Tag Archives: Business

GREENBOLLOXNOMICS

Price drop

The Greens have published a long and boring 10 year economic plan for the city, ‘Fair, Green and Thriving: Bristol’s Economic Strategy 2025 – 2035’.

The council officer produced report mentions ‘business’ 178 times while lowly ‘public services’ are mentioned twice. If that doesn’t convince you this is a business charter from the Greens, then how about the 100 mentions of ‘growth’; the 32 mentions of corporate-coffer filling ‘net zero’ and 8 mentions for an unexplained ‘just transition’?

Looks like another right of centre coalition aligned to local business grifters has set up at the Council House to shovel public money to the private sector.

MORE BLOODY ‘GROWTH’
The Reverend’s meaningless buzzwords ‘inclusive growth’ are revived by the Greens in their economic plan. “We will grow our global reputation for innovation, creativity and sustainability [yawwwwn, Ed.] and attract investment aligned to our inclusive growth principles” they gush.

This ‘inclusive growth’ nonsense term appears a further eight times in their strategy. Nowhere do they explain what it is or how it differs from old-fashioned growth and its reliance on “trickle down theory”. The ridiculous belief that if the rich get richer the poor benefit by magic too. They don’t tell us what these ‘inclusive growth principles’ are, either.

The report rambles on, “[We will] use our role in the Bristol Temple Quarter LLP to support the implementation of the Bristol Temple Quarter Inclusive Growth Strategy.”

Naturally, there’s no such thing at present as the Bristol Temple Quarter Inclusive Growth Strategy. Although we’re promised, “[it] will be published in early 2025,” a date that has now passed.

It’s all a load of bollocks isn’t it?

FILM FLAM
“The health and social work sector is [Bristol’s] largest employer, providing 16% of local jobs in 2022,” say the Greens. Almost one in six workers in Bristol. This huge employment sector gets just  seven mentions in their economic strategy.

Meanwhile, an obsession with the film industry continues. ‘Film’ gets 17 mentions, although the Greens forget to say what percentage of local jobs their Hollywood dream actually delivers. Instead we get a tired old stat: “the Bottle Yard Studios contributed almost £21 million to the city’s economy”. £21m is a little over a tenth of one per cent of Bristol’s £15bn annual turnover.

Why the exposure and subsidies for a marginal industry while the sectors people actually work in get downplayed and underfunded?

DOWN SOUTH: After a  few crocodile tears about inequality in south Bristol, the Green economic plan announces nine ‘designated areas of growth’ for the city for the next ten years.

Seven of these are north of the river. Two – Bedminster and Brislington – are in the south. Bedminster is gentrifying fast while the selection of Brislington along the Bath Road looks like a sweetener to help get the greenbelt built on at Hicks Gate.

Little support from the Greens for South Bristol, then.

ONE CITY FOR BUSINESS

ONE CITY FOR BUSINESS

With a large public relations fanfare, the Reverend’s ONE CITY PLAN and re-election campaign was launched upon us in early January. This plan is another absolute tsunami of DRIVEL of the kind we have now come to expect from the Reverend Rees.

Created by overenthusiastic copy writers working to the Reverend’s instructions, the plan attempts to PREDICT what the city will be like in 2050 thanks to the Reverend’s ideas. And yes, it is as embarrassing as it sounds.

For a LABOUR Mayor leading a LABOUR administration, the plan, however, lacks much in the way of traditional left wing content. Our search of the document revealed the terms ‘socialism’; ‘nationalisation’; ‘tax’; ‘taxation’ and ‘public ownership’ appear a grand total of ZERO times. While ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ get ONE appearance each in the Reverend’s grand design for a golden future.

However, the term ‘BUSINESS‘ appears 63 times while meaningless Reverend Rees jargon such as ‘sustainable’, 50 appearances; ‘leadership’, 17 appearances; partnership, 13 appearances; diversity, 23 appearances and ‘innovation’, 10 appearances, are LITTERED throughout the document.

Basically, it’s a load of right wing American BUSINESS SCHOOL BOLLOCKS of the kind the Reverend was spoon fed on his crappy leadership course at Yale.

Is this the future we want?