Author Archives: jacland

WE’RE SUNK!

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Stark scenes confronted the dock staff on the morning 23 March this year.

Where once a fourth emergency service vessel sat moored there was now a partly sunken walkway with an even more sunken Harbour Master’s engineer’s boat, The Albion, attached to it.

Several members of the dock team reported back in September that The Albion was holed above the waterline but docks boss Cap’n Tony ‘Ahab’ Nichols, in his infinite wisdom, decided not to fix it until its anual service due in May.

Since then the docks have laid off their experienced, qualified and ticketed team in preferring inexperienced managers, who left the damaged boat loaded over the weekend. Presumably getting home early on a Friday afternoon is a priority for managers, not the safety and security of out boats and harbour?

It beggars belief that while we’re being force fed rising tide and flood risk stories the City Council can be so blase about our safety.

We’re pretty sure it says somewhere in Cap’n Ahab’s job description that he’s supposed to keep the boats afloat. Are we getting value for money from council cuts? Certainly the Albion has cost us an extra bob or two and the essential vessel was out of action for weeks.

The mainstreme press – A reality free zone

BARISTOLSAYS

5 right-wing billionaires own over 80% of the UK’s newspapers along with huge swathes of our TV and radio stations, book publishers, cinemas, film and TV production companies. Almost everything we see, hear or read in this country is shaped and distorted by their propaganda machines.

As covered by this issue of the Bristolian, when the public are exposed to genuine socialist ideas as they were at Exeter’s General Election hustings, they are shockingly in favour of them.

The sad demise of Bristol’s 24/7 news website into yet another load of business-friendly drivel is one more example of how the mainstream media is a reality free zone.

Voices for radical change are either ignored or ridiculed. Their agenda is to keep us distracted with trivia while the social gains achieved by our grandparents, such as the NHS or the Welfare State, are dismantled or sold off to their wealthy friends.

However, the media barons are increasingly worried. From local papers such as the Bristolian to the hundreds of alternative voices which can now be found on the internet – they know their days are numbered.

Socialism still relevant shocker!

Over to Exeter’s local rag, the Express and Echo’s packed election hustings, which generously featured all the candidates for the city’s parliamentary seat including socialists, Left Unity.

Here in achingly trendy Bristol West, however, Left Unity have been persistently refused access to hustings organised by among others the BBC and community paper the Bristol Cable.

This is because these nannying media organisations have decided for us that socialism just isn’t important any more and doesn’t need to be presented to their audiences.

Instead the left wing tradition in Bristol West has been allowed to be represented and traduced by Lib Dem voting Green Guardian reader, Darren “Fruitbat” Hall and his naive on-the-hoof, out-of-the-Grauniad hipster drivel.

Meanwhile back in Exeter, socialism, when allowed in front of an audience, seems to be showing some remarkable signs of life.

As the public arrived at the meeting, they voted in a straw poll. Labour’s sitting MP Ben Bradshaw came  top, followed by Dom Morris for the Conservatives while Left Unity were the least popular ahead of the hustings.

However, when a second straw poll was conducted as the audience left, the shock winner was – wait for it … Left Unity’s Edmund Potts!

The full results were: Left Unity 83, Labour 37, Conservatives 26, Green Party 10, Lib Dems 6, Undecided 5 and UKIP 3.

Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but a manipulative local media!

Playing out at our expense?

playingout

Well done to Alice Ferguson and Naomi Fuller, Director and Communications Director respectively of the hopelessly middle class Southville charity, PLAYING OUT, for delivering one of the best self-inflicted PR disasters we’ve ever seen.

A sort of Reclaim the Streets for the Cath Kidston set, this ridiculous charity blocks upmarket residential streets for a few hours every month so kids can get to play in the road “like we did in the old days”.

The two lovely Southville gals behind the charity, one of whom just happens to be Mayor Bent Trousers’ DAUGHTER, were given some space recently in the mayor’s new personal propaganda machine, the Bristol 24/7 website, to “set the record straight”.

What record ? Why was this record ever bent? What’s going on?

Playing Out wanted to assure us that the fairly LARGE SUMS of public money that have come the charity’s way from the council since daddy arrived on the hot seat at the Counts Louse is purely down to their brilliance and an overwhelming public need for middle class kids to access boutique retro play experiences.

What better possible way is there to spend public cash in this age of austerity? Especially while the mayor personally cuts real public services – where his relatives don’t work – to the bone.

“It’s funding which was ring-fenced for this kind of initiative. It doesn’t all just come out of one big pot, that’s not how it works,” the pair bleated to Bristol 24/7 while not bothering to explain how it did work.

“It’s two years before Bristol as a city even decided it wanted an elected mayor that Alice and Amy held their first playing out session,” the site wailed neatly sidestepping the issue of when their generous levels of funding began.

And then the coup de grace. A Bristol City Council PR is rustled up to RUBBERSTAMP the vacuous claims: “The Mayor has never been involved in a funding decision relating to Playing Out. He took office on November 19 2012, meaning the majority of funding decisions pre-date his time in office.”

Alas, within two hours of this bizarre PR manouevre – randomly denying any nepotism exists between the mayor and his daughter for no apparent reason  – an article had appeared from the mayor-watching Bristol News team rebutting the council’s and the charity’s claims.

Up to the Mayor’s election in 2012, Playing Out were paid by the council the fairly reasonable amount – for what they do – of £12,000. By the end of the Mayor’s first year in office that figure was £92,000!!!

That’s, almost, an EIGHT-FOLD increase and none of it from especially ring-fenced council funds for middle class mums with daft ideas in Southville so far as we can see.

So did this £92k not “come out of one big pot at the city council”? Who knows? Neither Playing Out nor 24/7 provide evidence one way or the other. Although the council’s published expenditure records do nothing to disabuse the public of the notion that Playing Out’s money did indeed just come out of one big pot at the council.

Now 24/7 and Playing Out have set the hare loose, this hugely embarrassing issue for the mayor looks set to run and run in the lead-up to next year’s mayoral election.

So who’s idea was it for Playing Out to go to the local media with a load of  partial information for us to pick over then?

Councillors procure a buffet

Adding to the sense of surrealism surrounding city council procurement deals, comes the COUNCILLORS of the Business Change and Resources Scrutiny Commission.

While their legal boss Sanjay “Under” Prashar, his lawyers and procurement oafs are running up and down to London spending TENS OF THOUSANDS to justify handing a local contract to an organisation in London, the committee members held an all-important Procurement Scrutiny Enquiry day.

What was that for then? Er, to “look at ways to improve Bristol City Council’s procurement process for local small businesses and social enterprises”!

Obviously this day of mutual backslapping, pompous speeches, empty promises and fluffy PR rounded off with a FREE BUFFET is far more useful to our councillors than doing their jobs and dragging Sanjay and his oafs in front of their committee for a bollocking.

Council officer arses could then get KICKED and loads of money SAVED in relation to an actual unfolding local PROCUREMENT DISASTER that these councillors are directly responsible for overseeing.

Can’t have that can we?

Next Link give council a good shafting!

The city council’s legal department continues to excel.

Now under the bizarre management of congenital idiot and secrecy obsessive Sanjay “UNDER” Prashar, who learned his public law in er, Torquay, they’re once again, embroiled in an expensive Judicial Review farce.

This time around Prashar is trying to justify a DEFECTIVE TENDER PROCESS run by the city council. This resulted in local domestic violence organisation NEXT LINK losing their contract to a national organisation based in London with no presence in Bristol whatsoever.

Next Link immediately went to the High Court with their concerns over Prashar’s dodgy tender process and got a ‘stay’, which meant they could carry on delivering their service until the legal case was resolved.

A potentially costly matter for the council, a team of lawyers immediately legged it up to London to the High Court at great expense to apply to get this stay overturned arguing there was “NO SERIOUS ISSUE TO BE TRIED”.

Unfortunately their application was LAUGHED OUT OF COURT by judges when they discovered Bristol City Council was refusing to disclose the successful tender and evaluation documents they were using as evidence in their application to the court!

In other words, arrogant prat Sanjay and his minions thought they could get away with using secret, un-cross-examined evidence to NOBBLE a local charity!

Does Prashar understand how the British justice system works? Perhaps there’s someone down the council who can explain it to him and then explain he’s not working in bent Tory Devon now please?

With a FULL JUDICIAL REVIEW already granted to Next Link and, now, Sanjay’s miserable failure to get the stay removed, it’s beginning to look like another expensive legal flop will be coming Sanjay’s way very soon indeed.

Watch this space.

Pets replace news in brave new media

bris247
What’s happened to Bristol 24/7, Bristol’s fiercely independent  news website run by former Western Daily Press news hack, Chris Brown?

The site, since 2009, had built a formidable reputation in the city as the place to go for high quality news reporting and decent left of centre political commentary.

Then back in the autumn, with a huge fanfare, the site relaunched, along with a new monthly print edition, using money invested by the guilt-ridden former Venue owner Dougal “Fat Bastard” Templeton and ridiculous self-styled ‘place maker’, E3 Media boss and massive wannabe, Mike “Gordon” Bennett.

Further investment came from a ragbag of small business owners largely involved in the city’s catering industry and a few self-styled local movers-and-shakers no one’s ever heard of.

Then, two months after the launch, Gordon and the Fat Bastard forced Brown out of his own publication, publicly citing ‘lacklustre leadership’ while privately claiming his news was too negative towards Gordon’s friend and political ally, George Ferguson, and that they had identified a non-existent Labour Party editorial bias at the site.

Since then, what was once a fine news site and a place for political discussion in the city, has pissed out a sorry stream of unedited corporate press releases, George Ferguson brownosing articles, feelgood animal and pet stories, a bit of provincial catering news and loads of tedious middle class arts waffle.

What a load of crap. How has this been allowed to happen?

THAT SINKING FEELING

A whistleblower has broken cover to reveal a SCANDALOUS series of HAZARDOUS health and safety breaches in the infrastructure of Bristol Docks.

The major problems we EXPOSE represent a danger to the public, to users of the docks and to the city as whole as it’s unlikely that the city’s flood defences are properly maintained.

Our contact claims that council docks boss, the notorious bully and incompetent, TONY “AHAB” NICHOLS and his useless sidekick, Chief Engineer KEVIN “WHAT DOCK? ” POMEROY have allowed the docks to fall into this serious state of disrepair “due to either their total INDIFFERENCE or complete INCOMPETENCE”.

We’re also told that this is after the pair were entrusted with £17m of tax payer investment for the docks. Here’s the full list of issues:

Outer Gates

☠ Not ‘de-muddied’ in four years

☠ Bearings on operating arms seized

☠ Shear joints (an engineered weak spot to protect gates and machinery) welded top and bottom

Inner Gate

☠ As outer gates, except water ingress to High Pressure Units (HPUs) running biodegradeable oil and causing damage to delicate machinery

Sluices

☠ Spear post ends to sluice gate not repaired – refitted in very worn condition

93 Stop Gates

☠ Not recoated inside depite promises to the Environment Agency as condition of securing money for new stop gates

Brunel Sluices

☠ Only one of four operational for many years Emergency Paddle House

☠ Over six years spent changing from geared operation to hydraulic. Still none operational. (Wrong size rams were bought, wrong HPU. New HPU taken from Brunel subways)

Bridges

☠ Plimsoll: gutter is still not cleaned six months after breakdown, which was ultimately caused by this. Breakdown occurred at 16:15. Chief Docks Engineer Kevin Pomeroy would not answer his phone (during core working hours). He arrived eventually at 20:00. He did not call any engineering staff out although press were told they had

☠Redcliffe and Prince Street Bridge: badly corroded, massive holes in structure

Dredging

☠ More mud in the dock and Feeder Canal than at any time in the last 20 years.

It’s clear that out City Docks have been mismanaged and abused by Cap’n Ahab and Pomeroy. And it’s clear that they are simply not up to their well-paid jobs.

Now we say to the pair of them: “For gods sake – and for everyone’s sake – go. And go now .”

MANAGEMENT NEWS UPDATE

ALAS, after just 18 months of ineffectual bureaucratic middle management in the dull style, it’s time to bid farewell to the city council’s apprentice of the dark arts, babyfaced chief lawyer, LIAM “MALFOY” NEVIN.

This is a very quick exit indeed for the Warwickshire country boy as he becomes the first of Chief Exec LADY GAGA’S expensively assembled senior management team, just launched in the new year, to head for the door.

But why? Did Malfoy JUMP or was he PUSHED? Well, while it’s virtually impossible for a chief legal officer to be fired, rumours persist that Lady Gaga’s dark lord – ‘He Who Will Not Put Anything In Writing’ – private sector-friendly Business Change director MAX WIDE “BOY” was less than impressed with Malfoy’s style in general and his outmoded insistence on adhering to the law in particular.

Clearly such a dated attitude to government isn’t suited to ‘Uncle’ George’s ‘whacky’ buccaneering style of politics where nothing can stand in the way of getting jugglers on street corners to replace traditional public services.

Meanwhile we’re starting to get an insight into WIDEBOY. Trousering a healthy six-figure bung every year to take responsibility for ‘business change’, ‘efficiency’ and other euphemisms for the destruction of public services, Wideboy – a former outsourcing salesman for BT – isn’t one for explaining to the electorate exactly how he’s slicing £80m out of the council’s budget.

At a recent meeting – conveniently arranged in the MIDDLE OF AUGUST – of the new Business Change and Resources Scrutiny Commission of councillors, Wideboy had to deliver THREE reports to councillors detailing his various cuts packages.

However, no written reports were forthcoming from Wideboy. Instead councillors were treated to VERBAL PRESENTATIONS, allowing Wideboy to dodge any accountability whatsoever for what he’s up to.

This characteristic brew of arrogance, idleness and mendacity from a senior boss, being paid a fortune, didn’t seem to trouble our gormless councillors, however, who all seemed happy enough with the dodgy arrangement.

NAZI ZIP SHIT

John Hirst: An angry man with a fowl temper

John ‘FUHRER’ Hirst

You expect to read crap in the Bristol NAZI POST all year round but they really excelled themselves in August with an endless stream of aimless stories about a naff plan to put a pointless ZIP WIRE across the Avon Gorge as some kind of tourist attraction.

The plan seemed to be the brainchild of JOHN “FUHRER” HIRST, the former Broadmead Fuhrer who has now been handed strategic command of the DESTINATION BRISTOL Reichsbunker to promote tourism.

In a blitzkrieg of drivel, der Fuhrer detailed his plan to climb up Uncle George’s backside and get on the mayor’s crappy circus bandwagon of turning the centre of our city into an enormous and slightly crap Disneyfied theme park:

“My dream is that someone who lives in Clifton and works in Bedminster could get there by zip wire!” waffled the Fuhrer.

What a splendidly practical and inclusive idea that is. Touted to be just £25 a go, the Fuhrer and his creative hipster constituency must be really raking it in if they can spend £25 on just getting to work every morning!