Tag Archives: Bailiffs

WASTERS

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Waste wages 1

Will claims from councillors earlier this year that the real reason for the rush-job outsourcing of Bristol City Council cleaners and security staff to Bristol Waste was to address urgent cashflow issues at the stumbling council-owned company turn out to be accurate?

Last week came the bizarre announcement that Bristol Waste are suspending Green Waste collections for at least ten weeks. The reasons given for this decision were confusing to say the least. Oscilating between claims of a national shortage of skilled drivers and the alleged impact of Bristol Waste drivers self-isolating from Covid-19. We’re also fast learning that Bristol Waste is no longer able to guarantee collecting general waste and recycling on the day they are contracted to do so. 

Now we hear that bailiffs acting on behalf of SITA visited the offices of Bristol Waste earlier this week to demand overdue payments for the clearance of waste from larger blocks of flats in Bristol. What on earth is going on?

Adding to this sense of a company and management spiralling out of control comes news that the struggling firm’s Finance Director Adam “Because I’m Worth It” Henshaw received a 50 per cent pay rise last year. Tidily uplifting Worth It’s pay packet from £73k in 2020 to £110k this year. 

What was this enormous pay rise for and who authorised it? Is this a reward for failure? Or do Bristol Waste view their increasing inability to collect waste and pay their bills as a sign of management success?

Bristol Waste mainman, Managing Director, Tony ‘I Am The’ Lawless, had to rub along on a pay rise of just five per cent this year, which saw his pay packet exceed £125k for the first time. A rise rather more generous than he allowed his long-suffering staff. 

Operations Director Jason “Fatty” Eldridge, meanwhile, trousered a cool seven per cent rise. Crashing his salary through that all-important six-figure barrier to £104k a year.

Bristol Energy-watchers may recall executive salaries there rose the more the company failed. Culminating in Managing Director Mark ‘Magic’ Majewicz pocketing an obscene compensation package of £306k while the company racked up huge losses in 2019 – 20.

Is history repeating?

BATTLE OF THE BEARPIT

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As the dust settles on the Reverend’s underwhelming and overpriced ‘BATTLE OF THE BEARPIT’ eviction assault on the city’s street homeless, People’s Republic of Stokes Croft and Bearpit Improvement Group stalwart, Chris “The Pot” Chalkley should allow himself a wry smile at the council’s thinking behind this latest turn of events. The Reverend Rees unleashed his PRIVATE STORMTROOPERS to clear the Bearpit of squatters and the homeless on 19 June after what he called “escalating public fears” following a low-key statement from the police that a man had suffered a minor facial injury in the Bearpit.

The Reverend’s assault led by ineffective community worker turned ‘Street Czar’ Kurt “Wendy” James appeared to be devised as a HIGH PROFILE MEDIA EVENT and troops were piled in ready for a headline-grabbing scrap with the squatters of the Bearpit. Although things didn’t go quite to plan when just one man was arrested for a non-violent offence while the rest just drifted away from the Bearpit with a “fuck you” to the Reverend’s para-military bailiff team. Within a few hours bailiffs were stood around with the press in the middle of, possibly, THE MOST EXPENSIVELY SECURED ROUNDABOUT IN HISTORY.

The Battle of the Bearpit took place after an eviction hearing at Bristol’s Court of Justice where the city council arrived with a swanky barrister on top-dollar who proceeded to fail to prove the council owned the Bearpit. The court, instead, had to make do with a statement from ‘Street Czar’ Wendy claiming the council did own it but just couldn’t prove it at the moment. The barrister also blustered to the court that there was “AN URGENT NEED FOR “REDEVELOPMENT AND REGENERATION” at the Bearpit.

Really? An urgent need to expensively redevelop and regenerate a concrete underpass beneath a roundabout? This is why Chris The Pot should be pissing himself laughing. When he announced ten years ago that he intended to turn this ABANDONED, UNLOVED and UNDERUSED underpass popular only with the street homeless into an important cultural quarter, vibrant public space and open-air art gallery there were gales of laughter. Followed by a shrug of the shoulders from anyone in authority who had spent years pursuing a policy of “TARGET HARDENING” and “DISSUASION OF USE” in what studies had discovered was THE MOST FEARED SPACE IN CENTRAL BRISTOL. Certainly, no mention then from snooty bastards about “an urgent need for redevelopment and regeneration”.

So what’s changed? When did the Bearpit become valuable real estate? Who changed it and how? And who gets to cash in?

THE GREAT SIEGE OF RICHMOND TERRACE: BELLYFLOPPING BAILIFFS SPELL END OF COUNCIL RESISTANCE

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Bailiffs

Useless twats employed by senior council bosses fuck off after failing miserably

A PATHETIC attempt by the council’s bailiffs, accompanied by THREE coppers, to evict the occupiers of 44 Richmond Terrace this morning at 5.00am has resulted in a flurry of activity from Bristol City Council.

FIVE bailiffs arrived this morning at dawn at Richmond Terrace causing an unholy racket as they unsuccessfully tried to batter the door of number 44 in. Having FAILED at this pretty basic task for bailiffs, the gormless quintet then attempted to drill the lock out of the front door.

When this, too, was entirely UNSUCCESSFUL, the bailiffs beat a hasty retreat along with their cop bodyguards. Although they did successfully manage to call the occupiers and the entire street, who were by now wide awake and watching the entertainment, ‘WANKERS‘ as they departed. Classy stuff from the forces of law and order there.

To add to the general feeling of wholesale PATHETIC FAILURE for Bristol City Council, the local BBC kindly made their ludicrous bellyflopping bailiffs headline news all day!

By noon, a thoroughly DEFLATED and DEFEATED council, had made an offer of a council property to ex-serviceman Anthony Palmer and his 18 month son. This happened soon after Anthony – the original cause of the protest – was mysteriously handed the BAND ONE housing priority the occupiers have been demanding since 20 April to reflect Anthony’s ex-services status.

The latest RUMOUR is that the council are now in the process of helping the buyer of Richmond Terrace to quickly pull out of the purchase of the home that they have not wished to buy for, at least, two weeks.

The end may be in sight …

44 RICHMOND TERRACE: MIND YOUR LANGUAGE

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illegalIn the cat and mouse game of political public relations, it’s sometimes worth looking at what your opponents are calling you and then asking WHY?

So this really caught our eye on Wednesday from Marvin “THE REVEREND” Rees’s PR boss, Tim “ZOMBIE” Borrett and his brain dead council communications team about the occupiers of Richmond Terrace:

“During the course of the occupation the ILLEGAL OCCUPIERS have raised a number of issues around the sale of council houses.”

What the hell is an “ILLEGAL OCCUPIER“? And what’s illegal about them? Is Zombie Borrett suggesting the people involved in this occupation are innately “ILLEGAL“? Their very existence now against the law because they’re challenging his wanky little local authority?

Are senior council bosses openly characterising the occupiers as a class of people without any rights or a voice so the public needn’t have to give a fuck about them?

Zombie’s claim is both a little bit DISTURBING and wholly UNTRUE. For starters, the occupation itself isn’t even illegal. Zombie Borrett should know this from his own council’s statement to the County Court on Wednesday.

This admitted that the police “declined to exercise their powers” under the Legal Aid and Prosecution of Offenders Act (LAPSO) 2014 because the cops didn’t accept the occupation was a criminal act. The occupation is therefore UNLAWFUL. The people involved are not “ILLEGAL” in any sense.

The problem for Zombie and Rees is that their language of ‘illegality’ directly mimics and mirrors the language the FAR RIGHT uses about migrants.

We’ve all heard talk of “ILLEGAL ALIENS” and “ILLEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS” and we all know this language is deliberately deployed to MARGINALISE and DEHUMANISE migrants and to stir up hatred against them.

Is Zombie Borrett attempting a similar strategy to turn the public AGAINST the occupiers of 44 Richmond Terrace?

Or maybe he’s just WEAK and SLOPPY with language? After all, language and its deployment only makes up the entire content of the job he’s paid a fat wage to do. Why would he know what he’s doing with it?

This behaviour from Zombie Borrett, an over privileged little twerp from East Devon, is of little surprise. But it’s nothing short of SCANDALOUS that the Reverend Rees – within weeks of taking office – is signing off press releases using this kind of language towards his political opponents. Language that has a history of MARGINALISING and SPREADING HATRED toward a section of the public.

This DEHUMANISATION of the vulnerable and their campaigners and protestors is a dangerous game. Many of the occupiers are themselves vulnerable people living in poverty and in precarious housing conditions.

When the occupiers get an ‘accidental’ kicking from The Reverend’s bailiffs will the public turn a blind eye because the occupants have been sold to the public as “ILLEGALS“?

Marvin, the silly little prick, should know better than to be using this ugly language of the far right.

 

 

44 RICHMOND TERRACE: “WE’RE NOT LEAVING!”

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THE SIEGE OF RICHMOND TERRACE BEGINS! (You’ll be telling your grandchildren about this – well, Marvin Rees probably won’t. He’ll be shuffling around the room, staring at the floor desperately trying to change the subject)

Following a short hearing at Bristol’s County Court this morning, occupiers of 44 Richmond Terrace, Avonmouth have been ordered to leave the house immediately so that the sale of the council house to a private buyer can proceed.

Occupiers of the house, who have been there since April 20, six hours before the home was auctioned off to the highest bidder, have rejected the order out of hand. “We’re not leaving,” announced occupier Steve Norman immediately after the hearing.

During the hearing the council revealed the buyer of their property had issued them with a Notice of Completion on 18 May after the council had failed to complete the sale transaction on time because they were unable to provide the buyer with ‘Unoccupied Possession” of the home.

This Notice of Completion gives the council ten working days to complete the transaction or the sale falls through and the house remains in public ownership. The stage therefore is set for a battle between between bailiffs and occupiers leading up to this deadline of2 June

Occupiers say, “we have contingency plans in place and are confident of remaining in the house for the foreseeable future.”

Please call Steve 07747 490902