless grandstanding.

The MILLIONAIRE MAYOR bumrushed the doors at the Trinity Centre – putting a paltry two quid into the donation bucket – in what appears to have been a bizarre publicity stunt that soon went very wrong indeed.

Once spotted, the Red Trousered self-publicist found himself mobbed by angry punters keen to tell him what they thought of his budget-slashing cuts, with bumbling Fergo able only to repeat variations of his standard line that “I’m not making any cuts, it’s the government!” – our favourite being “that’s a government imposition that we have to deal with!” Oh George, are you telling us that you’re just EXPENSIVE WINDOW-DRESSING?

Anyway, it wasn’t enough to appease one book-lover, who promptly chucked their cup of tea over the Tobacco Factory Baron before ‘directing him to a question from the floor’.

Having returned to his feet and dusted himself down, noted libertine George then composed himself enough to point his election-winning fake smile at a cameraphone whilst posing with a copy of your favourite scandal sheet (though he later unsportingly described The BRISTOLIAN as “fiction”), do a quick circuit of the building and then leave, angrily MUMBLING TO HIMSELF ABOUT IAN BONE.

Well George, it was nice of you to fit in a trip to a part of Bristol that isn’t Clifton into your busy schedule of Very Important Foreign Excursions – but perhaps next time things might pan out better if you didn’t treat it like a safari…

MASSIVE MARKETS OVERSPEND PROVIDES FOOD FOR FRAUD

Why is Facilities Management leaking money like a sieve?

Facilities Management book keeping explained by way of a picture

Facilities Management book keeping explained by way of a picture

More news on TONY ‘THE TOERAG’ HARVEY, the council’s self-perking Facilities Manager following last issue’s exposé of his parking charge dodge.

Now we can exclusively reveal he’s a lot more careful with own money – about £50k a year from public funds – than he is with ours. Accounts published in November reveal that the Toerag’s Facilities Management department is OVERSPENT BY AN INCREDIBLE £602,000 – racked up in just eight months! Much of which – £283,000 – he hasn’t even bothered to account for.

The accounts do show, however, that the Toerag spent £104k on sacking staff and paying out redundancy – and that he overspent £51,000 on markets, which, er, are supposed to earn us money! So why exactly have council taxpayers been subsidising The Toerag’s personal St Nick’s Market fiefdom to the tune of £1,500 a week?

The markets overspending doesn’t stop there: in a special separate column in the accounts listed as ‘Other income’ we find Harvey recording a further £165,000 loss as “Markets Licence income shortfall”. That’s a “shortfall” of about £5k a week. What’s on earth has The Toerag been up to with our money?

One possible explanation comes from the local branch of Unison. In an open letter to Mayor Gorgeous before the budget they said: “We have just had a situation in markets, with a deficit of £200,000 that MAY WELL TURN OUT TO BE FRAUD…”

So that’s all right then. Especially when you discover that another one of The Toerag’s areas of responsibility is… City Council security and cash collection.

Your money safe in their hands? Ha!

HOYT’S HATE TWEET SCANDAL SHAME SHOCKER

Hoyt's hate crime scandal shame

It is with great concern that The BRISTOLIAN passes on news received today from a reader relating to embattled Green councillor, SIR GUS HOYTY-TOYTY.

It was only yesterday that GEORGE’S MINISTER FOR FREE-RANGE BEARDS vowed to never again “walk while I tweet” after prompting an international race hate scandal with his announcement that he “hated aborigines”. Diplomatic relations between Bristol and Australia were briefly severed before a hastily convened summit meeting established that Gusbo had actually meant to broadcast his loathing of aubergines – which in turn precipitated a rift between Shitty Hall and the Soil Association.

Councillor Hoyty-Toyty’s frantic attempts to row back from the political precipice seemed to work, but were then potentially self-scuppered when he promised to refer to the vegetable in question by its racially-charged American name, ‘eggplant’ – recalling 2009’s COCONUTGATE SCANDAL caused by Shirley ‘Not A Racist’ Brown-Marshall, the Lib Dem councillor he subsequently replaced in Ashley ward.

Yet less than 24 hours after his pledge to stop ‘tweet-walking’,  our tipster spotted the CUDDLY GREEN TEDDY BEAR flagrantly and feverishly tapping into his smartphone whilst striding along pushing his expensive bike and with a £200 solar-powered inflatable vegetable rucksack on his back, in an apparent dash to get to the Farmers’ Market at St. Nick’s before all the organic quinoa disappeared in the lunchtime rush.

Councillor Toyty – we implore you – SEEK HELP. If it is not treated, and soon, this compulsion of yours will sink your political career.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH NOW A LOAD OF ATOS

Don't panic, it's only Darth Janet!

A frisson of excitement went through the city’s chattering classes when the council’s brand new Public Health chief, JANET MAXWELL, immediately started talking up her eco credentials and pushing for Bristol to become European Green Capital. So it’s a pity that as she cycles over to the Farmers’ Market to save the bloody whale she can’t show the same respect to her own staff that she does for the environment.

For Janet’s first proper decision at the council after a couple of months dicking about with green poshos is to appoint one of the country’s most notorious companies as a partner. Step forward ATOS HEALTHCARE, which has just been awarded a contract by Janet to look after the well-being of Bristol City Council’s long suffering staff by running the occupational health service.

ATOS is of course the company making a mint out of government contracts by throwing disabled people off benefits after finding them ‘fit for work’ following dubious tests. Indeed, the company first shot to fame in 2011 when 1,100 PEOPLE DIED in the first 8 months of that year soon after being found ‘fit for work’ by ATOS!

Just the firm to help out ordinary underpaid overworked council workers who don’t have the benefit of a six-figure salary like Janet’s, don’t you think?