Monthly Archives: January 2014

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOLMWOOD: ANOTHER POINTLESS INVESTIGATION EXPOSED!

HOLMWOODHOUSETHE BRISTOLIAN has been passed sensational information from a Freedom of Information request that reveals that there was a major, unpublicised investigation regarding the safeguarding of residents  at the ‘The House of Horrors’, HOLMWOOD HOUSE last year.

According to information contained in the response to the request, an investigation Web Exclusivetook place at the home in May 2013 and it involved Bristol City Council, the police, the NHS and the home itself.  The reason for the investigation is listed as “physical abuse and neglect through  medication error (x4)”, which suggests that, yet again, serious issues in the dispensing of medicines have arisen at the home and that other residents at the home have been abused.

The outcome of the investigation, as usual, was a fudge with the council concluding, even after their intervention, that “some areas show improvement seen (sic) but inconsistencies are now being addressed through a specialist support team.”

The report also tell us that Holmwood instituted a voluntary ban on all admissions between 3 June 2013 and 23 August 2013 while Bristol City Council were supposedly monitoring the home. This is the period in which AN ELDERLY WOMAN DIED twelve days after leaving their care, having inexplicably lost her swallowing reflex and one third of her body weight.

So it looks like a safeguarding  investigation took place at the home just prior to this death and seemingly no lessons were really learned and opportunities were missed. It makes you wonder what it would take for the owners and managers of the home to be prosecuted and for the dump to be shut down.

Will the authorities tolerate absolutely anything in their godforsaken private care homes?

HORSEWORLD BOSS PINOCCHIOWEN DIGS HIS HEELS IN & SENDS OUT REDUNDANCY NOTICES

Web ExclusiveThe latest news from inside FORTRESS WHITCHURCH is that troubled equine charity HorseWorld is to close its visitor centre in just over a month – on 27 February – despite a supposed ‘consultation exercise’ running until 24 February.

It comes on top of the sad news that today 28 REDUNDANCY NOTICES were issued to staff. Sources indicate that amongst those being primed for the chop is Animal Welfare Manager Jerry Watkins. That’s right: instead of acknowledging their terrible – and costly – business decisions and resigning themselves, the clique around MD Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen have decided to sack a bunch of already underpaid employees, including the one with the most professional experience of actually running an animal sanctuary!

If rumours are to be believed, cowardly Pinocchiowen sent Watkins his redundancy notice whilst he was away on holiday representing his country as UK team captain at the Khartoum International Tent-Pegging Competition

At this rate all that will be left of HorseWorld will be a paddock full of expensive, incompetent senior managers.

[Edited 29/1/14]

BLUE MONDAY: HORSEWORLD BOSS PINOCCHIOWEN BRIDLES AT CRITICISM

Web ExclusiveTroubled charity boss Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen is back from his LOVELY SKIING HOLIDAY today, and it seems that the pissed off Pinocchiowen has wasted no time in exercising those fabled management skills of his that have dug HorseWorld into its financial hole.

Yes, now that he is back hard-working staff, who were left shovelling the horse-shit caused by his failed financial schemes whilst he jetted off for a nice posh break on the slopes, are now in fear for their jobs thanks to his RIDICULOUS REDUNDANCY PLANS.

On his return to the office this morning, the equine charity chump wasted no time in touring his (soon-to-be-ex-) stomping ground, doing a lot of… well, stomping. Owen has never been backwards in coming forwards with his anger, but insiders say Blue Monday has seen “a ‘stompathon’ to beat all previous stompathons.”

Our spies also tell us that he was straight onto his computer and phone, wheezily admonishing anyone who he felt had criticised his years of misrule.

It’s not just those who’ve publicly spoken out – like ex-trustees in the comments section of this very website: it was those who’ve facilitated others doing so… So the Western Daily Press has caught a gobbet of his bile for DARING TO PRINT A CRITICAL LETTER and then refusing to reveal to Pinocchiowen the ‘name and address supplied’.

In fact, anyone who has done anything other than wholeheartedly back him 150 per cent is now in the firing line – which doesn’t leave many people unscarred. Just most of the current trustees and a couple of members of his management team, we reckon.

Completely coincidentally (of course!) a Twitter account which has been revealing some truths about the management of HorseWorld based solely on public domain information, @HorseWispas, (which has been gathering followers quicker than you can say “£2 million lost in three years”) was SUSPENDED just this morning. Whether this was as a result of a spurious complaint from the notoriously over-sensitive Kim-Jong-Owen is anyone’s guess.

It’s certainly fair to say that your humble ‘Smiter’ is not Pinochiowen’s favourite blog, but he’s baffled by the sources of the tales of his woe we have been able to publish. He desperately wants to know where the paper all Bristol really did ask for gets its info from.

Well Mark, the thing is with a sinking ship – it’s just full of leaks…

CRISIS – WHAT CRISIS? HORSEWORLD BOSS PINOCCHIOWEN GOES ON THE PISTE WHILST HIS CHARITY’S STAFF FEAR FOR THEIR JOBS

Web ExclusiveJust days after putting 28 staff on notice of redundancy, troubled charity HorseWorld’s managing director Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen and chairman of trustees John L Newman are obviously feeling the same extreme levels of worry and fear as those whose jobs are actually on the line. How else could one explain their movements these past couple of weeks?

You’ll recall, by way of background, that serial bungler Owen managed to lose millions of pounds of the charity’s money since joining just a few years ago. He then spectacularly failed to get his flawed planning application – backed by three trustees with professional property development interests – past clued-up councillors.

So this January kicked off with them handing notice to dozens of their low-paid staff that they probably won’t have a job in a few weeks’ time. It’s to the credit of the hard-working animal lovers who actually keep HorseWorld going that despite all the stress and uncertainty caused by their idiot bosses they have simply been getting on with caring for horses and donkeys.

Meanwhile, their esteemed MD? Gone ski-ing. Yes, an expensive week-long skiing holiday for Mister-80k-Per-Annum-Plus-Shiny-28k-Audi Mark Pinnochiowen.

Rome, burning? Pass me my fiddle!

And the Chairman of Trustees? Surely he’s around to field the flak and take the concerns of staff to heart? Well, er, no actually. He’s said to be sunning it in Barbados, returning in a few weeks’ time.

The need for these hard-pressed holidaymakers to pack their cases and ship out suddenly might just explain the careless and hurried approach to their redundancy announcement two weeks ago.

Having ordered the affected 28 in a meeting that they were not to go public, or involve unions, and to keep the whole thing in-house, word naturally leaked out and found itself in your humble ‘Smiter’.

Cue a boardroom panic, a quick purchase of Employment Law For Dummies, and lo and behold, the next day a press release was issued (which even the Evening Bristol Post was highly sceptical of), claiming the charity is consulting on redundancies with ALL staff (except the MD, presumably).

So, to recap: first scare the life out of 28 people. Then extend the fear to roughly sixty. While they quake and tremble in the wake of your redundancy process fuck-ups, what do you do? Leave the country. Simples.

Can it be long before these muppets start offering expensive consultancy packages on crisis management?

LONG FACES AT HORSEWORLD AS CRAP BOSS PREPARES TO SACK STAFF

Web ExclusiveSad news reaches us from inside troubled equine charity HorseWorld… Thanks to shocking mismanagement under the Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen regime – which pinned all hopes on a misconceived development project – it seems that staff have today been told of MASSIVE JOB LOSSES on the horizon.

Of course, the cuts won’t be felt by Owen or his equally culpable senior management team, who together presided over a financial nosedive at the previously solvent and successful horse charity (latest estimates suggest losses of more than £2 million in just three years). Instead around TWENTY-FIVE MEMBERS OF STAFF will be dismissed at the end of February – including some involved in vital animal welfare work. Figures supplied to the Charity Commission indicate that HorseWorld employs 43 people, so that would be nearly 60% OF JOBS LOST. Even by Pinocchiowen’s more fanciful figure of 62 employees, that’s still a staggering 40% of employees getting the heave-ho thanks to their boss’ failed development gamble.

Whether workers and volunteers there are prepared to stand for this shameless attempt by Owen and his clique to save their own jobs at the expense of everyone else remains to be seen…