Tag Archives: South Gloucestershire

NHS PRIVATISATION WATCH

Since July last year an NHS Integrated Care Board has been established across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucester but not BANES. Because why use the existing West of England administrative area when you can make up another new area instead?

This latest NHS reform, according to their PR, will “bring the NHS together locally to improve population health and establish shared strategic priorities within the NHS”.

Six people, with no explanation of how or why they were appointed or what they’re being paid by us, are serving as non-executive directors on this board to “act in the best interests of patients and the public”.

Those secretly selected to act in our best interests include a Merchant Venturer, UWE boss and overpromoted chiropodist Steve West; Business West bigwig Jaya “Cha-cha-cha” Chakrabarti and a random woman from Wales, Ellen Donovan, who explains she has a “good track record as a Senior Executive in product development”. Neglecting to explain that a lot of that experience was at Debenhams, which went into, er, liquidation for the second and last time in 2020.

Little surprise, then, that this board stuffed with private sector cheerleaders has selected a private sector solution funded by international venture capital for their first initiative to support our local NHS.

Welcome to ‘NHS@Home’, a so-say ‘hospital at home’ scheme where the elderly are discharged from hospital to free up bed space and left to fend for themselves with the aid of a magic box of tech courtesy of leading ‘virtual ward providers’, private firm Doccla.

Far from working in the best interests of patients and the public, however, Doccla are working for profit and to pay back the large capital investment they’ve received from venture capital and private equity firms. What could possibly go wrong?

Conveniently, our Integrated Care Board has deemed trials of their tech solution a success and are now throwing millions at it across the region they’ve invented.

Shame, then, that word on the ground from NHS workers implementing the tech is that it was far from a success. They say that the elderly, unsurprisingly, struggled to understand how to work the Doccla box of tricks and require a huge level of in-person support that simply isn’t there.

In the brave new world of private equity involvement in the NHS, do we just have to cross our fingers and hope no one dies as public money turns to private profit?

ARENA CONFLICT: MAKING GREENHALGH

ARENA REPORT MASSIVE CONFLICT SHOCKER!

POTHOLED!

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A cyclist was involved in a nasty ACCIDENT on the Downs recently when he rode straight into a pothole measured as 8 inches deep, 68 inches long and 26 inches wide. It was also completely SUBMERGED in water and looked like a puddle.

The bike SNAPPED in two when the cyclist hit the pothole and he was hospitalised with head and face injuries including concussion and fractured cheek, nose and hand. NUMEROUS REPORTS had been made to the council’s ‘Fix My Street’ website, especially from cyclists reporting how dangerous sections of the Downs now are. There are a series of LARGE POTHOLES there, which the council is doing sod-all about.

Meanwhile, the council and their cycling consultants are resurfacing the cycle path on Baldwin Street for the THIRD TIME, even though no one uses it. All around the city, they’re building cycle paths a few metres long, when all the evidence shows that cyclists won’t dismount, get onto the cycle path, cycle a few metres, dismount and get back on the road again.

Why are the roads so much better in South Gloucestershire and North Somerset than in Bristol? Any potholes that appear are FILLED IN. Roads that deteriorate are RESURFACED. Meanwhile, Bristol has some absolute HORROR SHOWS, many where there is very heavy cycle use. The roads around Blaise Castle are another example.

And this is supposedly a ‘Cycling City’ where Sustrans chooses to locate its headquarters?

NOT CLEAN, NOT GREEN

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Bristol’s time as European Green Capital is not going at all well when it comes to the cleanliness of the city’s streets.

Even before the start of Green Capital year, Bristol had an unenviable reputation as the dirtiest place in the West of England. Government statistics reveal that in 2013/14, 10,472 incidents of fly-tipping were reported to Shitty Hall. This compares with 1,258 over the same period for South Gloucestershire and a mere 413 for Bath & NE Somerset.

Things haven’t improved much with the advent of the elite greenwash bunfight either. While the city’s great and good slap each others’ backs over their pretended environmental credentials, Bristolians from Lawrence Hill to Lawrence Weston are complaining about unacceptable levels of litter and fly-tipping in their areas.

But it’s not just in north Bristol that the locals are concerned about filth on the streets and the city in general. South of the Avon too, residents are complaining that fly-tipping is being made worse by the lack of a household waste recycling centre in Hartcliffe. The main reason there isn’t one is that the proposal that is being opposed by Mayor George Ferguson.

Presumably he thinks it’s acceptable for people in south Bristol to drive miles across the city to Avonmouth or St Philips, adding to the city’s congestion and pollution? Nice one George!

And when it does take action against litter louts and fly-tippers, there’s only one word to describe the council’s response – pathetic. Since 2010 only 120 people have been fined or taken to court by the city council for dropping litter, while in the BS5 area – one of the city’s hotspots – enforcement action has been taken against only 32 people.

This low level of enforcement is due to one major reason: council staff cuts. Before 2010 Bristol had a complement of 10 so-called ‘streetscene enforcement officers’ to deal with fly-tipping, litter, fly-posting, dog fouling and other such banes of modern urban living. These 10 officers were assisted in their work by 2 technical support/admin staff and a streetscene enforcement manager whose only other remit was to manage 3 dog wardens.

Following the 2010 general election and George Ferguson’s election as mayor the city was promised “no cuts to frontline services”. Yet the streetscene enforcement team has since consistently lost staff and no replacements recruited. The team is now down to 4.7 officers only and managed by a man with no knowledge of environmental legislation or how to investigate and prosecute a case.

Is it any wonder that reported fly-tips in the city more than doubled over the period in which the team has been more than halved?

The word from the streets is that this situation is unlikely to improve in the near future. Since August waste management and street cleansing have been taken back in house after Kier/May Gurney walked away from their contract with the council pleading lack of profitability despite doing a crap job and BCC never penalising them for doing so.

The BRISTOLIAN

“Smiter of the High and Mighty”