Tag Archives: Peter Robinson

GAGA’S GAG SENSATION

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

“LADY GAGA” DISHING OUT THE GAGS

Looks like council Chief Exec NICOLA “LADY GAGA” YATES has been living up to her name. The BRISTOLIAN can EXCLUSIVELY reveal that over the last year the city council has gagged at least TWELVE departing members of staff, preventing them discussing any aspect of their employment with the council in exchange for CASH.

The total amount of our money spent removing former employees’ human rights is not clear.
However we’ve tracked down a few payments.

One recipient was former finance boss PETER “ROBBIN-US” ROBINSON. Despite resigning last autumn to take up a post in Herefordshire, the sleazy Freemason, notorious at the Council House for corruption COVER-UPS and BULLYING of honest internal audit investigators, was handed £52k in exchange for his silence.

This is someone who resigned. Why are council bosses being paid for resigning? What happened to efficiency and austerity? or is that only for the little people?

The BRISTOLIAN also has traced a further THREE leaving payments to senior bosses last year totalling £389k, only one of which can be identified as a redundancy payment. That’s two more payments of over £100k each.

Senior bosses who have scarpered in the last year include village idiot and (mis)communications expert PETER ‘CLAUDIA-JEAN’ HOLT and belly-flopping major projects manager ALUN ‘IT’S A FUCK UP’ OWEN. Did they receive six-figure payouts? Funny, ‘cause last we heard there were STRICT LIMITS on leaving payments to senior managers ensuring all payments were capped at a maximum of £42,000.

What has Lady Gaga got to hide then? And how much is it costing us?

MARKET FARCES: HOW BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL’S ‘FRAUD-BUSTERS’ BELLYFLOPPED

CAN’T STAND UP TO MANAGERS – CAN’T PROTECT WHISTLEBLOWERS…

The Markets FileBack in mid-January, another meeting of the Bristol City Council’s crap Audit Committee offered up yet more shocking revelations of FINANCIAL MISMANAGEMENT AND SLEAZE in the seedy corridors of corrupt power at Shitty Hall.

The committee’s in-depth fraud reports (which have proved to be a hugely embarrassing feature of the last few meetings), have been quietly ditched. But another report catches the eye. With the unpromising title of ‘Internal Audit Compliance with Public Sector Internal Audit Standards’, it reveals the extent to which our council has operated for the benefit of bent bosses and against the interests of whistleblowers.

The report identifies “a few specific areas…where currently Internal Audit arrangements do not fully conform with the public sector Internal audit standards requirements”. Or, in other words, areas where the committee and its FEEBLE INTERNAL AUDIT TEAM have screwed up.

Top of the list is, “The Chief Internal Auditor should report to an organisation level equal or higher to the corporate management team and must be sufficiently senior and Independent to be able to provide credible constructive challenge to senior management.”

So the Chief Internal Auditor should report directly to the council’s Chief Executive? This has never happened. The Chief Auditor always reports to the Head of Finance – a level below corporate management. Until recently, when he scarpered sharpish, Head of Finance was Freemason Peter Robinson, who SPIKED ANY INVESTIGATION into the Markets Service and did nothing to discourage the victimisation of a whistleblower there.

We know he also once spiked an investigation into the dubious procurement of a fleet of Mercedes vans. On that occasion he victimised – then attempted to sack – an investigator in Internal Audit who uncovered and produced a report on that particular procurement scam.

Chief Internal Auditors have been NEUTERED and left powerless for years – and it’s a fact they admit. Last year in an email to a senior trade unionist the head of Internal Audit’s fraud unit, Andea ‘Chocolate Teapot’ Hobbs, admitted that they “cannot provide any assurances as to how management will respond if a whistleblower makes him/herself known to management as a whistleblower (as happened in the circumstance I believe you are referring to).”

The “circumstance” referred to is the way that Tony Harvey and his bosses responded to whistleblowing by victimising and bullying the whistleblower out of their job – apparently under the nose of Ms Hobbs.

Let’s face it, if you’re unable to stand up to a soppy little Facilities Manager and stop them doing over a whistleblower, or to call that manager out for being unable to account for £165,000, then the idea you can provide “a credible constructive challenge to senior management” is laughable.

The reverse is true. Middle managers have been able to IGNORE Internal Auditors with impunity, stamp on whistleblowers and do whatever they like with our money for years.

What a shambles.

MARKET FARCES: AN AUDITOR WRITES…

A FORMER INTERNAL AUDITOR GIVES THEIR OPINION ON THE SO-CALLED CITY COUNCIL ‘INVESTIGATION’ INTO THE MARKETS SERVICE…AND IT AIN’T PRETTY

The Markets FileWe have covered the FINANCIAL SCANDAL in Bristol City Council’s Markets Service for a full year.

Many in Shitty Hall attempted to gloss over the whole affair.

But then we received a LEAKED COPY of the council’s own ‘Internal Audit’ report. It made for interesting reading…

But don’t just take our word for it. We passed it on to a FORMER INTERNAL AUDITOR, and asked them to give their opinion on it.

Here is what they said:

Due to the seriousness of allegations and problems within the market, I would query whether this audit should have been carried out by the council’s own internal audit department as it may be considered that they may not be objective or independent.

For what it’s worth, the audit opinion is that “management can place no reliance” on the “weak” internal control of the market, resulting in an audit assessment of “poor – of concern”.

The auditors stated that they could not “form an opinion on the soundness and strength of the allegations or otherwise” because they were not presented with enough objective evidence.

The audit says that: (a) requested documentation was not made available and (b) there was a lack of willingness and urgency from market staff to resolve any issues. How any auditor worth their salt put up with this sort of response is beyond me. Imagine if a professional, independent, outside company had been brought in, only to be presented with a barrage of obstruction and apathy (let’s be honest – this is what it boils down to).

They would have presented a brief, damning report detailing how they had been given the run-around, declaring the market’s management and system unfit for audit and presented them with a large bill for wasting their time.

Some audit findings seem to imply that traders are being charged, ‘adjusted’ or let off on a whim, with no qualifying or traceable paperwork or adherence to any system. It is particularly telling that for some of the corrective action the auditors are suggesting that:

  1. There is a problem
  2. No one in current staffing has ability to correct the situation
  3. Suggests that a fInancial person is appointed to the task
  4. Recommends that they get instructions from the audit department (not management?) prior to implementing the corrective action.

Don’t they trust management to implement the corrective action, even after discussions and receiving the audit report along with all the “findings”?

I have been led to understand that, despite the audit laying down implementation dates for corrective action to be completed (Nov 2012 – Jan 2013) there has not been a follow- up audit to see whether the corrective action identified – and agreed – has been implemented.

“Imperative” and “urgent” are words from the executive summary, yet why still no follow-up audit?

I suppose at least the council has a piece of paper to wave under the noses of the uninitiated to tell them that the problems have been identified and corrective action – where necessary – is being implemented.

MARKET FARCES: THEY LIED! A ‘BRISTOLIAN’ SPECIAL REPORT INTO BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL’S FINANCIAL MISMANAGEMENT

STARTLING LEAKED DOCUMENTS DESCRIBE A SICK CULTURE OF LIES, DOUBLE CROSSING, BULLYING, VICTIMISATION AND MORE.

The BRISTOLIAN has been leaked a copy of a SHOCKING Internal Audit report by Bristol City Council’s Corporate Services into the crisis-hit Markets Service.

The Markets FileThe report, dated November 2012, sensationally proves that Mayor George Ferguson, his Green Cabinet sidekick Councillor Gus Hoyt (the man responsible for Markets), and even the council’s Press Office, have all LIED about what’s been going on in the department that had been the direct responsibility of Facilities Manager Tony Harvey.

Over the Summer of 2013 MAYOR FERGO and SIR HOYTY-TOYTY were both insistent that there was “no evidence of wrongdoing” and that “no money went missing as this was purely an administrative fault”. Meanwhile, in July 2012 the Press Office told the BBC in a formal statement that the council had “found no evidence to support any charge of fraud or dishonesty, nor that any cash had gone missing”.

However, there is nothing in the audit report that supports these conclusions. It actually states,

“It was difficult to form an opinion in respect of the allegations [of fraud, theft and dishonesty].”

Hardly the sparkling clean bill of health we’ve been sold for the last six months, is it? And in a further twist, it seems that Tony Harvey and his line managers, with the full support of the council’s Freemason ex-finance boss Peter Robinson, SPIKED A FULL INVESTIGATION into the twenty-odd allegations Harvey had received from a whistleblower.

What's a £283k overspend to a millionaire mayor? King George weighs in on the markets accounts chaos

Did you say unsubstantiated George?

The report says: “Facilities Management requested that Internal Audit undertake an investigation into the markets management decision making processes for both financial and commercial transactions. To facilitate the above investigation a decision was taken by Internal Audit management to undertake an AUDIT REVIEW. It was considered that this would enable a sound knowledge of the systems to be gained prior to completing the INVESTIGATIVE WORK.”

However, “the INVESTIGATIVE WORK” never happened. Instead, Internal Audit’s work was “drawn to a close” and – in the words of the report – the allegations left “unresolved”.

How a non-investigation in which serious allegations are unresolved becomes “no evidence to support any charge of fraud or dishonesty, nor that any cash had gone missing” is a mystery.

It’s also a mystery why Harvey – with the support of his boss, Robert ‘Spunkface’ Orrett, and the Head of Finance, Peter Robinson – never went on to investigate the allegations, but instead busied himself (again, with Orrett and Robinson) TARGETING THE WHISTLEBLOWER for the sack.

What the report DOES tell us:

  • £2,500 in cash is unaccounted for
  • “Income may not have been banked intact”
  • There was “potential for fraud/ misappropriation”
  • Accounts had been “adjusted” and monies removed with no explanation
  • “No reliance can be placed upon the integrity of the detail recorded [in the markets’ accounts]”
  • The audit opinion was “poor”, financial control was “weak and management could place no reliance on it”
  • The Markets Service finance system was open to “significant risk, error or abuse”
  • It was difficult for the auditor to form any opinion as documents were withheld by Markets Service staff and managers – an act of gross misconduct
  • There was a refusal from staff to work with the auditor – an act of gross misconduct
  • There was a lack of transparency in both commercial and financial decision making
  • The expertise to sort out the financial mess did not exist among Markets Service staff once whistleblowers were given the boot by Harvey
  • No reliance can be placed upon the integrity of the markets’ accounts

This shocking report and subsequent EFFORTS TO SUPPRESS ITS FINDINGS by senior City Council managers (with the full knowledge and cooperation of the ‘fraud-busting’ Internal Audit team and the Head of Finance) call into question the financial integrity of the whole organisation.

Our money is not safe in their hands. There’s a cover-up here that reaches right to the top.

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

Web ExclusiveYet 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.

MASSIVE PAYOUTS! MASSIVE CUTS! MASSIVE BELLENDS! …PLUS SOME GOOD NEWS TOO IN THE LATEST EDITION OF ‘THE BRISTOLIAN’!

The BRISTOLIAN #4.7 - coverOctober’s edition of The BRISTOLIAN is another PACKED ISSUE, featuring…

» NEARLY £900k IN PAYOFFS TO CRAP COUNCIL BOSSES!
Ex-Chief Executive and six Directors squeeze almost a million quid out of us

» FAT CAT GAGA’S DOSH SENSATION!
Second choice ‘City Director’ Nicola Yates’s well-funded departure from Hull

» GARGAN GETS FEAR OVER INTERNET PROFILE PIC!
Avon & Somerset Police’s Arch-Druid Nick Gargan confuses fictional copper for real thing

» INDYREDPANTS MAN AND THE AFFAIR OF THE ACCIDENTAL WORKFARE
PR guru Oliver Mochizuki fails to silence concerns over festival’s forced labour ‘volunteers’

» LABOUR’S NON-MAYOR: REES-KING RIDICULE?
Failed Shitty Hall candidate Marvin Rees shamelessly puts himself in same category as MLK

» HAVE A KITCAT? BREAK A STRIKE
Councillor Telford and Mayor Ferguson get chummy with Brighton’s binman-hating council boss

PLUS: NEWS IN BRIEF!!!

» BRISTOLIAN BITES
Tantalising titbits including…

  • MERCHANT VENTURER LANDGRABhow Fergo’s pals want your libraries and parks!
  • CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST who does John Hirst remind us of?
  • CABINET KNOWS BESThow Council leaders think they have nothing to learn

» VICTORY NEWS
Positive stories from across the city!

  • V FOR VALERIANpressure from The BRISTOLIAN helps trapped residents
  • ALLOTMENTS SAVED – Lynmouth Road gardeners don’t lose the plot
  • BLACKLISTERS IN RETREATsafety-hating construction companies on back foot

PLUS: COMMENT!!!

» BRISTOL’S BROKEN DEMOCRACY?
Outgoing Finance boss Peter Robinson leaves a ‘Zero Budget’ shit-in-a-box for Mayor Fergo

» TOWN GREENS: LATEST
Why you can’t trust councillors to do the right thing

PLUS: NEW D.I.Y GUIDES!!!

» TOP TIPS TO BEAT THE BEDROOM TAX!
Practical lawyer’s advice on how to survive the ‘Spare Room Subsidy’

Blimey! 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 #4.7 – October 2013

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

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:

Secrecy

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-offhow Jan Ormondroyd avoided her own redundancy rules to trouser her own secret wedge

“THANKS TO ‘THE BRISTOLIAN’ I GOT MY MONEY BACK!”

A young mum in Easton has thanked your super, soaraway BRISTOLIAN for its help in getting a £500 nursery fee overpayment refunded by the council – after more than a month of being FOBBED OFF WITH EXCUSES. She is thought to be one of hundreds across Bristol overcharged and awaiting a refund by the cash-strapped city council following its disastrous installation of a new computer system and countless job cuts.

“I spent weeks chasing this up on my own, being told there was nothing that could be done,” she said. “Yet having asked The BRISTOLIAN who in the council to contact, it TOOK ONLY HOURS TO SORT OUT.”

After getting in touch with the city’s premier scandal sheet for advice, the mother-of-one then emailed senior managers across Bristol City Council as well as her local councillors, using the magic words “misfeasance in public office” and threatening to go to the papers.

She quickly received the personal assurance of Finance Director Peter Robinson that the money she was owed would be returned to her straight away – and MIRACULOUSLY it was.

“It really made life difficult as I have to stick to a tight budget just to make ends meet,” the Eastonian told us. “I just wonder HOW MANY OTHER PEOPLE OUT THERE ARE IN THE SAME BOAT as I was, and why this mess happened in the first place.”

NEW BRISTOLIAN HITS THE STREETS

The latest edition of Bristol’s premier investigative scandal sheet is out now, packed with the stories that the other papers can’t be bothered to cover, including…

‘THREATS’ OVER DOCKS DEATH

Rush to silence whistleblowers over ‘accidental death of a cyclist’ that could have been avoided

SELF-POLICING ACADEMY IN RACISM ROW

‘No institutional racism here’ says institution – case closed…

NO REFUNDS!

Council holds onto cash thanks to major problems with new ‘cost cutting’ system

UPDATE: “BRISTOLIAN GOT MY MONEY BACK!”

Intervention by The Bristolian wins young mum refund!

B.R.T: AN OMNIBUS SHAMBLES

Bridge row as transport scheme fiasco trundles on – George’s Stalingrad?

HORSEWORLD BOSS RIDES CHARITY INTO THE GROUND

Rehoming centre heading for knacker’s yard?

TROUGH OVERSEAS AGAIN!

Mayor’s expensive Euro jaunt habit exposed

Plus: May Gurney recycling contract blackmail; Bristol Pound celebrates Mayor’s salary; local councillor annoyed that expenses won’t cover his girlfriend; Council lies over number of gagging orders; and more from Gus Hoyty-Toyty’s Cabinet Diary.

All in your super, soaraway monthly muckraker The Bristolian!

See the Distribution page for where to get your copy…