Tag Archives: Labour Party

NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY IN SOUTH BRISTOL?

An alliance of LABOUR and GREEN councillors – taking a break from pre-election climate emergency PR fisticuffs for the benefit of the gullible Guardian-readers of Bristol West – have granted planning permission for 1,400 homes on Hengrove Park, THE LARGEST PUBLIC OPEN SPACE IN SOUTH BRISTOL. Their reason for this crap decision is that old chestnut for foisting sub-standard shite on us – “THE HOUSING CRISIS”.

The development means the LOSS, not only, of a huge amount of PUBLIC OPEN SPACE and PLAYING FIELDS but of 850 TREES on the land. The poorly connected new housing estate is also likely to bring TRAFFIC CHAOS to local residential roads as more car users are poured into a working class suburb where a rapid transit system isn’t even AN UNLIKELY PROMISE from the Reverend Rees.

This is also the suburb already earmarked by the same climate emergency obsessed councillors as an ideal location for a NEW RING ROAD designed to CHOKE CHILDREN in south Bristol in order to get traffic out of the city centre to improve air quality there. The new road will also help get punters to an EXPANDED AIRPORT at Lulsgate.

Residents in Whitchurch and Hengrove are “LIVID” at the loss of their park and the planned destruction of their neighbourhood and local social media pages are full of lively chat about THE SELL-OUT COUNCILLORS and the scheme’s political architect, the Reverend Rees. The usually quiet and undersubscribed pages have leaped to life and are full of RIPE LANGUAGE on the subject of the city’s politicians. Popular terms include “wankers”; “arseholes”; “hypocrites” and “tossers”.

Hengrove and Whitchurch are unlikely to be returning any Labour or Green politicians to power any time soon, then.

LOST LABOUR WORLD DISCOVERED IN BRISTOL

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Have the stroppy TRIGGER BALLOTS going off all over the place to see if our local Labour MPs should face a selection contest created a CHAIN REACTION in the fabric of the city’s time-space continuum? How else to explain a MYSTERIOUS LOST WORLD that has been discovered in Bristol by the Labour Party’s Regional Office?

Unscientific reports say the newly discovered land is in BISHOPSTON AND ASHLEY DOWN in the Bristol West constituency. However, due to some sort of unexplained Schrodinger’s cat-type time-space quantum field, it “is NOT PART OF BISHOPSTON AND ASHLEY DOWN” and is actually somewhere else entirely in Bristol North West, the constituency of under-threat honorary Lib Dem MP, “Dipshit” Darren Jones.

Even more remarkably, A LOST TRIBE OF 20 MYSTERIOUS LABOUR PARTY MEMBERS are alive and well in this impossible new land and were able to vote as their own branch to decide whether Dipshit should be put up for reselection as a Labour candidate.

Have you noticed any mysterious time-space displacement phenomena in your area recently? Maybe flying discs in the sky or portals to Bristol North West? Has the Labour Party discovered a lost world and set up a quantum branch near you?

REVEREND’S HARA KIRI ELECTION PLAN

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Is Bristol’s Labour Group at the council, led by the Reverend Rees, attempting to commit some weird form of RITUAL POLITICAL SUICIDE before the local elections next May? What other explanation is there for the STUPID DECISIONS and CRAZED OUTBURSTS emanating from the Reverend Mayor and his daft councillors?

The Reverend has already pissed off loads of communities throughout the city who are unlikely to vote for him or his party next year. These include WHITCHURCH where he’s proposed running a ring road through the community past a primary school; HOTWELLS, ASHTON and SOUTHVILLE where he wants to build his corporate high rise wet dream on their doorstep; STOKE BISHOP where he’s allowed their open space to be fenced off by Cotham School; TOTTERDOWN where his councillors voted through, contrary to the Local Plan, a hideous 15 storey tower block on the Bath Road; KNOWLE where he’s backed another tower block and WINDMILL HILL and BEDMINSTER where the Reverend’s been unable to get any grip on unruly private developers at Bedminster Green.

Then there’s the Reverend’s thicko cabinet sidekick, Kye “The” Dudd’s treatment of the FLY PROBLEM in Avonmouth. The Dudd has courted voters by variously accusing residents of planting dead flies to create a FAKE PROBLEM; blaming the flies on DOMESTIC WASTE left on St Andrews Road and, even, claiming there’s NO FLY PROBLEM and that fly levels in Avonmouth are the same as other areas of Bristol. A claim recently rubbished by the BBC who did their own tests for their ‘Inside Out West’ documentary slot.

Remarkably, things now seem to be TAKING A TURN FOR THE WORSE for Labour. At September’s Full Council, the Reverend, behaving like the last officer standing on a Pacific island as GIs storm the beach, raged about “SABOTAGE” by opposition councillors before burnishing his ANTI-UNION CREDENTIALS by refusing to allow his council to be involved in the Climate Strike on 20 September. The Reverend’s Labour colleague, Tom “Charming” Brooks, then PLUMBED FURTHER DEPTHS while responding to a petition from 3,979 voters calling for a moratorium on 5G rollout.

Rather than calmly quote scientific sources to rationally dispute the petitioners health claims, the Horfield councillor launched into a DEMENTED RANT instead. The petitioners were “naive people who had been taken in by MALICIOUS MISINFORMATION” and “conspiracy theorists fuelled by
fake news and misinformation” and were “PEDDLING PSEUDO-SCIENCE using technical sounding words to confuse people”. However, Brooks dismally failed to cite ANY EVIDENCE to support his insults. Instead, he argued, he was right because he had “the ability to Google and was also as an engineer working in risk and safety”.

Lib Dem, Green and, even, Tory councillors were much CANNIER and CALMER towards this large group of potential voters. Explaining they accepted Public Health England’s view on 5G for now but agreed the health situation should be monitored as the technology was rolled out.

That’s another 4,000 votes down the pan for Labour next May then

ST MARVIN’S-UP-THE-CREEK NEWSLETTER #23

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I trust you all had an optimal summer and managed to get away to a few exotic locations on generous expenses, as I did, for some quiet prayer, reflection and contemplation and to help prepare for the trials and tribulations ahead identified by the parish’s senior leadership team at our recent ‘One Parish’ horizon scanning event. Have you, too, noticed how the dark winter evenings are beginning to descend upon our souls like a spectre haunting Europe?

As most of you are aware, my fixed term contract with the parish is up for renewal in May and, ridiculously, I will have to reapply for a job where I have consistently driven senior leadership excellence. While I know I can rely on most sensible parishioners to support me, I am aware that there are weak-minded waverers among you. But rest assured, any waverers are on Mr Slocombe’s special list and will be receiving a ‘comfort and reflection’ visit from my One Parish Encouragement Team in the coming weeks.

No doubt you are as disappointed as I am that some parishioners have decided to apply to be vicar themselves. I’m talking about Ms Page, already widely regarded in the parish as a socially and sexually deviant woman without husband whose lack of attendance at our cake sale events while brazenly attending local pubs to smoke cigars and talk about bridges with men is well known. And I’m talking about you, too, Mr Hore-Ruthven. Let’s face it, your role on the Parish Committee supposedly supporting young parishioners has, frankly, been a costly and disastrous failure and has led many ordinary parishioners to just point and laugh whenever you swagger past them trying to portray yourself as the only moral guardian in the parish.

I’m also led to believe that Mr Weston, the representative for small business and golfing matters on the Parish Committee, is after my job. Although I can’t help thinking his time and energy might be better spent on a serious weight loss programme. Then there’s Ms Townsend and her ragbag of troublemakers, terrorists and rumour mongers at the parish’s OFSTED ‘Needs Improvement’ Dave Spart Academy – now joined by rowdy elements from the Cumberland Basin, Stoke Bishop, Whitchurch and Hotwells – still attempting to undermine my leadership with Brexit campaign-like sabotage tactics.

They will not win, I shall prevail. My mentor, the Texan psychotic preacher and notorious anti-communist homophobe, the Pastor Righteous Loon’s letter from a Birmingham, Alabama whorehouse comes to mind at times like these :

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the stumbling block in our stride toward heaven on Earth is not the racist, the homophobe, the misogynist, the conservative or the free market liberal but the leftie troublemaker- often the schoolteacher, the local historian, the trade unionist or that annoying jackass who does something techie I don’t understand – who just doesn’t know when to shut up and do what they’re told by senior leaders.”

Fear not, together we will overcome and I will rise again unto a senior leadership role among you.

The Vicar

“Useless and Underperforming” Comrades: A Weaponised Human Resources Team

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By the Dwarf

I really feel I am getting somewhere now; I am enjoying my work and I feel valued by my employer. But not everyone is so lucky in the council because I’ve received a constant stream of leaks and complaints about the treatment dished out at the hands of HR and management. Over the last couple of years a trickle of shit has turned into a torrent.

I must admit, I’ve had to rewrite this article several times because a number of things I was gleefully writing up have been suddenly resolved, to the obvious relief of the staff affected. This is annoying. There are still a number of nasty problems in the pipeline, though, but I like to offer the other side an opportunity to really stick their necks out before writing them up. So, I’m going to take an overview of what’s going on (rather than a detailed expose) and hope to get across to you the experience of our staff, generally.

Anyway, I couldn’t at first understand what has been going on. Equalities used to be a high priority for management. It has recently stopped being so. My impression was that managers would find themselves with a tightened budget and would wonder to themselves whether or not staff really needed those visits to physio, modified duties, lighter duties, small breaks, time off to recover from operations, Dragon software, ramps over steps; that sort of thing. They, of course, took advice from HR.

HR used to give the advice that reasonable adjustments were a legal right, because the culture of equal opportunities used to be strong. Now they are replying that if it is a ‘need of the business’ they can justify taking it away (or not allow it) and HR will back the manager up. This is one of the reasons why it has been suggested that HR has become weaponised by someone ruthless at a medium to high level. This wrong advice is so widespread that it can only be a conscious strategy.

A new bit of advice from HR is that ‘you don’t have to change the job’ when designing reasonable adjustments and this is also incorrect. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (who are in charge of this) have a list of examples and several of them ‘change the job’. Total bollocks.

But another reason I know it is a conscious strategy is that they have been open about stopping certain things named as reasonable adjustments by the EHRC. And there is an element of incompetence in this in the sense that they were only so candid about what they were doing because they were so poorly informed.

One of these is medical redeployment. A person with a new disability (or a worsened one) and who is having trouble being productive even with reasonable adjustments (should they be able to get them at all), should be redeployed into a job where he can be productive, as an alternative to dismissal. Reasonable adjustments come first, obviously. HR have been open that they don’t intend to do this anymore and so have Occupational Health who have told us that they were told not to offer it. He who pays the piper calls the tune. But unfortunately that approach is illegal, and there is plenty of case law showing this.

The only time medical redeployment can be arranged (in HR’s view) is when there is a stage three sickness meeting, which means either the worker struggles on in a workplace that has been made artificially dangerous to them or they go off sick for a year. Hardly a sensible situation is it? Some just leave and join better employers.

Social Care is the worst culprit. They have had the nerve to tell us they have no temporary light duties even for people returning from life-saving operations. Of course they have light duties; do they think we are fucking stupid? If someone with the “eye of Sauron” needs to look anywhere, it needs to look there.

Anyway, this series of articles is not about HR; its long running theme is about how compromised public sector unions can become because of their relationships with politics. Well the good news is I’m upgrading them from ‘fucking corrupt” to “useless and underperforming” after a much improved couple of months. Pats on backs all round. There is still incredible timidity from some of our most senior union leaders but there have been the odd micro victory. All of which we have failed to communicate to our members.

One of the most entertaining events of the last week has been watching Unison refuse to be the Labour party’s bitch any longer. Somehow someone from Unison was allowed to oppose the Labour party (publicly) on its decision to amend a motion that called on the divestment of fossil fuels from the company pension. This was at full council. Their amendment, apparently, amended the words ‘divest’ to ‘look into divesting’, or so I was told. A Unison rep allegedly wasn’t happy at all and said so. Quite right!

THERE IS A LIGHT AND IT NEVER GOES OUT

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FANATICAL REMAINER, Labour’s goth MP for Bristol East, Kerry “And the Banshees” McCarthy, took an interesting approach to the final weekend of campaigning in the recent Euro elections, which were a disaster for Labour.

On the Saturday before the elections, the pint-size goth announced on Twitter she was NOT campaigning in East Bristol but going to Wales to walk up Mount Snowdon with fellow 80s indie music nerd, Labour Deputy leader, Tom “Student Grant” Watson.

How many voters Labour’s indie odd couple canvassed on top of the mountain is unclear. What is clear, however, is that another move on Corbyn’s leadership by Labour’s Parliamentary Party BLAIRITE ULTRAS and REMAINERS, blaming him for the inevitable election defeat, is a foregone conclusion.

This latest assault will come from exactly the same people who didn’t lift a finger to campaign for Corbyn’s tricky Euro compromise against the massed ranks of Brextremists and Remoaners DOMINATING AN ELECTION NOBODY CARED ABOUT with dumbass slogan politics.

In the circumstances there are, at least, two things we can be pretty sure will be remaining. One is the indie music odd couple’s SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT over the Labour Party; the other is the country’s leading allotment holder remaining as Labour leader. Because the chances of Kerry, Tom and the rest of the Parliamentary Labour Party installing some heir to Blair militant remainer as Labour Party leader is NEAR ZERO.

Indeed, there’s more chance of a double-decker bus crashing into us.

ASHER’S ASSETS UP FOR GRABS

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With our libraries “SAVED” until next year after the mayoral election, the Reverend’s trusty deputy, Asher “The Slasher” Craig has embarked on another bloody “CONVERSATION” about libraries in the city.

The focus this time around has been on talking to PEOPLE WHO DON’T USE LIBRARIES. Presumably on the basis that, maybe, they’ll be more sympathetic to The Slasher unloading a prized public service on to volunteers than our organised and informed local LIBRARY CAMPAIGNERS AND SUPPORTERS?

The Slasher, not keen on libraries and not too bothered about making wild remarks regarding them either, has not passed up the opportunity to wade into this conversation herself. Brazenly announcing to the press, “one of the issues in our city is we have TOO MANY ASSETS, TOO MANY BUILDINGS IN OUR PUBLIC SECTOR.”

Really? And how many businesses have you ever heard complaining that they have “TOO MANY ASSETS“? Is the Slasher, by any chance, seeking to dispose of some more community-based assets and any service they might contain to fund some more AIMLESS VANITY PROJECTS at College Green?

The Reverend, too, has joined “the conversation”. In response to a question at a Full Council meeting, he announced, “THERE IS NO DOUBT THE LIBRARY MODEL IS NOT FIT FOR THE 21ST CENTURY“. Who says? As this claim appears despite A LACK OF ANY RECORDED EVIDENCE held by the council of residents wanting change to our libraries, even after two consultations and a report costing £40k.

Is the Labour Party arranging to wreck our library service regardless of what we think?

WEST WING WATCH

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Efforts by the Reverend Rees and his point man ‘Slo’ Kevin Slocombe to create their own new season of THE WEST WING up on the third floor of the Counts Louse brings predictable results.

Having EXPANDED the Mayoral Office budget to the best part of £1MILLION A YEAR and styled themselves as fast talking power dressing power players who get things done, their efforts to slickly command and control a council of 7,000 employees SPENDING A BUDGET OF A BILLION is more Jedward than Jed Bartlet.

The latest MAYORAL FAILURE finds the Reverend unable to get a simple ‘corrective’ brass plaque attached to the statue of Colston in the Centre. This might be because following the original mayoral decree for a plaque, there was NO MEANS to communicate back to the Mayor or his team what was going on with a project easily highjacked by the Merchant Venturers from council officers.

Similar problems have haunted the Reverend’s response to institutional racism at the council where the HR officers and managers responsible for the problem have filled any MANAGEMENT VACUUM by stepping in to solve their own problem to suit themselves.

The most recent fiasco followed the removal of valuable 1930s street lamps from south Bristol to leafy Stoke Bishop. “THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN,” insisted Slo Kev on Twitter. “Any street lamps removed are used for spare parts only,” he explained. Alas, within minutes of Slo Kev’s claim, a photo appeared on Twitter of a newly installed street lamp from south Bristol in Stoke Bishop!

The obvious solution of appointing one of 40-odd Labour councillors to oversee something like the plaque project through to completion has been OVERLOOKED by both the Reverend and Slo Kev. Both naively believing they can achieve anything at the council, no matter how minor, by SWAGGERING COMMAND or LENGTHY PRESS RELEASE fired out from the third floor executive suite.

In reality simple projects are FAILING and poor decisions are MULTIPLYING due to the Reverend’s West Wing fantasy. There’s a bottleneck at the top of the council. Too many issues for too few mayoral staff to cope with and council officers end up running the show with little oversight. Labour councillors, meanwhile, the natural workforce to force Labour policy through a recalcitrant council, hang about IDLE, BORED and IGNORED.

When will the Reverend figure out how to run his council?

LOCAL LABOUR TRIGGER UNHAPPY

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GOOD NEWS for the Reverend Rees as he’s “overwhelmingly” reselected to stand for mayor in 2020 for Bristol’s Labour Party. Although it looks like the Reverend’s well-remunerated sidekick Kevin “Slo” Slocombe may have worked tirelessly BEHIND THE SCENES stitching-up the procedures for the ‘trigger ballot’ that decided the Reverend could not be challenged for the Labour candidacy.

Labour’s ‘trigger ballot’ rules were CHANGED at their last conference so that ward branches (of members) and party affilliates (staffed by bureaucrats) are balloted SEPARATELY and if either section has ONE THIRD in favour of a selection process then one is run. Under the old rules, there was ONE BALLOT requiring a simple majority for branches and affiliates combined. This tended to favour affiliates, such as trade unions who CONSIDERABLY OUTNUMBER WARD BRANCHES. For example, in Bristol, there are 25 ward branches and 92 affiliates, which means membership votes were outnumbered almost three to one by the bureaucrats.

However, trade union insider, Slo Kev’s LOBBYING of eager right wing bosses at Labour’s South West Region, who LOATHE the Corbynite rank and file of their party, persuaded them to bend the rules and allow the Reverend’s trigger ballot to be run UNDER THE DODGY OLD RULES. This meant even if every Labour ward branch in Bristol had voted for a reselection process, THERE WOULD NOT BE ONE if the affiliates decided they didn’t want one.

And so it came to pass that the Reverend was reselected as Labour’s candidate even though many wards hadn’t even had time to run a ballot before they were STOPPED by Labour’s dodgy regional bosses because of the impending Euro elections. Other wards complain their selection meetings weren’t QUORATE (ie. there were not enough members there). The Reverend’s own branch, Easton and Lawrence Hill tell us their vote wasn’t quorate but an ‘indicative vote’ was 32 – 5 AGAINST their own member.

Over at the Hartcliffe, Withywood and Bishopsworth branch, the meeting was quorate but the ballot paper WASN’T WORDED CORRECTLY so couldn’t be counted. While in Eastville, the Reverend’s former election agent, Kelvin Blake FORGOT to invite any party officials to their ballot and declared a victory for Rees despite the meeting not being quorate! In fact, the only branch we can find that legitimately voted for Rees were the wealthy liberals of Redland keen on a reheated Blairite to maintain the status quo.

What a shambles. Is this a party fit to run a city?

BETHEL TO BRISTOL – MARVIN’S FREE MARKET GRAVE-SUCKER CULT

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Following up a Freedom of Information request about the Reverend Rees’ expenses for a dinner in London in January, The BRISTOLIAN uncovered his close ties to the controversial weirdos of California’s BETHEL SCHOOL OF SUPERNATURAL MINISTRY (BSSM) and their deep cultic infiltration of his office.

BSSM is a Christian evangelist cult that believes everyone has apostolic power that can be unlocked through a variety of STRANGE PRACTICES. Their students are assured they can ‘perform miracles’ such as curing the sick and ‘raising the dead’ or, even, ‘walking through walls’. BSSM has come under fierce attack from fellow evangelicals, many of whom find its practices ‘UN-CHRISTIAN’, ‘GNOSTIC‘, or even ‘NECROMANTIC‘.

The latter accusation stemming from one of BSSM’s more bizarre practices – ‘GRAVE SUCKING’ – whereby the acolyte lies down on the tomb of a deceased Christian celebrity to ‘suck up the residual spiritual energy’ from their bones.

The cult is more materially minded, however, when it comes to seeking connections to POWER and INFLUENCE. Its closely allied religious organisation ‘Transform Our World’ largely dismisses the role of a church.

Instead, it breathlessly imagines a vast global network of brainwashed business, community, political, professional and faith leaders “walking out to their call to full-time ministry in the MARKETPLACE“, which allegedly plays “a vital part in the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth”.

From the FoI, we know that there was a long correspondence between the Reverend’s office and Kris ‘Voldemort’ Vallotton, co-founder of Bethel Church in Redding, California and ‘Senior Associate Leader’ of BSSM.

Voldemort’s personal blog is HIGHLY REVEALING with its SUB-PAEDO and RACIST OVERTONES as well as HATE SPEECH that unequivocally LINKS ABORTION TO “THE DEVIL”.

Vallotton also travels around the world, making connections with people his cult decides are “INFLUENTIAL“. In the emails we discover that Marvin and Vallotton are already very familiar, as is the mayor’s spin doctor “Slo” Kevin Slocombe who was also invited to attend the dinner, paid for by BSSM at St Ermin’s Hotel, Westminster, alongside “SEVERAL MPS” and an “ARCHBISHOP“.

Expenses for the London trip were paid by the MAYOR’S OFFICE (some ambiguity exists over whether this fare was paid back by Marvin). While BCC’s claim that ‘£25’ would cover the cost of Marvin’s meal (so it “didn’t need to be declared’) is absurd as it’s barely the cost of a ‘WAGYU BURGER’ on the upmarket hotel’s menu, never mind drinks or accompaniments. We’re told that they discussed ‘US – BRISTOL TRADE RELATIONS’, whatever that means.

Perhaps Rachel Molano, the Reverend’s ‘faith advisor’ and a BSSM ‘graduate’ can tell us more? Especially as we checked and DISCOVERED she is on the Mayor’s Office’s payroll – in flat contradiction to the OUTRIGHT LIE they told in a separate FoI – as a paid public servant. Rachel, please declare the true extent and objectives of your cult’s interests in our city?

Surely it’s time that Bristol’s Labour Party forced Mayor Rees and his fellow cultist sidekick Slo Kev to resign their party memberships? Magick Marv can stand as an independent for the Supernatural Necromancer Inclusivity Party or whatever he damn well likes, but surely not Labour?

First FoI (on Marvin meeting the cult leader) https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/mayors_meeting_with_co_founder_o#incoming-1346566

Second FoI (on Marvin’s BSSM faith advisor) https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/information_about_bristol_mayors?nocache=outgoing-888425#outgoing-888425