Worth around £500m, Merchant Venturer weirdo Andrew Nisbet of Nisbets PLC, a catering supplier in Avonmouth, is one of Bristol’s and the UK’s richest men.
No surprise to learn, then, that this super-rich slave trade cultist fired over 400 staff during lockdown. Despite Nisbets trousering £9m in government Covid cash and the firm’s hard-pressed directors sharing £2.3m that year.
Employment websites Glassdoor and Indeed reveal few positives about the firm. Recurring themes at the Avonmouth warehouse operation are low pay, monitoring of loo breaks, blame culture, bullying, nepotism and unachievable sales targets. All ignored by a useless HR team.
Comments from former staff include: “This place is the worst by a long mile. Surprised they’ve not been exposed like Sports Direct”; “KEEP AWAY! UNLESS YOU WANT TO WORK IN A MODERN DAY SWEAT SHOP!”; Absolute Joke of a company to work for!”; “WORST JOB EVER!”
On the bright side, Key West Holdings (Nisbets’ parent company) generously donated £1.5m to the Nisbet Trust, the family charitable trust. This money was then handed to charities around Bristol.
Let’s hope Nisbet’s filthy cash from misery is worth it.
While MPs and the media wring their hands and weep over a stabbed tory, it was not lost on us that during the same week it was reported in The Guardian that “[a] University of York study found that there had been 57,550 deaths due to austerity in the four years following 2010.”
This is slightly less than the British Medical Journal reported in 2017. They linked an extra 120,00 extra deaths to austerity cuts. These are not the only studies and the figures differ slightly but they all show a lot of deaths of the poor and ill.
This MP, who everybody said was a good bloke and cared deeply for his constituents, voted time and time again for cuts to welfare and services. But there’s hardly a word in the mainstream press about any deaths due to this. Not a single crocodile tear was shed in Parliament. No one minute silence for any human being lost to their families early due to decisions in Parliament.
What this one death means, at the hands of a lone nutter, is more security measures and less opportunity to engage directly with your MP. Not that that achieves much anyway.
The eagle-eyed might have noticed that the Tories are also trying to curtail our rights to judicial review. Even David Davies – remember that old twat? – calls it “an assault on the legal system” and “an attempt to avoid accountability”. But why the need to hold our leaders to account?
Well, deaths from austerity might be one reason. Another is that the Tories have just voted not to stop pumping raw sewage into our rivers. Apparently, it’s too expensive for the poor companies in charge of our water supplies who have already paid out billions in dividends to wealthy shareholders.
This vote came after our new-found freedoms thanks to BREXIT and the end of European environmental protections. Now we are free to swim and fish in our own shite. Not that we could have known because the government are refusing to allow access and scrutiny of any legal advice relating to BREXIT.
How has BREXIT gone so far? We have Northern Ireland, labour shortages, empty shelves, increase in prices, businesses going bust and disputes about fishing. We also have the £350m per week for the NHS but the Tories forgot to tell us that we would be paying that with National Insurance increases, which hits the low-waged worse. So that’s alright then.
And who needs scrutiny over the government’s response to COVID, the worse pandemic in living memory? That all started with the lack of PPE in care homes and the overstretched NHS releasing COVID positive patients into care homes.
The contract to oversee test and trace was given to Dildo Harding. The app did not work. They did not employ enough tracers but did spend £22 billion on consultants. Some racking up more than £6k a day, while Dildo Harding didn’t do too bad in her pocket either. I wonder how many of these twats vote Tory? In the meantime we have the highest death rate per head in Europe.
All through the pandemic the Tories handed their mates and donors contracts for millions of public money. Mainly to do stuff that they couldn’t do while ignoring the underfunded NHS who had the skills and resources to complete the tasks the private sector fatcats couldn’t.
Like testing. We have all heard about the 43,000 wrong results given for PCR tests in the South West. But then we are told that this has nothing to do with the sudden surge in cases. Really?
Who suffers? Us. Again. If they bring back a lockdown, it will not affect those in their country piles, fancy townhouses and gated communities. It will be us, in our tower blocks, terraced houses and apartments with a lack of living space. All watched over by state sponsored muggers, better known as the old bill, trotting about giving out fines.
There’ll be no chance of public scrutiny and don’t think public protest will be welcomed. Instead, the Crime and Policing Bill is curtailing your rights to peaceful protest. Not that the old bill ever lets you have a peaceful protest. They wade in as soon as it’s dark.
Like the recent Kill the Bill protests in Bristol. Remember how cops claimed to the press that they were provoked and injured by the violent protesters? Then later they had to admit that there were no significant injuries among the coppers on duty that night? A fact which received considerably less press.
Although the press did manage lots of outrage against anyone caught up in the police attack. Some have received serious prison time, including two women, who were kettled and needed a piss. Nine months each. Needless to say they were not granted Legal Aid and, like most working class people now, they had to defend themselves in court against a criminal charge.
It’s all a right mess and we are the victims. At the beginning of COVID, a leaked after dinner speech by a chinless Tory spoke of “useless eaters” in the care homes. They mean you and your family.
“The plebs should shut up and play frisbee while I piss public money away,” explains the Reverend Rees
To keep us entertained over the summer holidays, the Reverend Rees has done an interview with ‘Premier Christianity’, which, it says here, is “the UK’s leading Christian magazine”. Possibly not the hardest crown to claim in this day and age.
Among the Reverend’s fascinating insights, we find that “we live in a complicated world” and that his version of ‘levelling up’, Bojo’s hapless policy for the red wall constituencies, “actually makes sense“!
Further gems include the Reverend explaining his jobs-for-evangelical-mates policy. “What we’ve seen over recent years is the churches really beginning to step into city leadership, because I’ve offered that challenge,” he explains. Carefully sidestepping any job offers or cash that might have accompanied his “challenge”.
Your caring, sharing BRISTOLIAN even gets a mention. “You get your trolls,” whines the Reverend. “Some rag started to call me “Reverend Rees” and all that type of stuff and said I was trying to introduce a theocracy. But so much of that trolling stuff is such nonsense. It just washes over you.“
Indeed. It’s washing over him so thoroughly, he makes a point of mentioning this “nonsense” in his keynote interview about his Christian faith.
He then continues letting it “wash over” in bizarre and considerable detail. “The way I see it is if there’s a 60-year-old man in his underpants late at night writing mean things to people on the internet, you just think: “What has your life come to?” [Laughs] I mean, you know, take up a hobby, pick up a frisbee, do something!“
“Something” like, maybe, swanking around the Council House in a spiv’s suit calling yourself a ‘City Leader’? Or bullying female councillors to boost your flagging ego and to hide your gross incompetence? Or awarding jobs and funds to your best mates, the all-male Hope Chapel Prayer Circle Loonies? Last seen in 2020 claiming their prayers had kept Covid levels low in Bristol.
Unfortunately we’re unable to confirm if the Reverend and his gang of boys in the evangelical band strip down to their kecks and play frisbee before they pray for us.
But the Reverend’s fertile imagination must find inspiration somewhere, surely?
Have you heard the one about the appalling new ‘WELLBEING’ MANAGER at Bristol City Council who has triggered multiple complaints by council staff to HR for bullying? Please step forward ISLE OF WIGHT RESIDENT Christina “The Nag” Czarkowski Crouch, who didn’t rock up at the Counts Louse six months ago to start work as the council’s new Safety, Health and Wellbeing Manager.
Covid has proved a boon for this former Head of Risk and Safety at Hampshire County Council – who retired from there “UNDER A CLOUD” – as she’s only had to come to Bristol ONCE IN SIX MONTHS. Leaving this ridiculous Tory bint plenty of time to indulge in her expensive hobby running a riding school and poncing about at dressage events.
Less happy are trade unions at the council who tell us that there’s “a plan to get everyone back to work at the council based on an IDEOLOGICAL HR PLAN“. A plan enthusiastically fronted by a Hampshire resident safely tucked away in a home office 130 miles away who doesn’t see any need to come near one of her ‘safe’ workplaces in Bristol any time soon. Unions also tell us The Nag got paid a generous MOVING ALLOWANCE by us when she got the job but obviously hasn’t bothered moving to Bristol. What’s she done with our money?
The Nag’s current job at the council is to sign off – from a safe long distance – UNSAFE WORKPLACES and offices at the council as, er, safe. This corporate ‘wellbeing’ expert has done this by BULLYING staff into signing off her dodgy risk assessments and telling them that if they don’t do what she says, SHE WILL MAKE THEM LEAVE! Unions sources say The Nag is anti-union too and has refused to speak with them, let alone account for her efforts to kill council staff.
Multiple complaints regarding The Nag have now landed in Bristol City Council’s HR inbox. Although so far her bosses, the council’s mentally unstable Head of Workforce, John “Bedwetter” Walsh, A NOTORIOUS BULLY himself, and his hopelessly thick and useless yes-man sidekick, Director of HR Mark “Bashar” Williams, have done FUCK ALL. Mainly on the basis that this pair of turds view bullying as top quality management practice that needs to be encouraged. Unless any bullying is aimed at them of course.
Why can’t city council staff just man up a bit and be prepared to die of Covid for a bunch of management cowards and bullies hiding in expensive homes around the UK?
