Tag Archives: Redcliffe

THAT SINKING FEELING

A whistleblower has broken cover to reveal a SCANDALOUS series of HAZARDOUS health and safety breaches in the infrastructure of Bristol Docks.

The major problems we EXPOSE represent a danger to the public, to users of the docks and to the city as whole as it’s unlikely that the city’s flood defences are properly maintained.

Our contact claims that council docks boss, the notorious bully and incompetent, TONY “AHAB” NICHOLS and his useless sidekick, Chief Engineer KEVIN “WHAT DOCK? ” POMEROY have allowed the docks to fall into this serious state of disrepair “due to either their total INDIFFERENCE or complete INCOMPETENCE”.

We’re also told that this is after the pair were entrusted with £17m of tax payer investment for the docks. Here’s the full list of issues:

Outer Gates

☠ Not ‘de-muddied’ in four years

☠ Bearings on operating arms seized

☠ Shear joints (an engineered weak spot to protect gates and machinery) welded top and bottom

Inner Gate

☠ As outer gates, except water ingress to High Pressure Units (HPUs) running biodegradeable oil and causing damage to delicate machinery

Sluices

☠ Spear post ends to sluice gate not repaired – refitted in very worn condition

93 Stop Gates

☠ Not recoated inside depite promises to the Environment Agency as condition of securing money for new stop gates

Brunel Sluices

☠ Only one of four operational for many years Emergency Paddle House

☠ Over six years spent changing from geared operation to hydraulic. Still none operational. (Wrong size rams were bought, wrong HPU. New HPU taken from Brunel subways)

Bridges

☠ Plimsoll: gutter is still not cleaned six months after breakdown, which was ultimately caused by this. Breakdown occurred at 16:15. Chief Docks Engineer Kevin Pomeroy would not answer his phone (during core working hours). He arrived eventually at 20:00. He did not call any engineering staff out although press were told they had

☠Redcliffe and Prince Street Bridge: badly corroded, massive holes in structure

Dredging

☠ More mud in the dock and Feeder Canal than at any time in the last 20 years.

It’s clear that out City Docks have been mismanaged and abused by Cap’n Ahab and Pomeroy. And it’s clear that they are simply not up to their well-paid jobs.

Now we say to the pair of them: “For gods sake – and for everyone’s sake – go. And go now .”

FÜHRER FERGIE’S FASCIST MEMORIAL SHOCKER!

Like all public school twits, Mayor George ‘Pig’ Ferguson likes nothing better than the sound of his own voice. So a keynote speech for a select, £25 a ticket, audience of his UPPER MIDDLE CLASS GROUPIES at the Architecture Centre last month was inevitable. Modestly titled ‘The Art of the Impossible’, in it Ferguson outlined his ‘vision’ for the city.

And pretty weird it was too: a sort of JG Ballard-meets-George Monbiot future Bristol, full of silent electric boats on the harbour, buildings with photovoltaic skins and super-lite composite bikes. A city centre marked out with tree-lined avenues and boulevards for the pleasure of his architect friends from Redcliffe – something that would only be possible through the minimum wage labour of ordinary Bristolians sweating away unseen ‘below stairs’ anyway.

The icing on the cake, however, was Gorgeous George’s proposal to build a town square on Castle Park named after a notorious FASCIST FELLOW TRAVELLER!

Because ex-Merchant Venturer Ferguson thinks it’d be a good idea to call it “Eve Balfour Square, named after the founder of the Soil Association” – presumably overlooking the fact that horrifying right-wing Tory toff Balfour set up the Soil Association with pal Jorian Jenks, the notorious ‘blood and soil’ card-carrying British fascist.

Still, Eve Balfour Square pairs quite nicely with our slave trade celebration concert venue, the Colston Hall, doesn’t it?