Tag Archives: Consultants

WYE WATCH

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Wye
Wye Oh Why?

Bristol City Council rolls out its annual Pay Policy Statement. Where they announce the ratio of their lowest paid worker to an alleged highest paid worker. Written by one the council’s leading retards, HR Director, Mark “Bashar” Williams, it’s an eyewatering tissue of lies and bullshit that’s dutifully signed off every year by councillors for the wards of Cloud Fairyland on the HR Committee and Full Council.

In 2020 -21, the last year actual, rather than invented, figures are available, the council announced a pay ratio of 9.45:1.Except the lowest paid earned £17,364 while the highest earner, our friend Colin “Head Boy” Molton, trousered about £280k pro rata. A ratio of about 16:1.

Bashar’s sums are a little awry aren’t they? This year, Bashar calculated a pay ratio of 9.36:1, which has been backed by the new Green Chair of the HR Committee, former
big cheese council boss, Tim “Why-Oh” Wye. Delivering this pile of lying HR wank to Full Council, Why-Oh Wye explained “this [pay] policy is about the council’s directly employed staff. Interims are not relevant to this item”.

Why the largest salaries paid to workers at Bristol City Council aren’t relevant to a
policy about the largest salaries paid to workers at Bristol City Council isn’t something
Why-Oh Wye bothered to explain. It just isn’t relevant, apparently.

Although what is potentially relevant is that, according to LinkedIn, Why-Oh Wye is a “Self Employed Consultant specialising in Health and Social Care” for local authorities!

Anyone got any ideas why he might be keen to keep consultant and interim fees at a council off the record and unaccountable?

KEYSTONE COUNCIL (Part1)

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Rees cop

Heard the one about Bristol City Council pointlessly hiring an expensive HR consultant to run a disciplinary against a member of staff the great all-powerful Reverend Rees decided he wanted sacked? A disciplinary is normally a straightforward job any competent middle manager would do at the council. Was there, maybe, something a little abnormal about this particular process then?


Possibly, as they had to hire another HR consultant to hear a grievance regarding the conduct of the first consultant’s investigation! Now, we’re told by our trade union brothers, the council is hiring yet another consultant to investigate the conduct of both of the previous consultants! Will this deranged cycle of HR consultants at our expense ever end?

More to the point, after all this huge expenditure, did the Reverend get his man?

AUDITORS SLAM ENERGY SHAMBLES

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Even Bristol City Council’s own external auditors, BDO, have CONDEMNED the incompetent management of Bristol Energy, the council’s laughing stock energy reselling business that started trading in 2016 and has cost us about £25million so far.

“We have NOT seen evidence that the risks and potential financial losses of this investment were fully understood by the council when the investment was made in 2015 and 2016,” say the auditors before concluding, “Bristol Energy has NOT performed in line with its original 2015 business plan.”

This business plan, signed off by Nicki “Chocolate” Beardmore, the Reverend’s golden girl senior manager on £300k a year, said they would MAKE a 12% return on investment after 5 years and 35% after 10 years. Instead, the company reported a LOSS of £3million last year and £7million this year. With 110,000 customers and an initial investment of £15.3million by Bristol City Council, this means Bristolians have SPENT £139 for each customer and then Bristol Energy has generated a further LOSS of about £70 per customer. Top work!

BDO go on to conclude that a further hurriedly rewritten business plan in 2016, which admitted NO PROFITS were in sight, was also a lot of crap. “We have some concerns that the risks around the energy company, its governance arrangements and greater than expected losses were not understood fully by the Council in the early part of 2016/17.”

The auditors are now applauding the inevitable arrival of a team of CONSULTANTS from London to pick over the bones of this CORPSE and personally cash in on the shambles. “Independent Advisors and external consultants have been commissioned to provide advice on how the governance arrangements for the Group could be improved and financial and commercial advice to optimise value in the delivery of the Council’s investment and ensure that the Council achieves the best value for money outcome,” they claim.

When are we going to get a decent, decisive politician willing to pull the plug and shut down this miserable money pit shambles devised by idiots?

IN THE COURT OF TSAR MARVIN

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Moseley: at a brewery. But could he organise the piss up?

A well-placed source tells The BRISTOLIAN that the Reverend Rees and his two posh boy advisors at the council KEVIN “Don’t Mention the Private Education” SLOCOMBE and BEN “Oswald” MOSELEY have “totally lost it” and are “selling Bristol off to corporates in exchange for crappy short term fixes that are doomed to fail the city”.

“It’s like the final days of the court of Tsar Nicholas II having a NEW LABOUR STRATEGY MEETING up there,” we’re told of Marvin and his court cronies upstairs in the Counts Louse.

“Despite all three having a history in the Labour movement, none of them has any interest in listening to anyone in the movement – especially their own STAFF, UNIONS or anyone in their local PARTY. Instead, a rolling roster of expensive corporate goons, proposing one daft “strategy” after another for a large fee get full house room and their arses thoroughly licked by the trio.”

The promotion of Oswald Moseley over the summer to run Marvin’s executive office has especially raised a few eyebrows at the Counts Louse and beyond. The post is supposed to be a NON-POLITICAL senior local government officer role. Although Oswald has a long history with the local LABOUR PARTY. Including a stint working for Bristol East MP, Kerry “And the Banshees” McCarthy, and, in 2012, running Marvin’s losing mayoral campaign – widely regarded as an abysmal shambles!

Oswald is hardly a shining beacon for objective, non-political senior council officers is he? And, questions are beginning to be asked about a recruitment process that identified the Rev Rees’s FRIEND and former CAMPAIGN MANAGER, Oswald, as the best person for the job. Is this another dubious public appointment made to appease a marginal mayor that will sell Bristol short?

Slocombe: “Don’t mention the private school education” or basic competence

Meanwhile Slocombe, supposedly a TRADE UNIONIST and the one political appointment the Reverend is allowed to make, seems to be attempting to square his new found love for ultra-New Labour anti-worker corporate solutions to any and every problem with his trade union contacts.

We’re informed that Slocombe has been SKULKING AROUND meeting various senior regional union bureaucrats from the council’s unions begging them to lay-off the Reverend and Bristol City Council generally. Something many rank and file members, especially from Unite, may not be happy about.

“Everything these three are promoting is a FUCKING STUPID corporate solution that takes the city backwards to Thatcher, punishes the workforce and strongly rewards a small group of managers and unaccountable corporate consultants” says our source.

“The City Office, the management restructure; the “One Bristol” plan to abandon the voluntary sector, the vicious cuts. All of them have been devised by temporary consultants and interims with an eye on a BIG PRIVATE SECTOR PAY DAY down the line.”

“This is a corporate takeover of Bristol City Council. Rees, his two advisors and their revolving door of corporate Rasputins must be stopped.”

COUNCIL STAFF STUFFED AS AIMLESS UPHEAVAL IS FOISTED FROM ABOVE

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The naval-gazing SELF-OBSESSION of senior bosses at Bristol City Council continues unhindered by reality as the Reverend Rees launches another so-say “new structure for senior management”.

Naturally this restructure also means PAY RISES boosting top directors pay by a cool TEN PER CENT after Labour councillors led by self-styled militant trade unionist Kye “Rimmer” Dudd, the current chair of the council’s HR committee, steered the new pay deal through his committee for the Reverend last month.

This restructure and pay rise announcement – 18 months into the Reverend’s term – arrives shortly after a series of finance reports over the summer presented to his cabinet and councillors claimed such a reorganisation was officially ‘at risk’ and would NOT be happening.

However, with the speedy and mysterious DISAPPEARANCE of his hand-picked Chief Exec, Anna “Big Wedge” Klonowski in September, the Reverend reversed the ferret and instructed his latest teacher’s pet interim £1,000 a day private sector consultant Jackie “You’re Fired!” McGeachie to embark on the delayed project IMMEDIATELY.

The Reverend’s headline claim for this latest DECKCHAIR REARRANGEMENT at the top at the Counts Louse is that it will reduce the number of managers by seven and save £750k a year. A virtually UNVERIFIABLE claim considering the pay rises being doled out and the hidden number of highly paid interims, consultants, former bosses and corporate wonks wasting time, money and oxygen throughout the council at any given time.

The Reverend also doesn’t seem to realise that “a new structure for senior management” is also a new structure for the WHOLE organisation. This means yet more BUREAUCRATIC CHANGE and UPHEAVAL for ordinary low-paid staff who have been subjected to mass redundancy programmes in 2013 and 2016 and a ridiculous New Ways of Working “agile” office move programme ongoing since 2015. More redundancies are on the cards this year too.

Meanwhile, a PROMISED restructure for ordinary staff at the council, likely to deliver significant pay increases to the lowest paid workers to stop their wages collapsing to the low level of the minimum wage, has DISAPPEARED without trace. Despite a promise when bosses’ wages were hiked last year by up to 20 PER CENT – just after they conspired against us all to set an unlawful budget – that a fair staff pay structure was a priority for bosses, the mayor and councillors.

As one member of staff told The BRISTOLIAN: “Another management reorganisation means absolute chaos and a decision-making vacuum for six months at least. Then some dull, witess twat on vast wages who we’ve never met will start emailing corporate crap at us claiming they’re our ‘leader’. Then they’ll be more uncertainty as they start trying to get rid of us all, all over again. Then they’ll leave with a massive top secret pay off because it turns out they’re actually a load of shit”

Alas, it seems, the priority, as usual, is the bosses, the bosses’ pay, the bosses’ egos and more aimless upheaval for frontline staff trying to deliver actual services.