Tag Archives: George Ferguson

CITY COUNCIL CUTS WATCH: MAKE AS MUCH NOISE AS YOU LIKE!

Annoying-noise-001Black Friday was the start of a new Christmas tradition in Bristol. Welcome to Make-as-much-noise-as you-like-at-night-in-the-lead-up-to-Christmas-time (is there not a catchier title for this? Ed.).

In an unprecedented move, Bristol City Council are allowing everybody to make as much noise as they like at night until the 15 December because there will be no environmental health officers workings evenings!

This appears to be a direct result of mayor “Uncle” George Ferguson’s cuts that “will not affect frontline services”.

Know of any more council cuts that have affected frontline services? Get in touch!

 

 

AVONMOUTH BACK ON THE STREETS AS COUNCIL RENEGES ON DEAL!

Red pants aflame Mayor, “Uncle” George Ferguson and his large collection of turds (surely highly trained and skilled officers? Ed.) have RENEGED on their deal made this summer after some high-profile protests to hold monthly meetings with the residents of Avonmouth on POLLUTION ISSUES.

Protestors and the Avonmouth Dust Forum were told earlier this week by council officers that tonight’s pollution meeting was CANCELLED and that pollution issues could be dealt with by the TOOTHLESS, council officer-run Avonmouth Neighbourhood Forum instead.

And indeed it came to pass, no sign of any council officers at tonight’s meeting.

SOD THAT! It’s hi-ho, hi-ho back on the streets we go. Starting on DECEMBER 3 with a Bhopal/Avonmouth special. Come along. We’ve even been promised hot dogs and burgers!

Microsoft Word - bhopal.docx

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BRISTOL FERRY BOAT COMPANY SAGA: #1 WHAT IS A SECTION 216 OFFENCE?

The original name was the BRISTOL FERRY BOAT COMPANY, 42 per cent owned by Mayor George Ferguson, which went into full liquidation in February 2013.

A new name appeared between January 2 2013 and April 2013 – FERRYBOATS OF BRISTOL. One of two directors was IAN “BUNGLE” BUNGARD, a former director of the insolvent BRISTOL FERRY BOAT COMPANY. This is the company that never had more than £2.00 in assets during its existence.

A third company, set-up by “the gang” appeared in April 2013 – BRISTOL COMMUNITY FERRY BOAT COMPANY.

The very long arm of Section 216 of the Insolvency Act 1986 on “Phoenix Companies” says:

Prohibited name

Section 216 of the Insolvency Act 1986 defines the circumstances in which criminal and civil liability can be imposed on a director who acts, without proper notice being given or the leave of the court, for a company or even an unincorporated business which is known by a prohibited name.

A name will be prohibited where it is the same name that the liquidating company was known as at any time in the 12 months immediately before it went into liquidation, or where it is sufficiently similar as to suggest an association with the liquidating company.

This includes a trading name.

Criminal liability:

Where a company trades under a prohibited name an individual can be guilty of a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment or fine, or both for:
• acting as a director of the company; and
• taking part either directly or indirectly in the formation, management or promotion of the company.

An individual can also be liable under Section 216 for being involved in a business using the prohibited name, even if it is not a company.

Civil liability

Under section 217 of the Act, a person will be personally responsible for the ‘relevant debts’ of a company if he is involved in the management of the company in breach of section 216, or if he is involved in the management of a company and takes instructions from a person he knows to be in breach of section 216. The relevant debts are those debts which were incurred whilst that person was acting in contravention of section 216 or taking instructions from a person he knew to be in contravention of section 216.

What interesting times we live in …

FERRIES: MEET THE GANG

Ferry Boat owners

A document emerges listing the founders of the BRISTOL COMMUNITY FERRY BOAT COMPANY, the third of the Bristol ferry boat operations. This one appeared in April 2013 and currently owns the boats and runs the routes in Bristol docks.

You may recognise some of the names and not be surprised to learn that many of them are close to the Mayor, George Ferguson, who owned a 42 per cent stake in the BRISTOL FERRY BOAT COMPANY LTD that went bust in autumn of 2012.

We’re also pleased to see that, Sue Learner, described in the company’s promotional material as “Phillipa Bungard’s midwife” is among the gang!

Phillipa Bungard is of course of the ex-wife of IAN ‘BUNGLE” BUNGARD another director of Ferguson’s failed BRISTOL FERRY BOAT COMPANY LTD. He briefly ran yet another ferry boat company between December 2012 and April 2013 when this gang stepped in.

Ian Bungard’s FERRYBOATS BRISTOL was a mysterious entity that when wound up recently revealed it only ever had £2.00 worth of assets, which makes you wonder how it managed to function as a business and who owned the boats Bungle was chugging around Bristol docks for four months

The plot thickens …

FERRY QUESTIONS #3

ElizabethA boat was put up for sale recently. If you have a spare £15K you can buy it. It is called THE ELIZABETH.

Is it a coincidence that this is the same name as one of the boats previously owned by the now collapsed Bristol Ferry Boat Company?

As a 42% shareholder in the now collapsed Bristol Ferry Boat Company perhaps the Mayor of Bristol, George Ferguson, can explain why it seems to be registered to the Tobacco Factory?

http://www.apolloduck.co.uk/feature.phtml?id=379828

 

FERRY QUESTIONS #2

Ferry3

A Bristol Ferry Company Boat called THE MERCURY was sold by Royal Colonnade Initiatives, a company wholly owned by George Ferguson. Copies of two of the four dockets of sale are below, dated 31 October 2012 and signed by the Mayor of Bristol, George Ferguson.

While this boat is not amongst the seven or five boats owned/and or auctioned by the Bristol Ferry Boat Company, selling boats that this company had owned little more than two weeks before his beloved Bristol Ferry Boat Company collapsed, is ‘odd’ ‘strange’ and extremely peculiar to say the least. Can you explain this @GeorgeFergusonX ?

NOTE
The website URL link to the picture used to be this. However, after a whistleblower told Bristol City Council officers two days ago about this peculiarity and asked for questions to be answered by the city council officers, someone must have told the Bristol “Community” Ferry Boat Company as they have immediately taken down the picture off their website.

Funny that*?

* We’ve now received a cached version of that dead link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3A9vdJt4js1xkJ%3Abristolferry.com%2FourBoats.php%3Fboat%3DMercury+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

Ferry1 Ferry2

FERRY QUESTIONS #1

There were seven boats belonging to the collapsed Bristol Ferry Boat Company, according to its 2012 accounts that summer, when it bid for a fare paying passenger ferry route.

But only FIVE boats made it to auction when the assets of the collapsed company were put up for sale in December 2012.

As a 42% shareholder in the company do you have any idea why that might have been the case @GeorgeFergusonx?

Ferry accounts

GREEN CRAPITAL: YES, IT REALLY IS SHIT!

green cap

MELTDOWN

“IN life you often have to spend money to make money,” guffed SIR GUS HOYTY TOYTY, Uncle George’s pale green footrest, as the former line cook turned finance expert explained to us last November why he was paying a yankee CORPORATE MARKETER with no knowledge of Bristol or green issues a cool £250k to run the Green Capital shambles.

Meanwhile UNCLE GEORGE told us back in December, “European Green Capital is one of Bristol’s greatest opportunities and I wanted to find the best person in the world to run it. I am confident that KRIS DONALDSON is that person.”

George also assured us he had set the well-remunerated yank some tough targets, saying he needed to “raise millions”. Fast forward ten months and despite the tough targets it looks like George and Sir Gus’s brilliant appointment has raised a great big, fat, best-person-in-the-world ZERO for the Green Capital.

Indeed, so utterly hopeless was the yank that he was briefly PULLED from his post last month and then SACKED altogether from running the project he’s been paid a bomb to make a success. City Council Chief Exec NICOLA “LADY GAGA” YATES has now been given the reins for an undisclosed rate on top of her city council £140k pa day job.

Those in the know tell us, “it’s unlikely Gaga will be any more competent. She knows nothing about Bristol having been here about five minutes and her green credentials stretch to a paper recycling box in her office and a tin of organic coffee. Personally, I wouldn’t rely on her to find Sea Mills on a map if her life depended on it.”

Oh, happy days …

THE THICK OF IT

Listeners to John “DARTH” Darvall on Radio Bristol were treated to an entertaining Green Capital car crash last month.

Step forward yankee idiot KRIS DONALDSON “DUCK” – the sacked Green Capital chief exec who creamed a six-figure salary from the public purse – and his partner in slime Green Capital chair, plummy-voiced thicko ANDREW “SPESH” GARRARD from – would you believe? – the Society of the Merchant Venturers,

The undynamic duo were laid low by a series of Bristolians asking SIMPLE QUESTIONS during a phone-in about the Green Capital. For instance, ‘Betty from Westbury on Trym’ wanted to know why the council wasn’t able to keep the streets clear of rubbish and litter. A query way beyond Donaldson Duck and Spesh’s limited abilities.

It makes you wonder how a Merchant Venturer buffoon like Spesh ever landed the gig running our Green Capital? Could it have anything to do with the fact he was the second largest CASH DONOR to “Uncle” George’s election campaign?

Records seen by The BRISTOLIAN show Garrard handed a cool £2,500 of cash over to Ferguson to help get him elected. The biggest donor was Merchant Venturer (are you seeing a pattern here?) ANDREW NISBET who chucked George £6,244.

Other Venturers who splashed out to get George elected included TREVOR SMALLWOOD, former executive chairman of FIRSTGROUP buses and execrable establishment lackey, JAY TIDMARSH.

Indeed, over half of the cash for “Uncle” George’s election expenditure came from Merchant Venturers. What a surprise …

EVENTS DEAR BOY, EVENTS

More fun as what remains of the Green Capital’s team of out-of-town dickheads with masters degrees announced their SCHEDULE OF EVENTS for 2015 straight off the back of a fag packet.

Highlights include the creation of a TIRED CLICHÉ (surely blue whale? Ed.) sculptured out of rubbish, a few WANKY LECTURES featuring the likes of Guardian fruitbat-in-chief George Monbiot; a competition to design a bloody PHONE APP branded as a ‘Green tech festival’ and the opening event, inevitably featuring circus from CIRQUE “BOURGEOISE” BIJOU.

To pad out this total lack of anything much happening, Gaga’s Green Capitalists have chucked information into the programme about random Green stuff that’s already happening anyway.

Hence in February ‘ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING’ is listed as an event alongside ‘METROBUS’.
This is on the basis that “Bristol anticipates approvals from the Department of Transport for the region’s remaining MetroBus route”. And means Lady Gaga’s city council PR team will produce a gushing press release of more lying bollocks about their godawful BRT bus project. What an event! Be sure to tell the kids!

Also featured is Uncle George’s boyfriend and establishment brown-noser, LUKE “GISSA GRANT” JERRAM – the man who created the slowest waterslide in human history on Park Street.

He’s now being paid to put up 200 kids’ swings at an undisclosed cost to “to bring the fun factor to the Green Capital of Europe programme” despite the fact that plenty of us are having plenty of fun at the expense of Gissa Grant & Co’s Green Capital ‘crap factor’ already, thanks.

We say sack the lot of these tossers now and instead divvy up the money and dish it out to the city’s underfunded community groups that are being destroyed by austerity.

CENSORED!!! MAYOR’S FERRY COMPANY QUESTIONS

At 2.00pm this afternoon a series of THIRTEEN questions from a member of the public about the bankruptcy of the BRISTOL FERRYBOAT COMPANY were sent out to relevant councillors and managers at Bristol City Council in advance of tomorrow’s PLACE Scrutiny Committee where they should have been answered by council managers IN PUBLIC.

Mayor GEORGE FERGUSON‘s conduct as a 42 per cent shareholder in the bankrupt company and Bristol City Council’s role in awarding the basketcase business a series of tenders and grants over many years with no questions asked were the theme of the questions.

At 5.30pm today, council transport boss, PETER “STUPID” MANN, a close ally of the mayor, informed the chair of the scrutiny committee he was pulling the questions.

MANN’s excuse was that some of the questions were the subject of Freedom of Information requests. MANN was supported in this blatant ACT OF CENSORSHIP by council lawyers.

Of course, there is NO LAW against a member of the public asking a local authority questions that are also the subject of a Freedom of Information request. Neither is there anything in the authority’s constitution to prevent a member of the public asking such questions.

MANN and the – as yet – unnamed council solicitor are TALKING BOLLOCKS and CENSORING embarrassing information with potentially criminal implications.

The censored questions are here: http://issuu.com/bristolnews/docs/place_qs?e=0/9833673

The issues raised include:

1) The successor companies were Phoenix Companies (which means the evidence suggests that directors just walked away from debts to buy back assets at a heavy discount – with one of the directors from Ferguson’s company simply moving to the next one to run it)

2) SIP 16 infringement (a need to follow a strict code of practice laid down in law for providing information to creditors in order to resurrect a company from most if not all the same assets of the one just gone bust) – we believe this process was not followed

3) Section 216 Offence – all creditors must be consulted about the intention for a successor company to be named almost identically to the collapsed one. Not followed as far as we are aware. The Bristol Post stories where it called the new company by EXACTLY THE SAME NAME show this clearly

4) A failure to re-tender the routes of the Bristol Ferry Boat company – it is an asset belonging to the council that was handed from one dead company to its successors like sweets to a small child. No attempt to allow competitive tendering. No effort to maximize profitability for the benefit of council taxpayers.

5) A mysterious and glaring omission of who or how all the staff salaries were paid at the Bristol Ferry Boat Company (which would be paying an unsecured creditor and no one else which is illegal). How do all staff salaries appear to be paid in liquidators report in December 12 signed by Jane Salvidge? Can someone explain?

6) Possibly trading fraudulently in the summer of ’12 when the Bristol Ferry Boat Company submitted a bid for passenger routes across the Harbour (they were hundreds of thousands of pounds in the red) yet would have to have submitted a Pre-Qualifying Questionnaire answer to BCC saying they were actually solvent. BCC holds the PQQ completed by George Ferguson’s Bristol FerryBoat Company – but for some reason is reluctant to share it.

GEORGE FERGUSON: THE LIE

Here’s George Ferguson on 7 June 2014, just days after removing papers from his Mayor’s Forward Plan proposing to award a large contract to Avonmouth’s green industry polluters, BOOMECO.

“As far as I know we’re not giving any waste contracts to Boomeco.”

18 August 2014: lo and behold! Boomeco is given a new waste contract by Bristol City Council.