Bristol City Council’s country bumpkin Monitoring Officer, Labour-supporting and Marvin-loving “L’ll” Tim O’Gara who, as far as we can tell, learned his local government law via some scam correspondence course based somewhere in Latvia (‘Easy obtaining of the degree from the world famous Oxbridge University’), has instructed councillors not to vote against the Reverend’s budget because they could end up in court! He’s joined in this fool’s errand of blatant political interference and bullying by council finance boss Denise “Disease” Murray.

In a letter, sent today, to all councillors regarding Tuesday’s budget meeting that the Reverend doesn’t have a majority to force through, L’il Tim and Disease also instruct democratically elected councillors on how they should vote:

“In practice, if councillors do not wish to support the Mayor’s budget then councillors should consider recording their lack of support by abstaining from the vote on those parts of the budget that they do not support.

“THE CONSEQUENCES OF VOTING AGAINST THE BUDGET (rather than abstaining) COULD BE LEGAL. FINANCIAL AND REPUTATIONAL” [our emphasis]

They then sign-off their piece of anti-democratic legalistic mumbo-jumbo with a charming threat:

“If it can be demonstrated that councillors acted deliberately to prevent the council from setting a balanced budget, then this could be seen as a breach of the Member Code of Conduct.”

Are this pair of unelected jackarses threatening to discipline our elected councillors who don’t vote the way they’ve told them to?

I think we should be told. Preferably in their resignation letters to the people of Bristol first thing Monday.