Tag Archives: Temple Street

Rotten Comrades: “Values and Behaviours”

Endeavouring to compete with other paragons of corporate responsibility, Bristol City Council now has a corporate philosophy and it calls it ‘Values and Behaviours’. Plastering them all over the inside of City Hall in ten foot high letters, the mayor is hoping some of it will rub off on his staff.

So what have we got? Do these values and behaviours reflect the council’s values or are they aspirations as to how council officers should behave? Well, if it was based on actual management behaviours we would expect back-stabbiness, passive aggression, brown-nosing and cronyism to be high up there in behaviours. Thankfully, the council has chosen aspirations instead.

Instead, we have ‘respect’, ‘dedicated’, ‘collaborative’ and various other reasonable aspirations and their sub-headings. Nobody could argue with any of them.

So what does this mean for the “scores” of workers who recently had their pay calculated incorrectly? This problem was identified a few months ago but still the shortfall has not been paid. The longer it takes, the less time will be available for a class-action claim.

No doubt this is the reason for the delay – perhaps management are hoping the staff affected run out of time to sue? Or perhaps management are hoping for a cheaper settlement and a few non-disclosure agreements? Is this what Marvin meant when he said ‘we are collaborative; we come together to reach shared goals’?

What does this mean for M, who as a caretaker in a residential tower block, raised safety concerns and was immediately moved to another building. How does this behaviour fit into the post-Grenfell Tower world? Victimisation? Or is this ‘ownership’ where we ‘accept personal accountability’?

Or what about R who was stood outside Temple Street having a crafty fag when Work-Place Support phoned the litter police, who promptly slapped a fine on him. All his own fault, perhaps, or was it the petty act of a spiteful, vindictive arm of management?

As Marvin says, ‘we show respect; we treat each other fairly.’

MAYOR: DEPRIVED? (OF ANY SENSE)

MAYOR- DEPRIVED? (OF ANY SENSE)On the same day it emerged that Mayor Hubris was spending up to £150m (and counting …) of OUR MONEY  on a series of pet commercial development projects around Temple Meads, he published a CRAZED ARTICLE on posh people’s website, the Huffington Post, explaining how he was tackling inequality in Bristol.

“We are targeting investment in the most highly deprived areas,” blustered the old fool. Although capital investment by the council in deprived areas such as Avonmouth, Hartcliffe and Southmead is NON EXISTENT. While basic public services run by the council in these areas such as youth, housing and libraries have been consistently CUT by Mayor Deluded.

Even a proposed HARTCLIFFE RECYCLING CENTRE, a useful public service and a source of employment in a deprived area, has been on the backburner because George alleges he can’t find the £3m necessary to open it. So is a polluted old diesel yard next to Temple Meads Station – the subject of about £130m of council investment so far for an arena – one of these “most HIGHLY DEPRIVED AREAS” then?

Other “MOST HIGHLY DEPRIVED AREAS” – all conveniently situated around Temple Meads and worthy of the mayor’s energies and lots of our cash – include the City Point office building directly opposite the station purchased with £9m of our money; derelict land at Temple Meads owned by Skanska and subject to a SECRET financing deal with the mayor and the George Hotel site at Temple Gate, which Mayor Moneybags wants to purchase for an UNDISCLOSED FEE amounting to millions in public money.

Or how about an uncosted eight-storey car park on the Bath Road being built entirely for the benefit of the “most highly deprived” ARENA OPERATORS? Or the former Post Office site at Temple Meads, which George is fattening up for sale in the hope it will pay for some of his over budget arena?

Try to find similar financial commitments in any of Bristol’s REALLY deprived areas and there’s none. Quite the reverse. Deprived areas are subsidising commercial property developments at Temple Meads on an epic scale.

Instead, as George explains in the Huffington Post, he’s tackling any genuine inequality and deprivation with a bunch of CHEAP, INADEQUATE AND LAUGHABLE policies. Any old policy pursued by George over the last three years has been hastily assembled into a list by a council PR and then abstractly rebranded as an anti-poverty measure.

“From 20mph, to RPZ, to metrobus, to engagement hubs, to 10,000 new primary school places, to children planting 30,000 trees, to a rainbow cabinet – all these are integral evidence-based policies that help secure a foundation to position Bristol to sustainability and fiercely tackle inequality,” waffles Mayor Gonad.

Really? Reducing traffic speed tackles poverty and inequality? Likewise, surely even the most DEMENTED of hippies is unlikely to claim children planting trees is a realistic solution to poverty and deprivation?

We could just conclude, at this point, that our mayor is a crackpot in need of a long lie down but anyone who thinks providing deprived areas with a few road signs and a tree planting project for kids counts as serious investment while simultaneously funnelling HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS to corporate property interests is clearly mendacious.

Vote him out in May.

GAGA’S ‘ENTERPRISING’ RE-RELOCATION SEES HENGROVE SNUBBED!

Looks like Mayor Fergo’s increasingly isolated and absurd Chief Exec NICOLA ‘LADY GAGA’ YATES has managed to piss of a lot of her staff who’ve been dispatched to ABU GHRAIB, her ugly new City Council headquarters on Temple Street.

Now Gaga has announced that 155 of these staff, having been forcibly removed from the so-called Park View Campus in Hengrove to this new hellhole HQ, are to be MOVED BACK AGAIN after just a few months to make way for Gaga and her entourage who’ve decided they want the space temporarily while the Council House is refurbished.

The BRISTOLIAN understands that horrifying snob Gaga rejected out of hand a temporary move to Hengrove, insisting she needed to be near the ‘Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone’ (see issue #4.5) and what she calls the “business community”. Although an insider told us, “to be honest, I think she just likes hanging around wealthy people, and there’s not many of them in Hengrove.”

Staff who are being forced to make way for Gaga and her growing gang of OVERPAID HANGERS-ON are said to be fuming. We’ve heard of at least two who sold their cars once they no longer needed to travel to south Bristol every day. What happens to them now? Will Gaga compensate them?

And how much has this pointless escapade cost the council taxpayer?