We recently ran a story on our website about the relationship between L&G, who the Reverend Rees is gifting Arena island to, and the Tory government under Theresa May. Now we learn that the global pension player turned property developer continues to maintain strong links to the Tories under Johnson.
A Freedom of Information request to the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, contains an account of a meeting between the Minister for Housing and Planning, Esther McVey, and L&G on 27 January 2020. Topics included the greenbelt. L&G got to tell the Tory minister, “the entire country was not for protecting the Green Belt as a blanket rule”.
They also got to express concern about “the planning capability of local authorities,” stating they would pay a premium to get planning applications fast tracked. Explaining, “when large scale developments are delayed by slow decision making, the financial cost of delay is greater than it would cost to contribute to planning upscaling”.
McVey agreed to “take this point onboard as she considers further work”. Meanwhile, “the Minister was eager to know what L&G thought government has to do to speed up the release of public land”!
On the plus side, at least Tory ministers take minutes. Unlike BCC who gave Arena Island away at a private unminuted meeting at L&G’s offices in London attended by Rees’s dodgy property supremo Colin “Headboy” Molton, now at WECA.
Closer to home, the council has just published a VEAP for their Arena Island deal. A document used to avoid legal action by acknowledging they may have acted unlawfully in terms of regulation.
Tells us all we need to know about Rees’s shit deal with L&G
An old FoI request about the dodgy Bristol City Council/L&G Arena island deal catches the eye. It reveals L&G execs operating inside Number 10 [Downing Street] in 2015 and meeting Bristol City council property bosses who were supposed to be building an arena on the controversial site:
The bizarre deal The Reverend has now struck with L&G execs is that they get the prime Arena Island site after £32m of public investment and BCC get a 40 year lease on one of the proposed L&G corporate office slabs proposed for the site … And both sides get to avoid any procurement or open sale that might upset the cosy arrangement.
But what the hell were L&G execs doing in Downing Street at the heart of power in 2015? The answer is John Godfrey, L&G’s longtime Corporate Affairs Director – basically their chief political lobbyist. The former Tory Parliamentary candidate worked at Number Ten as Head of Policy for Prime Minister Theresa May from 2015-17. At the time, this L&G/Downing Street revolving door generated headlines in the Financial Times like, “Legal & General gives Toryism a reboot“.
At the same time the Legal & General CEO was musing on his blog that “UK cities are not overbuilt but under-demolished”. The company also developed an interest in fiscal policy (basically government spending money on infrastructure); called on taxpayers to invest with savings groups such as, er, L&G and argued that planning laws should be eased to defeat ‘Nimbies’.
Alongside L&G’s political capture of Downing Street, another front opened. In 2016, John Kingman was appointed Group Chairman of Legal and General plc. Prior to this, Kingman was a senior Treasury official and, among other things, led a research project looking at the tax treatment of buy-to-let property, which led to major policy changes in the 2015 Budget.
The specific change was Section 24 of the Finance Act 2015-16, setting mortgage tax allowance for individual landlords to 20 per cent. A change that didn’t apply to corporate landlords or property rental companies. Corporates, effectively, were allowed to operate at a state-engineered advantage to smaller competitors in the property market.
With the political and legal environment in place to fill their boots, L&G now required gullible twerps from the provinces who think they’re big shot property players with access to public land. Please step forward on 12 December 2017 Marvin’s £1.5k a day ‘property expert’ Colin Molton.
He walked into L&G’s offices in London desperate to offload Arena Island quickly so that the Reverend’s favoured multinational, YTL, could dodge the ‘sequential test‘ designed to favour inner city sites over out-of-town and get planning permission for an arena in Filton. L&G were happy to oblige with a self-serving deal and advice on how BCC could dodge procurement regulations and hand them the land.
As an added sweetener May’s L&G-friendly Downing Street operation stepped up, hinting to the Reverend and Molton that £100m of government money was on the table towards the Temple Quarter regeneration.
However, since the demise of May in 2019, L&G’s influence in the corridors of power has waned and the Johnson government with its levelling-up agenda focussed on the Red Wall seems uninterested in handing over £100m to the Reverend to regenerate Temple Meads.
In fact, they’ve now knocked back two funding applications from Bristol. Leaving the people of Bristol shortchanged and Tory L&G with a prime piece of public land in Bristol to cash in on.
A nice little corporate earner: the bridge to nowhere at Arena Island
Plans by Bristol City Council, cloaked in secrecy, to hand over the prime Arena Island site to pension fund L&G for free without an open market sale or procurement process continue.
The deal, cooked up by the council’s former £260k a year interim regeneration boss Colin “Headboy” Molton, who was officially characterised by the council’s own legal team last year as “incompetent”, finds the council guaranteeing rents for 40 years on a speculative office slab L&G intend to build on the site.
And there’s lots more public money to go around for privileged corporate sector players in on this public money giveaway. For instance, new council regeneration boss Stephen “Preening” Peacock has just signed off £420k to a corporate ‘strategic partner’ (Arcadis working with Arup and Mott MacDonald) “to provide project management, cost management and design services to maintain progress”.
Progress on what? Er, a further £32 million worth of “enabling works” on the site that the public are paying for before handing the site over to L&G.free of charge.
A bizarre and disturbing case unfolds at the Employment Tribunal involving the Reverend Rees, Colin “Head Boy” Molton and the council’s HR senior management nutters – presumably taking some time off from being racist? – John “Bedwetter” Walsh and Mark “Bashar” Williams.
The case involves 122 detriments to a whistleblower at Bristol City Council and there’s even a walk-on part for the Bristolian’s evil twin Twitter account, the ungovernable @bristol_citizen.
From what we’ve learned so far and we’re promised much more from the union involved, IWW Bristol, it seems Bashar and Bedwetter cooked up a cunning plan back in 2018, with the help of the Reverend, to fire the notorious Markets whistleblower from 2012 (Bristolian passim).
This is a whistleblower against whom Bashar Williams has long conducted a dirty whispering campaign in the corridors of the Counts Louse. A campaign that’s attempted to blame the whistleblower for the council’s failure in their duty of care towards council Facilities Service Manager, Tony Harvey, who killed himself in 2013. Directly after Harvey’s crude efforts to cover-up a major financial scandal in his Markets Service with the help and support of Bashar Williams and many other senior bosses started to fall apart.
According to the Employment Tribunal, the whistleblower had made TWENTY-TWO allegations that ‘relate to financial matters and alleged fraud relating to the first respondent’s market licence fees’.
The vehicle selected by the Bashar and Bedwetter to carry out their dastardly attack plan on this whistleblower was the creation of a bespoke allegation that the worker had shared – with a Bristol Waste trade union rep – ‘confidential’ council information that, er, was in the public domain!.
Their plan was assisted by Rees who handed his HR bosses confidential Bristol Labour Party and trade union information directly from his personal Facebook account. An action that resulted in the closure in 2018 of the local Labour Campaign Forum private Facebook page for members when it became apparent that personal and political information on there was no longer secure and was being shared with bosses at Bristol City Council and any passing Toryboy consultant in a pinstripe suit.
To further ensure the success of their brilliant plan, the Bedwetter personally hired – at great expense to us – ‘Mr Greaves’. a self-styled expert consultant who also happened to be an old local authority jobbing interim mate of Bedwetter’s. Mr Geaves, our union sources tell us, was “basically a posh twat in pin stripe suit who was thick as shit”.
Within a week of suspending the worker, HR’s ramshackle disciplinary house of cards inevitably collapsed with the revelation that the alleged ‘confidential information’ wasn’t in the slightest bit confidential having been released by the council themselves months earlier.
The hapless HR management team, including a clown on a generous day rate paid by council taxpayers, then started scratching around for some new allegations to nail their man. TWELVE allegations were variously tabled and hastily withdrawn over the next SIX MONTHS. Even including a desperate claim that the worker was running the @bristol_citizen Twitter account!
The worker eventually took out a grievance, possibly for humanitarian reasons, to end this Human Resources car crash and to try and resolve the embarrassing symptoms of mental decay on open display from a pair of barking senior council HR directors intent on firing someone for no reason other than that the mayor had apparently told them to.
The council responded to the grievance by wheeling out their top gun – the second highest paid council boss in the country – Colin “Head Boy” Molton. Who, it appears, hired another expensive consultant to investigate the work of the first consultant.
The outcome of this investigation is shrouded in mystery as Head Boy scarpered from the scene of his crime very quickly never to be heard from again. In the process failing to do any of the things he had advised himself to do, in his own report, to sort out his senior HR colleagues’ sorry mess..
The next act of this very Bristol City Council farce played out at a bizarre disciplinary hearing chaired by our dear old friend “Lil” Tim O’Gara. He was hurriedly shunted in to oversee proceedings after Bedwetter discovered he wasn’t allowed to hire a posh twit; hand him a weird dossier of drivel off the internet compiled by Bashar Williams; feed his pet twit a load of completely mental evidence-free allegations about a member of council staff and then chair the subsequent hearing to judge the merits of his own deranged crap.
In fact, in a highly original and unprecedented move, no one from HR turned up at all at their own disciplinary hearing to present any kind of case against the member of staff they had suspended for eight months and had, ‘independently’ investigated at great expense. Could this by any chance be related to the fact that the Reverend and Head Boy Molton might have had to appear to explain what the fuck they had been up to if a proper hearing was held?
What if any of the big swinging dicks at the top of the council had said the wrong thing and accidentally implicated each other in their fast unravelling dimwitted conspiracy? Suddenly, with the risk of funny little wriggly appendages being exposed at the top, the hearing was a very quick case of ‘allegations unfounded’ – ‘case dismissed’.
We reckon the cost of this pointless little escapade in targeting a whistleblower trying to protect your money from bent council bosses – if you add up whopping payments to various consultants, the wages paid to the member of staff to sit at home for eight months and the staff time – could easily hit six figures.
What for? An expensive game for the pleasure of a pisspoor mayor? A Bashar Williams’ revenge fantasy acted out on a member of recalcitrant staff? A palliative for Bedwetter’s prominent mental health conditions?
Have they nothing else to do at their City Hall?
MORE STUFF WE’VE BEEN PROMISED AND COMING SOON:
ARE YOU FEATURED IN BASHAR WILLIAM’S DOSSIER OF DRIVEL OFF THE INTERNET?
ABSOLUTE PROOF JOHN WALSH IS A LIAR (JUST IN TIME TO HELP SUPPORT HIS EXCITING DEFAMATION SUIT AGAINST COUNCILLORS)
JOHN WALSH, MARK WILLIAMS AND COLIN MOLTON ARE ‘STUPID’ EXPLAINS THEIR OWN LEGAL BRIEF
How many thefts must an auditor ignore With their head in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the public pay Before they’re finally paid?
The answer, my friend, is whisleblowin’ in the wind The answer is whistleblowin’ in the wind
(With apologies to Dylan)
An interesting document emerges from their Audit Committee about whistleblowing at Bristol City Council last year.
It reveals that eight decent workers stepped forward between April 2020 and March 2021 with serious allegations that met the legal criteria for formal whistleblowing. These criteria are
– a criminal offence has been committed; – someone’s health and safety is in danger; – there’s a risk or actual damage to the environment; – there’s a miscarriage of justice; – the organisation is breaking the law; – you believe someone is covering up wrongdoing;
So far so good but then we learn from the council’s report that the result of seven of these complaints was that the claims were “unsubstantiated” while the other one was “not considered a whistleblowing matter”. Which raises the question of what is it doing in a whistleblowing report then?
Five of the eight complaints emerged from the Growth and Regeneration department, run for much of the year by the second highest paid local government officer in the country. That’s our dear old friend, Colin “Head Boy” Molton, and the complaints about his department included allegations of, er fraud, corruption, perjury and drug abuse!
However, we are told that in a couple of cases that “control issues [were] identified, and internal audit review commissioned,” which sounds just like something has been substantiated doesn’t it?
The question that needs to be asked here, then, is what was done to substantiate these whistleblowing claims and who was responsible? For example, if you don’t investigate a complaint then it will remain unsubstantiated won’t it?
Or if, as the council often does, a claim of wrongdoing is investigated by the manager directly responsible for the matter in question, an investigation will fail to substantiate perfectly reasonable and evidenced claims.
Alas, the report put before the Audit Committee contains no detail about how these whistleblowing complaints were dealt with other than to announce they were all “unsubstantiated” and therefore no boss at the council appears to have done anything wrong (again) in any of the cases.
It’s nothing short of risible that this is the case for eight separate whistleblowing claims and this does nothing to encourage whistleblowing at the council. Why bother to potentially ruin your career to get a sentence in an obscure report stating your claims are “unsubstantiated” without explanation?
”Yes ‘n’ how many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn’t see?”
Chaos at a Bristol City Council HR meeting today as hapless HR Director Mark “Bashar” Williams cheerily announced that Town Hall Fat Cat Colin “Head Boy” Molton, our very own semi-detached senior officer on £1,500 a day, no longer worked for Bristol City Council.
This was shortly before Tory Boy councillor Richard “Bunter” Eddy described Bashar and his boss, Head of Workforce, John “Bedwetter” Walsh’s statements on outsourcing cleaning and security staff as “worthy of Dr Goebbels and the Third Reich”!
Alas, Head Boy’s surprise disengagement from the second highest paid local authority job in the UK was short-lived after a member of the public asking questions about Head Boy’s whopping £274k pa pay packet piped up that Molton had attended a Temple Quarter and St Philip’s Marsh Cross Party Working Group on 22 January!
This left Bashar to foolishly mumble that “this is the information I have been given”. While who provided such an outright lie to Bashar – peering out from Zoom beside his boss, notorious liar, Head of Workforce, John Walsh – to feed to a committee of elected councillors was not made clear.
Irish Tory councillor, Paula O’Rourke who creeps and crawls around the Counts Louse under Green branding made a feeble attempt to ride to Bashar’s rescue explaining that she chairs the Temple Quarter and St Philip’s Marsh Cross Party Working Group and that everything was above board and Head Boy was being paid by “projects”!
So that’s all right then. All sorted. The man earning the second highest local authority salary in the UK does not work for Bristol City Council, he’s just paid by them while doing their work?
Friend to any passing paedo and
DANGEROUS ENEMY of decent social care workers everywhere, John
“Bedwetter” Walsh, the council’s weirdo Director of HR and Chief
Mayoral Arselicker, is at it again. His latest wheeze is TO EXPLAIN AWAY to
gullible councillors his authorisation of the continued employment – ON £1,500
A DAY – of his executive colleague and the Reverend’s best buddy, Colin
“Head Boy” Molton.
Despite Head Boy being REPLACED
as Head of Growth and Regeneration in the autumn by his former colleague,
another regional development bureaucrat, Stephen “Preening” Peacock,
Head Boy CONTINUES TO WORK FOR THECOUNCIL ON A HUGE WEDGE. This
bizarre arrangement was first described as “a sensible period of handover
between Colin and Stephen to ensure a smooth transition and to maintain
momentum with major projects” but more recently it has been slightly
rebadged as “remain[ing] involved in a small number of projects for a
short while to make sure there is a smooth transition.”
How long is a “short while”? AND
HOW MUCH WILL THIS “SHORT WHILE” COST COUNCIL TAX PAYERS?
Bedwetter finally made himself available to the council’s HR committee in
December – two months after he PERSONALLY AUTHORISED this
generous arrangement at a cost to us, so far, of around £66k – to explain all.
However, two key problems emerged from Bedwetter’s HR Committee appearance.
Firstly, the item was EXEMPT, meaning the public, paying for this EXECUTIVE THEFT, will not be told anything about this carve up by two public sector managers with a dubious relationship to truth, honesty and the rules. Secondly, Bedwetter’s ‘verbal report’ conveniently leaves NO PAPER TRAIL and NO ACCOUNTABILITY for a decision that puts large sums of public money into an individual’s pocket for no coherent reason.
Bedwetter’s dodgy ‘verbal report’ also
ignores the Bundred Report, expensively prepared for the Reverend in 2017 to
explain how to run a council lawfully and competently. The report demanded that
“REPORTS rather than PRESENTATIONS to be used as the
basis of discussions and decisions”.
Why, then, is Bedwetter deliberately breaking his own council’s rules to help line Head Boy’s pockets with our cash? Rules that he’s paid handsomely to uphold.
A well-placed source tells us that it’s
slowly dawning on the boss class at the Counts Louse that the Reverend Rees has
NO HOPE OF WINNING THE MAYORAL ELECTION next May and will not be serving
another term as they had anticipated. This, we learn, has resulted in some especially
long queues at Counts Louse shredding facilities as “NO ONE WANTS TO END
UP IN COURT”.
What have the Reverend, his PR bag man
“Slo” Kev Slocombe and their dubious corporate property man
“Head Boy” Molton been up to for the last few years then? Are the
Reverend’s chickens en route to their roost? Will it require ANOTHER REPORT
from STEVE BUNDRED to get to the bottom of all this?
Maybe someone at the Counts Louse should give Steve a call now?
PRIME IDIOT
“I WANT TO BE PRIME
MINISTER,” announced the Reverend Rees to some unfortunate young people
who somehow got trapped in a room and forced to listen to our Mayor’s
meaningless jargon-riddled drivel at the LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE last month.
What a great idea from the Reverend.
Apart from the limited intellect, the thin skin, the lack of character, an
Inability to lead, the hopelessly poor judgement, the crap Thatcherite
politics, the corporate free market obsession and the dodgy gang of right wing
evangelical mates he’s promoted, WHAT’S TO STOP THE REVEREND GETTING ELECTED
TO RUN THE COUNTRY?
Some pictures of some pillocks to help make you trust them
What are the council’s glorious leadership
doing about the results of their staff survey published earlier this year?
Remember the survey that revealed that a huge majority of staff at the council
correctly viewed their bent and bonkers senior leaders as a bunch of
UNTRUSTWORTHY CHARLATANS who were so out of touch they had no idea what their
staff even did?
Fear not, enthusiastic Labour-supporter
and council Head of Paid Service, Mike “Billie Jean” Jackson has
devised A BRILLIANT SOLUTION to reinvigorate trust and belief in him and
his hapless senior leadership politburo colleagues Colin “Head Boy”
Molton and Jacqui “Village” Jensen.
All was revealed to councillors last
month when Billie Jean unveiled the kind of creative and innovative response
he’s paid TOP-WHACK to deliver. He plans to … Wait for it … publish
a “new structure chart with photos of senior leaders”!
Impressive or wot? Billie Jean’s really earning his six-figure sum with this NON-EVENT isn’t he? Quite how publishing photos of Head Boy Molton, who closely resembles a pig; Village Jensen who might be promoting ITV 4’s new “When Makeovers Go Wrong” and “Billie Jean” Jackson himself, channelling the style of a provincial accountant, will engender IMMEDIATE AND TOTAL TRUST from their staff is not a question Billie-Jean directly addresses.
Isn’t it time this useless shower of shit with no clue left Bristol alone and fucked off back to Devon or Leicester or wherever else it is they came from last year?
It’s quite the bromance isn’t it? Will
the lovestruck Reverend Rees ever let his wannabe property speculator FRIEND
WITH BENEFITS, city council Executive Director of Growth and Regeneration,
Colin “Head Boy” Molton, go?
Stephen “Preening” Peacock,
the replacement for the Reverend’s dubiously appointed CONSTITUTIONAL WRECK
of a £1,500 a day council exec with a taste for £200 taxi trips on us, finally
arrived at the Counts Louse on the 26 September. However, we were soon informed
that Head (Lover) Boy would NOT BE WALKING OUT on the Reverend just yet
and that the starry-eyed lovers could carry on sharing their public land
giveaway fetish, romantic Cote D’Azure mini breaks and secret trysts on the
third floor of the Council House for a while yet.
The latest excuse provided by a council
PR for the NON-EXIT of Lover Boy and his ample wage demands is that
“There will be a sensible period of handover between Colin and Stephen to
ensure a smooth transition and to maintain momentum with major projects”.
Although, the poorly briefed PR was UNABLE TO SAY when this bizarre ménage
a trois might end. How much longer will we have to pay Lover Boy £1,500 a
day for services rendered to the mayor? Days? Weeks? Months?
Rees’s new love interest, Peacock, will
have to struggle along on a wage of just £165k a year and the GOOD NEWS
is that he will also be subject to PAYE like his employees. The BAD NEWS
is that Peacock’s another South West Regional Development Agency reject with a
“huge amount of experience of economic development, major regeneration
projects, technology and the energy sector”.
Doesn’t this sound dangerously similar
to Lover Boy? Has the Reverend fallen head over heels for yet another naive
career bureaucrat with a high opinion of himself who’ll get SHAGGED
ABSOLUTELY SENSELESS when he falls prey to CORPORATE PROPERTY PIMPS
with an eye for his assets?
