Tag Archives: Bristol Old Vic

CARRY ON MERCHANT VENTURERS

The Society of Merchant Venturers (SMV) have been running (or at least trying) to run Bristol since their ‘royal charter’ of 1551. Nearly 500 years of feathering their own fat nests.

This unelected, undemocratic ‘union’ of rich merchants and businessmen, landowners, property speculators and their ilk concentrated on controlling the port, overseas trade, the corporation (now the City Council) and of course they made a fortune out of slavery.

In the 20th and 21st century they are renowned for masquerading as a ‘charity’, whilst their members have their ‘fingers in the pies’ of the Port of Bristol, public utilities like Wessex Water, huge business deals such as the ‘Arena’, the Church of England, both Universities, healthcare, the arts, schools and institutions such as the Beacon (ex-Colston Hall) that have swallowed up hundreds of millions of public funds. The power of the SMVs purse dominates these areas.

As a manager at the Old Vic theatre explained to us a few years ago “you musn’t have a go at the Merchant Ventuers, nothing happens unless they say so”.

An important part of this historic control has been manipulating the local media and politicians for their own interests. For example, in the 2000s the journalists at the Bristol Post knew they could not write pieces which were critical of SMV projects, from academy schools, funding the ‘Colston Hall’ to buying the Port of Bristol for a £1.

This was because Post editors like Mike Norton were well-known for being up the arse of the Venturers. It was common knowledge amongst Post journalists that Norton desperately wanted to be invited to be a member of the SMVs and he suppressed any stories that might piss them off as a result.

In one case he even threatened to sack a journalist for exposing members of the Venturers trust (the educational arm of the SMVs) for defamation. Despite his sychophantic loyalty to the SMVs, Norton never made it to be a member and retired a few years ago.

Five years ago, under huge pressure after the city rejected the SMVs slave-trading idol Edward Colston, the Venturers realised they had to modernise in order to survive. In their minds this meant allowing a few women and ‘ethnic monorities’ to join… shocker!

Of course, these people weren’t normal Bristolians but had to be millionaire business owners with good political ties, seeking status amongst the big business people in the city. One of their targets was corporate lawyer, Marti Burgess of the Burgess family empire, inner city ‘entertainment’ property owners who made millions running clubs like Lakota in Stokes Croft.

Burgess, a close aide of Marvin Rees during his Mayoral electoral campaign in 2016, realised how powerful the SMVs were when she was asked by Rees to map out the power structures in the city. She recalled “I did not know who the Merchant Venturers were until I surveyed the city. The SMVs had interests in so many sectors I told Rees that, after the Council, they were the most powerful organisation in Bristol”.

The unelected, undemocratic and exclusive SMVs appealed to Burgess and Rees, as a powerful body to join and collaborate with.

As elected Mayor, Rees went along with most of the SMV members’ needs, continuing to pour money into their iconic baby ‘the ex-Colston Beacon’, handing the arena site at Temple Meads to Bristol University and the airfield at Filton to Malaysian corporation YTL.

Rees seemed to think that if powerful businessmen from the SMVs were nice to him, then that meant they liked him. Worried close associates in the Labour Party pointed out they were only being nice because he was the elected Mayor and they were after contracts, not because they actually liked him!

Rees even refused to engage with the campaign to remove the slave-trader Colston from representing the city, sending the cops after the Colston 4 statue topplers and claiming that the protesters were “privileged” and the SMVs were the “genuine anti-racists in the city”.

Meanwhile, despite the anti-racist rhetoric of Marti Burgess, she joined the SMVs in 2020, claiming she was going to ‘change’ the organisation from within. Fuck all has happened of course and far from leaving the SMVs Burgess has stayed in there.

In 2024, with the blessing of the “anti-racist” SMV Rees was paid off with an honorary degree from their (Bristol) university, given a ‘job’ travelling round the world to climate conferences. Earlier this year made it into the House of Lords, as Lord Rees of Easton. Not bad for a failed Mayor who managed to get the post of elected-Mayor voted out of the city.

However, there was a spanner in the works when Rees was asked to declare his business interests as a Lord. As Private Eye pointed out, Rees’ own ‘personal services’ company was being paid by Ameresco Inc, the US multinational that signed a billion pound contract (yes! £1,000,000,000) with Bristol City Council under Rees’ watch in 2021. Smoking gun or what? At the Bristolian press centre we waited weeks for a news organisation in Bristol to follow up the Eye article.

The only place it appeared was on a local blogger’s website and the blogger’s husband happened to be a leading reporter in the Bristol media organisation Bristol 24/7, but still there was silence.

Who is on the board of 24/7? Yes, you guessed it SMV member and close associate of Rees, Marti Burgess. It would be no surprise to us that Burgess suppressed this massive story.

As a result of the yawning silence over this smoking gun, The Bristolian broke the story on the streets of Bristol by publishing the ‘Robber Baron’ issue . 48 hours later the cat was out of the bag when the Bristol Post ran the story, and then surprise, surprise even the fawning Rees propaganda arm the Bristol Cable were forced to say something. This is nothing new to us at The Bristolian as we often have to lead the way with ‘difficult’ stories like this. To this day 24/7 have left it unreported.

They say nothing changes, everything stays the same…..in the newly ‘diverse’, ‘modern’ Bristol we have the same old power structures, political corruption, businesses leeching off public money and of course members of the SMVs like Burgess controlling our access to news to protect their business interests and their dodgy ‘high and mighty’ mates.

The Committee for Public Safety

AUSTERITY MY ARSE

1 Reply

It hasn’t taken long for Marvin “The Reverend” Rees to turn into another nasty little Tory Boy RUINING THE LIVES of his low paid council staff so that he can FEATHER THE NESTS of the city’s wealthy elite has it?

Less than three months into his ‘REIGN OF ERROR‘ and Marvin has announced that he will need to make 1,000 staff at his council REDUNDANT to “balance the books”. Virtually all these staff will be low paid and will be working in ESSENTIAL public services like adult care, education, social services and housing.

These HORRIFYING CUTS have been spun by the Reverend’s new £63k a year trade union PR girl, Kevin “Slow Brain” Slocombe, as entirely the fault of Tory government austerity and Mayor-no-more George Ferguson. The dynamic business and corporate-friendly Labour duo claim that George left behind a £29m debt for 2016 – 17 of unachieved savings.

Really? So how come a report accepted by Marvin and his cabinet in July – just ONE MONTH before his cuts announcement – assured us, “This report shows that the Council has been able to deliver on its saving plans and balance its base budget in what continues to be a challenging fiscal environment.”

It then goes on to say, “The current financial strategy, consisting of the final year of the 2013-17 MTFS, will be sufficient to balance the Councils budget in 2016/17.”

So what happened in a month to create a £29m black hole in this balanced budget? WHO’S TELLING THE TRUTH? Marvin in July or Marvin in August?

Meanwhile, Slow Brain and the Reverend’s claim that they have no choice but to fire 1,000 staff on low pay fails to stand up to BASIC SCRUTINY when you start to look at the expenditure they’ve either already authorised or are intending authorise and for whom.

In late June Marvin and his cabinet had no problem in handing the COLSTON HALL £1.6m up front to develop their refurbishment plans while also agreeing in principle to chuck them a further £10m to achieve these plans.

At the same meeting, similar generosity was shown to the BRISTOL OLD VIC – who were awarded £1m to underwrite their refurbishment plans – and to another concert hall – ST GEORGE’S – who received £600k to help them with their rebuilding efforts.

And it doesn’t stop there. In September Marvin will award those famously poverty stricken organisations – BUSINESS WEST and the UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL – an undisclosed subsidy of over £500k to keep their ‘Set Squared’ creative industries ‘business incubator’ running the way they’ve become accustomed to at Brunel’s stylish ENGINE SHED at Temple Meads.

Also in the loop for an undisclosed public handout (of £500k plus) from the Reverend is the THE BOTTLE YARD film and TV studios in south Bristol. Because we can’t have austerity in the high-earning film industry can we?

This is all before we get on to the really high ticket projects Marvin is backing. He’s still committed to the £150m ARENA project, assuring anyone who will listen it’s affordable despite only having £100m to build it.

The other £50m will come from the council taxpayer until that income stream runs dry when Marvin, no doubt, will throw another few bodies on to his HUMAN BONFIRE and sack a few more staff running essential services to balance his crooked books.

Finally we have Marvin’s uncosted and unfunded EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE bid. To make himself look good in the ruins of the public services he’ll be running, the Reverend intends to make the city Capital of Culture in 2023 at an undisclosed cost.

HOW MUCH this will cost or WHAT USE it will be to any one not involved in of Marvin’s heavily subsidised high-earning creative industries is anyone’s guess. But what the hell? It’s only other people’s money and other people’s jobs isn’t it?

In less than THREE MONTHS Marvin’s mayoralty has turned into a hyopcritical farce and an elitist backscratching exercise.

“No one left behind” he says? Except for 1,000 council staff running essential services and their familes …

WHO PAYS FOR THESE PONCE HOLES?!

Commentary on recent arts funding cuts – and who they really affect – from The BRISTOLIAN‘s Arts Correspondent…

Any of you readers ever venture into Bristol Old Vic? Watershed? Arnolfini? No? Didn’t think so.

Yet you, me and the rest of Bristol’s working class are expected to fund these artsy, fartsy PONCE HOLES every year through our Council Tax. Not a tenner here or a tenner there, but hundreds of thousands of pounds are given each year from our pockets to fund these unnecessary, unprofitable middle class cultural centres.

Meanwhile that smug prick the Mayor and his arse-licking councillors are more than happy to shut down libraries and day centres and cut back on essential services for Bristol’s pensioners and disabled.

According to them if the things we need don’t make a profit then they must be PRIVATISED OR CLOSED DOWN.

Working class culture is something that scares these arseholes. They don’t want large groups of Bristolians meeting up in case we

start sussing out what a con their capitalist system is and start doing something about it. So they are happy to shut down our pubs (for example, try and find a boozer in Knowle), raise ticket prices at the football, or unleash more riot cops in town of a weekend to drive us out.

They don’t want us going out talking to each other; they want us to work for them, fuck off home and slowly rot away watching moronic zombie TV. Then our rulers can sleep in peace with their profits, whilst the STREETS ARE EMPTY. Meanwhile we pay for fucking middle class arseholes called Rupert or Tristram to have a jolly good night out at the Old Vic, Wankershed or Analphoney. Well fuck that…it’s time to turn off the TV and go meet these privileged scum who we’re paying for.

If they won’t spread the wealth about equally, then maybe it’s about time we spread the violence about.

ARTS HOLES: CUTS CAUSE LUVVIE RAGE FOR FERGO’S ‘BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE’