Tag Archives: #4.5

£103 IS THE MAGIC NUMBER: HOW BRISTOL COUNCIL DEMANDS MONEY WITH MENACES – AND HOW YOU CAN STAND UP TO THEM!

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BCC put the frighteners on - and demand the magical £103!Anyone who has ever had trouble paying their Council Tax, been hassled over the Single Occupancy Discount or chased over wrongly-issued demands will know the significance of £103.

This is the charge the City Council makes for summons to the Magistrate Courts to make you ‘liable to pay the tax’. Why they have to do this is a bit of a MYSTERY to those who live by common sense: after all, they sent you a bill, so don’t they know who should be paying it?

But what the Council doesn’t tell us is how they come to that odd – but precise – figure of £103. The BRISTOLIAN can reveal that the actual summons costs just £3, with the Magistrates Courts taking £25 in expenses. And what a surprise… Bristol City Council rakes off a massive £75 for itself. For doing what exactly?!

No wonder BCC has been flinging these liability orders out like confetti over the Bristol public. In 2007-8 the Council raked in a WHOPPING £1.6 MILLION from these threatening summonses – and with the sharp rise in snooping on Council Tax payers (including the hiring of extra investigators) of recent years, you can expect it’s increased since then.

It seems to us, what with Con-Dem cuts and costs of uneconomic ‘witch-hunts’ on the public, BCC needs to find other ways of raising cash. What better then than to clog up the over-stretched courts with liability orders – wasting all our time and money – whilst making £75 a shot. Whether the Council Tax-payers are guilty or innocent, it’s a good earner. If it was done by anyone other than the council it would be called for what it really is – a protection racket based on intimidation and threats.

It’s not all bad news; one angry Council Tax payer who was WITCH-HUNTED FOR 18 MONTHS by BCC over his single person discount contacted The BRISTOLIAN. Like so many, he was found to be completely in the clear and so refused to pay the £103 charge: “I didn’t see why I should be charged for the privilege of being found innocent,” he told us. Standing up to the council’s bullying worked – BCC backed off and waived the costs.

So fellow Bristolians, complain and refuse to pay the £103: it’s just a money-making scam designed to scare you into coughing up for no good reason.

COUNCIL SHOWS ‘CUFF LOVE’ AT CUSTOMER SERVICE POINTS IN BRISTOL

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Council wants local residents seeking help put on lockdown

It’s not just budget cuts that are starting to bite in Bristol – now it’s HANDCUFFS around the wrists as well.

The startling move to issue security guards at Phoenix Court ‘Customer Service Point’ with cop-style restraints – authorised by Strategic Property Director ROBERT ‘ORRIBLE’ ORRETT – comes as BCC continues to trim budgets across the whole city. This leads to fewer council workers working out of fewer buildings being told to cut assistance to hard-up Bristolians wherever possible. That means more people trekking to one of just five ‘Customer Service Points’ that have consolidated the functions of the much more numerous old Neighbourhood Offices – with limited waiting space and long queues before being seen.

As you can imagine, as a place where people at the end of their tether go – like those facing eviction due to the Bedroom Tax, or those made homeless with their families because they can’t afford their private landlord’s rent rises – Phoenix Court is a place with a sometimes tinderbox atmosphere. Therefore you would expect a bit of patience, and at least a friendly face.

Not at PHOENIX COURT, where the BCC customer services approach reigns supreme. Burly bouncers run the door like that of a dodgy nightclub, and only let so many people in. With the housing crisis in Bristol, this means many trying to access services are simply left out on the pavement – kids and elderly alike, rain or shine. Try to get some shelter, and you lose your place.

If you ask too many questions, you are now very likely to end up being ‘restrained’ in cuffs by one of the doormen.

Rumours of anti-Somali attitudes persist – not surprising when one Somali man trying to get in recently was forcibly ejected onto his head, requiring hospital treatment.  Another was told, as he lay on the floor “if you want to live in this country, you better learn the rules”. Priceless – flee your wartorn country to avoid persecution, pass draconian asylum tests, only to get beaten up when you try to access housing services.

None of those working on the service desks want this level of security or violence. It has become so bad that residents in Easton are working on a petition about the OUT-OF-CONTROL security guards at Phoenix Court.

Staff shortages currently mean new housing applications routinely take six months to be processed. And in the meantime, you are more likely to be attacked if you are a punter than a staff member: recently, one homeless person was sat upon by an office manager shouting obscenities, until the police turned up. It was this incident that prompted Orrett – more used to covering up fraud than addressing employee welfare – to kit out his own little PRIVATE ARMY with cuffs, despite not having properly addressed the legal issues of using force in this way.

How long before some bright spark in Shitty Hall proposes that parking wardens be equipped with tasers, or park keepers with CS gas?

We are already checking on rumours that school dinner ladies are getting pepper spray to dissuade any young Oliver Twists. “Please Miss, can I have some mor-ARRRGGHH MY EYES!!!”.