Remember last year when the council’s useless pillock of a Director of Workforce, John “Bedwetter” Walsh, and his ludicrous arselickin’ sidekick, Facilities boss, David Martin “Bore-Mann”, threatened to sue Councillor Gary “Meathead” Hopkins and Councillor Richard “Bunter” Eddy for defamation after they said what they thought at a council meeting?
Bunter described comments by Bedwetter and Bore-Man at a HR meeting to discuss the outsourcing of council cleaners and security to Bristol Waste as “worthy of Dr Goebbels and the Third Reich”! While Meathead waded in telling them “I don’t believe a word of what’s been presented to us by the management side.”
Months later, with the Reverend safely re-elected, Bedwetter and Bore-Mann suddenly announced, to much hilarity, that they were suing this pair of robust critics of the Reverend for defamation.
Legal letters had been dispatched we were solemnly informed.Then we heard, er, absolutely nothing.
Until a recent article in the Nazi Post explaining Bunter might be sued again for comparing women’s rights campaigners to “fascists”during the recent debate about keeping Bristol’s strip clubs open.
Tucked in at the end of this article, was an explanation of what happened to that last libel action: “Both members denied any wrongdoing and the matter is understood to have been resolved recently by agreement with no further action.”
No sign of a retraction. No sign of an apology. No sign of damages. No sign that Bristol City Council bosses aren’t Nazis. Looks like it’s perfectly OK to call council bosses Nazis then.
Councillor Gary Hopkins now leader of an imaginary political party (watercolour & crayon, 2013, Guriben)
Another big shout out to “L’il” Tim O’Gara, the half-trained lawyer and full time posh twit the Rees administration has made their Head of Legal and Monitoring Officer.
At the Annual Full Council meeting on 24 May, L’il Tim presented a report to councillors, ‘Allocation of Committee Seats 2022-23’. The purpose of this was to “review and approve the allocation of seats on committees in accordance with the statutory requirements concerning political balance.”
According to L’il Tim, Gary Hopkins’ whacky new political vehicle, the Knowle Community Party, were entitled to an allocation of 2.86% of seats on committees because they had two out of seventy councillors.
Hence Hopkins and his Knowle sidekick Christopher “Copper” Davies nabbed a seat on the Communities Scrutiny Commission, the Resources Scrutiny Commission and the Public Safety and Protection Committee.
All well and good except for one small detail. There’s no such thing as the ‘Knowle Community Party’ as a simple check on the Electoral Commission’s Register of Political Parties confirms. This means the Knowle duo are actually sitting as unaligned independent councillors.
They are therefore entitled to an allocation of the square root of fuck all of committee seats!
With the election safely over and the Reverend Rees restored to his rickety pulpit held together with gaffer tape and the prayers of his best friends, including Bristol City Council Chief Exec Mike “Billie Jean” Jackson and Monitoring Officer, “L’il” Tim O’Gara, it’s time to get down to the serious business of governing Bristol.
And the first item on the agenda? Is, er, getting a couple of gullible council managers to sue the Reverend’s chief political critics, Councillor Gary “Meathead” Hopkins and Councillor Richard “Bunter” Eddy for defamation!
It’s been alleged in the Nazi Post that our dear old friend, the council’s useless pillock of a Director of Workforce, John “Bedwetter” Walsh, and his latest dimwitted sidekick, Facilties boss David Martin “Bore-mann”, have “served [Bunter and Meathead] with a defamation claim demanding a retraction, public apology and damages”!
This appears to be in relation to comments Meathead and Bunter made at at a Human Resources Committee Meeting on February 18 and reported in The BRISTOLIANat the time.
In response to ludicrous claims from Walsh and Martin that cleaning and security staff that they had formally consulted were entirely in favour of being outsourced to Bristol Waste from Bristol City Council, Bunter replied that the bosses’ comments were “worthy of Dr Goebbels and the Third Reich.”
Meathead also frankly responded to Walsh and Martin’s unevidenced claims with “I don’t believe a word of what’s been presented to us by the management side.”
Get on standby, then, for the trial of century as two idiot council managers attempt to sue two councillors for making fair comment on the basis of the evidence presented to them.
On the one hand there was ZERO evidence presented by Walsh and Martin to back their claims. On the other there were TWO trade union written statements that the staff involved were deeply unhappy with the management outsourcing proposals.
Two Bristol City Councillors are the subject of a formal complaint from the council’s ridiculous pair of senior Human Resources bosses Mark “Bashar” Williams and John “Bedwetter” Walsh. This is the result of the councillors standing up for the Council’s cleaning and security staff, which Cabinet agreed last month should be outsourced to Bristol Waste Company to help disguise a large hole in the company’s budget.
The BRISTOLIAN hears that Tory councillor Richard “Bunter” Eddy and Lib Dem leader Gary “Meathead” Hopkins are presently being investigated by the Council’s Legal boss “L’il” Tim O’Gara after complaints were received from senior officers about the conduct of a Human Resources Committee on 18 February 2021. Both councillors expressed robust concerns about the outsourcing at the meeting.
The same two councillors were the subject of a formal complaint alleging breach of confidential information three-and-a-half years ago following the controversial departure of former Chief Executive Anna Klonowski. who bagged a reported ‘Golden goodbye’ from local taxpayers of £98,000. Following an expensive independent investigation, both councillors were cleared of the daft allegation made by present Cabinet Member Cllr Kye “The” Dudd.
Bunter has confirmed to friends that he is the “subject of a complaint under the Members’ Code of Conduct” and denies any wrongdoing. He also told friends, “I am particularly surprised to receive a complaint from senior officers with telephone-digit salaries with reference to my attempt to defend the interests of some of the Council’s hardest-working and poorest-paid staff at the Human Resources Committee in February.
The timing of the complaint has also raised eyebrows. No complaint was made in the month following the HR Committee or the outsourcing decision made by Cabinet on 18 March 2021. Instead the managers have waited until the Local Elections to lodge a complaint.
Are this pair of HR scrotes trying to interfere in our election?
THE REVEREND’S ATTEMPT TO OUTSOURCE VULNERABLE CLEANING AND SECURITY STAFF TO BRISTOL WASTE GOES NUCLEARDURING HR CONFLAB
Handsworth Parish Council talk HR
The passing resemblance of last Thursday’s HR Committee Meeting of Bristol City Council to a Handsworth Parish Council Zoom session wasn’t just down to useful-idiot HR Director Mark “Bashar” Williams’ accidentally misinforming himself over whether or not he was still paying Colin “Head Boy” Molton the second highest local government salary in the country.
The meeting also had a special ‘Chair’s Business’ section dedicated to Director of Workforce John “Bedwetter” Walsh’s half-arsed plan to outsource his low paid council security and cleaning staff to Bristol Waste to save money.
It was this issue that had barking Tory nutjob Councillor Richard “Bunter” Eddy telling Bedwetter that his description of the outsourcing proposal was “worthy of Dr Goebbels and the Third Reich.”
The comment drew a weak Claude Rains impression from Bedwetter as he attempted to feign shock at being branded, on the public record, as a liar by a senior councillor. It’s also noteworthy that staunch right winger, Bunter managed to outflank the Reverend Rees on the left with his views on this outsourcing issue,
Bunter’s comments came partly in response to Bedwetter’s ludicrous claim that the staff he had formally consulted were entirely in favour of a move to Bristol Waste and Bedwetter didn’t recognise Bunter and the trade unions’ version of events.
Versions outlined in a series of public statements and comments to the meeting. Bunter said that the staff he had spoken with were “scared and mystified” and were “terrified of losing their job” if they spoke directly with councillors or made public statements, as is their right, at council meetings.
The GMB told the meeting “Not one member of BCC staff … has expressed a wish to move across” and “the vast majority, many of whom are long service, wish to stay with BCC”.
Unison’s Tom “The Red” Merchant got even more to the point. He told the meeting, “The affected staff are very angry indeed over this and we don’t see why we should be shielding anyone from what is an understandable disaffection on the part of our members”
Tom the Red was also bemused that Bedwetter had managed to consult with cleaning staff, many of whom did not speak English and require an interpreter for Unison to be able to speak with them. He summed up, “staff who face transfers feel like they are bought and sold like cattle and though this phrase really upsets HR it is how the staff feel and I don’t see why I should be shielding the organisation from this level of disappointment from so many staff.”
Who’s telling the truth then? Bedwetter or the unions and councillors? One way to find out could be to read Bedwetter’s formal “best practice in consultation” document. It’s published with cabinet papers about the outsourcing and is scheduled to be rubberstamped by the Reverend and his Labour Cabinet next week.
Bedwetter’s consultation report is just one page long and while it goes into some detail about the process Bedwetter used to consult staff (which didn’t include using interpreters), there’s no mention anywhere about what staff actually said about his proposed transfer.
It’s an odd omission for a consultation report to have no content. It also means Bedwetter is unable to provide a shred of evidence, despite having apparently canvassed their opinion in a month long formal process, to back his claim that staff he has subsequently tried to gag are in favour of his plan.
Who should we believe? Notorious Director of Workforce, John “Bedwetter” Walsh, called out at the meeting as a liar and unable to produce written evidence from his own consultation for his self-serving claims, or councillors and elected trade union officials who directly represent the workers in question?
Chair of the meeting, limp Rees brown-noser and University of Bristol PhD perpetual student prat, John “Welly” Wellington, did manage to apologetically squeak at one point, “I don’t think you’re a liar John.”
Although the Labour Councillor for Windmill Hill, who’ll be quitting in May after a futile term of unquestioning loyalty to the Reverend’s right wing crap, didn’t offer any explanation as to why Bedwetter had attended his meeting and talked his typical brand of bollocks.
But let’s leave the last word to professional Lib Dem gobshite Councillor Gary “Hefty” Hopkins who told Welly’s HR meeting, “I don’t believe a word of what’s been presented to us by the management side.”
Thanks to the hard work of a MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC, Frank Church, a number of emails between Bristol City Council and Malaysian multinational, YTL, potential developers of an arena at Filton were finally released under FoI in August. This saw, even, the Nazi Post bothering to read some emails in brief flurry of investigative activity courtesy of their local government correspondent, the fragrant Esme “DAN” Ashcroft.
“During the second of three extraordinary scrutiny meetings on June 20,” explained Ms Ashcroft, “Liberal Democrat councillor for Knowle Gary Hopkins asked when council officers were told to start drawing up plans for a MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT on Temple Island.”
Colin “Head Boy” Molton, the reverend’s PERSONALLY APPOINTED £1.5k a day regeneration chief replied to Hopkins: “It was around LATE AUTUMN last year when the YTL proposition came to the fore.”
However, observes Ms Ashcroft, “Freedom of Information (FoI) documents seen by Bristol Live reveal a SENIOR COUNCIL OFFICER was exchanging emails with Malaysian investment firm YTL LAST APRIL about the prospect of an arena in the Brabazon hangar at Filton Airfield.”
The senior council officer exchanging these emails was former Bristol City Council Strategic Director Place, Barra Mac “NUGGET” Ruairi, the man personally running Bristol’s arena project until he went to work for YTL, the opposition. But why was the Reverend’s personal property expert (troughing around £200k a year off the rates) Colin “HEAD BOY” Molton telling porkies about these emails?
Perhaps Ms Ashcroft should have paid a little more attention to Mac Nugget’s emails and the dates they contain? (To be continued …)
Anyone got any idea what’s happened to the HARTCLIFFE RECYCLING CENTRE, the state-of-the-art recycling facility for south Bristol that could be located on a 5-acre site on Hartcliffe Way?
Politicians of every shade of useless have PROMISED the facility for years now. While the hot air expended on this non-existent facility, if captured, could generate imaginary plans for the city for the next hundred years.
This recycling centre was originally touted by the Lib Dems’ Gary “Fuckbucket” Hopkins in 2010 when he was the cabinet member responsible for waste. However, the centre has subsequently been promoted by Labour, Tories and Greens, including the Reverend Rees who PROMISED to build the place by 2018 in his first speech to Bristol City Council in May 2016.
The Lib Dems even got as far as agreeing, at cabinet meeting on 4 July 2012, to build the centre and allocated £2million for the task. Alas, Mayor No-more Ferguson arrived in autumn 2012 and put the project “ON HOLD” citing government cuts. Although Ferguson subsequently found MILLIONS to splurge on European Green Capital eco-tainment for the wealthy, such as dumping a load of festering tugboats in Leigh Woods to “challenge us to think about issues surrounding climate change”.
The Reverend, having personally put the recycling centre back on the agenda in 2016, appears to have done NOTHING about it since and he’s now set to miss his own 2018 deadline for the opening of the centre. Will it ever happen?
Perhaps Bristol Waste Managing Director, Tracey Morgan, who seems to take all the decisions in Bristol these days, has decided she doesn’t want a recycling centre in Hartcliffe?
Gary “FUCKBUCKET” Hopkins, local Lib Dem boss and the undisputed king of ridicule, has reported a Bristolian to the police claiming ‘harassment’ after a four line comment appeared in the Evening Post on Friday:
After trying to contain themselves the officers at Broadbury Road police station happily dismissed the idiot time wasting liberal’s demented claim.
For, alas, it seems the cops at Broadbury Road have become a lot less accommodating of Fuckbucket’s personal foibles and requests since Southmead Police have started investigating their conduct with Hopkins.
Issues such as Broadbury Road cops handing Fuckbucket and his Lib Dem colleague, Mark Bailey, police intelligence regarding the Gothic Mansion at ASBO case conferences are now firmly in the spotlight.
Police are also becoming interested in hearing if the tiresome Fuckbucket is yet being investigated by the council for his behaviour. This was confirmed by the mayor and legal services a few weeks ago.
Can anyone explain why Lib Dem councillor for Knowle, Gary “FUCKBUCKET” Hopkins, and the Lib Dem’s chief whip and councillor for Windmill Hill, MARK BAILEY, were invited to attend a confidential ASB (anti-social behaviour) case meeting on 12 November 2013?
A confidential meeting chaired by the boss of the Safer Bristol Partnership, GILLIAN DOUGLAS, and a meeting that another Knowle councillor, CHRIS DAVIES, was invited to but sent his apologies for after being supplied detailed minutes. Avon & Somerset POLICE OFFICERS also attended the meeting along with COUNCIL MANAGERS from Pollution Control, Licensing and Planning as well as a city council lawyer.
Can anyone then explain why a case conference convened to discuss events at 20 Knowle Road in the Windmill Hill Ward was allowed by Ms Douglas and a city council lawyer to discuss various HEARSAY ALLEGATIONS raised by these Lib Dem councillors about an entirely different property – The Gothic Mansion on Redcatch Road in Knowle?
And can anyone further explain why issues to do with the property in Knowle Road that had been agreed as ‘NFA’ (no further action required) at an ASB meeting without councillors, lawyers or Ms Douglas present on 28 May 2013 were inexplicably reopened at this case meeting on 12 November when councillors attended and Ms Douglas appeared in the chair?
Then perhaps someone can explain why SENSITIVE and CONFIDENTIAL information obtained by Bristol City Council’s licensing team using COVERT SURVEILLANCE methods was shared with these councillors? And why sensitive FINANCIAL INFORMATION obtained by city council officers relating to the owners of Knowle Road and Redcatch Road was shared with councillors? And why sensitive POLICE INTELLIGENCE was also shared with these councillors?
Can anybody imagine councillors being invited to attend housing case meetings? Adult care case meetings? Or social services case meetings? Does anyone believe they’d be invited to sit in on criminal investigations by the police?
What on earth has been going on here? The council’s own guidelines contained in the council’s constitution under the ‘Protocol forMember/Officer Relations’ explains what should happen in very plain and simple language:
6. COUNCILLOR INVOLVEMENT IN CASEWORK
CONVENTION
6.1: Officers must implement council policy within agreed procedures. An individual councillor cannot require an officer to vary this and cannot take a decision or instruct an officer to take action. The councillor’s role in relation to case work is:
– to be briefed or consulted where there is a need to know;
– to pursue the interests of individuals by seeking information, testing action taken and asking for the appropriateness of decisions to be reconsidered.
A councillor’s entitlement to be involved is based on the “need toknow” and determined in accordance with conventions 2 and 3.
Access to files may need to be denied or restricted if one of the exceptional circumstances in convention 2.1 and 2.2 applied. Any access then allowed may need to be “managed access” (as described in convention 2).
COUNCILLORS
Councillors should avoid becoming unduly involved in individual cases and operational detail, except within clear procedures. Involvement in legal proceedings and audit investigations carries special dangers of prejudicing the case, and of personal embarrassment.
OFFICERS:
Officers should take the lead in pointing out where the boundaries lie in particular areas, recognising that:
– councillors legitimately adopt different approaches;
– councillors may legitimately pursue non-ward issues (for example, a city-wide community of interest);
– the special local knowledge of particular councillors may be useful to a particular case.
Officers should point out to the councillor when a restriction on the need to know may apply, explore entitlement with the councillor and, in cases of doubt, consult the monitoring officer.
Chief officers should ensure that their staff know how to obtain appropriate senior management support (particularly out of hours) when the extent of a councillor’s involvement is an issue that needs to be clarified.
And to avoid any doubt, here’s the relevant sections of Convention 2.1 and 2.2 mentioned above:
CONVENTION
2.1 Every councillor has the right to information, explanation and advice reasonably required to enable them to perform their duties as a member of council (the “need to know”) but not where:
– there is an over-riding individual right of confidentiality (for example, in a children’s or employment matter)
CONVENTION
2.2 Councillors are normally entitled to be given information on a confidential basis, the exceptions being:
– an over-riding council interest (for example, protecting its legal and financial position); and
– natural justice (for example, giving an individual the chance to respond to allegations).
Isn’t it becoming increasingly obvious that Bristol City Council managers are operating a private ASBO service for the benefit of serving councillors?
Anyone got any idea what’s happened to the HARTCLIFFE RECYCLING CENTRE, the state-of-the-art recycling facility for south Bristol that could be located on a 5-acre site on Hartcliffe Way?
