Is our under pressure elected Mayor cracking already? Or is it an early run for the council’s new honest approach to consultation – “I’ve listened to you – now fuck off OK”?
It starts at around 1 minute 40 seconds in. Enjoy …
[youtube=http://youtu.be/Lb5OFukKqDg]
My amazing plan to transform Neighbourhood Partnerships into MODERN SUSTAINABLE DEMOCRATIC MOOTS OF THE PEOPLE where they can have a proper inclusive say in how this fine city is run has taken a great leap forward.
The very nice people from the consultation team have set up an excellent online survey for people to have their say about their Neighbourhood Partnerships – and judging by the smashing comments we have had from all seven people who engaged with this inclusive process, it’s all looking really positive and exciting indeed for democracy in this city.
Not long now before every neighbourhood from Stockwood to Henbury will be able to ‘cry freedom’ and decide everything from which potholes they want repaired to what colour they want their park benches painted (well, if there are any park benches left once we start chopping them up and burning them in the City Hall biomass boiler to save on fuel bills). Because as the lovely and clever Parks supremo Mrs Morgan explained to me when I bumped in to her in the corridor, “the parks amenities furniture transformation sub-budget has been reabled for cultural regeneration initiatives, and the transformated budget will be expended on the long term place making objective of delivering a contemporary continental green capital streetscene scenario through the promotion of non-permanent sculptural practice.”
I was confused too but then Mrs Morgan said, “George is going to spend the money on large inflatable vegetables, dear”.
Sometimes it’s all really bananas at George’s City Hall!
Had hoped to get started on my brilliant plan to transform equalities in the city today, so I popped down to the Equalities Unit at about 9.30am but no one had arrived for work yet. When I popped back at 1 o’clock they had all gone to lunch, and then in the afternoon they were all on a training course. Still, it is good to know that we’re investing so heavily in equalities training. It really underlines my commitment, don’t you think?
Even without my amazing equalities plan to make us all more equal I think there’s the buzz of equality in the air right now in this city. I saw two black men across the street in St Paul’s yesterday who looked perfectly happy. They even stopped and greeted me with some of their traditional street jive moves. One I had not seen before. They both raised their right arm and flicked their wrist from side-to-side while chanting “KING ANCHOR, KING ANCHOR”. Not sure what it means? Probably traditional patois? Or is King Anchor a popular dancehall artist?
We’re nothing if not streetwise hepcats at George’s City Hall!
Went over to the Create Centre today just to breathe some amazing sustainable air. Touched base with lots of the green sustainable thinkers this council has. It gives me a lot of hope for the future when I meet a staff team where hemp clothing’s the norm and who think nothing of still wearing their bicycle clips in the office.
While I was staring out of the window with not much to do, I saw the Property Services guys from the sixth floor all heading out for lunch. Does anyone know why so many of them take their golf clubs when they go out to lunch?
Sometimes it’s a confusing place, George’s City Hall!
After spending yesterday helping my good friend Dr Jon sort out his bottle recycling (it soon mounts up), today I met with finance boss Mr Robinson again. I wanted him to go through the figures for my brilliant plan to save the Homeless Prevention Fund by scrapping adult education. He must have been there for ten minutes punching figures in to his calculator, scratching his head and swearing under his breath. Eventually he got up, said, “I won’t be a minute” and disappeared. He reappeared ten minutes later with a sheet of paper full of figures and confirmed it all added up. He also told me he thought it was a great idea and A FINE EXAMPLE OF CREATIVE THINKING from a politician and made a funny little laugh.
I also asked him why we couldn’t collect the £165,000 worth of market licence fee arrears the Lib Dem administration were responsible for, and then spend that money on the homeless. Mr Robinson went very quiet for a minute while his mouth open and closed like a goldfish before explaining that this “wouldn’t be possible for all sorts of reasons”. He then had to go as he was attending a house warming party for Mr Morris the Market Service Manager at his big new house in Weston-super-Mare and he was already running late.
Reflecting on Mr Robinson’s explanation, I must say it’s very convincing. We’re right on top of the accounts at George’s City Hall!
At a recent meeting of one of the council’s Scrutiny Committees, Labour’s lumbering and not terribly numerate finance spokesman, Mark ‘Small’ Brain, quizzed the mayor’s new Tory finance chief, Geoffrey ‘Cods’ Gollop, on his plan to fire a load more Internal Auditors to save a few quid (so that His Royal Mayorness George the First can invest in proper council services like talking lampposts and INFLATABLE VEGETABLES, no doubt).
‘Small’ rightly pointed out that sacking Internal Auditors might be a stupid thing to do as they can save the council a small fortune by detecting and stopping many of the frauds, rip-offs, serial incompetencies and outright thefts regularly committed by Cods Gollop’s management.
“Nonsense!” boomed the Tory accountant before explaining that his plan to introduce some new untried and untested financial software would make such frauds a thing of the past and therefore Internal Auditors entirely expendable.
At this point the former Lib Dem Leaderene Babs Janke herself butted in to Cods Gollop’s paean to the infallibility of computer software to say, “I remember last year when I ran the finances and you were in opposition you asked me the very same question and didn’t like that answer!”
It’s not politics they’re doing down at the Shitty Hall is it? It’s musical fucking chairs.
Like all public school twits, Mayor George ‘Pig’ Ferguson likes nothing better than the sound of his own voice. So a keynote speech for a select, £25 a ticket, audience of his UPPER MIDDLE CLASS GROUPIES at the Architecture Centre last month was inevitable. Modestly titled ‘The Art of the Impossible’, in it Ferguson outlined his ‘vision’ for the city.
And pretty weird it was too: a sort of JG Ballard-meets-George Monbiot future Bristol, full of silent electric boats on the harbour, buildings with photovoltaic skins and super-lite composite bikes. A city centre marked out with tree-lined avenues and boulevards for the pleasure of his architect friends from Redcliffe – something that would only be possible through the minimum wage labour of ordinary Bristolians sweating away unseen ‘below stairs’ anyway.
The icing on the cake, however, was Gorgeous George’s proposal to build a town square on Castle Park named after a notorious FASCIST FELLOW TRAVELLER!
Because ex-Merchant Venturer Ferguson thinks it’d be a good idea to call it “Eve Balfour Square, named after the founder of the Soil Association” – presumably overlooking the fact that horrifying right-wing Tory toff Balfour set up the Soil Association with pal Jorian Jenks, the notorious ‘blood and soil’ card-carrying British fascist.
Still, Eve Balfour Square pairs quite nicely with our slave trade celebration concert venue, the Colston Hall, doesn’t it?
One thing not threatened by any cuts is the fat cat pension of Bristol City Council’s interim Chief Executive GRAHAM ‘SIMPLE’ SIMS.
So keen is incoming Mayor GEORGE FERGUSON to be rid of the bumbling timeserver, he’s agreed – despite Sims only having worked 36 years – to sign him off with the equivalent of forty years’ service so he can get a full gold-plated pension when he takes retirement in March. Quite a nice little earner in the age of austerity for the £150k a year bureaucrat.
It’s yet another piece of good fortune for this chronically over-promoted middle manager Sims. When BRADFORD SUN QUEEN Jan Ormondroyd swanned into Bristol in 2008 to become Chief Executive, the first thing she did was get rid of Sims’s Housing Department boss IAN CRAWLEY, whose above average intellect and competence was considered a dangerous threat in the court of the Sun Queen. It was into this vacuum that the hopelessly lightweight yes-man Sims stepped, to hoover up a £120k salary as well as promotion for fawning over Jan and her strategic leadership friends.
Fast forward two years to 2010 and Jan’s sidekick and pathetic wannabe enforcer JON HOUSE, the former cop turned local authority Deputy Chief Executive, had to urgently enforce his own speedy exit to avoid an embarrassing scandal. And who should pop up to pick up the pieces, as well as a tasty pay rise? Yes – Graham Sims!
By mid-2012 Jan finally had to throw in the towel herself after four years of high spending and low achieving. But who should get the top job (solely on the basis of not being weird, provably bent or Finance boss WILL GODFREY)? Yes, it’s our man Graham – once again on hand to collect a nice little salary bump, now boosting him up to £150k a year. Very handy indeed when you’re only fit for retirement and on a final salary pension scheme.
Following this cast of horrors, we can only speculate on the calibre of candidate GORGEOUS GEORGE has in mind for the Chief Operating Officer position he plans to replace the Chief Executive with.
One thing is certain, though – someone will be (red) trousering a pretty penny. Here’s to austerity!