Tag Archives: GOSW

VICTORIA PARK PLANNING: FUNNY BUSINESS

Dick Ed: road builder-in-chief

There’s some FUNNY BUSINESS going on with the Bristol City Council’s planning application to itself to build an inane cycle superhighway through Victoria Park.

The application appears to be a joint effort between Sustrans and the council’s Sustainable Transport Team headed up by “DICK” Ed Plowden, a career civil servant. Although many of us struggle to tell the difference between the local civil engineering outfit for cycling and Dick Ed’s department.

When Dick Ed’s minions originally uploaded the planning documents for their road on 28 November for comment by the public prior to a planning decision later this month, there were NO REPORTS relating to the impact on the ecology or biodiversity of Victoria Park. However, this was rectified last Thursday when these documents miraculously appeared.

Even more miraculously, the date listed for the uploading of these the documents that only appeared on 6 January was November 28. Creating the impression that the documents had been available to the public for SIX WEEKS when they hadn’t. How has this sleight-of-hand been allowed to happen and who authorised MISLEADING THE PUBLIC and a quasi-statutory planning committee in this way?

Naturally Bristol Sutrancity Council responded ‘NO‘ to “Section 13 Biodiversity and Geological Conservation” on their application form as to whether there is a reasonable likelihood of [biodiversity] being affected adversely. Although, due to some CONVENIENT OVERSIGHTS, this isn’t really borne out by their limited (and late) report.

Hall: long term prat

“Dick” Ed Plowden the man responsible for making this application arrived in Bristol as a lower middle manager for John Prescott’s HOPELESS Government Office of the South West (GOSW). A bizarre provincial civil service outpost based at Temple Quay that mainly served as a  repository for lower ranking civil servants who couldn’t really make the grade in London. Another alumni of the department is the Green Party’s Red Trouser fan-in-chief, Darren “TAMMANY” Hall.

In those days Plowden’s specialism was in CRIME REDUCTION. Then he waltzed into a senior transport manager role at Bristol City Council, apparently thanks to his experience of making a stately cycle commute to work from his large suburban pile in Knowle every day.

Judging by his approach to planning applications, former crime fighter, Dick Ed, isn’t much interested in reducing crimes in low-level local government corruption. In fact he’s helping create it!

HALL OVER

darren pratIs it the fastest failed political career in the city’s history? Darren “TAMMANY” Hall, the Green’s parliamentary candidate for Bristol West last year, appears to have quit the Bristol Green Party in a huff. Or was he pushed?

Hall, a former middle-ranking bureaucrat at the laughably inept GOVERNMENT OFFICE OF THE SOUTH WEST, joined the Bristol Green Party barely eighteen months ago and ascended their greasy reclaimed wood pole at remarkable speed.

Immediately handed the Green target seat of BRISTOL WEST to contest in last year’s General Election, Hall, was also made the Green party’s national spokesman on HOME AFFAIRS. His partner, “Champagne” Charley Pattison, a low ranking barrister, even got in on the action too as the party’s legal spokesman.

After this rocket-fuelled promotion, it all went DOWNHILL rather rapidly for Hall. His 2015 general election campaign, spent sipping cappuccinos with various members of the press on Stokes Croft while spouting inanities from trite American progressive politics bestsellers, never really caught fire, except among hipsters and students.

Inevitable DEFEAT to a pisspoor Labour Party in disarray, nationally, followed and Hall RETREATED to Southville to lick his wounds. Eventually reappearing in the autumn in the pages of the Nazi Post fronting a story headlined “I’LL BE BACKING GEORGE, says leading Green”.

Encouraging readers to VOTE FERGUSON in for another term for mayor, Hall told readers he did not want to “put at risk the progress achieved by Mr Ferguson during the past few years.”

A few weeks later the Green Party Home Affairs spokesman was crashing into reverse gear in the letters pages of the Nazi Post, assuring confused readers he would of course be VOTING FOR THE GREEN PARTY in Bristol’s mayoral elections … If he didn’t happen to be moving to Tory North Somerset where he couldn’t vote for a Bristol mayor anyway!

To further demonstrate his undying loyalty to the Green cause, the RED TROUSER GROUPIE then spent the rest of the autumn talking up Mayor Slimeball at every opportunity on his Twitter account while IGNORING the Green’s actual Mayoral candidate, Tony Dyer “Straights”!

The subtle sound of string pulling accompanied a Nazi Post Green Capital Award that came Hall’s way soon after. Handed over by the mayor at a black tie dinner in December, this did the TURNCOAT few favours among the rank and file of his party either. Especially when photos of Hall mugging for the camera alongside a very smug Mayor Sleaze were SPLASHED all over the local press.

So little surprise, then, when the National Green party finally STRIPPED Hall of his Home Affairs role last month. Now we’re hearing, Hall is no longer a Bristol Green Party member at all – mainly from former Bristol Green colleagues apparently desperate to disown him.

What an utterly bizarre political career that was.