Tag Archives: Brenda McLennan

AUDIT’S IDLE HANDS STILL ON THE PAYROLL

Bristol City Council’s Audit Committee continues to impress. The committee, that’s supposed to oversee sound finance and good governance at our council, releases its annual report to councillors today for the year the Bundred Report into the council’s latest FINANCIAL SHAMBLES was published.

Among a host of serious management misconduct at Bristol City Council, Bundred’s report detailed how the Audit Committee had been thoroughly MISLED by its own Chief Internal Auditors and senior bosses about their ‘savings programme’ for 2013 – 16. Sometimes through the use of straightforward LIES to the committee and sometimes through the use of “summary reports’ that conveniently LEFT OUT any bad news or actual facts.

This resulted in councillors setting an UNLAWFUL BUDGET for 2015 – 16 that proposed the council spend £30million more than they were legally permitted. So there’s lots to tell councillors and the public in this annual report then?

Or maybe not? As the latest Labour Party mug flailing around totally out-of-his-depth as the Audit Committee Chair, Olly “Meadiocre’ Mead, has delivered a short five page report of remarkable blandness and few recommendations. Indeed, it’s such a load of shite it could only have been written for him by his BENT Internal Audit Service.

Summing up a year of revelations of outright financial CRIMINALITY from his senior staff and auditors and financial ARMAGEDDON for the rest of us, Mediaocre felt his committee needed to focus on just three problems: ‘Maintaining an apolitical/independent approach to meeting agendas and items thereon’; ‘providing robust challenge to determine the effectiveness of Council’s governance  framework’; ‘ensuring  focused meetings to maximise the Committee impact’.

If anyone can find the part of the Bundred Report criticising ‘politicised’ Audit Committee meetings and a lack of focus at their meetings – do let us know. Otherwise just assume this is a load of wind and irrelevant bollocks from a CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT Internal Audit Service trying to cover their tracks by, er, misleading councillors (all over again).

Nothing sums up the misleading nature of this report more than the fact that NOWHERE does it mention the pretty important news that the council has appointed a new private sector Interim Chief Internal Auditor – Jonathan Idle of JR Idle Audit Services Ltd – no doubt for the standard annual six figure wedge. The appointment of this new Chief Internal Auditor hasn’t been formally announced to councillors anywhere else either.

Naturally, in order to waste even more of our money, which the Reverend Rees insists is in short supply, they’ve also KEPT their job share pair of USELESS and CORRUPT existing Chief Internal Auditors Melanie “Joe” Henchy-McCarthy and Alison “Mullet” Mullis in post. Although they’re now rebranded as just ‘Head of Internal Audit’ while being paid the same money.

In other words, the council’s response to the TOTAL FAILURE of their Audit Committee, Internal Audit and Chief Internal Auditors is to spend over £100k a year more of our money on a private sector consultant to do the jobs of pair of useless failures – who should be SACKED – who are still raking in excessive salaries they don’t deserve.

Also, NOWHERE in Mediocre’s report, is it mentioned that the Audit Committee has, for the last five years, received report after report from McCarthy and Mullet assuring councillors that finance management and risk at the council has been a story of CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT.

Until – that is – the Bundred Report appeared last year. Now we’re told by Chief Exec Big Wedge, in a separate finance report to Cabinet in May, that “the required Internal Audit Plan is not deliverable within existing resources” because of the “scale of finance improvements required”. Why is this serious AUDIT FAILURE and five year tissue of OUTRIGHT LIES from Internal Auditors not mentioned by Mediocre?

It’s also worth noting that the two ‘independent’ members of the Audit Committee –  Brenda “Wise Monkey” McClennan and Ken “Fool” Guy – who mysteriously noticed NOTHING amiss as various financial scandals engulfed the council during their extended eight year tenures  – have finally been let go.

Although – as yet – no replacements have been secured. Perhaps because if a normal member of the public sat on this committee listening to the bollocks spouted by the unholy alliance of city council senior bosses and their PATSY AUDITORS they might start asking difficult questions?

What a shambles.

THE ELECTION SECTION – MAY 2014 PREVIEW!

STORMIN’ NORMAN

Firebrand social care campaigner and friend of The BRISTOLIAN, Mr STEVE ‘STORMIN’ NORMAN, who’s recently been shaking things up at the council and elsewhere over the Holmwood House scandal, has declared he will be running for council as an independent candidate for Avonmouth in the May local elections.

This might disappoint Labour, who have their old stager JOHN ‘BUMBLE’ BEES lined up and would be hoping to keep the seat, currently held by their washed-up ex-MP, Doug Naysmith.

Norman will be running on a ticket attacking the council’s abysmal record in social care, which as well as embarrassing the city council may well expose Labour’s COULDN’T-GIVE-A-TOSS-PRIVATISE-THE-LOT attitude to social care in the city.

JANKE QUITS

Meanwhile, the current cabinet boss for social care, BARBARA JANKE will announce she will not be running for her Clifton seat again.

Janke has had little influence in changing the dismal quality of residential social care provided by private providers in the city and instead has been acting as little more than a mouthpiece for council managers determined to cover up the lethal state of privatised residential care in the city.

A suitably fitting damp squib finale for this politician of the second rank.

PAEDOS AND FOGHORNS

Over in the alternative universe occupied by INDYREDPANTS FOR BRISTOL – the political party that says it’s not a political party – it looks like business as usual to us with the endorsement by IfB of Stella Perrett as its candidate in Redland.

She, you may recall, is a close former friend and associate of disgraced local Lib Dem kiddie porn aficionado councillor John Astley, who in 2004 was convicted for his paedo peccadilloes – as well as a number of electoral fraud charges which, err, The Artist Formerly Known As Stella Hender also faced!

Meanwhile,  the Redpants’ foghorn-voiced closet Tory boss, Mayor Fergo’s pal STEPHEN ‘UNSPARKLING’ PERRY, has “fast-tracked” himself to become the candidate for Clifton, effectively replacing one enormously embarrassing candidate – BRENDA ‘WISE MONKEY’ MCLENNAN, the Analphoney’s innumerate bean counter – with another enormously embarrassing candidate – himself!

This new politics looks strangely like the old politics, doesn’t it?

70% OF BRISTOLIANS CAN’T BE WRONG?

The local elections take place on Thursday 22 May 2014, along with the non-event of the European elections.

As many as 70% of people in Bristol will not vote. And who can really blame them?

Will it make any difference?

ABANDON SHIP AT THE ARNOLFINI AS ‘PHONEY WAR CONTINUES!

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.

INDYREDPANTS’ UNWISE MONKEY’S HORROR NO-SHOW

Word reaches us that BRENDA ‘WISE MONKEY’ MCLENNAN is no longer the Finance boss at the Arnolfini arts centre by the Floating Harbour. Sources there have been keen to distance themselves from her for some reason, and have been at pains to emphasise that they parted ways in October. Why could that be?

Whilst not boasting the same name recognition as His Redtrouserness, you may remember McLennan from her unsuccessful bid for a council seat back in May, when she ran as the public-spirited, politically independent candidate in Clifton for the INDYREDPANTS PARTY, that ragbag of gormless cheerleaders for King George.

What you might not know is that this ‘outsider’ to Bristol’s local politics is also now the Deputy Chair of the City Council’s Audit Committee – which is responsible for ensuring sound management of our money and clamping down on fraud and corruption within BCC. If nothing else, this unusual appointment of one of the Mayor’s keenest public supporters brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘politically independent’.

Certainly Ms McLennan (who has racked up thousands of pounds in expenses) has wasted no time in showing the kind of gumption needed to “shake things up” at Shitty Hall by, err… Not turning up for the most important Audit Committee meeting of year!

That’s right, for reasons unknown, Ms Mclennan – one of only two people providing allegedly independent oversight of council finances – failed to show at the Committee meeting in September, where the council’s audited accounts for the 2012-13 were agreed and signed off (without a hitch, natch).

Also on the agenda at the meeting was the report from the council’s Internal Audit Department cataloguing the series of gross financial failures across the organisation. These included theft, wholesale non-compliance with procurement regulations, dodgy management of cash accounts and – even – a very special mention for The BRISTOLIAN’s bête noire, Facilities Service Manager Tony ‘Toerag’ Harvey’s bent Markets Service!

So nothing there that would in any way interest an independent election candidate who wants to “shake things up” at Bristol City Council then!

THE BRISTOLIAN #4.8 – OUT NOW FROM ALL GOOD STOCKISTS!

Bristolian_4.8_coverWell, we have been so busy working on the ‘Ms X’ story these past few days that we have not had the chance to tell you that the latest issue of your favourite local Smiter of the High and Mighty has been on the streets for a week!

November’s edition of The BRISTOLIAN is another PACKED ISSUE, featuring…

» BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL: WE’RE BEING ROBBED!
More cash disappearing from ‘of concern’ authority – this time from cash-in-transit

» MAYOR GRASS FARCE
A right royal game of lawn-acy as Fergo visit gets preferential grass-cutting treatment

» HOYTY-TOYTY’S PORK BARREL POLITICS SCAM
Green Councillor coughs up three times reserve price for allotments that couldn’t be developed on

» COUNTING THE COST OF CITY HALL LIARS
Farcical claptrap from council managers destroys open spaces, runs up massive bills

» CORPORATE FEED-IN FRENZY
China and big business cashing in on city’s solar power bonanza

» CRAP EMPLOYER OF THE MONTH: CLOVER ADVERTISING/APPCO GROUP
The lowdown on why this is one “billion dollar enterprise” you probably don’t want to work for…

» INDYREDPANT’S UNWISE MONKEY’S HORROR NO-SHOW
How the ‘outsider’ who ran in council elections for IfB “shook things up” on audit committee by not turning up

» B-LIME-Y
A merry-go-round of useless managers squanders £100k on lethal play equipment while kids’ education suffers

» HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB?
How PFI deals with the private sector cost us masses more…

PLUS: NEWS IN BRIEF!!!

» BRISTOLIAN BITES
Tantalising titbits including…

  • THE NEW POLITICSLib Dem Stella Hender returns as anti-Green artist Stella Perrett
  • PICKUP PACKS UP! mystery of Labour councillor’s ouster at hands of own party
  • FERGO IN PITTSBURGH CONGRESSHis Redtrouserness continues to rack up those AirMiles
  • HUNGER GAMESstarving kids made to trudge halfway across city to pick up food arcels
  • GASTRO PUB RUN BY IDIOTShard to imagine, we know

…And all that for FREE!

See the Distribution page for your local stockist – and if there isn’t one near you, let us know!

CAN’T WAIT TO GET HOLD OF A PAPER COPY?

Then you can DOWNLOAD a PDF version here:

» The BRISTOLIAN #4.8 – November 2013

MAYOR GORGEOUS DITCHES INDY REDPANTS AFTER DESULTORY ELECTION RESULTS?

So the votes have been counted, and despite thousands of pounds spent on promoting the middle class vanity project ‘Independents for Bristol’ – the ‘party that’s not a party’ set up by a bunch of Mayor George Ferguson’s rich chums on the grounds that the City Council isn’t stuffed with enough self-regarding toffs or laptoperati  – IfB only managed to win a single seat. And that was Kingsweston, won by the all-but-in-name Lib Dem Jason Budd!

Now that Labour is the biggest party in Shitty Hall with 28 councillors, George has been making overtures to them to get them inside his fast-sinking administration. Indeed, it is of note that instead of palling up with the single successful Indy Redpants candidate and offering Budd a place in his Cabinet, George has now turned his head to attracting in some Labour faces, having pointedly said:

I very much hope we can achieve a four-party cabinet, because I think it’s in Bristol’s interests and I also think it’s in the parties’ interests.

Seeing as he already has the Lib Dems, Tories and Green Party represented in his fake ‘rainbow coalition’ Cabinet of cuts-makers, it’s a rather harsh snub for the hard-working finance directors, self-facilitating media nodes and political anoraks who so tirelessly canvassed as proxies on his behalf.

The failure of the Indy Redpants to fire the imagination of Bristolians might have something to do with their insufferably middle class smugness, and their barely credible claims to be representing a change in city politics.

Cast your mind back ten years to the only-half-serious Bristolian Party – born of an earlier version of this very scandal sheet. It put up twelve candidates across Bristol, including a couple – for comedy value – in Clifton and Clifton East, on a ticket of “reclaiming our city back from the corporate developers”.

In the four wards contested by both the Bristolian Party in 2003 and IfB in 2013, the Bristolian candidate placed higher than the IfB in all but one (Clifton, unsurprisingly). The Bristolian candidate beat the IfB candidate in votes and vote share in two wards – trouncing IfB in both Ashley and Easton. In Lawrence Hill the Bristolian candidate polled just twelve votes fewer than IfB. And in all the jointly-contested wards, the Bristolian Party faced a higher proportion of voter turn-out than the IfB.

So what does that say about the ‘success’ of Fergo’s ‘independent’ outriders of the Indy Redpants, their ability to inspire voters, or their willingness to address issues on the doorstep?

That they were roundly outperformed by a bunch of chancers united by contempt for the well-heeled political classes in Bristol that the IfB so clearly seeks to represent?

ANAL PHONEY ‘INDEPENDENTS’

The ‘INDEPENDENTS FOR BRISTOL’ (IfB) – Mayor Redpants’ second crack at creating a political ‘party that’s not a party’ in under a year following his ‘Bristol 1st’ ticket – is picking up pace, with eight people so far selected to run for council seats.

A typical flavour of IfB comes from its Clifton candidate, chartered accountant Brenda McLennan, the finance & operations boss at the Arnolfini Gallery. From her £800,000 CLIFTON WOOD MANSION she is promising “to shake things up at City Hall” as one of these “new types of politician” running for the IndyRedpants. And how very, very new her personal management practices are at the Arnolfini.

McLennan’s snooty art gallery recently advertised for stewards, offering to pay them the princely sum of £6.20 AN HOUR – a whole 1p an hour more than the minimum wage! And for that “a flexible approach to working days and hours is required” as the gallery is open six days a week!

Just the kind of progressive attitude to low pay and employment this city needs more of, isn’t it?

NEW BRISTOLIAN OUT NOW!

Bristolian #2 - NOW OUT!

Ahoy there, shipmates – the latest issue of Bristol’s finest muckraking newspaper is now being distributed across the city as we speak!

This edition is packed full of exposés of the overpaid mediocrities running our fair town, with the focus on ‘hands-on but light touch’ MILLIONAIRE MAYOR George Ferguson and his scuttling around overseas at our expenses cooking up development deals with his old business cronies.

There’s also the scoop that Bristol City Council has brought in KILLER COMPANY ATOS – notorious for throwing disabled people off benefits – to manage its workers’ occupational health; a report on shady Facilities Management accounting and MISSING MARKETS MONEY; and news that senior officers don’t know how much of our money they’re spending on CUTS CONSULTANTS.

Throw in a round-up of how UNION BUREAUCATS are betraying ordinary Bristolians, a look at some of the candidates in the upcoming council elections, the story of the POSH NIMBY who tried to shut down a popular pub, and of course the latest entries from SIR GUS HOYTY-TOYTY’S CABINET DIARY, and you have yourself a super, soaraway scandal sheet!

Currently available from:

In addition there are copies around St. Nick’s Market, with St. Paul’s, Bedminster, Windmill Hill, Totterdown, Southville and Kingswood all being covered today or in the next few days. Precise locations will be added as they are confirmed.

More outlets will be added to the distribution list as they are confirmed, and further drop-offs can also be arranged – just get in touch.

++ STOP PRESS ++ STOP PRESS ++ STOP PRESS ++ STOP PRESS ++

Our street team reports back that this edition of The BRISTOLIAN has flown out of their hands so quickly just one day in that they’ve completely run out!

To satisfy the city-wide hunger for real news you can trust, we’ve put ordered a reprint, which will be ready for us to hit Hartcliffe, Knowle West, Sea Mills, Cotham, Hotwells – and other areas not yet covered – next week.

In the meantime, if you can’t wait to get your hands on a paper copy – or your local stockist has already run dry – download a digital version here.

PS:

This issue of The BRISTOLIAN was sent to the printers at 4am on Monday. At 11.28am Margaret Thatcher was found dead whilst “reading in bed”.

Coincidence? You decide.