Confused councillors have pointlessly delayed the Turbo Island Town Green application for three months on the advice of their clueless legal team.
At a Public Rights of Way and Greens (PROWG) meeting in April the applicants and objectors presented their evidence to the committee and a council lawyer admitted he had no idea how to decide the issue.
Normally, an expert inspector would be appointed by the council to look at the evidence and provide the way forward. Instead the council have decided to take three months out to figure out what the hell to do.
However, it seems unlikely the council’s legal team can produce a recommendation without landing themselves in the hot water of an expensive judicial review. That means they will need to appoint an inspector.
Why didn’t they just do this in April?
SECRET OWNER SHOCKER
The Nazi Post and Bristol 24/7 breathlessly assured us in October that Turbo Island had been sold by owners Wildstone Investments to ‘a mystery buyer’.
This ‘mystery buyer’ was reputed to be Bedminster printing company Out of Hand, a claim vigorously denied by the Nazi Post who won’t identify the actual ‘mystery buyer’ of the land.
This ‘mystery buyer’ mystery becomes more tangled in the bundle of documents for the Turbo Island item at the PROWG in April.
It includes a letter from Merret & Co solicitors who say “we act on behalf of the local freehold owner of the Property” and the council lists Out of Hand as the firm represented by Merret & Co.
Who actually owns the land and why’s it being disguised by local press?
**UPDATE: papers released this week by the council for a PROWG meeting next week have confirmed Out of Hand as the owners of the land.
DEAL OR NO DEAL?
Campaigners for the Town Green, led by the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft, are pushing for a deal where the landowner – whoever they are – voluntarily registers the land as a Town Green in exchange for concessions on public access to the site.
Councillors on the PROWG, allegedly concerned about costs being run up, appeared blissfully unaware that a deal could be on the table.
Instead, they opted for the expensive option of funding their own legal team to look at an issue they know nothing about for three months before appointing a barrister as an inspector to decide the issue.
Bizarrely, the council’s PROWG lawyer quoted a cost of at least £1,000 for an inspector.
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 Eyepointed 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.
Hard to think of a caption that does this idiot display justice
Dribbling Tory councillor for the Redcatch Development Partnership, Richard “Bunter”, Eddy recently featured in the pages of the Nazi Post denying he was a vagina!
The freak show chair of the council’s Planning Committee ‘A’ has had a few problems recently following the ‘bewildering reversal’, by his committee, of their refusal of planning permission for the horrific over-redevelopment of Broadwalk Shopping Centre.
While defending himself from what appears to be the reasonable observation that he’s another bent Tory fucker too close to wealthy property development interests, Eddy explained, “I make no excuse for being a real Bristolian rather than a pouncy (sic) humourless Leftie.”
‘Pouncy,’ we’re reliably informed, is a slang term for ‘vagina’. So it seems the idiot councillor is helpfully clearing up any confusion there may be among the public between local Tories and women’s genitalia.
Bad look for snooty community newspaper Bristol Cobblers (surely Cable? ed) as local freelancer Joe Banks breaks cover to reveal that they pulled him off a story last year. Then rewrote it themselves under close supervision from the paper’s Labour Party-friendly directors!
Joe was investigating planning permission granted to MEPC, part of US corporate investment giant Federated Hermes, to develop the sensitive St Mary-le-Port site at Castle Park. He was especially interested in the role of a fake community group ‘The Friends of Castle Park’ who vigorously supported the development at planning committee claiming to represent the local community.
Joe’s enquiries seemed to upset Nicola “La La” Beech, Labour Cabinet member for planning, who went directly to the Cobbler’s directors – that conveniently included cabinet colleague, Tom “Plasticine Man” Renhard’s, partner – and accused Joe of “harassment”. Joe was unceremoniously dumped off the story, which was rewritten more to Labour Party tastes by one of the Cobbler’s useful idiots.
So much for speaking truth to power.
COBBLERTHEID?
An ‘equity and Inclusion practitioner’
Shocked Bristolians listened in increasing horror as Shereena Abbassi, a director at The Bristol Cable, suggested on BBC Radio Four’s’ ‘Rethink’ programme on 2 August that vulnerable minorities should stay at home in order to avoid workplace ‘micro/macro aggressions’.
If you are a victim of any discrimination at work just crawl away and hide under the nearest rock says the former Worldwide Head of Culture and Inclusion at M&C Saatchi.
According to this ‘equity and Inclusion practitioner’, ‘black and brown folks’ are not adequately protected by the Equality Act and therefore should ‘exclude’ themselves from the workplace if they experience racial abuse!
Maybe she should ‘rethink’ her job title?
PUBLIC ARE A TURN OFF FOR NAZI POST JOURNO SNOBS
In May, the Nazi Post turned all comments beneath their articles off without explanation. Although sneering by its middle class graduate journalists at public comments below the line had been a feature of local social media for years.
Between the crazies and conspiracy nuts – still generally a brighter and more entertaining read than actual Post articles, mainly nicked off Reddit, by the ‘professionals’ – the majority of public comments were highly critical of the Reverend Rees and Bristol City Council.
Was this some sort of an editorial effort to reduce trenchant public criticism of Bristol City Council? A little local establishment help to prop up a bent shambles of a local public institution?
Whatever the reason, it seems to have failed. By the summer holidays comments under articles magically reappeared. With plenty of slagging of the Reverend and his council of fuckwits back in force.
Unilaterally censored by their local paper without explanation, did the Bristolian public start to vote with their feet?
An article last week in the Nazi Post reporting that the council’s Independent Shareholder Advisor, Fiona Ross, had told the council they need to consider whether they should continue to badly run failing companies, produced a panicked response from Bristol Waste’s latest interim MD Ian “Not Another One” Osborne.
He immediately wrote out to Bristol Waste’s workers explaining there was no problem at the firm whatsoever and that the press had published “an exaggerated story”. Apparently by quoting precisely what the “very concerned” Independent Shareholder Advisor had written in their own report.
This included describing the basketcase waste firm as “a significant drain on scarce [council] resources in terms of time and funding”.
We’ve been told, “anyone with any sense should take notice of Fiona Ross rather than the latest plonker to be handed the top job at Bristol Waste.”
Check the MD’s message to his staff to see how desperate it’s got at the top at Bristol Waste:
Remember last year when the council’s useless pillock of a Director of Workforce, John “Bedwetter” Walsh, and his ludicrous arselickin’ sidekick, Facilities boss, David Martin “Bore-Mann”, threatened to sue Councillor Gary “Meathead” Hopkins and Councillor Richard “Bunter” Eddy for defamation after they said what they thought at a council meeting?
Bunter described comments by Bedwetter and Bore-Man at a HR meeting to discuss the outsourcing of council cleaners and security to Bristol Waste as “worthy of Dr Goebbels and the Third Reich”! While Meathead waded in telling them “I don’t believe a word of what’s been presented to us by the management side.”
Months later, with the Reverend safely re-elected, Bedwetter and Bore-Mann suddenly announced, to much hilarity, that they were suing this pair of robust critics of the Reverend for defamation.
Legal letters had been dispatched we were solemnly informed.Then we heard, er, absolutely nothing.
Until a recent article in the Nazi Post explaining Bunter might be sued again for comparing women’s rights campaigners to “fascists”during the recent debate about keeping Bristol’s strip clubs open.
Tucked in at the end of this article, was an explanation of what happened to that last libel action: “Both members denied any wrongdoing and the matter is understood to have been resolved recently by agreement with no further action.”
No sign of a retraction. No sign of an apology. No sign of damages. No sign that Bristol City Council bosses aren’t Nazis. Looks like it’s perfectly OK to call council bosses Nazis then.
The Reverend talking his shite to a bored audience
The Reverend’s bizarro press conferences making national headlines raises questions about the state of our local press. The Reverend boasted about his “open press conferences” to the Mayor’s Migration Council website as recently as May: “my motto is: ´ask me anything,” he chirped with a straight face.
Not quite. It’s since emerged that Local Democracy Reporters at the Post could not attend these ‘open’ press conferences “by agreement” with whatever moron was running our local newspaper at the time.
Middle class community rag, The Bristol Cable, then waded in, explaining that they’d never been allowed to attend the ‘open press conferences’ since they began two years ago. Although, for some reason, they didn’t tell anyone or consider their ban newsworthy.
It gets worse. Bristol 24/7 hackette, Ellie “Copy Typist” Pipe, attended the press conference on the 8 June. She watched Rees’s dreadful council tax funded PR Saskia “Hindley” Konynenburg attempt to bully newbie Local Democracy Reporter Alex Seabrook on camera for asking the Reverend a mild question about his pointless climate change lecture trip to Vancouver. And Ms Pipe didn’t notice anything worth reporting!
The story finally came to light two weeks later when citizen journalist Jo “Vexatious” Booth, saw the blatant act of bullying on Youtube and posted the clip to Twitter. Cue viral story and the Reverend and Koynenburg making national headlines for their bullying antics.
Bristol journalists really need to get their shit together and stop allowing themselves to be easy pushovers for the Reverend and his PR team.
How many stories have these idiots allowed to be buried over the last six years?
Gossip from around the Nazi Post’s city centre flexible workdesk regarding their new editor Pete “Swindon” Gavan.
“When former editor Mike Norton was in charge, everything was at the whim of Norton and how his relationship with Kevin Slocombe (the mayor’s PR assistant) was going. If they fell out, a minor put down by Marvin to a reporter was front page news.
“If Norton and Slocombe were mates, Esme Ashcroft [former Post political editor] was prevented from investigating Marvin’s deal with YTL, conducted in the Far East, for an arena at Filton. Esme left because of it. Now though, it seems the new boss isn’t taking any shit. He don’t care who Slocombe is.”
Neither does anyone else in the city. What’s the big deal about pound shop spin doctor Slo Kev anyway? We watch events with interest …
The Nazi Post, after years of stories about Greggs vegan sausage rolls, lists of the 13 best pavements in Bristol and any other crap with a vaguely local angle their Facebook funded ‘content creators’ can dredge up from Insta or Reddit have finally appointed a new editor.
Please step forward Pete “Swindon” Gavan, fresh from the cut and thrust of the Swindon (yes, that fucking shitehole where nothing’s ever happened) Advertiser. He was recently featured in the Post with a photo that looks like one of his poorly paid content creators might be gently stimulating his rectum. Isn’t it amazing what Facebook will fund these days? Anyway, if Pete wants to know what the fuck a proper story looks like, he knows where to look.
To pad out this miserable news out of Swindon, the Post also announced, in the same story, that “the team is in the process of moving into a brand new city centre hub”. This comes after the long-suffering workforce have been forced to work from their bedrooms for the last two years by multinational shysters Reach who own the whole sad sorry mess of a newspaper.
How the mighty have fallen. Post staff used to work out of the Grey Lubianka, their own office block with its own print room knocking out two daily newspapers a day, Now they get a couple of hot desks in some shared open plan ‘space’ with a broken photocopier, a dodgy broadband connection and some inspirational quotes on the wall that make you want to die. All “Ideal for flexible creatives’ agile working needs”.
Welcome to the living corpse of Bristol’s newspaper industry
Press releases tumbling out of the Society of Merchant Venturers since the fall of Colston on Sunday 7 June 2020 have left campaigners against the cult and their slave trade icon gobsmacked.
“The statue of Edward Colston was removed from Bristol’s city centre last weekend and the fact that it has gone is right for Bristol,” the Venturers innocently chirped to the press late on a Friday evening about a statue they fought a bitter and underhand battle for years to maintain at the heart of city.
Public warm words and contrition now are in stark contrast to the cult’s attitude as recently as 2018. Then the Merchant’s misfiring education wing, the Venturers Trust, which runs Colston Girls School and Withywood’s Merchants Academy as well as string of primary schools across the city, accused Colston campaigners and anti-racists of terror offences.
The damaging smear, a deliberate attempt to destroy the careers and reputations of campaigners prepared to directly challenge our city’s wealthy and influential Colston cult, came after Countering Colston’s Christine Townsend submitted a formal objection to the Office of the School Adjudicator in April 2018 about admission arrangements at Colston’s Girls School.
Smallwood: RESIGNED
During this adjudication process, in letters to the Adjudicator and to Bristol’s Local Education Authority, signed by senior Merchant Venturer Anthony Brown of the Venturers Trust, they claimed that Christine had harassed children and associated her with a bomb threat to Colston Girls School. They even demanded that the Home Office’s PREVENT Programme to tackle homegrown terrorism investigate Christine and other members of Countering Colston.
The Adjudicator ignored Brown’s absurd fabrications as the Adjudication process deals exclusively with school admissions and a ruling on this appeared in August 2018. The local authority told the Merchants they needed to speak with the police, not a local council, in line with long established children’s safeguarding processes an academy chain should be familiar with.
Throughout the summer of 2018 the Venturers Trust ignored all correspondence and refused to retract and apologise for the kind of damaging smears that can cost people hard-earned careers. Eventually, in August 2018, a Civil Procedure Rules Pre-Action Protocol was served on Anthony Brown as Chair of Colston Girls Schools and trustee of the Venturers Trust. Christine was suing for libel.
By February 2019, with neither Brown, Colston Girls School or the Venturers Trust able to produce a shred of evidence for their claims, a written apology and a full and detailed retraction of their allegations was received by Christine from Anthony Brown. The proven liar also quietly resigned as Chair of Colston Girls School and a Trustee of the Venturers Trust. Oddly, Trevor Smallwood, a former Master of the Merchant Venturers, followed Brown out of the door as Chair of the Venturers Trust. The typical fanfare the local press reserves for vain old Venturers for their much-vaunted charitable and voluntary work was noticeably absent.
No explanation for Brown and Smallwood’s sudden departure from running one of the city’s leading academy chains has ever been publicly provided by The Venturers Trust or the Merchant Venturers. While the editor of the Bristol Post, Mike Norton, has declined to publish this news, almost certainly in the public interest, that his newspaper has held for over a year.
Are we to believe it is so entirely unremarkable for senior Merchant Venturers running academy chains to be proven liars that it is not worthy of news or comment? Or is the city’s wealthy slave trade cult so malignly powerful and influential it can easily silence our city’s senior media figures in order to maintain their false reputation?
Why are these wealthy men allowed to continue getting away with it and what else haven’t you heard about the Colston cultists dominating our city?
