Tag Archives: Culture Budget

COUNCIL CULTURE BUDGET NOT IN ACCOUNTS!

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juggling-businessman-image

Council juggling budget up?

A lot of people have asked us how Bristol City Council, according to their annual report, managed to spend almost £10m more on ‘CULTURAL AND RELATED SERVICES’ in 2014 -15 than in 2013 -14 while cutting vital services (Bristolian passim).

The answer is that WE HAVE NO IDEA. This is because the budget heading ‘Cultural and related services’ contained in their annual financial report is not used in the council’s management accounts that are presented to councillors and the public on a quarterly basis. Neither does the budget heading  ‘Cultural and related services’ appear in the council’s annual budget setting papers.

It’s therefore IMPOSSIBLE to work out what Bristol City Council actually spent £62,257,000 of  ‘Cultural and related services’ expenditure on. Neither can we see what caused this increase in expenditure from £52,421,000 in the previous year.

Senior bosses’ promises every year at budget meetings that their accounts will be SIMPLIFIED and CLEARLY PRESENTED to the public and councillors next time around aren’t worth a warm bucket of piss are they?

Do you ever get the feeling you’re being had?

POOR SUFFER CULTURE BOOST

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Carnival revellers dressed as clowns pedal on the clowns parade in Sesimbra village February 11, 2013. REUTERS/Jose Manuel Ribeiro (PORTUGAL - Tags: SOCIETY) - RTR3DNM6

No austerity for clowns in Bristol

Looks like Mayor Luvvie-Dahling and his yes-man sidekick, Cabinet Member for freebies and junketing, Simon “Spend” Cook, have not heard of austerity when it comes to spending money on vital services such as juggling, street entertainers, circus performers, artisan cheese markets and local drama productions.

While environment and waste, planning services, highways and transport, housing services and social care have been hit with cuts of up to 33 per cent to budgets over the last year, the council’s culture budget has shot up 33 per cent from £36.156m to £47.891m!

Isn’t it nice to see Mayor Nepotism and Simon Spend not only looking after their friends and improving their personal ‘international profiles’ but they’re also keeping plenty of freebie tickets for themselves rolling in.
What better way to spend public money is there?