Tag Archives: Labour Party

PENSIONERS TARGETED AT LABOUR MEETING

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Local and national news outlets were quick to report a controversial Bristol West Constituency Labour Party meeting in April. Where Corbynites in the party attempted to CENSURE their MP Thangam Debbonaire for supporting the controversial  ‘#EnoughIsEnough’ anti-semitism rally in Westminster in March.

The meeting ended abruptly when Debonaire STAGED a walk out for the media, complaining that the meeting was “UNPRODUCTIVE” due to heckling. The media went along with this line. Happily characterising Corbyn supporters as an unruly rabble and Debonnaire’s gang as the height of professionalism.

However, a Corbyn-supporting PENSIONER who attended the meeting gives us a slightly different view of this meeting. “As I got up to leave,” they explain, “a young, well-dressed man supporting Thangam shoved into me hard, nearly pushing me over.

‘You need to watch where your going mate,’ he SNEERED at me before exiting the room.”

Nice to see Ms Debbonaire supported by such charming individuals …

UNISON: THE SORRY STATE by The Dwarf

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Despite being the union that campaigned for an end to tribunal fees and won. Despite being the union that strikes for hospital workers, wins equal pay claims for cleaners and tries to prevent the outsourcing of care workers everywhere except Bristol. Despite having nearly all the cuts in this round of austerity aimed at those areas only they really have members in – Bristol Unison still refuse to do anything to oppose the cuts. That is, unless Mayor Marvin asks them to go on a demonstration against his own cuts. In which case out comes the banner in what could only be described as a giant blow struck for irony.

The cuts are coming in social services, children’s services, libraries and community services. All areas that are almost exclusively Unison and all are areas where member engagement, information exchange and political activism are non-existent. Meetings with unions have been cancelled, barrack room lawyers silenced in staff meetings, management have denied a plan to outsource libraries but then put out an email about mutualisation.

Does anyone remember the battles of the past? When disabled residents and unions lobbied noisily on the ramps of the Counts Louse? Where day centres were occupied and workers broke the blockade passing them fish and chips through the windows? Where library workers struck for the right to a family life? Where have the activists gone? I’m reliably informed that Unison hasn’t enough activists to fill a Renault Espace when they once numbered in the hundreds. They’re voting with their feet comrades … Wake up and get a grip.

I was told that regional officers consider the cuts to have been democratically arrived at and that is that, nothing more can be done. We at The BRISTOLIAN reject that sort of democracy. We want an engaged, participatory democracy of mutual solidarity and so should the unions. If we don’t get it then protest and actions must rightfully take place.

But here we come to the nub of the matter and that is the risk social and industrial agitation poses to the electoral prospects of the Labour Party. Occupying day centres and striking for work-life balance is OK as long as the Liberal Democrats or an Independent is in charge but not when it’s Labour.

Last year there was a scandal at Unison’s AGM as to whether Unison should affiliate to the anti-cuts groups – a no-brainer in anyone’s world assolidarity with people against the cuts should be ingrained. A self-appointed standing orders committee, which no one knew existed because it didn’t, ruled the motion incompetent. This year, the union’s members ruled their own representatives’ incompetent over a scandalous redundancy pay cut ballot stitch-up. And this was in front of a firebrand assistant general secretary, from head office, who was so embarrassed he didn’t know where to look.

Sorry, Roger McKenzie, that you had to see the union in such a sorry state.

MEET THE TORY WASTE BOSS RUNNING BRISTOL

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What the fuck is going on at BRISTOL WASTE, run by, officially, the thickest bureaucrat in Britain, Bristol City Council’s Tracey “Beaker” Morgan, appointed Managing Director of this shitty little council  firm in 2016 by half-witted councillors?

In November, Beaker, a dim Tory from Portishead, instructed her staff to REMOVE from the Bear Pit an artwork celebrating Labour pacifist MP Walter Ayles, which formed part of the nationally acclaimed Journeys to Justice exhibition hosted by the city in the autumn.

It appears that Beaker PERSONALLY decided that this artwork, produced by the Creative Youth Network, had no value and should be binned after she received a request to remove it in the lead up to Remembrance Day from her FAT TORY TURD mate, Henbury Councillor, Mark “Lard Arse” Weston.

Following UPROAR on social media and the personal intervention of the mayor, Beaker was forced to quickly restore the work to the Bear Pit and the mayor issued an apology explaining that Beaker and Bristol Waste had removed this private property without his or anyone else’s authority. Surely a disciplinary matter?

Fast forward two months and guess what? Just one day after UPROAR in the newspapers after Bath City Council issued their homeless with threats to REMOVE their belongings from the city centre, reactionary thicko Beaker issued notices of dubious legality to homeless people in Broadmead, er, threatening to REMOVE their belongings from the city centre.

Yet again, the mayor had to personally intervene and make an apology explaining that Beaker and Bristol Waste had acted without his or anyone else’s authority! What the fuck is wrong with this North Somerset piece of TORY SHIT, Beaker? What makes her think she can do what she likes in our city, such as judging our children’s artwork as rubbish to be dumped or treating our homeless as SUBHUMAN WASTE?

This latest piece of blatant right wing fuckwittery from Beaker, targeting vulnerable people in the city while totally misreading the mood of Bristolians regarding homelessness, came just weeks after she personally FUCKED UP the city’s rubbish collections over Christmas.

Having decided NOT to print and deliver leaflets listing altered household rubbish collection times over Christmas, Beaker then published a load of INACCURATE information about these collections on the internet. This resulted in rubbish being left out on our streets for days on end in the new year and made the city – she conveniently doesn’t live in – look like shit.

Isn’t it about time that the Reverend fired this incompetent right wing twat who thinks she can do what she pleases in our city? Let’s send her packing back to Portishead to die the long, slow, painful death all Tories deserve.

MARV’S KINGDOM CON, WORKERS WILL BE DONE

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Another win for our on-the-ball Reverend Mayor. His new force of outsourced Environmental Enforcement Officers recruited to fine locals for littering and anti-social behaviour – and launched in a blaze of publicity – are being paid BELOW his own living wage!

Adverts all over the internet from dodgy outsource specialist security firm Kingdom are offering the jobs for £8.00 AN HOUR when the Reverend’s formal living wage rate for all council workers and their contractors is £8.45 AN HOUR!

Adding to the sense gross incompetence emanating from the Reverend’s witless LABOUR ADMINISTRATION, the living wage rate was introduced by them just last year with much song-and-dance. Not least when Labour councillors claimed they had to raise senior bosses’ salaries by up to 20 per cent to get their FLAGSHIP living wage policy through.

A year later and their policy for the low paid is in TATTERS while the huge pay increase for bosses not only remains firmly in place but has been INCREASED by another 10 per cent by Labour councillors this year!

Meanwhile, reviews from Kingdom’s former Environmental Enforcement Officers from around the country do not bode well and suggest workers’ rights may be a low priority in the Reverend’s new LITTER FREE PARADISE.

“Worst company ever,” says a former Kingdom officer in Canterbury. “Diabolical company. Work long hours with hardly any break and get pushed to issue a certain amount of tickets when targets are illegal … Managers and colleagues disrespectful and ignorant. Did not even speak to me properly if at all.”

“Run by Neanderthals!” claims another former employee from St Helens. “Worked here only because I was desperate. You must record when you have had conversations with “management” as they deny you ever contacted them. No one can take responsibility or make a decision. No support. Do not bother, you deserve better.”

 “Make sure you read your contract,” advises another former employee from Hampshire. “Told it wasn’t targeted and is to extent. But they try to performance manage you out. Was not allowed to take breaks in an 8 hour shift. Have to pay for second hand uniform.”

Yet another emerging shambles from the Reverend’s useless council. Will anyone be taking responsibility for this?

HEY MOMENTUM – WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU AT?

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MOMENTUM is the movement within the Labour Party that has, according to their own manifesto, set out to radicalise the party behind leader Jeremy Corbyn.

While this principle is to be lauded, to the average punter on the Bristol street the internal Labour Party struggles of Momentum against its well-entrenched old guard of (neo)liberals, careerists and self-serving jobsworths means very little. Why?

Sometimes I wonder how many of you have your ear to the street, because we’re in a MASSIVE SOCIAL CRISIS this winter. The homeless are strewn everywhere. No social housing, just rack-rent slum landlords. Wages going down in real terms. Benefits being trashed. Fewer and fewer social services. The NHS on the brink of total collapse. That means GRAPPLING WITH THIS EMERGENCY can’t be put off until ‘after the next election’, but needs to be addressed RIGHT NOW. Here in the socially-cleansed margins of working class Britain, we’re LITERALLY dying by the thousands.

And Bristol’s Labour Party elected representatives are STILL nearly all diehard Blairites. Happy to implement Tory austerity, yet craftily using Momentum activists to keep themselves in power and/or looking good in public. This happens any time one of these anti-Corbyn quislings needs re-election – or to give a recent Bristol example, when they need your street presence to give them the kudos they lack on say, a so-called ‘March Against Austerity’, WHERE THEY DON’T MENTION AUSTERITY OR THE CUTS ONCE!

What would JC do? He’d agree with us. Look back at his record since the 1970s. He always saw Labour Party internal politics as being SECONDARY to the struggles of the countless social movements he was active in. His principles never changed, but he always had the humility to listen to the people first. He didn’t wait until authority had been cleared through his control over the Labour Party – he just GOT STUCK INTO THE ISSUES. That’s why people voted for him and it’s why many more support and trust him today.

There seems to be some confusion in Momentum ranks as to what a social movement is. A social movement is not about ‘getting our guys into office’ in the Labour Party. It’s a MASS GRASS-ROOTS militant and democratic CAMPAIGN built around the key issue of the moment, and also one that isn’t a covert vehicle for any one political group or another. Think of the 1980s Anti-Poll Tax Campaign as a model. Right now, that key issue is STOPPING AUSTERITY DEAD IN ITS TRACKS – while we still can.

So Momentum needs to HELP BUILD that social movement and GET STARTED on it right away. Let the changes in the party structure and democracy be propelled forward by the social movement, not the other way around. Because quite simply, without such a movement, we haven’t a hope of effecting any real change – either within the Labour Party or without.

ANGRY BRISTOL LABOUR PARTY MEMBER

FLY ON THE WALL: The ‘Save St. Marvin from His Plummeting Popularity’ Rally on College Green

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The Fly: savouring Marvin’s shite

Enormous deposits of BULLSHIT were detected and tasted by The BRISTOLIAN’s six-legged friend flying overhead at Marvin’s ‘anti-austerity’ march and rally on Saturday September 9.

According to our blue-arsed correspondent, the vicar of Bristol and his collaborators in UNITE, UNISON, The Peoples’ Disassembly, ACORNYJOKE and the Labour Party made up a DISMAL, rain-bedraggled charade of no more than 2,000 on College Green.

It even included a big bouncy castle for speakers to jump up and down on while they whined infantile DRIVEL about ‘diversity’, ‘inclusiveness’, “hey, my dad was a Welsh miner and I was born in Southmead”, or “why I love Bristol” and other IRRELEVANT TOSH. Some of it even recounted in verse by ‘the city’s poet laureate’!

Every subject under the sun (or rain) was covered in fact. Except the one the march and rally was actually supposed to be about, namely AUSTERITY and THE CUTS. This ‘difficult’ subject was raised NOT ONCE by any of the OVERWHELMINGLY MIDDLE-CLASS speakers. One of whom was a LAWYER who offered WAGE-FREE LABOUR in her office to “any of you principled, under-employed folk out there who’d like some work experience”.

The sole rebellion against this pretentious downpour of excrement was offered by a small group of DISSIDENTS. During The Reverend’s speech, despite all attempts by UNITE stewards to thwart them, they repeatedly called St. Marvin out on: the fakery of his much-publicised ‘anti-austerity green paper’ submission to Theresa May (which doesn’t mention austerity once); his craven compliance with the Tory austerity programme when he could legally set a NO-CUTS BUDGET; the libraries and public toilets he’s closing; the social care programmes he’s shutting down; the park/street maintenance departments he’s stripping to the bone and the ILLEGAL ‘gate keeping’ of homeless categories currently being enforced at BCC’s Housing Department.

And all to pay for the continuing Metro/contractor disaster, his GOLDEN HANDSHAKES to the Dirty Thirty bosses; ever more ‘public-private partnerships’ with thieves and parasites and the hiring of a new generation of incompetent, six-figure salary ‘consultant’ twats to make even more of a mess at City Hall.

The REBELS were sorely put upon. First by ‘stewards’ trying to rip down a banner opposing Marvin’s cuts and, later, an enraged Momentum youth in a Jeremy Corbyn sweatshirt who tried to start a fight, before wisely thinking better of it.

In between her feast on the LASHINGS of BS spewed out through the stage microphone, The Fly observed a laughable attempt by one of Marv’s acolytes to silence the uproar, claiming the rebels were ‘failing to be inclusive to the hard-of-hearing group’! All of whom were, of course, straining to hear The Reverend’s every word.

Two of the disgruntled were also overheard wishing that they’d brought along a stanley knife or drill (as in ‘Driller Killer’, 1979??) to DEFLATE the rain shelter/bouncy castle over Marv’s head*. “Come better prepared next time”, buzzed The Fly as she savoured more of Marvellous’s shite.

*Of course The BRISTOLIAN warns that such a violent act could feasibly constitute a new ‘credible death threat’ to the embattled Mayor, instigating an ‘immediate investigation’ by the Stasi (ie. the UK Special Branch) – ed..

THE GAME’S AFOOT

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Offensive to muslims according to non-muslim equalities enthusiast

Labour’s candidate for Metro Mayor, Lesley “Person” Mansell is going to provide us with lots of ENTERTAINMENT. Not least because this ridiculous Equalities and Diversity Manager for the NHS appears to have learned the cut and thrust of power politics on the mean streets of the Mendips as Chair of Radstock Town Council.

This council, some may recall, made the news in 2013 when they effectively put a CIVIC BAN on the flag of St George after Labour councillor and lifelong non-Muslim Eleanor Jackson announced at a meeting that the flag “is offensive to some Muslims”, apparently because of its links to the crusades. Personsell’s council then decided not to purchase a flag to fly on St George’s Day!

Once their decision made the national news with the Muslim Council of Britain condemning Personsell’s council for TALKING BOLLOCKS, Personsell was reversing the PC ferret at the double with an epic non-denial denial to the press.

She explained that her council’s discussions that day were “mainly about purchasing [a Union flag] to fly for Armistice Day” and agreeing to purchase a rainbow flag – the symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pride movement – to fly at “appropriate” times of the year.

Contrary to what silly old fools like self-syled DIVERSITY EXPERT Personsell and her bonkers Labour countryside colleagues think we all think, the Muslim Council of Britain says, “St George needs to take his rightful place as a national symbol of inclusivity rather than a symbol of hatred.”

As Shakespeare probably wouldn’t put it: “Follow your spirit, and upon this charge, Cry “vote for Mansell as Metro Mayor even if I am totally fucking dopey'”.

‘BEST CUT OF ALL’ IS “DISGUSTING” SAY FAKE CAMPAIGNERS

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THREE PEOPLE NOBODY’S EVER HEARD OF CONDEMN CONFECTED SHOCK IMAGE AS, ER, SHOCKING IN USELESS RIGHT WING RAG EVERYONE KNOWS IS FULL OF CRAP!

The Nazi Post has kindly published our hugely successful ‘Best Cut of All‘ front cover and poster so it can reach a wider audience. It’s published today under the excellent, if inaccurate, headline, “Anti-cuts campaigners condemn ‘disgusting’ image of Bristol mayor Marvin Rees”. 

The article features a few random nobodies from West Bristol – that the Post apparently found on Facebook and rebranded as “ANTI-CUTS CAMPAIGNERS” – who helpfully consented to condemning our artwork in the local yellow press. This is presumably so we can all have a good laugh at the Post’s expense?

Meanwhile, actual, real, anti-cuts campaigners from Bristol’s local anti-cuts group, BADACA, didn’t, er, condemn anything at all! Do we have a new media phenomena? FAKE CAMPAIGNERS?

Full article here: ***WARNING*** This link contains shocking bullshit: http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/anti-cuts-campaigners-condemn-disgusting-image-of-bristol-mayor-marvin-rees/story-30135187-detail/story.html#ipHBqQfKVokBpzXc.99

In case you care, the quote the from us that the Nazi Post won’t print said, “Could you tell Mike Norton he’s a cunt and we wouldn’t mind putting an axe through his Tory head?”

A word from the circulation department:

“We’ve had quite a good response from the street to this issue and only had one ‘negative’ – which was really more in the realm of worry about displaying the front cover rather than an objection to it per se. Even this hitch was overcome.

“Laughter or a shrug is the more common response.

“On the positive side we’ve already had two sell outs requiring re-stocks, and two places wanting our number in the anticipation of demand for more. A punter in one of the delivery venues shook our hand and said ‘I just love this paper – it’s straight from the heart with two fingers up to PR bullshit – I’ll show all my friends.”

Ho, ho!