Category Archives: Privatisers & Carpetbaggers

Our fine local ‘investors’ and ‘stakeholders’

LABOUR BUSH CONFUSION

The level of utter confusion in our local Labour Party was highlighted recently following the death over Christmas of the popular St George West Labour councillor, RON STONE.

Among many tributes paid to Ron was one from parents and friends fighting the closure of the BUSH RESIDENTIAL CENTRE in Knowle. This centre provides support and respite care to some of the most seriously ill and disabled children in the city and beds at the centre are currently being cut.

The Bush campaigners praised Ron for his unstinting support for their cause. Which is odd because the politician behind the closure is Ron’s Labour Party colleague and member of Mayor Fagin’s ridiculous ‘RAINBOW CABINET‘ of hapless nobodies, Barbara “YES GEORGE” Massey.

Massey is on record SUPPORTING the cuts to the Bush, claiming the money will provide more families with ‘short breaks’. Although she’s UNABLE to explain what service will be available – if any – to the desperately vulnerable kids losing their places at the Bush.

It’ll be interesting to see, then, how Labour’s misfiring mayoral candidate Marvin “LUTHER” Rees deals with this issue. Will he share old school socialist and trade unionist Ron’s view? Or will he side with his senior NEW LABOUR colleague, Massey, and opt to support the ‘MODERNISING‘ market solution for vulnerable kids?

Or maybe he’s got a THIRD WAY? Sit on the fence, say nothing and hope nobody notices that his party has two opposing views on the issue – one for brutal cuts to disabled children’s services; the other against brutal cuts to, er, disabled children’s services!

RED PANTS INVESTS IN SURREAL ESTATE

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BCC offers venture capitalists 3-6% profit out of its Property Fund for the homeless

Bristol’s homeless are now so thick on the ground that you can’t go past a public park without seeing shabby tents inhabited by those turfed out by housing cutbacks and ever-rising rents.

HRH Lord Ferguson’s response to this is to hand £5m into a joint property purchase fund with an organisation called Real Lettings – consisting of Resonance (a fund/asset management company), and St. Mungo’s housing association/homeless charity.

Big Society Capital, the government’s private investment fund will then invest a ‘matching’ £5m into this property fund’s purchases. These homes will then be rented out to 70-80 households of the ‘unintentionally homeless’, consisting of 80% families and 20% singles.

These new deserving poor are given no more than 2-3 years with St Mungo’s to “move up through the homelessness pathways” and earn the ‘privilege’ of renting independently in the private sector. Their progress presumably being sustained on zero-hours minimum wage jobs?

All this is contained in a public document, ‘Executive Summary of Agenda Item 7’, signed off on 3 November by HRH and rubber stamped by his ‘cabinet’: court flunky councillors Gollop (Con), Cook (LibDem), Radice (Green), and Massey (Lab). The Council’s intention – as written – is to ‘support homelessness’ (sic), by joining the Real Lettings’ national scheme as outlined above.

Much of the document is filled with cost projections, risk management tables and colourful graphs, with sub-headings such as ‘sensitivity analysis’, ‘capital appreciation’ and ‘cash yield’.

And a ‘net target return’ of 3% plus profit is anticipated for the investor, even after the Council, Resonance and St. Mungo’s have taken their cuts. It is explained that this route will be ‘significantly cheaper’ than lodging the homeless, as at present, in private B&Bs.

It is also disconcertingly stated that The Fund is an ‘unregulated collective investment scheme’, which disqualifies it from protection normally offered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Big Society Capital is chaired by Ronald Cohen of pensions collapse fame, who along with hsome friends in 2000 disappeared with the pensions of 544 long service workers from British United Shoe Machinery (BUSM). In total, £81 million vanished from three pension funds: Dexion, BUSM, and USM Texon… All faster than you could say Abracadabra.

A comment by Ashok Kumar MP on the unresolved scandal involving Big Society Capital’s chairman is worth quoting in full: “I think these people need flogging. I feel so angry on behalf of decent upright citizens robbed of their basic human rights… These are greedy, selfish capitalists who live on the backs of others.”

But of course, having such a person at the helm investing in a local homeless fund for profit will not be bothering Lord Red Pants or his sycophantic team.

GREASY POLE KID SAYS CORBYNITES “OLD AND LAZY”

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Bristol Labour Party’s vice chair HADLEIGH “MARGARET” ROBERTS has an interesting way of greeting new Labour Party members, who joined as part of the “Corbyn surge”, to his local Bristol West Constituency Party.

Margaret, a self-styled Labour “moderate” – or “RUTHLESSLY AMBITIOUS PUBLIC SCHOOLBOY” as they’re better known – has written a rather charming blog for his new members. Complaining that the newbies “were not the bright young things we were told to expect” before sniffily adding, “they are not in it for the hard slog.”

In other words, they’re all OLD AND LAZY and may not be too keen to run around promoting Margaret in the style to which he wishes to be accustomed. He then went on to claim, “most of these members were Greens and Socialists yesterday and will be tomorrow at the first opportunity.”

Good point. Why on earth would a socialist join and remain a member of Margaret’s pathetic version of the Labour Party? Do the fools not realise the Labour Party is a plaything for WEALTHY PRETTY BOYS in expensive suits? Socialists are the last thing you want around if you have a Westminster political career path in mind.

Perhaps Margaret, who was the parliamentary candidate for Thornbury earlier this year, will go far in the Labour party with this kind of attitude towards ordinary members, workers and – gasp! – socialists?

Although let’s hope none of these new members get wind of what he thinks of them. They might take offence and prevent the POSH PRAT being selected again.

That would be terrible wouldn’t it?

KIDS’ HEALTH SOLD TO WEALTHY HIPPY SHOCKER

With the election safely out of the way, Tory efforts to privatise the NHS move smoothly up a gear.

Plans are now afoot by the North Bristol NHS Trust, who run Southmead Hospital,
to PRIVATISE the city’s Community Children’s Health Partnership (CCHP).

This is the part of the trust that runs Community Paediatricians, Children’s Therapists, Health Visitors, School Health Nurses and Children’s Mental Health Teams in the city and it’s a service crucial to the health and safety of our kids.

Not least because it is at the frontline of PREVENTION of ill health and abuse among children. Not that the Tories or their suited and booted wealthy little helpers running local hospital trusts give a toss about any of that.

The trust’s excuse for this privatisation is that they wish to focus on ‘acute services’. Although some very small bottom line savings and the awarding of public money favours to well-connected corporates also seem to underpin the plans.

Our information suggests that these services for kids in Bristol will be TENDERED OUT for about £28m over the next year and the favourites to get the contract are … Wait for it … VIRGIN Care!

Yes, that’s right, city health bosses want to make creepy billionaire weird beard RICHARD BRANSON responsible for your kids’ health!

Virgin describes 2014’s HEALTH & SOCIAL CARE ACT – which has opened the NHS to more private providers – as an “opportunity” and they are desperate to get their hands on this Bristol contract.

As the upstart private health business, despite having scooped 230 CONTRACTS worth £500m from the NHS already, is not yet showing signs of profit. However this could change if Virgin can achieve what’s called ‘market penetration’ and grab a large enough slice of a health market to benefit from economies of scale.

Virgin already has lucrative health contracts in Devon. So if they can expand into Bristol they’ll achieve the kind of regional ‘market penetration’ that spells cash and profit joy for Richard Branson and his family.

Adding to the sense of bargain basement RIP-OFF at the expense of our kids comes news that Virgin Care is not likely to be paying much tax on any profits made from NHS money any time soon either.

Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant at Tax Research UK, recently revealed that Virgin Care’s ultimate holding company, that’s dished out loans to the fledgling health company, is based in the Virgin Islands – a tax haven!

To be on the safe side and to ensure you avoid this toxic company, we strongly suggest readers make sure their kids don’t get ill in Bristol any more.

HOYT BY HIS OWN PETARD

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WHAT DID GUS KNOW, AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT? ‘GUSTY-GATE’ SPIRALS OUT OF CONTROL…

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And so ‘GustyGate’ continues…

It seems that putting out his ‘public statement’ via the hidden-away blog section of the Bristol Greens’ website – presumably without anyone else checking it through first – may end up causing ex-council house carpetbagger Cllr Augustus Hoyt more problems than he hoped it would cause!

Firstly, he claims he bought his flat in 2011 – when in fact he ACTUALLY bought it in 2012.

Secondly, he admits that he knew it was a council property BEFORE he bought it, and that he could have pulled out after he ‘discovered’ this fact:

I enquired about this and my heart sank when they said they were acting as the agents for BCC who were disposing of the property. I…almost withdrew from the process.

(‘Almost’ – but not not quite. Ah, the sweet smell of a politician’s bullshit-scented principles!)

Thirdly, Hoyt – who by his own admission at the time lived only “three doors down” from the property he was to buy – KNEW that it was owned by Bristol City Council well before it was even put on the market.

Email sent to Councillor Gus Hoyt in January 2012 (address details redacted)

We have paperwork which clearly shows that the property in question was only put up for sale AFTER February 2012 – and that Gus Hoyt had been sent details of this in January 2012 as part of his ward councillor casework.

Former fellow Ashley councillor Jon Rogers has now CONFIRMED that both he and Gus Hoyt were told that the property was owned by BCC and would be sold on the open market if no objections were raised. It is not known if anybody did object to the proposed sale – but the fact that the sale went through apparently unhindered suggests not.

So the question is, was Gusty a CRAP COUNCILLOR, who didn’t properly read his paperwork, or a GREEDY HYPOCRITE, who demands higher standards from others than himself?

Answers on a postcard…

HOYT’S HOUSING HYPOCRISY – UPDATE!

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The many faces of Bristol City Council housing supremo, Assistant Mayor Cllr Gus Hoyt – buying up your public housing stock at very reasonable prices since 2012!

It seems that The BRISTOLIAN‘s story about Assistant Mayor Gus Hoyt’s hypocrisy over people who live in ex-council houses – which we EXCLUSIVELY broke last week in issue #4.13 (OUT NOW at all good stockists!) has stung the Right Honourable Halfwit for Mueslibelt (East)…

After Bristol 24-7 got in touch with him for a follow-up piece, he had some sort of a fizzy-mouthed fit in which he came out with nonsense such as:

I regret that it is necessary to make [this statement] but the recent article in The Bristolian is full of innuendo and therefore has to be refuted.

Except, of course, it’s not ‘innuendo’ to state facts, and you can’t ‘refute’ facts by admitting them!

FACT ONE:

In September 2012 Gus Hoyt bought a family-sized flat from Bristol City Council.

FACT TWO:

Gus Hoyt paid cash for it – £186,500 with no mortgage.

FACT THREE:

Gus Hoyt does not deny either of the facts above. Because they are facts!

~~We look forward to seeing Augustus Bendy-Truth’s promised “public statement” sometime soon on the Bristol Green Party website…~~

Edited to add:

That Augustus Hoyt statement in full is now up (and definitely not hidden away on a dusty, forgotten part of the Bristol Greens’ website where even fewer people go than the ‘News’ page!)

HOYT IN HOUSING HYPOCRISY!

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Another month, another foot-in-mouth fiasco from Mayor Fergo’s right hand man, Ashley Councillor Augustus Hoyt.

You may have noticed Bristol’s miscast housing supremo SIR HOYTY-TOYTY taking to the pages of the Nazi Post to lecture residents in Sea Mills about how he won’t help them renovate their ex-council homes at the same time as BCC housing stock in the area is expensively perked up.

“The council must target our funding to- wards our own housing stock and those lost
to private ownership would not qualify for council investment,” blusters the buffoon.
He then helpfully explains, “Our option is never to lose our housing stock to private ownership as we have a backlog of those trying to access council properties.”

Why indeed it is! So let no-one say Sir Gus has no idea how to deal with the city’s ongoing housing crisis. It’s simple. Just buy yourself outright a nice family home in a fashionable area at a KNOCKDOWN PRICE off the council!

Obviously you’ll need to conveniently ‘forget’ you’re CONTRADICTING your own stated public policy and depriving someone else in need of a home.

Really? So surely this can’t be the same Sir Gus Hoyty-Toyty, a single man, who in 2012 BOUGHT FOR CASH a very competitively priced and well-appointed family-size home in chi-chi Montpelier for just £186,500 off the, er, council could it?

But, presumably, that’s just – another – small price to pay?

WHY PRIVATISATION MATTERS TO EVERYONE…

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Writes The BRISTOLIAN‘s Social Care Correspondent:

So what’s this privatisation of public services thing all about, then?

Well, If you believe the papers, it’s the improvement of services because the workers who deliver them presently are lazy, incompetent, uneconomical and probably have a better pension than you. What a load of arse!

For starters most of the companies that are bidding to run our services also have shares in the media companies that peddle this one-sided MISINFORMATION.

The privatisation of public services means that large companies are providing services for the sick, elderly and vulnerable for financial gain. They have a legal duty towards their shareholders to MAXIMISE PROFIT – a duty that outweighs the rights of the service users or staff, who are often untrained, under resourced and on zero hours contracts with few checks on their background.

We are told that quangos like the Care Quality Commission monitor privatised care Well, they’ve inspected Holmwood House on numerous occasions and the home has FAILED EVERY TIME but they’ve been allowed to carry on regardless and people have died in the meantime.

After you’ve worked all your life and paid your National Insurance, you’d be hoping for some kindness and care with dignity. Tough. In all likelihood you’ll be laying there with your pyjamas round your ankles waiting for some sixteen year old on the Minimum Wage to perform a bowel evacuation on you. Her first time… Just like yours!

After all, they don’t want you being a nuisance and SHITTING YOURSELF because you’re in bed all day with nobody to take you to the toilet.

Meanwhile all that money you raised by selling your house to pay for it will wing its way to the Cayman Islands accounts of a private ‘care provider’. Fucking perky!

Let’s get down the Council House and do a bowel evacuation on those that are flogging off our care and see how they like it.

Anybody fancy some BRISTOLIAN-branded rubber gloves..?

“LIVES AT RISK” IN BRISTOL’S DAY CENTRES AS ‘COST CUTTING’ BY BARMY BOSSES SLASHES SERVICES FOR VULNERABLE PEOPLE

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After The BRISTOLIAN blew the lid on the dangerous understaffing in Day Centres – which have seen service users with dementia and learning difficulties being lumped together despite the clear risks (see issue #4.11) – you would have thought that the BUNGLING BOSSES responsible would do something.

We stated that centres were running at nearly 50% staff absences. Things have now got even worse, with dim-witted managers making more than twenty people redundant!

Many of those ‘restructured’ out of their jobs were glad to be out and away from the CHAOS – yet also very concerned for those left behind and expected to work miracles with nowhere near the resources necessary.

Sources we have spoken to describe “a tangible fear that someone will die soon”.

Meanwhile management has started to realise that it will have to get casual workers in to plug the gaps, as even the lamentable Care Quality Commission won’t let them get away with such CHRONIC UNDER-STAFFING.

But here’s the kicker: the casual workers brought in – costing the council more money than the permanent staff – are likely to be the exact same people they made redundant only last month. That’s right – whilst they DEVASTATE the service, the idiots in charge can’t even save money.

It’s enough to make you wonder who has the learning difficulties.