Further institutional confusion emerges around Asher Craig’s Stepping Up (SU) business. We’ve already learned how Bristol City Council senior bosses dodged their own procurement rules to hand public money over to the former Deputy Mayor’s private training company.
When that scam got uncovered, Bristol Waste became the vehicle for subsidising the Deputy Mayor’s company instead. Including supplying an apparent £53k loan to the Slasher’s company. A loan that the council waste company now denies making. Claiming, instead, that SU is their “debtor”. But what service was a waste company selling to a management training company? Very pricey waste disposal services?
Now WECA’s joined the party. Information from a member of the public at a WECA Audit Committee meeting reveals that a £150k grant awarded to SU was dependent on a financial guarantee from, er, Bristol Waste! However, any guarantee should have been approved by Bristol Waste shareholder, Bristol City Council and recorded on the Council’s website. There’s no record of this authorisation so any “guarantee” is unlawful under company law.
Did anyone at WECA think to ask why Bristol Waste was acting as a “parent guarantor” for a company where a Bristol Cabinet member was a director and if it was legal? Where’s the due diligence?
Cherry-picked prisoners (checked for ‘good behaviour’ and most already with the skills) will be ‘employed’ to build pre-fab ‘eco’ homes ‘for the vulnerable’, built from… erm, recycled milk cartons!
This public/private project, promoted by an ad-hoc mishmash of council, probation/reoffending bodies, eco-charities, churches and quangos, is an ‘experiment’ to employ prisoners in ‘useful activities’ to ‘learn skills’ for employment after release.
Nauseating middle class PR guff about an amazing ‘win win’ for prisoners, ‘the community’, social housing, churches, building companies and landowners accompanies the plan. Bristol’s ‘Green’ council is among the talking heads. Taking over where the Reverend left off.
A ‘minimum wage’ for prisoners is mentioned but not whether it’s the statutory minimum wage. Theoretically it might be a ‘minimum wage’ of £5 an hour!
A dystopian vision of this public/private partnership ‘win/win future’ would see prisons becoming 21st Century workhouses. An aristocracy of labour drawn from compliant prisoners with skills would be conditioned to accept a ‘minimum wage’ as the norm. The rest of the undeserving poor could be employed to do shit for free.
Free labour for the ticky tacky milk carton houses of the future
“Day after day council staff witness the blatant disregard, lawbreaking and contempt with which citizens like myself are treated. It’s hardly surprising that less than half of staff trust senior leaders to act with integrity, and that just over half feel confident using whistleblowing policies without fear of retaliation.”
A parent of a disabled child spied on by council bosses has published, on Twitter/X, a public statement that council Monitoring Officer, ‘L’il’ Tim O’Gara, banned from the council’s last Human Resources Committee meeting.
The statement reveals that the parent has started legal action against the council for their weird and unlawful surveillance of her and her family.
This legal action was the final resort after the council, under the Reverend Rees and, now, the Greens reneged on a promise to set up an independent investigation into their surveillance of residents.
The statement also explains that the council has failed to provide a response to this parent’s formal legal letter in seven months.
The officer accountable for that response is Monitoring Officer ‘L’il’ Tim O’Gara. Never one to let a blatant conflict of interest get in the way, he has enthusiastically banned a statement, highlighting his self-serving negligence, from being heard by a committee of councillors responsible for employing him.
To add insult to injury, the parent further reveals that the Reverend’s appalling cabinet sidekick, Asher “The Slasher” Craig, told a meeting of local community groups that the parent was “hysterical”.
How long before the council denounces her for witchcraft and sets up witch trials with O’Gara as judge?
As a statement bannned by the council’s chief legal officer to cover his own bent arse is unlikely to appear in any other local press, here’s the full statement:
The Smiter has informed readers about the Venturers Trust (VT) academy schools shitshow on many occasions. So there were few surprises when the useless multi academy trust run by wealthy idiot Merchant Venturers announced it was “to merge” with E-ACT, a large national multi academy trust (MAT) last September.
Few surprises except, perhaps, at E-ACT? Who were quick to confirm that they were not merging but that the arrangement was “a take-over”. Presumably so that E-ACT could distance themselves swiftly from the Venturer’s disastrous reputation?
E-ACT have taken further action to distance themselves from anything associated with the Venturers by making the trust’s senior leadership team redundant and replacing them with E-ACT recruited managers and head teachers. Hopefully with a modicum of knowledge on how to run a school?
The final stage was to transfer the hard working and long suffering teachers and support staff to the new MAT under transfer of undertakings protection of employment legislation (TUPE). This should have happened in May. Eagle-eyed readers will note, however, May is now over and the transfer has not occurred. The TUPE was postponed until June, due to issues with the roof on Montpelier High School, previously Colston Girls School.
It appears that this roof has been removed, which has had a bit of a negative impact not only on the school but on adjacent shops and flats. At the time of writing the roof is still missing while groups of Merchant Venturers, E-ACT managers and Bristol City Council education bosses sit around the table arguing about who is going to pay for it.
The bill runs into the millions and those of you who have bought property before might wonder about a pre-purchase surveyor. Did E-ACT not employ a surveyor or did the surveyor miss the fact that the school roof was missing?
This is, of course, the oldest building trick in the book. Put a price in, rip the roof off and then, while looking concerned, add a few zeros to the original price. The customer, whose property is roofless, then has no choice but to cough up. If you have not heard of this trick, ask Marv about the Bristol Beacon eventually costing us £135m during major cuts to services.
Latest news is that the TUPE has now been postponed until September. But privately, when asked, E-ACT managers are reluctant to make assurances of when the transfer will take place. But they are “hopeful” it will happen, “in the future”.
Where does that leave the seven schools, their pupils and prospective new students hoping for some type of education in the next academic year? Arguments over who’s going to pay for the roof continue with little sign of a resolution.
Meanwhile all the Venturer’s Trust bosses have been made redundant and paid off. If E-ACT pull out, they will take their newly appointed bosses with them. Leaving current Venturers Trust teachers and support staff in limbo, wondering who is going to pay them or line manage them.
This is a total clusterfuck. One hope is that another MAT will step in, take over a massive deficit, pay the millions of pounds for a new roof on a crumbling building and recruit some education bosses capable of turning these failing schools around. Good luck with that.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to let the private sector run education for a profit because they are more ‘efficient’ is demonstrably a fucking idiot.
Possibly the most expensive idiot you’ve never heard of. This dodgy old fart has spent years grabbing lucrative local authority interim contracts.
He pitched up in Cornwall for a couple of years in 2018 where a local blog colourfully called him “a 10-minute shoe-in pensioner” as he forked out £2.5m without authorisation to an associate for a regeneration scheme in Truro.
Another career highlight was a stint in Bath 2005 – 10.
In charge of the later stages of the Bath Spa development where costs spiralled from £13 million to £45 million. He also featured in the press. They revealed he earned £1.2m during his five years there. A deal the coalition government called “exorbitant”.
So guess who, since leaving Cornwall under a cloud in 2020, has been project director for the Bristol Beacon as costs spiralled from £52m to £132m?
Remarkably, there’s no record of who appointed 77 year old Betty or why and there’s no recorded process for his appointment. Neither has he appeared before any committee of councillors. Nor is his, undoubtedly, huge salary recorded in the council’s statement of accounts.
Why is this high-earning, high public spender not accountable?
Our down home new £130m concert hall announces the opening of the Colonade, ‘a sustainable-forward restaurant set within the historic heart of Bristol Beacon’. Which is more than enough to make you want to heave.
Their copywriting hacks then move into overdrive. We’re talking no less than ‘a fresh take on modern European cuisine’; ‘seasonal menus and daily specials led by artisanal local produce’ and ‘consciously low-carbon impact’ here.
But how much do these well worn foodie cliches cooked by someone you’ve never heard of set you back?
Bread and butter comes in at a fiver while a serving of cheese and ‘cracker’ is nine quid. An actual plate with a meal on starts at 14 quid plus a fiver for fries and six quid for veg. The cheapest bottle of Spanish plonk – ’round on the palate’ and heavy on the wallet – is 27 quid.
No sign of a cost of living crisis at the ‘inclusive’ Bristol Beacon then.
‘OPPRESSIVE AND DYSFUNCTIONAL’
Contrary to the contrived local PR waffle, the Colonade is actually owned by a Kent-based catering company, Graysons. Their major shareholder is US prison food provider, Aramak.
Aramak also run three ‘direct provision asylum centres’ in Ireland where asylum-seekers are forced to stay until their application is complete.
Praxis, the artists union of Ireland say, “the direct provision system is an oppressive and dysfunctional migrant prison system which has successfully enriched private companies like Aramark over many years.”
Praxis also described the National Gallery of Ireland’s decision to award Aramark a multi-million catering deal as “a stain on the reputation of our public institution.”
If you must support the local economy by eating overpriced food, try elsewhere.
News just in from our You Really Couldn’t Make This Ridiculous Shit Up Department:
While hanging around looking for a job in Dubai at COP 2023, the global climate talking shop, the Reverend Rees got a gig on a panel at the UK Climate Action Forum & Dinner.
Rees was billed as a ‘UK climate leader’ along with another familiar face who got to deliver a speech. Please step forward the one and only Nicola “Lady Gaga” Yates!
This is the former Chief Exec at Bristol City Council who was rather unceremoniously ‘disappeared’ from Bristol with a generous £200k handout after running up a mystery £30m deficit in the council’s accounts in the lead-up to the mayoral elections back in 2016.
Is it a requirement of a ‘UK climate leader’ that they have a history of failure and being shown the door?
The electorate, of course, sent the Reverend packing last year. Scrapping the post of mayor after an abysmal performance pissing our money up the wall.
Is there some fail Bristol, become a ‘UK climate leader’ rule?
The Reverend Rees told long-suffering journalists daft enough to attend his stillborn ‘CITY OFFICE’ launch last month that he planned to tackle “inequalities within leadership roles” by changing the people who are awarded the top jobs.
“This will mean having leaders from HARTCLIFFE and AVONMOUTH as well as Clifton”, he assured an audience invited and organised by his old, white, highly paid, Cambridge educated right hand man and personally appointed “leader”, council Chief Exec, Stephen “OAP” Hughes from, er, Birmingham.
Who thinks Hughes could even find Hartcliffe on a map?
