Tag Archives: Nicola Yates

THE BRISTOLIAN #4.8 – OUT NOW FROM ALL GOOD STOCKISTS!

Well, we have been so busy working on the ‘Ms X’ story these past few days that we have not had the chance to tell you that the latest issue of your favourite local Smiter of the High and Mighty has been on the streets for a week!

November’s edition of The BRISTOLIAN is another PACKED ISSUE, featuring…

» BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL: WE’RE BEING ROBBED!
More cash disappearing from ‘of concern’ authority – this time from cash-in-transit

» MAYOR GRASS FARCE
A right royal game of lawn-acy as Fergo visit gets preferential grass-cutting treatment

» HOYTY-TOYTY’S PORK BARREL POLITICS SCAM
Green Councillor coughs up three times reserve price for allotments that couldn’t be developed on

» COUNTING THE COST OF CITY HALL LIARS
Farcical claptrap from council managers destroys open spaces, runs up massive bills

» CORPORATE FEED-IN FRENZY
China and big business cashing in on city’s solar power bonanza

» CRAP EMPLOYER OF THE MONTH: CLOVER ADVERTISING/APPCO GROUP
The lowdown on why this is one “billion dollar enterprise” you probably don’t want to work for…

» INDYREDPANT’S UNWISE MONKEY’S HORROR NO-SHOW
How the ‘outsider’ who ran in council elections for IfB “shook things up” on audit committee by not turning up

» B-LIME-Y
A merry-go-round of useless managers squanders £100k on lethal play equipment while kids’ education suffers

» HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB?
How PFI deals with the private sector cost us masses more…

PLUS: NEWS IN BRIEF!!!

» BRISTOLIAN BITES
Tantalising titbits including…

THE NEW POLITICS – Lib Dem Stella Hender returns as anti-Green artist Stella Perrett
PICKUP PACKS UP! – mystery of Labour councillor’s ouster at hands of own party
FERGO IN PITTSBURGH CONGRESS – His Redtrouserness continues to rack up those AirMiles
HUNGER GAMES – starving kids made to trudge halfway across city to pick up food arcels
GASTRO PUB RUN BY IDIOTS – hard to imagine, we know

…And all that for FREE!

See the Distribution page for your local stockist – and if there isn’t one near you, let us know!

CAN’T WAIT TO GET HOLD OF A PAPER COPY?

Then you can DOWNLOAD a PDF version here:

» The BRISTOLIAN #4.8 – November 2013

TORY TEA PARTY CAPTION COMPETITION

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l-r: George Ferguson, Eric Pickles, David Cameron, Greg Clark and 'Lady Gaga' Yates (back to the picture)

Clockwise from redtrousered twat on left: Bristol Mayor George Ferguson, Communities & Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles, Prime Minister David Cameron, Minister of State Greg Clark and Bristol City Director ‘Lady Gaga’ Yates (back to the picture)

Mayor Fergo of Red Trousers accompanied by his Chief Exec, Nicola ‘Lady Gaga’ Yates met the PM and Cabinet oddbods Pickles and Greg Clark yesterday.

Amusing captions welcome!

YET MORE BLOODLETTING AT SHITTY HALL: GAGA’S ‘RESTRUCTURING’ RAMPAGE

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Yet more DECKCHAIR REARRANGING on the Titanic that is Bristol City Council’s Strategic Leadership Team, with the announcement that current interim Health & Social Care Director Alison Comley is to take on a ‘super ministry’ for ‘Neighbourhoods’, with incoming John Readman handling ‘People’. Two further permanent directors – for ‘Place’ and ‘Change’ – have yet to be appointed.

In the fluffy language of PR, it’s being hailed as “management restructure” – but with the current six directorates being shrunk into four, it’s clear that this is Bristol’s new City Director Nicola Yates waving the cutlery around for her very own NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES…

It comes as The BRISTOLIAN has been feverishly trying to confirm a number of rumours leaking out of Shitty Hall about senior managers getting VERY NERVOUS in these early days of the reign of LADY GAGA. Only last week we were told:

…Director of Public Health Janet Maxwell is joining the other rats leaving the sinking ship and is off less than a year after taking up the job. As you guys haven’t reported it yet I’m guessing there might be no truth in it…

It seems we were too cautious – responsible paper that we are – and that the hapless ex-GP (the only permanent Director currently serving) is for the chop after all, as her ‘Public Health’ portfolio gets swallowed up into Comley’s ‘Neighbourhoods’. Whilst she looks for a new job, she’d better hope that she doesn’t find herself under the care of ATOS…

This all follows the bombshell last month that Gaga’s “organisation redesign and [re]alignment of services” had led to FIVE Strategic Directors begging for voluntary severance: as we reported at the time, Alun Owen, Peter Robinson and Peter Holt have all gone, with Claudia McConnell and Craig Bolt planning their escape for next year.

Meanwhile, the search continues to for a pair of fresh mugs to warm the ‘Place’ and ‘Change’ chairs for a few months before their inevitable departure. Seeing as the “very thorough selection process” for finding Directors of ‘Neighbourhoods’ and ‘People’ ended up giving us a current acting-up director (Comley) and one of Yates’ pals from her days mismanaging Hull City Council (Readman), it shouldn’t take too long – just long enough to ask “where did I leave my barrel scraper?”

If nothing else, it’s enough to make you wonder whether Lady Gaga is a bit, well, gaga.

GAGGED! GAGA’S FAT CAT DOSH SENSATION!

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Nicola Yates: Well, you’d smile too, if you’d been paid off like she has!

With the ink barely dry on her massive pay-off cheques (and gagging orders) to five of Bristol’s departing service directors, we can reveal that Mayor Fergo’s new City Director, Nicola ‘Lady Gaga’ Yates has brought her own TOWN HALL FAT CAT SCANDAL with her: she received her own secretive pay-off of £242,677 as “compensation for loss of office” in 2012.

Tory supporter LADY GAGA departed from her post as Chief Exec of cash-strapped Hull Council soon after Labour started running the administration last year. However, the exact reasons for her departure are unknown because … Wait for it … Both parties have signed a GAGGING ORDER preventing them discussing her dismissal!!

The BRISTOLIAN also learns that the appointment of Lady Gaga was considerably more controversial than MAYOR FERGO has claimed.

Rather than being a “unaninous decision of the appointment panel” as claimed, we’ve been tipped off that the independent recruitment panel members preferred Swindon Chief Exec Gavin Jones.

Presumably he would have come with considerably less baggage and personal wealth?

REVEALED: COUNCIL BOSSES IN SECRET ELECTION PLAN TO BACK TORIES

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Senior BCC officers implicated in sick election plot

More illuminating news about the gang of overpaid RIGHT-WING DEADBEATS Bristol City Council calls its Senior Leadership Team…

Bristol City Council employees have contacted The BRISTOLIAN to express anger and amazement after discovering that the council’s most senior and well-paid managers have been plotting to use council taxpayer cash and resources to SUPPORT THE TORY PARTY come the general election!

At a meeting in August, members of the council’s Senior Leadership Team – including City Director NICOLA YATES, the now-departed ANGIE RIDGWELL, as well as legal eagle LIAM NEVIN – openly discussed how they could help to get the Conservative-LibDem coalition government re-elected.

Also present was George Ferguson’s spin doctor PETER HOLT, who has since left Bristol City Council for the bright lights of Camden in north London. Could his recent twitter rage at The BRISTOLIAN have anything to do with his panic over us placing the Mayor’s Propaganda Minister in the room during a discussion of dubious legality?

Completing the dastardly cabal were Health supremos ALISON COMLEY and JANET MAXWELL, Neighbourhoods boss MIKE HENNESSEY, ISOBEL CATTERMOLE, who’s responsible for ‘Children, Young People & Skills’, Regeneration guru NEIL TAYLOR, and PAUL TAYLOR, who heads up the ‘Executive Office’.

ROLLCALL OF SHAME: Six figure-salaried senior officers

In their own words they think it’s “important to identify some ‘QUICK WINS’ that could assist in the current Government’s election campaign, these would need to be submitted by January 2014. It was suggested that Boris Johnson’ [sic] vision be used to inform this piece of work.”

Just what relevance London’s Tory mayor Boris Johnson has for people in Bristol isn’t made clear – after all we have our own privately-educated MAYORAL BUFFOON to contend with. But what is clear is that these management muppets are brazenly breaking the law by promoting their own personal allegiances whilst in what are meant to be politically neutral roles.

‘Copy Boris, support the Conservaties’ agrees Senior Leadership Team

Matters are made worse by the fact that the government these unelected managers SECRETLY CONSPIRE to support is wrecking local government and the safety net of the welfare state.

The very things you’d think Bristol’s council officers should be protecting for its citizens.

There’s only one solution for this kind of shameless behaviour – sack these barmy bosses NOW!

THE (E)X-BOSS FILES #1: ANGIE RIDGWELL – “SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE CASH!”

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ANGIE ‘PAIDWELL’ RIDGWELL – the former KPMG consultant who in the space of just nine months notched up three senior job titles at Bristol City Council (Corporate Services Director, City Director and now Organisational Development Director) and pocketed a tasty SIX FIGURE SALARY off the council tax payer – is quitting at the start of November, ‘to spend more time with her money’.

Riding into town in her top-of-the-range BMW, the dazzling redhead turned many a head, not least that of Mayor ‘Gorgeous’ George Ferguson – especially when she whispered into his ear how “very effective in delivery transformation in challenging and heavily unionised environments” she was. But alas, the relationship has soured and a permanent separation now seems inevitable.

Ms Paidwell appears to be taking her ball home after not getting the permanent City Director top job that’s gone to Hull’s Nicola ‘Lady Gaga’ Yates, and so is heading off for the glamour of central government in That There London as she becomes Director General for Finance and Corporate Services at the Department of Energy and Climate Control. This leaves Gorgeous George and our council rather redfaced and in the lurch.

For Ms Paidwell is the person running George’s “zero-based budget process” that’s been shrouded in the utmost secrecy (see The BRISTOLIAN #4.4), quite possibly because it’s COMPLETE TOSH.

So isn’t it nice to know that when this corporate accountant claptrap eventually sees the light of day in November and is introduced to George’s unbelieving staff and public, its chief architect will be gone – along with £100k of our money!

So much for accountability in public office…

THE BRISTOLIAN PICTURE GALLERY IS NOW OPEN!

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At the weekend we published angry twitter person @guriben‘s fine painting of Bristol City Council’s £160,000 ~~Chief Executive~~ City Director Nicola ‘Lady Gaga’ Yates, which beautifully captured her essence.

Since then, BRISTOLIAN readers have been sending us yet more municipal masterpieces… So let us direct you to the new Gallery page over yonder – cue the relaxing music…

LADY GAGA PORTRAIT JOY

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The BRISTOLIAN can EXCLUSIVELY unveil Bristol City Council’s new official portrait of City Director Nicola “Lady Gaga” Yates, created by local artist and Twitter enthusiast @guriben.

The portrait of the city’s wealthy first lady of local government will accompany all official Bristol City Council announcements and publications by Lady Gaga from Monday and it will also appear on a range of Conservative general election material from next year.

MAYOR FERGO told The BRISTOLIAN, “The portrait is magnificent. It perfectly encapsulates Nicola, her character, intellect and not insubstantial beauty. Well done to Guriben and I look forward to an interpretation of me.”

“Nicola Yates will be responsible for the delivery of the Mayor and council’s vision,” says £160k Nicola Yates with tongue firmly in cheek

Lady Gaga has been described as “satisfied” with her official portrait and is said to be keen to see the painting displayed in the City Museum and Art Gallery where she may fit in nicely alongside some of Bristol’s other famous Conservative political figures like the slave trader EDWARD COLSTON and that old reactionary EDMUND BURKE.

The BRISTOLIAN will be commissioning further portraits from Guriben soon for some of our favourite local government officers such as country boy solicitor LIAM ‘MALFOY’ NEVIN, the less than magical new chief legal officer; ANGIE ‘PAIDWELL’ RIDGWELL, the generously remunerated chief bean counter and a farewell portrait of PR man for himself, PETER ‘CLAUDIA-JEAN’ HOLT.

Have you painted a portrait of your favourite local government officer or councillor? Why not send it in?

The best artistic rendering of GARY HOPKINS will win a prize…

Stop Press: TREBLES ALL ROUND AS RUNAWAY COUNCIL MANAGERS TROUSER A WEDGE!

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Rumours of a Shitty Hall meltdown emerge as news reaches your caring, sharing BRISTOLIAN that no less than THREE senior Bristol City Council senior managers sensationally QUIT last week.

All – apparently – are unable to work any longer in Mayor Fergo’s shambolic ‘rule-by-Twitter’ and ‘manage-by-foolish-announcement-on-BBC-Radio-Bristol’ regime. Sources in the council have also revealed to us that these exits are being accompanied by UNUSUALLY LARGE CASH PAYMENTS from our cash-strapped council to some of the quitters.

The quitters so far identified to The BRISTOLIAN include senior finance boss, Peter ‘Robbin-us’ Robinson; communications boss, Peter ‘Claudia-Jean’ Holt and belly-flopping major projects manager Alun ‘It’s a Fuck Up’ Owen, the man in charge of the rubbish BRT project and who tried, a few years ago, to swap – with the city’s wealthiest man – a piece of our land at Ashton Gate worth millions for a few hundred cut-price health club memberships. A deal he laughably described as “good value”.

In a further extraordinary twist, a source has confirmed to The BRISTOLIAN that Peter Robbin-us, who fled for the shires on Friday, was handed £50,0000 of our money as he went out of the door. This is unusual as Robbin-us, who voluntarily resigned to take up a post in Hereford – deep in the Tory shires where, traditionally, bent accountants have oiled the wheels of commerce and power – would not usually be entitled to a redundancy payment. How many times have you voluntarily put in notice to take up another job and then been rewarded with a massive redundancy payment?

And even if this was a redundancy payment, the amount involved has raised eyebrows. Just three years ago, the council’s former Chief Exec, the BRADFORD SUN QUEEN, Jan Ormondroyd introduced strict limits on redundancy payments to senior managers ensuring all payments were capped to reflect a pay maximum of £35,0000 a year, less than half Robbin-us’s generous wage. So even in the unlikely event Robbin-us was entitled to the maximum amount of redundancy over the maximum time period, he’s still received an amount of our money some 50% over his entitlement!

Our source confirms that this is because Robbin-us did not receive redundancy at all. Instead he was paid handsomely for signing a COMPROMISE AGREEMENT with a convenient GAGGING CLAUSE agreed by Mayor Fergo’s new City Director Nicola ‘LADY GAGA’ Yates, who has a bit of form for shutting her staff up. Such agreements should be used to settle genuine legal disputes not cover-up dodgy public money payments to senior bosses. However, any details of this agreement are conveniently now secret thanks to this little clause in the deal:

What a joke! Bristol City Council has effectively GAGGED ITSELF from discussing with the public, its councillors or journalists its own dodgy pay outs to its former managers. Where’s the accountability? This news comes just a few months after a national scandal over the city’s excessive use of compromise deals to gag staff, which had senior managers assuring councillors that these deals “are only ever used in exceptional circumstances”.

Yeah. An exceptional circumstance like when they want to give one of their mates a generous, top secret pay-off.

Staff at the council, meanwhile, are said to be livid at the deal. Robin-us’s reputation at Shitty Hall is appalling. In the last year he’s purchased a new finance system from Agilisys, “one of the UK’s most innovative IT and business services providers”, as part of a £40m outsourcing deal, which has been described to the BRISTOLIAN reliably as, “a load of shit that doesn’t work … that must have been bought by a cretin who’s never operated a computer before”.

He’s also DELIBERATELY DRAGGED HIS FEET over locating £165k missing from the council’s Markets Service (BRISTOLIAN passim). Insiders tell us, “he’s more interested in COVERING HIS MIDDLE MANAGEMENT CRONIES’ ARSES than the sound management of public money.”

While so degraded was Robin-us’s financial management culture that his own internal auditors, responsible for investigating irregularity, fraud and corruption, are now openly admitting that they can no longer protect whistleblowers from what’s been described to us as “A SLEAZY CULTURE OF MANAGEMENT BULLYING AND COVER-UP”.

So, while kids go hungry, families queue at food banks and our streets remain uncleaned you can rest assured that our local authority’s former senior managers are all doing just fine, thanks.

SEE The BRISTOLIAN #4.7 (out in October) FOR EVEN MORE:

Robin-us’s parting shot – the finance boss’s exit plan to slash our services and create a Barnet-style ‘easyCouncil’
The Sun Queen’s pay-off – how Jan Ormondroyd avoided her own redundancy rules to trouser her own secret wedge

MISSING MARKETS MONEY, GAGS, CHEESE AND MARK BRADSHAW: WHAT I DID IN THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS BY AUGUSTUS HOYTY-TOYTY AGED 37¾

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MONDAY:

Bumped into our brilliant new Chief Executive Mrs Yates today while I was wandering around on the third floor trying to find something useful to do. She was at the photocopier running off a considerable amount of paperwork headed ‘GAGGING ORDER’. I asked her what she was up to as a bit of a conversational opening gambit and apparently she was just doing some early preparatory work to pop in the top drawer of her desk. Then she gave me a little grin, grabbed the paperwork and headed off to her office – sorry, I mean flexible work space.

I must say she seems very professional and efficient and she can operate a photocopier! Certainly an improvement on Mr Sims, who seemed to need a PA to switch a light on for him never mind operate a Blackberry or that iPad he was given that he thought was a clipboard for the first three weeks. I sense already that Nicola is the person to lead the new hi-tech open City Hall culture George and I are embedding. Good times!

TUESDAY:

High-level meeting with new Cabinet member, Labour’s superb Mark Bradshaw today. To be able to work alongside such a supremely gifted and able politician and first rate intellect is a privilege. Mark and I discussed very important matters relating to George’s proposed RPZ scheme that I can’t tell you about. Although we will inform the public at an appropriate time. As Mark said, car parking is far too important to discuss in public.

WEDNESDAY:

Had an excellent two o’clock with George today. I must say he’s in a far better mood since he went up to Harley Street to see his doctor about his anxiety issues. He’s now installed a comfy sofa in his office and he was lying on it wearing only his favourite Fairtrade silk dressing gown (red, of course) with his feet up reading Fifty Shades Of Grey! He’s also mentally firing on all cylinders again and has had yet another brilliant idea – ‘City of Cheese’

Apparently he bought a particularly ripe and vibrant brie at our first Make Sunday Special food market and he thinks Bristol Brie could be a really amazing international place-making tool for the city. I could only agree and promised – as the Cabinet lead on food – to get on it right away. I then had to leave as he needed to take his Effexor, whatever that is, and relax for a while.

THURSDAY:

Finally got in today to see Mr Mann, our transport boss, over at Brunel House. What a strange meeting. When I walked in Mr Mann was holding a small teddy bear at his face level and appeared to be having a conversation with it. “Hello Sir Gus,” he said, “this is Teddy. He helps me with policy.”

Thinking I had better change the subject sharpish, I pointed at a large green safe in the corner of the room that seemed to be wrapped in about four toughened steel chains secured by around six padlocks. “That’s where I keep the Greater Bristol Bus Network performance statistics,” explained Mr Mann. “We can’t be too careful. We don’t want them getting out to the press or public, do we?” he muttered quietly.

If nothing else, I suppose we should be impressed by Mr Mann’s commitment to information security. The rest of the meeting was about RPZs, which I can’t tell you anything about because car parking is quite rightly a top-secret issue.

FRIDAY:

Had a row today on Twitter with those horrible, nasty, beastly people at The BRISTOLIAN. They keep banging on about this missing £165,000 missing from the Market Service that I’m ultimately responsible for. It is of course all complete nonsense. As George has kindly explained to them there is no evidence of any wrongdoing at all. So come on guys, sometimes you just have to accept that £165,000 just disappears from public sector organisations without any explanation. Mankind isn’t perfect, is it? We just can’t explain everything, can we? Like how bees fly; UFOs; the Loch Ness Monster; the Bermuda Triangle; Alastair Sawday; homeopathy and David Lynch films. Some things are simply pure mystery.

Besides I’m happy to confirm that Mr Harvey, the Facilities Manager responsible for overseeing the money, has fully investigated himself and has confirmed nobody has done anything wrong. The Metropolitan Police seem to be able to investigate themselves without all this fuss. What more do these people want?

They should join UKIP with all the other racist stirrers and RPZ resisters who want to destroy mine and George’s progressive coalition for Green progress in Bristol with their relentless focusing on silly little details and small amounts of missing money rather than looking at the big canvas of Bristol George and I are busy colouring in green.