Category Archives: Shitty Hall

Our fine local authority – all about Bristol City Council and the Mayor

FROM AGILE TO FRAGILE: HOW SENIOR COUNCIL BOSSES HAVE SCREWED THEIR STAFF #1

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ON THE DAY IT’S FINALLY REVEALED THAT BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL’S FORMER CHIEF EXEC, NICOLA “LADY GAGA” YATES LEFT LAST MONTH WITH A £196K PAY OFF FROM THE THE REVEREND MARVIN REES, WE START TO REVEAL THE APPALLING FINANCIAL BASKETCASE GAGA AND HER SENIOR BOSSES HAVE TURNED OUR COUNCIL INTO … AND WHO’S GONNA PAY FOR IT

How has Bristol City Council property boss Robert “Spunkface” Orrett already managed to run up a LOSS of £9m in his department this year? Surely there’s some mistake? Wasn’t Spunkface brought in from the super efficient, cash generating private sector to prevent just this kind of public sector waste and profligacy?

Spunkface

Spunkface: business pro who can’t identify a £9m loss?

A brief read of the Reverend Rees’s emergency finance report – expensively prepared by his highly-paid private sector finance consultant Anna “BIG WEDGE” Klonowski, managing director of Elka Solutions Ltd management consultancy – reveals that Spunkface has managed to turn a profit projected to be £7.5m in March’s budget into a LOSS of £1.5m five months later!

Most of the excuses concocted for this financial shambles float in a special space between useless and the absurd. According to Ms Big Wedge, Spunkface has flopped because he’s FAILED to increase return on investment property holdings; he’s FAILED to reduce running costs from the disposal of admin buildings and he’s FAILED to reduce facilities management costs as promised.

Since the rental income from INVESTMENT PROPERTIES was £10m in 2015 – 16 – slightly up from £9.5m in 2014 -15. It’s is hard to see how Spunkface or the council thought they could increase this income by £7.5m this year … So it’s nothing to do with that then.

Similarly, FACILITIES MANAGEMENT costs are just £4.3m a year so there’s no £7.5m savings to be made there … So it’s nothing to do with that then.

This just leaves the running costs saved from the disposal of admin buildings. A major part of recently departed strategic director Max Wide “Boy’s” SINGLE CHANGE PROGRAMME that was going to deliver £60m of carefully designed strategic cuts by March 2017.

MAX WIDE ‘BOY’ - There'll be hell toupee with him in charge...

MAX WIDE ‘BOY’: has packed up his Powerpoint slides and fled

The jewel in the crown of these proposals was the ‘WORKPLACE PROGRAMME‘. The plan being that council would create “new agile working environments” for all council staff in just TWO BUILDINGS – an expensively refurbished Counts Louse and the newly purchased £15m Temple Street base. Apparently this could save the council a fortune in office rentals and leases and by having less buildings to maintain and administrate.

The new ‘agile work environments’ are already universally loathed by staff as corporate, sterile and IMPRACTICAL. Relying on expensive half-baked tech solutions and fashionable nonsense in an attempt to appear modern, the offices have only found favour with sad and lonely senior local authority bosses who appear to gain a sense of importance wafting around the ‘flexible space’ with their iPads.

Alas, Wide Boy’s Single Change Programme and on-trend ‘agile environment’ plans may not have panned out quite as he had planned. Before legging it in June he alleged via one of his many vague (but extremely agile with the truth) Powerpoint presentations to GULLIBLE COUNCILLORS that he had managed to deliver just £30m of his promised ‘savings’ up to April. Meaning a further £30m savings had to be found this year.

But now we find that a £9m shaped HOLE has appeared in Property Services exactly where Wide Boy’s agile ‘Workplace Programme’ savings should be. That means that Wide Boy’s overall savings are actually £21m not £30m. A cock-up that 1,000 low paid council staff will now have to pay for with their jobs. Less ‘agile working’ and more ‘fragile working’!

Marvin: talked shit and lost to a red trousered arse

Reverend Rees: employed a new gang of twats on big money?

So why don’t council bosses openly tell us about this financial savings BELLYFLOP and their wholly misconceived corporate ‘agile’ cock up? Indeed, why hasn’t Spunkface – as a responsible public servant – prepared a proper detailed report on the finances in his Property Department for the mayor and councillors? As opposed to keeping his head down and trying to bury this enormous senior management CLUSTERFUCK in an opaque set of accounts?

Could it have anything to do with the fact that Marvin’s newly installed team of highly paid bosses – some pulling in a GRAND A DAY on temporary contracts; others tax efficiently creaming £80k A QUARTER – are just about to embark on yet another top-down reorganisation?

They’re promising, with lashings of corporate jargon, natch, lots more huge savings. So maybe they don’t want anyone noticing that the last reorganisation was a load of OVERPRICED BULLSHIT run by a bunch of highly paid INCOMPETENTS and cover-up artists?

Are The Reverend’s newly assembled little gang of greedy bosses and management consultants preparing to deliver their own under-powered reorganisation using the same old over-powered corporate PR techniques safe in the knowledge they, too, can do A RUNNER before the shit hits the fan?

And Look! Top of the new bosses’ list – promising to deliver £16m of savings by March 2017 – is Wide Boy’s utterly failed and useless SINGLE CHANGE PROGRAMME!

That’s gonna work like a dream isn’t it?

AUSTERITY MY ARSE

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CultureIt hasn’t taken long for Marvin “The Reverend” Rees to turn into another nasty little Tory Boy RUINING THE LIVES of his low paid council staff so that he can FEATHER THE NESTS of the city’s wealthy elite has it?

Less than three months into his ‘REIGN OF ERROR‘ and Marvin has announced that he will need to make 1,000 staff at his council REDUNDANT to “balance the books”. Virtually all these staff will be low paid and will be working in ESSENTIAL public services like adult care, education, social services and housing.

These HORRIFYING CUTS have been spun by the Reverend’s new £63k a year trade union PR girl, Kevin “Slow Brain” Slocombe, as entirely the fault of Tory government austerity and Mayor-no-more George Ferguson. The dynamic business and corporate-friendly Labour duo claim that George left behind a £29m debt for 2016 – 17 of unachieved savings.

Really? So how come a report accepted by Marvin and his cabinet in July – just ONE MONTH before his cuts announcement – assured us, “This report shows that the Council has been able to deliver on its saving plans and balance its base budget in what continues to be a challenging fiscal environment.”

It then goes on to say, “The current financial strategy, consisting of the final year of the 2013-17 MTFS, will be sufficient to balance the Councils budget in 2016/17.”

So what happened in a month to create a £29m black hole in this balanced budget? WHO’S TELLING THE TRUTH? Marvin in July or Marvin in August?

Meanwhile, Slow Brain and the Reverend’s claim that they have no choice but to fire 1,000 staff on low pay fails to stand up to BASIC SCRUTINY when you start to look at the expenditure they’ve either already authorised or are intending authorise and for whom.

In late June Marvin and his cabinet had no problem in handing the COLSTON HALL £1.6m up front to develop their refurbishment plans while also agreeing in principle to chuck them a further £10m to achieve these plans.

At the same meeting, similar generosity was shown to the BRISTOL OLD VIC – who were awarded £1m to underwrite their refurbishment plans – and to another concert hall – ST GEORGE’S – who received £600k to help them with their rebuilding efforts.

And it doesn’t stop there. In September Marvin will award those famously poverty stricken organisations – BUSINESS WEST and the UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL – an undisclosed subsidy of over £500k to keep their ‘Set Squared’ creative industries ‘business incubator’ running the way they’ve become accustomed to at Brunel’s stylish ENGINE SHED at Temple Meads.

Also in the loop for an undisclosed public handout (of £500k plus) from the Reverend is the THE BOTTLE YARD film and TV studios in south Bristol. Because we can’t have austerity in the high-earning film industry can we?

This is all before we get on to the really high ticket projects Marvin is backing. He’s still committed to the £150m ARENA project, assuring anyone who will listen it’s affordable despite only having £100m to build it.

The other £50m will come from the council taxpayer until that income stream runs dry when Marvin, no doubt, will throw another few bodies on to his HUMAN BONFIRE and sack a few more staff running essential services to balance his crooked books.

Finally we have Marvin’s uncosted and unfunded EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE bid. To make himself look good in the ruins of the public services he’ll be running, the Reverend intends to make the city Capital of Culture in 2023 at an undisclosed cost.

HOW MUCH this will cost or WHAT USE it will be to any one not involved in of Marvin’s heavily subsidised high-earning creative industries is anyone’s guess. But what the hell? It’s only other people’s money and other people’s jobs isn’t it?

In less than THREE MONTHS Marvin’s mayoralty has turned into a hyopcritical farce and an elitist backscratching exercise.

“No one left behind” he says? Except for 1,000 council staff running essential services and their familes …

RISE OF THE ANTI-MAYOR: MARVIN TO SACK 1,000 STAFF

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Anti-Mayor? The Reverend Marv stands in front of an inverted cross in his council chamber as he starts to invert everything he promised and ever believed in.

Following the Reverend Rees’s laughable ‘First 100 Days‘ PR effort last week – where he revealed he’d done NOTHING except sit on his backside and appoint a few committees  – our hapless new mayor today announced he intends to immediately SACK 1,000 council staff to balance the books.

This will effectively spell THE END of functioning local public services like adult care, social services, and youth services and is the polar opposite of what the Reverend promised just three months ago in his ambitious manifesto.

One member of the Reverend’s pissed off staff has kindly summed up the truth of this ABSURD PLAN for us:

“Just had a prick of a manager come down to basically say: no overtime, no more temps, working weekends for basic rates etc etc  And all brought in by a cunt on a grand a day!”

Not much we can add to that.

The council’s unions, meanwhile, have come out with a pathetic response, proposing a USELESS four point plan that will make no difference whatsoever:

“Responding to today’s announcement by the council, the unions have come up with a four-point plan to stave off the worst effects of the planned cuts:

•Meaningful consultations on a plan to deliver quantifiable savings to deal with the current budget shortfall and future savings
•A review of the decisions behind the budget shortfall in the 2014-2017 period
•A review of consultancy, agency and casual contracts to ensure value for money from these contracts in future
•The mayor Marvin Rees to make representations to Whitehall on the state of local government finance and the impact on Bristol’s 450,000 population of these cuts.”

What will this achieve? “Representations to Whitehall” my arse.The Reverend Marvin and his union friends need to come out fighting. REJECT the cuts outright; REFUSE to put 1,000 Bristolians out of work and REFUSE to destroy our local services.

Tell Theresa May and her piss weak DIVIDED GOVERNMENT to stick their Tory cuts up their Tory arses; set a proper budget to deliver the services we need and invite the Tories to come to Bristol and try to stop us.

Let’s see if May’s poxy little shit stain of a failing government is strong enough to take on Bristol shall we?

Come on Marv. You’re not a yes-man pussy public sector bureaucrat any more. Time to be a politician. That’s what we elected you for.

 

MEET THE NEW BOSS …

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Lady Gaga’s replacement has arrived … And it looks like we’re in for a treat (if you enjoy bent local government bosses)

Stephen-Hughes

Hughes: disreputable fat cat on a grand a day

“THE REVEREND” Marvin Rees continues his fight on the frontline of the battle against rising inequality by paying a scandal-hit “retired” local government officer and EX-PUBLIC SCHOOLBOY £1,000 a day to run his council on a PART TIME, four day a week basis.

The lucky recipient of this absurd generosity is dubious little shit, Stephen “OAP” Hughes. A bloke with bad teeth and an ill fitting suit who used to be Chief Exec at Birmingham City Council until he scarpered in February 2014 to become – wait for it … “A strategic consultant’ (surely “unemployed”? Ed).

As with all these dodgy local authority FAT CAT bosses, OAP left Birmingham under a cloud with an undisclosed fat pay off disguised as a pension for his lead role in a botched cover-up of the so-called ‘TROJAN HORSE’ affair.

This SORDID little tale finally became national news in 2014 after teachers had spent over a year raising concerns to Hughes’ council about various school governing bodies in Birmingham that were trying to introduce strict Islamic principles into education.

After considerable and lengthy dithering by OAP’s council, the story finally broke in BIRMINGHAM MAIL in March 2014 – just after Hughes had done a runner and “retired” to the private sector!

With the Birmingham Mail driving things forward, a leaked document soon came to light claiming DIRTY TRICKS were being used to oust non-Muslim staff in some schools in an operation called ‘Trojan Horse’.

And with Hughes out of the way, FOUR separate inquiries were immediately launched into the allegations, including Birmingham City Council and Department of Education probes. Ofsted also conducted inspections at 15 Birmingham schools.

Several teachers forced out of schools involved in the Trojan Horse scandal came forward to the press and the investigations to complain that they were offered SECRET SETTLEMENT AGREEMENTS by OAP’s council to shut up them up about their allegations.

The teachers had all raised SIMILAR CONCERNS that governing bodies were trying to introduce strict Islamic principles into schools.

The government report into the scandal found that there was a view among teachers that OAP’s city council preferred to GET RID of teachers rather than confront dubious school governing bodies.

Meanwhile Ofsted immediately put five schools OAP had protected in SPECIAL MEASURES after damning inspections found kids were not being protected from extremism or prepared for life in modern Britain.

OAP’s response to this PERSONAL DEBACLE was to tell the press that “the Government and Ofsted had over-reacted” to an anonymous document which was “designed to stir up racial and religious antagonism”.

Although he had never bothered to actually launch any kind of investigation, which might have backed up (or not) his UNORTHODOX VIEW of events.

Perry Barr’s Labour MP Khalid Mahmood was less than impressed with Hughes excuses and told the Birmingham Mail “[Hughes] is only interested in COVERING HIS BACK” before asking, “Why did he DO NOTHING?”

Why indeed?

Now this nasty piece of work – who will openly fuck up whistleblowers and honest public sector workers and protect extremists and religious nutters to keep his HUGE INCOME rolling in – is running Bristol.

Looks like some fun times ahead …

RAT AND SHIP UPDATE

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MAX WIDE ‘BOY’ - There'll be hell toupee with him in charge...

MAX WIDE ‘BOY’ – Hell toupee when we see what he’s done …

So it’s farewell, then, to Max Wide “Boy”, the city council’s Business Change boss who leaves the organisation at the end of May after two years of hard graft SACKING PEOPLE in return for over £250k! What a deal that’s been for the city.

Former BT salesman, Wide Boy, arrived at the council just two years ago on a £130k a year wedge after a stint controversially PRIVATISING SERVICES in Barnet. His remit in Bristol was to deliver £64m of cuts by 2017.

His final report to the city’s cabinet suggests he’s actually delivered about £33m of these cuts by FIRING around 500 council staff and a further £18m may get delivered if his ‘EFFICIENCY SAVINGS’ pan out as planned. Meanwhile the £12.9m in cuts still outstanding will need to be found by a further 450 REDUNDANCIES according to the cabinet report Wide Boy published shortly before scarpering.

So well done Mayor Fucking Useless and Bristol City Council. You’ve paid someone a quarter of million pounds to sack a 1,000 people and run away before the disastrous results of this policy become clear.

THE CULTURE OF SECRECY

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RomeoTHE BRISTOLIAN’S mission to find out why Bristol City Council’s spending on ‘Culture and related services’ has INCREASED by £10m in the year 2014 -15 over the previous year is being stymied by the council.

A freedom of information request asking for further detail on this spending and sent in January is yet to receive a response. The request is now three months old and the council is openly BREAKING THE LAW by not responding.

What are they trying to hide?

AUDIT WATCH

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Brain

Ironic Name Brain in action

Our dear old friends at the council’s in-house financial watchdog, the AUDIT COMMITTEE, managed to excel even themselves in the totally-fucking-useless-and-incompetent stakes at their meeting in March to look at Green Capital spending.

Long touted as the moment that Bristolians would get the answers to their questions about what happened to the £8M OF PUBLIC MONEY spent on a year long jolly for the city’s ultra-privileged and their mates, the meeting was ineptly chaired by Labour’s Mark “Ironic Name” Brain. A man who increasingly resembles some sort of special needs case rather than a senior local politician.

Under Ironic Name Brain’s careful stewardship, members of the public were invited to ask their Green Capital questions to THIN AIR while direct questions from councillors on how public money was spent by the Green Capital’s private company, Bristol 2015 Ltd, also went UNANSWERED. Because nobody from Green Capital bothered to turn up for the first hour and a half of the agenda item!

However,Bristol 2015 Ltd chief exec, Nicola “LADY GAGA” Yates did finally put in an appearance but only after Deputy Mayor Geoff “Cods” Gollop admitted to our feisty and fearless independent financial watchdogs that he had personally undermined their authority and had instructed Bristol 2015 Ltd NOT TO ATTEND the meeting that he was only an invited guest at!

This blatant SABOTAGE by the mayor’s office of an independent committee of councillors did result in a mild rebuke to Gollop from Ironic Name. Although the obvious action of halting the DERANGED, HALF-ARSED MEETING immediately and arranging a proper public bollocking for Gollop and a proper meeting to investigate Bristol 2015 Ltd appeared way beyond Ironic Name’s abilities. Instead he ploughed on. Overseeing a farce.

Gaga’s performance, once she turned up, was undoubtedly the STAR COMIC TURN. The £192k a year council chief deciding to insist that she was only attending as Chief Exec of Bristol 2015 Ltd and couldn’t possibly answer any questions about the council she’s in charge of. Instead she redirected questions about the council to a HAPLESS MINION.

Meanwhile any questions directed by councillors to Gaga about Bristol 2015 Ltd were BATTED AWAY. “I don’t hold the data in my head,” she waffled. Neither did she have any data on a piece of paper, because, she claimed, she didn’t know about the meeting in advance and had only decided to pop in after seeing the meeting being webcast!

This RIDICULOUS CHARADE, performed under their noses by their most highly paid boss, passed without comment from the half-wits on the Audit Committee. And, after around two hours of aimless fucking about, the committee blandly concluded that “LESSONS NEEDED TO BE LEARNED“. Although what lessons or how the council will learn them is anybody’s guess as they didn’t bother to say.

All this meeting really demonstrated is that the only bigger waste of time and money than Bristol’s Green Capital is Bristol City Council’s Audit Committee. What are these wankers for?

CITY COUNCIL JOB WATCH

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Austerity you say? Well, there’s PLENTY OF JOBS around at Bristol City Council. So many, in fact, that some managers have to do a lot more than one!

CITY COUNCIL JOB WATCH Yates webStep forward, Chief Exec Nicola “LADY GAGA” Yates who has at least SEVEN jobs. Not only is she the council’s full time chief exec on an income they list as £192k a year, she’s also the city’s electoral Returning Officer – on around £15k a year – and the chief exec of  Bristol 2015 Ltd, the dodgy Green Capital operation, where she trousers £12k a year.

Then she is also the director (on undisclosed money) of FOUR city council run companies – Bristol Waste Company Ltd, Bristol Energy & Technology Services (Supply) Limited, Bristolisopen Ltd and Bristol Holding Ltd.

How on earth does she find the time to run a council? Although she’s not alone. Step forward Alison “FOUR JOBS” Comley, who now earns £136k a year at the council under the overblown job title of Strategic Director for Neighbourhoods.

The work itself might not be too overblown, however, as Four Jobs has time on her hands to doCITY COUNCIL JOB WATCH Comley web another THREE jobs. One of which is the artistic director at Theatre West – an Arts Council funded theatre group – which sounds suspiciously like a FULL TIME job to us.

Then in her SPARE TIME Alison is director of the council’s Bristol Holding Ltd and Bristol Waste Company Ltd on an undisclosed income. You have to sympathise with poor Alison though. Even with four jobs entirely funded from the PUBLIC PURSE she probably has to try and get by on less than Gaga’s £200k plus a year.

How does the poor woman cope?

SELL-OFF!

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SELL OFF webThe only people who don’t seem to have noticed there’s a MAJOR HOUSING CRISIS in Bristol are the bosses at the council’s wretched Housing Department and our city councillors.

44 RICHMOND TERRACE in Avonmouth has been a council house for years. Or at least it was until about six months ago when the family occupying this tidy little terraced home were MOVED OUT by the council and builders sent in to renovate it.

The work on the house – at council taxpayers expense – is now complete and so a family in need of council house can move back in, right?

Wrong! The council has now put the property ON THE MARKET for sale by auction because they’ve decided – in the middle of a council housing shortage – it’s SURPLUS TO REQUIREMENTS!

44 Richmond Terrace is just one of 15 COUNCIL HOMES we know about that’s recently been renovated at OUR EXPENSE and which will be sold on to property developers or someone wealthy at an auction later this month.

Because it’s unlikely anyone other than property developers or investors will get a look-in as properties sold at auction require FULL PAYMENT within a month, a process that massively favours cash buyers.

This all raises two questions. First, why are the council selling homes they could use to house local families in DESPERATE NEED? Second, if they intend to sell the houses, why have they FORKED OUT OUR MONEY to renovate them first? Couldn’t they just flog them as is?

Why the hell are large numbers of Bristol City Council properties that could have housed the poor and the vulnerable being sold off to the wealthy? Who agreed to this?

 

HOW HOYTY GOT A HOME

Cuddly GusYou may recall the council ran a similar house selling scam at COBOURG ROAD in Montpelier in 2013 when the local Green Councillor, SIR GUS HOYTY TOYTY, bagged himself a cheap council home, conveniently situated next door to where he was already living!

On that occasion the Housing Department contacted the local councillor, Sir Gus, to inform him of the sale, which he could have OPPOSED. However, he allegedly FAILED TO READ the email telling him about the sell-off and went on to claim he had been unaware the house was a former council property until he had put in a successful bid for it!

Do the local councillors know about this latest round of council house sell-offs and have they done nothing? And who’ll be the lucky recipients of the cheap housing this time around?