Cash gone missing, whistleblowers ‘disappeared’, finances ‘of concern’: council’s most useless department still in total chaos after 18 months…
The latest audit report reveals that Bristol City Council’s crisis-hit MARKETS SERVICE – where £165k disappeared last year without any coherent explanation – remains ‘of concern’. This is how it’s been for eighteen months now. Will it ever end?
The BRISTOLIAN can also reveal that, so far, the main action taken by Facilities boss Tony ‘THE TOERAG’ Harvey and his gormless gopher Markets boss Steve ‘God Botherer’ Morris to sort out their financial disaster area was to redeploy two whistleblowers out of the department under the guise of a departmental reorganisation!
One of the whistleblowers was even subsequently awarded thousands in an OUT-OF-COURT SETTLEMENT after it turned out the recruitment process they used to get rid of them was er, bent!
Having disposed of their troublesome staff late last year, Harvey and Morris then immediately forked out on pricey agency staff because their new staff structure didn’t comply with the council’s financial regulations! And, we’re told, the idiots squandered a further £5k on a consultant to try and sort out their ongoing financial mess.
This obviously failed because here we are a year later with a department whose finances remain – and we quote – “of concern”. So just how much more money are council taxpayers expected to fork out so that these two can piss £165k of public money up the wall and cover it up?
It’s certainly mighty convenient for the two men in charge that whistleblowers have been ‘disappeared’; £165k remains totally unaccounted for and no one can get to the bottom of the financial circumstances in the Markets Service don’t you think?
Meanwhile, there’s no sign of the investigation promised by the service’s political boss Sir Gus Hoyty-Toyty aftfter he revealed last summer that cash had been stolen from the Markets Office safe.
It’s obviously bent middle managers calling all the shots on Hoyty-Toyty’s watch then.
