MARVIN MEETS HIS PUBLIC
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TOP JOB NEWS
The Reverend Rees told long-suffering journalists daft enough to attend his stillborn ‘CITY OFFICE’ launch last month that he planned to tackle “inequalities within leadership roles” by changing the people who are awarded the top jobs.
“This will mean having leaders from HARTCLIFFE and AVONMOUTH as well as Clifton”, he assured an audience invited and organised by his old, white, highly paid, Cambridge educated right hand man and personally appointed “leader”, council Chief Exec, Stephen “OAP” Hughes from, er, Birmingham.
Who thinks Hughes could even find Hartcliffe on a map?
USELESS MANAGER ENERGY
The council’s Service Manager Energy, Mareike Schmidt who oversaw the Warm-Up Bristol BANKRUPTCY FIASCO, which left residents with half-finished building works on their homes last year, is apparently the South West’s Sustainable Energy Champion of the Year.
However that’s not stopped her finding entirely new ways to SCREW UP. A recent finance report to Cabinet explains:
“There is anticipated to be a shortfall in rechargeable income from the Housing Revenue Account and Trading for Schools in the Energy (utility) Purchase budget. This is due to the Energy price reduction in recent years being captured as a corporate saving without any corresponding reduction in income target for the energy service.”
In other words, another of Mareike’s department’s jobs is to buy gas, electricity, oil, and bio fuels for the council and other public sector bodies including schools in bulk and sell it on to them at a CHEAPER RATE.
Alas, when the price of energy DROPPED last year, eager pup Mareike was quick off the mark to record the savings and show her bosses how ‘efficient’ (and indispensable) she was. But, alas, she forgot to record that cheaper energy would also mean less income for her department as they would have to drop their prices.
The result? An inaccurate set of accounts presented to councillors for the 2016 -17 budget. That’s got to be worth another award surely?
Scary Monsters: #2 The Body Snatchers
Patrick Cotter O’Brien, “The Bristol Giant” born 1760 in Kinsale, County Cork; died Hotwells, Bristol, 1806, was over eight feet tall. He fought exploitation by showmen and opportunist medical careerists and was imprisoned for his cause.
He became his own promoter and to enjoy privacy ventured out in the hours of darkness to sometimes startling effect. His final wish was to be buried securely under 12 feet of concrete. This was difficult to achieve as the surgeon John Hunter was to steal his body before burial. He was forced to hand it back and Patrick’s last wish was granted at St Johns Chapel.
A century after his death the ghouls of Bristol University tried to rob his grave but were thwarted by the steel reinforcement and the outrage of local people. Another violation occurred in 1972 when the ghouls examined Patrick and re-interred him. The site was redeveloped in 1986 and Patrick was taken away. It is said that he was cremated respectfully although the Royal College of Surgeons still display one of his arms!
I ask the question, what was the purpose of these outrages? It cannot be scientific, as ample study was done on the sensitive Patrick when he was still alive. Also many people living today suffer his affliction. Can anybody enlighten me about the body snatchers who abuse us even after death?
SPENDING WATCH
The Reverend has a tasty destination in mind for his all-expenses spring jaunt
The Mayor’s PERSONAL OFFICE continues impress as they lead the way in savings at this time of austerity and cuts to vital public services.
In September, not only did the Reverend manage TWO TRIPS abroad – one to New York and one to Norway – to play at global mayors but he also returned home proposing to spend OUR MONEY on hosting the annual convening of the Global Parliament of Mayors – an enormous junket for mayors – here in Bristol next year at a minimum cost of £150k.
Other absolutely necessary expenditure emanating from his office in August included the purchase of 1,600 branded water bottles for over TWO GRAND, £448.00 of catering for people who can afford to buy their own lunch and £4,000 handed to an agency for a SINGLE translation.
He then popped off for some pre-Christmas junketing in Malaysia and China and says he’ll be visiting the notorious annual piss-up cum mass council land sell-off MIPIM in Cannes next year.
Good to see the Reverend leading from the front, eh?
ELECTION 2020: KICK ‘EM IN THE KNACKERS?
The long and dull mayoral election campaign for 2020 briefly sparked into a bit of life at the end of January when the Lib Dems announced they would campaign in 2020 to SCRAP THE MAYORAL SYSTEM in Bristol.
The Lib Dems are yet to announce who their candidate will be but here at The BRISTOLIAN we think this has the sound of a very popular policy indeed. Will disgruntled and disgusted Bristolians sick to death of their underperforming and overpaid ‘city leaders’ and mayor deliver these clowns the ultimate KICK IN THE ELECTORAL KNACKERS?
The news is especially bad for the Reverend Rees. He may not only FACE DEFEAT IN MAY 2020 after a miserable term in office promoting Tory policies but he also may be personally responsible for the REJECTION of the mayoral system altogether! What a humiliating – if deserved – legacy!
The Greens, too, running a long campaign fronted by DULL TECHNOCRAT, Sandy Bufton-Tufton (surely Hore-Ruthven? ed.), may also be disappointed at this news. Having tried to position themselves as the main challengers to Rees and Labour, they may now need to RETHINK THEIR CAMPAIGN quite radically.
The boring, technocratic campaign they envisaged with Bufton-Tufton endlessly bickering with Rees over MARGINAL ISSUES such as ‘social value tendering’, the best placement of cycle lanes in Bishopston and who is best able to get the buses to run on time by treating First boss, James Freeman, to lunch once a month, is DEAD IN THE WATER.
Instead the Greens will need to go BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD and devise some eye-catching policies for people to vote for. The Greens will also need to convince a cynical electorate that Bufton-Tufton isn’t another pillock interested in the foreign travel opportunities and photo-ops with his friends rather than running A COUNCIL FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL BRISTOLIANS.
Watch this space.
NUTS CUTS
The £20m of cuts announced by the Reverend Rees for next year mainly seem to confirm that he has now gone totally insane. Among the nutty highlights we’ve spotted so far:
- An inexplicable £4m cut to the Adult Care budget will appear if HomeChoice prioritise people with adult social care needs on the housing register.
- A proposal from an unnamed member of the Labour administration to cut trade union facility time by 75 per cent. That means union reps will have no time to represent staff directly affected by cuts from a Labour administration.
- Lots more cuts are proposed by HRH Helen of Holland overseeing Adult Care. This is despite her failure to deliver £4m of the £6m cuts she proposed last year.
- Transport guru, “Tweedle” Don Alexander, will attempt to increase council revenue by about £2.5m from Residents Parking Zones (RPZ) and car parking. Tweedle Don has lost about £5.4m in income from these so far this year.
- Asher “The Slasher” Craig proposes charging a fee to parents who are contacted by her Education Welfare Service about their child’s school attendance. Will she discover parents are suddenly uncontactable?
- Finance kingpin, Craig “Crapita” Cheney, officially the stupidest man in Bristol, is opening a rooftop bar at the M Shed to make £85k a year.
- Asher the Slasher is supporting young people by slashing youth services budgets by £400k.
- Government money for Public Health will be spent on wages for the Reverend’s evangelical pals in his City Office instead. He will also pass a begging bowl around ‘external partners’ to see if they’re up for funding an office full of evangelical loonies at the Counts Louse.
- Cabinet Pied Piper Nicola “La La” Beech is to deliver pest control in “different ways”.
We’ll let you know as we find more of these inanities over the coming months.
NETTING ZEROES: GEORGIAN MARV
Remember when Mayor No More Ferguson flew to New York City in 2014 to deliver a speech via satellite link to gormless local climate protestors sat on College Green? The Bristolian got in lots of trouble at the time for calling out the marching morons of Bristol who went along with this farce.
Well, anything George can do the Reverend can do better. Because back in April the Reverend took a 9,000 mile business class round trip by plane to Vancouver to deliver a 14 minute lecture on, er, climate change! A lecture people in Bristol weren’t even able to hear until over a month later when the tedious lecture was finally uploaded for free to the internet.
This ridiculous little escapade created two tons of carbon dioxide per plane passenger. About the same amount of carbon dioxide that an average car would generate if driven for 7,000 miles. Rees later explained to the Nazi Post that the trip was worthwhile because he was shaping global thinking with, er, internet celeb Elon Musk!
When will it dawn on people that the best way to sort out the climate would be to put the vain, self-serving hypocrites of the political class against the wall?
FUCKWIT CHARLES III
Has anyone spotted the close similarity between these two twats? Both were or are total fuckwits.
Both were or are spiteful, vain and arrogant with it. Both thought or think the king should play ‘a larger role in politics’. Both either tried or will try to meddle in Parliament.
Charles I (left) believed in the ‘Divine Right of Kings’ and was happy to kill 1 in 10 of the adult male population of England to keep his right… it’s uncertain, but possible, that Charles III (right) also does.
Both took or are taking the throne at a time of extreme crisis for both the monarchy and the ruling class, and both fucked or will fuck it up. Finally, both lost their heads metaphorically speaking, and the war criminal Charles literally did.
So will Charles III repeat the exact same journey of his namesake, but as farce?
BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL’S FANTASY PAY WORLD
It’s that time of year when we have to endure the laughable bullshit that is Bristol City Council’s Pay Policy. A wholly misleading yearly statement on high pay for the council’s useless boss class.
This year we’re invited to admire how the ratio of the lowest paid on a minimum wage to the highest paid, allegedly the Chief Exec (without including his generous pension contribution), has fallen to 8.93:1 from 9.26:1 last year. Conveniently below the council’s arbitrary target of 10:1.
However – as usual – the maths is faulty. A glance at last year’s Statement of Accounts reveals that the highest paid boss was Juliet Blackburn Consulting Ltd, Director of Adults Transformation, who trousered a cool £30,932 a month. Or £371,184 a year making a highest to lowest paid pay ratio of, er, 17.7:1.
Other lottery winners courtesy of our council tax include congenital idiot Nikki Beardmore, a Communication & Engagement Director, who had to struggle through the cost of living crisis on around £200k a year, and Alan Layton, Head of Financial Planning, who trousered £240k a year pro rata.
Trebles all round!