Richard “Wanksy” Hanks has ‘resigned’ as Bristol’s Director of Education but is officially on ‘sick leave’ for now. Allegedly, Wanksy got a bollocking by the cabinet over SEND just before his ‘resignation’
His replacement, Reena “Dolores” Bhogal-Welsh from the University of Bolton is an interim appointed outside any normal processes.
Sources say she’s “totally out of her depth” and is especially shit-scared of the Bristol Parent Carer Forum. Probably wise. They’ve seen off three of her predecessors in the last three years – Stubby Stubbersfield, Pervy Hurley and now Wanksy.
Also heading for the exit is Head of Education Psychology Vikki Jervis who, seems to have spent most of her work time on Twitter reading parents’ feeds and circulating the material around the council.
Who will be next out the revolving door before independent investigators arrive to look at the SEND spying issue?
Inactive “activists” and non-campaigning “campaigners” star in desperately shite sham report that council’s top lawyer is pretending isn’t anything to do with him
A little late but, as promised by outgoing Chief Exec Mike “Billie Jean” Jackson, Bristol City Council has published a heavily redacted ‘fact-finding’ report into their SEND spying scandal.
This is the scandal of senior education bosses casually obtaining personal information from the internet, including wedding photos, on parents with SEND children. With no regard for the law, this personal information was then gleefully shared among City Hall bosses and third party organisations to undermine the local Parent Carer Forum and the parents it supports.
The education bosses even appear to have attempted a spot of what’s popularly called “doxxing” by obtaining what they considered identifying information from the internet on parents and then outing them to third parties.
Luckily for the officers involved in this potentially unlawful conduct, their names have been redacted in the report. However, in order not to protect the guilty and help you avoid some massive tossers, we’re happy to name some of the key arseholes in the council’s senior education team involved in the spy operation: Alison “Purvey” Hurley, Director of Education; Vikki Jervis, Principle Education Psychologist; Virginia Roberts, WSOA/SEND consultant; Gale Rogers, Head of Children’s Commissioning; Jess Baugh, Commissioning Manager.
A number of unnamed individuals in the council’s external comms team, managed by failed journalist Saskia “Hindley” Koynenburg were also involved. Information on these individuals welcome. Why should they be allowed to skulk in the shadows and fuck with us?
The report, itself, is a grim farrago of half-arsed backside covering attributed to Bristol City Council’s “Legal Services”. Largely because legal boss “L’il” Tim O’Gara may not want his name anywhere near such a political document that may cost some of the idiots involved their jobs.
O’Gara’s report is just ten slim pages. Eight of which are wholly irrelevant and dedicated to a nakedly political and obsessive attack on the Bristol Parent Carer Forum (BPC), which two parents at the centre of the scandal are involved with. The council’s main angle on the pair is that they were “activists” and “campaigners” against the council and its SEND team and this was a conflict of interest with their roles at BPC.
The obvious response to this is, so fucking what? And what right do council managers and directors have to spy on “activists” and “campaigners” anyway? Do residents of Bristol effectively forfeit basic human rights and their dignity if the council randomly labels them “activists” and “campaigners” on the basis of unreliable evidence gleaned off the internet?
Having dehumanised their SEND spy victims as “activists” and “campaigners” with no rights, the council’s report fails to identify anything resembling a “campaign” or “action” from either parent. Instead the parents’ only apparent action was to discuss the poor quality of Bristol’s SEND offer on social media with each other!
When did conversing with friends, acquaintances and relatives become “activism” and “campaigning”? Who made up this nonsense, which is basically cover for a crude state assault on the free speech of Bristol SEND parents on the internet? And a blatant attempt to stop dissent and criticism of a failing local public service so that the incompetents running it can pump out cheery fake news about the service instead and continue to bank fat salaries they don’t deserve.
Helpfully, the report clearly indicates that this “campaigning”/”activist” schtick is all a load of bollocks. Para 16 says:
Remarkably, the report is openly acknowledging that its “campaigning”/”activist” concerns may not even be true but concludes that doesn’t matter because some fantasists at City Hall think they might be true! A piece of Alice in Wonderland logic that opens the door for council bosses to unlawfully investigate citizens on the basis of false facts and fictional concerns. So that’s all right then.
Another purpose of all this meandering drivel seems to be that it allows O’Gara to avoid the actual purpose of his report, which should be an investigation into spying on parents by council bosses.
Eighteen days after his election and the Reverend Rees still hasn’t managed to find a full cabinet for his second term.
Despite reappointing his ‘Infamous Five’, the two deputy mayors – Craig “Dick” Cheney and Asher “The Slasher” Craig – his anointed successor – Helen “Oh My” Godwin – court favourite – Nicola “La La” Beech – and aging makeweight – HRH Helen of Holland – Rees still has no cabinet members to run Transport, Housing or Education.
Neither is the Reverend intending, it seems, to reach out to the Greens by giving them some cabinet seats after they decimated his councillors and destroyed his majority at the election.
What is his plan then? Is the Reverend going to end all pretence of democracy in Bristol and simply let council managers and appointed One City business wankers run these departments any way they see fit?
Questions are also being asked about the appointment of La La Beech to the Climate, Ecology, Waste and Energy brief. Here, among other things, she’ll nursemaid through Rees’s deranged City Leap public asset sell-off to a multinational company. This may result in the burning of as much shit as possible in Avonmouth to generate loads of lucrative dirty (surely clean? Ed.) energy.
Alas, it turns out that La La Beech, in her day job as a corporate PR consultant, lists one of her clients as the National Grid. is there a conflict of interest here at all?
Which local Academy Trust is
charging its schools at least EIGHT PER CENT of their core income for “central
services” – one of the highest figures in the country? Step forward the
VENTURERS TRUST, the hopelessly underperforming education wing of the Society
of Wealthy Old White Men (Surely Merchant
Venturers? Ed.)
Last year the greedy COLSTON
TOENAIL WORSHIPPERS charged their eight schools eight per cent of their
general annual grant (GAG) – the funding each academy gets from the Department
for Education. These charges are for
‘BUSINESS SERVICES’ such as human resources, financial services, legal
services, educational support services, property services and, of course, “PR AND COMMUNICATIONS”. The kind of
lucrative work, incidentally, that the toenail trustees and their wealthy mates
specialise in!
However, while charging our schools and children TOP WHACK FOR MARGINAL CRAP, the Toenail Trust has been struggling
on a number of fronts. In OFSTED terms, THREE
of its schools are currently rated as INADEQUATE
and another “REQUIRES IMPROVEMENT”.
Meanwhile, the chair of the Trust, Anthony Browne, DISAPPEARED over the summer following an expensive spot of LEGAL BOTHER. Although the precise cost
of this little escapade is yet to be revealed.
We do, however, know that the trust’s EIGHT SCHOOLS were charged £1.53M
FOR CENTRAL SERVICES in 2017-18 and this was about nine per cent of the £17
million received from the general annual grant that year. Oddly, the previous
year, the schools had been charged less than HALF THIS AMOUNT, a comparatively small £633,000. Where did all
this extra public cash collected by WEALTHY
TRUSTEES WITH LAVISH LIFESTYLES go in this age of austerity?
The same accounts also show that the Toenail Trust’s chief executive, HILARY MACAULEY, personally trousered
£145-£150,000. Just under £150,000, which the Department for Education has said
should only go to leaders for “EXCEPTIONAL”
performance.
The latest interim consultant ON AN UNDISCLOSED DAY RATE to run Bristol City Council’s half-arsed, partially legal education service is cheery Bath resident, Alan “Stubby” Stubbersfield. Like most jobbing consultants, Stubby’s main concern, rather than the education of our children, is to cover the arses of any fellow consultants so that they can keep their lucrative gravy train on the rails for a few more years yet.
Stubby was recently CONFRONTED at Bristol Schools Forum meeting about the relationship between a gormless predecessor’s decision to CUT payments to educational psychologists and the current inability – ON STUBBY’S WATCH – of the council to complete Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) for children with special educational needs.
The cuts were large too. Spend on educational psychologists in 2016 – 17 was £1,159,000, by 2018 – 19 it was £797,000. So, at present, the EHCP process, which should take 20 weeks is taking 40 – 50 WEEKS and without an EHCP a child is deprived of any support in school and – in some cases – even a school to attend.
Stubby’s response was cheerily oblique. “If you look at the attempts to save High Needs Block spend on psychologists … I think probably AN UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCE of that is in terms of that team’s ability to turn around assessments in a timely manner,” he blandly explained
Exactly what kind of fucking moron is it that can’t foresee that IF YOU CUT STAFF FUNDING, YOU CUT STAFF AND YOU’LL GET LESS WORK DONE? And why would anyone pay this level of moron a six-figure sum of council taxpayers’ money? Stubby, of course, sees it differently and AVOIDS BLAMING HIS INTERIM PREDECESSOR AT ALL COSTS
“I think there’s a question there about the extent to which we are appropriately supporting the ability of the Local Authority through its Education Psychology service to do what’s necessary,” he explained as if it’s all our fault.
There’s another question here too. Why are we paying interim consultant after interim consultant stupid money for stupid decisions they’re never around to account for.
The doc prescribing another dose of paralysis and panic
A BIZARRE AND RAMBLING SPEECH from city council social services director, Jacqui “Trust Me I’m a Doctor” Jensen, to Bristol’s long-suffering SEND parents at an event in June achieved little beyond richly demonstrating that Jensen is not up to the job.
As
an opening gambit, Jensen admitted that the judicial review launched and won by
SEND parents last year to reverse the council’s unlawful cuts to special needs
budgets – cheerily implemented by Jensen two years ago – created “A KIND OF MIX BETWEEN PARALYSIS AND PANIC”
in the SEND department. A department that she’s paid a fortune to run competently.
SO WHAT ARE WE PAYING JENSEN BIG MONEY
FOR EXACTLY? Couldn’t we just get someone in off the street on minimum wage
to create “a kind of mix between paralysis and panic” in the
council’s SEND department? Jensen then went on to make the weird claim that the
judicial review, won at great cost in time and money by Bristol parents, was,
er, “A TECHNICAL PIECE OF
CONSULTATION“.
Who knew? When did the council start doing
public consultations at the High Court with the expensive help of a judge,
solicitors and barristers working together to deliver a multi-million pound
bill to council taxpayers at the end? Is this a new best value approach to
consultations from our council tax?
“Not good enough,” heckled one
frustrated parent at Jensen. We agree.
