Monthly Archives: June 2017

DIRTY LAUNDRY

Efforts by a maverick cell of bureaucratic loonies in Bristol City Council’s estates department to restrict the communal laundry’s 24 hour opening times at Shire’s Antona Court for no reason look set to end in an expensive disaster for the council.

Antona Court resident, Steve “The Avon Mouth” Norman, The Bristolian‘s gobshite-in-chief and scourge of the council’s housing department took umbrage at access to the laundry he pays to use being arbitrarily restricted without notice or consultation.

So he filed papers with the County Court in Bristol demanding that the council remove their thousands of pounds-worth of unnecessary laundry alterations and compensate him for failing to comply with the Housing Acts governing the council’s management of Antona Court.

Alas, the court’s deadline has now passed and the council has failed to provide a defence to the judge, which means Steve can now apply for a judgement and compensation unchallenged.

Costs to us – thanks to the council’s negligence in how they altered a service they provide and in failing to respond to a judge in time – will run into the thousands we’re told.

So much for austerity.

ST MARVIN’S-UP-THE-CREEK PARISH NEWS #7

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I am aware many of you are almost as upset and distressed as I am that our place of worship has been thoroughly demeaned, degraded and abused by our abysmal and biased local press who have claimed an alleged “modern slavery” business operated out of St Marvin’s earlier this year.

The first thing that needs to be thoroughly understood by all parishioners is that none of this has anything whatsoever to do with me. It is entirely the fault of others, possibly Mr Baber and Mr Orrett from the Property Sub Committee. They agreed to an interim contract-out arrangement for St Marvin’s with Mr Launcelot from Rachman Estates and Development on the High Street during my annual sabbatical tour in January to the United States to visit my mentor, the Texan psychotic preacher and notorious anti-communist homophobe, the Pastor Righteous Loon.

It was unfortunate, then, if Mr Rachman may have infringed aspects of our quality assurance framework by licencing 40 Romanian specialist contractors to reside in the church for that month to facilitate an at pace an asbestos reassignment procedure from the church roof to Mr Rachman’s chosen site of mitigation. On a positive note, this maintenance intervention was scored ‘acceptable’ on our construction competency framework and was delivered at costs rated ‘effective’ and we are all far safer for it. I even understand those eight unfortunate Romanians may be discharged from St Marvin’s Infirmary as soon as next week and, in further positive news, the police indicate they may not take any action. So that’s all right then.

Rest assured, I am more than content to explain in further detail any non-positives that may emerge from our agile contracting process with Rachman Estates.

However, I’m assured by our Parish Secretary, Ms Klonowski, that the matter, for now, remains confidential as any detailed narrative I provide at this stage might impact future outcomes in a judicial setting. Ms Klonowski will conduct a full rapid change review on behalf of the church, which will pathway to me in due course.

Those of you – briefed by Ms Townsend from the Dave Spart Academy – who claim I was warned about Rachman Estates months ago are misinformed. It was entirely correct that Mr Gobshite was manhandled out of December’s Parish Committee meeting when he tried to raise matters pertaining to Property Sub Committee contracts that did not form part of the formal agenda. If we allow parishioners to raise issues that do not form part of the structured committee agenda we are setting ourselves on an unrighteous path toward anarchy. And we don’t want that do we?

However, please note that the circumstances surrounding the manhandling of Mr Gobshite out of the committee and his subsequent tasering by our community beat officer, PC Mounstevens, are the subject of a 360-degree church review implemented by Ms Klonowski and the Property Sub Committee. So let’s now wait for these important, high quality reviews to outcome before we judge. As my mentor, the Texan psychotic preacher and notorious anti-communist homophobe, the Pastor Righteous Loon says “He that rushes to judgment on those that are able to pay a generous stipend may be damned with poor remuneration and a limited expense account”

I also note that some of you, encouraged Ms Townsend from the Dave Spart Academy and her weird feminist friends have now started making a silly fuss about the recent Dioceses Library development restructure plan. Please note, the beautiful and valuable historic diocese library building adjacent to St Marvin’s is not being “turned into luxury flats” as claimed. At just £400,000 for a 3-bed apartment they are average priced family homes in an up-and-coming parish. We should celebrate affordable family housing being made available so close to our church and within the catchment area of our high performing parish school, St Snoot’s Academy.

Surely the lesson of this month’s newsletter is that we need to learn to celebrate more, complain a little less and avoid tricky questions at St Marvin’s? God bless you all, even those godforsaken atheist moaners from the Dave Spart Academy and their weirdo feminist friends.

The Vicar.

HOLIDAY SNAP

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News that his friend, newly-minted Deputy Mayor and public service cutter-in-chief, Asher “Slasher” Craig, had run up a £5k council tax debt that had to be paid off by the Bristol Labour Group of councillors late last year, had the Reverend scrambling for some fascinating excuses.

“I don’t think anyone should rush to judgement. We cannot and should not exclude people from local politics on the basis of their income or other disadvantages.” he mused to the press. Possibly suggesting that Slasher should be considered “disadvantaged” because of her low income.

Is she? Slasher owed around £5k in tax to us, which is about three years council tax at normal rates. So what had the poverty-stricken councillor been up to in that time? Er, taking plenty of exotic holidays by the look of it.

A brief perusal of Slasher’s Facebook page reveals that while she was running up her significant debt to us over the three years 2013 – 16, the Reverend’s favourite hard-up councillor managed to fit in a considerable number of exciting foreign trips.

Florida is, apparently, one popular destination with the disadvantaged as Slasher managed trips to Orlando in 2014 and 2015 and to Miami in 2013 and 2014. For a change of scenery in 2014, the Slasher also managed to squeeze in a visit to the Spanish royal resort of Santander for a richly deserved getaway from disadvantage.

2015 then saw Slasher travelling to that notorious haven for the disadvantaged , the Canaries . While come 2016 – what with an election to win on the theme of “inequality” and Labour colleagues to blag for an emergency cash bailout – Slasher confined herself to just a brief weekend in Paris!

Disadvantaged readers might like to also note that Slasher recommends on Facebook the beauty parlour where she gets her ‘deep tissue holistic massage’ from. She especially recommends this for people who are feeling ‘stressed‘. Perhaps because your local library, customer service point or other vital public service has been shut without notice?

But we best not “rush to judgement”, eh?

DAY GROUP ROBBERY

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Planning permission? That’s for the little people.

Efforts by the Day Group to open a poisonous bottom ash manufacturing plant at the Port of Bristol, Avonmouth WITHOUT planning permission takes a turn for the worse for residents.

The council has finally responded to a complaint filed in November by a local ‘moaning bastard’ in Avonmouth, which resulted in a Planning Contravention Notice (PCN) against Day Group and a wholesale LACK of any further action.

Having considered the straightforward matter now for EIGHT MONTHS and splashed out on one of the city’s slowest barristers – Leslie Blohm from St John’s Chambers in Queens Square – for advice, the council has finally concluded, “there would be very considerable difficulties and expense in seeking the demolition of the structures which the Council does not feel able to undertake.”

In other words the huge plant can REMAIN despite it having no planning permission. While the council further admits a so-called ‘Certificate of Lawful Use’ handed by planning officers to Day Group in 2014 to “operate and maintain a facility for the processing of inert waste and specifically IBA (Incineration Bottom Ash) imported into Avonmouth Docks and for onward transit to a variety of end users” was “WRONGLY ISSUED“.

This means the residents are now entirely reliant on the Environment Agency continuing to REFUSE the Day Group an Environmental Permit to process bottom ash at the site and on the council refusing any change of use planning applications.

To this end, the council have given a WEAK undertaking to residents “that any further proposals for uses on the site are very carefully scrutinised in accordance with all relevant planning policies”. And we all know what “careful scrutiny” by our planning department means don’t we?

Residents in Avonmouth are up in arms and promise a response …<

PARKS MANAGEMENT: A LOAD OF RUBBISH

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This is what crap management looks like

Our new INEXPERIENCED and completely UNQUALIFIED parks boss, Gemma “Ctrl-v” Dando is off to a flying start. At the beginning of the year this idiot boss – who cut her teeth farting about with Neighbourhood Partnerships nowhere near any parks – unilaterally announced from the comfort of her ‘flexible agile workspace’ in the Counts Louse that all overtime in the Parks Department must CEASE immediately.

This met with a universal outcry from our EXPERIENCED parks maintenance boys, who do know a thing or two about running our parks. Not only was this a major hit in the wallet for some of the council’s lowest paid staff (on about a third of Dando’s wedge), it would also mean no cleaning and maintenance of parks could take place over the WEEKENDS. This, they said, would result in crap all over the parks and a huge amount of extra work at the start of the week.

Indeed, Dando’s decision was so fucking clueless and stupid even the parks’ long term middle management yes-man , Richard “Bedwetter” Fletcher was moved to protest to Dando that her plan would not work. Naturally, dimwitted career bureaucrat and office monkey Dando IGNORED all of this experienced advice and forced through her daft plan.

Cue the first hot weekend of the year on 8 April and there’s absolute pandemonium. Parks across the city are COVERED IN CRAP and bins are OVERFLOWING and STINKING. Inevitably a huge social media storm ensues, picked up by the BBC and the Nazi Post, as hundreds of park users post photos of the mess all over the internet along with their howls of protest to the council. The whole episode was a blockbusting PERSONAL PR DISASTER for the Reverend, who has put a lot of political capital behind a gormless anti-litter campaign that his mum told him to do.

The Reverend’s PR chief and puppeteer Kevin “Don’t mention the private school education” Slocombe originally decided the solution to this self-inflicted disaster was to launch a poor quality SPIN OPERATION out of the Reverend’s office. Supported by Labour Party councillors and a few of its members whining away on Facebook, they attempted to pin the blame on the PUBLIC for the state of the parks rather than own-up to their refusal to listen to experienced voices and leave key decision-making to a cretin managing our parks by spreadsheet.

Naturally the Reverend’s HALF-ARSED EFFORT to blame the public for his own manager’s stupidity gained little traction with the pissed-off public and by Tuesday 11 April a visibly stressed Dando was hauling the parks maintenance crew back into her agile workspace. Five minutes later, all weekend overtime was restored for parks staff and there’s been no problem since! RESULT.

Perhaps the next decision should be to remove the tin-eared twat and walking PR disaster running our parks from a job she doesn’t know how to do (immediately saving us £80k – £90k a year)?

WORLD OF THE USELESS UPDATE

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Keith Barrow: company expert Beardmore didn’t notice he was shagging the auditor!

Congratulations to Nikki “Chocolate Fireguard” Beardmore. She’s ascended Bristol City Council’s greasy pole at remarkable speed to joins the council’s official REALM OF THE STUPID and claim a prized six-figure salary as the fancy-sounding ‘Interim Strategic Director of Resources’.

Ms Fireguard pitched up in Bristol last April as ‘Interim Commercial Director’ for the council and Bristol Holding Ltd – part of Mayor No More Ferguson and Nicola “Lady Gaga” Yates’s bizarre network of UNACCOUNTABLE and FAILING private companies set up with our cash.

Ms Fireguard’s first move was to hand £3million more of our money to the council’s energy reselling business shambles, Bristol Energy, who used it to get themselves 10,000 customers and post an immediate £3million LOSS … Charged to us!

With this success under her belt, Ms Fireguard was immediately promoted to ‘Interim Director – HR, Change, ICT, Communications & Culture’. Here, the great strategist – having overseen a RANDOM and DISORGANISED voluntary redundancy process last year (surely she “led a programme of change using a rapid redesign methodology to drive and deliver major and complex change at pace”? Ed.) – set the council on course to spend £10million this year employing 15 per cent of its workforce on expensive temporary contracts.

Now, just four months into this role, Ms Fireguard has hit the jackpot and has been PROMOTED by the Reverend’s under-powered new Chief Exec, Anna “Big Wedge” Klonowski, to the Counts Louse’s top table and been issued with a long spoon.

Nobody at Bristol City Council bothered to research Ms Fireguard’s CV then? Had they done so they might have noticed that she has a record of, er, APPALLING FAILURE allied to ZERO entrepreneurial skills and a wholesale INABILTY to oversee and scrutinise the work of senior colleagues!

Ms Fireguard’s previous employer was Shropshire Council where she rose to the giddy heights of Director of Resources & Support in 2013. She then got a taste of the really big time in December 2014 when she was also appointed Chief Operations Officer of ip&e, a wholly owned council company notorious locally for continually LOSING MONEY, disliking disclosing information to councillors and the public and trying to UNLAWFULLY DODGE FoI requests!

Somehow things managed to take a TURN FOR THE WORSE on Ms Fireguard’s watch, however, when Shropshire’s council leader Keith Barrow hurriedly resigned as chairman of the board of ip&e in September 2015 after a conflict of interest SCANDAL. Apparently the dubious Tory twit was in a “personal relationship” with one of the auditors he had appointed to ip&e in 2012!

Is this not something a competent ‘leader’ might have noticed while a senior boss at an organisation for all those years? Apparently not. Instead Ms Fireguard sloped off in DISGRACE from Shropshire in December 2015 to enter the world of local government consultancy. Three months later she popped up in Bristol as an expert in local authority trading companies!

Last spring, with the ink still drying on Ms Fireguard’s lucrative consultancy contract in Bristol, ip&e was wound-up in Shropshire as an EMBARRASSING FAILURE. Although we understand there’s an ongoing fraud case at Shrewsbury Crown Court relating to the company and FALSIFIED INVOICES. Another unfortunate incident their expert Chief Operations Officer managed to miss!

To add to the sense of absolute farce surrounding this latest appointment to a senior post in our city, oddly – for someone employed to sort out a crisis hit FINANCE DEPARTMENT – Ms Fireguard is qualified in, er, MARKETING!

Don’t believe the Reverend’s bullshit, hype and spin. The pieces are already falling into place for yet another Bristol City Council financial scandal within the next few years

IN-CREDIBLE?

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VICAR ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN?

As the latest corpse of a young clubber is fished out of the docks and a dead rough sleeper is discovered in a Broadmead shop doorway, the Reverend’s Corporate Health and Safety Committee has swung into action and had an EMERGENCY MEETING.

And what was the number one item on the agenda? Making our docks and waterways SAFE for Bristolians? Helping rough sleepers stay ALIVE during the April frosts? PROTECTING Avonmouth residents from unlawful levels of pollution from the Port of Bristol? ENSURING young people, slaves and exploited workers are living in legal, safe and sanitary conditions in empty council properties run by cowboy contactors?

Er, no, none of these issues were discussed. Probably because they only affect the little people and might make our failing mayor look even more crap. Instead this absurd committee of OVERPAID TWERPS in suits has spent hours and hundreds of pounds of tax payers cash leafing through the city’s favourite newspaper, The BRISTOLIAN, to discuss the cartoons in it!

And it turns out that our hugely popular ‘Best cut of all’ cover is now officially a “CREDIBLE DEATH THREAT”! Really? A death threat so “credible” that no attempt has been made on the life of the ridiculous vicar in the last three months by anyone anywhere. Evidence – for most normal people – of the exact opposite of “a credible death threat” and more of “an incredible death threat”.

However, not ones to let reality get in the way of their war on cartoons published by the plebs, this nauseating little bunch of useless and under qualified COUNCIL PLONKERS have reported The BRISTOLIAN to the police on behalf of the mayor! Presumably the Reverend’s not noticed any REAL CRIME in our city then? Or, rather than get real issues investigated to protect us, the struggling Mayor and his outsize ego prefers that the local constabulary – who have also suffered swingeing cuts – urgently investigate a NON-CRIME against him committed by cartoon?

By an extraordinary coincidence, the object of this urgent high-level investigation (us!) has consistently exposed CRIMINALITY and WRONGDOING at the Reverend’s council and has exposed the Reverend as weak and futile with a PATHETIC record of protecting Bristol and its people from Tory austerity. The latest education cuts mean that each pupil will receive £600 less funding next year. A cut of nearly one third. So what’s Marv doing about that? Less than fuck all, while worrying about a cartoon everyone else had forgotten about.

No doubt local coppers are also thrilled, having just pulled another body out of the docks, to get stuck into an investigation of ZERO PUBLIC INTEREST for a piss weak paranoid mayor who can’t handle criticism?

And what’s our mentally erratic city ‘leader’ hoping to achieve with this COSTLY FARCE cooked up entirely for his own benefit? Have any of the mayor’s highly paid ‘expert’ strategists explained to the Reverend you can’t stop local people photocopying a sheet of paper with cartoons and stories in it about his council’s dodgy activities and handing it out around town?

Nobody really wants to hurt this poor little DELUDED FOOL. After all, we do know where he lives. Perhaps we should pop round for a group cuddle and inject him with a bit of backbone before there’s nothing left in Bristol but understocked food banks, ex old people’s homes full of slave labour and dead kids face down in the docks?

It’s not funny really is it?