“A mate of mine was involved in the Beacon renovation bid for Balfour Beatty and says it was a total sham. They lost (obviously) and told the council that nobody could possibly fulfill the contract at the requested cost.
“The council ignored them. Then, after agreeing to go with Wilmott Dixon, the council were, mysteriously, “forced to increase the budget” after the contractor had removed the roof of the building!”
The council has now announced a £75m overspend on the project.
Before the City Leap deal ascended to the Reverend and his cabinet of all the chumps for rubberstamping, a cross party scrutiny committee got to take look at some of it.
Comments by councillors at this meeting were not positive. Among the complaints:
* That the committee’s comments and questions over a period of years have not received adequate answers;
* Every scrutiny meeting listed in the final report was either delayed, deferred or cancelled and reorganised;
* Money spent on advice and procurement has been around £10million dwarfing the concession payments of £2.3m we may receive over five years from City Leap;
* Scrutiny members were denied access to the detailed agreement with private partner Ameresco. How do you scrutinise something you can’t see? Enormous complexity’s involved. If something goes wrong, trying to enforce a secret agreement is difficult;
* What happens to the loss in Bristol Heat Networks? Up to 31 March 2022 there was a £1m loss according to documents at Companies House. No member has been briefed on the loss. Who’s paying? The council taxpayer? Private sector partners?
Councillors got no answers. Instead cabinet member, Kye “The” Dudd openly laughed in their faces.
Strange goings-on at Housing Association Curo’s new social housing in Old Market. A few lucky new residents were all set to move in October when suddenly the whole thing was called off.
The properties were meant to be connected to the new Old Market Heat Network, currently owned and run by Bristol City Council but being secretively handed over to Swedish energy giant, Vattenfall, at a knockdown price.
Residents now have been told they can’t move in to their new homes until January at the earliest because of “a disagreement about the heating with the council”.
Let’s hope the disagreement is nothing serious and that our city’s public assets are still on the way to a global corporation to make a fat profit from.
Has the council just given up paying for some SEND provision they’re legally obliged to provide?
A lot of children require so-called ‘Alternative Provision’ (AP) in Bristol because they are unable to attend school. This may be because the council is unable to provide a school appropriate for the child.
Or it may be because the child has been thrown out of school because their parents have attempted to assert their child’s legal right to SEND provision that the school has taken funding for and then not provided.
Many of these children are taught by private tutors paid by the council. However, The Bristolian is receiving news that “one-by-one families with kids in AP or EOTAS (Education Otherwise Than At School) are having provision stopped because the council has stopped paying the bills for it.”
So far the council has provided no notice to parents and no reason why they’ve stopped paying for this provision. Our information comes from SEND parents who would probably be viewed by the council as “troublemakers” but we’re assured the problem is now “widespread”.
What’s on earth is going on? Why is our council randomly cancelling SEND children’s education?
Labour councillors’ new object of fury is cycling campaigners. Some of them had the cheek to attend a Bristol City Council Full Council meeting and present a petition, that attracted almost 3,900 signatures, demanding the city have a proper cycling strategy.
During the ensuing debate most councillors seemed to agree that making cycling safer in the city by publishing a new Bristol Cycling Delivery Plan might be a good idea.
But this didn’t stop Labour Cabinet member Nicola “La La” Beech, having a pop at the campaigners when they left the Council Chamber after the debate.
The embittered councillor later Tweeted, “We support the need for continually improving cycle infrastructure BUT I am appalled at those @BristolCycling campaigners who couldn’t even wait until the break to leave and walked out on the important words from Alun Davies MBE on the work of Disability Equality Commission.”
The outburst came despite the Fancy Dress Mayor especially making time for campaigners to leave the council chamber before the disability item began.
Meanwhile, there was no Labour fury over the Mayor’s assistant, “Slo” Kevin Slocombe, who was filmed pulling a face when the agenda item on disability was announced. He then walked out before the cycling campaigners did!
Does Labour have different rules for mayoral bag carriers?
A freedom of investigation request asked the council to provide ‘the criteria for a company not owned or controlled by the Council to use City Hall, Ashton Court or the Mansion House as their Registered Office’?
The council responded that ‘no such criteria existed‘. So how are companies that are neither owned nor controlled by the Council using prestigious city council addresses for their Registered Offices?
For example, the Bristol Buildings Preservation Trust Limited (company 01549056), has their Registered Office at City Hall. Stepping-Up Leadership Community Interest Company (company 12533716), one of whose directors is cabinet member Asher “The Slasher” Craig, has their Registered Office at Ashton Court Mansions. While Parsnip Mash Ltd (company 07166972), has their Registered Office at The Lord Mayor’s Mansion.
How does this all work then?
Great news just in. Our four-jobs mayor, the Reverend Rees, has now declared his fifth job!
He’s now picking up an honorarium from 17 Rooms, part of Centre for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC and the Rockefeller Foundation in New York. An honorarium is payment for services rendered and Rees has registered it as a pecuniary interest under ’employment’ .
This latest little income uplift fits alongside being chair of the Local Government Association’s (LGA) City Regions Board (1.5 to 2 days a week), chair of Core Cities and a non-executive director at TV company Plimsoll Productions.
We know he gets £83k as mayor (plus a councillor allowance of £14k) and that his LGA allowance is £17.5k. However, the rest of his pay is undisclosed.
This new Brookings Institute/Rockefeller gig seems to involve the Reverend pursuing his Atlanticist interests and promoting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. A self-interested US-led global free market template for the ‘free world’. A long way from Bristol.
You have to wonder when the Reverend finds any time to be the executive mayor of Bristol?
Yesterday, the Nazi Post and others ran with our story about the council spying on SEND parents. Naturally, Bristol City Council had a totally bizarre explanation for their actions.
An unnamed spokesperson from the council’s External Communications team – who are at the heart of the scandal after covertly collecting parents’ sensitive personal data from the internet and distributing it to Council House managers – explained:
“At the request of the Bristol Parents Carer Forum, we reviewed our own social media and passed onto the forum information relating to claims made about SEND services which included comments left by members. The forum had specifically requested this information to conduct an internal investigation into the conduct of some of its members.”
This is a bizarre excuse, which seems to be saying that a small, local voluntary group made the council do it. It also fails to address public concern that the council acted unlawfully in terms of data protection law (GDPR) and in terms of tight legislation around covert investigations by the state (RIPA).
It now appears the council statement was also a total lie. The Bristol Parent Carer Forum this morning issued the following statement:
This is a pretty categorical statement that the forum did not ask the council to collect data about parents. What have the council got to say now? What’s gonna be their next excuse for their unlawful conduct?
This story is set to run and run …
We told you so. Now here’s the evidence. Bristol City Council’s SEND department has been systematically spying on SEND parents on the internet and social media. Then collating and cataloguing the results and sharing them with senior Bristol City Council education managers, including that useless oaf and third class human being, Education Director, Alison “Pervy” Hurley, as well as various third party organisations. Who the fuck are these people? Bristol’s own Stasi?
The first document we can reveal is an email to Hurley and her freakish gang of unethical education bosses outlining the people spied on and the methods deployed to gather the information. A table of information and PERSONAL PHOTOGRAPHS of the parents in question were attached to this email.
Of particular note is the comment at point 2 in the email ” … External Comms deduced this is XX as image is the same as wedding photos on XX’s personal Facebook site. Attached”
Yes, you read that right. Members of BCC’s creepy External Communications team, paid to communicate with the press and public, have been hunting through SEND parents’ personal photo collections on Facebook, downloading highly personal pictures (wedding photos FFS!) and sharing them with grateful Council House bosses.
Has Hurley now got wedding photos of SEND parents with large pins stuck in them all over her attic? Or is she up to something really weird and kinky with them?
We’re reliably informed that external comms staff would have had to search for the wedding photo in question. It wasn’t a Facebook profile photo in front of them. It was buried in the user’s photo folder with lots of other personal items.
Leaving aside that this is likely unlawful as it would classify as covert surveillance, it is also vile, anti-social behaviour and a wholly unacceptable way to be treating members of the public who pay your wages. All those responsible should be hanging their heads in shame and considering their positions.
Did no one involved in this think that the material they were accessing was way too personal and intrusive and complain to their bosses that the work was demeaning? What’s wrong with them? Would they want their wedding photos and details of their personal lives collected and randomly circulated, without their knowledge or agreement, to Hurley and her freakshow of Council House bosses to use for god knows what?
The Head of External Comms is, of course, The Reverend’s disgraced personal PR bully Saskia “Hindley” Konynenburg. When not bullying local journalists, it seems this unbalanced individual spends council time secretly rifling through strangers’ personal photo collections on Facebook and gleefully sharing the contents with her colleagues. Lovely stuff. What a wonderful person and exceptional public servant.
The second document is a table listing some harmless social media comments, mainly from just two SEND parents. A further three parents are also identified in the document as “critical commenters”. A number of local SEND campaigning groups are also thrown in and named and shamed for Hurley’s benefit.
The table was circulated to the Hurley education freakshow and to third party organisations. This type of surveillance and sharing of people’s social media activity is unlikely to be lawful. But, again, the critical issue is as much one of basic taste and sensibility.
What the fuck do these Council House freaks think they’re doing with our personal information and why?
There is a statement on this matter from the Bristol City Council and a response from the Bristol Parent Carer Forum here.
What’s going on at Clifton Library? It appears to have been taken over by a group of local worthies, the Friends of Clifton Library (FoCL), an “unincorporated association”, who have installed a bar and started charging the public for free events. Listed among their committee members is Tory masquerading as Green councillor, Paula “Taking the Mickey” O’Rourke who is currently fancy dress mayor for the city.
Bristol Radical History Group were approached by FoCL to do some talks at what they thought was a public library where they’ve done free talks for no charge on many occasions. They agreed and arranged five dates for five talks. Then they discovered, via the internet, that FoCL are charging the public £10 a ticket to hear their free talks! To add insult to injury, when the history group approached FoCL to ask what was going on, they discovered that FoCL usually pays speakers a £150 fee, which was never mentioned when the history group were booked.
The Radical History Group have now cancelled their talks at this dodgy library for the wealthy. Not because they aren’t being paid, which they never are, but because people are excluded by being charged for a free event in a space that should be inclusive and free at the point of use. Having tried to rip off the poor and a local group of volunteers to fund their exclusive library with a bar operation, FoCL told the history group when they cancelled that they were “grossly unprofessional”.
Bit rich coming from a bunch of wealthy conmen openly destroying our public services.