Baltic Wharf: prime location – no council houses please.
The city’s largest council house building programme for a generation has been scrapped by Green proclamation.
At a Housing Committee in September, its chair, community arts twat, Barry “Goldwater” Parsons announced that council housing projects at Baltic Wharf and Hengrove Park were cancelled with immediate effect.
Parsons explained that this multi-million major policy decision was taken by council officers after a grubby deal between Parsons and his Tory wanker vice chair, Richard “Bunter” Eddy.
The cancellation of these two projects wrecks the council’s HRA business plan, which was supplying funding for council housing over the next 30 years. The plan relies on building council homes and borrowing against the income generated to build more homes. No increased income: no homes.
Parsons refused to let his committee take this major decision. Instead, he used a recent judgement from the government’s Regulator of Social Housing regarding the poor condition of council homes to unilaterally scrap the programme.
Parsons claimed that unknown council officers had instructed him that any housing money must be spent on improving existing homes rather than building new ones. Figures or financial information to back officers’ claims was absent.
Is it a coincidence there was zero mention of council housing in the Green’s manifesto in May?
Green council boss, “Tory” Tony Dyer, is proving to be highly flexible in power. Before the election, Tory Tony was an enthusiastic supporter of south Bristol’s Yew Tree Farm. The nature reserve and city’s only working farm was under threat from a council plan to expand South Bristol Cemetery into it.
Cometh the moment, cometh the man and now Tory Tony has concluded that expanding the cemetery onto the farm is a great idea. He’s even brokered his own ‘compromise’ between himselves to only use the land for a dirty great drainage pond.
Tory Tony was also an enthusiastic supporter of the victims of the SEND spying scandal. Supporting public demand for a proper investigation into senior council bosses’ surveillance of parents of children with SEND. To score a few political points over Labour, he even helpfully leaked an unredacted version of the council’s internal whitewash report to SEND victims so they could stir the pot for him.
Now, there’s no sign of any investigation from Tory Tony and he’s blocking legal action by the victims against the council by refusing to respond to a pre-action letter issued to his council months ago.
What will the courts make of his clueless dickheadery?
In June, Green Councillor David “The Builder” Wilcox, from the Transport and Connectivity Policy Committee, trumpeted that the M32 Junction 3 pedestrian underpass had been “unblocked” and would no longer flood. It’s the end of “breeze [sic] blocks or pallets to cross the ponds,” he boasted.
Emma “Air” Edwards, Leader of the Green Party Group and another member of the Transport and Connectivity Policy Committee, waded in. “No more Krypton Factor challenged [sic] to get through the underpass when it floods,” she gushed on Twitter. While fresh new Green Councillor for St George, Cara “La Caravan” Lavan predicted that flooding would “be no more”.
Wilcox went on to explain that “after some investigation” it was unnecessary to fix an underground pipe and suggested people contact other politicians to find out why they had not got the problem fixed sooner.
Alas, by September, the underpass was flooded again. On Fix My Street, the council says, “this issue is currently under investigation. We’ll provide updates on the outcome as soon as we can.”
Freshly minted Green MP Carla “Head Girl” Denyer has had to publish her financial interests for the House of Commons without any of the unlawful fucking about allowed at Bristol City Council.
One £15k donation to her came from ‘We Deserve Better’. A shadowy Tankie organisation whose best known supporter is the Guardian’s “Oxbridge” Owen Jones.
We Deserve Better is currently run by a “committee” of three: Hilary Schan, former Co-Chair of Momentum and independent councillor in Worthing; Dr Carl Walker who left the Labour in May to serve as an independent councillor in Worthing and former Manchester Labour councillor Amna Abdullatif, who resigned from Labour in October 2023.
Until recently, the committee also included Hamza Ali Shah, “British Palestinian journalist, writer and political researcher”. A few years back, Hamza agreed with George Galloway that “abortion is murder” and posted a number of racist comments, including “Sikhs? Clean hearted?” along with laughing emojis.
More problematic for openly gay Oxbridge Owen and bi-sexual Denyer is that he also posted messages like “Looool, imagine getting banged by a fag.”
Cherry-picked prisoners (checked for ‘good behaviour’ and most already with the skills) will be ‘employed’ to build pre-fab ‘eco’ homes ‘for the vulnerable’, built from… erm, recycled milk cartons!
This public/private project, promoted by an ad-hoc mishmash of council, probation/reoffending bodies, eco-charities, churches and quangos, is an ‘experiment’ to employ prisoners in ‘useful activities’ to ‘learn skills’ for employment after release.
Nauseating middle class PR guff about an amazing ‘win win’ for prisoners, ‘the community’, social housing, churches, building companies and landowners accompanies the plan. Bristol’s ‘Green’ council is among the talking heads. Taking over where the Reverend left off.
A ‘minimum wage’ for prisoners is mentioned but not whether it’s the statutory minimum wage. Theoretically it might be a ‘minimum wage’ of £5 an hour!
A dystopian vision of this public/private partnership ‘win/win future’ would see prisons becoming 21st Century workhouses. An aristocracy of labour drawn from compliant prisoners with skills would be conditioned to accept a ‘minimum wage’ as the norm. The rest of the undeserving poor could be employed to do shit for free.
Free labour for the ticky tacky milk carton houses of the future
“Day after day council staff witness the blatant disregard, lawbreaking and contempt with which citizens like myself are treated. It’s hardly surprising that less than half of staff trust senior leaders to act with integrity, and that just over half feel confident using whistleblowing policies without fear of retaliation.”
A parent of a disabled child spied on by council bosses has published, on Twitter/X, a public statement that council Monitoring Officer, ‘L’il’ Tim O’Gara, banned from the council’s last Human Resources Committee meeting.
The statement reveals that the parent has started legal action against the council for their weird and unlawful surveillance of her and her family.
This legal action was the final resort after the council, under the Reverend Rees and, now, the Greens reneged on a promise to set up an independent investigation into their surveillance of residents.
The statement also explains that the council has failed to provide a response to this parent’s formal legal letter in seven months.
The officer accountable for that response is Monitoring Officer ‘L’il’ Tim O’Gara. Never one to let a blatant conflict of interest get in the way, he has enthusiastically banned a statement, highlighting his self-serving negligence, from being heard by a committee of councillors responsible for employing him.
To add insult to injury, the parent further reveals that the Reverend’s appalling cabinet sidekick, Asher “The Slasher” Craig, told a meeting of local community groups that the parent was “hysterical”.
How long before the council denounces her for witchcraft and sets up witch trials with O’Gara as judge?
As a statement bannned by the council’s chief legal officer to cover his own bent arse is unlikely to appear in any other local press, here’s the full statement:
With the vote by councillors to trash Bristol’s only remaining working farm and a Site of Nature Conservation Interest, Yew Tree Farm, due on Friday, Green Party councillors are gearing up to break one of the few manifesto commitments they managed to make.
The manifesto the Greens ran on in May promised they would, “Protect Sites of Nature Conservation Interest (SNCI) that Bristol City Council controls by preventing development on them.”
The policy seemed to be confirmed as recently as August 22. Green council leader, “Tory” Tony Dyer, huffed and puffed at Bristol 24/7 that he had been ‘misrepresented’ in an interview with BBC Points West the day before when he had appeared to support plans to expand the South Bristol Crematorium onto Yew Tree Farm SNCI.
Dyer whined at 24/7, “Yesterday in an interview with BBC Points West, I reaffirmed the Green Party’s opposition to development on SNCIs in response to a question on Yew Tree Farm. This was edited out of the broadcast interview.”
Now in October, developing the farm seems to have been edited back in. Four Greens on the Public Health and Communities Policy Committee are being asked to consider a council officer report proposing to expand South Bristol Crematorium on to Yew Tree Farm, a site ‘Bristol City Council controls’.
And these councillors – Abdul “Dull” Malik and Fi “Fie Foe” Hance, a couple of dodgy old Lib Dems mainly loyal to their own ambition, and rookie councillors Cara “Caravan” Lavan and Ed “Fuk” Fraser – appear to be getting cold feet about saving this council controlled SNCI.
All four councillors have point blank refused to visit the farm to meet the farmer Catherine Withers and learn about the importance of the site and three of them – Abd-dull, Fi and Ed – have refused to meet with independent ecology experts. Labour, Lib Dem and Tory councillors have all visited the farm to learn more before voting on this crude act of environmental destruction.
Ab-Dull has even gone one step further, ignoring both his boss, Tory Tony and the manifesto he ran on just a few months ago, publishing a rambling piece in Bristol 24/7 about Muslim burials and claiming that ‘we must balance the need for burial space with protecting the environment’.
The article was accompanied by one of the weirdest publicity shots ever (see above). An uneasy pastoral like something out of the 17th Century, the gloomy folk horror tableau features Ab-Dull stood solemnly in front of a coffin flanked by male counterparts. Any women present are stood ten metres back and off to the side of Ab-Dull and the boys.
Is this weird shit the progressive new look for Tory Tony’s not very greens?
Following Labour’s lead, the Greens have gone some of the way to ditching the long list of expensive and undeliverable promises approach to manifesto writing.
Perfected by their centrist dad mayoral candidate last time round in 2021, Lord Sandy Bufton Tufton of India seemed to promise everything from reopening your local corner shop as boutique vegan food pop-up to sending an ambassador for Bristol to the UN. The Greens, this time, have gone for a stripped down version of the Bufton Tufton list approach.
‘Disappeared’ leader, Emma Edwards – confined to the attic for the duration in case she disturbs anyone from Business West with some dangerous off-message tree hugging hippy shit – has been briefly reanimated and wheeled out for the manifesto’s Foreword written for her by bland copywriters.
“Bristol Green Party has a vision of hope for the city and highly experienced candidates,” she enthusiastically assures us. That’ll be ‘highly experienced candidates’ like their current councillors who don’t understand the basic legal responsibilities of company ownership or the necessity to take action when the council acts unlawfully. There’s a thin line in local politics between ‘highly experienced’ and ‘reckless amateur’ isn’t there?
The main manifesto is divided into ten sections beginning with a ‘Getting the basics right‘ section. Here we’re threatened with that old chestnut “genuine engagement on key Council proposals” and decision-dodging “demographically representative Citizens’ Assemblies.”
“Ensure decisions about community facilities and community asset transfers have a more consistent and transparent process,” also pops up. Meaning community facilities and assets will be transferred to the Greens’ mates rather than Labour’s.
On to transport where, like everyone else, they’re going to improve the buses and – this is their one standout policy – they’ll fund this from a Workplace Parking Levy, if, presumably, Business West lets them?
Other keynote transport policies are the introduction of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, which will “make traffic flow better on main routes”, apparently, and reviving Mayor No More Ferguson’s residents’ parking schemes, now redesigned as high tax revenue earner for the council.
In housing, the headline is to increase the city’s target of affordable homes from the current 600 homes per year to 1,000 per year. As no housing target in the city ever gets reached you wonder what the point of this actually is?
There’s also an odd and unexplained major outsourcing plan sneaked in, to set up an “arms length company to own and rent out council-owned housing”. This, the Greens allege, will create more “genuinely affordable homes” while also, conveniently, achieving the Thatcherite dream of moving social housing out of the council’s hands altogether. An old Lib Dem policy and one to watch.
Under the heading ‘A Great Start in Life’ we get a load of retreads of Labour’s failing Children’s Service policies where costs are going south fast. So they’ll increase special school places; somehow reduce costs of home to school transport and recruit more foster carers as they’ve been doing unsuccessfully for the last ten years.
Despite being a major budgetary pressure, there’s nothing on the subject of the rising costs of private sector out-of-county children’s care placements at all. Neither is there any mention of the Tory ‘Safety Valve’ SEND cuts programme the council is now signed up to for the next five years if it doesn’t get cancelled immediately.
For young people, there’s a vague “aim” with no resource attached to “increase the provision of youth services”. On knife crime it’s equally vague and totally under-resourced. They’ll “work with young people themselves, with the police, schools, youth services and other community organisations.”
On adult care there’s some warm words for staff and social workers and then this, “investigate a council-funded capital grant programme or loan scheme to assist care homes to be more efficient to save money in the long run.”
Are they really proposing to use our money to subsidise private care homes’ profits?
Sections on public health and “a clean city” provide airy lists of stuff “aiming to”; “exploring”; “enhancing”; “joining up” with no firm commitment to anything very much. The language indicating the lack of resources to make any of it happen.
On culture we get that old manifesto money-wasting favourite, “lead a Bristol regional bid to become the UK’s city of culture” along with a vague threat of a raid on the Local Government Pension Scheme to fund pet culture projects.
The final section of the local authority manifesto is on our old corporate friend ‘net zero’. Basically the ‘billion pound’ City Leap is still the only game in town delivering small scale publicly funded insulation, energy and EV projects. But it wouldn’t be a Green manifesto without developing a way to waste money the council hasn’t got on a pointless ‘net zero’ measure. So please step forward “a carbon budget process alongside the annual financial budgeting process.”
The idea here seems to be to employ people to add up the carbon costs of what the council does each year while cutting actual useful public services to the bone. Bravo!
Desperate times for Greens trying to get their national co-leader Carla “Head Girl” Denyer elected in the new constituency of Bristol Central.
Formerly Bristol West, the constituency of “Thingy” Thangam Debbonaire with a majority north of 10,000, the Greens are currently begging Tories to vote for them!
A leaflet dropped across the leafy constituency, notorious for its Guardian-reading electorate, explains “the Conservatives can’t win here” and has a Lib Dem-style graph where unidentified “independent polling experts” say the Green vote is up 3.4 per cent; Labour down 7.7 per cent and Tory down 4.5 per cent.
Meaning that Labour are set to easily win the constituency despite ecstatic noises from the Greens over their latest snooty candidate in a constituency they’ve insisted for years they can win.
Another issue: if “independent polling experts” say that the the combined Labour and Tory vote is down over 12 per cent and the Greens’ up 3.4 per cent, where the fuck have all the other votes gone?
Are voters giving up on the ‘progressive’ crap that the colour branded parties dump on us?
The Reverend’s increasingly fragile mental state was exposed again during a visit to Stapleton Road in February to stare at waste bins.
Accompanied by cabinet bozo Kye “The” Dudd, the local police team and local community representatives, it seems the Reverend hadn’t realised two of the Green councillors for the area had been invited too.
So he decided to start shouting at them, accusing them of spreading lies about him on social media, being backstabbers and moaning about the budget.
