Monthly Archives: June 2021

WHISTLEBLOWING IN THE WIND

Freewheelin

How many wrongs must a boss investigate

Before they substantiate a claim?

How many thefts must an auditor ignore
With their head in the sand?

Yes, and how many times must the public pay
Before they’re finally paid?

The answer, my friend, is whisleblowin’ in the wind
The answer is whistleblowin’ in the wind

(With apologies to Dylan)

An interesting document emerges from their Audit Committee about whistleblowing at Bristol City Council last year.

It reveals that eight decent workers stepped forward between April 2020 and March 2021 with serious allegations that met the legal criteria for formal whistleblowing. These criteria are

– a criminal offence has been committed;
– someone’s health and safety is in danger;
– there’s a risk or actual damage to the environment;
– there’s a miscarriage of justice;
– the organisation is breaking the law;
– you believe someone is covering up wrongdoing;

So far so good but then we learn from the council’s report that the result of seven of these complaints was that the claims were “unsubstantiated” while the other one was “not considered a whistleblowing matter”. Which raises the question of what is it doing in a whistleblowing report then?

Five of the eight complaints emerged from the Growth and Regeneration department, run for much of the year by the second highest paid local government officer in the country. That’s our dear old friend, Colin “Head Boy” Molton, and the complaints about his department included allegations of, er fraud, corruption, perjury and drug abuse!

However, we are told that in a couple of cases that “control issues [were] identified, and internal audit review commissioned,” which sounds just like something has been substantiated doesn’t it? 

The question that needs to be asked here, then, is what was done to substantiate these whistleblowing claims and who was responsible? For example, if you don’t investigate a complaint then it will remain unsubstantiated won’t it? 

Or if, as the council often does, a claim of wrongdoing is investigated by the manager directly responsible for the matter in question, an investigation will fail to substantiate perfectly reasonable and evidenced claims.

Alas, the report put before the Audit Committee contains no detail about how these whistleblowing complaints were dealt with other than to announce they were all “unsubstantiated” and therefore no boss at the council appears to have done anything wrong (again) in any of the cases.

It’s nothing short of risible that this is the case for eight separate whistleblowing claims and this does nothing to encourage whistleblowing at the council. Why bother to potentially ruin your career to get a sentence in an obscure report stating your claims are “unsubstantiated” without explanation?

”Yes ‘n’ how many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn’t see?”

“LET US PRAY TOGETHER, TOM.”

Renhard-Red-Telephone-Box

Rather than reinforcing the lost Labour majority in the council democratically by reaching agreement with the rising Greens, Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees has doubled down on his already well-developed autocratic tendencies.

Encouraged by the authoritarian nature of the office he holds and the support of “even-higher in the firmament” despot Dan Norris as West of England Regional Mayor, Reverend Rees has instead surrounded himself with a personally selected cabinet of sycophantic courtiers. All eager to pretend to the deluded but fragile-as-glass messianic emperor that he’s fully clothed.

Alas, to complete the “choir of angels” required around the celestial centre, the steady drip-feed of sufficiently pliable self-seekers and arse-lickers was wearing thin on the ground, even for the Bristol Labour Party.

So please step forward Tom “Plasticene Man” Renhard to fill the gap. The pliant New Labour councillor for Horfield – a former nobody known only for his ambition and compulsive brown-nosing of anyone in the party he saw as useful for advancing his political career.

Greasy pole-dancer Renhard started from humble beginnings as the mere obedient secretary to Cllr Brenda “Commissar” Massey’s chairing of Horfield Branch Labour Party. He then proceeded to ingratiate himself with Bristol North-West’s Blairite MP Darren “Dipshit” Jones, before – most recently – sniffing out the Reverend Rees himself by providing “indispensable” services during the Mayor’s re-election campaign in April. As a direct consequence, he’s been elevated into the latter’s key cabinet post of Director of Housing.

Plasticene Man’s been catapulted into the office previously occupied by someone with at least a minimum of experience and credibility – Paul “Wolfie” Smith. His qualifications and talents for this are, according to Bristolians who’ve had the misfortune of working with the Play-Doh chameleon or who’ve been forced to rely on him for any competent undertaking – no matter how small – completely and utterly absent. It would appear therefore that the sole reason for Renhard’s selection as Marvin’s right-hand man in the cabinet is due to the elasticity of his composition.

Eager to be all things to all people and thereby to increase his profile and visibility among the gullible, Tom Renhard has been sliming around the Labour Party and the Co-op Party for some time. Not to mention the “tenants union”/community organisation ACORN, who are currently thrilled to laud him as the hero of their forlorn hope to acquire influence in Shitty Hall. So on the face of it, at least in The Reverend’s eyes, Plasticene Man is the perfect man for the job.

What could possibly go wrong?

Statement of Support for the Toppling of the Colston Statue, and for the Four Colston Defendants

By Alternative Bristol

This Statement has been released by GladColstonsGone (FB page + on Instagram @gladcolstonsgone). They are “a coalition united by our belief that the toppling of the Colston Statue has benefitted the City of Bristol. We want to continue conversations it has galvanised around race, racism and justice, historical and present, in Bristol.“ They’ve also made it clear they believe the charges against the Colston4 Defendants should be dropped. We at AltBristol agree with that! Beneath the Statement is their Press Release today.

Statement of Support for the Toppling of the Colston Statue & for the Four Colston Defendants
The statue of Edward Colston was toppled in Bristol during a Black Lives Matter protest on June 7th 2020. This protest was one of many globally and nationally, in direct response to the brutal murder of a black man, George Floyd, by Minneapolis police. The Bristol protest was attended by thousands of people. Hundreds can clearly be seen on camera to have been involved in various activities that led to this object being pushed into the harbour. Despite this, authorities have decided to single out four people who are now charged with criminal damage. They await trial in December 2021.

We, the undersigned, support the anti-racist aims of the protests throughout the summer 2020. We abhor the legacies of institutional and structural racism arising from European colonisation and the trafficking, enslavement and transportation of African men, women and children into plantation slavery in the Caribbean and Americas.

We believe that raising the statue of the slave-trader Colston in 1895, some 60 years after the Emancipation Act, and repeatedly ignoring expressions of concerns by citizens, campaigners, and artists, has been deeply damaging to Bristol’s Black community and to our common humanity.

We believe the statue has stood as a monument to the disingenuous way power is wielded, impacting those of African descent adversely and disproportionately in policing, health, housing, education outcomes, job opportunities and life chances.

In contrast, we note the absence in our city centre of any memorials, monuments or plaques that restore to African peoples’ ancestors their dignity and humanity, or that honours the many nameless Africans and indigenous people exploited and murdered by Bristol merchants and ruling elites.

We recognise that this statue has been a point of division for many years and welcome the fact that it no longer stands in our city centre. We do not believe the trial against four people is in the best interests of our city and urge that charges be dropped.

We call for some permanent recognition in our civic spaces of the historical reality of this period, and the creation of a permanent memorial and centre of memory, resistance and renewal to begin a process of understanding, healing, reflection and education.

GladColstonsGone – 7 June 2021

Note: We invite individuals, groups, institutions and campaigns to sign-up in support of this Statement. To support this statement:
– add your or your organisation’s name in a comment to the pinned post of the GladColstonsGone FB page.
– message us via FB or @gladcolstonsgone on Instagram
– email us at gladcolstonsgone1@gmail.com and we’ll add you. Download the Statement as a pdf here: Statement-GladColstonsGone

Now for the Press Release that came with the Statement:

Colston Statement – Press Release 7th June 2021

From GladColstonsGone

On the first anniversary of the toppling of the Colston statue, we are Glad Colston’s Gone from his pedestal.

We recognise that this statue has been a point of division for many years and welcome the fact that it no longer stands in our city centre.

We believe that raising the statue of the slave-trader Colston in 1895, some 60 years after the Emancipation Act, and repeatedly ignoring expressions of concerns by citizens, campaigners, and artists, has been deeply damaging to Bristol’s Black community and to our common humanity.

The Countering Colston Campaign says: “If local government and city institutions had cared about systematic racial inequalities in the past, Bristol wouldn’t be where and what it is today. Drop the Colston statue damage charges, let’s attend to the real damages of inequalities and racial injustices in our midst.”


We do not believe the trial against four people is in the best interests of our city and urge that charges be dropped.

Sam Elliot from Bristol Defendant Solidarity – legal support says: “The charges are divisive and vindictive. We cannot have a ‘conversation’ or ‘consultation’ whilst some of the architects of that consultation have been involved with the criminal justice system in persecuting protesters involved in the toppling of Colston.”

We support the anti-racist aims of the protests throughout the summer 2020. We abhor the legacies of institutional and structural racism arising from European colonisation and the trafficking, enslavement and transportation of African men, women and children into plantation slavery in the Caribbean and Americas.

We invite individuals, groups, institutions & campaigns to sign up in support of our Statement – see attached/or below.

Notes for editors, readers & others:
1. The statue of Edward Colston was erected in 1895 by a tiny clique of wealthy Bristol businessmen. It was toppled during a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol on 7 June 2020 attended by over 10,000 people. Many were involved in pulling the statue down. But just six people were issued Conditional Cautions by A&S Police in the summer of 2020, whilst just four people were charged with criminal damage by the CPS in December 2020.
2. Bristol Council provided a statement to A&S Police in late June 2020 that facilitated the start of the Police’s investigation.
3. For GladColstonsGone please see – https://www.facebook.com/gladcolstonsgone/
4. For Countering Colston Campaign please see – https://counteringcolston.wordpress.com/
5. For Bristol Defendant Solidarity please see – https://twitter.com/bristoldefenda1
6. For a range of historical research & articles related to Edward Colston please see – https://www.brh.org.uk/site/project/edward-colston/
7. #GladColstonsGone! Bristol Topplers’ Defence Fund! Please see – https://gofund.me/e49428cb

Solidarity with the Colston Statue Defendants!
(Feature image by AltBristol)

MEET LOCKLEAZE’S CHURCH OF HATE

SoL

More bad news for Lockleaze as the Spirit of Life Church has bought the Unity Chapel on Romney Avenue. Among the many things this disreputable shower have to say is:

“We teach that homosexuality, in particular, is subject to God’s wrath of abandonment, is a matter of choice and not inherited status, and epitomizes man’s ungrateful against God.”

And:

“Any attempt to change one’s sex or disagreement with one’s biological sex, is sinful and offensive to God.”

On the positive side, efforts by this church to ingratiate themselves in the local community on the local  ‘Love Lockleaze’ Facebook page have been firmly rebuffed by members of the community who have told them, in no uncertain terms, they are not welcome.

The Lockleaze Neighbourhood Trust (LNT), which is funded by Bristol City Council and the Arts council among others, however, seemed far more relaxed about a group of nutty far-right Christians setting up in the area.

At first two community workers at their hub even welcomed the church to the area on Facebook. However one agreed to remove her welcome post from the Love Lockleaze page after pressure from residents while Maria Perrett, the ‘Community Activator’ for LNT, has refused to do so. 

Meanwhile, Lockleaze’s two brand new Green councillors, Heather Mack and David Wilcox have gone missing in action. Odd, as just last week, the local Green Party was virtue signalling from the pages of Bristol 24/7 about having signed a trendy on-message ‘trans support pledge’.

Do trans support pledges not count in Lockleaze?

MEET THE ‘GREAT COMMUNICATOR’ WHO CAN’T ANSWER A LETTER

Remember when Bristol City Council’s new Chief Executive, ‘the great communicator’, Mike “Billie Jean” Jackson was handed a “reasonably modest” pay rise of £2k in March?

A few months after promises that no such pay rise would be forthcoming when the Reverend’s bitch first got handed the lucrative new job in May 2020 without the fuss of going through a policy compliant recruitment or interview process.

Fast forward a year from this dodgy promotion and a report from the Local Government Ombudsman hits our inbox outlining “a serious failure in its corporate governance arrangements and oversight.” at Jackson’s council. This is due to a failure to implement agreed remedies for two separate complaints from 2019. One over waste collection and another about failures in a noise pollution complaint.

And Jackson himself was personally responsible for this latest city council corporate failure. The Ombudsman reports that Jackson ignored SEVEN items of correspondence from them sent between March and November 2020. In them he was asked to implement some simple remedies to the complaints from members of the public about the public services he’s directly responsible for. He ignored the letters and did nothing instead.

Paying £171,500 a year doesn’t buy you someone responds to their correspondence then?