Tag Archives: George Ferguson

ASTROTURF AVONA IN ‘BIG SOCIETY’ SURVEY NONSENSE

AstroTurfii

Avonmouth fake ‘grassroots’ community organisation AVONA exposed in the December issue of the Bristolian has recently published the results of its ‘Community Survey’.

AVONA run by Ian “PULL MY STRINGS” Smith, the quisling puppet of George Ferguson, local Tory councillors and the Port Authority, mysteriously sprung up last year in the wake of the pollution scandals, community protests and law suits against the corporations that followed. Pro-business, pro-polluter AVONA is apparently being used by Ferguson as a ‘safe’ channel to funnel cash (and now it seems bullshit) into Avonmouth outside of the accountable Neighbourhood Partnership grants process.

It is reputed that AVONA requested funds from Ferguson in an invitation-only meeting in June last year to carry out a survey of local residents. Since then AVONA have refused to answer questions about how many people had actually responded to the questionnaire, but it seems it was pitiful; as one resident put it ‘no one gives a fuck about their organisation and no-one wants to be in it’.

Let’s take a look at what AVONA were asking residents in their (his?) survey:

Do you feel there is a need for a community bus in Avonmouth?  Yes or would like to know more: 80%
Would you be able to volunteer in running or maintaining a community bus service in Avonmouth? No: 78%

Hmmm, something fishy going on here….

Would you like to see the public toilets reopened in Avonmouth Village? Yes: 73%
Would you be happy to volunteer in the upkeep and hygiene of the public toilets? No: 80%

AVONA is having a laugh….now they want us to clean the bogs for free…

What support would encourage you to take part in learning activities? Free courses: 77%
Do you have a skill that could be shared with others in the community? Yes: 7% No or maybe: 88%

So we have to provide our own voluntary education whilst still paying our Council Tax?

How much of a police presence do you see in Avonmouth?
Never: 51% Monthly: 38% Weekly: 9% Daily: 2%

Many residents stated, ‘where are they?’, ‘what presence?’, ‘what police service? there is none’. Maybe AVONA wants us to set our own volunteer police force up?

And the big question….

What are things that negatively affect your health?
80% of residents responded: Pollution, dust, smoke, flies, smells, sewage, Sims Metal, Boomeco

And no follow up question to that in the AVONA survey, funnily enough…well maybe one…

Do you think massive cuts in public services are leading to ‘Big Society’ nonsense surveys? Yes: 100%

We rest our case.

MEET TINY TIM MARVIN’S SPIN

Lezard

In an effort to boost his flagging campaign – drenched in tedious corporate jargon and uninspiring political correctness – Labour’s mayoral candidate, MARVIN “LUTHER” REES, has found himself a trade union PR and self-styled Corbynite – “TINY” Tim Lezard – to polish his hapless image.

Is this Marvin’s latest effort to get some electoral traction out on the suburban estates he needs to capture back from UKIP and apathy if he wants to defeat Ferguson’s overwhelming majority among Bristol West’s wealthy liberals?

But is Tiny Tim the man to deliver these estates? A Corbynite mired in the tired old politics and language of trade union bureaucrats? Is it what South Bristol’s crying out for?

RED PANTS INVESTS IN SURREAL ESTATE

Rough SleeperBCC offers venture capitalists 3-6% profit out of its Property Fund for the homeless

Bristol’s homeless are now so thick on the ground that you can’t go past a public park without seeing shabby tents inhabited by those turfed out by housing cutbacks and ever-rising rents.

HRH Lord Ferguson’s response to this is to hand £5m into a joint property purchase fund with an organisation called Real Lettings – consisting of Resonance (a fund/asset management company), and St. Mungo’s housing association/homeless charity.

Big Society Capital, the government’s private investment fund will then invest a ‘matching’ £5m into this property fund’s purchases. These homes will then be rented out to 70-80 households of the ‘unintentionally homeless’, consisting of 80% families and 20% singles.

These new deserving poor are given no more than 2-3 years with St Mungo’s to “move up through the homelessness pathways” and earn the ‘privilege’ of renting independently in the private sector. Their progress presumably being sustained on zero-hours minimum wage jobs?

All this is contained in a public document, ‘Executive Summary of Agenda Item 7’, signed off on 3 November by HRH and rubber stamped by his ‘cabinet’: court flunky councillors Gollop (Con), Cook (LibDem), Radice (Green), and Massey (Lab). The Council’s intention – as written – is to ‘support homelessness’ (sic), by joining the Real Lettings’ national scheme as outlined above.

Much of the document is filled with cost projections, risk management tables and colourful graphs, with sub-headings such as ‘sensitivity analysis’, ‘capital appreciation’ and ‘cash yield’.

And a ‘net target return’ of 3% plus profit is anticipated for the investor, even after the Council, Resonance and St. Mungo’s have taken their cuts. It is explained that this route will be ‘significantly cheaper’ than lodging the homeless, as at present, in private B&Bs.

It is also disconcertingly stated that The Fund is an ‘unregulated collective investment scheme’, which disqualifies it from protection normally offered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Big Society Capital is chaired by Ronald Cohen of pensions collapse fame, who along with hsome friends in 2000 disappeared with the pensions of 544 long service workers from British United Shoe Machinery (BUSM). In total, £81 million vanished from three pension funds: Dexion, BUSM, and USM Texon… All faster than you could say Abracadabra.

A comment by Ashok Kumar MP on the unresolved scandal involving Big Society Capital’s chairman is worth quoting in full: “I think these people need flogging. I feel so angry on behalf of decent upright citizens robbed of their basic human rights… These are greedy, selfish capitalists who live on the backs of others.”

But of course, having such a person at the helm investing in a local homeless fund for profit will not be bothering Lord Red Pants or his sycophantic team.

NOT CLEAN, NOT GREEN

explosive-art-1434120503Bristol’s time as European Green Capital is not going at all well when it comes to the cleanliness of the city’s streets.

Even before the start of Green Capital year, Bristol had an unenviable reputation as the dirtiest place in the West of England. Government statistics reveal that in 2013/14, 10,472 incidents of fly-tipping were reported to Shitty Hall. This compares with 1,258 over the same period for South Gloucestershire and a mere 413 for Bath & NE Somerset.

Things haven’t improved much with the advent of the elite greenwash bunfight either. While the city’s great and good slap each others’ backs over their pretended environmental credentials, Bristolians from Lawrence Hill to Lawrence Weston are complaining about unacceptable levels of litter and fly-tipping in their areas.

But it’s not just in north Bristol that the locals are concerned about filth on the streets and the city in general. South of the Avon too, residents are complaining that fly-tipping is being made worse by the lack of a household waste recycling centre in Hartcliffe. The main reason there isn’t one is that the proposal that is being opposed by Mayor George Ferguson.

Presumably he thinks it’s acceptable for people in south Bristol to drive miles across the city to Avonmouth or St Philips, adding to the city’s congestion and pollution? Nice one George!

And when it does take action against litter louts and fly-tippers, there’s only one word to describe the council’s response – pathetic. Since 2010 only 120 people have been fined or taken to court by the city council for dropping litter, while in the BS5 area – one of the city’s hotspots – enforcement action has been taken against only 32 people.

This low level of enforcement is due to one major reason: council staff cuts. Before 2010 Bristol had a complement of 10 so-called ‘streetscene enforcement officers’ to deal with fly-tipping, litter, fly-posting, dog fouling and other such banes of modern urban living. These 10 officers were assisted in their work by 2 technical support/admin staff and a streetscene enforcement manager whose only other remit was to manage 3 dog wardens.

Following the 2010 general election and George Ferguson’s election as mayor the city was promised “no cuts to frontline services”. Yet the streetscene enforcement team has since consistently lost staff and no replacements recruited. The team is now down to 4.7 officers only and managed by a man with no knowledge of environmental legislation or how to investigate and prosecute a case.

Is it any wonder that reported fly-tips in the city more than doubled over the period in which the team has been more than halved?

The word from the streets is that this situation is unlikely to improve in the near future. Since August waste management and street cleansing have been taken back in house after Kier/May Gurney walked away from their contract with the council pleading lack of profitability despite doing a crap job and BCC never penalising them for doing so.

LOCAL AMNESTY ALL A-FIZZ ON CHINA

2008-6-30-guo-feixiong-2006-after-beatingChinese premier, XI JINPING, was in the country last month for a high profile state visit and to get brownosed by a British establishment desperate for Chinese cash to fund infrastructure projects like the Hinkley Point nuclear power station in Somerset.

To coincide with the CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY top dog’s arrival, Amnesty International published a list of high profile prisoners of conscience in China. The vast majority of whom are banged up for the crime of free speech and demanding democracy in China.

Among those on the list is a big hero of the Bristolian, GUO FEIXIONG. The pen name of Yang Maodong, a prominent writer and lawyer from Bristol’s Chinese twin city of Guangzhou.

Feixiong was SEIZED off the city’s streets by Guangzhou police on August 8, 2013, and finally arrested on September 11 2013 on a charge of “gathering a crowd to disrupt order of a public place”. His crime was to help organise a peaceful protest over BLATANT CENSORSHIP by the Chinese Communist Party of a local Guangzhou–based newspaper, the Southern Weekly.

Two years later, Feixiong remains in custody and still awaits trial on these spurious charges. According to his lawyer, his health has deteriorated while in detention and his lower legs are extremely weak. His sister and doctor say his condition could be caused from the HUNGER STRIKE he went on in protest at his treatment or from TORTURE.

His lawyer has applied twice for his release on medical bail, the first time in 2013 and then again in June 2014. The authorities refuse to grant bail, however, claiming that Feixiong poses a “DANGER TO SOCIETY”.

Feixiong was also imprisoned from 2006-2011 when he was SEVERELY TORTURED. This Included being beaten, ‘tiger benched’ and suspended from a ceiling by his arms with his legs bent back while being hit with an ELECTRIC PROD on the face, arms, and genitals.

Other Guangzhou-based citizens on the Amnesty list include TANG JINGLING, a  human rights lawyer, who was criminally detained in mid-May 2014 on suspicion of “CREATING A DISTURBANCE,” and WANG QINGYING and YUAN XINTING, who are close associates of Tang in the “Non-violent Citizens’ Disobedience Movement”.

All three have subsequently been formally arrested on a serious charge of “INCITING SUBVERSION OF STATE POWER” although there’s no sign of a trial.

Despite having an active Amnesty International branch in Bristol, which organises a SWANKY GARDEN PARTY at Bristol University’s swanky Goldney Hall every year, there’s no sign of the branch taking up the cases of any of these four prisoners of conscience from our Chinese twin city in any meaningful way.

Instead, it seems, our local Amnesty members prefer to sip sparkling wines in agreeable surroundings while Mayor Pro-Torture – himself an Amnesty member – is left in peace to regularly travel back and forth to Guangzhou to allegedly promote trade and pick up spurious awards from the torturers of the Chinese Communist Party.

Meanwhile, MERCHANT VENTURER Port of Bristol bosses Terrence Mordaunt and David Ord are similarly left in peace to seek financial support for their deepwater port plan at Avonmouth from the Chinese Communist Party bosses of the GUANGZHOU PORT AUTHORITY.

Surely we should be doing much more to support these prisoners of conscience held and tortured under our noses in our twin city?

FLY SWOT SWOTTED

The hugely entertaining ‘FLY’ protest by activists in Avonmouth at their Make Sunday Special event on September 13 managed to enrage someone other than lying MAYOR THINSKIN, the object of the protest.

A bizarre report of the protest cobbled together by the Nazi Post from film footage nicked off the internet even reported the mayor apparently hallucinating as he claimed “THE PROTESTER HAD FOLLOWED HIM AROUND WITH A PIG’S HEAD“.

Most people found the sight of this protestor dressed as a fly, with no pig’s head in sight, a cause of hilarity as he followed Mayor Boomeco around his UNINSPIRED EVENT.

However, one resident took a dimmer view of the mayor being harangued about everything from why his DAUGHTER’S CRAP CHARITY was getting so much cash off his council to the OPEN CORRUPTION in his environmental health department.

Appearing under the Post’s largely fictitious story of the protest came a comment by ‘FLY SWOT‘. He claimed the protestors “Happen to be bigger pests in the community than the flies”! He also called them “a band of three vile people” and accused them of “continually victimis[ing] individuals for trying to make positive changes in the area”.

Coincidentally, the same three people happen to be leading a class legal action involving over 200 residents against the criminal polluting firm Boomeco who created a fly infestation in Avonmouth in 2014.

And unfortunately for ‘Fly Swot’, who’s possibly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, his Nazi Post user account reveals his real name is IAN SMITH.

Surely this is not the same Ian Smith of Avonmouth who runs the unicorporated association, ‘Project Avonmouth’. And surely this isn’t the same Ian Smith who received £1,000 from the criminal polluters Boomeco into his PRIVATE BANK ACCOUNT last year  for the use of the community, which has now DISAPPEARED without any explanation from Smith?

Indeed, it is one and the same Ian Smith. Perhaps someone as equally community-minded as Mr Smith should contact the coppers and get them to ask him what he’s done with his community’s money?

NEW SCHOOL’S ROAD HELL

800_ashtongateprimaryschoolampmayor1-chrisbahn

The other side of the street: Mayor Cock-Up and friends opening Ashton Gate Primary

Much disquiet in Mayor Me-First’s SOUTHVILLE BACKYARD following the botched expansion of Ashton Gate Primary School into the old Imperial Tobacco offices on Upton Road.

Ashton Gate Primary School has now DOUBLED in size from a two-form intake to a four-form intake because of a population explosion in the leafy South Bristol suburb and the Upton Road site will eventually hold 480 children.

The original planning application proposed closing Upton Road as the school’s playground is on the OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD from the classrooms but this has not happened.

Instead, the council responded to objections from a few residents and people who use Upton road as an overflow car park by agreeing to leave the road OPEN to all traffic and promised to install some traffic calming measures instead.

The final planning decision states that the main reason for leaving Upton Road open to traffic was because of the loss of parking spaces and the fact that Upton Road is used as a diversion route when events are held at – wait for it … Mayor Self Serving’s TOBACCO FACTORY!

Some so-called traffic calming measures have been put in place although many parents are describing them as “PATHETIC“. One told us, “The ‘speed tables’ at either end of Upton road wouldn’t slow down a mobility scooter”!

Worse, there are no signs to warn drivers that a school is ahead and people driving past or through Upton Road are very confused indeed when they see HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN AND PARENTS flocking to an office block at 8.40am.

Neither have any crossing patrols been provided at either end of Upton Road nor yellow zig-zags have been kept to a MINIMUM in order to maximise the number of PARKING SPACES on the road.

Double yellow lines were still being painted onto the road on the Monday afternoon after the school had opened for the new term and the traffic calming measures appear to have been installed by a fly-by-night contractors as they resemble a “TARMAC TOUPEE“.

It has also become apparent that the classrooms at the front of the school cannot have any windows open because of TRAFFIC NOISE, which suggests it’s not a healthy site for a school unless the road is closed during school hours.

It’s also IMPOSSIBLE for any children to walk to school unaccompanied, which has always been seen as useful for year 6 children preparing to go to secondary school.

It’s blatantly obvious that the council have decided to prioritise pay parking meters for RPZ and supporting events at the Tobacco Factory above the safety of the children of Southville.

It’s not good enough. The Council must urgently agree to close Upton Road at least during school hours before there’s an accident…

SPIN WATCH WITH MATT BAKER #3: PAEDO SMEAR BOY WILL BE SUED NEXT WEEK!

mattbakerA semi-regular series on the ‘chequered history’ of the mayor’s new spin doctor, MATT “PAGE 3” BAKER, former bag-carrier and sleaze slinger for Labour’s hugely entertaining MP for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk.

Oh dear. It’s a full blown scandal!

It’s goes from bad to worse for Mayor Cock Up and his new spin doctor, Matt “Page 3” Baker.

It was revealed last night on the BBC’s North West Tonight news show that a Labour councillor in Rochdale who has been SMEARED AS A PAEDO by Baker will be starting legal action for lbel against him next week!

See this legal threat in all its glory. Just follow this link: BBC North West Tonight – Baker paedo smear story and the fun starts at about 8 minutes in.

We understand Baker has spent the last three days and a considerable part of his fee from Mayor Gullible trying to stop this being broadcast. Tragically he failed!

We also understand that while Baker told Rochdale Online last week he had “no recollection or record of sending this email [smearing a Labour colleague as a paedo]”, Baker has now claimed to a BBC reporter that his email account must have been “hacked”!

What will his tall story be next week?

SPIN WATCH WITH MATT BAKER #2: NAMING THE NAMES

mattbakerA semi-regular series on the ‘chequered history’ of the mayor’s new spin doctor, MATT “PAGE 3” BAKER, former bag-carrier and sleaze slinger for Labour’s hugely entertaining MP for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk.

Your caring, sharing, sleuthing BRISTOLIAN has managed to track down some information on the fake internet accounts run by Mayor Sleazeball’s new spin doctor, MATT “PAGE 3” BAKER when he was employed by Rochdale MP, SIMON DANCZUK.

It seems Baker and Danczuk first met when working on The Big Issue In The North in the late 90s. Danczuk left to set up VISION TWENTYONE, a social research company, with RUTH TURNER who went on to be Tony Blair’s director of government relations and the chair of his Faith Foundation.

The company, which specialised in using government cash to set up citizens juries to come up with ways of improving communities, went tits-up when the Labour government cash finally dried up in 2012 OWING £222,000. Danczuk is quoted as describing his business flop as, “a difficult experience but I’ve learned a lot of lessons from it.”

So that’s all right then.

Baker, meanwhile, went to work at MANCHESTER BUSINESS SCHOOL until the pair became reacquainted in 2007 when Danczuk was selected as Labour PPC for Rochdale and Baker started working for him.  Although it’s unclear whether Baker was also working for the Business School at the same time. Efforts to establish his period of employment there are currently ongoing.

The BRISTOLIAN’s been told that even in 2007, “most of Matt Baker’s activities for Danczuk seem to have centred on the press and on ‘BLACK OPS.’”

Indeed, Baker was forced to admit that one particularly virulent contributor to the popular ROCHDALE ONLINE forum, a ‘MR PHIL SEDGLEY’, was in fact him! He was also using several other PSEUDONYMS  to attack opponents both within and outside the Labour Party. While actual people in the Labour Party were often bemused when challenged over letters to the press that had appeared in their name that they clearly had no knowledge of!

Then there was ‘RUTH LUGER’, who was especially nasty.  This turned out to be the wife of his boss at the Business School and it’s almost certain that he wasn’t just using her name but also her account.

When Baker was confronted on the phone about ‘Ruth Luger’ he’s alleged to have BURST INTO TEARS and begged that it didn’t go any further because he was sure he would get the sack and he had just become a father!  No action to stop Baker appears to have been taken.

During the general election campaign in 2010, Baker turned more attention to the local press.  He invented several names for himself with which to bombard the Rochdale Observer and others with stories and letters.  Among the names he was forced to admit were actually him were ‘SEAN CAIRNS’, ‘WILLIAM RILEY’ and ‘HARRY RUSH’!

He is also suspected of using many more fake identities. They all ‘lived’ in properties that were either empty or didn’t exist at all and he was able to get away with it because the papers only published a road name rather than a number. All these MADE-UP letters and stories attacked opponents rather than supported his own candidate.

At the time Baker was living in neighbouring CALDER VALLEY and he had also become the campaign manager for one of the candidates in the Labour selection battle there. This started turning nasty too.  Baker was assumed to be behind much of the poison that had been injected into proceedings and was quite often turned away from Labour Party meetings.

The names he was using to write to the ROCHDALE OBSERVER even started to appear in the HALIFAX EVENING COURIER. Again, always attacking opponents.

So with Baker now installed in the hot seat in Bristol and running his campaign, it’s pretty clear what type of campaign we can expect from Mayor Smear isn’t it?

GEORGE’S LEAFLET BELLYFLOP

George Ferguson leafletHurrah! George’s first mayoral campaign leaflet has appeared on the streets.

No doubt it’s been really carefully thought through by his dodgy new spin doctor MATT “PAGE 3” Baker so it looks exactly like something from the Green Party?

“Do you want a career politician running Bristol taking orders from a party leader in London?” it asks.

Er, no we don’t Matt, you huge plonker. But neither do we want a career politician running Bristol taking orders from a BENT NEW LABOUR SPIN DOCTOR from Rochdale, thanks.