A well-placed source tells The BRISTOLIAN that the Reverend Rees and his two posh boy advisors at the council KEVIN “Don’t Mention the Private Education” SLOCOMBE and BEN “Oswald” MOSELEY have “totally lost it” and are “selling Bristol off to corporates in exchange for crappy short term fixes that are doomed to fail the city”.
“It’s like the final days of the court of Tsar Nicholas II having a NEW LABOUR STRATEGY MEETING up there,” we’re told of Marvin and his court cronies upstairs in the Counts Louse.
“Despite all three having a history in the Labour movement, none of them has any interest in listening to anyone in the movement – especially their own STAFF, UNIONS or anyone in their local PARTY. Instead, a rolling roster of expensive corporate goons, proposing one daft “strategy” after another for a large fee get full house room and their arses thoroughly licked by the trio.”
The promotion of Oswald Moseley over the summer to run Marvin’s executive office has especially raised a few eyebrows at the Counts Louse and beyond. The post is supposed to be a NON-POLITICAL senior local government officer role. Although Oswald has a long history with the local LABOUR PARTY. Including a stint working for Bristol East MP, Kerry “And the Banshees” McCarthy, and, in 2012, running Marvin’s losing mayoral campaign – widely regarded as an abysmal shambles!
Oswald is hardly a shining beacon for objective, non-political senior council officers is he? And, questions are beginning to be asked about a recruitment process that identified the Rev Rees’s FRIEND and former CAMPAIGN MANAGER, Oswald, as the best person for the job. Is this another dubious public appointment made to appease a marginal mayor that will sell Bristol short?
Meanwhile Slocombe, supposedly a TRADE UNIONIST and the one political appointment the Reverend is allowed to make, seems to be attempting to square his new found love for ultra-New Labour anti-worker corporate solutions to any and every problem with his trade union contacts.
We’re informed that Slocombe has been SKULKING AROUND meeting various senior regional union bureaucrats from the council’s unions begging them to lay-off the Reverend and Bristol City Council generally. Something many rank and file members, especially from Unite, may not be happy about.
“Everything these three are promoting is a FUCKING STUPID corporate solution that takes the city backwards to Thatcher, punishes the workforce and strongly rewards a small group of managers and unaccountable corporate consultants” says our source.
“The City Office, the management restructure; the “One Bristol” plan to abandon the voluntary sector, the vicious cuts. All of them have been devised by temporary consultants and interims with an eye on a BIG PRIVATE SECTOR PAY DAY down the line.”
“This is a corporate takeover of Bristol City Council. Rees, his two advisors and their revolving door of corporate Rasputins must be stopped.”
Slocombe is effectively both the chief exec and deputy mayor on £70k + a year. Mosley reports to him so The Reverend Rees has sown up the officers to do his political work. Rees almost a cert to run as an independent in 2020 after just quitting as Labour leader on the council. All those 2015/16 election pledges flushed away. No wonder Tincknell, Bradshaw & whoever next fed up and resigning.