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GAGA’S WAGE SCAM

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 …

 

GAGA’S CONFLICT

Lady Gaga: private gain coming before public interest?

£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.

GEORGE’S PET IN PETITION DEBACLE

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?

Bacardi’s hot water electoral cocktail may leave MP shaken and stirred

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).

TOP JOB NEWS

City office Avonmouth

The Reverend Rees told long-suffering journalists daft enough to attend his stillborn ‘CITY OFFICE’ launch last month that he planned to tackle “inequalities within leadership roles” by changing the people who are awarded the top jobs.

“This will mean having leaders from HARTCLIFFE and AVONMOUTH as well as Clifton”, he assured an audience invited and organised by his old, white, highly paid, Cambridge educated right hand man and personally appointed “leader”, council Chief Exec, Stephen “OAP” Hughes from, er, Birmingham.

Who thinks Hughes could even find Hartcliffe on a map?

Scary Monsters: #2 The Body Snatchers

Patrick Cotter O’Brien, “The Bristol Giant” born 1760 in Kinsale, County Cork; died Hotwells, Bristol, 1806, was over eight feet tall. He fought exploitation by showmen and opportunist medical careerists and was imprisoned for his cause.

He became his own promoter and to enjoy privacy ventured out in the hours of darkness to sometimes startling effect. His final wish was to be buried securely under 12 feet of concrete. This was difficult to achieve as the surgeon John Hunter was to steal his body before burial. He was forced to hand it back and Patrick’s last wish was granted at St Johns Chapel.

A century after his death the ghouls of Bristol University tried to rob his grave but were thwarted by the steel reinforcement and the outrage of local people. Another violation occurred in 1972 when the ghouls examined Patrick and re-interred him. The site was redeveloped in 1986 and Patrick was taken away. It is said that he was cremated respectfully although the Royal College of Surgeons still display one of his arms!

I ask the question, what was the purpose of these outrages? It cannot be scientific, as ample study was done on the sensitive Patrick when he was still alive. Also many people living today suffer his affliction. Can anybody enlighten me about the body snatchers who abuse us even after death?

SPENDING WATCH

The Reverend has a tasty destination in mind for his all-expenses spring jaunt

The Mayor’s PERSONAL OFFICE continues impress as they lead the way in savings at this time of austerity and cuts to vital public services.

In September, not only did the Reverend manage TWO TRIPS abroad – one to New York and one to Norway – to play at global mayors but he also returned home proposing to spend OUR MONEY on hosting the annual convening of the Global Parliament of Mayors – an enormous junket for mayors – here in Bristol next year at a minimum cost of £150k.

Other absolutely necessary expenditure emanating from his office in August included the purchase of 1,600 branded water bottles for over TWO GRAND, £448.00 of catering for people who can afford to buy their own lunch and £4,000 handed to an agency for a SINGLE translation.

He then popped off for some pre-Christmas junketing in Malaysia and China and says he’ll be visiting the notorious annual piss-up cum mass council land sell-off MIPIM in Cannes next year.

Good to see the Reverend leading from the front, eh?

ELECTION 2020: KICK ‘EM IN THE KNACKERS?

ELECTION 2020- KICK ‘EM IN THE KNACKERS?

The long and dull mayoral election campaign for 2020 briefly sparked into a bit of life at the end of January when the Lib Dems announced they would campaign in 2020 to SCRAP THE MAYORAL SYSTEM in Bristol.

The Lib Dems are yet to announce who their candidate will be but here at The BRISTOLIAN we think this has the sound of a very popular policy indeed. Will disgruntled and disgusted Bristolians sick to death of their underperforming and overpaid ‘city leaders’ and mayor deliver these clowns the ultimate KICK IN THE ELECTORAL KNACKERS?

The news is especially bad for the Reverend Rees. He may not only FACE DEFEAT IN MAY 2020 after a miserable term in office promoting Tory policies but he also may be personally responsible for the REJECTION of the mayoral system altogether! What a humiliating – if deserved – legacy!

The Greens, too, running a long campaign fronted by DULL TECHNOCRAT, Sandy Bufton-Tufton (surely Hore-Ruthven? ed.), may also be disappointed at this news. Having tried to position themselves as the main challengers to Rees and Labour, they may now need to RETHINK THEIR CAMPAIGN quite radically.

The boring, technocratic campaign they envisaged with Bufton-Tufton endlessly bickering with Rees over MARGINAL ISSUES such as ‘social value tendering’, the best placement of cycle lanes in Bishopston and who is best able to get the buses to run on time by treating First boss, James Freeman, to lunch once a month, is DEAD IN THE WATER.

Instead the Greens will need to go BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD and devise some eye-catching policies for people to vote for. The Greens will also need to convince a cynical electorate that Bufton-Tufton isn’t another pillock interested in the foreign travel opportunities and photo-ops with his friends rather than running A COUNCIL FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL BRISTOLIANS.

Watch this space.