Monthly Archives: March 2024

Palestine Action target Somerset Council over Elbit tenant 

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Elbit

Images are available for free here

Activists submitted evidence of an action taken at Somerset Council, where they covered the building in red paint, bloody hand prints and spray painted messages which read ‘Elbit out’ and ‘Evict Elbit’.

Somerset Council are the landlords of Aztec West 600, the headquarters of Elbit Systems UK. Elbit Systems UK is owned by Israel’s largest weapons firm, who market their weaponry as “battle-tested” after they’re developed through assaults on the Palestinian people [1]. 

The Israeli weapons maker manufactures 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet and land-based equipment, as well as missiles, bombs and bullets [2]. Elbit’s CEO Bazhalel Machlis, who sits on the board of Elbit Systems UK, boasted of how the Israeli military has thanked the company for their “crucial” services during the ongoing genocide in Gaza [3]. 

Since October 7th, Israel has killed over 31,000 Palestinians, injured over 73,000 and displaced the vast majority of Gaza [4]. 

On two previous occasions, Somerset residents have disrupted council meetings urging for immediate action to be taken and for Elbit’s lease to be terminated [5] [6]. Amidst financial issues, the council has made plans to sell all of their commercial properties including Aztec West 600 [7]. 

However, residents have repeatedly emphasised that selling the property doesn’t absolve the council of their responsibility, and before any sale takes place the council must evict Elbit from their property. 

As the council have not yet taken such action, they remain on Palestine Action’s database of institutions and companies who profit from and enable Israel’s weapons trade [8]. 

The local group said: 

“By taking Elbit’s money, our council have Palestinian blood on their hands. By default, they’ve made the whole county of Somerset complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We refuse to stand by whilst the council continue to ignore our requests to evict Elbit. For the Palestinian people at the other end of Elbit’s weapons, we will continue to take action until the council kick Elbit out of Aztec West 600.”

ENDS

‘LEFTY WOKE NONSENSE’?

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Gissa job
The fourth most powerful person in the UK?

Obscure website, Powerful Media’s UK black powerlist for people of African or African Caribbean heritage raised a few eyebrows when released last autumn with the Reverend Rees in fourth place.

Neither Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, now Home Secretary, nor Tory leadership hopeful, Kemi Badenoch, Trade Secretary, appeared on the list despite, on the face of it, being quite powerful.

This has led some commentators to brand the whole fiasco “lefty woke nonsense”. Powerful Media responded by explaining they had inexplicably banned parliamentarians from being listed.

But not mayors too weak to get selected for a seat to become a parliamentarian?

WHO THE FUCK IS JOHN BETTY?

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John Betty

Possibly the most expensive idiot you’ve never heard of. This dodgy old fart has spent years grabbing lucrative local authority interim contracts.

He pitched up in Cornwall for a couple of years in 2018 where a local blog colourfully called him “a 10-minute shoe-in pensioner” as he forked out £2.5m without authorisation to an associate for a regeneration scheme in Truro.

Another career highlight was a stint in Bath 2005 – 10.

In charge of the later stages of the Bath Spa development where costs spiralled from £13 million to £45 million. He also featured in the press. They revealed he earned £1.2m during his five years there. A deal the coalition government called “exorbitant”.

So guess who, since leaving Cornwall under a cloud in 2020, has been project director for the Bristol Beacon as costs spiralled from £52m to £132m?

Remarkably, there’s no record of who appointed 77 year old Betty or why and there’s no recorded process for his appointment. Neither has he appeared before any committee of councillors. Nor is his, undoubtedly, huge salary recorded in the council’s statement of accounts.

Why is this high-earning, high public spender not accountable?

CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?

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Alacatraz
Bristol’s first prison food restaurant?

Our down home new £130m concert hall announces the opening of the Colonade, ‘a sustainable-forward restaurant set within the historic heart of Bristol Beacon’.  Which is more than enough to make you want to heave.

Their copywriting hacks then move into overdrive. We’re talking no less than ‘a fresh take on modern European cuisine’; ‘seasonal menus and daily specials led by artisanal local produce’ and ‘consciously low-carbon impact’ here.

But how much do these well worn foodie cliches cooked by someone you’ve never heard of set you back?

Bread and butter comes in at a fiver while a serving of cheese and ‘cracker’ is nine quid. An actual plate with a meal on starts at 14 quid plus a fiver for fries and six quid for veg. The cheapest bottle of Spanish plonk – ’round on the palate’ and heavy on the wallet – is 27 quid.

No sign of a cost of living crisis at the ‘inclusive’ Bristol Beacon then.

‘OPPRESSIVE AND DYSFUNCTIONAL’

Contrary to the contrived local PR waffle, the Colonade is actually owned by a Kent-based catering company, Graysons. Their major shareholder is US prison food provider, Aramak.

Aramak also run three ‘direct provision asylum centres’ in Ireland where asylum-seekers are forced to stay until their application is complete.

Praxis, the artists union of Ireland say, “the direct provision system is an oppressive and dysfunctional migrant prison system which has successfully enriched private companies like Aramark over many years.”

Praxis also described the National Gallery of Ireland’s decision to award Aramark a multi-million catering deal as “a stain on the reputation of our public institution.”

If you must support the local economy by eating overpriced food, try elsewhere.

LOSING THE PLOT

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allotments

Allotments? So what if the council doubles the rent? They’re for the chattering classes to grow rainbow chard while talking bollocks to each other about shit they read in the Guardian.

Wrong. Allotments have a history.

Our right to an allotment is the only compensation we have for the loss of our right to work common land that’s been systematically robbed from us over the last 1,000 years.

This robbery of land by the rich from the poor can be traced back to Norman Britain; was attacked by Sir Thomas More in ‘Utopia’ published in 1516; was directly challenged by the Diggers (they really did dig) after the English Civil War and caused the 1885 land reform campaign where ‘Three Acres and a Cow’ was the demand in the fight against poverty.

A series of laws followed. The 1887 Allotments Act, the 1892 Smallholding Act and the 1908 Smallholding and Allotments Act gave local authorities the power to create allotments. It’s not much in exchange for the robbery and privatisation of virtually all the country’s land by the wealthy but allotments and the odd tract of scrubby ‘common’ is all we have left.

When our money-grabbing Labour council casually announces it’s doubling the rent on our allotments, it’s the latest attempt to drive the country’s poorest from the remnants of our shared common land.

They can fuck off.

NEIN NEIN NEIN

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999

Call handlers at South West Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, based at Bradley Stoke, North Bristol are well aware that they are understaffed, underfunded and under-resourced in many areas like the rest of the country.

They are no longer surprised when regularly receiving emergency calls from places like London. But imagine the expressions on the faces of dumbfounded frontline staff when they received an emergency call from, er, Germany!

Are response times in the South West similar to a country about 640 miles away?

LEGACY? ISSUE 71 ON THE STREETS NOW!

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Layout 1

It’s all hands on deck for long-suffering Bristol City Council museum staff.

Under direct orders from the Reverend Rees and his office, they’re racing to get their Edward Colston statue exhibit complete and on display as part of an exhibition on ‘protest’ at the M Shed by a deadline of 16 March.

In the absence of much else to brag about, the Reverend seems to have decided the Colston Statue will be a key part of his effort to have some kind of legacy.

This is something of a u-turn for Rees. He began his ruinous reign distancing himself from anything to do with Colston on the advice of “creative industries advisors”. He therefore didn’t even bother getting a poxy corrective plaque on the statue prior to its fall and even enthusiastically supported the prosecution of the Colston Four ‘privileged activist’ statue topplers.

Now the desperate soon-to-be ex-mayor is trying to claim the toppled statue as his own!