Category Archives: Bad Bosses

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A READER WRITES: ODE TO HORSEWORLD CAPO DI TUTTI CAPI MARK OWEN…

A reader has submitted this poem, dedicated to HorseWorld boss Mark Owen…

I know a man on 80 grand,
A Black Audi he has too.
He runs a Horse Rescue Charity,
But he hasn’t got a clue.

HorseWorld Managing Director Mark Owen,
All the Charity donations he has been blowin’,
All the money he has blown,
Will soon lose the horses their home,
And 28 staff will also be going.

Seven Million Pounds he wanted to spend,
On a Brand New Visitor Attraction,
That of course, did depend,
On the BANES Councillors reaction.

BANES Councillors rejected it,
By Ten votes to Two.
HorseWorld will have to close says Owen,
So we’ll have to buy memberships for the Zoo!

Trustees held a meeting,
They came from near and far.
Some flew in from Barbados,
While others came by car.

Sustainability is an issue,
Apparently the Visitor Centre has had its day.
And so have you Mark Owen,
But we want the Visitor Centre to stay.

The stress was getting to Owen,
He didn’t know what to do.
So on a plane he hops,
“Screw the lot of you”.

A week’s skiing holiday,
For Mister 80K.
Meanwhile 28 staff worry,
Of the Mortgages they have to pay.

2 million pounds has been lost,
Since Owen came on board.
Still he fails to count the cost,
Of the 28k Audi, the Charity cannot afford.

But now word is out,
And people are on his case,
Not forgetting our wonderful Smiter,
All leaving Owen very long faced.

Feel free to email, tweet, text, phone or even write to us with your tips, suggestions or lavish praise! (Please send any green-inked critiques and legal papers to our other office.)

MARKETS: IT’S LIKE THE FIRST WORLD WAR!

FAILED CHARITY BOSS ANNOUNCES 2014 TOUR! UNIONISED WORKERS NOT INVITED!

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HorseWorld boss Mark Owen (left) perfects his fiddling-whilst-Rome-burns dadrock pout

Ark at ee, it’s our old friend MARK ‘NOT THAT ONE’ OWEN, the moribund boss of troubled equine charity HorseWorld!

Of course, when we say “troubled equine charity HorseWorld” it should be pretty clear by now just where the problem lies…

Still, having terrorised his staff by doling out redundancy notices, Bristol’s COMMUNICATOR OF THE YEAR continues to work hard to undermine the hard-earned reputation of the organisation which pays for both his shiny new Audi and his not-inconsiderable salary. This week’s wheeze: trying to ignore his legal obligations under employment law.

Yes, thanks to his financial shenanigans, more than half of HorseWorld’s employees are now unionised, and we understand some heavy-hitting regional union reps have been in touch with both the charity’s trustees and Owen himself to arrange meetings this week.

As one source told The BRISTOLIAN:

Owen is shitting himself that the unions are now muscling in…

And in the words on another:

As usual Owen is refusing to answer them, [claiming] HorseWorld ‘does not recognise a union’…

Well, that’s okay then..?

Meanwhile our fearless leader has decided to put on a brave face with all this turmoil around him and go on tour with his dadrock band!

Sadly you’ve missed the first date – last Saturday at the Anchor – but you can still catch them this Friday at Blue Lagoon on the Gloucester Road, Saturday 1 March at Oldland Common’s Dolphin, at the Crown in Staple Hill on Saturday 22 March, and then back at the Blue Lagoon the following Saturday.

As they say:

Expect an eclectic mix of “anthems” from Oasis, Kings of Leon, The Killers, The Jam, The Foo Fighters, The Stereophonics, Wheatus, The Verve, Primal Scream – to mention just a few!

So if you’re a horse lover, one of the workers whose jobs are at threat thanks to Pinocchiowen’s business ‘skills’, or you just like covers bands, get on down…

HORSEWORLD BOSS PINOCCHIOWEN DIGS HIS HEELS IN & SENDS OUT REDUNDANCY NOTICES

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The latest news from inside FORTRESS WHITCHURCH is that troubled equine charity HorseWorld is to close its visitor centre in just over a month – on 27 February – despite a supposed ‘consultation exercise’ running until 24 February.

It comes on top of the sad news that today 28 REDUNDANCY NOTICES were issued to staff. Sources indicate that amongst those being primed for the chop is Animal Welfare Manager Jerry Watkins. That’s right: instead of acknowledging their terrible – and costly – business decisions and resigning themselves, the clique around MD Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen have decided to sack a bunch of already underpaid employees, including the one with the most professional experience of actually running an animal sanctuary!

If rumours are to be believed, cowardly Pinocchiowen sent Watkins his redundancy notice whilst he was away ~~on holiday~~ representing his country as UK team captain at the Khartoum International Tent-Pegging Competition…

At this rate all that will be left of HorseWorld will be a paddock full of expensive, incompetent senior managers.

[Edited 29/1/14]

BLUE MONDAY: HORSEWORLD BOSS PINOCCHIOWEN BRIDLES AT CRITICISM

CRISIS – WHAT CRISIS? HORSEWORLD BOSS PINOCCHIOWEN GOES ON THE PISTE WHILST HIS CHARITY’S STAFF FEAR FOR THEIR JOBS

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Just days after putting 28 staff on notice of redundancy, troubled charity HorseWorld’s managing director Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen and chairman of trustees John L Newman are obviously feeling the same extreme levels of worry and fear as those whose jobs are actually on the line. How else could one explain their movements these past couple of weeks?

You’ll recall, by way of background, that serial bungler Owen managed to lose millions of pounds of the charity’s money since joining just a few years ago. He then spectacularly failed to get his flawed planning application – backed by three trustees with professional property development interests – past clued-up councillors.

So this January kicked off with them handing notice to dozens of their low-paid staff that they probably won’t have a job in a few weeks’ time. It’s to the credit of the hard-working animal lovers who actually keep HorseWorld going that despite all the stress and uncertainty caused by their idiot bosses they have simply been getting on with caring for horses and donkeys.

Meanwhile, their esteemed MD? Gone ski-ing. Yes, an expensive week-long skiing holiday for Mister-80k-Per-Annum-Plus-Shiny-28k-Audi Mark Pinnochiowen.

Rome, burning? Pass me my fiddle!

And the Chairman of Trustees? Surely he’s around to field the flak and take the concerns of staff to heart? Well, er, no actually. He’s said to be sunning it in Barbados, returning in a few weeks’ time.

The need for these hard-pressed holidaymakers to pack their cases and ship out suddenly might just explain the careless and hurried approach to their redundancy announcement two weeks ago.

Having ordered the affected 28 in a meeting that they were not to go public, or involve unions, and to keep the whole thing in-house, word naturally leaked out and found itself in your humble ‘Smiter’.

Cue a boardroom panic, a quick purchase of Employment Law For Dummies, and lo and behold, the next day a press release was issued (which even the ~~Evening~~ Bristol Post was highly sceptical of), claiming the charity is consulting on redundancies with ALL staff (except the MD, presumably).

So, to recap: first scare the life out of 28 people. Then extend the fear to roughly sixty. While they quake and tremble in the wake of your redundancy process fuck-ups, what do you do? Leave the country. Simples.

Can it be long before these muppets start offering expensive consultancy packages on crisis management?

LONG FACES AT HORSEWORLD AS CRAP BOSS PREPARES TO SACK STAFF

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Sad news reaches us from inside troubled equine charity HorseWorld… Thanks to shocking mismanagement under the Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen regime – which pinned all hopes on a misconceived development project – it seems that staff have today been told of MASSIVE JOB LOSSES on the horizon.

Of course, the cuts won’t be felt by Owen or his equally culpable senior management team, who together presided over a financial nosedive at the previously solvent and successful horse charity (latest estimates suggest losses of more than £2 million in just three years). Instead around TWENTY-FIVE MEMBERS OF STAFF will be dismissed at the end of February – including some involved in vital animal welfare work. Figures supplied to the Charity Commission indicate that HorseWorld employs 43 people, so that would be nearly 60% OF JOBS LOST. Even by Pinocchiowen’s more fanciful figure of 62 employees, that’s still a staggering 40% of employees getting the heave-ho thanks to their boss’ failed development gamble.

Whether workers and volunteers there are prepared to stand for this shameless attempt by Owen and his clique to save their own jobs at the expense of everyone else remains to be seen…

PINOCCHIOWEN’S LAST STAND? THE ‘CUNNING NEW PLAN’ OF HORSEWORLD BOSS

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HorseWorld boss Mark Owen: full of pony

Trustees of troubled charity HorseWorld meet tomorrow (Wednesday 18 December) to consider what they do next after the SPECTACULAR FAILURE of MD Mark Owen to persuade local councillors to give him the green light to fill Whitchurch’s green belt with lots of unaffordable posh houses.

Faced with a CRISIS of Becher’s Brook proportions, the trustees have important decisions to make that will decide the futures of many staff and still more animals.

Under Owen’s watch in the last five years HorseWorld has shipped millions of pounds – but frittered away hundreds of thousands on consultants working on his ill-judged master plan. This came crashing to the ground at the first fence last month when BANES councillors showed that they could think for themselves and act in the best interests of local people who didn’t want posh houses and a big arena, thank you very much, by voting against Owen’s plans.

And when they voted against his harebrained scheme to knock down the visitor’s centre and sell off prime land to profiteering property developers, they didn’t do it by half-measures.

Comments from councillors considering the application included:

…10% affordable housing was not good enough…

…information about visitor figures was not clear…

…not convinced the proposal would solve HorseWorld’s problems…

…10% affordable housing was not enough, it should be 35%…

…not convinced there were very special circumstances outweighing the need to protect the Green Belt…

…information about transport issues was incomplete…

…worried about transport issues…

…HorseWorld, with 100,000 visitors a year, should already be successful…

…not convinced about the commercial viability of HorseWorld…

…concerned about the impact of a new housing development on the local primary school…

So that would be a resounding ‘no’, it would seem.

Since then Owen has FURIOUSLY STOMPED around the local press fuming that his failure to get the nod for the plan means the charity will close. ‘It’s unsustainable,’ he whines. Well, insiders retort, it’s certainly unsustainable to retain this INCOMPETENT TWAT on £80,000 per year (plus 28k company car).

Owen’s HorseWorld business model has long been seen to be redundant, and now he should be too.

So is this the moment when trustees finally ditch the hapless Owen so he can spend more time playing guitar in his pub covers band?

At the meeting Owen is expected to plead with his trustee bosses for CLEMENCY. His latest ruse will be to tell them they can overturn the BANES decision on appeal, and he has already started a petition. A bit late in the day for petitions, but you can expect some (non-local) people – including staff – to sign it. ‘Think of my mortgage… err, I mean, the horses!’

Alongside this petition strategy is the key part of his new vision – the immediate closure of the existing visitor centre, home to 24 horses, donkeys and ponies, and employer of several low-paid staff. Retain the rest of the charity land as a small scale sanctuary for animals, he’ll urge, but scale down the operation. ‘Oh, and keep me as MD, pretty please!’

There is of course another option for trustees. It’s not one which Owen will recommend to them, but maybe like the BANES councillors did, THEY’LL PROVE THEY HAVE MINDS OF THEIR OWN…

Flog the Audi;
Sack this expensive failure and his overpaid management cronies; and
Move to a different model that puts long-suffering animals and hard working charity staff first.

It’s an option that would allow HorseWorld to continue working, but in creative co-operation with the local community, not against it.

Nobody in their right mind would believe councillors who overwhelmingly rejected an application by 10 to 2 votes would just overturn the decision on appeal. But are HorseWorld trustees in their right mind?

The acid test will come at this week’s meeting…

PS: For over a year Owen has been telling anyone who’ll listen that if HorseWorld failed to get planning permission he would RESIGN. He hasn’t.

What Mark Owen tells the Charity Commission – not quite what he tells BANES…

I say 62, you say 43, let’s call the whole thing off!

But then he’s been telling everyone he employees over sixty staff (most notably going with the figure 62, as shown on the HorseWorld website here and here, and in submissions to BANES Council – see page 92), when official figures submitted the Charity Commission claim the true figure is 43.

Pinocchiowen indeed.

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOLMWOOD: WHY THE BRISTOLIAN HAD TO ACT

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**So, how did the Holmwood House scandal come to be plastered over the pages of The BRISTOLIAN and featured in gruelling detail at last Thursday’s Cabinet meeting?**

As usual, distant, arrogant council managers who refuse to be accountable to the public – even in the most extreme cases such as the unexplained death of an elderly woman in their care – are the authors of their own public humiliation and downfall.

Rest assured, the Holmwood case did not come out of a clear blue sky last Thursday: Kathleen Cole died in July and her daughter Annette Whiting has been asking questions ever since then and not getting any answers.

A key figure in the scandal is DAVID TOOLE, the Bristol City Council Health and Social Care Manager who oversaw the six safeguarding reports into Kathleen’s care. It was he who worked closely with the home’s struck-off nurse ‘consultant’, ISLA MEEK, to play down the dangerous quality of care at Holmwood House. By September, he simply stopped taking Annette Whiting’s concerned phone calls over the circumstances of her mother’s death.

So did he think she’d just go away? On the basis that when some middle manager plonker at the council stops taking your phone calls that’s the end of any matter? How wrong can he be?

It was at this point, Annette sought the only immediate help at hand, which was seasoned care campaigner Steve Norman and The BRISTOLIAN. She was immediately put in touch with firebrand lawyers Irwin Mitchell, specialists in public law, while Steve tackled the council privately and requested a meeting with the Social Care Strategic Director ALISON COMLEY.

Fat chance. Apparently Comley – herself an ex-social worker, but now a six-figure salaried City Hall boss – was far too busy at strategy meetings to worry about suspicious deaths on her watch. The actual response from Comley’s PA was that her boss was “too busy” and that Annette would need to complete a ‘Fair Comment’ corporate complaint form!

Because obviously the best way to deal with a bereaved relative – with a series of highly compelling issues to raise regarding the care your organisation provided – is to get them to fill in a form and force them through a useless bureaucratic process!

It was at this stage that The BRISTOLIAN took the decision to go public with Holmwood House immediately. It was plainly apparent to us that none of these managers gave a toss about Annette or her mother and were behaving as if they were not accountable to the likes of us.

Just how stupid and arrogant are these council managers? What planet are they living on, which makes them think they can treat ordinary Bristolians with utter contempt and get away with it?

Well, things have changed a bit now haven’t they? Rest assured Comley, her sidekick MIKE HENNESSEY and that lamentable safeguarding manager arsehole DAVID ‘WATTA’ TOOLE are now running round like blue arse flies trying to explain their bizarre conduct and lunatic decisions. And this is just the start …

To steal their own soundbite – “There’s no secrets, no cover-ups, no hiding places in Bristol”.

» Be sure to keep an eye on The BRISTOLIAN: there will be further Holmwood House revelations this week…

CRAP EMPLOYER OF THE MONTH #1: CLOVER ADVERTISING/APPCO GROUP

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With the economy suffffering and the safety net of the welfare state being cut from under us, jobs are hard to come by these days. But as one BRISTOLIAN reader found out, you’d be better offff punching yourself in the face than accepting employment with some of the COWBOYS out there.

‘Jane’ contacted us to warn others about Clover Advertising. “I responded to an advert for an office-based ‘energy surveyor’, and got an interview. But in the interview it suddenly turned out to be door-to-door sales – and the advertised hours of 10-7 became 10-8,” recalls Jane.

The interview began as a sales pitch for Riverford, an organic veg box scheme from Devon. When asked what this had to do with energy surveying, the interviewer cagily said “Um, you’ll be doing some of that too”.

“They lied through their teeth. Advertising a different job to the one they had,” says Jane. “I want people to know they’re a bunch of crooks. From the start they were ABSOLUTE BLAGGERS.”

Other people conned into applying for MISADVERTISED JOBS with Clover have told The BRISTOLIAN that it gets worse if you work for them! Clover is a Bristol-based marketing company run by Gareth Byrne and Natalie Powell from an office above an unlet shop off Park Street. It’s effectively a franchise of the UK’s largest direct sales outfit, Appco Group, run by MILLIONAIRE WIDEBOY Chris Niarchos.

“Billion dollar enterprise” Appco once traded as Cobra Group – until its reputation got known – and sells direct debit subscriptions on doorsteps, mainly on behalf of charities.

Meanwhile in Bristol, Clover – like other Appco companies – recruits mainly young people with vague promises of “fantastic average earning potential”. Appco-linked firms don’t employ their doorstep canvassers either.

Instead they consider their workers self-employed (so don’t pay tax or National Insurance contributions) and only pay commission. That’s right – no basic wage. If you don’t sell anything you don’t get paid! Appco-style self-employment also means answering to the same boss everyday, being contractually tied to the company and being forbidden to work for competitors.

So you’re like a charity street seller only without the Minimum Wage. A few really ruthless I-could-sell-anything-to-your-102-year-old-gran types do succeed – but most Appco workers are simply exploited, with reports of staff earning less than a hundred quid for fifty-hour weeks.

So why does right-on farm Riverford Organics use a company that rinses the desperate-to-work unemployed to sell their lovely organic veg? They proudly display ‘Best Online Retailer 2011 in the Observer Ethical Awards’ on their website; ethical with vegetables not people though.

Other clients of Clover include the Red Cross, who recently started providing food donations in the UK for the first time in seventy years. So the people who flog their direct debits will likely be the same people forced to use their food banks! Clover Advertising and Appco Group: you win The BRISTOLIAN‘s very first CRAP EMPLOYER OF THE MONTH award.

You absolute scumbags!