Dim Daya
Congratulations to Bristol City Council legal eagle SHAHZIA “DIM” DAYA. For it seems this time-serving, lower middle ranking public law semi-professional has hit the big time and the BIG CASH and has been appointed permanent Head of Legal and Monitoring Officer at the council on a wedge not unadjacent to £75k a year (plus a potential performance related ‘uplift’).
BRISTOLIAN readers may recall Dim Daya THREATENING The BRISTOLIAN last year on behalf of her then boss, Sanjay “Under” Prashar. One of the FOUR hapless chumps employed by Mayor-No-More Redpants to bodge together dubious legal decisions for his administration.
Daya and Prashar took exception to The BRISTOLIAN publishing some of their self-styled “secret” documents regarding huge overspends on the doomed Metrobust project and they threatened to DRAG US INTO COURT unless we removed the documents from our website forthwith. Ooh-er, missus!
Alas, we immediately pointed out to Dim Daya that The BRISTOLIAN can publish what the fuck it likes as stamping ‘CONFIDENTIAL‘ on embarrassing documents and lying to councillors about their legal status has no meaning whatsoever to the Smiter or in a British court.
Having delivered our succinct lesson in public law, Dim Daya conveniently took our advice to the letter and immediately fucked off never to be heard from again. While her “secret” documents still reside on our website FOR ALL TO VIEW as they please.
Now it’s been brought to our attention that despite handing over a £75k salary to Dim Daya for the last year as their interim legal boss, it seems bosses at the council share our view that Dim Daya is another OVERPAID INCOMPETENT not up to the job.
Because a quick glance through the council’s EXPENDITURE SPREADSHEETS for 2016 reveals that they have paid one Philip McCourt, ‘consultant solicitor and chartered secretary’, £61k last year to “provide support and mentoring to the interim monitoring officer; conduct a review of Bristol City Council’s companies; and enhance the governance arrangements for shared devolution proposals across the West of England.”
In other words we’ve been forking out for someone to do Dim Daya’s bloody job. McCash has also been “retained to provide advice over 2016/17”, which means more of our money will be spent PROPPING UP Dim Daya for a further six months at least.
Yet again at Bristol City Council, it’s austerity for us, the plebs, while huge sums of money are expended on them – the cult of the useless at City Hall.