Author Archives: Jooohn Ag

THE ELECTION SECTION – MAY 2014 PREVIEW!

STORMIN’ NORMAN

Firebrand social care campaigner and friend of The BRISTOLIAN, Mr STEVE ‘STORMIN’ NORMAN, who’s recently been shaking things up at the council and elsewhere over the Holmwood House scandal, has declared he will be running for council as an independent candidate for Avonmouth in the May local elections.

This might disappoint Labour, who have their old stager JOHN ‘BUMBLE’ BEES lined up and would be hoping to keep the seat, currently held by their washed-up ex-MP, Doug Naysmith.

Norman will be running on a ticket attacking the council’s abysmal record in social care, which as well as embarrassing the city council may well expose Labour’s COULDN’T-GIVE-A-TOSS-PRIVATISE-THE-LOT attitude to social care in the city.

JANKE QUITS

Meanwhile, the current cabinet boss for social care, BARBARA JANKE will announce she will not be running for her Clifton seat again.

Janke has had little influence in changing the dismal quality of residential social care provided by private providers in the city and instead has been acting as little more than a mouthpiece for council managers determined to cover up the lethal state of privatised residential care in the city.

A suitably fitting damp squib finale for this politician of the second rank.

PAEDOS AND FOGHORNS

Over in the alternative universe occupied by INDYREDPANTS FOR BRISTOL – the political party that says it’s not a political party – it looks like business as usual to us with the endorsement by IfB of Stella Perrett as its candidate in Redland.

She, you may recall, is a close former friend and associate of disgraced local Lib Dem kiddie porn aficionado councillor John Astley, who in 2004 was convicted for his paedo peccadilloes – as well as a number of electoral fraud charges which, err, The Artist Formerly Known As Stella Hender also faced!

Meanwhile, the Redpants’ foghorn-voiced closet Tory boss, Mayor Fergo’s pal STEPHEN ‘UNSPARKLING’ PERRY, has “fast-tracked” himself to become the candidate for Clifton, effectively replacing one enormously embarrassing candidate – BRENDA ‘WISE MONKEY’ MCLENNAN, the Analphoney’s innumerate bean counter – with another enormously embarrassing candidate – himself!

This new politics looks strangely like the old politics, doesn’t it?

70% OF BRISTOLIANS CAN’T BE WRONG?

The local elections take place on Thursday 22 May 2014, along with the non-event of the European elections.

As many as 70% of people in Bristol will not vote. And who can really blame them?

Will it make any difference?

NEVER MIND THE NEWS, FEEL THE P.R!

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An article in the Press Gazette catches the eye. “First for Torquay police as they publish story straight to Herald Express website,” is the headline.

The story explains: “Police in Torquay celebrated a first yesterday as they published a story directly on to the Herald Express website after being granted “publisher rights”.

The Torquay Herald Express is part of the LOCAL WORLD group – which also now own Bristol’s Nazi Post – and Local World’s chief executive David ‘Rommel’ Montgomery says he wants his journalists to be “HARVESTERS OF CONTENT” and that he wants these kinds of self-publishing arrangements for hospitals, schools, businesses, sport, education and culture too.

This is no doubt a dream come true for the likes of Mayor Fergo, the coppers, Merchant Venturers, dodgy health service managers and anyone else looking to peddle convenient lies to the public.

So look out for PR guff, spin and plain lies coming soon to a certain newspaper website near you soon…

WHY PRIVATISATION MATTERS TO EVERYONE…

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Writes The BRISTOLIAN‘s Social Care Correspondent:

So what’s this privatisation of public services thing all about, then?

Well, If you believe the papers, it’s the improvement of services because the workers who deliver them presently are lazy, incompetent, uneconomical and probably have a better pension than you. What a load of arse!

For starters most of the companies that are bidding to run our services also have shares in the media companies that peddle this one-sided MISINFORMATION.

The privatisation of public services means that large companies are providing services for the sick, elderly and vulnerable for financial gain. They have a legal duty towards their shareholders to MAXIMISE PROFIT – a duty that outweighs the rights of the service users or staff, who are often untrained, under resourced and on zero hours contracts with few checks on their background.

We are told that quangos like the Care Quality Commission monitor privatised care Well, they’ve inspected Holmwood House on numerous occasions and the home has FAILED EVERY TIME but they’ve been allowed to carry on regardless and people have died in the meantime.

After you’ve worked all your life and paid your National Insurance, you’d be hoping for some kindness and care with dignity. Tough. In all likelihood you’ll be laying there with your pyjamas round your ankles waiting for some sixteen year old on the Minimum Wage to perform a bowel evacuation on you. Her first time… Just like yours!

After all, they don’t want you being a nuisance and SHITTING YOURSELF because you’re in bed all day with nobody to take you to the toilet.

Meanwhile all that money you raised by selling your house to pay for it will wing its way to the Cayman Islands accounts of a private ‘care provider’. Fucking perky!

Let’s get down the Council House and do a bowel evacuation on those that are flogging off our care and see how they like it.

Anybody fancy some BRISTOLIAN-branded rubber gloves..?

“LIVES AT RISK” IN BRISTOL’S DAY CENTRES AS ‘COST CUTTING’ BY BARMY BOSSES SLASHES SERVICES FOR VULNERABLE PEOPLE

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After The BRISTOLIAN blew the lid on the dangerous understaffing in Day Centres – which have seen service users with dementia and learning difficulties being lumped together despite the clear risks (see issue #4.11) – you would have thought that the BUNGLING BOSSES responsible would do something.

We stated that centres were running at nearly 50% staff absences. Things have now got even worse, with dim-witted managers making more than twenty people redundant!

Many of those ‘restructured’ out of their jobs were glad to be out and away from the CHAOS – yet also very concerned for those left behind and expected to work miracles with nowhere near the resources necessary.

Sources we have spoken to describe “a tangible fear that someone will die soon”.

Meanwhile management has started to realise that it will have to get casual workers in to plug the gaps, as even the lamentable Care Quality Commission won’t let them get away with such CHRONIC UNDER-STAFFING.

But here’s the kicker: the casual workers brought in – costing the council more money than the permanent staff – are likely to be the exact same people they made redundant only last month. That’s right – whilst they DEVASTATE the service, the idiots in charge can’t even save money.

It’s enough to make you wonder who has the learning difficulties.

GREEN GUS GETS THE GLOBE TROTS (AT YOUR EXPENSE!)

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What’s this curious spreadsheet all about that’s arrived in The BRISTOLIAN‘s inbox?

Why, it’s only the foreign travel expenses for that formidable Green Party anti-car campaigner and supposed environmen- talist SIR GUS HOYTY-TOYTY.

Clearly the Cabinet member for hot air and gaffes has taken the austerity message to heart and confined himself to just the SIX European trips at our expense between April and September 2013 and he’s only taken a plane TWICE.

Total cost to the council taxpayer for these jollies is a mere £2,135 in travel costs (excluding accommodation) and he’s burned around 550 kilos of carbon.

Can there be any doubt Sir Gus’s vital international environmental and humanitarian work to save our children’s futures more than justifies these planet-wrecking plane trips?

And no way does he look like a big fat gormless buffoon…

GAGA’S ‘ENTERPRISING’ RE-RELOCATION SEES HENGROVE SNUBBED!

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Looks like Mayor Fergo’s increasingly isolated and absurd Chief Exec NICOLA ‘LADY GAGA’ YATES has managed to piss of a lot of her staff who’ve been dispatched to ABU GHRAIB, her ugly new City Council headquarters on Temple Street.

Now Gaga has announced that 155 of these staff, having been forcibly removed from the so-called Park View Campus in Hengrove to this new hellhole HQ, are to be MOVED BACK AGAIN after just a few months to make way for Gaga and her entourage who’ve decided they want the space temporarily while the Council House is refurbished.

The BRISTOLIAN understands that horrifying snob Gaga rejected out of hand a temporary move to Hengrove, insisting she needed to be near the ‘Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone’ (see issue #4.5) and what she calls the “business community”. Although an insider told us, “to be honest, I think she just likes hanging around wealthy people, and there’s not many of them in Hengrove.”

Staff who are being forced to make way for Gaga and her growing gang of OVERPAID HANGERS-ON are said to be fuming. We’ve heard of at least two who sold their cars once they no longer needed to travel to south Bristol every day. What happens to them now? Will Gaga compensate them?

And how much has this pointless escapade cost the council taxpayer?

BALD-FACED VOTE RIGGING AS HILLCREST HEAD NIXES POLL: ‘ANTI-UNIFORM PARENTS ARE REVOLTING’!

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All is not well in the once boho suburb of Totterdown… Or rather, all is not well among the parents of the local Primary School, HILLCREST – one of the last schools in the city not trussing up young kids in nasty nylon uniforms for their own good.

As reported in The BRISTOLIAN #4.10, the promised referendum of parents has now taken place at the school on the vexed issue of introducing a uniform and, in a small victory for the area’s dwindling liberals over the gentrifying corporate hordes, 52% of parents said ‘thanks but no thanks’ and voted against. Alas, this wasn’t good enough for the school’s bosses, Headteacher Tim ‘Baldy’ Browse and chair of governors Julia ‘Thick’ Skinner. They immediately announced that they planned to INTRODUCE A UNIFORM ANYWAY!

Cue uproar, Facebook spats, playground rows and fuming complaints as Thick and Baldy were besieged by outraged parents.

Matters then took a turn for the worse when Thick Skinner published a post on her widely-read blog condemning complaining parents as “school bullies” whose complaints were “pointless” and full of “aggressive, intimidating vitriol”! When this predictably stirred up even more anger, she then pulled it down, perhaps not realising that nothing is every really deleted from the web… You’ll never pass your ICT exam with clangers like that!

Meanwhile, presumably not wishing to get left behind in the total nutjob stakes, Baldy Browse has started issuing DARK THREATS that he may be investigating parents comments about the school on Facebook. Oooerrr missus!

What kind of city do we live in when primary school managers with support from council bosses start compiling secret intelligence dossiers on parents who oppose school uniforms?

‘NO FUN’ PARK BYELAWS BROUHAHA BACKFIRES ON FERGUSON & HOYT!

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BRISTOL BIGWIGS HAVE HISTORY FOR THIS SORT OF THING…

If our illustrious millionaire mayor George Ferguson and his idiot boy wonder Councillor Augustus Hoyt have it their way, it’s soon going to be illegal to climb trees, play ball games or skateboard in Bristol Parks.

The LUDICROUS BYELAWS these nobs tried to rush through council the other week hit the national press and threatened to trash Bristol’s reputation as a ‘fun city’. The nationally publicised backlash frightened Fergo, who then bottled it like the cheap snake oil salesman he is. He pulled the byelaws out from a vote (at least for now) and forced his ‘Assistant Mayor’ Hoyt to appear on the local telly news to defend the policy – just as he was putting it on hold!

Ass Mayor Gusty Hoyt - a shaved chimp who hates kids, ball games and free family fun in the park?

Ass Mayor Gusty Hoyt – a ‘shaved chimpanzee’ who hates kids, ball games and free family fun in the park?

But whilst amusing to watch Gusty sweat like a PARTIALLY-SHAVED CHIMPANZEE with glandular problems in the face of a mild probing from Ian Axton, the whole fiasco also underlined an age-old point. When nobs who think they own our city bang on about ‘public freedoms’, they mean that there are only two types of ‘fun’ allowed in our streets and parks: stuff organised by them (like the boring official ‘street festivals’ in town); or commercial events they can profit from, like the Arc Festival.

If you don’t fit into these categories then at best you’ll be nicked and fined, at worst riot police go in and you’ll be kissing truncheons (like in Easton at the impromptu Thatcher’s Dead street party).

Bristol’s international reputation for free, self-organised fun is based on things like the original Ashton Court Festival, St Paul’s Carnival and ‘free parties’ in general. But it will always be under threat from posh tossers like Fergo and Hoytie-Toyty, who just don’t get it, and never will.
None of this is new. For hundreds of years Bristolians have been fighting over control of public space.

Back in the 17th century after the Church had stopped a land grab by GREEDY CLIFTON MERCHANTS (things don’t change), College Green became a popular place for recreation. Trouble was Bristolians weren’t interested in going to Church but just wanted to hang out and have a laugh.

In 1634 a report sponsored by Archbishop Thomas Laud stated:

…it is made a receptacle for all idle persons to spend their time in stopball and such lyke recreations, even of times from morning until night, the time of divine service not excepted.

Ironically in 2001, the Dean of Bristol Cathedral complained about disturbances to his services by skateboarders on College Green (who weren’t interested in church, funnily enough) and started a campaign to get a byelaw forbidding skateboarding to be enforced. In the summer of 2007 the police served a ‘dispersal order’ on College Green and the surrounding area for the period of the school holidays.

The order was aimed at the SKATEBOARDERS and other youth who had gathered on College Green for many years. Bristolian youngsters reacted in style with demonstrations and an active media campaign protesting against the order.

The fight over College Green continues to this very day, but in nearby Brandon Hill the battle was lost over a century ago.

Overlooking the whole city, Brandon Hill in the 17th and 18th centuries was symbolic as the ‘PEOPLE’S HILL’, where Bristolians came to play, party, meet and demonstrate.

However, after the 1831 ‘riots’ – essentially a violent attack on Bristol’s wealthy elite – the rich began to move in droves up to Clifton as they were too scared to be near the working class areas of central Bristol. The last thing these posh types wanted was a free party or a working-class demonstration going on just up the road.

It comes as no surprise that one of the first police stations in Bristol was built on Brandon Hill in 1836 to keep an eye on working class Bristolians having a party, whilst the real colonial thieves and SLAVE-TRADING CRIMINALS lived right round the corner.

In the 1840s, the People’s Hill was the scene of mass Chartist meetings and demonstrations, calling for democracy for everyone not just the wealthy. This frightened the rich Cliftonites, who began a long campaign to stop the demonstrations and get control of the People’s Hill.

In the late 19th century, after a series of sneaky legal manoeuvres, they managed to get the top of Brandon Hill covered in rock gardens to stop any parties or gatherings, and celebrated their victory by planning to build a massive statue of slave-trader Edward Colston overlooking the city!

In the end they settled for Cabot Tower, a monument to their robbing and enslavement of the New World. Brandon Hill was completed sanitised and has so many byelaws that most Bristolians don’t bother with it. It was transformed from the People’s Hill to Nobs’ Hill in just one hundred years.

So, bollocks to their byelaws – The ‘Smiter’ says ‘Fight for the Right to Party’, just like Bristolians have done for centuries!

EMPTY PITCH SHOCK AS G.F.A. WASTES MONEY ON WHITE ELEPHANT NO ONE USES WHILST COMMUNITY FOOTBALL REMAINS UNDERFUNDED

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Bristol football clubs have been astounded by the activities of the Gloucestershire Football Association (GFA). Last year the GFA opened a new 3G astroturf pitch COSTING NEARLY ONE MILLION QUID at its Oaklands Park headquarters in Almondsbury.

The GFA have been crowing about their new ‘Real Madrid’ standard pitch, which replaced a perfectly good grass surface. The problem is that the Almondsbury HQ, seven miles outside the city centre, normally only hosts cup finals and one or two other games a year. So what’s the point of this expensive luxury when the city’s football clubs are suffering from under-maintained grass pitches and changing rooms?

In an article in the Nazi Post last December the GFA openly admitted that their 3G pitch was so underused they had resorted to getting Aztec West office workers to have a kick about on it during lunchtimes.

Why did the GFA make the decision to build it in the first place, rather than spreading the money around the hundreds of amateur clubs who make up their association? Many of these clubs desperately need money to improve their grass pitches and changing facilities, especially with all the council cuts.

Instead the GFA have turned their backs on their members so they could modernise their own facilities using the Bristol clubs’ subscription money and grants for ‘community football’ from the Football Foundation. How does this benefit Bristol football clubs and the ‘community’?

Looks like Bristol footballers’ money has been squandered on a criminally underused and massively expensive white elephant….

BRISTOL ARTS SECTOR DOWN THE SHITTER AS INFAMOUS ‘URINAL BOSS’ BRINDLEY SLASHES OVER ARNOLFINI!

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Following The BRISTOLIAN‘s report last month about the city’s crisis-hit upper class gallery-bar-cinema Arnolfini, it seems that the management team there has decided the best way to right the good ship Analphoney is to appoint KATE ‘SLASHER’ BRINDLEY as Interim Director.

Slasher, a contemporary art bullshitter of the highest order and a former director of Bristol City Council’s Museums Service, is popular among Bristol’s arty-farty/luvvie nexus for her role in bringing the Banksy exhibition to Bristol in 2009 – and because they’ve never had to actually work for her.

However, she is less fondly remembered by staff in the Museums Service, where she FIRED MORE THAN THIRTY WORKERS and downgraded and de-skilled the whole of the expert curatorial staff to save a few quid.

After all, who needs any knowledge or expertise to care for the load of crap created in the modern art self-promotion industry?

Museums insiders have told The BRISTOLIAN that if the ‘Phoney’s in financial trouble and Slasher’s at the helm, then the gallery’s 24 staff will inevitably be TARGETED FOR CUTS. They have been warned.

So what has Slasher been doing with herself during her five years away from Bristol? Well, she’s been the boss of Middlesborough’s controversial Arts Council-funded contemporary art gallery, MiMA – so any hopes the ‘Phoney has that Brindley will be increasing their visitor numbers may be premature.

Whilst at MiMA Slasher actually oversaw A DRASTIC FALL in visitor numbers at the unpopular gallery, and in 2012 a group of Middlesborough residents branded her gallery “THE MOST EXPENSIVE PUBLIC URINAL IN THE WORLD”.

The claim was made after a group of residents sat in the gallery’s cafe for a week and counted visitors to the white elephant. They discovered that more people visited the gallery to use the loos than to see Slasher’s boring exhibitions!

Middlesborough Council later published their own visitor figures for the week, which were much higher – but included 212 visitors on a Monday when the place was closed. They later had to admit that this was because they counted people who walked through the gallery’s car park as visitors!

The latest fun and games at the Analphoney began on 1 April (when else?) when Slasher took up her post. It remains to be seen who the fool is – the ‘Phoney’s trustees for hiring her, or us for footing the bill come the inevitable bail-out…