ELECTION WATCH

Desperate times for Greens trying to get their national co-leader Carla “Head Girl” Denyer elected in the new constituency of Bristol Central.

Princess

Formerly Bristol West, the constituency of “Thingy” Thangam Debbonaire with a majority north of 10,000, the Greens are currently begging Tories to vote for them!

A leaflet dropped across the leafy constituency, notorious for its Guardian-reading electorate, explains “the Conservatives can’t win here” and has a Lib Dem-style graph where unidentified “independent polling experts” say the Green vote is up 3.4 per cent; Labour down 7.7 per cent and Tory down 4.5 per cent.

Meaning that Labour are set to easily win the constituency despite ecstatic noises from the Greens over their latest snooty candidate in a constituency they’ve insisted for years they can win.

Another issue: if  “independent polling experts” say that the the combined Labour and Tory vote is down over 12 per cent and the Greens’ up 3.4 per cent, where the fuck have all the other votes gone?

Are voters giving up on the ‘progressive’ crap that the colour branded parties dump on us?

HALLS WELL

Beacon interior

Mystery surrounds how the £80m debt the Reverend Rees has run up refurbishing his cultural legacy project, the Bristol Beacon, is being funded.

Borrowing £80m, even at council rates would cost around £4m – £5m a year. Figures not cropping up in any financial projections published at the council.

That’s because the overpriced hall is being part-funded from this year’s capital underspend. Money that should have gone on other projects but didn’t. In October, Rees’s Cabinet approved “the reprofiling of this underspend of £68.8m from 2023/24 into future periods.”

Among the many budgets raided to fund this elitist concert hall are the schools budget (£5.9m); the SEND investment programme (£3.9m); Highways and Traffic infrastructure  (£4.2m); the housing delivery programme (£3.5m) and the Harbour’s operational infrastructure budget (£2.5m).

All stuff we, presumably, can do without now we’ve got an expensive concert hall?

WATCHING THE WATCHMAN

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City Council legal eagle Tim O’Gara in action

Has Bristol City Council’s posh clown Monitoring Officer, “Li’l” Tim O’Gara, broken the law? A recent meeting of the council’s optimistically named Value and Ethics Committee revealed that Bristol has not upheld a complaint against a politician in over six years. Not impressing residents who’ve made complaints.

One complaint was about Asher “The Slasher” Craig’s private company receiving payments from Bristol City Council that personally involved “Li’l” Tim. Another revealed that “Li’l” Tim kept two separate registers of interest for the mayor. One public, one private with different entries!

Oversight of “Li’ll” Tim’s handling of complaints, so far, has been from a so-called “independent person”, appointed by ‘Li’l’ Tim whose identity is a secret.

When grilled by residents why the “independent person” wasn’t appointed in public at Full Council as required by the Localism Act, “Li’l” Tim explained, “it would be a complete misreading of the legislation to think that the appointment would need to be made by Full Council.”

Such a “misreading”, in fact, that at Full Council on 14 November an “independent person” was set to be hurriedly appointed by councillors as the law asks!

Has “Li’l” Tim been caught red-handed breaking the law?

DOG WHISTLE WATCH

Highly paid consultant blames parents and asylum seekers for huge overspends in SEND

Vanessa Wilson
Vanessa Wilson: Interim Director of Racist Scapegoating

Enormous overspends emerging in the council’s SEND budget are not the fault of council bosses squandering money on private sector rip-off artists; spying on parents or paying providers not to deliver SEND services we’ve paid them to deliver.

Turns out, instead, the overspend is the fault of parents and, er asylum seekers. At least, that’s what Vanessa Wilson, a well remunerated management consultant employed on a large undisclosed fee, claimed at a recent council meeting.

“Due to a lack of provision in our area, we’re placing more children in schools out of area. There’s parental choice as well. That’s meant that we’ve seen, in this last year, a doubling in costs of our transport,” she shamelessly explained.

But, as parents are liable for transport costs at a ‘parental choice’ of school, any doubling in transport costs is down to Vanessa’s department’s failures and nothing whatsoever to do with parents.

Vanessa then went after asylum seekers: “We’ve got a large number of children and families coming in who are asylum seekers. We’re seeing an increase in those families where not just the children have complex needs, but also the parents.”

With only 1,500 asylum seekers in Bristol, is it likely this tiny number are responsible for Vanessa’s ballooning costs?

Or is she using them as a convenient scapegoat for her department’s ongoing management failures?

TINFOIL HAT NEWS

Marvin-Rees tinfoil

Has the Reverend let the cat out of the bag? At a Full Council Meeting in September he was asked by a member of the public if he “agreed that planning decisions should remain nonpartisan in Bristol?”

Back came the bizarre response, “It is disappointing when planning applications are rejected on brownfield sites when we have a housing and climate crisis for political reasons.”

Is the Reverend just using the so-called housing and climate crises as convenient pegs to hang his pro-corporate developer right wing economic agenda on?

“The truth is out there, but so are lies …”

NO TRADE UNIONS PLEASE, WE’RE AMERICAN

ameresco

Fancy that! Ameresco, Bristol City Council’s US corporate partner in the City Leap joint venture – the world’s most expensive public works contract – doesn’t recognise trade unions!

Top due diligence there for a £10m outlay from our over-promoted posh twit Tory-boy council Chief Exec, Stephen “Preening” Peacock and his hopeless clean energy team.

What a bunch of arseholes.

MEET THE ‘CLIMATE LEADERS’

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Lady Gaga: a leading bank balance

News just in from our You Really Couldn’t Make This Ridiculous Shit Up Department:

While hanging around looking for a job in Dubai at COP 2023, the global climate talking shop, the Reverend Rees got a gig on a panel at the UK Climate Action Forum & Dinner.

Rees was billed as a ‘UK climate leader’ along with another familiar face who got to deliver a speech. Please step forward the one and only Nicola “Lady Gaga” Yates!

This is the former Chief Exec at Bristol City Council who was rather unceremoniously ‘disappeared’ from Bristol with a generous £200k handout after running up a mystery £30m deficit in the council’s accounts in the lead-up to the mayoral elections back in 2016.

Is it a requirement of a ‘UK climate leader’ that they have a history of failure and being shown the door?

The electorate, of course, sent the Reverend packing last year. Scrapping the post of mayor after an abysmal performance pissing our money up the wall.

Is there some fail Bristol, become a ‘UK climate leader’ rule?

SAVE YOURSELF SOME MONEY

Council papers reveal that they’re owed £14.75m of debt that’s now over two years old and they say “there is a significant risk that most of this aged debt will not be recovered,” which is a big, big shame.

The paper also reveals that there’s £1.1m of income they have received that they haven’t matched to any customer accounts.

This means they have no idea who’s paying their debts and who isn’t, which makes collecting debt difficult.

So if the council claim you owe them money, tell them you’ve paid it and they’ll have no idea whether you have or not!

BRISTOLIAN #70: ON THE STREETS NOW!

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CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?

Our down home new £130m concert hall announces the opening of the Colonade, ‘a sustainable-forward restaurant set within the historic heart of Bristol Beacon’.  Which is more than enough to make you want to heave.

Their copywriting hacks then move into overdrive. We’re talking no less than ‘a fresh take on modern European cuisine’; ‘seasonal menus and daily specials led by artisanal local produce’ and ‘consciously low-carbon impact’ here.

But how much do these well worn foodie cliches cooked by someone you’ve never heard of set you back?

Bread and butter comes in at a fiver while a serving of cheese and ‘cracker’ is nine quid. An actual plate with a meal on starts at 14 quid plus a fiver for fries and six quid for veg. The cheapest bottle of Spanish plonk – ’round on the palate’ and heavy on the wallet – is 27 quid.

No sign of a cost of living crisis at the ‘inclusive’ Bristol Beacon then.

‘OPPRESSIVE AND DYSFUNCTIONAL’

Contrary to the contrived local PR waffle, the Colonade is actually owned by a Kent-based catering company, Graysons. Their major shareholder is US prison food provider, Aramak.

Aramak also run three ‘direct provision asylum centres’ in Ireland where asylum-seekers are forced to stay until their application is complete.

Praxis, the artists union of Ireland say, “the direct provision system is an oppressive and dysfunctional migrant prison system which has successfully enriched private companies like Aramark over many years.”

Praxis also described the National Gallery of Ireland’s decision to award Aramark a multi-million catering deal as “a stain on the reputation of our public institution.”

If you must support the local economy by eating overpriced food, try elsewhere.