Here’s the Reverend pictured at Temple Meads in November showing “how we’re delivering ambitious projects”.
Because holding a cgi picture of something unbuilt is delivery?
Here’s the Reverend pictured at Temple Meads in November showing “how we’re delivering ambitious projects”.
Because holding a cgi picture of something unbuilt is delivery?
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.
What a bunch of arseholes.
While hanging around looking for a job in Dubai at COP 2023, the global climate talking shop, the Reverend Rees got a gig on a panel at the UK Climate Action Forum & Dinner.
Rees was billed as a ‘UK climate leader’ along with another familiar face who got to deliver a speech. Please step forward the one and only Nicola “Lady Gaga” Yates!
This is the former Chief Exec at Bristol City Council who was rather unceremoniously ‘disappeared’ from Bristol with a generous £200k handout after running up a mystery £30m deficit in the council’s accounts in the lead-up to the mayoral elections back in 2016.
Is it a requirement of a ‘UK climate leader’ that they have a history of failure and being shown the door?
The electorate, of course, sent the Reverend packing last year. Scrapping the post of mayor after an abysmal performance pissing our money up the wall.
Is there some fail Bristol, become a ‘UK climate leader’ rule?
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!
Our down home new £130m concert hall announces the opening of the Colonade, ‘a sustainable-forward restaurant set within the historic heart of Bristol Beacon’. Which is more than enough to make you want to heave.
Their copywriting hacks then move into overdrive. We’re talking no less than ‘a fresh take on modern European cuisine’; ‘seasonal menus and daily specials led by artisanal local produce’ and ‘consciously low-carbon impact’ here.
But how much do these well worn foodie cliches cooked by someone you’ve never heard of set you back?
Bread and butter comes in at a fiver while a serving of cheese and ‘cracker’ is nine quid. An actual plate with a meal on starts at 14 quid plus a fiver for fries and six quid for veg. The cheapest bottle of Spanish plonk – ’round on the palate’ and heavy on the wallet – is 27 quid.
No sign of a cost of living crisis at the ‘inclusive’ Bristol Beacon then.
Contrary to the contrived local PR waffle, the Colonade is actually owned by a Kent-based catering company, Graysons. Their major shareholder is US prison food provider, Aramak.
Aramak also run three ‘direct provision asylum centres’ in Ireland where asylum-seekers are forced to stay until their application is complete.
Praxis, the artists union of Ireland say, “the direct provision system is an oppressive and dysfunctional migrant prison system which has successfully enriched private companies like Aramark over many years.”
Praxis also described the National Gallery of Ireland’s decision to award Aramark a multi-million catering deal as “a stain on the reputation of our public institution.”
If you must support the local economy by eating overpriced food, try elsewhere.
The revelation that council Chief Exec, Nicola “LADY GAGA” Yates earned £18k in wages out of the Bristol 2015 Ltd company at the rate of £60 an hour may prove to be a triple whammy of bad news for the greedy public money-grabbing boss.
Not only is there understandable outrage that Gaga scooped herself an extra £18k of public money while already taking something between £160k and £193k from the public purse every year anyway. It also appears that her contract of employment specifically prevents her from doing any other job or retaining the earnings.
Gaga’s contractual obligations are contained in the Joint Negotiating Committee for Local Authority Chief Executives Conditions of Service Handbook. And here’s what it says
3. WHOLE-TIME SERVICE
The chief executive shall devote his or her whole-time service to the work of the council and shall not engage in any other business or take up any other additional appointment without the express consent of the council. He or she shall not subordinate his or her duty as chief executive to his or her private interests or put himself or herself in a position where his or her duty and private interests conflict.
In other words, Gaga should not take on any other employment without the “express consent” of councillors. Where is that consent? It also means if she does take on any other employment it should not conflict with her role as Chief Exec of the council.
For example, she should not be overlooking the Local Government Transparency Code on behalf of Bristol 2015 Ltd, who privately employ her, as this conflicts with her duty as a the chief executive to uphold this code. Oh dear.
But there’s more. Her contract also states:
8. INCLUSIVE SALARIES
Salaries shall be deemed to be inclusive, and all other fees and emoluments, unless they are covered by Paragraph 9 (returning officer, etc.) or the authority expressly agrees that they shall be retainedby the officer, shall be paid by the officer into the council’s accounts.
In other words, any extra salary payable to Gaga for any other work should be paid to the council not to her. Unless “the authority expressly agrees”. Where is that agreement with councillors? Otherwise Gaga owes us £18k!
That’s at least two breaches, then, of Gaga’s contract. Looks like it’s time for some disciplinary action …
£160,000 a year – and STILL second-choice City Director Nicola ‘Lady Gaga’ Yates thinks she ought to be costing us more!
The speed with which Bristol City Council Chief Exec, Nicola “LADY GAGA” Yates, responded to a request by former Lib Dem MP Stephen “DOLE BOY” Williams for detailed accounts from Bristol 2015 Ltd, the company that runs the Green capital fiasco, was extraordinary.
Dole Boy fired in an open letter to Lady Gaga and her HOPELESS INADEQUATE of an Internal Audit Chief Melanie Henchy-McCarthy on 28 January and back came an instantaneous reply by Gaga on the same day! It’s almost as if she had a pre-prepared answer ready to go isn’t it?
The response was, of course, NONSENSE. Gaga claimed that her private company had been open about its SECRETIVE SPENDING of £8.5m of public money because they had handed over a few crappy headline figures to the council’s pisspoor Audit Committee and a couple of council Scrutiny Committees.
On the specific subject of providing line-by-line accounts – in line with the Local Government Transparency Code she’s paid handsomely to uphold – on the spending by this private company run by an UNHOLY ALLIANCE of Gaga, Mayor Bent and his Merchant Venturer mate, Andrew “WINDY” Garrard, she had this to say: “we are NOT able produce that level of detail because we do NOT hold it.”
Highly misleading stuff from Gaga here. “WE” may not hold that level of detail but “SHE” almost certainly does. She’s the bloody Chief Exec of Bristol 2015 Ltd! She must hold a detailed budget of the company’s spending. Because if she doesn’t, then these accounts don’t exist and she’d be looking at a prison sentence!
Gaga, paid £60 an hour by Bristol 2015 Ltd, appears to have a massive CONFLICT OF INTEREST in all this. Does it, perhaps, suit her, as the boss of 2015 Ltd, to keep the detailed finances, spending and especially any personal payments, expenses and ehancements she and others have received carefully under wraps?
However, as the council’s chief exec, the most senior officer at the council, she should be demanding full transparency from this company in the public interest. In her council role, working for us, she’s supposed to be promoting and upholding the VERY HIGHEST STANDARDS in public life.
Gaga appears conflicted between FILLING HER BOOTS via a salary from Bristol 2015 Ltd and the PUBLIC INTEREST she’s handsomely paid by us to rigorously uphold at Bristol City Council.
She ain’t up to it is she? She needs to go.
What do you do if you’re the Mayor of Bristol and there’s a huge petition due asking to “Halt any further Bristol Residents’ Parking Schemes and roll back all in place” that could be POLITICALLY EMBARRASSING in the lead up to the mayoral election?
Why, you get your friend and gopher “Richard “YES MASSA” Irwin, Community Activist” to simply send an unsolicited and unauthorised mail to Democratic Services asking, “Please can you extend this online petition.”
And back comes the reply from a Bristol City Council Democratic Services’ useful idiot: “As requested, petition ‘Halt any further Bristol Residents’ Parking Schemes and roll back all in place’ has been EXTENDED to 1st May 2017.”
How convenient! The petition’s been extended for a whole year after the election! Presumably the fact the petition had nothing whatsoever to do with Mr Irvin, a known associate of the mayor, is a petty detail that can be overlooked by super sharp council officers?
Is this conduct legal?
Here’s some news you WON’T HEAR on the local BBC – because her boyfriend works there – or in the Evening Post – because the editor is a congenital Tory idiot.
BristolNorth West MP, Charlotte “BACARDI” Leslie is in hot water with Parliament again. This time round she’s leaked the confidential discussions of Parliament’s Health Select Committee to the media to boost her faltering reelection campaign.
Her actions have managed to PISS OFF not only the highly regarded chair of the committee, Dr Sarah Wollaston, but also the majority of the committee itself who agree that Bacardi’s conduct “represented a serious interference with the work of the Committee”.
Ms Bacardi, suffering in the battle for her marginal seat with Labour, was apparently desperate to get the contents of the committee’s draft ‘Public expenditure on health and social care’ report into the public domain before the election.
This is thought to be because she managed to get an electorally convenient U-TURN inserted into the report stating there were no plans for any patient charges in NHS.
Although we all know Ms Bacardi has robustly expressed the view to Channel 4’s Dispatches, BBC Sunday Politics and the Guardian newspaper that patient charges should be introduced to the NHS!
Dr Wollaston and her committee have now voted to refer Ms Bacardi and her shameless electioneering at their expense to the Speaker for DISCIPLINARY ACTION.
And chatter in the tea room says that Bacardi will be forced to apologise to the House of Commons (again).