Tag Archives: Full Council

PLASTICENE MAN BAMBOOZLED BY NIMBIES

A successful council motion last night to preserve the city’s greenbelt and wildlife areas such as the Novers/Western Slopes from the Reverend’s looney housing developer mates really upset the developer-friendly Labour Group.

The Reverend, naturally, had one of his regular and embarrassing hissy fits in public at councillors after not getting his own way and being stopped from concreting over any more of our open spaces. But also joining him was our dear friend Tom “Plasticene Man” Renhard, the city’s new Cabinet member for housing, tasked with reading out crap speeches badly written for him by the Reverend’s PR sideman Kev “Slo” Slocombe.

After the Labour defeat, Plasticene Man, Labour’s latest ridiculous working class voice of the people, was heard privately dismissing campaigners, insisting that none of the Western Slopes campaigners lived locally and that they were all “posh nimbys”.

For starters, how can you live out of an area and be a Nimby?

THE EMPEROR’S NEW WAGES

HEAD BOY SALARY SHAME EXPOSED

BRISTOLIAN PUBLISHER DEMANDS TO BE SUED!

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Steve Norman has written to all of Bristol City Councillors today demanding that they take LEGAL ACTION against him immediately for “revealing the truth about their relationship with Camelot and Meridian,” our bent council’s close business partners.

Camelot and Meridian are the CROOKS housing vulnerable people and migrants in inadequate conditions in rat infested council properties that don’t meet the council’s own basic standards of safety. Unusually, these buildings have been handed to the businesses FREE OF CHARGE by council property boss Robert “Spunkface” Orrett.

Steve has once again openly published and distributed the statement, banned yesterday from the Full Council for for being – according to council officers – “DEFAMATORY“.

We continue to await word from the idiot Rev Rees and his legal eagles or the wankers at Camelot that they are taking action against our open publication and distribution of this DEFAMATORY MATERIAL, however.

Is there a problem of some sort? Like, perhaps, everything the statement says is true? This might also explain why council officers REFUSED yesterday to let the resident change their statement and remove any allegedly defamatory clauses the officers cared to identify? (Thus far these legal pro’s have identified ZERO defamatory clauses to anyone)

It’s a cover-up!

Steve’s email is below:

From: steven norman
Sent: 14 December 2016 09:38
To: Mayor and all councillors

Subject: RE: WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

BCC have threatened legal action against anyone revealing the truth about their relationship with Camelot+Meridian, i’m sharing this! So has any ONE OF YOU GOT THE COURAGE TO ASK WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE OR WILL YOU ALL DO YOUR NORMAL TRAIT AND BURY YOUR HEADS LIKE OSTRICHES OUTSIDE THE BIG HOUSE ON THE GREEN?

MESSAGE FOR THE GREAT LEGAL EAGLES OF BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL SUE ME COME AND GIVE IT A GO LETS SHOW THE PEOPLE OF BRISTOL THE TRUTH

Address For Service Of Papers Mr Stephen Kenneth James Norman, Antona Court, Antona Drive Bristol BS11 9RL

“I am a resident/property guardian at Broomhill EPH, owned by Bristol city council (BCC) and formerly an elderly persons home. Currently and for the past 3 years, while I have been living here, it was leased to Camelot property management LTD, a private company, providing a short-term security solution, by renting rooms within what would otherwise be vacant properties.

However, Is it appropriate for Bristol City council to have dealings with Camelot property management? Camelot property management entered into a contract with Bristol city council in September 2013. There have been between 5 and 20 guardians living at Broomhill EPH since then. Against the law, with the knowledge of some within Bristol City Council, Camelot operated Broomhill, without a HMO license for 3 years (needed when more than 5 unrelated people live there. Broomhill is a large HMO having many rooms and over 3 story’s). After the eventual visit by the councils EHO and subsequent improvement notice, no works were done, up to the expiry of the improvement notice and yet Camelot were allowed to operate without a HMO license from November 2013 until November 2016. The property has never met the requirements of such a license and even now after the license was granted, there is an improvement notice issued for substantial works to make the property up to the required standards. This notice has now run out and no works were carried out, until a week ago, when strip lighting was installed, so we are still living in dangerous and substandard housing conditions, with no heating, fire safety measures, or hot water.

The members of the public living there as property guardians have suffered numerous incidents of harassment, including physical, verbal and racial abuse at the Hands of Camelot staff members. Illegal fines have been issued for sums of money with no legal binding and pressure has been applied for guardians to pay these or be issued with notice to leave properties. In addition to this Camelot have committed multiple breaches of their contract agreement with Bristol city council. Failing to supply hot water, removing showers, not maintaining the fire alarm system, removing fire doors and lighting to name just a few.

In my license agreement with Camelot I have paid council tax for over 3 years. I, personally have been informed by the council tax office, that there is no liability nor account, for any council tax to be collected for Broomhill EPH, as it is still a council tax exempt property. Should all guardians who lived at the property over the past 3 years receive this money back, as the property is still exempt for council tax? So why does Bristol city council have any dealings with such an unscrupulous, negligent, potentially fraudulent and therefore criminal company, with a flagrant disregard for their tenants welfare? After all, Hackney Council in London terminated its contract with Camelot in 2015 in similar circumstances.

Clearly regarding not issuing the mandatory license for an HMO, a department within Bristol city council have been in collusion with Camelot for not enforcing their own regulations and therefore the law. In the last 6 months we have discovered that Camelot in another Camelot run BCC property has used forced illegal evictions, with 4 Camelot employees removing a woman from a property late at night in her night clothes, being permitted to take her medication from the fridge, but none of her other property. Another Camelot run BCC property has been sublet to a third party (Meridian), housing as many as 40 of their workers with no agreement/contract in place whatsoever, collecting their rent in cash per person weekly. Other properties have unresolved issues with rat infestations. Also there are several allegations of criminal acts carried out by Camelot staff contrary to the protection from eviction act 1977, due to be heard in court early 2017. In light of this information we would like to know what Bristol city’s response to this is?

We would like to request BCC recognize Camelot ‘guardians’ as council tenants and not licensees. We also would like BCC to acknowledge that some of their workers wrongfully colluded with Camelot property management, particularly over the HMO license. It is up to BCC whether they re-house all residents currently, in their Camelot-run BCC properties, with decent accommodation and legal contracts.

Please can I have a full written response to this statement?”

GREEDY BOSSES SCORE THEIR MASSIVE CASH BOOST

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Rejoice! It has come to pass! Two thirds of Bristol’s councillors have voted to RAISE the council’s senior bosses’ salaries by up to 20 PER CENT. Just as we revealed they were conspiring to do in the last issue of The BRISTOLIAN.

An elite group of bosses – already in THE TOP ONE PER CENT OF EARNERS in the city – can now look forward to enhanced pay packets from this month. The council’s three strategic directors will now be struggling along on £136K A YEAR while 29 service directors can look forward to pay packets of up to £110K A YEAR. Up from £90k!

Meanwhile councillors made NO PAY OFFER whatsoever to the rest of their long-suffering, low paid staff whose salaries have STAGNATED for at least eight years. The little people who do all the work can fuck off as far as Bristol City Councillors are concerned.

Many from the establishment political parties – LABOUR, TORIES and GREENS – with the exception of a few maverick Lib Dems, supported this insane salary rise for bosses. Delivered under the guise of a pay policy claiming to REDUCE INEQUALITY between the lowest paid and the highest paid at the council by, er … Increasing the wages of the best paid!

While you expect bent Tories to stuff the pockets of the wealthy with public money, it’s extraordinary that the so-called progressives of the Labour and Green parties back these pay rises for the ONE PER CENT OF HIGHEST EARNERS. Especially when both parties are pretending – during the mayoral elections at least – that they are going to tackle inequality in Bristol.

Both parties also happily supported the unproven claim by Mayor Toryboy that these fat cat salaries have to be increased to attract “THE BEST TALENT“. Because obviously you need “talent” to shuffle paper, sit in meetings and fail to deliver a transport plan for your key capital project don’t you? It also takes “talent”, presumably, to keep your work and its finances TOP SECRET at all costs from the public you serve.

In reality, there’s ZERO EVIDENCE to show higher salaries to bosses improves anything at all. It’s as big an economic myth as the Tories’ notorious “TRICKLE DOWN THEORY“, which claims making the rich richer will make poor people wealthier.

Even the trade unions seem to be in on this CRUDE SCAM to benefit the bosses and not the workers. We’ve seen no public objection from the three main unions at the council – Unison, Unite and the GMB – to this scandalous pay rise for the rich or any attack on the LIES AND DISTORTIONS used to implement it.

Perhaps it’s time for workers at the council to organise themselves?

TOWN HALL FAT CATS ATTEMPT WAGE HEIST

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Service directors take lunch

A council pay policy report talking up the living wage and shoved in front of councillors on the Human Resources Committee last month claimed that the council’s new SENIOR MANAGEMENT PAY POLICY, apparently conjured out of thin air, is that the salary of Strategic Directors will be 85% of the City Director’s salary of, allegedly, £160k.

What this means, then, is that the council’s four strategic directors, struggling along on just £130k a year at present should get a tasty little £6K PAY RISE to £136k a year! … So much for austerity and cuts at the council …

That’s a 4.6 PER CENT pay demand from the bosses then. Meanwhile, the little people who actually do all the fucking work will be lucky to see a one per cent pay rise this year. Not that their bosses, busy FEATHERING THEIR OWN NESTS, have tried to get them any kind of pay rise at all.

Also joining in with this latest FAT CAT PAY BONANZA at the Counts Louse were 19 Service Directors. In their case, councillors are instructed to up the pay of this well paid shower of twerps “IN LINE WITH THE MARKET RATE“.

The “market rate” being £94,601, up from £90,989. That’s a cool FOUR PER CENT wage demand from them then. Apparently demanded – with a straight face – while these service directors personally take an AXE to public services in the name of austerity.

Adding to the sense of WHOLESALE RIP OFF of taxpayers and service users, bosses also demanded “An Uplift Band payable to Service Directors to reward exceptional performance.”

An “uplift band” that can earn a maximum of 15 PER CENT of total salary. In other words, service directors could earn as much as £110K A YEAR if they meet undisclosed performance targets based on secret criteria judged by themselves! But don’t worry, because bosses assured councillors they’d inform them immediately after they’d awarded themselves any “uplift band”!

The cost of all these proposed wage hikes appears to be in the region of £400K OF COUNCIL TAX PAYERS MONEY and no doubt these bosses have worked very hard indeed to set aside our money to sort out their wages for the next year in these straightened times?

But what about their staff? Are they getting a four per cent pay rise and a 15% “uplift band”? Well, we’re yet to hear ANYTHING AT ALL about pay proposals for them!

This pay demand – disguised as a ‘pay policy’ – now goes before all councillors at a FULL COUNCIL MEETING next Tuesday. And the Human Resources Committee, chaired by a supposed trade unionist, LABOUR’S Mike “Arselick” Wollacott is recommending councillors agree to bump the bosses’ wages up by 20 per cent while offering no pay rise to other council workers.

With trade unionists like this, who needs exploitative bosses?