Tag Archives: #4.11

FORGED DRUG RECORDS CLAIMS AT ‘HORROR HOUSE’ NURSING HOME HOLMWOOD

As part of our ongoing investigation local private care home of horrors HOLMWOOD HOUSE, where we have reported the concerns of family members over several resident deaths and allegations of neglect, The BRISTOLIAN has taken delivery of a large bundle of medical documents. These relate to the management and distribution of controlled drugs there in 2013 – when the home was briefly managed by a State Registered Nurse (SRN), SIMONE SMITH.

We understand that the police have studied these documents and confirmed that a considerable number of them contain FORGED SIGNATURES. At present it is unclear who was responsible for the forgeries, as the police appear to have discontinued their inquiry.

Also in the bundle is evidence of a DRUG AUDIT ordered by then-manager Smith which was conducted by struck-off nurse ISLA MEEK, who was working at the home as a “consultant”.

There’s little doubt Meek did the work, as the audit was produced on the headed business paper of ‘Isla Meek Consulting’. Obviously, a struck-off nurse should not be involved in any way in the management of controlled drugs at a nursing home.

in a further extraordinary twist, Smith is now using these dodgy drug audits herself as evidence to get another former nurse from the home STRUCK OFF by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). A hearing is expected later this year.

Smith left Holmwood House in the Autumn of 2013 and is now employed by Four Seasons Healthcare as a manager at OAKTREE CARE HOME in Yate. Four Seasons Healthcare rejects any claims of wrongdoing regarding Smith, and told The BRISTOLIAN that Bristol City Council’s Safeguarding Team have described Smith as “a whistleblower”!

Although, as far as we can tell, the only whistleblowing Smith could have done would be in regards to her own management of controlled drugs.

Forged drug records? Bent audits? The Holmwood House affair gets a whole lot murkier…

KNOW YOUR ENEMY #1: MAX WIDE ‘BOY’ – BRISTOL’S NEW ‘STRATEGIC DIRECTOR FOR BUSINESS CHANGE’

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

MAX WIDE ‘BOY’: Hell toupee with him in charge…

A visit to Bristol from Julian Silverman of the Barnet Alliance For Public Services has shone some light on Mayor Fergo’s recent appointment of MAX WIDE ‘BOY’ as his ‘Strategic Director for Business Change’.

Julian is an anti-cuts campaigner who has been fighting wholesale privatisation at the so-called ‘Easy Council’ which runs the London Borough of Barnet. Its mass privatisation of local services, named after budget airline EasyJet, was personally organised by Wide Boy when he was Barnet’s Director of Planning whilst on secondment from BT. It was always unclear whether Wide Boy was actually working for BT or the council.

Wide Boy quickly became notorious in Barnet for coining odd and sinister catchphrases such as “LEARN TO LOVE A RECESSION” and “NEVER WASTE A GOOD CRISIS” – and Julian explained how Wide Boy’s weirdo statements seem to have come straight out of the pages of a Naomi Klein book, The Shock Doctrine.

The book describes an extreme free market economic dogma that creates or manipulates economic crises to justify the mass transfer of public wealth and resources into the hands of the private sector. Usually at knockdown prices and always involving the transfer of wealth from us – the poor – to them – the rich.

Wideboy will be commuting to Bristol daily from LEAFY FROME, where he campaigns in his spare time to get supermarkets built, and it is obvious he is being brought in to deliver Mayor Redpants’ mass privatisation agenda for our public services.

Watch this space…

WHO PAYS FOR THESE PONCE HOLES?!

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Commentary on recent arts funding cuts – and who they really affect – from The BRISTOLIAN‘s Arts Correspondent…

Any of you readers ever venture into Bristol Old Vic? Watershed? Arnolfini? No? Didn’t think so.

Yet you, me and the rest of Bristol’s working class are expected to fund these artsy, fartsy PONCE HOLES every year through our Council Tax. Not a tenner here or a tenner there, but hundreds of thousands of pounds are given each year from our pockets to fund these unnecessary, unprofitable middle class cultural centres.

Meanwhile that smug prick the Mayor and his arse-licking councillors are more than happy to shut down libraries and day centres and cut back on essential services for Bristol’s pensioners and disabled.

According to them if the things we need don’t make a profit then they must be PRIVATISED OR CLOSED DOWN.

Working class culture is something that scares these arseholes. They don’t want large groups of Bristolians meeting up in case we

start sussing out what a con their capitalist system is and start doing something about it. So they are happy to shut down our pubs (for example, try and find a boozer in Knowle), raise ticket prices at the football, or unleash more riot cops in town of a weekend to drive us out.

They don’t want us going out talking to each other; they want us to work for them, fuck off home and slowly rot away watching moronic zombie TV. Then our rulers can sleep in peace with their profits, whilst the STREETS ARE EMPTY. Meanwhile we pay for fucking middle class arseholes called Rupert or Tristram to have a jolly good night out at the Old Vic, Wankershed or Analphoney. Well fuck that…it’s time to turn off the TV and go meet these privileged scum who we’re paying for.

If they won’t spread the wealth about equally, then maybe it’s about time we spread the violence about.

ARTS HOLES: CUTS CAUSE LUVVIE RAGE FOR FERGO’S ‘BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE’

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Watershed’s big swinging Dick Penny

A rare outbreak of common sense last month from Labour’s Southville councillor SEAN ‘DADDY’S BOY’ BEYNON called for a ten per cent cut in the generous handouts for the city’s Key Arts Providers (KAP) as part of the city’s recent slash-and-burn budget.

Naturally there was an explosion of rage from the city’s wealthy and influential luvvie lobby at this small challenge to their large sense of entitlement.

The rage was mingled with disbelief at how anybody could question the overwhelming social value of stuff like the BRISTOL OLD VIC’s latest effort – a five hour, state-subsidised overblown theatrical production of an overwrought Victorian potboiler, Jane Eyre, organised by a Cambridge graduate with a terrible wardrobe!

Legendary local luvvie DICK ‘THE DISRUPTOR’ PENNY, soon waded in with some back-of-the- fag-packet calculations to “prove” that this kind of marginal nonsense is in fact an economic powerhouse for the city and that our luvvie legions are doing a selfless and remarkable job for the masses.

“Combined turnover of not for profit arts and museums organisations in the West of England last year was £55m,” huffed Penny, “and that’s a pretty major return on BCC investment.”

“And none of this takes into account the huge benefit to social cohesion, education, tourism and inward investment,” he puffed. Although he failed to produce a shred of evidence to back up his claims – and what the hell is “social cohesion” anyway?

What he also failed to explain is how this small cut, which would amount to just £100k, would have any effect whatsoever on an industry with a turnover of £55m. Are we meant to believe that a reduction of just one fifth of one per cent of its turnover is going to bring this industry to its knees?

Penny further neglected to point out that one organisation, WATERSHED, receives city council grants in excess of £300k in 2013, which, er … Pays his wages! He also neglected to point out that an increase of just one pound in cinema tickets for the very well-heeled ABC1 audience his venue attracts would make in the region of £100k a year!

So that’s what “social cohesion” is all about, then: the poorest directly subsidising elitist entertainment and the wages of the wealthiest.

WORKERS REVOLT AGAINST HORSEWORLD BOSSES?

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After having their ridiculous plan to sell off land to developers (who planned to build more than a hundred high-end houses on the site) turned down by BANES council, in February HorseWorld’s bosses threw a hissy fit and shuttered the charity’s visitor centre.

Managing Director Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen and his team also started doling out redundancy notices to long-suffering staff – as well as setting the legal rottweilers onto The BRISTOLIAN for publishing the truth.

Yes, just as Pinocchiowen and his clique were getting down to making some of the strangest business decisions ever – such as closing down a vital revenue stream and the charity’s strongest connection to the wider public – they also decided to try and impose a media blackout. To achieve this they hired tinpot law firm Burges Salmon to try and put the frighteners on local news sources, threatening all sorts of badness to anyone who dared to report on Owen’s crazy antics.

But whilst this might have worked on the student hacks of Bristol University’s Epigram paper, it did not on your super soaraway ‘Smiter’. We called their bluff and pointed out that in ten months of highly accurate, detailed reporting on HorseWorld we had heard not a peep from them claiming anything we printed was wrong.

Since then the legal threats have dried up, and a number of other outlets, including the Nazi Post, BBC Bristol, ITV West, The Week In and the Western Daily Press have all since published critical pieces. Funny, that!

Meanwhile, the situation for those who actually look after animals is looking increasingly rocky. Twenty-four workers face the boot, for no reason other than their bosses made a balls-up of the management of the charity. On a positive note, despite Owen & Co trying to keep all of this under wraps, staff are fighting back, with around half those under threat now represented by the GMB union.

Owen might yet lose that prized Audi…

THE RAIN IN SPAIN FALLS MAINLY ON THE… ASTROTURF?!

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Commentary from The BRISTOLIAN‘s Football Correspondent…

While politicians and many fans cling to the belief that stadiums on the greenbelt for pros are the key to success, a GRASSROOTS FOOTBALL CRISIS unfolds before them.

Over the last two months, virtually no competitive youth football took place in the city. Poorly maintained pitches with poor drainage were waterlogged after heavy rain.

Our man not on the touchline but inside playing PlayStation with the kids says, “if a child missed eight weeks of school, they’d fall behind. WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT FOOTBALL?”

Young people have sussed this. An under-14 at Rockleaze Rangers FC, told The Guardian recently about Spain’s youth, who rarely play on grass, so “learn from a young age to play well”.

He’s right. A grass pitch can hold three games a week. Artificial pitches can host 60 teams for training plus matches and they’re usually floodlit for play at night.

The technically extravagant and tactically sophisticated Spaniards will be competing for a fourth consecutive major title in Brazil this summer.

Meanwhile, England has not won a trophy for 48 years.

So, what’s your stance on grass versus artificial surfaces? Is astroturf the thin edge of a privatising wedge that will rob us of our last open, free-to-all green spaces, as happened at Packer’s Field? Let us know!

THE WHISTLEBLOWERS AND THE UNRELIABLE UNION REP

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The whistleblowers at the heart of Bristol City Council’s never-ending MARKET SERVICE SCANDAL had the misfortune to be represented – for a fortunately brief time in 2012 – by a congenital idiot, Bristol Unison’s CLYTUS ‘CLIT ARSE’ WILLIAMS.

An ex-public schoolboy who waltzes around the Council House in a bow-tie sucking up to managers, he brushes off the endless complaints he gets from members losing their jobs by telling them “you don’t understand the language”.

Despite being told by his whistleblowing members in markets in July 2012 not to sign off on TONY HARVEY‘s inept and mendacious restructuring plan for the service because (a) it was a load of bollocks and (b) its only purpose was to remove them from their jobs, Clit Arse, in a fine example of trade union democracy in action, signed off the plan on behalf of the unions anyway!

Consequently, two of his members, one of whom was a legally acknowledged whistleblower, LOST THEIR JOBS! While it has since turned out that the restructure was indeed a load of bollocks that’s created a service whose FINANCES ARE STILL ‘OF CONCERN’ 18 MONTHS LATER with nobody left in the department who can sort it out. What a result!

Backing bent count bosses over dues paying union members and legitimate whistleblowers is no biggie for local Labour Party member Clit Arse, though. He has form for SCREWING OVER HIS OWN UNION MEMBERS – especially the politically active ones.

in 2007 when he was chairman of Unison’s obscure national Standing Orders Committee he formally complained that a satirical cartoon of the three wise monkeys (see no evil – hear no evil – speak no evil) produced by some left-wing activist members to take the piss out of his stupid and obstructive little committee was racist and he encouraged Unison to discipline the four members responsible. This subsequently happened and the members were banned from holding office at the union.

The farcical case eventually ended up at an employment tribunal and COST UNISON OVER £800,000 while Clit Arse’s evidence given under oath was labelled – and we quote – “NOT CREDIBLE” by the tribunal’s chair.

The fall-out from the case also saw four London Unison branches fall apart and go in to special measures, leaving union members unable to fight local authority bosses and public service privatisation.

In comparison, a mere corpse and a piffling £165k-worth of unaccounted for public money is but a trifle for this particular careerist union boss…

DIM TIM IN THIN SPIN DIN! RUMOUR-MONGERING COUNCIL PRESS BOSS BORRETT HAS TROUBLE COMMUNICATING…

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Looks like the council has appointed yet another congenital idiot to run its press operation.

Step forward ‘DIM’ TIM BORRETT, previously a lowly press assistant who stepped into the hot seat a few months ago when his chum the West Wing-loving Peter ‘Claudia Jean’ Holt was finally shipped out by the all- new council management when they instantly discovered he was a useless twat.

Anyway, it seems Dim Tim, yet another chancer who fancies himself as spin doctor, is already briefing the Nazi Post ‘OFF THE RECORD’.

Oh dear. Does Tim not realise that any statement released by the council to the press can be attributed to him as the man in charge of the Press Office?

Isn’t the whole point of him earning a large wedge as media boss that he take responsibility for what appears in the press on behalf of the council? The idea he can shirk his responsibility and avoid accountability by describing himself as “a City Council source” or some other ridiculous fabrication is patently absurd. We all know it’s you, Borrett, you silly, silly boy.

We’ve also been reliably informed that at the time of his appointment last year, Borrett was very friendly with former press boss, Claudia Jean Holt and he appears to have got his break in Bristol as Claudia Jean’s right hand man after regularly visiting the bellyflopping press boss in Bristol so they could play zombie games together!! How cosy.

Prior to pitching up in Bristol, Borrett was something of a BIG TIME MEDIA OPERATOR in the sleepy Devon resort of Budleigh Salterton, where he kept local farmers and assorted yokels up- to-date on various muckspreading issues on behalf of East Devon Council.

How times don’t change…

ABANDON SHIP AT THE ARNOLFINI AS ‘PHONEY WAR CONTINUES!

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Never more than one overpriced, underperforming art installation away from self-inflicted disaster, the elitist arty-farties of Harbourside’s ‘contemporary art’ gallery ARNOLFINI really have been surpassing themselves over the last year or so.

Not only did they manage to lose an entire ‘Executive Team’ in the space of a month, but their tenants – spread over three voluminous floors of their prestigious, cash-generating Bush House headquarters – all quit. If that wasn’t enough, they then uncovered a large black hole in the finances of around £360K – and promptly FIRED THEIR OWN AUDITORS, Grant Thornton!

Meanwhile, a deranged “recovery plan” to convert the top three floors of the Bush House bunker – at public expense! – into an “art hotel” predictably flopped.

At the height of last autumn’s crisis, the place had to be run by a sub-committee of posh twits from the Analphoney board of trustees. That was because centre director TOM TREVOR was frogmarched off the premises in October so that he could, er, “pursue a number of international curatorial projects”! Presumably he didn’t have a family to “spend more time with”, then?

Trevor was escorted out the door right after the other half of the “executive team”, finance chief and our old friend BRENDA ‘WISE MONKEY’ MCLENNAN, was herself ‘disappeared’ from the organisation without explanation last August.

Brenda, you may recall, is currently vice-chair of Bristol City Council’s financial watchdog, the Audit Committee. So despite an organisation apparently sinking faster than the Titanic on her watch, she got a job overseeing sound financial practice at the council! (But then again, between 2009-2013 she notched up a not-to-be-sniffed-at £1,958.53 in expenses from the council, which suggests a certain amount of flair…)

You may recall that Brenda – she of the £800k Clifton Wood mansion – was a candidate at the last election for George Ferguson’s INDYREDPANTS PARTY, promising that she was going “to shake things up” at the Council House. Well, she’s certainly managed to shake things up at the ‘Phoney!

Other victims of the mass clear out include colourfully-named former chair LOVEDAY SHEWELL. She quietly left after six years in the post in July 2012. Although oddly, despite the UK’s arty-fartie-bore-in-chief Sir Nicolas Serota describing the ‘Phoney as “one of a handful of the most significant cultural centres in Europe,” Ms Shewell has mysteriously left her time with the gallery off her extensive CV. Why could that be?

Meanwhile, that renowned patron of the arts, business genius and financial whiz – MAYOR FERGO himself – hastily quit his post on the board of trustees in December 2012.

Demonstrating, yet again, that George’s instinct for survival outstrips his business acumen by some way.

THE CITY COUNCIL CARE SERVICE FROM HELL

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The BRISTOLIAN‘s Health & Wellbeing Correspondent explains more about the dangerous changes in Bristol’s council Care Services…

Bristol City Council’s adult care services have been “UNDER REVIEW” for nearly two years. The idea behind the reviews is to CUT SERVICES TO THE VULNERABLE. Two services have been drastically affected: residential care for the elderly, and day services for adults with learning difficulties.

Unions have vainly attempted to stop the worst effects for service users and the care workers who support them.

As hard as people have tried, managers have continued to slash and burn these services. Elderly People’s Homes (EPHs) were closed and day services shrunk and made DANGEROUS by uncaring managers.

First to close were the EPHs. Residents were scattered as they lost their homes and care. Many were put in private homes – and looking at Holmwood House, we know what that could mean.

Hundreds of staff were also made redundant and thrown on the dole. But not for long. Clueless boss NIKKI COLE soon realised the slash-and-burn had gone too far too soon and staffing levels were too low even for the council to tolerate.

Care workers were re-employed at great cost to the Council Tax payer. Was Cole held to account? no. She’ll be handed a huge redundancy package and allowed to retire as residential care struggles to make ends meet.

The situation in day services is even worse. Contrary to all advice, Service Director VARETA BRYAN and sidekick SHEENA HUGGINS created three ‘supercentres’ for day care to bring together elderly dementia care patients and those with learning difficulties.

Everyone who works in the service says that this is barking mad and dangerous. Frail elderly people are at great risk even with full

Staffing quotas, which is unlikely. Many staff have left because they do not want to work in an environment which could be seen as negligent and abusive.

Managers have lied and disciplined staff who stood up to them. One worker was so upset by the plans they cried and shouted during a so-called consultation. They were given a management warning. Bryan then sacked him… But also ensured he got a LARGE PAYOUT to buy his silence.

This service is dangerous and cruel. One manager who contacted The BRISTOLIAN fought back tears as he described how he tries to manage services in a crap environment with no resources and too few staff. He had the clear impression that when – not if, but when – someone gets seriously hurt, he will get the blame.

Vareta Bryan declined to comment to The BRISTOLIAN.