BRISTOLIAN #74: ON THE STREETS NOW!
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Monthly Archives: December 2024
BRISTOLIAN TROUBLEMAKERS’ CHRISTMAS BASH
PLAYING HOUSE
The city’s largest council house building programme for a generation has been scrapped by Green proclamation.
At a Housing Committee in September, its chair, community arts twat, Barry “Goldwater” Parsons announced that council housing projects at Baltic Wharf and Hengrove Park were cancelled with immediate effect.
Parsons explained that this multi-million major policy decision was taken by council officers after a grubby deal between Parsons and his Tory wanker vice chair, Richard “Bunter” Eddy.
The cancellation of these two projects wrecks the council’s HRA business plan, which was supplying funding for council housing over the next 30 years. The plan relies on building council homes and borrowing against the income generated to build more homes. No increased income: no homes.
Parsons refused to let his committee take this major decision. Instead, he used a recent judgement from the government’s Regulator of Social Housing regarding the poor condition of council homes to unilaterally scrap the programme.
Parsons claimed that unknown council officers had instructed him that any housing money must be spent on improving existing homes rather than building new ones. Figures or financial information to back officers’ claims was absent.
Is it a coincidence there was zero mention of council housing in the Green’s manifesto in May?
‘THERE’S NO SUCCESS LIKE FAILURE’
Loopey Oxbridge cat lady Sarah “Tigger” Crew, the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset Police, has turned the 2,717 rapes recorded in the area for 2023/24 into another roaring policing success.
Despite there being more rape reports per 1,000 people in Avon and Somerset than any other force in Britain, Crew explained at a press conference that “it is not so much about the number of offences being committed but the willingness of people to report it.”
So that’s all right then
TORY TONY’S U-TURN WATCH
Green council boss, “Tory” Tony Dyer, is proving to be highly flexible in power. Before the election, Tory Tony was an enthusiastic supporter of south Bristol’s Yew Tree Farm. The nature reserve and city’s only working farm was under threat from a council plan to expand South Bristol Cemetery into it.
Cometh the moment, cometh the man and now Tory Tony has concluded that expanding the cemetery onto the farm is a great idea. He’s even brokered his own ‘compromise’ between himselves to only use the land for a dirty great drainage pond.
Tory Tony was also an enthusiastic supporter of the victims of the SEND spying scandal. Supporting public demand for a proper investigation into senior council bosses’ surveillance of parents of children with SEND. To score a few political points over Labour, he even helpfully leaked an unredacted version of the council’s internal whitewash report to SEND victims so they could stir the pot for him.
Now, there’s no sign of any investigation from Tory Tony and he’s blocking legal action by the victims against the council by refusing to respond to a pre-action letter issued to his council months ago.
What will the courts make of his clueless dickheadery?
WECA CAUGHT IN SLASHER’S WEB
Further institutional confusion emerges around Asher Craig’s Stepping Up (SU) business. We’ve already learned how Bristol City Council senior bosses dodged their own procurement rules to hand public money over to the former Deputy Mayor’s private training company.
When that scam got uncovered, Bristol Waste became the vehicle for subsidising the Deputy Mayor’s company instead. Including supplying an apparent £53k loan to the Slasher’s company. A loan that the council waste company now denies making. Claiming, instead, that SU is their “debtor”. But what service was a waste company selling to a management training company? Very pricey waste disposal services?
Now WECA’s joined the party. Information from a member of the public at a WECA Audit Committee meeting reveals that a £150k grant awarded to SU was dependent on a financial guarantee from, er, Bristol Waste! However, any guarantee should have been approved by Bristol Waste shareholder, Bristol City Council and recorded on the Council’s website. There’s no record of this authorisation so any “guarantee” is unlawful under company law.
Did anyone at WECA think to ask why Bristol Waste was acting as a “parent guarantor” for a company where a Bristol Cabinet member was a director and if it was legal? Where’s the due diligence?
GREEN GOVERNMENT: HOW IT WORKS
In June, Green Councillor David “The Builder” Wilcox, from the Transport and Connectivity Policy Committee, trumpeted that the M32 Junction 3 pedestrian underpass had been “unblocked” and would no longer flood. It’s the end of “breeze [sic] blocks or pallets to cross the ponds,” he boasted.
Emma “Air” Edwards, Leader of the Green Party Group and another member of the Transport and Connectivity Policy Committee, waded in. “No more Krypton Factor challenged [sic] to get through the underpass when it floods,” she gushed on Twitter. While fresh new Green Councillor for St George, Cara “La Caravan” Lavan predicted that flooding would “be no more”.
Wilcox went on to explain that “after some investigation” it was unnecessary to fix an underground pipe and suggested people contact other politicians to find out why they had not got the problem fixed sooner.
Alas, by September, the underpass was flooded again. On Fix My Street, the council says, “this issue is currently under investigation. We’ll provide updates on the outcome as soon as we can.”
There’s no comment from the Greens.
CONSULTANTS LATEST BELLY FLOP
Bristol City Council’s Children’s Services has a deficit of £23m this year, excluding the car crash SEND deficit. Efforts at ‘transformation’ of the service have predictably failed to make the savings touted by bosses and consultants.
According to a recent report to councillors about Home to School Travel, “The Children’s Transformation programme is currently forecasting a delivery of £4m of the £6.2m [savings] target in 24/25.”
Undershooting target by 35 per cent, thanks, are due to corporate consultants PwC who, in 2022, council bosses paid £444k for a secret unpublished report into, er, savings in Home to School Travel.
When do we get our money back?