With just a week to go until our annual Harbour Festival, it’s time for Bristol City Council and its prize turd in human form, the Hitler of the harbour, Cap’n Tony “Ahab” Nichol, to treat some Bristol residents LIKE SHIT in order to facilitate some vacuous piece of old crap for the WEALTHY and PRIVILEGED.
This year’s victims are the 30-odd boat-owning residents of HANNOVER QUAY who have been instructed by Harbour Master Ahab, still apparently struggling with his considerable number of mental health issues, to shift their homes out of the way to the end of the harbour at Poole’s Wharf for TEN DAYS during a festival that’s supposed to celebrate, er, boats and our harbour.
We understand these residents are being uprooted so that Ahab and his tragic council management mates and hangers-on can move a SUPER YACHT on to Hannover Quay for the weekend so they can spend time aboard the vessel getting pissed and tugging each other off in style.
Perhaps they’ll be celebrating Ahab’s oversight of the dodgy repair of the Princes Street Swing Bridge? This only took him about THREE YEARS, cost MILLIONS and, we’re reliably assured, “will last about FIVE MINUTES“! Or perhaps they’ll raise a glass to Ahab’s last round of staff cuts, which created 1.25 bosses to every member of working staff accompanied by an unprecedented rise in the DEATH TOLL in his docks?
The boat owners are, of course, livid. Not least because there’s NO ELECTRICITY at Poole’s Wharf, which means the council are treating their long-term paying customers to ten days of living in the dark and eating cold food in the arse end of the harbour while they all enjoy themselves. What’s not to like?
The boat owners are also less than impressed that the consultation they were promised months ago by Bristol City Council prior to any move NEVER MATERIALISED. Instead Ahab – who only has a job because an investigation into his systematic workplace bullying practices in 2014 was called off because it took so long the investigator had retired – simply wandered down to Hannover Quay one day and INSTRUCTED the boat owners to leave or else.
Subsequent complaints to Ahab have all fallen on DEAF EARS, not least because he’s actually very, very ill and isn’t mentally capable of giving a fuck about people. But that’s only when boat owners have managed to get hold him at all. “He’s been spending a lot of time lately in the Harbour Office toilet with his prized copy of ‘Superyacht’ magazine,” we’re told.
“He’s not known around the Harbour Office as “crispy trousers” for nothing”!
I’m sick of sloppy journalism. If any, so called, journalist bothered to simply click on the harbour website and read the conditions for mooring will easily see that the terms clearly state that being moved is to be expected. Most boats in the floating harbour are moved every year for the festival. There are no distinctions, some boats belonging to wealthy people are moved as well. Outragous lazy unresearched opinionated journalism! Plus I find it most distasteful the way mental health is disparaged. i speak as a boat dweller and former sufferer of mental ill health.
I’m sick of idiots that don’t know what they are talking about. You. The terms of moorings for this pontoon are “boats may be moved up to three times per year for operational purposes”. NOT for commercial gains.
More importantly, the owners were assured any movements will be discussed with them and there would be a full consultation. This did not happen. They just received a letter telling them to move.
So pipe down with stuff you know nothing about.
“the terms clearly state that being moved is to be expected”
That’s not really the point the article is making though, is it?
Try talking to the berthing officer. The Scarlet Pimpernel has nothing on him. He failed to turn up for two pre-arranged meetings despite being aware I was travelling from South Devon to meet him. Tosser.