Category Archives: Privatisers & Carpetbaggers

Our fine local ‘investors’ and ‘stakeholders’

COUNCIL HOUSE SELL-OFF SHOCKER

Bristol_Council_House_from_southIt’s been confirmed to The BRISTOLIAN that so-called temporary  plans to move staff out of the Council House while it’s “refurbished” will be made permanent and the building sold to the PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA.

We understand that one of China’s leading sovereign wealth funds, the CHINA INVESTMENT CORPORATION (CIC), will be paying in the region £30m IN CASH for the landmark building and its College Green lawn. The deal was reputedly first brokered by Mayor Fergo when he traveled to China on a business mission late last year.

We can also confirm that the city’s private sector property boss, Robert “Spunkface” Orrett has travelled to Beijing twice this year already and we’ve seen evidence from a Freedom of Information request that Spunkface has, for the last six months, been receiving MANDARIN LESSONS at least twice weekly at his Council House office.

The future of the Council House, one of the city’s landmark buildings is currently unclear. Although a well-placed source has told us that he believes it will be used by the CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY as a cultural and business centre to promote further Chinese investment in the region and the UK as a whole.

“There’s absolutely no doubt now, “ he says, “the Chinese are coming and they’re paying CASH!

Our source has also spoken to people “close to a number of West Bristol estate agents” who say that what appear to be senior Chinese Communist Party officials have been viewing “HIGH-END PROPERTIES” in Clifton and Leigh Woods.

Our source says, “Initially the Chinese were very interested in Georgian town houses in and around Clifton Village. However, since the Chinese security services have got involved, the interest has switched to SECLUDED LOCATIONS in Leigh Woods. I’m also told interest has been expressed in Ashton Court Mansion.”

Our spies in AVONMOUTH also report sightings of Chinese in and around the port. “They look like teams of surveyors in hard hats and h-viz,” we’re told.

And contacts at the BRISTOL WOOD RECYCLING PROJECT in the Enterprise Zone also  report sighting Chinese officials  at the arena site.

“They’ve turned up three times now,”  we’re told. “They arrive in a convoy of about four or five smart, black Range Rovers with tinted windows and wander around the site. It’s all a bit cloak and dagger – dark suits, dark glasses, moody demeanours and so on.”

“Four of them came in here the other day and they didn’t seem much interested in buying any wood. I was just really friendly as they looked like the types who might shoot first and ask questions later. Although I did hear they bought a lot of salad leaves off the SEVERN PROJECT when they visited there.”

FORGED DRUG RECORDS CLAIMS AT ‘HORROR HOUSE’ NURSING HOME HOLMWOOD

HOLMWOOD HOUSEAs part of our ongoing investigation local private care home of horrors HOLMWOOD HOUSE, where we have reported the concerns of family members over several resident deaths and allegations of neglect, The BRISTOLIAN has taken delivery of a large bundle of medical documents. These relate to the management and distribution of controlled drugs there in 2013 – when the home was briefly managed by a State Registered Nurse (SRN), SIMONE SMITH.

We understand that the police have studied these documents and confirmed that a considerable number of them contain FORGED SIGNATURES. At present it is unclear who was responsible for the forgeries, as the police appear to have discontinued their inquiry.

Also in the bundle is evidence of a DRUG AUDIT ordered by then-manager Smith which was conducted by struck-off nurse ISLA MEEK, who was working at the home as a “consultant”.

There’s little doubt Meek did the work, as the audit was produced on the headed business paper of ‘Isla Meek Consulting’. Obviously, a struck-off nurse should not be involved in any way in the management of controlled drugs at a nursing home.

in a further extraordinary twist, Smith is now using these dodgy drug audits herself as evidence to get another former nurse from the home STRUCK OFF by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). A hearing is expected later this year.

Smith left Holmwood House in the Autumn of 2013 and is now employed by Four Seasons Healthcare as a manager at OAKTREE CARE HOME in Yate. Four Seasons Healthcare rejects any claims of wrongdoing regarding Smith, and told The BRISTOLIAN that Bristol City Council’s Safeguarding Team have described Smith as “a whistleblower”!

Although, as far as we can tell, the only whistleblowing Smith could have done would be in regards to her own management of controlled drugs.

Forged drug records? Bent audits? The Holmwood House affair gets a whole lot murkier…

JUNKET GEORGE JETS OFF YET AGAIN: YES HE CANNES!

It’s that time of the year once more – so our illustrious MAYOR FERGO has packed his BUDGIE HAMMOCKS AND BRONZER and buggered off to Cannes on the French Riviera for the annual MIPIM Property Conference!

Yes, just like last year, when we reported how George and his pals racked up a tab of more than £100,000 at an industry get-together known as “basically a four-day party with loads of LOBSTER AND CHAMPAGNE ON YACHTS”…

This time, though, he will be part of a “high level delegation” of city bosses from CUBA (that’s the Councils that Used to Be Avon), as well as his close, personal Merchant Venturer chum COLIN SKELLETT from Wessex Water.

The icing on the cake? George’s jolly is being organised through regional quango Invest Bristol+Bath – and sponsored by HorseWorld lawyers BURGES SALMON!

What a small world…

RED ALERT! GREEN SPACE SELL-OFF..?

Open space campaigners tell us that part-time council property boss, Robert ‘Spunkface’ Orrett has OPENLY ADMITTED that he sees his role as obtaining the maximum cash sale value of all council land in Bristol – including any local green or open space.

This was why Spunkface endlessly delayed voluntarily registering council-owned open space such as Wellington Hill Playing Fields as ‘Town Greens’.

Locals should therefore be on alert to protect their green and open spaces not protected by town green law, as the man in charge considers it all up for sale for development and he DOESN’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK. This applies to all parkland and allotments too.

At least what we have always suspected is now confirmed: that Bristol City Council sees open spaces primarily as financial assets for itself and not as spaces of value for Bristolians.

GEORGE’S MARVELLOUS CATHEDRAL PRIMARY SCHOOL STITCH-UP! HOW BRISTOL’S MAYOR AND HIS CHUMS ‘STOLE’ A COMMUNITY RESOURCE…

FERGO IGNORES REPORT; HIDES CLOSE LINKS TO SCHOOL; FORCES THROUGH LIBRARY DEAL…WHY?

Parsons, Blundell, Ferguson & Cook: making the magic happen. But would you want them looking after your kids?

The CPS ‘Dream Team’: Parsons, Blundell, Ferguson & Cook – making the magic happen. But would you want them looking after your kids?

The SCANDAL over how vital space in Bristol’s publicly-owned and much-used Central Library has been given over to what until recently was a fee-paying private school continues, after Mayor George Ferguson’s Cabinet decision to rubber-stamp the move was confirmed in a ‘calling in’ council meeting in January. This followed Fergo ignoring a December scrutiny report which was highly critical of the deal on almost every count.

This means Cathedral Primary School (CPS), a new ‘free school’ set up by the formerly fee-paying Bristol Cathedral Choir School (BCCS), could take over two basement floors of the library from September 2015 if central government approves it. CPS  opened the doors to its first intake this past September, and currently occupies the Abbey House building alongside BCCS’s administrative block, the Deanery.

But exactly how did this behind-closed-doors deal get to be hammered out? And what can be done now?

The PRIMARY SCHOOL PLACES CRISIS in Bristol is real  – current estimates show that Bristol needs an additional 30% on top of current primary school places over the next five years – but the most acute shortages are in north and south Bristol, which this school will not address.

Since 2008 a state-funded but independently managed academy (thanks to severe financial problems forcing it to go cap-in-hand for government cash), BCCS has only been open to all children for 36 of its 873 years of continuous operation. In other words, it has been a BASTION OF PRIVILEGE and closed doors – and is judged to be in the bottom 1% nationally for social inclusion. Like its parent school, CPS will most directly benefit middle and upper class families in Clifton – whilst the school boasts of appealing to similarly affluent parents in South Gloucestershire and North Somerset!

Relocating the primary school into the library will mean two floors-worth of books – many in regular use – will now be shipped over to the B Bond warehouse on Cumberland Basin, where they will be MAROONED along with unwilling staff (minus convenient ‘wastage’ or ‘rationalisation’ – which will help Fergo trim down his wages bill). Bristolians wanting to access those books will likely have to wait days instead of minutes, and even face fees for the inconvenience.

So how did it all come to this?

George Ferguson has been careful to trying to appear neutral on the issue, but no matter how hard he tries, he can’t hide the facts.

As a longtime member of that smug, self-satisfied band of local sub-Freemasons, the Society of Merchant Venturers, ex-private schoolboy Ferguson has been kept abreast of the plans from the outset. Ferguson resigned from the MVs in 2012 – only after announcing his candidancy for Mayor – much as he stopped paying dues to the Lib Dems: because it was politically expedient.

A fellow MV is Stephen Parsons. As well as being Chair of Trustees at both the Bristol Cathedral Trust and Cathedral Primary School, as well as Chair of Governors at BCCS and CPS, and Vice-Chair of Trustees at BCCS and an honorary Canon at  the Cathedral, Parsons also runs the Quartet Community Foundation. A way for RICH BASTARDS to feel good about themselves by doling out a few grants here and there, Quartet just so happens to administer Fergo’s own ‘Mayor’s Fund for Bristol’.

Parsons is also – alongside George Ferguson, of course – a board member at the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership quango. Perhaps he needs a hobby?

Fergo’s Cabinet chum, Lib Dem councillor Simon ‘Casualty’ Cook, has been another key driver behind the annexation of the library. Not himself a Merchant Venturer, Cook is however a member of the MV-linked ‘Antient Society of St Stephen’s Ringers’. He also went to school (in Norwich) with former BCCS head Kevin Riley. It is thought that this close friendship with Riley brought Cook into PARSONS’ INNER CIRCLE.

Grabber George’s own close connections to BCCS, and the cathedral to which it is linked, stretches back for years. His ex-wife Lavinia Ferguson was for the best part of a decade a director of Bristol Cathedral Concerts Ltd, seven years as its company secretary. In the 90s Fergo himself worked directly with the Cathedral’s Dean to block any harbourside development that didn’t put money in his RED TROUSERED POCKETS.

But not all the pressure has been from a clique within Shitty Hall. Considerable resources have been put at the disposal of BCCS Principal Neil Blundell – the man widely seen as driving the project from the Cathedral side – from ideologically-driven quarters.

Consider the Centre for Market Reform of Education (CMRE), a champion of ‘free schools’ which whilst nominally independent shares its premises and some personnel with the Institute for Economic Affairs. (Yes, that’s right, Margaret Thatcher’s very own BATSHIT CRAZY right-wing thinktank is also in the picture!) CMRE appears to have been used to channel funds into the marketing effort to ‘sell’ the CPS library snatch to Bristolians – not because it’s a good deal for the city, but because it fits a certain agenda.

Key to implementing this has been Wotton-based communications agency Edge Media, which has worked for the Cathedral and BCCS for a number of years, and is now additionally contracted to CPS. Certainly the amount of work Edge has put into the P.R. OFFENSIVE far outstrips the £6,961 that CPS itself directly spent on communications, or the £2,084 BCCS spends with them annually. But then it is unusual for Edge to represent what is nominally a state school: virtually all its clients are private schools or organisations connected to them.

These include the School Proprietors’ Association, for owners of private schools; the Tutors’ Association, for private tutors; the Society of Education Consultants; and iSBi, a search site for private schools. It’s almost as though Edge Media doesn’t really like mixing with us ordinary folk!

But it’s not all bad news. The push to relocate CPS into the library building is not unanimously popular within BCCS – either with staff or governors – or even with the
Cathedral. It seems that many consider it a vanity project of Parsons, Ferguson, Blundell and Cook. Sources say even Blundell was surprised that Cook managed to get Cabinet approval for the DODGY library deal.

Meanwhile, the murkiness of the whole sordid affair has attracted the interest of both the Department for Education and the Office of the Schools Adjudicator.

So watch this space…

HOLMWOOD HOUSE ‘CARE’ SCANDAL: CENSORSHIP AND COVER-UP IN BRISTOL?

Web ExclusiveFollowing on from our exclusive story about Holmwood House care home, The BRISTOLIAN here reprints word-for-word a statement sent in to Bristol City Council by the son of a resident ENDED UP DEAD in circumstances that would make any reasonable person very concerned.

Its HEARTFELT MESSAGE, intended to be read out at today’s Cabinet meeting, seems to be something which neither Bristol’s Bedwetter-in-Chief, Mayor Red-Nappy himself, nor his middle management cronies, want you to hear.

That’s certainly what the various attempts by senior bureaucrats to prevent the statement’s author from presenting his statement or addressing the meeting look like to anybody outside of their cosy BCC bubble. They’ve spent the last day or so going REDACTION CRAZY, crossing out as much detail in the statement as possible with their big black felt pens, as if to minimise any possible comeback against council officers or policy. That’s on top of trying to strong-arm the author (whose father died in their care) into not mentioning the names of any people, places, companies or court cases – which are already a matter of public record.

“The statement’s defamatory!” they cry, as if they were high court judges instead of the cheap apologists for the abusers of the elderly that they actually are.

As usual the actions of these petty town hall bosses appear designed to protect the guilty and screw ordinary, innocent Bristolians unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of their outsourced ‘care’ or their cut-price ‘safeguarding’.

Anyway, anyone mentioned in this statement – as those at Shitty Hall know full well – is more than welcome to take action. We wait with interest…

Three years ago this coming January my father passed away under dubious circumstances whilst in the care of Holmwood House Nursing Home. Kenneth Albert Norman was placed in to the of care Holmwood House by the Adult Community Care team after suffering horrendous abuse and neglect at the hands of Mimosa Health Care. Another provider who were fully supported by Bristol City Council and who received millions of pounds from the city’s coffers to provide quality care and end of life facilities to the most vulnerable in society – the elderly.

The establishments’ run by Mimosa within the city were continuously investigated by the biggest toothless tiger on the planet. One that in most sensible thinking people’s minds should be disbanded and replaced with something that can bite. This organisation is the Care Quality Commission.

What action did Bristol City Council take when serious failings were found? Ummm they continued to give this provider millions until their demise. Through this stupidity and madness you helped this provider continue to abuse and neglect the most vulnerable in society and not once has an elected official or senior manager apologised to those that suffered or their families who are left with the permanent scars and nightmares created by the madness of this provider.

We now have a new provider of abuse and neglect on the block – Holmwood House Nursing Home, Westbury-On-Trym. When Kenneth Albert Norman passed away, I requested an inquest in to his death. During this process I made a request through the coroner’s office to obtain his medical records from Holmwood House. The coroner’s office were then informed by Holmwood House that “the gardener had burned/destroyed them in a bin in the back garden of the home.”

This was less than a year after his passing and it effectively scuppered any chance of the files being inspected by me or the coroner’s office before an inquest. After the inquest these records rose like a Phoenix from the ashes and re-manifested themselves. I along with other members of my family have a lasting vision etched on our brains of our father led out in a hospital bed at 01.00am dead and we will never have the answers as to why.

Three weeks ago I was approached by a lady called Mrs Annette Whiting seeking my assistance and help after her mother, Katherine Cole, died of pneumonia twelve days after leaving Holmwood House Nursing Home, having inexplicably lost her swallowing reflex and one third of her body weight.

She died despite six safeguarding investigations by Bristol City Council – who placed the woman in the home – into the care Katherine was receiving at Holmwood House during her last fifteen months there. The city council did a seventh safeguarding investigation following the woman’s death.

I have seen the safeguarding reports and the material is shocking. One report describes two potential assaults on Katherine by nurse Cicily Joseph, who was later charged with one count of common assault for performing an enema on Katherine without proper permissions. Ms Joseph escaped a conviction for this on appeal.

A second potential assault charge for performing a ‘manual evacuation’, a considerably more serious and degrading assault, never came to court. Although seven staff have stated that Ms Joseph had clearly told them that she performed “a manual” on the woman. Staff say Ms Joseph also told them that she had performed the procedure on a male resident with learning difficulties and one member of staff witnessed this. Ms Joseph now works in another Bristol care home.

Meanwhile the ‘consultant’ employed by Holmwood House who worked directly with the council on many of their safeguarding investigations at the home was former nurse, Isla Meek. Ms Meek was struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council in 2012 after failing to report six deaths and keep proper drug records at a home in Whitchurch. Why both the city council and Holmwood House owner Ghassan Al-Jibouri consider Ms Meek a suitable person to carry out investigations in to the safety of adults in care homes is unclear.

It also appears that Ms Meek was directly involved in patient care at the home too. She claimed to the council’s final safeguarding investigation that on the morning that Katherine Cole was moved from Holmwood, she was sat up in bed eating porridge. An account that is disputed by legitimate medical practitioners who say the woman had no swallowing reflex on arriving at another care home a few hours later.

Similarly, Ms Meek and Holmwood can provide no explanation as to how the woman lost such a large amount of weight. What there is of Holmwood’s slapdash medical records – that have already  been heavily criticised by the CQC – seem to show the patient experienced no weight loss.

Her family are therefore left to believe their mother somehow lost a third of her body weight, her swallowing reflex and caught terminal pneumonia during a half hour ambulance journey to a new care home.

And to add insult to injury, Mrs Cole’s daughter, Annette Whiting, has requested her mother’s medical records from the home, only to be told that this will cost her £50 for copying. In the first instance, a charge of this magnitude is simply not legal and seems designed to prevent Mrs Whiting from accessing these records. Secondly, where’s the basic humanity from this home and its Bristol City Council backers? How can you charge recently bereaved relatives like this?

Does anyone here remember the No Secrets No Hiding Place In Bristol Policy? Has anyone considered renaming that policy ‘Plenty of Secrets Plenty of Hiding Place in Bristol as We Don’t Believe In Transparency’?

I say this to our esteemed Mayor before jetting of round the world on jolly boys outings. Do the job you were elected to do and get the big house on the green in order. I have no doubt that when this story becomes public knowledge and hits the civil courts you will have plenty of opportunity for press coverage and comments about our great city and its failure to protect the most vulnerable.

Three years may seem like a long time but I feel sure from the press I read Mr Ferguson that it is going to be a case of Sia Nara Mr Ferguson in three years time.

Stephen Norman.

You can watch the action live on the council’s website here from 6pm.

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOLMWOOD: BRISTOL’S NEW HOUSE OF HORRORS

Microsoft Word - NO SECRETS IN BRISTOL 2010.docHolmwood House care home is like something out of The Munsters. Except it’s really not funny.

The spotlight is firmly on private care home HOLMWOOD HOUSE in Westbury-on-Trym after an elderly woman died twelve days after leaving their care, having inexplicably lost her swallowing reflex and one third of her body weight.

She died despite SIX safeguarding investigations by Bristol City Council – who placed the woman in the home – into the care the woman was receiving at Holmwood House during her last fifteen months there. The City Council began a seventh such investigation following the woman’s death.

The BRISTOLIAN has seen the safeguarding reports and the material is shocking. One report describes two potential assaults on the woman by nurse CICILY JOSEPH, who was later charged with one count of common assault for performing an enema on the woman without proper permissions. Ms Joseph escaped a conviction for this on appeal.

A second potential assault charge for performing a ‘manual evacuation’, a considerably more serious and degrading assault, never came to court – though seven staff have stated that Ms Joseph had clearly told them that she performed “a manual” on the woman. Staff say Ms Joseph also told them that she had performed the procedure on a male resident with learning difficulties. One member of staff witnessed this. Ms Joseph now works in another Bristol care home.

In a further shocking revelation, we can also confirm that a ‘consultant’ employed by Holmwood House who worked directly with the council on many of their safeguarding investigations at the home was former nurse, ISLA MEEK. Ms Meek was STRUCK OFF by the Nursing and Midwifery Council in 2012 after failing to report six deaths and keep proper drug records at a home in Whitchurch.

Why both the City Council and Holmwood House owner GHASSAN AL-JIBOURI consider Ms Meek a suitable person to carry out investigations in to the safety of adults in care homes is unclear.

It also appears that Ms Meek was directly involved in patient care at the home too. She claimed to the final safeguarding investigation that on the morning the woman was moved from Holmwood, she was sat up in bed eating porridge. An account that is disputed by legitimate medical practitioners who say the woman had no swallowing reflex at all on arriving at her new care home a few hours later.

Similarly, Ms Meek and Holmwood can provide no explanation as to how the woman lost such a large amount of weight. What there is of Holmwood’s slapdash medical records – which have been heavily criticised by the CQC – seem to show the patient experienced no weight loss.

Her family are therefore being led to believe that their mother somehow lost one-third of her body weight, her swallowing reflex and caught terminal pneumonia during a half-hour ambulance journey to a new care home.

This latest scandal comes just three years after another family with a deceased relative at the home was told that his medical records had all been burned by the gardener. Although, MIRACULOUSLY THE RECORDS REAPPEARED  after the coroner’s inquest was completed!

Family of the home’s latest victim are consulting lawyers with a view to taking action for negligence against the home, the city council and the home’s GP Dr Norman Douglas.

Good news then. This dump needs closing down immediately and the guilty and incompetent need to be identified and punished.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB (IN BRISTOL)?

Bristol City Council Chief Exec Nicola ‘Lady Gaga’ Yates wants to cut £90 million from what little remains of local services. But it’s not only the council that teeters on the BRINK OF BANKRUPTCY unable to provide basic services.

Remember the ‘Private Finance Initiative’ – or PFI – deals that led to all our new schools being built by private companies which then lease them back to local authorities?

Well, the schools have to pay the PFI companies before they are allowed to spend a single penny on books, or anything else. So when schools get their budgets cut – tough. Blacklisting PFI racketeers like Skanska or Carillion get their money before your kids get educated.

And the brand spanking new facilities aren’t what they’re cracked up to be. The Oasis Academy – previously Portway School – now has to pay more for five-a-side pitches, for example. The charge: a WHOPPING £40 an hour. How many kids do you know with that sort of money? So the pitches stay unused and local kids play in the streets.

Even worse, the company charges BREATHTAKING SUMS for basic caretaking. The PFI deal means that a company provides ‘soft services’ like catering, and caretaking. f a light bulb goes, the school staff can’t touch it. They must call ‘caretaking services’ who, when they eventually get there, will charge up to an EXTORTIONATE £60 for changing a light bulb!

Money grabbing bastards are stealing our children’s education – kids should come first. Time to ditch these sick PFI debts!

CORPORATE FEED-IN FEEDING FRENZY SET TO HIT BRISTOL OVER SOLAR SCHEME

China & big business cashing in on city’s solar power bonanza

While leafing through our latest copy of Construction News, the ‘Magazine of the Chartered Institute of Building’, a headline leaps out: CONTRACTORS EYE UP BRISTOL’S £47M ‘DASH FOR SOLAR’.

Maybe this a reference to Mayor Fergo’s go-ahead earlier this month for a £47m plan to install solar panels on 7,000 council houses and a variety of public buildings in the city?

This is “triggering one of the biggest solar PV projects since the Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) was cut in November 2011,” the magazine breathlessly informs its corporate readership. It then lists massive global companies including Lakehouse, Wates, Willmott Dixon and NOTORIOUS BLACKLISTERS Carillion among the contractors who might be interested in this feed-in feeding frenzy. Hardly the kind of local businesses that Mayor Redtrousers and his sidekick, solar-powered windbag Sir Gus Hoyty-Toyty seem so keen to promote at election time!

The article then finds Simon Green from Lakehouse – which grabs lucrative public sector contracts – waxing lyrical: “Because of MASS PRODUCTION IN CHINA, the unit cost of the kit has come down considerably and with the feed-in tariff the same as it was, then you have a large enough project, and the RATE OF RETURN is as big as it was before,” he gushes.

Bollocks. Unit costs have not “come down considerably”; they’ve been driven down. China has unlimited access to forced, slave and child labour and gives workers zero human rights. So they can undercut competitors in European markets by selling panels below cost. Why? To break Europe’s companies and get a monopoly.

Just the sort of practices we should be encouraging here in Bristol for our long-term benefit don’t you think?

Anyway, with £47m to play with, why can’t we manufacture and install the damn things from Bristol?

NO RED TAPE FOR REDPANTS’ PALS! MAYOR FERGO TO GIVE MERCHANT VENTURERS FREE REIN IN PARKS & LIBRARIES..?

Mayor George Ferguson’s old friends and colleagues in the rich posh boys’ club the MERCHANT VENTURERS seem to be doing all right out of his administration…

STEPHEN PARSONS, in his role as chair of the governors of BRISTOL CATHEDRAL SCHOOL, looks set to take over TWO FLOORS of the Bristol Central Library with few questions asked for his primary ‘free school’ project.

DAVID FREED, director of upmarket property developers DEELEY FREED, has been handed a sizable chunk of CASTLE PARK to concrete over. At least we now know what Mayor Redpants meant when he said he was going to get things done.

Nothing to see here, honest!

Nothing to see here, honest!

Meanwhile, Fergo’s extensive and highly involved business interests in the city have attracted the attention of the council’s official auditors, Grant Thornton. “[A] review of the Mayor’s declarations of interest found a number of organisations with which the Council have had interaction which have not been included within the related parties transactions note,” they say in their ‘Audit Findings for Bristol City Council’.

No doubt it’s all just a big misunderstanding that cash-strapped millionaire George will set straight when he’s able to take time out of his busy schedule.

Edited to add:

It seems that the audit report linked to above is now mysteriously ‘unavailable’ on the Bristol City Council website – so download it direct from The BRISTOLIAN website here!

Edited again to add:

It would now appear that the Council decided to change the document’s address on the BCC website (at around 6pm on a Friday afternoon!) as soon as it was realised that The BRISTOLIAN was linking to it.

You can find the document in question via this direct link, or you can click on the link at item 11 on the agenda of the Audit Committee meeting of 24 September 2013 here