Monthly Archives: April 2023

LIBRARIES GIVE US POWER

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So Rees and Labour are wrecking them.

Central library
Bristol Central Library

Here’s what the unions told a recent cabinet meeting:

“Printed newspapers and magazines were cut in all libraries in October 2022; a vacancy freeze has been in operation since August 2022 with no sign of an end.

“Currently there are 35+ vacancies across the city. The loss of hours amounts to 554.5 hours a week across the city.

“The Library service has also had five posts deleted, without any formal process or discussion with unions. Three of these posts are at the Central Library.

“These five posts amount to a loss of 137.5 more hours on top of the vacancy hours listed above. Total hours lost is therefore 592 hours a week. Due to staff shortages the standard of delivery is compromised. This is a disservice to the citizens of Bristol.

“These shortages have led to unplanned closures every day somewhere in the city since the summer.

“The lack of recruitment has also meant flexible working requests are being denied. This includes refusal of flexible retirement. The book/materials fund has been cut twice within a year and no new books have been bought since August 2022. It is unclear what the situation will be like in April 2023.”

Exactly how much does the Labour Party hate our libraries?

ASHLEY TAKEOVER

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Hickman
What Marg did next …

Ashley Ward Labour AGM in January saw Oxbridge twat MP “Thingy” Thangham Debonnaire and her crew of centrist Labour weirdoes rid themselves of the few remaining left wingers in the ward.

They’ve now installed Marg “Thickie” Hickman as chair. Her pandering to the Reverend Rees while leading Bristol City Council Labour Group helped Labour lose a mayoralty.

Let’s see what she can do with a ward and a constituency

NETTING ZEROES: PIPE DREAM

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Netting Zeroes (1)

The appearance of a thin City Leap summary business plan for the public is another outing for a proposed ‘Strategic Heat Main’. To run from Avonmouth where UK-wide waste is burned on an industrial scale to Bristol city centre where the shiny new heat networks are being built for the shiny new people.

This pipe dream pipeline run euphemistically on ‘low carbon heat’ is currently touted to cost around £100m out of the £200m or so the private sector may invest in ‘decarbonisation’ in Bristol.

Because the best way to get to net zero is definitely to burn – in working class Avonmouth – shitloads of polluting rubbish imported from London then use the energy to cheaply power a heat network for wealthy folk in the centre.

BEACON TIP OFF

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Beacon refurb
Well paid work?

“A mate of mine was involved in the Beacon renovation bid for Balfour Beatty and says it was a total sham. They lost (obviously) and told the council that nobody could possibly fulfill the contract at the requested cost.

“The council ignored them. Then, after agreeing to go with Wilmott Dixon, the council were, mysteriously, “forced to increase the budget” after the contractor had removed the roof of the building!”

The council has now announced a £75m overspend on the project.

NETTING ZEROES: PUMPS PRIMED FOR PROFIT

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Netting Zeroes (1)

City Leap lottery winners Ameresco took on their first project in December. An existing £1.2m entirely publicly funded plan to install an air-source heat-pump in Blaise Primary School to replace an aging gas system that can be replaced for about £0.5m.

Accompanying the low-profile news that Ameresco were taking on this year old project was a senior officer decision to up the budget by 25 per cent to £1.5m due to ‘inflation’. This is despite the project having a 35 per cent contingency built into it when it was set-up in February 2022.

This extra money will come from this year’s school maintenance budget. Bad luck if your kids’ school needs any repairs then. The money’s been earmarked for a US corporation.

Any cynic suggesting Ameresco have upped the price by 25 per cent to extract a profit would, of course, be speculating.

HUMAN WAREHOUSING JOY

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Derby Street Car Park
Derby Street car park: enough for eight homes?

Plans for eight “temporary accommodation pods” for homeless people in Derby Street Car Park, Redfield have been enthusiastically waved through by councillors on the planning committee bravely tackling ‘The Housing Crisis’ by supporting any old shit for the poor.

“Each unit would be 2.7 metres high, 7.9 metres deep and 3.8 metres wide, providing a total of 24 square metres of floorspace,” explains the planning report. That’s 13 square metres below the Tories’ ungenerous 37 square metre National Space Standard for one bed accommodation then.

Planning officers dodged around this glaring issue by agreeing “the units are small” and then claiming they “offer a better alternative to the proposed residents”. Better than what isn’t stated.

Officers also said that as tenancies via the Salvation Army are limited to two years, the accommodation is temporary and space standards don’t apply. How temporary it will be remains to be seen. Especially as Bristol’s planning department appears to have no means of enforcing their own planning conditions any more.

Why fewer units couldn’t be built that met minimum National Space Standards wasn’t a matter explored by planning officers or councillors.

STEPPING UP AND CASHING IN

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Deputy Mayor procures her own firm!

Stepping Up grads
Diverse leaders. Fully trained by, er, Bristol Waste?

More news on Deputy Mayor Asher “the Slasher” Craig’s 2024 post-council income generation plan, the Stepping Up leadership programme.

We reported a few months back that this council funded project had been quietly outsourced in March 2022 to Stepping Up Leadership CIC.

The directors are Asher the Slasher and the extraordinarily well-remunerated Stepping Up programme director Christine “Wonky” Bamford.

A partially successful Freedom of Information request, however, provides a different spin on this odd arrangement where the council is paying a Labour Cabinet member’s firm to deliver their project.

A council ‘Procurement Request Form’ dated 1 April 2022 and released by the council’s finance team shows that the council actually procured £57,500 worth of diversity leadership training from those well-known diversity in leadership professionals, er, Bristol Waste!

It seems that Bristol Waste, which has a few financial issues of its own brewing, is then somehow forwarding on the cash to Slasher’s Stepping Up Leadership CIC.

Why a council procurement team are engaging in this cloak and dagger arrangement is not clear.

Neither is the legality of an arrangement that effectively launders public money through council-owned Bristol Waste on its way to the Deputy Mayor’s private company.

We understand a complaint is now sitting with the council’s external auditor, Grant Thornton. It’ll be interesting to see what they make of the arrangement.

NETTING ZEROES: LAUGHING MATTER?

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Netting Zeroes (1)

Before the City Leap deal ascended to the Reverend and his cabinet of all the chumps for rubberstamping, a cross party scrutiny committee got to take look at some of it.

Comments by councillors at this meeting were not positive. Among the complaints:
* That the committee’s comments and questions over a period of years have not received adequate answers;
*  Every scrutiny meeting listed in the final report was either delayed, deferred or cancelled and reorganised;
*  Money spent on advice and procurement has been around £10million dwarfing the concession payments of £2.3m we may receive over five years from City Leap;
*  Scrutiny members were denied access to the detailed agreement with private partner Ameresco. How do you scrutinise something you can’t see? Enormous complexity’s involved. If something goes wrong, trying to enforce a secret agreement is difficult;
*  What happens to the loss in Bristol Heat Networks? Up to 31 March 2022 there was a £1m loss according to documents at Companies House. No member has been briefed on the loss. Who’s paying? The council taxpayer? Private sector partners?

Councillors got no answers. Instead cabinet member, Kye “The” Dudd openly laughed in their faces.