Monthly Archives: July 2018

LABOUR NEWS

All hail the great Labour leader

 Bristol’s Labour Party under the deft (surely daft? Ed.) leadership of the Reverend Rees continues on its singular journey to becoming an embarrassing farce and danger to its own members.

We learn that the Bristol Labour Women’s Forum on Facebook has been FORCIBLY CLOSED down due to “transphobia”. Or women wishing to discuss the Gender Recognition Act and transgender issues as it’s also known.

Presumably, in the world of Rees’s Labour it’s best all round if women are SHUT UP and CENSORED? This follows the CLOSURE of Bristol Labour Party’s private forum on Facebook in March after Bristol City Council bosses were granted access to the pages to SPY on staff and councillors.

Meanwhile, in a further extraordinary move, we learn that Ras Judah, the Rasta who was TASERED in the face by cops last year, has been suspended by the Labour Party for, er, racism!

All hail the peoples’ party!

Rotten Comrades: Ethical Care Charter, Libraries and the Sirona Strike

by The Dwarf

A nice little bonus for Bristol’s overworked home care workers was unveiled last week to absolutely no fanfare whatsoever. A commitment to spend some new money on extra wages, matching and eventually exceeding the Living Wage, was followed up by a commitment to meeting other aspects of the ethical care charter such as paying staff travelling between clients.

When I mentioned this at home, Mrs Dwarf pointed out that it was funny how the Mayor could find a bit of money when he wanted to. After all, he found a few quid to keep the libraries open as well. Am I looking a gift horse in the mouth, I wondered aloud? Am I being a bit churlish treating this with my customary scepticism? Well, she snorted at this and started going on about privatisation, all the while pointing angrily at me with a rolled up copy of the Morning Star. She’s a bit more militant than me.

Finding a few quid down the back of the sofa to keep the libraries and home care going can only be a good thing if you forget it didn’t need to be this bad in the first place. But when you realise the problems are caused by privatisation and outsourcing, it becomes only a sticking plaster. Home care nationally only has a problem at all because it has been nearly all outsourced to private organisations.

Those teams that still belong to councils spend enough time with the old and disabled to help with disabilities, with personal care, help a little around the house and even have a little chat. It’s called dignity. And it’s called democratic control and oversight. I have seen work schedules for the private sector where as little as fifteen minutes is spent with the client and not enough time is given to travel to the next client, which is a sore temptation to shave a little of what little time there is with them.

Part of the announcement was that Unison, Bristol’s most hapless union, was involved in all this. I couldn’t believe the Chuckle Siblings had it in them to actually achieve a pay rise for someone. But then I noticed that it was a national campaign – the Ethical Care Charter – which isn’t all that bad a campaign and therefore nothing Bristol’s button-hole water-squirting brigade can screw up. I’m told they didn’t bother to tell anyone with a spinning tie they were doing this, which either just about sums up the secretive little cabal the union has become or that head office has just given up on them.

Needless to say no one sent an email out telling the members or put it on the website or anything like exploiting it for organising or recruitment purposes. At least I haven’t seen anything and neither have my little spies. Unison was also described as the union for care workers, which I can assure you was quite a surprise for Unite who had recruited nearly all of home care when Unison stopped talking to, thinking of, and involving them, several years ago.

So, my message to the Council (and the unions) is to bring home care back in-house if you really want to solve home care’s problems. And, it goes without saying, don’t privatise or outsource the libraries. The same sort of debacle is just as foreseeable with the library service as it was with home care.

While we’re on private provision of care, Unison members in Sirona in Bath are in an industrial dispute. I would like to wish them all the best in their fight and remind them to control their own struggle if they possibly can. If you see anyone coming towards you with a Unison badge, a flashing red nose, a car horn, and trying to tell you black is white: tell them to jog on.

 

DIPSHIT’S ANTI-SEMITIC SMEARS SHOCKER

Dipshit Daz: poorly manicured clown

“I should have voted for Charlotte Leslie. At least Charlotte only OPPOSES the Labour Party, Darren Jones actively UNDERMINES the party and its members. He’s a disgrace.”

So says one long-suffering member of Bristol North West Constituency Labour Party who is sick to death of their thicko right wing MP, Darren “Dipshit” Jones and his endless shenanigans aimed at UNDERMINING Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour Party.

The FINAL STRAW came for this supporter at a constituency party meeting in March when Dipshit Daz attempted to strong-arm his constituency into allowing the right-leaning JEWISH LABOUR MOVEMENT (JLM) to affiliate to the local party.

At least one party member, an officer of Jones’ constituency party and a committed socialist, loudly OBJECTED to Jones’ proposal. Not only because they objected to the politics of the JLM but also because they knew that this national organisation affiliating to Dipshit’s local party would give them A VOTE in any forthcoming selection battle Dipshit might find himself involved in.

To get an idea of the politics of the Jewish Labour Movement, which openly claims to be “ZIONIST” and the voice of Jewish members of the Labour Party, they have not issued A SINGLE STATEMENT on their website nor a single tweet about the recent killing of 59 Palestinians by Israeli soldiers at the Gaza border. Nothing. Not a word.

Dipshit responded to his party officer’s REASONABLE COMPLAINTS by filming the socialist miscreant on his phone as he spoke and then PUBLICLY tweeting his new-found anti-Corbynite ally, Liverpool MP and big name JLM supporter, Luciana Berger. “Do you send speakers to CLPs? My CLP VC just called you “zionist” and that your affiliation requires debate. Can you come?” enquired the dipshitted one.

Luciana then kindly tweeted back to Dipshit, copying in her 73k-off followers, that she could indeed come. Thus unleashing a nationwide anti-semitic WITCH-HUNT against a key Corbynite member of Labour’s Bristol North West constituency Party.

Many North West members are said to be less than impressed with Dipshit’s conduct. Not only for publicly filming and revealing the content of a party meeting LIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA but also for his role in the public SMEARING of an officer of his local party.

How much longer can Dipshit Daz survive? Surely deselection beckons?

SOME STAFF DO ‘AVE ‘EM

Spencer

The ever-resourceful Human Resources Department of Bristol City Council has come up with a new wheeze to SCREW its lowest paid workers.

James “Betty” Brereton, masquerading under the poncey job title ‘People and Culture Manager‘, wrote out to low paid staff who work term times only in May announcing he has been “checking the calculations we use to work out pay”. And lo and behold! He’s discovered some “ERRORS“.

“Any overpayment or underpayment in April will be added to or DEDUCTED from your pay in May,” Brereton cheerily announced to people taking home small sums of money who thought the small increase in their pay packet in April might be their pay rise!

Unfortunately not. Instead money was REMOVED from pay packets a few weeks later at the end of May with NO REGARD for anyone having to manage on a tight budget or anyone wishing to know exactly what their monthly income from Bristol City Council might actually be.

Betty Brereton’s letter in May then added, “we will work out if there has been an overpayment or underpayment IN THE PAST. Where there has, we will negotiate with the trade unions on how we deal with this. We will then be in touch with you.”

In other words, Bristol City Council will be deducting EVEN MORE MONEY from the pay packets of the low paid at undisclosed some point in the future with little notice or explanation.

How are workers on low incomes supposed to plan their finances like this?

LIFE THREATENING STUNTS BY OAPS NEEDED TO FUND SERVICES IN REES’S BRISTOL

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This year the Bristol Older People’s Forum (BOPF) will be celebrating their 25th anniversary. However, following a number of funding cuts by the Reverend’s council, the future of the forum is under DIRECT THREAT.

So please step forward 81 year old Tony Wilson, a Trustee of the forum, and retired Zia Haque, a member of the forum, who took part in a SKYDIVE in April from 15,000 feet. That’s the highest it’s possible to do in the UK without additional oxygen.

“This skydive is crucial to our survival,” explained Tony, “as BOPF moves away from Bristol City Council funding into an UNCERTAIN FUTURE. In these hard and changeable times Bristol Older People’s Forum is needed more than ever.”

The dive took place on Saturday April 14 at Sarum Airfield near Salisbury, with Tony and Zia raising over £2,000. This, we’re told, “would COVER MOST OF THE COSTS OF THE NEXT NEWSLETTER, which is currently mailed to over 3000 members, many of whom struggle with mobility issues and are not online”.

Meanwhile, the following month, the Reverend jetted out to New York City, yet again, to deliver a pointless speech to the UN about migration. Priorities, eh Marvin?

MANN AND DOLPHIN JOIN FORCES

Bath buildings

The Dolphin School, the self-styled feeder primary school for Colston Girls School conveniently located on the Cheltenham Road site of the controversial girls school, has for a number of years been trying to BUY LAND to gain additional access to their overcrowded site from Kwik-Fit and other businesses on Bath Buildings, Montpelier.

Alas, the school, run by our good friends the chronically underperforming (Merchant) Venturers Trust, has FAILED to get anywhere. So now they’ve turned to useful city council idiot, transport chief Peter “Useless” Mann for help.

And he’s obliged by attempting to RUIN access to businesses and residences on Bath Buildings by issuing a Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) stopping vehicles turning left into Bath Buildings from Cheltenham Road. The notice informing residents and businesses appeared on 29 May and it will be implemented on 6 July. Obviously there’s been NO public consultation.

The measure effectively SPLITS Kwik Fit in two with their MOT trade having to travel to St James Barton roundabout then back up Stokes Croft and Cheltenham Road to enter their MOT bay on Bath Buildings. There are a further 16 BUSINESSES on Bath Buildings affected, plus one sub-surface car park for 90+ cars and 250 holders of RPZ permits.

We learn: “The community intends to make a big thing out of this and a demo is planned plus a bit of civil disobedience but all in the best possible taste.”

GOLDEN BOY JOY FOR USELESS ENERGY FIRM

Much fuss all round last month as the local BBC finally cottoned on to what we’ve been saying for over a year now and announced that the council’s vanity energy reselling firm, Bristol Energy, has now LOST £24MILLION with no end to the losses in sight!

The BBC even pointed out that the council’s so-called “INVESTMENT” in Bristol Energy jumped by 40 per cent in six months last year from £17million to £24million. But is it even an investment if you’re unlikely to get your money back?

Bristol City Council and Bristol Energy’s response to their loss-making disaster continues to be shrouded in “COMMERCIALLY CONFIDENTIAL” mystery. Although an UNKNOWN Bristol Energy spokesman assured the BBC that the money would be paid back “with interest”! How, we’re not told.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the city council director who set up the company, Bill “Dick” Edrich, has been quietly OUSTED as a director of Bristol Energy and replaced with the Reverend’s new golden boy, Colin “HEAD BOY” Molton of the Colin Molton Consultancy Ltd.

Head Boy, currently the very well remunerated interim Executive Director of Growth and Regeneration at the council, is the latest CHANCER to have the ear of the Reverend. He comes from a senior post at the Homes and Community Agency (HCA) and it appears he is being paid a SMALL FORTUNE in the region of £5k a week by the Reverend to get some housing developments moving in Bristol prior to the next mayoral election.

But what exactly does he know about the energy reselling business?