Monthly Archives: July 2021

COUNCILLORS CALL TIME ON CHILD ABUSE IN BRISTOL SCHOOLS

Kerry on People Scrutiny

If you’re ever looking for some visceral screen entertainment over the next few years, we suggest you take a look at Bristol City Council’s People Scrutiny Commission on Youtube. Finally, it looks like the gloves might be coming off against the council’s social care and education bosses for failures and evasions stretching back for years.

The Commission is chaired by Tim “Little Asshat” Kent who has a child with special educational needs in Bristol and has the scars on his back to show for it. He’s joined on the committee by Christine “Miss” Townsend, who has been accused in the past of being a ‘terrorist’ by local academy chain The Venturers Trust for complaining about their admission procedures, and Hartcliffe councillor Kerry “Rosie” Bailes.

Kerry has a child with special educational needs who’s been forced out of his primary school for three years now, because, as far as we can tell, his Hartcliffe school is run by some sort of Nazi freak fully backed by the council. Also on the Committee are Tim “The Ripper” Rippington who has family experience with autism and Bristol City Council ‘services’ and Geoff “Cods” Gollop who has a family member drifting around somewhere at the wrong end of the council’s adult care service.

All-in-all it looks like the focus of this committee might be on the human rights of children and service users. Rather than its usual business of blaming parents, covering up abuse and ignoring the systematic management failures of senior bosses and an embedded culture of institutional disability discrimination. An approach that bosses, for years, have tidily wrapped up in complicated bureaucracy and unfathomable technocratic jargon to give their ugly work a veneer of respectability.

The first meeting of People Scrutiny got off to a flying start with Kerry telling Hugh “Hell” Evans, the cheery, chubby Jacqui “Village” Jensen replacement as Executive Director Of Institutional Abuse (surely Executive Director of People? Ed), in relation to his ‘Building Rights: a review of Bristol’s policies and actions for people with learning disabilities and autistic people’ report:

 “This all sounds really amazing. A lot of it should already be happening. The law was changed a very long time ago and we just haven’t seen it. As public forum said, there is no accountability. You know that I’ve been in the system nearly four years now and I’ve seen no difference. It’s still very much a you’ll do as you’re told or else system and when I say or else, I mean or ,else. It is awful.”

My son was thrown into a car park at five years old. He was locked in an office for being autistic. This report talks about abuse in care homes. That’s happening in our schools under our noses. And when we complain about it, we are lied about. There is no accountability. What kind of consequences are there if none of this happens? You know it can’t go on as it is. This is our children, you know? What consequences are there? The people who abused autistic people in care homes went to prison. You know what? When are our children going to get justice. When is there going to be some consequences?”

Evans, unsurprisingly, didn’t offer Kerry a timeline on when council bosses and education ‘leaders’ might suffer any consequences for abusing children and ignoring service user’s rights. Instead a private meeting away from the public eye was offered by Education Director Alison “Burly” Hurley.

Kerry, not one to be easily distracted by useless private meetings with desperate arse-covering council bosses keen to keep a fat salary rolling into their bank account at the expense of abused children, has instead approached the Police and Crime Commissioner requesting a criminal investigation into the abuse of SEND pupils in Bristol schools.

Last week’s meeting is available on Youtube with more set to come

“COMMON ACTIVITIES”: THREE WAVES OF BULLSHIT

New Briefing Arrives for BCC’s Homelessness Prevention Team

Homeless directive

In July, a Bristol City Council managerial team led by HR taskmaster John “Bedwetter” Walsh produced a 12 page, full colour glossy pile of vomit called ‘Common Activities – Briefing for The Homelessness Prevention Team’.

Complete with “flow charts” and other meaningless diagrams, no doubt employing external graphic designers at an undisclosed sum, Bedwetter and his team of useless flunkies churned out “inclusive” speech hogwash by the bucket load. All packaged to please the uncritical eyes of the Reverend Mayor and his team of sycophants, simultaneously confusing the general public and rank-and-file employees alike, and/or boring them stupid.

Common Absurdities

Once you’ve read through the 12 pages of utter drivel and after exhaustively eliminating the “positive” buzzwords that saturate it – like “shared objectives” and “creating a city of hope and aspiration” – and distilled it down to an essence that could be easily comprehended in a single paragraph, you’re left with this:

Bristol City Council is cutting back £1 million from its £53 million staffing budget. This will be achieved by “generalising” tasks, and “fusing” any coal-face posts that “do the same job” in the eyes of management. They also reserve the right to “make further savings where possible”.

These measures are currently being introduced in three “waves” that are supposed to wash over Bristol City Council in the course of July.

Considering the number of unproductive bullshit job staff and “professional support officers” involved and the costs of dreaming up and implementing such a complicated and probably unnecessary process, surely one could ask if the £1 million savings could have been far easier met elsewhere?

Maybe by simply firing Bedwetter and his ever-swelling entourage of goons and flunkies?

NO LOOKING BEFORE WE LEAP

Why were an unholy alliance of council bosses so keen to prevent a meeting of councillors scrutinising the fatcats’ confusing and secretive “Billion Pound” City Leap plan last week? Who do these clowns really work for?

City Leap is the latest senior officer brainchild to emerge out of Bristol City Council and they’re spending £10m of our money on it. The money’s being spent on procuring a multinational corporation as a ‘joint venture partner’ in, er, wait for it … An energy business!

This time the business is aimed at cashing in on ‘net zero’ by, among other things, building and running unregulated neighbourhood heat networks across the city to “‘up the pace’ in reaching carbon neutrality targets”,

Chief Exec Mike “Billie Jean” Jackson; Exec Director for Growth and Regeneration, Stephen “Preening” Peacock and Energy Services boss David “Payday” White all told councillors at a scrutiny meeting last week that there was absolutely no role for them in City Leap until their secretive high stakes procurement process was finished in February. 

The officers explained they would then generously allow councillors a couple of hours to rubberstamp their extraordinarily expensive done deal a few days before it goes to cabinet to get signed off by the Reverend, a Yale-trained corporate puppet.

The unscrupulous threesome explained that any attempt now at democratic scrutiny of this latest council energy scheme would have a ‘material impact on the procurement’.

Bizarre reasoning asserting that the council’s constitution and the right of councillors to scrutinise the executive like any normal functioning democracy should be suspended. On the basis that it might upset any multinational corporation lining up at the trough these officers are generously setting up for them.

All highly irregular. Surely any multinational that wants to work with Bristol City council needs to understand from the get-go that they’re working in a democratic environment where public scrutiny of their work is likely to be regular and detailed? And if they don’t like our democracy in Bristol? Well, they can fuck off to any of the many dictatorships around the world with their money can’t they?

Why are Bristol City Council bosses, whose jobs should directly involve upholding the constitution of Bristol City Council to the letter, creating an environment where the city’s democratic norms need to be ignored because corporate interests are waving some money around? Isn’t this exactly the time democratic scrutiny is needed?

A similar fiasco unfolded with Bristol Energy. Scrutiny and opposition councillors were persistently refused access to vital company information by officers. Councillors were unable to scrutinise what was going on at the company and the result was an estimated  £50m loss to council taxpayers.

Is it acceptable for officers to set up yet another energy business shrouded in secrecy that can repeat exactly the same mistakes all over again?

COMING SOON: What the fuck is City Leap anyway?

REVEREND IN THE EYE

Private Eye  Marvin

Fancy finding the Reverend Rees in the latest ‘Rotten Boroughs’ column of Private Eye. The natural home of the bent provincial politician.

It seems this brief article refers to Lib Dem councillor Tim “Small Asshat” Kent who asked the Reverend at a recent Cabinet meeting how many followers he had blocked from his ‘Official’ Twitter account run by council officers?

None of your business came the official reply. It’s a private account, explained the Reverend, and he could choose what he did with it, including “blocking individuals who are abusive or deliberately spread misinformation”.

He then proceeded to block Kent on Twitter describing him as a “pit of negativity” at a press conference the next day.

None of which explains why the Reverend is spending £3k a month of public money having his private Twitter account monitored by Impact Social, a dubious internet monitoring firm based above a used car dealers in south London, while blocking any resident he feels like.

Is this legal?

WASTERS

Waste wages 1

Will claims from councillors earlier this year that the real reason for the rush-job outsourcing of Bristol City Council cleaners and security staff to Bristol Waste was to address urgent cashflow issues at the stumbling council-owned company turn out to be accurate?

Last week came the bizarre announcement that Bristol Waste are suspending Green Waste collections for at least ten weeks. The reasons given for this decision were confusing to say the least. Oscilating between claims of a national shortage of skilled drivers and the alleged impact of Bristol Waste drivers self-isolating from Covid-19. We’re also fast learning that Bristol Waste is no longer able to guarantee collecting general waste and recycling on the day they are contracted to do so. 

Now we hear that bailiffs acting on behalf of SITA visited the offices of Bristol Waste earlier this week to demand overdue payments for the clearance of waste from larger blocks of flats in Bristol. What on earth is going on?

Adding to this sense of a company and management spiralling out of control comes news that the struggling firm’s Finance Director Adam “Because I’m Worth It” Henshaw received a 50 per cent pay rise last year. Tidily uplifting Worth It’s pay packet from £73k in 2020 to £110k this year. 

What was this enormous pay rise for and who authorised it? Is this a reward for failure? Or do Bristol Waste view their increasing inability to collect waste and pay their bills as a sign of management success?

Bristol Waste mainman, Managing Director, Tony ‘I Am The’ Lawless, had to rub along on a pay rise of just five per cent this year, which saw his pay packet exceed £125k for the first time. A rise rather more generous than he allowed his long-suffering staff. 

Operations Director Jason “Fatty” Eldridge, meanwhile, trousered a cool seven per cent rise. Crashing his salary through that all-important six-figure barrier to £104k a year.

Bristol Energy-watchers may recall executive salaries there rose the more the company failed. Culminating in Managing Director Mark ‘Magic’ Majewicz pocketing an obscene compensation package of £306k while the company racked up huge losses in 2019 – 20.

Is history repeating?

LUVVIE TROUSERS CASH GIFT WHILE COUNCIL CAN’T FIND MILLIONS

Remuneration 2021

The revelation in Bristol City Council’s draft accounts that former housing director and architect of the ‘Caridon Death Star‘ for warehousing the homeless, Julian “Luvvie” Higson scarpered from Bristol in December with a £27k payment as “Compensation for Loss of Office”, despite apparently resigning has raised a few eyebrows.

Not least because a report has just appeared from the council’s Internal Audit team identifying serious problems in the council’s Affordable Housing Grant scheme. A scheme worth tens of millions and meant to support “Registered Housing Providers (RP) and community led housing organisations for affordable rented homes which are within Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rent limits.”

In other words this was a scheme to hand large sums of our public money to housing providers to subsidise the building of affordable homes. The fund for this amounts to something like £47m over 2019 – 2024.

The disturbing Internal Audit report explains, “During the course of the audit both the member of staff responsible for grant administration and the newly appointed manager with responsibility for oversight left the Council.”

Having confirmed that the managers directly responsible have done a runner, the report then provides a helpful list of the scheme’s absolute failures:

  • There has been insufficient oversight of administration and record keeping, hence issues with data had not been promptly identified 
  • The Housing Delivery Board had met infrequently and had not set requirements for progress reporting of grant awards 
  • The Grant Tracker, the primary record of the progress of grant applications progress and grant award was not fit for purpose and had been poorly maintained. The source and accuracy of the data used for summarisation and reporting could not be relied upon 
  • Data requested by Internal Audit was not readily available and required reconstruction, which upon Internal Audit review were modified 
  • There was no interface between Pro-Contract, the Grant Tracker, and the ABW accounting system, and reconciliations could not be provided 
  • Data was not sufficiently granular to determine whether grants were only awarded within permitted criteria, delivery timelines, within budget, or to the expected build standard 
  • The legal advice in the Decision Pathway Report stating the importance of a robust monitoring process had not been fully implemented and the Council could not be assured that grants provided did not constitute over-compensation
  • No confirmation was received that the risk register referred to in the Housing Delivery Plan existed

To the untrained eye, this looks like a straightforwardly corrupt grant making process where tens of millions in public money has not been properly managed by the council and they’re unable to tell us what has happened to it.

A notion not entirely disabused by housing bosses’ promise going forward of “consistency and completeness of record keeping and evidence to ensure grants were properly awarded, the use of grants was monitored, and assessments made that grants provided value for money.”

Which all rather begs the question as to why the Director responsible, Higson, was paid £27k to disappear last December? Higson, who cut a deal last autumn that was very generous indeed to Caridon, one of the dodgiest landlord firms in the country, now has a lucrative new job in Harrow as Interim Head of Housing. So at least he’s all right then.

Meanwhile, rather than get the cops in to find out what Higson did with our money, Internal Audit have promised a further report in six months time. Something the council’s Audit Committee will discuss on Monday.

Are they doing enough?

MAD MEN

mad men final

A bizarre and disturbing case unfolds at the Employment Tribunal involving the Reverend Rees, Colin “Head Boy” Molton and the council’s HR senior management nutters – presumably taking some time off from being racist? – John “Bedwetter” Walsh and Mark “Bashar” Williams.

The case involves 122 detriments to a whistleblower at Bristol City Council and there’s even a walk-on part for the Bristolian’s evil twin Twitter account, the ungovernable  @bristol_citizen.

From what we’ve learned so far and we’re promised much more from the union involved, IWW Bristol, it seems Bashar and Bedwetter cooked up a cunning plan back in 2018, with the help of the Reverend, to fire the notorious Markets whistleblower from 2012 (Bristolian passim).

This is a whistleblower against whom Bashar Williams has long conducted a dirty whispering campaign in the corridors of the Counts Louse. A campaign that’s attempted to blame the whistleblower for the council’s failure in their duty of care towards council Facilities Service Manager, Tony Harvey, who killed himself in 2013. Directly after Harvey’s crude efforts to cover-up a major financial scandal in his Markets Service with the help and support of Bashar Williams and many other senior bosses started to fall apart.

According to the Employment Tribunal, the whistleblower had made TWENTY-TWO allegations that ‘relate to financial matters and alleged fraud relating to the first respondent’s market licence fees’.

The  vehicle selected by the Bashar and Bedwetter to carry out their dastardly attack plan on this whistleblower was the creation of a bespoke allegation that the worker had shared – with a Bristol Waste trade union rep – ‘confidential’ council information that, er, was in the public domain!.

Their plan was assisted by Rees who handed his HR bosses confidential Bristol Labour Party and trade union information directly from his personal Facebook account. An action that resulted in the closure in 2018 of the local Labour Campaign Forum private Facebook page for members when it became apparent that personal and political information on there was no longer secure and was being shared with bosses at Bristol City Council and any passing Toryboy consultant in a pinstripe suit.

To further ensure the success of their brilliant plan, the Bedwetter personally hired – at great expense to us – ‘Mr Greaves’. a self-styled expert consultant who also happened to be an old local authority jobbing interim mate of Bedwetter’s. Mr Geaves, our union sources tell us, was “basically a posh twat in pin stripe suit who was thick as shit”.

Within a week of suspending the worker, HR’s ramshackle disciplinary house of cards inevitably collapsed with the revelation that the alleged ‘confidential information’ wasn’t in the slightest bit confidential having been released by the council themselves months earlier.

The hapless HR management team, including a clown on a generous day rate paid by council taxpayers, then started scratching around for some new allegations to nail their man. TWELVE allegations were variously tabled and hastily withdrawn over the next SIX MONTHS. Even including a desperate claim that the worker was running the  @bristol_citizen Twitter account!

The worker eventually took out a grievance, possibly for humanitarian reasons, to end this Human Resources car crash and to try and resolve the embarrassing symptoms of mental decay on open display from a pair of barking senior council HR directors intent on firing someone for no reason other than that the mayor had apparently told them to.

The council responded to the grievance by wheeling out their top gun – the second highest paid council boss in the country – Colin “Head Boy” Molton. Who, it appears, hired another expensive consultant to investigate the work of the first consultant. 

The outcome of this investigation is shrouded in mystery as Head Boy scarpered from the scene of his crime very quickly never to be heard from again. In the process failing to do any of the things he had advised himself to do, in his own report, to sort out his senior HR colleagues’ sorry mess..

The next act of this very Bristol City Council farce played out at a bizarre disciplinary hearing chaired by our dear old friend “Lil” Tim O’Gara. He was hurriedly shunted in to oversee proceedings after Bedwetter discovered he wasn’t allowed to hire a posh twit; hand him a weird dossier of drivel off the internet compiled by Bashar Williams; feed his pet twit a load of completely mental evidence-free allegations about a member of council staff and then chair the subsequent hearing to judge the merits of his own deranged crap.

In fact, in a highly original and unprecedented move, no one from HR turned up at all at their own disciplinary hearing to present any kind of case against the member of staff they had suspended for eight months and had,  ‘independently’ investigated at great expense. Could this by any chance be related to the fact that the Reverend and Head Boy Molton might have had to appear to explain what the fuck they had been up to if a proper hearing was held? 

What if any of the big swinging dicks at the top of the council had said the wrong thing and accidentally implicated each other in their fast unravelling dimwitted conspiracy? Suddenly, with the risk of funny little wriggly appendages being exposed at the top, the hearing was a very quick case of ‘allegations unfounded’ – ‘case dismissed’.

We reckon the cost of this pointless little escapade in targeting a whistleblower trying to protect your money from bent council bosses – if you add up whopping payments to various consultants, the wages paid to the member of staff to sit at home for eight months and the staff time – could easily hit six figures.

What for? An expensive game for the pleasure of a pisspoor mayor? A Bashar Williams’ revenge fantasy acted out on a member of recalcitrant staff? A palliative for Bedwetter’s prominent mental health conditions?

Have they nothing else to do at their City Hall?

MORE STUFF WE’VE BEEN PROMISED AND COMING SOON:

  • ARE YOU FEATURED IN BASHAR WILLIAM’S DOSSIER OF DRIVEL OFF THE INTERNET?
  • ABSOLUTE PROOF JOHN WALSH IS A LIAR (JUST IN TIME TO HELP SUPPORT HIS EXCITING DEFAMATION SUIT AGAINST COUNCILLORS)
  • JOHN WALSH, MARK WILLIAMS AND COLIN MOLTON ARE ‘STUPID’ EXPLAINS THEIR OWN LEGAL BRIEF
  • AND MUCH MORE ….