The state of the mayor is laughable. Another year, another self-aggrandising “State of the City” speech by a mayor from the city’s citadel of entrenched public school privilege, Bristol University’s Wills Hall.

Again, this year, the thick-as-a-brick Reverend attempted to bang on about his BACKGROUND and invite us to marvel at his achievement in getting to be mayor. Presumably this being a better bet than parading his record of HAPLESS non-achievement as mayor?

The overwhelming sense of second rate FAILURE was ignited early in the evening when the Reverend began his schtick by showing his audience a self-produced “comedy” video made with his mate. This was followed by another of his mates reading out an EMBARRASSING poem. The Reverend then thanked a roster of friends and cronies for their help and support in the ongoing decline and decay of our austerity hit city.

In terms of announcements in the speech, what went unsaid was – perhaps – most significant. The arena, promised by 2019 in his speech last year WASN’T MENTIONED. So it’s safe to say there’ll be no arena in 2019 or any other time soon since the Reverend called a halt to his current plans two weeks after his speech. Instead the Reverend’s dreamed up a couple of totally unfunded new major projects – or “AMBITION PLANS” as he called them – to distract us.

One “ambition plan” is an UNDERGROUND rail system he’s going “to speak to the government” about. The other proposal is to DIG UP the Cumberland Basin road and bridge system and build 1,000 houses there along with another bridge (and, maybe another road) for Christ knows what cost or purpose. The Reverend and his team of advisors have obviously worked extra hard on this imaginary plan as they even thought up a crap name for it – WESTERN HARBOUR.

Other than that, we got some WAFFLE from the Reverend about how well everything’s going for him and his mates and a cheery explanation that his Congestion Task Force – which he also announced last year – has had a couple of meetings and is thinking about things.

He also announced – mainly to save himself from being deselected for the next mayoral election by his own party – that he would NOT be implementing his gormless plan to cut Council Tax Relief to the city’s poorest. Our libraries, he’s threatened with closure, would also survive, he suggested, based on some UNEXPLAINED plan devised by his loopy privatiser cabinet friend, Asher “The Slasher” Craig.

And with that, the Reverend was gone. Hopefully to find the plot he mislaid some time last year?