Tag Archives: Budget

DOG WHISTLE WATCH

Highly paid consultant blames parents and asylum seekers for huge overspends in SEND

Enormous overspends emerging in the council’s SEND budget are not the fault of council bosses squandering money on private sector rip-off artists; spying on parents or paying providers not to deliver SEND services we’ve paid them to deliver.

Turns out, instead, the overspend is the fault of parents and, er asylum seekers. At least, that’s what Vanessa Wilson, a well remunerated management consultant employed on a large undisclosed fee, claimed at a recent council meeting.

“Due to a lack of provision in our area, we’re placing more children in schools out of area. There’s parental choice as well. That’s meant that we’ve seen, in this last year, a doubling in costs of our transport,” she shamelessly explained.

But, as parents are liable for transport costs at a ‘parental choice’ of school, any doubling in transport costs is down to Vanessa’s department’s failures and nothing whatsoever to do with parents.

Vanessa then went after asylum seekers: “We’ve got a large number of children and families coming in who are asylum seekers. We’re seeing an increase in those families where not just the children have complex needs, but also the parents.”

With only 1,500 asylum seekers in Bristol, is it likely this tiny number are responsible for Vanessa’s ballooning costs?

Or is she using them as a convenient scapegoat for her department’s ongoing management failures?

LABOUR TIP MONEY INTO ENERGY BLACK HOLE

MY MAYOR LOLLIPOP?

3 Replies

Despite a huge OUTCRY during a POINTLESS public consultation about his cuts, the Rev Rees is going ahead and CUTTING his school crossing patrol budget by £155k a year.

The Reverend explains, “We will look at ALTERNATIVE METHODS for providing patrols for school crossings (lollipop people) outside 80 school sites around Bristol. This could include VOLUNTEERS or seeking alternative funding arrangements.”

What’s needed here is the kind of LEADERSHIP that is usually entirely lacking from Bristol City Council. So we look forward to the REV REES and his senior leadership team that earn all the big bucks showing us the way and putting in some SHIFTS at their local primary schools.

Look out for them at 8.00am every morning at a school near you?

THE LORD MAYOR OF BRISTOL, JEFF LOVELL, IS A CUNT

3 Replies

Jeff “CUNT” Lovell: Nazi

Today, the Bristol Labour Group’s Lord Mayor, Jeff “CUNT” Lovell, called people protesting his Labour Group’s right wing £100 million cuts budget “A DISEASE”!

Oh dear. Well, at least they’re not an extreme right wing cunt like Lovell is. After all, which end of the political spectrum is associated with trying to dehumanise their opponents?

We’ll give you a clue Lord Mayor Cunt … It ain’t socialists, it ain’t social democrats. In fact it’s nobody on the left of politics at all. Ever.

The bigger question here is why the hell is there an extreme right winger not only in the Bristol Labour Group but leading and promoting them?

Are they all Nazis? Or do they just tolerate references to the the Untermenschen in their ranks for a quiet life?

AUDIT UPDATE

2 Replies

Promises by our dear old friends on Bristol City Council’s beyond useless Audit Committee to take a long hard look at the finances of the METROBUS PROJECT on our behalf are floundering after just a few months.

At their meeting on 23 September a question from a member of the public on the Metrobus fiasco could not be answered “as there was not a Transport Officer present”. However, the new chair of the committee, Labour’s Olly “Meadiocre” Mead promised a FULL REPORT would be presented at the November meeting.

Come November, however, and much to the surprise of the public and, we’re told, even members of Meadiocre’s own committee, NO REPORT APPEARED. While a glance at the committee’s detailed schedule for the next year revealed any reference to Metrobus had been carefully REMOVED by unknown council bosses.

So don’t expect any information from Meadiocre’s Audit Committee about your money and Metrobus as they appear to have been very crudely NOBBLED by elements in this city who don’t want you knowing how much of your money is being SQUANDERED on some over engineered bus lanes.

Meanwhile the five year old MARKETS SERVICE finance shambles (Bristolian passim) continues to stagger around somewhere in the vicinity of the Audit Committee like an aging drunk high on laughing gas. A promised report on the council’s DEPARTMENT FOR DISAPPEARING CASH was promised in September. This then inexplicably slipped to November. Now we’re promised something in January.

When this report finally appears will it explain the following statement currently doing the rounds in council finance reports regarding this year’s £30m overspend? “There is a £125K FORECAST SHORTFALL in income against the budget target for Markets as a result of an historic revenue target, which has not been met for the last 5 YEARS.”

That’s a cool £0.6million now pissed up against the wall while an army of useless auditors and an oversight committee of gullible councillors sit on their lazy arses.

The BRISTOLIAN

“Smiter of the High and Mighty”