Category Archives: Marvin Rees

ST MARVIN’S-UP-THE-CREEK NEWSLETTER #6

Greetings my parish stakeholders! As the darkness of Easter descends and that appalling image of a great, bleeding, beaten Christian martyr with a meat cleaver in his head is seared upon our minds and penetrates our very souls anew, I am not unpleased to be publishing another parish newsletter.

It’s all a bit of a hurry this month as myself and my brilliant editor, Mr Slocombe, have only just arrived back from an urgent trip to Ohio to engage in intensive prayer, discussion and fine dining with fellow vicars from around the globe to seek resolution to the urgent problems facing our diverse global community in the age of Trump and Brexit.

Those of you questioning the value to the parish of such a vibrant trip would do well to dwell on the words of my mentor, the Texan psychotic preacher and notorious anti-communist homophobe, the Pastor Righteous Loon who told us in Ohio, “he that travels far on generous expenses arrives nearer to God.”

I am aware the Ms Townsend from the Dave Spart Academy has set up a petition regarding my small and essential international travel claims. So perhaps I should remind parishioners who signs what around here. Such as the application forms for entrance to St Snoot-the-Privileged, the parish’s high performing, OFSTED rated ‘Outstanding’ school. It isn’t Ms Townsend is it? Or any of that ragbag of commies and pinkoes who follow her around on the latest passing bandwagon she’s hitched them to.

Now, moving on to more important administrative matters, please note that the new competency framework for members of the Parish Committee has been delayed because our new Parish Administrator, Ms Klonowski from London thought I asked for a complacency framework. Speaking of which, I’m sure that most of you have now had an opportunity to read the special report I commissioned from Mr Steele, a senior partner at local accountancy firm Steele & M Bezzle on the High Street, regarding my predecessor, the Rev Loose Canon Ferguson’s financial overspend.

As far as I can see from Mr Steele’s excellent report, the blame for the overspend lies firmly with our former vicar and his Parish Administrator Mrs Yates and Bursar, Mr Wide. Some of you, however, seem to wrongly believe that the whole of the Parish Committee was responsible. I shall therefore be commissioning a further report – from Mr Bezzle this time – to ensure that all the blame is put on Mrs Yates and Mr Wide.

This new report will prove it had nothing to do with our fabulous new Parish Administrator Ms Klonowski – who helped uncover the financial problems once the Rev Ferguson had left and she wanted to suck up to the new vicar – or any of my close friends on the Parish Committee who may have been in an unfortunate close proximity to others’ wrongdoing entirely by unfortunate mistake.

Finally, a number of you have contacted me regarding renaming the Jimmy Savile OBE Playgarden next to the church. As vicar of the parish I am unable to offer a formal view on the subject of nomenclature of public land managed through a charitable trust vehicle. Similarly, the generous church stipend to the garden is the responsibility of the St Marvin’s Garden Blind Trust over which I have no control.

Please therefore pursue this campaign through the correct channels and not through me. Please, also, if you are protesting at the garden, ensure that there is vehicular access to the church at all times. Some of my congregation are extremely wealthy time-limited people who need to get their kids into a decent secondary school in a timely manner with the minimum of fuss.

Hold-ups for families wishing to attend my church and hear my words of wisdom will not be tolerated. Have a happy Easter.

The Vicar

BUNDRED: GRAMMAR CLASS

6 Replies

OK. Here’s the Reverend’s new Chief Executive, Anna “Big Wedge” Klonowski’s long-awaited ‘Response to the Bundred Review’ going to cabinet next week.

The Bundred Review, you may recall, discovered that Bristol City Council was a financial basketcase where senior managers were running amok committing a variety of offences in order to massage our council’s accounts for their own benefit.

Many of us have been hotly anticipating clear and bold action from the Reverend and his well remunerated sidekick, Ms Big Wedge, to clear up this fiasco and nail the culprits once and for all. Alas, it looks like we may be disappointed.

One of Bundred’s many recommendations raised by Ms Big Wedge in her new report is:

“The Council should take steps to build on recent improvements in the quality of reporting and document management. Where necessary guidance should be issued, or training provided, to report authors emphasising the importance of clarity, transparency, analysis and advice (paragraph 121).”

Another is:

“Members should be less tolerant of poor quality reports than they appear to have been in the past (paragraph 120).”

OK then. Who’s gonna tell Ms Big Wedge the standard of English, grammar and syntax in her report is simply not good enough? Here’s a few random examples from the first two pages:

“To ensure that cross directorate saving proposal [sic] or proposals that covered [sic] more than one Directorate are achieved, each savings proposal has been allocated a named Strategic and Service Director lead as accountable officers.”

And:

“Further consultation will be required in respect of some areas of savings proposals and will commence when the General Elections [is there more than one?] have concluded. This has required Officers to consider further mitigations to assure delivery of the budgets in these unusual circumstances.”

And:

“In addition, Directorates will be challenged to explore alternative options for meeting the cost pressures faced within their existing resources or seek supplementary estimate [sic] to increase the directorate spending limit.”

And:

“This has now been put into implementation [sic] and should ensure there is a shared understanding and approach to council processes across the organisation that supports all Members.”

For fucks sake, “Put into implementation”? Isn’t there a word for that – ‘implemented’? Have the Reverend, Big Wedge or the council never heard of proofreading?

Meanwhile moving on to the subject of ‘clarity’. Try some of these for size:

“We have also reviewed, aligned and combined the monthly mechanisms for managers and their Service/Strategic directors to submit a holistic view of savings delivery from a financial and action focussed perspective.”

If anyone has the foggiest idea what Service/Strategic directors will be physically submitting and to who, please get in touch.

Or try this nightmare piece of prose from the depths of hell:

“Member oversight is a new element of this governance process that now includes a Delivery Executive. This involves attendance by the Mayor and Deputy Mayor (Finance, Governance and Performance) who is the chair of the new Delivery Executive. This meeting provides an opportunity to discuss the savings proposals, delivery and implementation and provides an additional challenge, enables further investigation of the detail, reviews any mitigating actions and provides a formal feedback loop to Cabinet with an overview of progress on savings delivery. Relevant Portfolio holders also attend these sessions, providing joint ownership and accountability for savings by both members and officers.”

This seems to be suggesting “member (ie, councillor) oversight” will be a matter for a “Delivery Executive”, which includes only one member out of 70 – the Deputy Mayor – plus possibly “relevant portfolio holders”. This meeting will then provide a “formal feedback loop” to Cabinet members (although in order to be a “formal feedback loop” wouldn’t it have to return to the Delivery Executive where it came from?)

So Big Wedge’s “member oversight” stretches to around nine cabinet members if we’re generous and include those in her new-style “formal feedback loop”. The other 62 normal councillors who aren’t in the executive can presumably fuck off then?

Now try this bollocks for size:

“A one-off investment fund has been allocated to support savings related change activity across the council, this also includes funding a proportion of the change resource within the council. The resource is limited, making the threshold for allocation of this resource high, therefore promoting local ownership of service change and savings delivery, whilst mitigating against increased savings targets in future years for replenishment once this resource is fully used.”

We’ve no idea either. And what’s “mitigating against” all about? Meaning is so lost in there that it’s hard to tell whether it’s a straightforward error mistaking ‘mitigating’ for ‘militating’ or whether it’s the tautology ‘mitigating against’.

And finally (as we can’t stand any more of this half-arsed meaningless drivel):

“To ensure the achievement of long term improvements in the function, it will be necessary to take an end-to-end approach, combination of top down and bottom up initiatives, take along those involved in the execution of the operations; optimise the finance functions by removing waste and re-focus on core and value add activities.”

Excellent use of cliché, ambiguity and vague platitudes that could mean anything from Ms Big Wedge here.

Wouldn’t it all be so much simpler and provide a helluva lot more ‘clarity’ if she just fired the arseholes who fucked up the accounts in the first place and instead employed some people who can write reports competently in plain English and implement the proposed plans?

Bundred Response Recommendations FINAL-2

BUNDRED REPORT: ARE THE WHEELS COMING OFF?

1 Reply

While the rest of the media produced a PERFUNCTORY news report and crawled back under their stone; while councillors acted DUMB and couldn’t even be arsed to demand a debate about it and while the public continue to be UP IN ARMS about it … The BRISTOLIAN is driving forward the agenda around the Bundred Report.

And the Rev Rees knows it! Following our demands for an investigation into the conduct of his chief officers and managers over their handling of last year’s budget – especially THE CONSPIRACY identified by Steve “Sticky” Bundred to provide councillors with deliberately MISLEADING savings figures – the Reverend has conceded that further investigations are necessary.

Rees agreed to our demands today after he was confronted by protestors in the Council Chamber during his budget meeting. He promised the protestors a new inquiry into “how the failings actually took place” and admitted his senior bosses knew that the savings they presented in last year’s budget were “UNACHIEVABLE”. Most significantly Rees admitted last year’s budget was “ILLEGAL” just days after his Monitoring Officer told us, “the report does not imply any criminal act”!

Will the Reverend call the cops then? Regardless – we’re winning! But rest assured we’ll keep the pressure up and get this whole current shower of dishonest, disreputable overpaid and underperforming council management crooks and tosspots investigated.

Watch this space …