Monthly Archives: June 2015

NEPOTISM WATCH

The ludicrous PLAYING OUT organisation, coincidentally run by Mayor Dodgy Trouser’s daughter, Alice, is not the only charity to be benefiting from increased council largesse since King George ascended to his throne.

Cycling charity, SUSTRANS, run by George’s old public school friend and fellow 1970s Clifton socialite, JOHN “REALLY” GRIMSHAW, also seems to have managed to rake it in over the last three years.

In 2011and 2012, the charity scooped a healthy £215k from the council tax payer but this shot up to over £1million for 2012 and 2013 after George arrived.

In Bristol, it seems who you went to school with or who your dad is does you no harm when it comes to scooping up large council grants!

Red Trousers wants to eat his Greens

Mayor Georgie Porgie, presumably now aware as the rest of us that he has no hope of getting reelected next year, is resorting to DESPERATE MEASURES to keep his incompetent backside in the mayoral hot seat.

Rumours arrive at The BRISTOLIAN that Mayor Unelectable has now come up with a barking mad new election strategy … He wants to go into a COALITION with the electorally successful Greens to improve his reelection chances!

He’s reported to have approached the ever-expanding party of hapless wealthy lefties claiming that “we are basically the same. We want the same things”!

What same things? Unicycle lanes for trainee jugglers? Endless promotion of Luke “Small Dick” Jerram’s 6th form art projects? A cheap ex-council property?

Alas, apart from Southville councillor and former Bristol Green Party leader, “RIGHT” CHARLIE BOLTON, who’s been residing up Georgie’s backside for at least ten years now, no Green seems very keen to take up the offer of an ELECTORAL SUICIDE PACT fronted by Mayor Loser.

Identity has no class

The Bristol 24/7 VANITY PUBLISHING website for E3 media bosses, Mike “GORDON” Bennett and Dougal “FAT BASTARD” Templeton, gushed about “Girl Power” in a patronising headline on May 8 after Bristol returned four female MPs to Westminster.

What the website didn’t point out in its usual rush to sell Bristol as THE NEW PARADISE OF URBAN COOL is that all THREE of the city’s Labour MPs now live in leafy BRISTOL WEST. An area of town where property prices and rents are through the roof and the poor are being FORCED OUT on a daily basis by gentrifiers.

Newbie Bristol West MP “FASCIST GROOVE” Thangam Debonaire lives in wealthy hippy outpost, St Werburghs; Bristol East MP, Kerry “AND THE BANSHEES” McCarthy, opts for a dockside apartment in Redcliff and new South Bristol MP Karin “WHO?” Smyth lives in the Georgian splendour of leafy Cotham.

All very nice indeed. But what does this tell us about the WEALTH and STATUS of our Labour MPs? Do these MPs, all homeowners from professional backgrounds who aren’t really short of a penny or two, adequately represent the whole of this city?

Or are we supposed not to ask because they’re ALL WOMEN and this trumps any issues around wealth, status and class?

Surely if the Labour Party are serious about reconnecting with communities and their electorate they’re going to have to start handing senior party roles in Bristol to people who aren’t middle class, POLITICALLY CORRECT SNOBS and to people who have genuine connections to the communities they claim to represent?

Lying Tories

That pair of gormless BENT TORY pricks, Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber – Matthew MELIAS and Wayne HARVEY – that call themselves councillors for Avonmouth have been at it again.

Does anyone remember the dodgy municipal couple getting people to line up for a pre-election PHOTO-OP outside the former Alldays site in Shire to campaign for a new supermarket?

Well, lo and behold! Just a week after the election we learn that a planning application has gone in to convert the premisies in to TEN PRIVATE DWELLINGS! No sign of Dumb and Dumber’s promised supermarket.

Of course, as councillors for the area, both Melias and Harvey would have been perfectly aware of these plans for the site when they posed for their photo-op.

But what’s the harm in a bit of dodgy pre-election lying between Tories and their electorate?

Welsh Back handers ?

Strange goings-on down at WELSH BACK as Bristol City Council attempt, yet again, to get their ‘O’ and ‘M’ Sheds at the far south of the street PRIVATELY DEVELOPED into an upmarket dockside restaurant and leisure complex for wankers.

Joe “JACKASS” Jeffrey, a Principal Property Officer with the council, has been skulking around Welsh Back for some time now ordering HOUSEBOAT OWNERS, some of whom have been moored alongside any proposed development for over 30 years, to move immediately, at their own expense, to Bathurst Basin.

The houseboat owners, naturally, are not that keen to be EVICTED by the council from the place they call home. While many Bristolians may be similarly shocked to find this kind of pressure being exerted on what many of us consider to be part of the fabric of the modern docks.

None of this is a concern to BULLY-BOY JEFFERY, however. He’s told the houseboats to move or else! He’s even claimed the council has a “BOTTOMLESS PIT” of money to fund legal action against the boat owners if necessary.

Presumably our old friend and Mayor Bumhole’s legal gimp, council monitoring officer, Sanjay “Under” Prashar has authorised this then?

Which is all rather strange. Because there’s currently no live planning application for the site and there’s not even, as far as we can see, a preferred developer appointed since plans for the site promoted by Cordwell Developments collapsed in 2009.

Perhaps the reasons for that collapse might give us some idea what’s going on then?

-Cordwell’s 2009 planning application was rejected for the following reasons: the loss of the London Plane Tree [at the junction of Welshback and Redcliff Way]; the massing and height of the replacement M Shed building; the privacy and access to HOUSEBOATS and the lack of adequate refuse storage.

How convenient would it be if one of those pesky reasons – the HOUSEBOATS – were simply removed from the scene before any planning application went in?

The smell of foul play in Welsh Back air is hardly dispelled by an email from a councillor to one of the houseboat owners, which says, “the most important thing to say is that the attempt to move you has been agreed by THE MAYOR“!

Surely the mayor wouldn’t be doing a favour for a mystery private developer friend? Would he?

Media creams itself as mayor reverse ferrets

Was it just last year that Mayor Blind Eye BANNED members of the public from asking him questions at meetings that didn’t relate to items on the agenda? Why indeed it was!

But that didn’t stop the Bristol 24/7 vanity publishing website wetting itself with joy at the announcement by Mayor Ferret that he would now be PERMITTING the public to ask him questions at meetings that didn’t relate to items on his agenda!

This “inspires more people to be more active in our democracy” gushed George’s web mouthpiece before explaining with a straight face that this was “the latest step down the path of empowered democracy”!

All neatly sidestepping the fact that George had personally BANNED these questions last year and has only reinstated them after being TOLD TO in a report by the Centre for Democratic Scrutiny about George’s council’s lack of democracy.

Cold Comfort Farm

A massive SCANDAL is brewing over Bristol City Council’s commissioning process for their latest adult social care contract.

As usual, local organisations and charities have been FORCED OUT and a national company, based in the north – ‘Cold’ Comfort Call – have been awarded the lucrative contract by council boss LEON GODDARD. A right little wanker masquerading under the overblown title of “Strategic Commissioning Manager”.

Although a better title for Wanker Goddard might be “typical Bristol City Council bent boss” as a WHISTLEBLOWER has now stepped forward to blow the lid on Goddard’s DODGY procurement process and the “high levels of corruption involved”.

According to the whistleblower, an employee of ‘Cold’ Comfort Call, the company had PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of the commissioning process and a director of the firm even confidently asserted that they would WIN the tender before the process even started!

The same director also told his staff that sensitive little soul, Wanker Goddard, wanted to “make a point” and not commission any LOCAL PROVIDERS in Bristol as he didn’t like them as they gave him “a hard time”.

An impressive and mature way to run a public sector procurement process for a vital service don’t you think?

Even worse, despite Wanker Goddard’s claim that Cold Comfort will deliver “the best possible service”, their record suggests something different.

In Sheffield and Nottingham, Cold Comfort were placed on safeguarding and barring lists after miserably FAILING Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections. While the care they’re providing in those cities is described as “BARBARIC” by Cold Comfort’s whistleblower.

In Sheffield alone, the CQC had concerns relating to the management of medicines, requirements relating to workers, safeguarding people who use services from abuse, the care and welfare of people who used services, staffing and complaints.

Which makes you wonder how Cold Comfort were even allowed to be part of Goddard’s procurement process in the first place when one of his opening questions to bidders was “Have you ever failed a CQC inspection?”

Then there’s the question as to why Wanker Goddard didn’t obtain REFERENCES from Sheffield and Nottingham before awarding a multi-million pound contract on our behalf to Cold Comfort.

Questions, no doubt, Bristol City Council will simply NEVER BOTHER to answer as they move into cover-up mode.

George’s dickhead shit-for-brains legal boss Sanjay “Under” Pressure has already told the whistleblower, “We will be auditing the process before contracts are entered into in order to satisfy ourselves that our usual procurement process has been fully adhered too.”

Well, if that “auditing process” is anything like the one in their Markets Service that’ll be at least three years of waiting and cover-ups before they get going then.

The Ego has landed

The only thing in Bristol West that has expanded faster than the Green vote since the last election is their candidate, DARREN “BUGGER” HALL’s, ego.

The former civil service middle manager and LIB DEM VOTER from Southville thought running some ridiculous ECO LIFESTYLE election campaign for hipsters would sweep him to power in Bristol West.

Not quite! Sitting on his arse in Stokes Croft sipping overpriced latte’s while INANELY POSTURING for the national press didn’t really cut it for most people and he came in second as we said he would.

However, this result did not properly reflect Bugger Hall’s extraordinarily HIGH OPINION OF HIMSELF. So, when approached by the press on election night after the result, the tired and emotional PRIMA DONNA treated them to a hissy fit before running home to Southville to cry!

Bit of a change from those halycon days on Stokes Croft last month when he was charming the press for votes isn’t it?

Secrecy Saves the Day

Consternation at a recent Neighbourhood Partnership meeting in Eastville when residents asked the local Labour councillor, Mhairi “DUH?” Threlfall how much Bristol City Council were being paid for the use of Eastville Park by dance festival Love Saves the Day.

“I don’t know,” came the reply, “council officers won’t tell me.”

With tickets retailing at £30 – £40 a day for the two day private FOR-PROFIT event for up to 15,000 people, it’s not hard to see a TIDY SUM was being turned over here. Especially when you consider the organsiers also had a MONOPOLY on the sales of food and drink to those 15,000 people for two days.

So it’s not unreasonable that Eastville residents asked what’s in it for them, their area and their much-loved park.

Particularly as the park was effectively out of action for TWO WEEKS (one week either side of the festival) and residents had to tolerate high noise levels and anti-social behaviour over the weekend.

So why, you have to wonder, haven’t council officers struck a deal with organisers to get a good sum of money – say £50k – out of the organisers just to fund park improvements for the benefit of locals?

Or maybe they have? Who knows? Not our councillors that’s for sure. Even though their job is to oversee the commercial arrangements that their officers negotiate. Especially in the parks department with its sorry history of CORRUPTION and BACKHANDERS.

Remember the eight pricey and useless Italian food kiosks purchased in virtual secrecy by parks boss ALBERTO PALMEIRO in 2010 from associates in the obscure Italian firm Asteco Industria Srl? Then remember how when it all went tits up Palmeiro upped sticks and became the authorised UK agent for PRESTIGE KIOSKS LIMITED, “the exclusive distributor in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland for Asteco Industria Srl”?

Our councillors have learned nothing from this episode. They’re still happy enough to be FOBBED OFF by dodgy council managers making up bizarre commercial confidentiality claims as they go along to cover arse and, quite possibly, on previous form, corrupt practices.

Parks bosses need to tell us exactly what money they’ve taken from Love Saves the Day and what they’ve used it for. Or they need to quit in favour of honest brokers.