Tag Archives: Cuts

BOSSES WAGES UP: ‘SAVINGS’ DOWN

When Labour councillors voted in November for a TEN PER CENT pay rise for the council’s senior bosses as part of an organisational restructure, they assured us that £750k would be saved by employing less bosses.

Alas, just a month later and with an internal consultation on these management changes underway for the next few months, news is SNEAKED OUT that savings will now only be £500k. And, of course, there’s no guarantee this figure won’t drop further before the restructure is complete.

Looks like it’s another con to increase wages at the top in exchange for fuck all.

UPDATE:
Oddly, an entirely different story emerged directly from the mouth of the Reverend Rees regarding these ‘savings’ (as opposed to the traditional term ‘cuts’).

When questioned this week about how much his new senior management structure would ‘save’ us, the Reverend claimed the figure had risen to £830K. Somewhat different to the £500k savings figure stated in his own finance report he signed off in December.

Relevant sections of the reports are here:

Meanwhile a presentation to the HR committee just today still claims the savings are £750k:

So where did this magical new pr-friendly £830k savings figure the mayor’s spouting come from? And why are the HR committee still being fed an old figure discredited in finance reports in December?

And what – to use the Reverend’s own farcical management-speak bollocks – is the “single version of the truth”?

FLY ON THE WALL: The ‘Save St. Marvin from His Plummeting Popularity’ Rally on College Green

The Fly: savouring Marvin’s shite

Enormous deposits of BULLSHIT were detected and tasted by The BRISTOLIAN’s six-legged friend flying overhead at Marvin’s ‘anti-austerity’ march and rally on Saturday September 9.

According to our blue-arsed correspondent, the vicar of Bristol and his collaborators in UNITE, UNISON, The Peoples’ Disassembly, ACORNYJOKE and the Labour Party made up a DISMAL, rain-bedraggled charade of no more than 2,000 on College Green.

It even included a big bouncy castle for speakers to jump up and down on while they whined infantile DRIVEL about ‘diversity’, ‘inclusiveness’, “hey, my dad was a Welsh miner and I was born in Southmead”, or “why I love Bristol” and other IRRELEVANT TOSH. Some of it even recounted in verse by ‘the city’s poet laureate’!

Every subject under the sun (or rain) was covered in fact. Except the one the march and rally was actually supposed to be about, namely AUSTERITY and THE CUTS. This ‘difficult’ subject was raised NOT ONCE by any of the OVERWHELMINGLY MIDDLE-CLASS speakers. One of whom was a LAWYER who offered WAGE-FREE LABOUR in her office to “any of you principled, under-employed folk out there who’d like some work experience”.

The sole rebellion against this pretentious downpour of excrement was offered by a small group of DISSIDENTS. During The Reverend’s speech, despite all attempts by UNITE stewards to thwart them, they repeatedly called St. Marvin out on: the fakery of his much-publicised ‘anti-austerity green paper’ submission to Theresa May (which doesn’t mention austerity once); his craven compliance with the Tory austerity programme when he could legally set a NO-CUTS BUDGET; the libraries and public toilets he’s closing; the social care programmes he’s shutting down; the park/street maintenance departments he’s stripping to the bone and the ILLEGAL ‘gate keeping’ of homeless categories currently being enforced at BCC’s Housing Department.

And all to pay for the continuing Metro/contractor disaster, his GOLDEN HANDSHAKES to the Dirty Thirty bosses; ever more ‘public-private partnerships’ with thieves and parasites and the hiring of a new generation of incompetent, six-figure salary ‘consultant’ twats to make even more of a mess at City Hall.

The REBELS were sorely put upon. First by ‘stewards’ trying to rip down a banner opposing Marvin’s cuts and, later, an enraged Momentum youth in a Jeremy Corbyn sweatshirt who tried to start a fight, before wisely thinking better of it.

In between her feast on the LASHINGS of BS spewed out through the stage microphone, The Fly observed a laughable attempt by one of Marv’s acolytes to silence the uproar, claiming the rebels were ‘failing to be inclusive to the hard-of-hearing group’! All of whom were, of course, straining to hear The Reverend’s every word.

Two of the disgruntled were also overheard wishing that they’d brought along a stanley knife or drill (as in ‘Driller Killer’, 1979??) to DEFLATE the rain shelter/bouncy castle over Marv’s head*. “Come better prepared next time”, buzzed The Fly as she savoured more of Marvellous’s shite.

*Of course The BRISTOLIAN warns that such a violent act could feasibly constitute a new ‘credible death threat’ to the embattled Mayor, instigating an ‘immediate investigation’ by the Stasi (ie. the UK Special Branch) – ed..

NEW YORK – LONDON – BRUSSELS – HARTCLIFFE

There was a very LOW KEY decision from the Vicar last month to continue spending £351k a year to keep open his Bristol City Council office in Brussels and to provide a nice little slush fund for his aimless mayoral trips abroad.

This will no doubt come as especially good news for residents of HARTCLIFFE, SOUTHMEAD, LAWRENCE WESTON and FISHPONDS. As, following his destructive Tory cuts budget that closed all neighbourhood Customer Service Points, the Reverend can now proudly boast that his council has an office open for business in Brussels but not in, er, Hartcliffe!

How convenient for paying the rent …

PARK RAVING MAD

A nice little earner?

The Reverend Rees has kickstarted his amazing masterplan to CUT ALL FUNDING to Bristol’s parks and get them to somehow generate their own income with the help of local volunteers and the underemployed fairies at the bottom of his garden.

On 24 February the Rev’s Strategic Imbecile for Neighbourhoods, Alison “Three Jobs” Comley, presented a report to councillors – Parks and Green Spaces – moving towards cost neutral – about this parks finance CONJURING TRICK.

A brief glance at the report reveals that £130k a year council boss Comley and her hapless minion, £90k a year Service Director, Gemma “Ctrl-v” Dando have simply COPY AND PASTED sections of a recently published House of Commons Select Committee Report on parks into their own report and told councillors to read it and call it ‘scrutiny’

The parks privatisation pair also helpfully recommended that councillors take a look at 2006’s Paying for Parks by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, a Blairite Quango put out of its misery in 2011. The paper contains lots of ideas for New Labour politicians on how our parks can be PRIVATISED and MONETISED.

However, Three Jobs and Ctrl-v themselves are tight-lipped about how they will replace the £5 million budget they intend to cut for the Labour Party and how exactly our parks might achieve this deranged “cost neutral” FANTASY FUNDING MODEL by 2020.

Another parks fiasco is about to unfold. Watch this space …

HARTCLIFFE HOUSING OFFICE BETRAYAL

Although the Reverend Rees and his hapless Cabinet sidekick Asher “Close-It” Craig haven’t officially announced it yet, Bristol City Council’s housing office and Citizen Service Point, Symes House, in Hartcliffe will be CLOSING on 31 March 2017.

Councillors actually voted that things like libraries, Citizen Service Points and neighbourhood partnerships would close or be wound down over the NEXT TWO YEARS. So closing the Hartcliffe office immediately doesn’t seem in the spirit of the plan.

Especially as Councillor Close-It had told both BBC Radio Bristol on 17 February and residents at a well-attended Mayoral event held at the Withywood Centre on 9 March that there would be a CONVERSATION with the local community partnership before anything happened

Councillor Close-It had even mentioned that the popular Citizen Service Point could be incorporated into the library situated in the @Symes building next door. Although efforts to contact Councillor Close-It to start that conversation have failed as she’s NOT RETURNING CALLS!

The Reverend’s cuts consultation last year provoked an impressive response from the local community in Hartcliffe. More people took part in the BS13 area than most other areas in Bristol. There was also a community petition with over 1,400 signatures asking the mayor NOT to cut services in one of the most deprived areas in Bristol.

Many people in Hartcliffe now say they feel BETRAYED by the Reverend and Councillor Close-It as they clearly haven’t lived up to the undertaking they had given to people. Instead, council bosses have been given FREE REIN to do what the hell they feel like in Hartcliffe and shut down the office without an exit strategy, a long term plan or, even, an explanation.

Another Rees policy delivery shambles.

MY MAYOR LOLLIPOP?

Despite a huge OUTCRY during a POINTLESS public consultation about his cuts, the Rev Rees is going ahead and CUTTING his school crossing patrol budget by £155k a year.

The Reverend explains, “We will look at ALTERNATIVE METHODS for providing patrols for school crossings (lollipop people) outside 80 school sites around Bristol. This could include VOLUNTEERS or seeking alternative funding arrangements.”

What’s needed here is the kind of LEADERSHIP that is usually entirely lacking from Bristol City Council. So we look forward to the REV REES and his senior leadership team that earn all the big bucks showing us the way and putting in some SHIFTS at their local primary schools.

Look out for them at 8.00am every morning at a school near you?

LIES, DAMN LIES AND MARV’S MANIFESTO

Number four on the Rev Rees’s list of ‘Our seven commitments to you…’ contained in his expansive and farcical ELECTION MANIFESTO of around 168 proposals was “WE WILL PROTECT CHILDREN’S CENTRES”.

So what’s this we find hidden away as proposal number 97, aiming to save a cool £1.5m, in the ‘Saving proposals recommended for approval‘ document the Rev’s PERSONALLY signed off to balance his Tory budget?

“Reshape Children’s Centres’ services,” it says here. “We will review management structures and combine some services to create EFFICIENCIES. We hope to keep 18 CHILDREN’S CENTRES open and find alternative ways to provide some of the existing services.”

There’s currently 23 CHILDREN’S CENTRES in Bristol, which means the Rev Rees is CUTTING Children’s Centre provision by 22%. Although the upbeat liar claims, “this proposal keeps our commitment to those services and the value they bring, and recommends a change to the way that we organise our offer.”

Not quite what the Rev’s manifesto promised is it?

‘BEST CUT OF ALL’ IS “DISGUSTING” SAY FAKE CAMPAIGNERS

THREE PEOPLE NOBODY’S EVER HEARD OF CONDEMN CONFECTED SHOCK IMAGE AS, ER, SHOCKING IN USELESS RIGHT WING RAG EVERYONE KNOWS IS FULL OF CRAP!

The Nazi Post has kindly published our hugely successful ‘Best Cut of All‘ front cover and poster so it can reach a wider audience. It’s published today under the excellent, if inaccurate, headline, “Anti-cuts campaigners condemn ‘disgusting’ image of Bristol mayor Marvin Rees”. 

The article features a few random nobodies from West Bristol – that the Post apparently found on Facebook and rebranded as “ANTI-CUTS CAMPAIGNERS” – who helpfully consented to condemning our artwork in the local yellow press. This is presumably so we can all have a good laugh at the Post’s expense?

Meanwhile, actual, real, anti-cuts campaigners from Bristol’s local anti-cuts group, BADACA, didn’t, er, condemn anything at all! Do we have a new media phenomena? FAKE CAMPAIGNERS?

Full article here: ***WARNING*** This link contains shocking bullshit: http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/anti-cuts-campaigners-condemn-disgusting-image-of-bristol-mayor-marvin-rees/story-30135187-detail/story.html#ipHBqQfKVokBpzXc.99

In case you care, the quote the from us that the Nazi Post won’t print said, “Could you tell Mike Norton he’s a cunt and we wouldn’t mind putting an axe through his Tory head?”

A word from the circulation department:

“We’ve had quite a good response from the street to this issue and only had one ‘negative’ – which was really more in the realm of worry about displaying the front cover rather than an objection to it per se. Even this hitch was overcome.

“Laughter or a shrug is the more common response.

“On the positive side we’ve already had two sell outs requiring re-stocks, and two places wanting our number in the anticipation of demand for more. A punter in one of the delivery venues shook our hand and said ‘I just love this paper – it’s straight from the heart with two fingers up to PR bullshit – I’ll show all my friends.”

Ho, ho!