Tag Archives: Southville

SEND PARENT SPY SCANDAL: GREENS FIRST PARTY TO BREAK COVER

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Spy medium

A statement on the SEND spy scandal has emerged from the Green group at Bristol City Council. They’re the first party to go on the record. We anticipate seeing more statements on the matter in the coming week:

“The recent reports in the local media about leaked information showing that parents/carers of children and young people with SEND have had their on-line social media communications monitored by senior council officers and then shared with an external agency, have raised serious concerns for councillors across the council.

“The administration have confirmed that this happened but claimed it was at the request of the parent carers forum, a claim that organisation denied in a statement released on Thursday.

“This area of work falls within the People Scrutiny remit, the vice-chair of which is Green Party Councillor for Southville Christine Townsend. She is working with other elected representatives in trying to get to the bottom of exactly what has happened as the media reports are confusing and contradictory.

“Greens, and councillors from other parties, believe that these accusations are so serious that an external investigation is required in order to ensure full transparency. Only this will help to restore the trust of our residents in this area of the statutory education service.”

We broadly agree that an independent inquiry would be helpful. However, chances of the Reverend launching such an inquiry into his own administration are near zero. We also believe that any inquiry needs to be run by an independent QC, not by some ex-local authority time-server in a pin-stripe suit on a fat consultancy fee. We need someone who knows how to nail the guilty, not cover-up for bent council bosses.

Onwards and upwards through the shit!

‘The Merchant Venturers need to remove themselves from our governance structures, getting out of Bristol’s democracy – removed if necessary.’

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Turds of turd hall
Why are these unaccountable wealthy bastards allowed to spend public money on themselves as they see fit?

Public statement to today’s Down Committee Meeting by Cllr Christine Townsend, Green Party, Southville Ward:

The Nolan Principles cannot be served with the current governance set-up of this committee despite the elected members being bound by them as the Society of Merchant Venturers are not. Nor does the Society of Merchant Venturers make any financial contribution. The Committee’s secrecy, incompetence and extravagance have, cost the Bristolian tax-payer hundreds of thousands of pounds and must now be dealt with.

The recent Judicial Review illuminated how public funds were used to defend the indefensible. The settlement demonstrated that the Committee’s licensing decisions were, as they had been warned, contrary to the purpose of the Victorian piece of legislation that this committee is bound by. Society of Merchant Venturer members led on these decisions.

The Society of Merchant Venturers have sought to involve themselves in the democratic process and influence decisions in this and other arenas which has been well publicised in recent years. The time has come for a complete overhaul of how and why public money can be used by private individuals to further their own views, interests and ideological positions. The elected representatives of the people, including the Lord Mayor, must step-up and address these now pressing issues that run contrary to the democratic society in which we are told we live.

Officers administrating this committee do so as servants of the people paid from the public purse. Yet the contortions exercised in relation to the Freedom of Information and Environmental Information Regulations questions from Downs for People do not reflect this. Your agenda today does not include the minutes from the Governance Task and Finish Group that previous paperwork indicates apparently met on December 13th. Nor could I find a record of a meeting stated as scheduled for September 8th – Why is that? Where are these minutes? This is unacceptable.

Councillors on this committee cannot claim the role of the elected mayor lacks transparency,
openness, avoidable loss of public funds and democratic decision making, whilst simultaneously dragging their feet with inaction and inertia in relation to this committee – that would be hypocrisy of the highest order.

The Society of Merchant Venturers need to hand over the Downs and remove themselves from our governance structures, getting out of Bristol’s democracy – removed if necessary.

Only those of us with a mandate to represent the people can be in position to make decisions over how our public spaces are managed and how much public money is spent on them. It is the people who have been paying for the upkeep and development of public space, not the Society of Merchant Venturers.

REVEREND’S HARA KIRI ELECTION PLAN

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REVEREND'S HARA KIRI ELECTION PLAN

Is Bristol’s Labour Group at the council, led by the Reverend Rees, attempting to commit some weird form of RITUAL POLITICAL SUICIDE before the local elections next May? What other explanation is there for the STUPID DECISIONS and CRAZED OUTBURSTS emanating from the Reverend Mayor and his daft councillors?

The Reverend has already pissed off loads of communities throughout the city who are unlikely to vote for him or his party next year. These include WHITCHURCH where he’s proposed running a ring road through the community past a primary school; HOTWELLS, ASHTON and SOUTHVILLE where he wants to build his corporate high rise wet dream on their doorstep; STOKE BISHOP where he’s allowed their open space to be fenced off by Cotham School; TOTTERDOWN where his councillors voted through, contrary to the Local Plan, a hideous 15 storey tower block on the Bath Road; KNOWLE where he’s backed another tower block and WINDMILL HILL and BEDMINSTER where the Reverend’s been unable to get any grip on unruly private developers at Bedminster Green.

Then there’s the Reverend’s thicko cabinet sidekick, Kye “The” Dudd’s treatment of the FLY PROBLEM in Avonmouth. The Dudd has courted voters by variously accusing residents of planting dead flies to create a FAKE PROBLEM; blaming the flies on DOMESTIC WASTE left on St Andrews Road and, even, claiming there’s NO FLY PROBLEM and that fly levels in Avonmouth are the same as other areas of Bristol. A claim recently rubbished by the BBC who did their own tests for their ‘Inside Out West’ documentary slot.

Remarkably, things now seem to be TAKING A TURN FOR THE WORSE for Labour. At September’s Full Council, the Reverend, behaving like the last officer standing on a Pacific island as GIs storm the beach, raged about “SABOTAGE” by opposition councillors before burnishing his ANTI-UNION CREDENTIALS by refusing to allow his council to be involved in the Climate Strike on 20 September. The Reverend’s Labour colleague, Tom “Charming” Brooks, then PLUMBED FURTHER DEPTHS while responding to a petition from 3,979 voters calling for a moratorium on 5G rollout.

Rather than calmly quote scientific sources to rationally dispute the petitioners health claims, the Horfield councillor launched into a DEMENTED RANT instead. The petitioners were “naive people who had been taken in by MALICIOUS MISINFORMATION” and “conspiracy theorists fuelled by
fake news and misinformation” and were “PEDDLING PSEUDO-SCIENCE using technical sounding words to confuse people”. However, Brooks dismally failed to cite ANY EVIDENCE to support his insults. Instead, he argued, he was right because he had “the ability to Google and was also as an engineer working in risk and safety”.

Lib Dem, Green and, even, Tory councillors were much CANNIER and CALMER towards this large group of potential voters. Explaining they accepted Public Health England’s view on 5G for now but agreed the health situation should be monitored as the technology was rolled out.

That’s another 4,000 votes down the pan for Labour next May then

 

Social Cleansing at Bristol City FC

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Loyal supporters were left feeling shocked and betrayed after Bristol City announced season ticket prices for next year. Like a mirror image of Tory Britain, the most vulnerable fans, including the young and disabled, are the hardest hit, with a sickening price increase of 570% on last season.

In addition, adult tickets have risen 16%, senior citizens 17%, under-22’s 25%, and under-19’s 51%. This seems particularly hateful in light of this season’s huge financial gains from TV revenue, cup ties and a record 16,000 season tickets sold. In a further piss take of it’s most loyal fans, BCFC have given fans just 2 weeks to pay up – or they will permanently lose their seats. This is over 5 months before the new season even begins.

Many believe BCFC are attempting to ‘nudge’ parents with children into the ‘Family Area’ – way up in the gods of the Lansdown upper tier, thereby freeing up lucrative seats in the areas that provide the best views. If City win promotion to the Premier League, the club can sell those seats at a premium to corporate groups and football tourists.

The neighbourhoods of Ashton and Southville are two of the worst affected areas in terms of gentrification in the whole of Bristol. No doubt the club see this as an opportunity to entice a new breed of fan; wealthier and more middle-class, politically right-on, less prone to profanity and happy to sit down and shut up in a sanitised and sterile environment.

One fan told us: “I have sat in the same place for 42 years with three generations of my family. For us to sit in the same seats next season, we have to pay an extra £991. The club are effectively saying: move where we tell you or get an economic sanction. Now that they’re on the verge of joining the Premier League, it’s as if they don’t need us anymore. We are not wanted. How can they justify such a steep increase above inflation? This is our reward for the support we’ve given over the years? It feels like the club have put a tax on loyalty”.

City’s owner Steve Lansdown (non dom financial services shyster) – and his witless son Jon (who just happens to be Vice-Chairman) justified the prices by saying: “The club want to get more families sitting together and feel that is best in the family area”.

The board have made the cost of renewing so prohibitive for most, their message is clear: we don’t want you to pay more for your current seat – we want you gone from those sections altogether.

GREEDY GREEN EVICTS TENANT

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Another greedy green

Looks like yet another Green Party councillor’s PUBLIC pronouncements on housing don’t quite match his PRIVATE arrangements.

An irate ACORN tenants union member calls to tell us that the Green Party Councillor for Southville, Bristol Pound bigwig and er, ACORN tenants union member Stephen “Daddy” Clarke, has EVICTED a tenant from one of his numerous local buy-to-let investments after the tenant told him that his rent increase of 28 per cent was unaffordable!

The evicted tenant had been sharing with Daddy Clarke’s daughter, Katie “Snowflake” Finnegan-Clarke, a self-styled ‘SOCIAL JUSTICE CONSULTANT‘ who’s main contribution to progressive causes is ‘being around when the media arrive’ we’re told. Snowflake originally advertised daddy’s house as “LOW RENT in line with local housing allowance so people on a low income can afford to live here.”

At £292 per month plus £60 towards bills, the idea seemed to be about building a stable and secure home for people on low incomes. However towards the end of the tenant’s six month contract they received an email from Ms Finnegan-Clarke advising them of CHANGES to the rent.

Snowflake explained that daddy wanted to INCREASE the rent so each room was rented at the same price as THE REST of his properties in Bedminster and Totterdown. This would be £382 every four weeks. Snowflake claimed she had been trying to negotiate with daddy but “without a huge amount of luck”. So the rent would be increasing to £375 a month (excluding bills) from 27 June. “In-line with comparable properties in Easton,” she claimed.

When asked why the rent was being increased, Snowflake explained that daddy, who bought the property on a buy-to-let mortgage, was affected by changes in tax law to TOP RATE taxpaying landlords. This meant the poor dear could no longer put his mortgage repayments against his business expenses and Daddy didn’t want to ‘LOSE MONEY‘ … On a property which had only gone up £100,000 since he purchased it five years ago!

The tenant complained that the rent rise was not something they could AFFORD and Ms Finnegan-Clarke told them to negotiate directly with Daddy Clarke. However, the following Monday an email arrived from Snowflake.

“As  I labored to make clear in the room advert, in our initial skype interview and during our face-to-face interview, the lodgers agreement was only supposed to last six months in order to give us (and now me) the flexibility required and was reflected in the LOW RENT.

“The HOUSE DYNAMICS haven’t been working for me, and you do not seem happy in the house either, so I would like to formally end the extended lodgers agreement. Please accept this email as WRITTEN NOTICE of the end of your Lodger Agreement at Hinton Road, Bristol.”

And with that Clarke and his social justice warrior daughter –  who does lots of ‘work’ to raise awareness about issues of gender and race – evicted the tenant because the “house dynamics” were wrong.

ELECTORAL HOUSING BALLS

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housing-development-design-and-regenerationNext up launching their mayoral election campaign … Step forward the Green Party. They even got their crackpot national leader, NUTTILY BENNETT, down for the occasion and their big promise is that they’re going to get private developers to build 8,000 HOMES by 2020 and 2,800 of these will be “affordable”, whatever the fuck that means this week.

So 35 PER CENT of homes built up to 2020 through some kind of unexplained city council/private sector partnership will be “affordable”. An ambitious target that the private sector has persistently FAILED to meet in Bristol and that they have little interest in meeting while they’re driven by a SHORT TERM PROFIT motive.

Quite why developers would suddenly start delivering these targets because the Green Party tell them to is anybodies’ guess. Especially when you consider that the local Greens’ favourite developer, URBIS, who have planning permission to build a tower block at St Catherine’s Place in Bedminster, are committed to delivering ZERO affordable or social housing there while waffling a lot about “sustainable housing”.

The other big question regarding this Green housing promise is where will they put all these homes? They are currently claiming they will build all of them on 91 HECTARES of city council land already identified in a council ‘Housing Land Prospectus‘ and that they will then “insist that MINIMUM DENSITY LEVELS are part of the deal for the future development of this land” according to Green mayoral candidate, Tony Dyer “Straits”.

However the council’s current plans for this land – mainly low quality OPEN SPACE on the outskirts of the city in the poorest areas – already proposes densities of over 70 people per hectare. While average density in Bristol is only 39 PEOPLE PER HECTARE.

The Greens’ proposals to pile 8,000 homes on to this land would therefore push densities up to around 250 – 300 PEOPLE PER HECTARE. An absurd level, way in excess of population densities in Horfield (54 people per hectare), Easton (92 pph) and Southville (49 pph) that the Greens have identified as desirable levels of population density.

The reality is that to deliver 8,000 homes in Bristol is going to take around 360 HECTARES of land, not the 90 currently on offer. This raises the question of where the Greens intend to build the rest of their homes?

However, not one to be outdone in the bullshit stakes, Labour’s Marvin “Luther” Rees is also promising to build 2,000 HOMES A YEAR by 2020. A similar amount to the Greens. Although he, also, has not identified the land he intends to build on.

The Bristolian’s advice is: watch out for your local green space. After May politicians might just want to give it away to their private developer friends …

NEW SCHOOL’S ROAD HELL

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800_ashtongateprimaryschoolampmayor1-chrisbahn

The other side of the street: Mayor Cock-Up and friends opening Ashton Gate Primary

Much disquiet in Mayor Me-First’s SOUTHVILLE BACKYARD following the botched expansion of Ashton Gate Primary School into the old Imperial Tobacco offices on Upton Road.

Ashton Gate Primary School has now DOUBLED in size from a two-form intake to a four-form intake because of a population explosion in the leafy South Bristol suburb and the Upton Road site will eventually hold 480 children.

The original planning application proposed closing Upton Road as the school’s playground is on the OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD from the classrooms but this has not happened.

Instead, the council responded to objections from a few residents and people who use Upton road as an overflow car park by agreeing to leave the road OPEN to all traffic and promised to install some traffic calming measures instead.

The final planning decision states that the main reason for leaving Upton Road open to traffic was because of the loss of parking spaces and the fact that Upton Road is used as a diversion route when events are held at – wait for it … Mayor Self Serving’s TOBACCO FACTORY!

Some so-called traffic calming measures have been put in place although many parents are describing them as “PATHETIC“. One told us, “The ‘speed tables’ at either end of Upton road wouldn’t slow down a mobility scooter”!

Worse, there are no signs to warn drivers that a school is ahead and people driving past or through Upton Road are very confused indeed when they see HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN AND PARENTS flocking to an office block at 8.40am.

Neither have any crossing patrols been provided at either end of Upton Road nor yellow zig-zags have been kept to a MINIMUM in order to maximise the number of PARKING SPACES on the road.

Double yellow lines were still being painted onto the road on the Monday afternoon after the school had opened for the new term and the traffic calming measures appear to have been installed by a fly-by-night contractors as they resemble a “TARMAC TOUPEE“.

It has also become apparent that the classrooms at the front of the school cannot have any windows open because of TRAFFIC NOISE, which suggests it’s not a healthy site for a school unless the road is closed during school hours.

It’s also IMPOSSIBLE for any children to walk to school unaccompanied, which has always been seen as useful for year 6 children preparing to go to secondary school.

It’s blatantly obvious that the council have decided to prioritise pay parking meters for RPZ and supporting events at the Tobacco Factory above the safety of the children of Southville.

It’s not good enough. The Council must urgently agree to close Upton Road at least during school hours before there’s an accident…

Playing out at our expense?

playingout

Well done to Alice Ferguson and Naomi Fuller, Director and Communications Director respectively of the hopelessly middle class Southville charity, PLAYING OUT, for delivering one of the best self-inflicted PR disasters we’ve ever seen.

A sort of Reclaim the Streets for the Cath Kidston set, this ridiculous charity blocks upmarket residential streets for a few hours every month so kids can get to play in the road “like we did in the old days”.

The two lovely Southville gals behind the charity, one of whom just happens to be Mayor Bent Trousers’ DAUGHTER, were given some space recently in the mayor’s new personal propaganda machine, the Bristol 24/7 website, to “set the record straight”.

What record ? Why was this record ever bent? What’s going on?

Playing Out wanted to assure us that the fairly LARGE SUMS of public money that have come the charity’s way from the council since daddy arrived on the hot seat at the Counts Louse is purely down to their brilliance and an overwhelming public need for middle class kids to access boutique retro play experiences.

What better possible way is there to spend public cash in this age of austerity? Especially while the mayor personally cuts real public services – where his relatives don’t work – to the bone.

“It’s funding which was ring-fenced for this kind of initiative. It doesn’t all just come out of one big pot, that’s not how it works,” the pair bleated to Bristol 24/7 while not bothering to explain how it did work.

“It’s two years before Bristol as a city even decided it wanted an elected mayor that Alice and Amy held their first playing out session,” the site wailed neatly sidestepping the issue of when their generous levels of funding began.

And then the coup de grace. A Bristol City Council PR is rustled up to RUBBERSTAMP the vacuous claims: “The Mayor has never been involved in a funding decision relating to Playing Out. He took office on November 19 2012, meaning the majority of funding decisions pre-date his time in office.”

Alas, within two hours of this bizarre PR manouevre – randomly denying any nepotism exists between the mayor and his daughter for no apparent reason  – an article had appeared from the mayor-watching Bristol News team rebutting the council’s and the charity’s claims.

Up to the Mayor’s election in 2012, Playing Out were paid by the council the fairly reasonable amount – for what they do – of £12,000. By the end of the Mayor’s first year in office that figure was £92,000!!!

That’s, almost, an EIGHT-FOLD increase and none of it from especially ring-fenced council funds for middle class mums with daft ideas in Southville so far as we can see.

So did this £92k not “come out of one big pot at the city council”? Who knows? Neither Playing Out nor 24/7 provide evidence one way or the other. Although the council’s published expenditure records do nothing to disabuse the public of the notion that Playing Out’s money did indeed just come out of one big pot at the council.

Now 24/7 and Playing Out have set the hare loose, this hugely embarrassing issue for the mayor looks set to run and run in the lead-up to next year’s mayoral election.

So who’s idea was it for Playing Out to go to the local media with a load of  partial information for us to pick over then?