THE REAL STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS

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Last night the Reverend Rees delivered his final State of the City speech from the University of Bristol’s shithouse Wills Building. Here’s a response:

Marvin, your State of the City speech seems to be a list of things that haven’t been delivered or resolved in your time in office. 

Most of the key infrastructure projects that previous Labour council’s failed to invest in remain uninvested in but with a tab left to be picked up by the next administration. 

There’s no funded mass transit proposal. It’s stalemated due to a lack of agreement between two bickering Labour Mayors who have prioritised their own personal animosity and egos above the needs of the city and region. 

The city continues to have deep divisions along race and class lines despite all the talk about diversity, equity and inclusion and tackling the “issues”. Where are the measurable outcomes showing improvement? 

But then you did watch the Colston statue come down and spot a self promotional media opportunity rather than a chance to trigger a real attempt to tackle the city’s long standing divisions. 

Congratulations Marvin, you built some homes (the vast majority at market rates with many being bought by private landlords) and yet still managed to miss every housing target you set yourself. 

The housing waiting list has increased to 20,000 families. The highest it has ever been, despite officers actively discouraging residents from going on the list “because it’s a waste of time”. 

Homelessness remains noticeably present everywhere, except, maybe, in the Bearpit, despite your promise to solve it. 

The vast majority of the 14,000 homes with planning permission are not being built and you try to blame a minority opposition party for this failure to deliver.

Still no arena, public or privately funded, anywhere. And tens of millions in public funds sunk into an elitist city centre cultural venue because of a binding legal contract signed on your watch. All while deprived suburbs lose community/cultural facilities.

City Leap has potential but so far isn’t unlocking any private investment and is falling behind its real investment plan, never mind this unsubstantiated £1bn you constantly quote at the press.

Goram Homes also has some potential but your planning delays means it’s falling massively behind schedule.

Bristol Waste is a basketcase with a revolving door board of directors. A direct result of poor corporate oversight. Your political interference in its business planning, meanwhile, has undermined any efforts to reduce costs. 

Elsewhere, your council is still complicit in developing SNCIs despite declaring an ‘Ecological Emergency’ and creating plenty of photo-ops of Labour politicians standing in fields saying how important green spaces are. 

There’s still no real plan for achieving net zero despite declaring a ‘Climate Emergency’. 

Then there’s the poorly implemented CAZ, almost as if it was designed to fail and disrupt. 

You are creating only one Liveable Neighbourhood and this is being poorly implemented and poorly consulted on with middle class neighbourhoods getting disproportionate input while poorer neighbourhoods are ignored.

Local CiL projects, especially transport and parks, are not being delivered partly because staff are being taken away to work on “headline grabbing” strategic projects.

The budget gap is currently larger than the Bundred one under Ferguson and there’s still no realistic plan to address it beyond service reduction and selling off council property. 

SEND?!?!! Say no more. Your “Deputy” Mayor hasn’t a clue what she is doing just like the chain of useless Labour education leads before her. Our kids and, increasingly, their parents are paying the price of this serial incompetence. 

The Dedicated Schools Grant is effectively in special measures and your administration is just crossing it’s fingers and hoping the government doesn’t pull the plug on this ever growing debt.

Basically Marvin, you have left behind a stinking pile of crap and then have the nerve to lecture the councillors who will have to clear up your shit about how the city should be run!!! 

Get da fuck!

HOT MESS PRESS

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Our local press in their own words:

Media dissertation Max Thrower

‘How does local media serve local politics in Bristol?’ enquires “Meejah” Max Thrower, recently appointed political assistant to the Green councillor group. It’s the title, that’s just hit our newsdesk, of his recent dissertation for an MA in Political Communications from Goldsmiths College, London, a  hotbed of fashionable post-modern drivel. 

The first twenty pages of the forty-page effort are therefore inconsequential academic gobbledegook that even Goldsmiths’ tutors probably skipped reading judging by the amount of uncorrected typos twisting any vague bit of meaning in there.

The second section is where the action is. Featuring interviews with self-styled local experts like Bristol Cobblers’ (surely Cable? Ed) part-timer Neil “Professional Bristolian” Maggs; the Nazi Post’s Tristan “Gruppenführer” Cork;  Martin “Latte” Booth, Editor, Bristol 24/7; Alex “All At” Seabrook, a BBC Local Democracy Reporter (LDR) working out of the Post and Cobbler’s not-editor “Door” Matty Edwards. Also along for the ride were The Bristolian, the Greens’ Carla “Head Girl” Denyer plus a rare appearance from mayoral bag carrier “Slo” Kev Slocombe.

After a risible quote from the Press Gazette claiming these indistinguishable liberal left centrists of our local press have created “a media oasis“ in Bristol, it’s not long before our media stars are fighting like rats in a sack. “The issue of funding models and the supposed influence of corporate interests has created tension between media outlets,” and, “the tension between  outlets was most apparent between The Bristol Cable and Bristol 24/7 and the way that people viewed their funding,” we’re told.

“According to Neil [“Professional Bristolian”, Cobblers], Bristol 24/7 received money from a tobacco company that they used to fund a community reporter scheme. Martin [“Latte”, 24/7] described this advertising as a ‘necessary evil” and would love to see them not accept any advertising.” 

“The incident was called out by The Bristol Cable, who Tristan [“Gruppenführer”, Nazi Post], cheerily pointed out “get most of their money from philanthropic billionaires”.

“According to Martin [“Latte”, 24/7], The Cable’s grants allow them to “loudly criticize us [Bristol 24/7] for daring to accept advertising”. 

And on it goes: “People were also critical of Bristol 24/7, with Tristan saying that they “get their money from… a handful of rich people in Bristol”. [“Slo”] Kev believed that financial loss means they must be “bankrolled by a group of businessmen” that run bars and restaurants. Tristan noted that Bristol 24/7 have been called out in the past for “writing favourable things to do with pubs in Easton”.”

Adding to a sense of dodgy money washing around our gormless local press: “Martin [“Latte”] stated that Bristol 24/7 is a community interest company, although he didn’t know the details and liked “to just get on with the journalism side of things”.”

Neil [“Professional Bristolian”, Cobblers] then calls out his Cobbler’s colleagues as “Marxist in their origins and… a bit pompous and self-righteous with that at times”. Surely more to do with being middle class twats than anything to do with Marxism? Or is this Goldsmiths College style Marxism we’re talking here?

Rounding off a thoroughly undignified episode, Local Democracy Reporter Alex “All At” Seabrook – Marxist proclivities unknown – revealed that the thought of going out and speaking with actual Bristolians rather than communicating with middle class people on Twitter was “horrifying”. 

But last word to “Slo” Kev Slocombe (who should be a Marxist) hitting nails on heads: “[The Cable is] a vanity organization driven by mysterious tech money,” he explained.

In future, do look out for the local press complaining about politicians “squabbling”!

The dissertation’s solution to this local press hot mess is the completely shit idea of state funded media for Bristol. Probably the fastest route to creating the most dull ,unreadable crap imaginable. Censoriously micro-managed by some hideous unelected committee of wealthy establishment tosspots with a Merchant Venturer in the chair.

They will definitely not be Marxists.

Wanna read ‘How does local media serve local politics in Bristol‘? Drop us a line at bristoliannews@gmail.com and we’ll send you a copy.

Gotta a dissertation about Bristol? Send us a copy and we’ll give you the feedback your academic tutors won’t!

IT’S A MUGA’S GAME

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Filwood Broadway Swimmming Pool Site
Filwood swimming pool site, ideally located for a MUGA but flogged for housing

The existing MUGA (Multiuse Games Area), next to the demolished Olympic sized swimming pool in Filwood Broadway, is to be relocated to a ‘wildlife area’ next to a floodlit pitch on Filwood’s BBS Football Park.

When asked. “Why not install, new MUGA, into Filwood Park”? Told, that it is impossible! Why? Because BCC, has sold the land to a developer who has built houses on half of Filwood Park (Filwood’s ONLY public Park)!

As the land no longer belongs to BCC (public land, mind you! Sold!), BCC can’t build it there so it is putting it further away from its original location with the possibility that people who use it won’t want to go that far away to use it!

‘WORLD CLASS’: YOUTH ZONE

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50/50 BCC STYLE …

Youth Zone proposal
Pink stinks! World class youth zone interior imagined as modernist tart’s boudoir

The cost of a ‘world class’ private sector Youth Zone in south Bristol is rising.

The capital cost of building this large shed for wealthy philanthropists to pose in on open space at Inns Court was originally £8.4m with Bristol City Council paying one half, £4.2m.

Now we learn that the council will be paying a further £3.275m to build the access road and to level the site.

Philanthropic charitable partner, Onside, meanwhile, will only have to pay £600k towards this.

In terms of running the zone, once opened in 2026, the Reverend’s cabinet has now committed £400k of the measly £1m budget for youth services from 2026. Two years after the Labour Party are likely to have lost power in Bristol.

There will be, therefore, 40 per cent less youth provision in an already stretched service elsewhere in the city from 2026.

Youth workers and services not aboard  the Youth Zone gravy train are not impressed.

WORLD CLASS? STATION RIP-OFF

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Coffee

The dismal reality of the ‘world class’ train station the Reverend Rees is foisting on us at Temple Meads is emerging.

A reader writes: “we were recently at Temple Meads trying to find somewhere warm to sit with our rip-off £3.80 Starbuck takeout-only coffees and we asked one of the station staff if there was a waiting room?

“Just go in the Pumpkin Cafe,” they replied.   

“Are we allowed in there with drinks we didn’t buy from them?”

“Oh don’t worry about that. They’re all the same company in here except WH Smiths.”

Meaning a monopoly is running all the refreshment concessions at the station and just sticking different branding on them to create an illusion of choice. This monopoly is then able to charge any inflated price they like across the station.

If there were five or six different companies competing for your trade, prices would be lower and food better as concessions compete for your trade on price and quality.

Welcome to ‘world class’. One great big corporate rigged rip-off monopoly delivering mediocrity.

WHO’S RIGHT? THE CABLE, DAVOS AND LOW TRAFFIC NEIGHBOURHOODS

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Malcolm X Media

Self-styled, community newspaper, The Bristol Cable continues to throw bizarre conspiracy theory smears at working class opposition to the Low Traffic Neighbourhood in East Bristol. A meeting opposing the LTN in early July found Cable journalists seizing on a comment by a speaker from London who said, “we need to think about the needs of local people rather than “what they say at Davos.””

This comment “blurred into conspiracy theories” explained investigative experts at the Cable without bothering to explain why. Although we do know that ‘conspiracy theories’ soon blur into ‘right wing’ in the centrist lexicon of smears (with ‘anti-semite’ not far behind).  

However, a brief look at the website of the World Economic Forum, a powerful, inarguably, right wing economic lobby group of unbelievable wealth who meet annually at the exclusive Swiss resort of Davos to lobby governments in the interests of US billionaire oligarchs, global corporations and the international banking and finance class, reveals they are openly promoting a series of ‘net zero’ policies. Including, er, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and ’15 Minute Cities’! Why is mentioning this a conspiracy theory?

Informed progressive commentary on the subject suggests that the Davos billionaire club is running a self-serving ‘net zero’ PR campaign aimed at protecting their own wealth and interests rather than the climate. Most of their proposals will have a marginal effect on climate and will not challenge the existing global economic order that’s driving it. But the charade might make the billionaires look like they’re doing something as they shovel more cash from another scam into their bank accounts. What’s wrong with calling this shit out?

It was pointed out on Twitter to Cable journalists that they were doing billionaires a favour by smearing people who draw attention to them. Along with the observation that one of the Cable‘s funders, Bill Gates, through his philanthropic foundation, was an ‘Agenda Contributor’ to the WEF, so maybe the Cable‘s views on Davos and the WEF are a little untrustworthy?

All sniffily rejected as more conspiracy nonsense by Cable contributors whose expensive educations seemingly didn’t stretch to the simple study of ‘what is a conflict of interest?’

The haughty snobs at the Cable want us to believe that Somalian taxi drivers and some bloke who runs a bar in London campaigning against traffic calming in East Bristol are an imminent right wing threat to your future and wellbeing. By contrast, the US billionaire oligarch class organising the world economy for their own benefit and trashing the planet are cuddly teddy bears in need of protection from dangerous ‘conspiracy theorists’.

Go figure.

HEARD THE ONE ABOUT THE DISABLED ADULTS BOSS?

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mussolini
Hugh “Cares” Evans (are you sure? Ed.)


Useless fatso former People boss at the council, Hugh “Cares” Evans, fresh from being fired from overseeing Children’s Services after royally fucking up and getting caught spying on parents, has now been caught laughing at the disabled.

A leaked email he sent out to the SEND managers and education directors he incompetently managed reveals him openly mocking a disabled parent’s spelling.

Hugh Cares, who, for some reason, is still allowed by the Reverend to run Adult Care Services for the council, has a statutory responsibility for disabled adults in the city.

We might, therefore, reasonably expect that he doesn’t laugh at them in private. Does Hugh also liven up his dull meetings with his fawning social work managers with hilarious impressions of the learning disabled?

Can someone please put this useless twat out of our misery?

BARKING: THE MADNESS OF THE WECA MAN

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dan_norris_with_angel_-_large.jpg__1200x700_q80_progressive_subsampling-2_upscale (1)

Does the insanity of our regional government body WECA and its deranged mayor, Dan “The WECA Man” Norris, have no bounds?

You may recall that the WECA Man insisted, when arriving in office, that this failing bureaucracy fronted by a man of much self-importance needed high-end offices in central Bristol at twice the price we would pay for exactly the same thing in Yate?

WECA flunkies immediately set about obtaining offices at an appropriate address – Rivergate House, Redcliff Street.

A fortune was then spent on poncy architects, interior design types and a variety of ‘workplace’ bullshitters to create a ‘space’ for Dan and his incompetent bureaucrats to waft around in trying to feel important.

However, when the WECA man finally turned up for his first day, he announced he didn’t want an office on the third floor and it needed to be immediately  moved to the ground floor … At a cost of over £100k!

WECA flunkies, of course, obliged and Dan now has an office on the ground floor. Although he’s now refusing to come into the office because he’s not allowed to bring his dog!

Woof! Woof!