Author Archives: Jooohn Ag

BRISTOL’S MISSING MONEY SCANDAL CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM AS CASH LOSS BOSS QUITS

Who’s this manager urgently clearing their desk at Bristol City Council – and collecting a large wedge of redundancy cash?

Why, it’s only the Head of Security Services, PETE ‘PANSY’ PARKINSON, whose department is at the centre of an on-going and seemingly endless investigation into missing cash-in-transit money at the council (see The BRISTOLIAN #4.8). That’s now more than six months and counting…

No doubt it can only be purely coincidental that one of TONY HARVEY‘s subordinate bullies should choose this difficult time – just as a financial investigation breathes down his neck – to jump ship?

Meanwhile, dark rumours from within his department that all was not well when auditors searched Pansy’s computer recently can now, presumably, be quietly disregarded?

WOTTA DOCKER SHOCKA! MORE BULLYING EXPOSED AT BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL…

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TOP COUNCIL MANAGERS TURN A BLIND EYE TO BONKERS BOSS’S BIZARRE BEHAVIOUR ON THE DOCKS

The BRISTOLIAN can reveal that the city council’s DOCKS SERVICE is at the centre of a BULLYING SCANDAL stretching back years.

Bristol City Council’s docks boss Tony Nichols considers how to keep the scurvy sea dogs under him in line

Staff at the docks service, based at Underfall yard, have been persistently bullied by docks boss CAPTAIN TONY ‘AHAB’ NICHOLS and documents seen by The BRISTOLIAN reveal that he has even been openly targeting union representatives, apparently with impunity. As usual, senior council bosses’ response, despite a huge amount of evidence against Cap’n Ahab, has been LIMP AND PATHETIC.

Last year staff even uncovered an email from Ahab to his supervisory team (or “wankers” as he calls them when they’re not around) that openly attacked highly skilled and knowledgeable docks staff and union reps by name for being lazy and incompetent.

He accused them of “sitting on their backsides doing nothing”; “doing next to nothing for £17k a year” and claimed “99% of [people] would make a better job of it after 2 weeks training”.

He even had a pop at the public trying to use his increasingly poor and inaccessible service, saying we “need to plan our lives a bit better” to suit his crappy timetable! He then rounded off his email by explaining how he was dumbing down his staffs’ jobs so he could cut their paltry wages and benefits further!

When staff complained last year, Ahab’s bosses finally agreed to launch an investigation into this MAD MANAGER. However, the investigation lasted so long that the boss running the investigation retired before it was complete!

Council bosses then held a DISCIPLINARY HEARING IN SECRET for Ahab, which called no witnesses and decided that the best course of action was for staff to attend an equalities workshop and for Cap’n Ahab to deliver an apology to his staff and then let him to carry on as usual!

Staff are reported to be less than impressed with this outcome and tensions within the department are reputed to be “very high indeed” while there’s increasing evidence of “reduced performance in the service” while “sickness levels have soared”.

Our expert in workplace psychology says, “it’s pretty clear to any objective observer that Nichols is unfit for purpose and cannot do the job he’s paid to do. He appears to be suffering from a personality disorder of some kind and maybe other untreated mental health problems. He is simply NOT FIT TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for his staff or even to behave in a socially acceptable manner.”

“Basically long-suffering dock workers are being managed by a nutter and no one’s doing anything about it.”

FORGED DRUG RECORDS CLAIMS AT ‘HORROR HOUSE’ NURSING HOME HOLMWOOD

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As part of our ongoing investigation local private care home of horrors HOLMWOOD HOUSE, where we have reported the concerns of family members over several resident deaths and allegations of neglect, The BRISTOLIAN has taken delivery of a large bundle of medical documents. These relate to the management and distribution of controlled drugs there in 2013 – when the home was briefly managed by a State Registered Nurse (SRN), SIMONE SMITH.

We understand that the police have studied these documents and confirmed that a considerable number of them contain FORGED SIGNATURES. At present it is unclear who was responsible for the forgeries, as the police appear to have discontinued their inquiry.

Also in the bundle is evidence of a DRUG AUDIT ordered by then-manager Smith which was conducted by struck-off nurse ISLA MEEK, who was working at the home as a “consultant”.

There’s little doubt Meek did the work, as the audit was produced on the headed business paper of ‘Isla Meek Consulting’. Obviously, a struck-off nurse should not be involved in any way in the management of controlled drugs at a nursing home.

in a further extraordinary twist, Smith is now using these dodgy drug audits herself as evidence to get another former nurse from the home STRUCK OFF by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). A hearing is expected later this year.

Smith left Holmwood House in the Autumn of 2013 and is now employed by Four Seasons Healthcare as a manager at OAKTREE CARE HOME in Yate. Four Seasons Healthcare rejects any claims of wrongdoing regarding Smith, and told The BRISTOLIAN that Bristol City Council’s Safeguarding Team have described Smith as “a whistleblower”!

Although, as far as we can tell, the only whistleblowing Smith could have done would be in regards to her own management of controlled drugs.

Forged drug records? Bent audits? The Holmwood House affair gets a whole lot murkier…

KNOW YOUR ENEMY #1: MAX WIDE ‘BOY’ – BRISTOL’S NEW ‘STRATEGIC DIRECTOR FOR BUSINESS CHANGE’

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MAX WIDE ‘BOY’ - There'll be hell toupee with him in charge...

MAX WIDE ‘BOY’: Hell toupee with him in charge…

A visit to Bristol from Julian Silverman of the Barnet Alliance For Public Services has shone some light on Mayor Fergo’s recent appointment of MAX WIDE ‘BOY’ as his ‘Strategic Director for Business Change’.

Julian is an anti-cuts campaigner who has been fighting wholesale privatisation at the so-called ‘Easy Council’ which runs the London Borough of Barnet. Its mass privatisation of local services, named after budget airline EasyJet, was personally organised by Wide Boy when he was Barnet’s Director of Planning whilst on secondment from BT. It was always unclear whether Wide Boy was actually working for BT or the council.

Wide Boy quickly became notorious in Barnet for coining odd and sinister catchphrases such as “LEARN TO LOVE A RECESSION” and “NEVER WASTE A GOOD CRISIS” – and Julian explained how Wide Boy’s weirdo statements seem to have come straight out of the pages of a Naomi Klein book, The Shock Doctrine.

The book describes an extreme free market economic dogma that creates or manipulates economic crises to justify the mass transfer of public wealth and resources into the hands of the private sector. Usually at knockdown prices and always involving the transfer of wealth from us – the poor – to them – the rich.

Wideboy will be commuting to Bristol daily from LEAFY FROME, where he campaigns in his spare time to get supermarkets built, and it is obvious he is being brought in to deliver Mayor Redpants’ mass privatisation agenda for our public services.

Watch this space…

WHO PAYS FOR THESE PONCE HOLES?!

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Commentary on recent arts funding cuts – and who they really affect – from The BRISTOLIAN‘s Arts Correspondent…

Any of you readers ever venture into Bristol Old Vic? Watershed? Arnolfini? No? Didn’t think so.

Yet you, me and the rest of Bristol’s working class are expected to fund these artsy, fartsy PONCE HOLES every year through our Council Tax. Not a tenner here or a tenner there, but hundreds of thousands of pounds are given each year from our pockets to fund these unnecessary, unprofitable middle class cultural centres.

Meanwhile that smug prick the Mayor and his arse-licking councillors are more than happy to shut down libraries and day centres and cut back on essential services for Bristol’s pensioners and disabled.

According to them if the things we need don’t make a profit then they must be PRIVATISED OR CLOSED DOWN.

Working class culture is something that scares these arseholes. They don’t want large groups of Bristolians meeting up in case we

start sussing out what a con their capitalist system is and start doing something about it. So they are happy to shut down our pubs (for example, try and find a boozer in Knowle), raise ticket prices at the football, or unleash more riot cops in town of a weekend to drive us out.

They don’t want us going out talking to each other; they want us to work for them, fuck off home and slowly rot away watching moronic zombie TV. Then our rulers can sleep in peace with their profits, whilst the STREETS ARE EMPTY. Meanwhile we pay for fucking middle class arseholes called Rupert or Tristram to have a jolly good night out at the Old Vic, Wankershed or Analphoney. Well fuck that…it’s time to turn off the TV and go meet these privileged scum who we’re paying for.

If they won’t spread the wealth about equally, then maybe it’s about time we spread the violence about.

ARTS HOLES: CUTS CAUSE LUVVIE RAGE FOR FERGO’S ‘BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE’

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Watershed’s big swinging Dick Penny

A rare outbreak of common sense last month from Labour’s Southville councillor SEAN ‘DADDY’S BOY’ BEYNON called for a ten per cent cut in the generous handouts for the city’s Key Arts Providers (KAP) as part of the city’s recent slash-and-burn budget.

Naturally there was an explosion of rage from the city’s wealthy and influential luvvie lobby at this small challenge to their large sense of entitlement.

The rage was mingled with disbelief at how anybody could question the overwhelming social value of stuff like the BRISTOL OLD VIC’s latest effort – a five hour, state-subsidised overblown theatrical production of an overwrought Victorian potboiler, Jane Eyre, organised by a Cambridge graduate with a terrible wardrobe!

Legendary local luvvie DICK ‘THE DISRUPTOR’ PENNY, soon waded in with some back-of-the- fag-packet calculations to “prove” that this kind of marginal nonsense is in fact an economic powerhouse for the city and that our luvvie legions are doing a selfless and remarkable job for the masses.

“Combined turnover of not for profit arts and museums organisations in the West of England last year was £55m,” huffed Penny, “and that’s a pretty major return on BCC investment.”

“And none of this takes into account the huge benefit to social cohesion, education, tourism and inward investment,” he puffed. Although he failed to produce a shred of evidence to back up his claims – and what the hell is “social cohesion” anyway?

What he also failed to explain is how this small cut, which would amount to just £100k, would have any effect whatsoever on an industry with a turnover of £55m. Are we meant to believe that a reduction of just one fifth of one per cent of its turnover is going to bring this industry to its knees?

Penny further neglected to point out that one organisation, WATERSHED, receives city council grants in excess of £300k in 2013, which, er … Pays his wages! He also neglected to point out that an increase of just one pound in cinema tickets for the very well-heeled ABC1 audience his venue attracts would make in the region of £100k a year!

So that’s what “social cohesion” is all about, then: the poorest directly subsidising elitist entertainment and the wages of the wealthiest.

WORKERS REVOLT AGAINST HORSEWORLD BOSSES?

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After having their ridiculous plan to sell off land to developers (who planned to build more than a hundred high-end houses on the site) turned down by BANES council, in February HorseWorld’s bosses threw a hissy fit and shuttered the charity’s visitor centre.

Managing Director Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen and his team also started doling out redundancy notices to long-suffering staff – as well as setting the legal rottweilers onto The BRISTOLIAN for publishing the truth.

Yes, just as Pinocchiowen and his clique were getting down to making some of the strangest business decisions ever – such as closing down a vital revenue stream and the charity’s strongest connection to the wider public – they also decided to try and impose a media blackout. To achieve this they hired tinpot law firm Burges Salmon to try and put the frighteners on local news sources, threatening all sorts of badness to anyone who dared to report on Owen’s crazy antics.

But whilst this might have worked on the student hacks of Bristol University’s Epigram paper, it did not on your super soaraway ‘Smiter’. We called their bluff and pointed out that in ten months of highly accurate, detailed reporting on HorseWorld we had heard not a peep from them claiming anything we printed was wrong.

Since then the legal threats have dried up, and a number of other outlets, including the Nazi Post, BBC Bristol, ITV West, The Week In and the Western Daily Press have all since published critical pieces. Funny, that!

Meanwhile, the situation for those who actually look after animals is looking increasingly rocky. Twenty-four workers face the boot, for no reason other than their bosses made a balls-up of the management of the charity. On a positive note, despite Owen & Co trying to keep all of this under wraps, staff are fighting back, with around half those under threat now represented by the GMB union.

Owen might yet lose that prized Audi…

THE RAIN IN SPAIN FALLS MAINLY ON THE… ASTROTURF?!

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Commentary from The BRISTOLIAN‘s Football Correspondent…

While politicians and many fans cling to the belief that stadiums on the greenbelt for pros are the key to success, a GRASSROOTS FOOTBALL CRISIS unfolds before them.

Over the last two months, virtually no competitive youth football took place in the city. Poorly maintained pitches with poor drainage were waterlogged after heavy rain.

Our man not on the touchline but inside playing PlayStation with the kids says, “if a child missed eight weeks of school, they’d fall behind. WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT FOOTBALL?”

Young people have sussed this. An under-14 at Rockleaze Rangers FC, told The Guardian recently about Spain’s youth, who rarely play on grass, so “learn from a young age to play well”.

He’s right. A grass pitch can hold three games a week. Artificial pitches can host 60 teams for training plus matches and they’re usually floodlit for play at night.

The technically extravagant and tactically sophisticated Spaniards will be competing for a fourth consecutive major title in Brazil this summer.

Meanwhile, England has not won a trophy for 48 years.

So, what’s your stance on grass versus artificial surfaces? Is astroturf the thin edge of a privatising wedge that will rob us of our last open, free-to-all green spaces, as happened at Packer’s Field? Let us know!

THE WHISTLEBLOWERS AND THE UNRELIABLE UNION REP

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The whistleblowers at the heart of Bristol City Council’s never-ending MARKET SERVICE SCANDAL had the misfortune to be represented – for a fortunately brief time in 2012 – by a congenital idiot, Bristol Unison’s CLYTUS ‘CLIT ARSE’ WILLIAMS.

An ex-public schoolboy who waltzes around the Council House in a bow-tie sucking up to managers, he brushes off the endless complaints he gets from members losing their jobs by telling them “you don’t understand the language”.

Despite being told by his whistleblowing members in markets in July 2012 not to sign off on TONY HARVEY‘s inept and mendacious restructuring plan for the service because (a) it was a load of bollocks and (b) its only purpose was to remove them from their jobs, Clit Arse, in a fine example of trade union democracy in action, signed off the plan on behalf of the unions anyway!

Consequently, two of his members, one of whom was a legally acknowledged whistleblower, LOST THEIR JOBS! While it has since turned out that the restructure was indeed a load of bollocks that’s created a service whose FINANCES ARE STILL ‘OF CONCERN’ 18 MONTHS LATER with nobody left in the department who can sort it out. What a result!

Backing bent count bosses over dues paying union members and legitimate whistleblowers is no biggie for local Labour Party member Clit Arse, though. He has form for SCREWING OVER HIS OWN UNION MEMBERS – especially the politically active ones.

in 2007 when he was chairman of Unison’s obscure national Standing Orders Committee he formally complained that a satirical cartoon of the three wise monkeys (see no evil – hear no evil – speak no evil) produced by some left-wing activist members to take the piss out of his stupid and obstructive little committee was racist and he encouraged Unison to discipline the four members responsible. This subsequently happened and the members were banned from holding office at the union.

The farcical case eventually ended up at an employment tribunal and COST UNISON OVER £800,000 while Clit Arse’s evidence given under oath was labelled – and we quote – “NOT CREDIBLE” by the tribunal’s chair.

The fall-out from the case also saw four London Unison branches fall apart and go in to special measures, leaving union members unable to fight local authority bosses and public service privatisation.

In comparison, a mere corpse and a piffling £165k-worth of unaccounted for public money is but a trifle for this particular careerist union boss…

DIM TIM IN THIN SPIN DIN! RUMOUR-MONGERING COUNCIL PRESS BOSS BORRETT HAS TROUBLE COMMUNICATING…

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Looks like the council has appointed yet another congenital idiot to run its press operation.

Step forward ‘DIM’ TIM BORRETT, previously a lowly press assistant who stepped into the hot seat a few months ago when his chum the West Wing-loving Peter ‘Claudia Jean’ Holt was finally shipped out by the all- new council management when they instantly discovered he was a useless twat.

Anyway, it seems Dim Tim, yet another chancer who fancies himself as spin doctor, is already briefing the Nazi Post ‘OFF THE RECORD’.

Oh dear. Does Tim not realise that any statement released by the council to the press can be attributed to him as the man in charge of the Press Office?

Isn’t the whole point of him earning a large wedge as media boss that he take responsibility for what appears in the press on behalf of the council? The idea he can shirk his responsibility and avoid accountability by describing himself as “a City Council source” or some other ridiculous fabrication is patently absurd. We all know it’s you, Borrett, you silly, silly boy.

We’ve also been reliably informed that at the time of his appointment last year, Borrett was very friendly with former press boss, Claudia Jean Holt and he appears to have got his break in Bristol as Claudia Jean’s right hand man after regularly visiting the bellyflopping press boss in Bristol so they could play zombie games together!! How cosy.

Prior to pitching up in Bristol, Borrett was something of a BIG TIME MEDIA OPERATOR in the sleepy Devon resort of Budleigh Salterton, where he kept local farmers and assorted yokels up- to-date on various muckspreading issues on behalf of East Devon Council.

How times don’t change…