The Fly: savouring Marvin’s shite
Enormous deposits of BULLSHIT were detected and tasted by The BRISTOLIAN’s six-legged friend flying overhead at Marvin’s ‘anti-austerity’ march and rally on Saturday September 9.
According to our blue-arsed correspondent, the vicar of Bristol and his collaborators in UNITE, UNISON, The Peoples’ Disassembly, ACORNYJOKE and the Labour Party made up a DISMAL, rain-bedraggled charade of no more than 2,000 on College Green.
It even included a big bouncy castle for speakers to jump up and down on while they whined infantile DRIVEL about ‘diversity’, ‘inclusiveness’, “hey, my dad was a Welsh miner and I was born in Southmead”, or “why I love Bristol” and other IRRELEVANT TOSH. Some of it even recounted in verse by ‘the city’s poet laureate’!
Every subject under the sun (or rain) was covered in fact. Except the one the march and rally was actually supposed to be about, namely AUSTERITY and THE CUTS. This ‘difficult’ subject was raised NOT ONCE by any of the OVERWHELMINGLY MIDDLE-CLASS speakers. One of whom was a LAWYER who offered WAGE-FREE LABOUR in her office to “any of you principled, under-employed folk out there who’d like some work experience”.
The sole rebellion against this pretentious downpour of excrement was offered by a small group of DISSIDENTS. During The Reverend’s speech, despite all attempts by UNITE stewards to thwart them, they repeatedly called St. Marvin out on: the fakery of his much-publicised ‘anti-austerity green paper’ submission to Theresa May (which doesn’t mention austerity once); his craven compliance with the Tory austerity programme when he could legally set a NO-CUTS BUDGET; the libraries and public toilets he’s closing; the social care programmes he’s shutting down; the park/street maintenance departments he’s stripping to the bone and the ILLEGAL ‘gate keeping’ of homeless categories currently being enforced at BCC’s Housing Department.
And all to pay for the continuing Metro/contractor disaster, his GOLDEN HANDSHAKES to the Dirty Thirty bosses; ever more ‘public-private partnerships’ with thieves and parasites and the hiring of a new generation of incompetent, six-figure salary ‘consultant’ twats to make even more of a mess at City Hall.
The REBELS were sorely put upon. First by ‘stewards’ trying to rip down a banner opposing Marvin’s cuts and, later, an enraged Momentum youth in a Jeremy Corbyn sweatshirt who tried to start a fight, before wisely thinking better of it.
In between her feast on the LASHINGS of BS spewed out through the stage microphone, The Fly observed a laughable attempt by one of Marv’s acolytes to silence the uproar, claiming the rebels were ‘failing to be inclusive to the hard-of-hearing group’! All of whom were, of course, straining to hear The Reverend’s every word.
Two of the disgruntled were also overheard wishing that they’d brought along a stanley knife or drill (as in ‘Driller Killer’, 1979??) to DEFLATE the rain shelter/bouncy castle over Marv’s head*. “Come better prepared next time”, buzzed The Fly as she savoured more of Marvellous’s shite.
*Of course The BRISTOLIAN warns that such a violent act could feasibly constitute a new ‘credible death threat’ to the embattled Mayor, instigating an ‘immediate investigation’ by the Stasi (ie. the UK Special Branch) – ed..
Good to see you covering this, Bristolian.
I turned up but I had very grave misgivings, I nearly turned back once, sick to the stomach with anxiety about being used to support a type of leftism I loathe. It was, though, a good march but I went home when we hit my bus stop in Broadmead – I was soaked through. The marchers were anti-austerity (and there was more than 2,000), but the organisers were so caught up in their nightmare orwellian contradictions (‘cuts bad, labour party cuts not bad’) they weren’t even conscious of it. I presume they comfort themselves with the thought that if they repeat propaganda often enough, it becomes truth.
I had more than one conversation with people who are convinced if Marvin doesn’t do what he is consulting on the tories will send the commissioners. I don’t think this will happen, I think it is possible for him to make a legal anti-cuts budget, at least for a year or two, and that breather might make all the difference.
I was pleased to see quite a few banners calling for the mayor not to cut our services and I spotted quite a large banner between two trees that caused quite a stir! It seems the people weren’t entirely fooled.
There was a lot of lying going on that day and Orwell would turn in his grave if he saw the state of such a large proportion of the left acting like this. Though it wasn’t a total loss, the march at least was anti-cuts and I had a lot of encouraging conversations with people prepared to fight the cuts, including a new citizen-led service cuts protest group.
I don’t necessarily blame the mayor, the tories have cut his money. I think it is the large body of neo-liberal, blairites that surround him that have led him down this route, though I recognise you might disagree with this, but that’s my opinion.
The unions and people’s asembly were awful, the ordinary folks were alright.
That’s a very considered, reasonable comment Eric.
I think Marvin is probably a nice guy. But he’s way out of his depth trying to take charge of this city, never mind the Labour Scylla and Charybdis (Progress and Momentum). Homely anecdotes about his mum or grandparents will only get him so far. I also suspect his instincts are actually Blairite, thats another matter though.
The only good thing to come out of the protest is that it will hopefully end Marvin’s political career. He will be remembered as the politician that protested and marched against his own cuts, that he chose to make despite not having to make them for a year or two.
As far as I’ve read, the marvellous Rees hasn’t as yet responded to tory ministers saying they didn’t recieve any invites to his Westminster mission pleading for more funding.
So we had the Rees instigated rally and march last Saturday, a march against the failed neo-liberal economic austerity cuts that Rees is implimenting, enabled and policed by the Peoples Assembly and Unite.
This march was part of a message that Rees wanted to take to Westminster but, if true, Rees didn’t invite and make appointments for the message of the march to be heard by ministers.
This seems to be going beyond the cynical manipulation of genuine grassroots anger at austerity cut-backs into farcical inepitude and amateurism.
That’s because Mc Donnell has organised this another ‘Day of Rage’ nationwide sending out his Momentum to look spontaneus and city-specific.
It’s all BS really..but the daft c…ts think they’re on the verge of power
Yet more evidence of our over-promoted middle manager wannabe Chicago Mayor who’s really a puppet for Kevin ‘£65k’ Slocombe.
Time to think about a referendum to abolish the expensive elected mayor role in Bristol.
In the meantime, other cities and regions move ahead and Bristol is a laughing stock.
Did Rev Marvin or his minions even invite the Minister’s to ‘his’ Westminster flipchart event? So embarrasing and amateur.
The problem with letting Slocombe run the show is that he’s a middle ranking trade union official from the CWU specialising in PR who has no experience of local government or its services. This is why we only get stupid PR efforts, pointless consultations and badly implemented cuts aimed at core services emerging from Marvin’s office.
If they’re on the verge of power, why not instruct Labour councils to set needs budgets, directly challenge the government and bring them down? This seems likely to be far more effective than getting people to march around with placards indefinitely.
Ps..correction;Momentum goons
Is it true that Rev Marvin & dim Slocombe are now in New York for 2 weeks on some global foundation jolly? Really gutting for all those being hit with the cuts being unleashed. The new campaign to get rid of Bristol’s elected mayor role may just find a lot of backers too. You can see that many more sensible Labour people are not exactly happy with the Rev especially his clumsy sacking/demotion of experienced cabinet people replacing them with weak newbie fans of Marv.
Two days, not two weeks: https://www.concordia.net/annualsummit/2017annualsummit/global-mayors-summit/
All the usual bollocks about public-private partnerships. This time around how private companies can trouser public cash from immigration.
Marv now admits to 5 days on his blog, presumably with Slocombe in tow as the brains of the outfit. FOI on purpose and costs?
As much as I’d like to agree with you; it’s enshrined in legislation that full council cannot agree a deficit budget, and the LA’s have to have X% of reserves.
“The Fly observed a laughable attempt by one of Marv’s acolytes to silence the uproar, claiming the rebels were ‘failing to be inclusive to the hard-of-hearing group’!”
Seems all the disabled were placed down at the front near Marvin, in order to prevent hecklers getting too close. An interesting Labour Party variation on the ‘human shields’ tactic as used by ISIS etc.
A dicky bird told me a librarian has been threatened with disciplinary action for being photographed at a demonstration called by his boss.
You can’t make it up.
This, if true, is a total waste of public money and resources. It is enshrined in law that you cannot discipline a member of staff for trade union activity and the right to protest is also enshrined in law. Which city council boss thinks they’re above the law now? They’re the one who should be dismissed for playing the thick, egotistical time and money wasting cunt.
if you hear anymore about this, please contact the Bristolian. if the unions cannot represent the librarian we have people who can.