Category Archives: Road & Rail

Our fine local transportation networks

CAR PARKING WATCH

Baille

Money grabbing snob

Ben Hamilton “OLD” Bailie is a world-renowned designer of shared spaces, which limit the use of the motor vehicle. He is employed by local authorities to plan road schemes and is frequently employed by Bristol City Council. He is currently working on a scheme for Long Ashton in North Somerset to restrict traffic.

While apparently gaining wealth from this type of employment he also, somewhat hypocritically, obtains further wealth by running a PRIVATE CAR PARK in Kingsdown! He charges users £8 per day or part day for the privilege of parking close to the BRI.

Most users are POORLY PAID health workers from the hospital. There are 11 spaces of which 7 are in regular use. Is there any planning consent for this private car park? It’s all administered by his wife Jennifer Hill and is registered under the business name of Kingsdown Arcadia LTD. Bailie and his missus are the only two directors.

Sounds like a nice little earner …

LEAKED DOCUMENT!!! WHAT THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT BRT!

BRT leak-1

Click to view document

We’ve been LABOURing over this cabinet report LEAK about the financial black hole emerging in the city’s white elephant BRT bus project.

The report that we’re publishing and which has no council managers’ name anywhere near it to take ownership and responsibility for the shambles, lists a series of overspends due to the inflated FINANCIAL DEMANDS of corporate civil engineering firms for work on the Ashton Vale – Temple Meads bus route.

So far, before any work has even begun, costs for works on the Ashton Avenue Bridge; bridges at the Bathurst Basin due to Fergo’s rerouting plans and on the so-called “Cumberland Busway” (Cumberland Road to me and you) amount to £9.12m MORE than was originally budgeted for.

The council’s proposals for covering these losses are equally interesting.

One plan is to shave £2.4m off the budget by a REDUCING FLOOD DEFENCE measures along the New Cut on Cumberland Road.

Another is to TARGET PEDESTRIANS and not bother with street lighting, except at bus stops, over the whole route. Another is to inexplicably “reduce the cost of city centre work” for the BRT scheme by £1.1m. Yet more corners cut then.

Another is to simply reallocate £1.5m to “OTHER SCHEMES”, which is likely to be transport budgets – so don’t expect any new pedestrian crossings any time soon in your community.

Yet another is to “reallocate” £0.4m from the CYCLING AMBITION FUND and spend it on the Bathurst Basin bridges. In other words money for cycling will be spent on buses!

A further £1.1m will be absorbed by “ADDITIONAL FUNDING”, whatever that is.

Is all this legal? Council budgets raided and tax payers money diverted – in secret – to corporations on the authority of unsigned confidential council cabinet reports?

The full report is here: BRT leak

GREEN CRAPITAL: YES, IT REALLY IS SHIT!

green cap

MELTDOWN

“IN life you often have to spend money to make money,” guffed SIR GUS HOYTY TOYTY, Uncle George’s pale green footrest, as the former line cook turned finance expert explained to us last November why he was paying a yankee CORPORATE MARKETER with no knowledge of Bristol or green issues a cool £250k to run the Green Capital shambles.

Meanwhile UNCLE GEORGE told us back in December, “European Green Capital is one of Bristol’s greatest opportunities and I wanted to find the best person in the world to run it. I am confident that KRIS DONALDSON is that person.”

George also assured us he had set the well-remunerated yank some tough targets, saying he needed to “raise millions”. Fast forward ten months and despite the tough targets it looks like George and Sir Gus’s brilliant appointment has raised a great big, fat, best-person-in-the-world ZERO for the Green Capital.

Indeed, so utterly hopeless was the yank that he was briefly PULLED from his post last month and then SACKED altogether from running the project he’s been paid a bomb to make a success. City Council Chief Exec NICOLA “LADY GAGA” YATES has now been given the reins for an undisclosed rate on top of her city council £140k pa day job.

Those in the know tell us, “it’s unlikely Gaga will be any more competent. She knows nothing about Bristol having been here about five minutes and her green credentials stretch to a paper recycling box in her office and a tin of organic coffee. Personally, I wouldn’t rely on her to find Sea Mills on a map if her life depended on it.”

Oh, happy days …

THE THICK OF IT

Listeners to John “DARTH” Darvall on Radio Bristol were treated to an entertaining Green Capital car crash last month.

Step forward yankee idiot KRIS DONALDSON “DUCK” – the sacked Green Capital chief exec who creamed a six-figure salary from the public purse – and his partner in slime Green Capital chair, plummy-voiced thicko ANDREW “SPESH” GARRARD from – would you believe? – the Society of the Merchant Venturers,

The undynamic duo were laid low by a series of Bristolians asking SIMPLE QUESTIONS during a phone-in about the Green Capital. For instance, ‘Betty from Westbury on Trym’ wanted to know why the council wasn’t able to keep the streets clear of rubbish and litter. A query way beyond Donaldson Duck and Spesh’s limited abilities.

It makes you wonder how a Merchant Venturer buffoon like Spesh ever landed the gig running our Green Capital? Could it have anything to do with the fact he was the second largest CASH DONOR to “Uncle” George’s election campaign?

Records seen by The BRISTOLIAN show Garrard handed a cool £2,500 of cash over to Ferguson to help get him elected. The biggest donor was Merchant Venturer (are you seeing a pattern here?) ANDREW NISBET who chucked George £6,244.

Other Venturers who splashed out to get George elected included TREVOR SMALLWOOD, former executive chairman of FIRSTGROUP buses and execrable establishment lackey, JAY TIDMARSH.

Indeed, over half of the cash for “Uncle” George’s election expenditure came from Merchant Venturers. What a surprise …

EVENTS DEAR BOY, EVENTS

More fun as what remains of the Green Capital’s team of out-of-town dickheads with masters degrees announced their SCHEDULE OF EVENTS for 2015 straight off the back of a fag packet.

Highlights include the creation of a TIRED CLICHÉ (surely blue whale? Ed.) sculptured out of rubbish, a few WANKY LECTURES featuring the likes of Guardian fruitbat-in-chief George Monbiot; a competition to design a bloody PHONE APP branded as a ‘Green tech festival’ and the opening event, inevitably featuring circus from CIRQUE “BOURGEOISE” BIJOU.

To pad out this total lack of anything much happening, Gaga’s Green Capitalists have chucked information into the programme about random Green stuff that’s already happening anyway.

Hence in February ‘ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING’ is listed as an event alongside ‘METROBUS’.
This is on the basis that “Bristol anticipates approvals from the Department of Transport for the region’s remaining MetroBus route”. And means Lady Gaga’s city council PR team will produce a gushing press release of more lying bollocks about their godawful BRT bus project. What an event! Be sure to tell the kids!

Also featured is Uncle George’s boyfriend and establishment brown-noser, LUKE “GISSA GRANT” JERRAM – the man who created the slowest waterslide in human history on Park Street.

He’s now being paid to put up 200 kids’ swings at an undisclosed cost to “to bring the fun factor to the Green Capital of Europe programme” despite the fact that plenty of us are having plenty of fun at the expense of Gissa Grant & Co’s Green Capital ‘crap factor’ already, thanks.

We say sack the lot of these tossers now and instead divvy up the money and dish it out to the city’s underfunded community groups that are being destroyed by austerity.

WEBSITE EXCLUSIVE: BRADSHAW GOES QUACKERS OVER B.R.T.

8 out of 10 Bristolians can't tell the difference - can you?

8 out of 10 Bristolians can’t tell the difference – can you?

News that Gorgeous George now has a dream team cabinet complete with Labour Party members has been met, on the whole, with barely stifled yawns across the city.

However, here at The BRISTOLIAN, we’re rather excited by the appointment of Labour Deputy Leader MARK ‘BEAR’ BRADSHAW as George’s transport supremo, as he has long had a penchant for crap ideas, political ineptitude and panicked u-turns as good as any in Bristol.

After all, this is the man who just a few years ago not only decided that BRT was the transport solution the city really needed, but then proposed to run the useless bus service up the Bristol and Bath Railway Path – the one genuine world-class cycling facility we have! This resulted in a world-class about-turn from Bradshaw when virtually the whole city, with the exception of FirstBus and Bradshaw’s own USELESS transport officers, told him where to stick his plan.

And now Bradshaw’s back – and guess what? He’ll be fronting the latest version of the BRT fiasco for George. And this promises to be very interesting as Bradshaw is now on record as saying that BRT is “A LAME DUCK PROJECT WITH VIRTUALLY NO SUPPORT”!

So that’s both the Mayor and his transport supremo against BRT. Now just sit back and watch the pair of them execute a perfect 180 degree u-turn and deliver the expensive and unwanted white elephant…

B.R.T: AN OMNIBUS SHAMBLES

Bridge row as transport fiasco trundles on – George’s Stalingrad?

Mayor Fergo: facing a mutiny on the buses over BRT bridge fiasco?

Mayor Fergo: facing a mutiny on the buses over BRT bridge fiasco?

Another week, another embarrassing public row about BRT, the crappy ‘super bus’ system nobody wants but nobody seems able to stop.

In March Gorgeous George found himself engaged in a WAR OF WORDS with North Somerset councillors Elfan Ap Rees and Nigel Ashton over their glorified FirstBus service. They both criticised the mayor for being in Cannes (see The BRISTOLIAN #4.2) rather than at a meeting with them explaining his new policy of rerouting this supposed transit system. Unimpressed, the two carrot-crunching councillors issued a press release stating the BRT plan was going ahead in its original form: through Bristol Docks, over Prince Street Bridge, and into the Centre.

George responded by publicly calling Rees and Ashton “SILLY” and firmly stating BRT would not be going over Prince Street Bridge.

Then everything went very quiet for a few weeks. But now George’s own underling, Head of Special Projects and consummate time-serving Bristol City Council underachiever, Alun Owen, has piped up to councillors and the press saying – wait for it – that buses will be routed over George’s beloved Prince Street Bridge!

“Oh no they won’t,” replies Dame George in true pantomime style. But what on earth is going on here? Who’s in charge – unelected bureaucrat Owen or elected mayor George? And why is a local government officer openly contradicting his elected boss and NONCHALENTLY CHANGING AGREED POLICY via the press?

This is turning into a huge débacle for George. He was elected on a platform of scrapping the BRT plans – yet U-turned on this within days of being elected, announcing instead he would reroute the system to avoid the Docks and Prince Street Bridge (and so not upset his Redcliffe heritage mafia chums and Harbourside business associates). Now even that plan is being publicly undermined by his own employees.

It’s as though the mayor can’t even manage his own staff – let alone a whole bloody city!