Tag Archives: Senior Management

THE SEND SURVEILLANCE WITCH TRIALS COMMENCE:

“Day after day council staff witness the blatant disregard, lawbreaking and contempt with which citizens like myself are treated. It’s hardly surprising that less than half of staff trust senior leaders to act with integrity, and that just over half feel confident using whistleblowing policies without fear of retaliation.”

A parent of a disabled child spied on by council bosses has published, on Twitter/X, a public statement that council Monitoring Officer, ‘L’il’ Tim O’Gara, banned from the council’s last Human Resources Committee meeting.

The statement reveals that the parent has started legal action against the council for their weird and unlawful surveillance of her and her family.

This legal action was the final resort after the council, under the Reverend Rees and, now, the Greens reneged on a promise to set up an independent investigation into their surveillance of residents.

The statement also explains that the council has failed to provide a response to this parent’s formal legal letter in seven months.

The officer accountable for that response is Monitoring Officer ‘L’il’ Tim O’Gara. Never one to let a blatant conflict of interest get in the way, he has enthusiastically banned a statement, highlighting his self-serving negligence, from being heard by a committee of councillors responsible for employing him.

To add insult to injury, the parent further reveals that the Reverend’s appalling cabinet sidekick, Asher “The Slasher” Craig, told a meeting of local community groups that the parent was “hysterical”.

How long before the council denounces her for witchcraft and sets up witch trials with O’Gara as judge?

As a statement bannned by the council’s chief legal officer to cover his own bent arse is unlikely to appear in any other local press, here’s the full statement:

MAYOR’S OFFICE CASH UPDATE

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While Bristol City Council continues to IMPOSE AUSTERITY on the rest of the city, it’s trebles all round in the office of the Mayor.

We’ve already told you about the Reverend’s personally appointed regeneration chief Colin “Head Boy” Molton – responsible for arena non-delivery – trousering £1.5k a day without the bother of having to go through any COMPETITIVE RECRUITMENT PROCESS. Not this side of the 2020 mayoral election, anyway.

Now we learn that the Reverend’s political assistant, Kevin “Don’t mention the private education” Slocombe has been treated to a ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN PER CENT pay rise by the Reverend. The same post under Mayor No More Ferguson attracted a wage of £45k for his glamorous assistant, Zoe “Groupie” Sear. Now the pay is £95K.

£45k isn’t bad money at all for a post managing a PA and a couple of admin assistants. But clearly not enough money for a MIDDLE RANKING PR of Slocombe’s standing. So he’s has bagged a £50k pay rise from his friend, the Reverend.

News is also in, courtesy of the council’s external auditors, that the £100k the Reverend handed to departing Chief Exec Anna “Big Wedge” Klonowski last year was a GENEROUS PERSONAL GIFT with public money from the Reverend and not a legally required pay off for her notice period as he claimed.

How much is the Reverend spending on generous and unnecessary payments to his mates? It’s hard to say. Especially now that the paperwork for the senior management reorganisation that the Reverend promised would save £1million a year on senior bosses’ wages has been made ‘EXEMPT‘. This means the public and press are conveniently DENIED access to any final figures.

Is this because the promised savings haven’t materialised for the council, while large sums of money for a privileged few have materialised in personal bank accounts?

MENTAL MARVIN

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The Reverend Rees took to his pulpit for World Mental Health Day on October 10. “Time taken off work due to mental health illnesses was an “economic consideration” for the Bristol region,” he blustered on Youtube in another EMPTY PR GESTURE designed to make him look like he gives a shit.

Although he is right. Mental health illness is an “economic consideration”. Especially in his own organisation, where 25 per cent of the 4,000 working days lost to sickness absence at Bristol City Council in the last six months were due to “ANXIETY, STRESS, DEPRESSION“.

This is almost entirely the fault of the Reverend’s incompetent, naval-gazing SENIOR BOSS CLASS. A relentless focus on their own terms, conditions and wages and the obsessive feathering of executive and managerial nests at the DIRECT EXPENSE of the public they serve and the people they employ is clear for us all to see.

It’s no coincidence that the lowest rates of sickness – with less than ONE DAY per person lost to sickness in six months – are in the pampered executive offices of the City Director. Here, the soft-handed Reverend and his well-heeled bosses and advisors drift from relaxed meetings with each other discussing how to fuck up our lives to laidback briefings among themselves to set-up their next salary uplift. They are UNSTRUCTURED, UNSUPERVISED and UNACCOUNTABLE.

Meanwhile, the highest rates of sickness are in frontline services – social services, adult care and housing – where the absence rates are TEN TIMES more for those doing the REAL WORK – dealing with the consequences of crappy, distant management decisions from a decaying and corrupt organisation.

The Reverend’s response to the MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS unfolding in front of his eyes in his own organisation was another PR announcement for organisations he’s not really responsible for. Launching an unfunded schools’ mental health initiative he explained he wanted “to help young people build emotional and psychological resilience”.

Presumably, then, the Reverend’s staff can just fuck off?

COUNCIL STAFF STUFFED AS AIMLESS UPHEAVAL IS FOISTED FROM ABOVE

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The naval-gazing SELF-OBSESSION of senior bosses at Bristol City Council continues unhindered by reality as the Reverend Rees launches another so-say “new structure for senior management”.

Naturally this restructure also means PAY RISES boosting top directors pay by a cool TEN PER CENT after Labour councillors led by self-styled militant trade unionist Kye “Rimmer” Dudd, the current chair of the council’s HR committee, steered the new pay deal through his committee for the Reverend last month.

This restructure and pay rise announcement – 18 months into the Reverend’s term – arrives shortly after a series of finance reports over the summer presented to his cabinet and councillors claimed such a reorganisation was officially ‘at risk’ and would NOT be happening.

However, with the speedy and mysterious DISAPPEARANCE of his hand-picked Chief Exec, Anna “Big Wedge” Klonowski in September, the Reverend reversed the ferret and instructed his latest teacher’s pet interim £1,000 a day private sector consultant Jackie “You’re Fired!” McGeachie to embark on the delayed project IMMEDIATELY.

The Reverend’s headline claim for this latest DECKCHAIR REARRANGEMENT at the top at the Counts Louse is that it will reduce the number of managers by seven and save £750k a year. A virtually UNVERIFIABLE claim considering the pay rises being doled out and the hidden number of highly paid interims, consultants, former bosses and corporate wonks wasting time, money and oxygen throughout the council at any given time.

The Reverend also doesn’t seem to realise that “a new structure for senior management” is also a new structure for the WHOLE organisation. This means yet more BUREAUCRATIC CHANGE and UPHEAVAL for ordinary low-paid staff who have been subjected to mass redundancy programmes in 2013 and 2016 and a ridiculous New Ways of Working “agile” office move programme ongoing since 2015. More redundancies are on the cards this year too.

Meanwhile, a PROMISED restructure for ordinary staff at the council, likely to deliver significant pay increases to the lowest paid workers to stop their wages collapsing to the low level of the minimum wage, has DISAPPEARED without trace. Despite a promise when bosses’ wages were hiked last year by up to 20 PER CENT – just after they conspired against us all to set an unlawful budget – that a fair staff pay structure was a priority for bosses, the mayor and councillors.

As one member of staff told The BRISTOLIAN: “Another management reorganisation means absolute chaos and a decision-making vacuum for six months at least. Then some dull, witess twat on vast wages who we’ve never met will start emailing corporate crap at us claiming they’re our ‘leader’. Then they’ll be more uncertainty as they start trying to get rid of us all, all over again. Then they’ll leave with a massive top secret pay off because it turns out they’re actually a load of shit”

Alas, it seems, the priority, as usual, is the bosses, the bosses’ pay, the bosses’ egos and more aimless upheaval for frontline staff trying to deliver actual services.