Tag Archives: #4.5

‘PLOT 6’ THICKENS…

Politicians from across the spectrum are quick to insist that ‘Plot 6’ at Temple Meads train station – situated in the heart of the Tories’ so-called ENTERPRISE ZONE next to Brunel’s original building – is pencilled in to become a much-needed transport interchange. No, ‘onest guv!

This seems a bit strange as plans for the site have always shown Plot 6 occupied by a grotty speculative development of office blocks. And now The BRISTOLIAN learns that desperate planning bosses offered the plot to the BBC last year as a base for their operations in the city – and as part of a transparent attempt to boost the Enterprise Zone’s thin claims to be a centre for the creative industries.

Alas, the BBC declined the offer, presumably not really wanting to move to a DULL WASTELAND of office blocks and car parks.

But surely our councillors and Mayor Fergo need to have an urgent chat with Enterprise Zone boss – unelected Tory-boy Merchant Venturer Colin Skellett – and find out what his plans really are?

HIBAQ TO BASICS SCANDAL STILL BREWING IN LAWRENCE HILL

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It seems that those pesky mutterings about “unprofessional personal relationships” we mentioned in the last BRISTOLIAN might sabotage new Bristol Labour councillor HIBAQ JAMA’s political career before it gets going.

Of course, it’s never wise to brazenly have affairs with people who work for you whilst mistreating other staff members.

But then to dump your lover the moment you’re selected for a political candidacy on the grounds that they don’t match your carefully-honed public image? That just seems foolish.

Because that sort of thing tends to come back and haunt you…

MISSING MARKETS MONEY, GAGS, CHEESE AND MARK BRADSHAW: WHAT I DID IN THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS BY AUGUSTUS HOYTY-TOYTY AGED 37¾

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MONDAY:

Bumped into our brilliant new Chief Executive Mrs Yates today while I was wandering around on the third floor trying to find something useful to do. She was at the photocopier running off a considerable amount of paperwork headed ‘GAGGING ORDER’. I asked her what she was up to as a bit of a conversational opening gambit and apparently she was just doing some early preparatory work to pop in the top drawer of her desk. Then she gave me a little grin, grabbed the paperwork and headed off to her office – sorry, I mean flexible work space.

I must say she seems very professional and efficient and she can operate a photocopier! Certainly an improvement on Mr Sims, who seemed to need a PA to switch a light on for him never mind operate a Blackberry or that iPad he was given that he thought was a clipboard for the first three weeks. I sense already that Nicola is the person to lead the new hi-tech open City Hall culture George and I are embedding. Good times!

TUESDAY:

High-level meeting with new Cabinet member, Labour’s superb Mark Bradshaw today. To be able to work alongside such a supremely gifted and able politician and first rate intellect is a privilege. Mark and I discussed very important matters relating to George’s proposed RPZ scheme that I can’t tell you about. Although we will inform the public at an appropriate time. As Mark said, car parking is far too important to discuss in public.

WEDNESDAY:

Had an excellent two o’clock with George today. I must say he’s in a far better mood since he went up to Harley Street to see his doctor about his anxiety issues. He’s now installed a comfy sofa in his office and he was lying on it wearing only his favourite Fairtrade silk dressing gown (red, of course) with his feet up reading Fifty Shades Of Grey! He’s also mentally firing on all cylinders again and has had yet another brilliant idea – ‘City of Cheese’

Apparently he bought a particularly ripe and vibrant brie at our first Make Sunday Special food market and he thinks Bristol Brie could be a really amazing international place-making tool for the city. I could only agree and promised – as the Cabinet lead on food – to get on it right away. I then had to leave as he needed to take his Effexor, whatever that is, and relax for a while.

THURSDAY:

Finally got in today to see Mr Mann, our transport boss, over at Brunel House. What a strange meeting. When I walked in Mr Mann was holding a small teddy bear at his face level and appeared to be having a conversation with it. “Hello Sir Gus,” he said, “this is Teddy. He helps me with policy.”

Thinking I had better change the subject sharpish, I pointed at a large green safe in the corner of the room that seemed to be wrapped in about four toughened steel chains secured by around six padlocks. “That’s where I keep the Greater Bristol Bus Network performance statistics,” explained Mr Mann. “We can’t be too careful. We don’t want them getting out to the press or public, do we?” he muttered quietly.

If nothing else, I suppose we should be impressed by Mr Mann’s commitment to information security. The rest of the meeting was about RPZs, which I can’t tell you anything about because car parking is quite rightly a top-secret issue.

FRIDAY:

Had a row today on Twitter with those horrible, nasty, beastly people at The BRISTOLIAN. They keep banging on about this missing £165,000 missing from the Market Service that I’m ultimately responsible for. It is of course all complete nonsense. As George has kindly explained to them there is no evidence of any wrongdoing at all. So come on guys, sometimes you just have to accept that £165,000 just disappears from public sector organisations without any explanation. Mankind isn’t perfect, is it? We just can’t explain everything, can we? Like how bees fly; UFOs; the Loch Ness Monster; the Bermuda Triangle; Alastair Sawday; homeopathy and David Lynch films. Some things are simply pure mystery.

Besides I’m happy to confirm that Mr Harvey, the Facilities Manager responsible for overseeing the money, has fully investigated himself and has confirmed nobody has done anything wrong. The Metropolitan Police seem to be able to investigate themselves without all this fuss. What more do these people want?

They should join UKIP with all the other racist stirrers and RPZ resisters who want to destroy mine and George’s progressive coalition for Green progress in Bristol with their relentless focusing on silly little details and small amounts of missing money rather than looking at the big canvas of Bristol George and I are busy colouring in green.

MALLETT’S MAYOR

REDTROUSER RADAR (AUG 2013): AN IRREGULAR LOOK AT BRISTOL’S MILLIONAIRE MAYOR AND HIS GLOBETROTTING!

THAT FERGUSON ‘GREEN’ PARKING POLICY EXAMINED – NO CHARGE FOR GEORGE’S CUSTOMERS!

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Talking of RPZs, one thing MAYOR FERGO didn’t mention when he was belatedly trying to sell RESIDENTS’ PARKING ZONES to a sceptical Bristolian public, is how he personally benefits from permit-free parking in Southville.

Yes, his very own trendy bar/theatre the TOBACCO FACTORY actually advises its patrons to park on neighbouring streets!

Until recently, the Tobacco Factory website (archived for posterity here) stated “WE RECOMMEND ON-STREET PARKING. There are a number of residential streets off Raleigh Road…which are probably your best bet.”

Of course, since the paper issue of The BRISTOLIAN with this story in it hit the streets, it has now been HASTILY AMENDED to a slightly less controversial version (see picture below).

Now that’s joined up thinking, George!

A SICK RACKET – HOW BRISTOL COUNCIL PROFITS FROM INJURIES AND DISEASE

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Bristol City Council traffic bosses are using the RESIDENTS PARKING ZONE in Kingsdown to bleed money from hospital patients, visitors and staff, an internal memo reveals.

The Kingsdown RPZ has proved a HANDY CASH COW for the council, providing thousands of pounds in parking fees and fines thanks to the proximity of nearby medical facilities such as the Bristol Royal Infirmary, St Michael’s, the Children’s Hospital and the Oncology Centre.

In a document seen by The BRISTOLIAN, council traffic chiefs say:

It is likely that the Kingsdown scheme, for which we have most data, will generate more income than the future schemes will. this is because it is close to a number of key attractors such as the University and the Hospital.

And there was us thinking that hospitals were much-loved vital public services to be respected and cherished. Not at Bristol City Council. They’re an income attractor!

So mind how you park if you’re unfortunate enough to have a relative at the BRI: The ghouls will be waiting to turn your care into cash…

NOTHING VENTURED, NOTHING GAINED… HOW BRISTOL’S COSY CLUB FOR RICH BUSINESSMEN KEEPS THE MONEY GOING ROUND

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A couple of examples emerge of just how charitable our old friends at the SOCIETY OF MERCHANT VENTURERS really are.

First, please step forward TIM ROSS who seems well-versed in that old Venturer trick of turning public money into private wealth.

Ross was, until June last year, Chairman of financial basketcase waste company MAY GURNEY (see The BRISTOLIAN #4.3 & 4.4), currently being rescued from financial collapse via a multi-million pound takeover by anti-union construction outfit, KIER GROUP. Indeed such are the financial problems at May Gurney that Bristol City Council has been discouraged from enforcing the penalty clauses in its waste collection contract with the company as it was thought it would bankrupt them and our rubbish could go uncollected.

However, bankruptcy is not something that’s likely to happen to Ross: once the ink was dry on May Gurney’s contract with the city council, he cashed in 100,000 of his shares in December 2011 to pocket A COOL £235,000 – conveniently before the share price of the company went south! He scarpered as Chairman of May Gurney six months later, just a few months before the share price tumbled below a pound.

Our second all-heart, all-charidee Venturer is CULLUM MCALPINE, scion of the civil engineering giant SIR ALFRED MCALPINE LTD, a firm that is never far from a tasty government contract or two. Cullum is a director of the company and has been personally named in papers lodged with the high court as being “intimately” involved in the operation of a “clandestine” organisation – The Consulting Association – holding a list of people barred from the construction industry. Or trade union blacklisting as it’s generally known.

The court papers claim, “McAlpine was the founding chairman at the [Consulting Association’s] inception in 1993. He was intimately involved in the foundation and operation of TCA. He formally offered Mr Kerr the position of director in August 1993. He finalised the written particulars of Mr Kerr’s employment, sending them to members for approval and obtaining legal advice in relation to them. He oversaw the arrangement of life and health insurance for Mr Kerr as part of his remuneration.”

IAN KERR was the director of The Consulting Association, the organisation which operated the ILLEGAL BLACKLIST OF WORKERS on behalf of big construction firms until he was exposed and prosecuted in 2009.

Perhaps Mr McAlpine should keep better company – as should the Society of Merchant Venturers.

AND ANOTHER THING …

Venturer DAVID ORD, co-owner of the Bristol Port Company at Avonmouth, has donated more than £330,000 to the Tory Party since 2005.

He was also one of forty donors to attend dinners with senior ministers, including the Prime Minister, in the last quarter of 2012.

So, did Ord use his access to ‘Dodgy’ David Cameron to lobby for the scrapping of plans for an electricity-generating Severn estuary barrage?

INHUMAN RESOURCES? COUNCIL CHIEFS EYE UP OVERTIME PAYMENTS

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Overtime ban threatened – but no one knows effects

Showing the sort of blue skies nonsense we are becoming familiar with under FÜHRER FERGO’s regime of red-trousered lunacy, a clique of overpaid senior managers has decided to SLASH overtime payments to a huge section of council employees.

The measures, put to the Human Resources Committee at its last meeting, were submitted as ‘information’ – but it’s clear that the councilors on the HRC, which is supposed to oversee all changes to terms and conditions for BCC staff, haven’t a clue what to do.

The overtime ban the bosses want in place will initially affect those on pay grades BG11 and above – hitting mostly middle managers – but sure as shit rolls downhill, it won’t be long before those on lower wage packets suffer too.

Chaired since May by Labour’s MIKE LANGLEY, ably assisted by his Brislington East wingman MIKE WOLLACOTT, their party colleague BILL ‘IN THE ARSE’ PAYNE, plus duff Lib Dems FI HANCE and GLENISE SWEETING ‘SOUR’ MORGAN and rounded out by Tory buffoon DICK EDDY, the HRC has so far BOTTLED the issue. It’s not as though it is the first they have heard about it – the ‘no overtime’ policy was brought up at a fractious full council meeting in February.

You would think that in the half-year since then some detailed costings would have been offered, or research started into the effects of such major cutbacks… But this being Bristol City Council, there has been nothing of the sort.

Instead, it appears the committee members are following the lead of the very people they are supposed to be directing: the CUTS-HAPPY TOP BOSSES running the council from the shadows, seemingly to please the increasingly temperamental and aloof GEORGE FERGUSON.

Unions have asked for a financial breakdown, and an explanation of how the changes will affect service delivery, only to be told that senior managers have ‘considered’ this – but that there are no actual figures or even minutes of meetings to back this up. Funny, that…

The usual lame promises that ‘this will not happen again’ were offered, plus the announcement that a full report on savings, and service delivery will be forthcoming at sometime in the next six months to a year.

The clear result of this policy will be the GRINDING TO A HALT of a vast array of out-of-office-hours services, from building security and maintenance of the docks system to public health inspections and support for vulnerable people – because no one in their right mind would work for nothing. Perhaps that’s the aim – for all we know Mayor Ferguson, the HRC and their senior officer chums want us all eating horsemeat burgers and the city flooded.

That would make more sense than the excuses they’ve offered so far.

FERGUSON FAMILY FIND FUNDING – BUT NOTHING FOR KNOWLE WEST

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Congratulations to local group PLAYING OUT, which has secured major government funding for its work in encouraging “resident-led street play activity” (that’s helping parents make roads safe for kids to play on).

The announcement of the cash injection came just as several streets around the City Centre were closed to traffic for the first ‘Make Sunday Special’ events. The latest bright idea of Mayor George Ferguson – who’s still having trouble getting his ‘boulevards of solar-powered giant inflatable vegetables’ scheme off the ground – five monthly traffic-free Sundays are planned until October, costing Bristol a total of nearly £200,000.

Whilst a boon to the street performers and circus groups paid to entertain, you can’t help but wonder if the money could be spent better elsewhere…
Certainly KWADS, the Knowle West–based support service for friends and family of those affected by alcohol and drugs, which has just had £180,000 funding snatched away by the council-supported quango Safer Bristol, could do with a bit of that JUGGLING-AND-MIME CASH.

So maybe KWADS could ask Fergo for some assistance – or perhaps not. Knowle West isn’t really fashionable enough for Fergo, and anyway kids there already play out in the streets safely…

Without help from Playing Out (director: ALICE FERGUSON – DAUGHTER of the MAYOR).