Tag Archives: Deeley Freed

THE SOCIETY OF MERCHANT NITE SPOT BOSSES

motion_i1_s4 — Bristol City Council managing Covid

Bristol City Council is using council tax money and government public health handouts for Covid to, er, promote nightclubs!

£15k from the Covid Outbreak Management Fund and £15k from the council’s Growth and Regeneration budget were used last year to pay the council’s ‘Night-time Economy Advisor’.

This year the money will come from the government Covid cash and from the council’s private sector partner, Sound Diplomacy, “an international consultancy” who are going “to develop a framework to capitalise on the cultural, social and economic benefits that night-time industries offer the city”.

Other partners in the Sound Diplomacy project include Master of the Merchant Venturers David Freed’s Deeley Freed; Merchant Venturer Marti Burgess’s Lakota nightclub; Motion nightclub; the University of Bristol; the Bedminster and City Centre BIDs and PfP Capital Limited

So who’s likely to benefit from the public money handouts that are likely to emerge from this corporate night time industry framework then?

Watch this space

CASTLE PARK DEVELOPMENT SHOCKER

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MORE WANKY FLATS FOR WANKERS ON PUBLIC LAND

News reaches The BRISTOLIAN that the Reverend’s council has quietly put a part of Castle Park on the market. The council’s parks department depot, which lies within the boundary of the park, is UP FOR SALE and nine developers visited the site on 7 June to measure up this prime city centre site for luxury flats.

The strategy being pursued by the council to cash in big time by disposing of our park is becoming clear. With Merchant Venturers Deeley Freed holding a development option and biding their time to grab more land at St Mary-Le-Port at the west end of the park, the council is now opening up the east end of the site for development. There’s A PINCER MOVEMENT TO BUILD ON OUR PARK!

Does anyone really believe that expensive bridge between the park and the old Courage Brewery where Channel 4 ponces are moving in to SNOOTY OFFICES soon was ever for the benefit of park users? Of course not. It’s for the wealthy to cross from one well-appointed luxury mixed-use development to another. The only playground we’ll be left with in Castle Park will be a PLAYGROUND FOR THE RICH.

Details of what will happen to the Castle Park depot are, naturally, TOP SECRET and therefore sketchy. However, expect another development based around luxury flats, open plan commercial space for ‘creatives’ and a few expensive food outlets. A further LAND GRAB from any potential developer of the depot also will be inevitable as they will claim they need more park land to make their development “VIABLE“.

They must be stopped.

ARENA CONFLICT: MAKING GREENHALGH

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Nigel “Independent” Greenhalgh, the council’s ‘Arena Director’ produced the official council cabinet report recommending that the Reverend SCRAP plans for an arena at Temple Meads in favour of a mixed use development. Advice the Reverend happily accepted on September 3.

Naturally Greenhalgh, as is the way at the Reverend’s council, isn’t actually an employee of Bristol City Council. Instead he’s a WELL-REMUNERATED CONSULTANT operating through a service company, which sounds like a shit early 90s rave act – ELEV8.

It’s well worth noting some of elev8’s past and present clients. For example, according to the company’s website, elev8 represented ‘CRIBBS PATCHWAY NEW NEIGHBOURHOOD’, the group of landowners who masterplanned, along with South Gloucestershire Council, the proposed development of Filton airfield. The very neighbourhood where Malaysian corporation, YTL, now wish to put an arena!

Also, according to elev8’s website, they continue to work for DEELEY FREED – who have an option on ‘CRIBBS URBAN VILLAGE‘, a development site in the Filton area. Greenhalgh and his firm are therefore an interested party in siting an arena at Filton and the effect this might have on land and property prices there.

What this all means is that Greenhalgh, his company elev8 and his clients in Filton may make a LOT OF MONEY from cancelling the arena at Temple Meads and promoting one at Filton instead.

What better person than Greehalgh is there, then, to write an INDEPENDENT REPORT for the Reverend and his cabinet asking them to SCRAP an arena at Temple Meads and start PROMOTING Filton as the ideal venue!

What do you mean conflict of interest?

ARENA REPORT MASSIVE CONFLICT SHOCKER!

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Can we be the first to thank Nigel “Independent” Greenhalgh, The Reverend Rees’s personally appointed ‘Arena Director’ for his sterling work on our behalf producing an official council report recommending the Reverend immediately scrap plans for an arena at Temple Meads?

Naturally Greenhalgh, as is the way at the Reverend’s council, isn’t actually an employee of the council. Instead he’s a well remunerated consultant operating through a service company, which sounds like a shit early 90s rave act – elev8.

It’s especially worth noting some of elev8’s past and present clients. For example, according to the company’s website, elev8 represented ‘Cribbs Patchway New Neighbourhood’, the group of landowners who masterplanned, along with South Gloucestershire Council, the proposed development of Filton airfield. The very neighbourhood where Malaysian corporation, YTL, wish to put their arena!

Also, according to elev8’s website, they continue to work for Deeley Freed – who have an option on ‘Cribbs Urban Village‘, a development site in the Filton area. They are therefore a highly interested party in creating an arena at Filton!

What this all means is that Greenhalgh, his company elev8 and his clients in Filton all stand to make an awful lot of money from cancelling the arena at Temple Meads and promoting one at Filton instead.

What better person than Greehalgh is there, then, to write an independent report for the Reverend and his cabinet recommending that they scrap an arena at Temple Meads and start promoting Filton as the ideal venue!

What do you mean conflict of interest?

NO RED TAPE FOR REDPANTS’ PALS! MAYOR FERGO TO GIVE MERCHANT VENTURERS FREE REIN IN PARKS & LIBRARIES..?

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Mayor George Ferguson’s old friends and colleagues in the rich posh boys’ club the MERCHANT VENTURERS seem to be doing all right out of his administration…

STEPHEN PARSONS, in his role as chair of the governors of BRISTOL CATHEDRAL SCHOOL, looks set to take over TWO FLOORS of the Bristol Central Library with few questions asked for his primary ‘free school’ project.

DAVID FREED, director of upmarket property developers DEELEY FREED, has been handed a sizable chunk of CASTLE PARK to concrete over. At least we now know what Mayor Redpants meant when he said he was going to get things done.

Nothing to see here, honest!

Meanwhile, Fergo’s extensive and highly involved business interests in the city have attracted the attention of the council’s official auditors, Grant Thornton. “[A] review of the Mayor’s declarations of interest found a number of organisations with which the Council have had interaction which have not been included within the related parties transactions note,” they say in their ‘Audit Findings for Bristol City Council’.

No doubt it’s all just a big misunderstanding that cash-strapped millionaire George will set straight when he’s able to take time out of his busy schedule.

Edited to add:

It seems that the audit report linked to above is now mysteriously ‘unavailable’ on the Bristol City Council website – so download it direct from The BRISTOLIAN website here!

Edited again to add:

It would now appear that the Council decided to change the document’s address on the BCC website (at around 6pm on a Friday afternoon!) as soon as it was realised that The BRISTOLIAN was linking to it.

You can find the document in question via this direct link, or you can click on the link at item 11 on the agenda of the Audit Committee meeting of 24 September 2013 here…

FERGO GOES THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS ON CASTLE PARK CONSULTATION!

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As the 18 October deadline looms for public submissions on the ‘Central Area Action Plan’ (which will seal the fate of Castle Park and decide just how much of the city centre green space will be COVERED IN CONCRETE) a recent music festival was an interesting test of the council’s resolve.

Having won a reprieve for its turn-it-into-a-shopping-mall strategy with the knocking back of the Town Green application in 2009, Bristol City Council has since tried to tread softly with the passionate Park Users’ Group. That is, of course, until this weekend just gone, when with less than a month before the CAAP consultation closes they rented out the popular urban park – despite all the public rights of access involved – to £30-a-head commercial event Tokyo Dub. Given infamous local unwillingness to spend money to get into public spaces, and with just sixty security (85% of them from that well-known Bristol neighbourhood Brighton) to watch over a licensed crowd of 5,000 with only rickety Heras fencing to contain them, this was certainly a BOLD MOVE.

CAAP February 2012 (development area in orange)

But it’s by no means the boldest move being made at Castle Park: that honour would appear to go to our old friend MAYOR GEORGE FERGUSON. Despite being a man who as a graduate of the University of Bristol and a qualified architect presumably knows how to use a ruler and read a map, poor old Fergo has been having some proper trouble with sizes and scales when faced with angry Bristolians who accused him of putting Castle Park under threat. Under threat? Fergo?? How!?

Well, by SNEAKILY EXTENDING THE BORDERS of the potential development area. Fergo, though, claimed not to be able to see how the September 2013 ‘Preferred Options’ map of the Castle Park development clearly covers a larger area that that on February 2012’s ‘Options Consultation’ document, which only identified the empty bank buildings and car park at the St Mary-le-Port end of the park as suitable for development. In fact, the February 2012 map even clearly marks out the surrounding parkland as ‘Important Open Space’, signalling its protection.

CAAP September 2013 (development area bounded in white)

Not so on Fergo’s watch though, as the millionaire mayor made clear in EVER MORE FEVERISH tweets in which he effectively claimed that black was white and up was down… “It’s a decrease [in development size] if anything,” blurted out the panicky Merchant Venturer, before retreating away from the argument as fast as he could.

But then despite his well-cultivated image of being a touchy-feely, save-the-trees kinda guy, Fergo’s was after all the go-to hip architect for the COUNCIL’S PREFERRED DEVELOPERS Deeley Freed, back during Fergo’s pre-mayor days and when they needed a bit of local credibility due to public opinion being very much against them.

This time though it’s Fergo feeling the lash of the public’s tongue – especially now his spin doctor Claudia Jean has left the building (though not before rather unsuccessfully attempting to combine aloofness, charm and hey-guys-I-can-laugh-at-myself sense of humour) leaving Gorgeous George with only LONG-SUFFERING BAG-CARRIER ZOE SEAR to keep him from sticking his foot in his mouth more than once a day (or “setting the news agenda” as those meejah professionals in Shitty Hall like to call it). Whether this will prove a good or a bad thing for Castle Park remains to be seen.

As does the reason behind why a supposed environmentalist like Fergo is so keen to see trees chopped down, green spaces removed from public use and a much-loved park extensively concreted over…