16 April 2021: Bristol Labour politicians had their photos taken at Brislington Meadows, insisting they would be saving a Site of Nature conservation Interest (SNCI).
23 June 2023 Bristol Labour politicians had their photos taken at Yew Tree Farm insisting they would save an SNCI.
12 September 2023: Bristol Labour politicians had their photos taken at Blackswarth Road Wood at Crews Hole Road insisting they would save an SNCI.
30 November 2023: Bristol Labour politicians vote to develop South Bristol Crematorium next to Yew Tree Farm, an SNCI – no photos available.
Has Bristol City Council’s posh clown Monitoring Officer, “Li’l” Tim O’Gara, broken the law? A recent meeting of the council’s optimistically named Value and Ethics Committee revealed that Bristol has not upheld a complaint against a politician in over six years. Not impressing residents who’ve made complaints.
One complaint was about Asher “The Slasher” Craig’s private company receiving payments from Bristol City Council that personally involved “Li’l” Tim. Another revealed that “Li’l” Tim kept two separate registers of interest for the mayor. One public, one private with different entries!
Oversight of “Li’ll” Tim’s handling of complaints, so far, has been from a so-called “independent person”, appointed by ‘Li’l’ Tim whose identity is a secret.
When grilled by residents why the “independent person” wasn’t appointed in public at Full Council as required by the Localism Act, “Li’l” Tim explained, “it would be a complete misreading of the legislation to think that the appointment would need to be made by Full Council.”
Such a “misreading”, in fact, that at Full Council on 14 November an “independent person” was set to be hurriedly appointed by councillors as the law asks!
Has “Li’l” Tim been caught red-handed breaking the law?
Highly paid consultant blames parents and asylum seekers for huge overspends in SEND
Vanessa Wilson: Interim Director of Racist Scapegoating
Enormous overspends emerging in the council’s SEND budget are not the fault of council bosses squandering money on private sector rip-off artists; spying on parents or paying providers not to deliver SEND services we’ve paid them to deliver.
Turns out, instead, the overspend is the fault of parents and, er asylum seekers. At least, that’s what Vanessa Wilson, a well remunerated management consultant employed on a large undisclosed fee, claimed at a recent council meeting.
“Due to a lack of provision in our area, we’re placing more children in schools out of area. There’s parental choice as well. That’s meant that we’ve seen, in this last year, a doubling in costs of our transport,” she shamelessly explained.
But, as parents are liable for transport costs at a ‘parental choice’ of school, any doubling in transport costs is down to Vanessa’s department’s failures and nothing whatsoever to do with parents.
Vanessa then went after asylum seekers: “We’ve got a large number of children and families coming in who are asylum seekers. We’re seeing an increase in those families where not just the children have complex needs, but also the parents.”
With only 1,500 asylum seekers in Bristol, is it likely this tiny number are responsible for Vanessa’s ballooning costs?
Or is she using them as a convenient scapegoat for her department’s ongoing management failures?
Has the Reverend let the cat out of the bag? At a Full Council Meeting in September he was asked by a member of the public if he “agreed that planning decisions should remain nonpartisan in Bristol?”
Back came the bizarre response, “It is disappointing when planning applications are rejected on brownfield sites when we have a housing and climate crisis for political reasons.”
Is the Reverend just using the so-called housing and climate crises as convenient pegs to hang his pro-corporate developer right wing economic agenda on?
Fancy that! Ameresco, Bristol City Council’s US corporate partner in the City Leap joint venture – the world’s most expensive public works contract – doesn’t recognise trade unions!
Top due diligence there for a £10m outlay from our over-promoted posh twit Tory-boy council Chief Exec, Stephen “Preening” Peacock and his hopeless clean energy team.
Council papers reveal that they’re owed £14.75m of debt that’s now over two years old and they say “there is a significant risk that most of this aged debt will not be recovered,” which is a big, big shame.
The paper also reveals that there’s £1.1m of income they have received that they haven’t matched to any customer accounts.
This means they have no idea who’s paying their debts and who isn’t, which makes collecting debt difficult.
So if the council claim you owe them money, tell them you’ve paid it and they’ll have no idea whether you have or not!
The £20m of cuts announced by the Reverend Rees for next year mainly seem to confirm that he has now gone totally insane. Among the nutty highlights we’ve spotted so far:
An inexplicable £4m cut to the Adult Care budget will appear if HomeChoice prioritise people with adult social care needs on the housing register.
A proposal from an unnamed member of the Labour administration to cut trade union facility time by 75 per cent. That means union reps will have no time to represent staff directly affected by cuts from a Labour administration.
Lots more cuts are proposed by HRH Helen of Holland overseeing Adult Care. This is despite her failure to deliver £4m of the £6m cuts she proposed last year.
Transport guru, “Tweedle” Don Alexander, will attempt to increase council revenue by about £2.5m from Residents Parking Zones (RPZ) and car parking. Tweedle Don has lost about £5.4m in income from these so far this year.
Asher “The Slasher” Craig proposes charging a fee to parents who are contacted by her Education Welfare Service about their child’s school attendance. Will she discover parents are suddenly uncontactable?
Finance kingpin, Craig “Crapita” Cheney, officially the stupidest man in Bristol, is opening a rooftop bar at the M Shed to make £85k a year.
Asher the Slasher is supporting young people by slashing youth services budgets by £400k.
Government money for Public Health will be spent on wages for the Reverend’s evangelical pals in his City Office instead. He will also pass a begging bowl around ‘external partners’ to see if they’re up for funding an office full of evangelical loonies at the Counts Louse.
Cabinet Pied Piper Nicola “La La” Beech is to deliver pest control in “different ways”.
We’ll let you know as we find more of these inanities over the coming months.
Dear Bristol City Council, I’ve seen evidence that the mayor’s office are using Whatsapp for council business, despite the guidance on doing so.
This information falls under the parameters of the Freedom of Information Act and must be disclosed.
Please provide all Whatsapp messages sent between chief of staff to the Mayor of Bristol as an employee of Bristol City Council and all paid staff of Goram Homes, and directors of Goram Homes. I would like to see all Whatsapp messages for the last two months.
I remind the council that ALL whatsapp messages are subject to the Act whether from Council-owned phones and phone numbers, or personal phones and phone numbers if the business relates to Council.
As I have seen evidence that Whatsapp is being used I don’t expect a reply saying this information isn’t held.
Yours faithfully –
And the response …
Dear –
Freedom of Information Act 2000
This request is being handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Bristol City Council does not hold information falling within the scope of your request.
It’s that time of year when we have to endure the laughable bullshit that is Bristol City Council’s Pay Policy. A wholly misleading yearly statement on high pay for the council’s useless boss class.
This year we’re invited to admire how the ratio of the lowest paid on a minimum wage to the highest paid, allegedly the Chief Exec (without including his generous pension contribution), has fallen to 8.93:1 from 9.26:1 last year. Conveniently below the council’s arbitrary target of 10:1.
However – as usual – the maths is faulty. A glance at last year’s Statement of Accounts reveals that the highest paid boss was Juliet Blackburn Consulting Ltd, Director of Adults Transformation, who trousered a cool £30,932 a month. Or £371,184 a year making a highest to lowest paid pay ratio of, er, 17.7:1.
Other lottery winners courtesy of our council tax include congenital idiot Nikki Beardmore, a Communication & Engagement Director, who had to struggle through the cost of living crisis on around £200k a year, and Alan Layton, Head of Financial Planning, who trousered £240k a year pro rata.
