Tag Archives: Peter Holt

SIR GUS TACKLES BRISTOL’S ENORMOUS ARTS HOLE

Welcome to the Hoyty-Toyty World of Bristol Politics!

MONDAY:

Finally saw George for our 10 o’clock at 11.30am when he finally arrived for work, apologising as he’d been up late with Zoe list-ticking again. They seem to have so many lists and so much to tick!

But at last I finally got to lay out to George the Bristol Green Party’s ideas for the new arena. He appeared very excited by our proposals for an all-wooden structure with a THATCHED ROOF POWERED BY WIND. Although he did have some reservations, such as what would happen when there’s no wind to power the amplifiers.

The solution is simple but brilliant. Top bands from around the world would simply have to do acoustic sets. What better way to put Bristol on the map than as the international home of the impromptu acoustic gig? “Imagine,” I said to George, “Take That with just Gary on piano, Robbie playing a bit of acoustic guitar and Jason, Mark and Howard doing the harmonies. That’s not something you see every day.”

“I guess not,” said George, who then went very quiet, overwhelmed by the groundbreaking consequences. He brightened up considerably when I pointed out that there were also some interesting sustainable employment spin-offs from our plan such as the potential for the reintroduction of the artisan craft of thatching to Britain with Bristol as its epicentre.

Before I left I also put in a special request from the younger members of the Green Party who really want to see the exciting folk-rock act Mumford & Sons do the honours at the grand opening of the arena. George, who is a big fan, was thrilled at the suggestion.

I know this is going to come as a big upset to some our older Bristol Green Party members who had been holding out for a reformed Lindisfarne to appear, but hey fellas! You got to move with the times.

It’s forward not back at George’s City Hall!!

TUESDAY:

A fantastic day. Green Party leader Natalie Bennett visited Bristol today to support our local election campaign. She was superb. OK, as a former Guardian journalist she might be prone to making embarrassing spelling errors (but who isn’t?) and utterly clueless about foreign policy, but she’ll happily sympathise for hours with whingeing school teachers and moaning social workers.

Natalie was especially keen to get our “total opposition to the cuts” message across and she dealt with any challenges supremely well. When asked why if we were totally opposed to cuts did we vote for them in Bristol she gave the questioner a FUNNY LITTLE SMILE and then rushed off to find a school teacher to moan at her. What a professional.

We all know how to say one thing at election time and do another at George’s City Hall!

WEDNESDAY:

Attended a ‘Keep Sundays Special’ Project Meeting at City Hall.

Exciting times seeing George’s plan to create a traffic-free environment on Sundays come to fruition thanks to a crack council officer team. We’re now at the detail and delivery phase and it’s great to see a proper ‘one council’ approach in action. Mr Mann the traffic boss has agreed to shut three roads at a cost of just £190,000, which is a great deal. Mr Holt, Head of Press and Marketing, knows a face painter and someone who knows someone who knows a unicyclist. George’s friend in Southville will make 100 yards of cloth bunting for us, and Mr Morris, the Markets Manager, says he’s got EIGHT ARTISAN CAKE STALLS lined up already – and even promised to personally come in every Sunday to collect the stall fees (cash only please!) himself. What commitment.

We’re still on the lookout for jugglers and Morris Dancers so give us a shout if you can help.

We love dancing with bells on our toes at George’s City Hall!

FRIDAY:

Back at work after yesterday’s special social media course (George’s idea) after that minor thing the other day when I was accidentally racist. And it worked! No major diplomatic incidents, plus Mr Holt taught me how to write ‘BOOBLESS’ on a calculator.

It’s a digital wonderland, George’s City Hall!

TOTAL GAG AND BALLS-UP: COUNCIL CAUGHT PUTTING OUT WRONG FIGURES ON ‘COMPROMISE AGREEMENTS’

A political row has broken out after the last BRISTOLIAN exposed Bristol City Council for signing off gagging orders to staff at the rate of TWO A MONTH.

Within just days of The BRISTOLIAN hitting the streets, Bristol North West’s Tory MP ‘Sugar Ray’ Charlotte Leslie was calling for Bristol City Council to implement an immediate ban on these orders due to their CORROSIVE EFFECT on open and honest government.

Sugar Ray Charlotte’s efforts eventually elicited a bizarre response from the Shitty Hall’s West Wing-obsessed public schoolboy twit of a PR boss Peter ‘Claudia Jean’ Holt, who claimed Bristol City Council “has used 54 compromise agreements in the last five years,” adding that they “are only ever used in exceptional circumstances”.

Going by Claudia Jean’s figures that’s a rate of just one month… So that’s okay, then. Except it’s not – because it’s BULLSHIT. According to information provided by Bristol City Council in 2011, they signed off 46 of these orders in 2008/09 alone, and a further 54 in 2009/10 – that’s one hundred gagging orders in just two of the last five years! No figures are yet available for the years 2010 – 2013 but on present evidence it looks like Claudia Jean’s misreported the numbers of these orders by a factor of about four…

It’s also interesting to note that there was a MASSIVE SPIKE in the use of these gagging orders in 2008 when Bradford Sun Queen Jan Ormondroyd arrived in Bristol as Chief Executive. In the year immediately before she arrived – 2006/07 – Bristol City Council signed off none. Within two years of her arrival, staff were being legally gagged at the rate of one a week.

So not only did she introduce a bloated, under performing management structure and enormous pay hikes for the chosen few, but she proactively gagged any staff who attempted to criticise her mess. And remember: this is the management that gave us the hated BRT, the loathed green spaces strategy, and attempted to destroy the Bristol and Bath Railway Path – all whilst promoting utter nonsense like promising to spend £50m on hosting the 2018 World Cup – a kamikaze pledge that cost Bristol £363,000 with nil return.

So just how many people tried to sound the alarm and got gagged?

Get in touch if you were one of the ones silenced…