Tag Archives: Steve Lansdown

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.

44 RICHMOND TERRACE: THE BIG COUNCIL LIE

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As council housing activists continue to occupy former council property 44 Richmond Terrace, Avonmouth to get homeless ex-serviceman Anthony Palmer and his 18 month son housed in dignified conditions, the council continues to LIE about what they can do.

Senior housing bosses led by their useless Tory-boy liar-in-chief, Housing Director, Nick “Drooper”Hooper, continue to claim that they have NO POWER to let Anthony ‘jump’ the housing list and give him a home.

THIS IS BOLLOCKS.

If you cast your mind back to 19 February 2012, you might recall Bristol City Council announcing with great fanfare that “the sole unnamed local person has discontinued his application to the High Court for a Judicial Review [into the Ashton Vale Town Green application].”

And you may also recall, the withdrawal of this person from this judicial review briefly made it look like Bristol City FC could build their multi-million pound new stadium and commercial development on greenbelt land unimpeded.

However, what you may not have realised is that this “sole unnamed local person” who briefly helped make this lucrative development a possibility also happened to be a council tenant in Ashton Vale.

You also may not have realised that the day before this gleeful press announcement from the council appeared, this “sole unnamed local person” was mysteriously whisked away in a chaueffeur driven car never to be seen at his Ashton Vale council home again.

And why was this? Er, because Nick Hooper’s housing department, which – remember – has no power to let anyone jump the housing list, rehoused this  “sole unnamed local person” in a well-appointed one bedroomed bungalow elsewhere in the city at very short notice – working to a timetable that turned out to be very convenient to a local billionaire.

Isn’t it amazing what Nick Hooper can manage to do at the drop of a hat to help out a mega-rich football club owner who resides offshore to avoid tax and what he can’t do to help a homeless ex-serviceman trying to care for a young son just released from care?

Hooper’s clearly a man only too prepared to drop his pants and bend over his desk for the wealthy and influential of the city. The only question is: does he charge for his generous favours to local gentleman of considerable means?

OUR TOWN GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND

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Town green

Despite the best efforts of the Tory government, supported by local councillors of all persuasions – who are never ones to shirk their responsibilities when it comes to helping out wealthy and influential PROPERTY DEVELOPERS – legitimate town and village green applications continue to get a hearing.

The Growth and Localism Act 2013, was supposed to spell an end to most town and village green applications. Legislation that was specifically drafted after the residents of Ashton Vale STUFFED Bristol’s richest man Steve Lansdown and his little coterie of Bristol City Council helpers trying to build a football stadium on their open space

However, it increasingly looks like the new law is not the developer free-for-all planned. In and around Bristol there’s due to be TVG hearings for COLSTON’S FIELDS, neighbouring Eastville Park, after the Merchant Venturer’s Colston School tried to build luxury houses on open space there and on CLAVERHAM GREEN in the North Somerset village where developers have designs on designated open space.

Our TVG expert tells us, “It feels like there’s a BIG SELL OFF of green land planned for after the mayoral election to build houses. Communities need to look at their green spaces NOW because local authorities might SELL them.

“It’s likely to happen in North Somerset and South Gloucester more than Bristol I reckon. Mostly AGRICULTURAL LAND on fringes of housed areas or sports pitches.  As soon as it’s zoned for development in local plans, it’s too late to apply for a TVG. Same if there’s already been a planning application in last two years.”

If you have open space nearby and you value it, apply for a Town Green NOW before the bastards rezone the land for their developer friends.

The Bristolian can put you in touch with people who can help.

PAYOFFS TO FAILED COUNCIL MANAGERS NOW TOTAL NEARLY £900K!

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The BRISTOLIAN has learned that in the last year the city’s council taxpayers have doled out an astonishing £875,000 to council leaders for leaving! That’s OVER HALF A MILLION QUID going to failed service directors, and MORE THAN £300K being forked out for two former council bosses to put their feet up at home!

Jan Ormondroyd: doesn't badly run councils for free, you know

Jan Ormondroyd: doesn’t badly run councils for free, you know

First up, Bristol’s former Chief Exec THE BRADFORD SUN QUEEN, Jan Ormondroyd. She mysteriously ‘quit’ in a bit of a hurry in July 2012 and was handed a SECRET CASH HANDOUT in of around £50k in pay for work she never did – a figure way beyond any redundancy entitlement for a post that wasn’t redundant anyway.

The 57 year old was also given a whopping pension enhancement that saw Bristolians stumping up a further £135k or so. So the total bill to the council taxpayer for the SUN QUEEN to sit at home retired is not far short of £200k.

Stephen McNamara - no wonder he's smiling with a six figure payout from YOU!

Stephen McNamara: with a six figure payout courtesy of YOU, no wonder he’s smiling

Former legal boss, STEPHEN ‘LYCRA’ MCNAMARA followed the SUN QUEEN out the back door last Christmas. Having reinterpreted the law to suit the city’s richest man Steve (“Tax is for the little people”) Lansdown and landed Bristol with an expensive and UNDEFENDABLE JUDICIAL REVIEW into the ASHTON VALE Town Green, Lycra was considered surplus to requirements – and allegedly made redundant. Although, strangely, the post of Chief Legal Officer and Monitoring Officer, Lycra’s old job, still appears to exist and is not redundant at all.

To ease 55 year old Lycra on his way, he was “retired” and given a pension enhancement worth around £60k, three months pay worth around £14k per month, and a further £40k in “COMPENSATION FOR LOSS OF OFFICE”. Of course, Lycra thinks he’s too good for B&Q, so he has a tasty post-retirement ‘consultancy’ with expensive law firm Veale Wasbrough Vizards – best known for (have we mentioned this before?) representing a Catholic private school facing a paedo priest scandal.

The BRISTOLIAN can also reveal that another FIVE council managers, all on six figure salaries, last year shared “exit packages” worth £548K – that’s almost £110k each!!! Obviously all these payments massively exceed pay outs available through the redundancy policy created by Ormondroyd herself to, erm, prevent “excessive pay outs to top managers”.

Perhaps Ormondroyd’s redundancy policy – like taxation, in the opinion of McNamara’s chum Lansdown – only applies to “THE LITTLE PEOPLE”?

Welcome to austerity – Bristol style.