Tag Archives: Tony Harvey

THE BRISTOLIAN #4.8 – OUT NOW FROM ALL GOOD STOCKISTS!

Bristolian_4.8_coverWell, we have been so busy working on the ‘Ms X’ story these past few days that we have not had the chance to tell you that the latest issue of your favourite local Smiter of the High and Mighty has been on the streets for a week!

November’s edition of The BRISTOLIAN is another PACKED ISSUE, featuring…

» BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL: WE’RE BEING ROBBED!
More cash disappearing from ‘of concern’ authority – this time from cash-in-transit

» MAYOR GRASS FARCE
A right royal game of lawn-acy as Fergo visit gets preferential grass-cutting treatment

» HOYTY-TOYTY’S PORK BARREL POLITICS SCAM
Green Councillor coughs up three times reserve price for allotments that couldn’t be developed on

» COUNTING THE COST OF CITY HALL LIARS
Farcical claptrap from council managers destroys open spaces, runs up massive bills

» CORPORATE FEED-IN FRENZY
China and big business cashing in on city’s solar power bonanza

» CRAP EMPLOYER OF THE MONTH: CLOVER ADVERTISING/APPCO GROUP
The lowdown on why this is one “billion dollar enterprise” you probably don’t want to work for…

» INDYREDPANT’S UNWISE MONKEY’S HORROR NO-SHOW
How the ‘outsider’ who ran in council elections for IfB “shook things up” on audit committee by not turning up

» B-LIME-Y
A merry-go-round of useless managers squanders £100k on lethal play equipment while kids’ education suffers

» HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB?
How PFI deals with the private sector cost us masses more…

PLUS: NEWS IN BRIEF!!!

» BRISTOLIAN BITES
Tantalising titbits including…

  • THE NEW POLITICSLib Dem Stella Hender returns as anti-Green artist Stella Perrett
  • PICKUP PACKS UP! mystery of Labour councillor’s ouster at hands of own party
  • FERGO IN PITTSBURGH CONGRESSHis Redtrouserness continues to rack up those AirMiles
  • HUNGER GAMESstarving kids made to trudge halfway across city to pick up food arcels
  • GASTRO PUB RUN BY IDIOTShard to imagine, we know

…And all that for FREE!

See the Distribution page for your local stockist – and if there isn’t one near you, let us know!

CAN’T WAIT TO GET HOLD OF A PAPER COPY?

Then you can DOWNLOAD a PDF version here:

» The BRISTOLIAN #4.8 – November 2013

MISSING MARKETS MONEY, GAGS, CHEESE AND MARK BRADSHAW: WHAT I DID IN THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS BY AUGUSTUS HOYTY-TOYTY AGED 37¾

Welcome to the Hoyty-Toyty World of Bristol Politics!

MONDAY:

Bumped into our brilliant new Chief Executive Mrs Yates today while I was wandering around on the third floor trying to find something useful to do. She was at the photocopier running off a considerable amount of paperwork headed ‘GAGGING ORDER’. I asked her what she was up to as a bit of a conversational opening gambit and apparently she was just doing some early preparatory work to pop in the top drawer of her desk. Then she gave me a little grin, grabbed the paperwork and headed off to her office – sorry, I mean flexible work space.

I must say she seems very professional and efficient and she can operate a photocopier! Certainly an improvement on Mr Sims, who seemed to need a PA to switch a light on for him never mind operate a Blackberry or that iPad he was given that he thought was a clipboard for the first three weeks. I sense already that Nicola is the person to lead the new hi-tech open City Hall culture George and I are embedding. Good times!

TUESDAY:

High-level meeting with new Cabinet member, Labour’s superb Mark Bradshaw today. To be able to work alongside such a supremely gifted and able politician and first rate intellect is a privilege. Mark and I discussed very important matters relating to George’s proposed RPZ scheme that I can’t tell you about. Although we will inform the public at an appropriate time. As Mark said, car parking is far too important to discuss in public.

WEDNESDAY:

Had an excellent two o’clock with George today. I must say he’s in a far better mood since he went up to Harley Street to see his doctor about his anxiety issues. He’s now installed a comfy sofa in his office and he was lying on it wearing only his favourite Fairtrade silk dressing gown (red, of course) with his feet up reading Fifty Shades Of Grey! He’s also mentally firing on all cylinders again and has had yet another brilliant idea – ‘City of Cheese’

Apparently he bought a particularly ripe and vibrant brie at our first Make Sunday Special food market and he thinks Bristol Brie could be a really amazing international place-making tool for the city. I could only agree and promised – as the Cabinet lead on food – to get on it right away. I then had to leave as he needed to take his Effexor, whatever that is, and relax for a while.

THURSDAY:

Finally got in today to see Mr Mann, our transport boss, over at Brunel House. What a strange meeting. When I walked in Mr Mann was holding a small teddy bear at his face level and appeared to be having a conversation with it. “Hello Sir Gus,” he said, “this is Teddy. He helps me with policy.”

Thinking I had better change the subject sharpish, I pointed at a large green safe in the corner of the room that seemed to be wrapped in about four toughened steel chains secured by around six padlocks. “That’s where I keep the Greater Bristol Bus Network performance statistics,” explained Mr Mann. “We can’t be too careful. We don’t want them getting out to the press or public, do we?” he muttered quietly.

If nothing else, I suppose we should be impressed by Mr Mann’s commitment to information security. The rest of the meeting was about RPZs, which I can’t tell you anything about because car parking is quite rightly a top-secret issue.

FRIDAY:

Had a row today on Twitter with those horrible, nasty, beastly people at The BRISTOLIAN. They keep banging on about this missing £165,000 missing from the Market Service that I’m ultimately responsible for. It is of course all complete nonsense. As George has kindly explained to them there is no evidence of any wrongdoing at all. So come on guys, sometimes you just have to accept that £165,000 just disappears from public sector organisations without any explanation. Mankind isn’t perfect, is it? We just can’t explain everything, can we? Like how bees fly; UFOs; the Loch Ness Monster; the Bermuda Triangle; Alastair Sawday; homeopathy and David Lynch films. Some things are simply pure mystery.

Besides I’m happy to confirm that Mr Harvey, the Facilities Manager responsible for overseeing the money, has fully investigated himself and has confirmed nobody has done anything wrong. The Metropolitan Police seem to be able to investigate themselves without all this fuss. What more do these people want?

They should join UKIP with all the other racist stirrers and RPZ resisters who want to destroy mine and George’s progressive coalition for Green progress in Bristol with their relentless focusing on silly little details and small amounts of missing money rather than looking at the big canvas of Bristol George and I are busy colouring in green.

BARKING GREEN ADMITS THEFT AT MARKETS

Ho-ho-ho! Green giant prat and esteemed councillor Sir Gus Hoyty-Toyty drops a double clanger

Ho-ho-ho! Green giant prat and esteemed councillor Sir Gus Hoyty-Toyty drops a double clanger

The BRISTOLIAN‘s ongoing digging around into financial irregularities at Tony ‘The Toerag’ Harvey’s city council Markets Service is paying unexpected dividends after the service’s new Cabinet boss, our old friend Sir Gus Hoyty-Toyty, openly admitted today on Twitter that money has been stolen out of the Market Service’s safe.

Further questioning of the barking mad Green, however, revealed that he sees no need to contact the police about this theft of our money and he instead seems to be intent on shooting the messenger – your caring, sharing BRISTOLIAN – and protecting the guilty.

Sir Gus’s outburst comes just two days after His Royal Georgeness claimed on the self-same Twitter that:

[There is] no evidence of fraud, and no funds unaccounted for. Please cease unsubstantiated insinuation #endofstory

What's a £283k overspend to a millionaire mayor? Fergo weighs in on the markets accounts chaos

What’s a £283k overspend to a millionaire mayor? Fergo weighs in on the markets accounts chaos

Well, no need for ‘unsubstantiated insinuation’ any more, George. Your gopher’s publicly admitted a load of money’s been nicked from a council safe.

Now, what are you going to do about it?

MASSIVE MARKETS OVERSPEND PROVIDES FOOD FOR FRAUD

Why is Facilities Management leaking money like a sieve?

Facilities Management book keeping explained by way of a picture

Facilities Management book keeping explained by way of a picture

More news on TONY ‘THE TOERAG’ HARVEY, the council’s self-perking Facilities Manager following last issue’s exposé of his parking charge dodge.

Now we can exclusively reveal he’s a lot more careful with own money – about £50k a year from public funds – than he is with ours. Accounts published in November reveal that the Toerag’s Facilities Management department is OVERSPENT BY AN INCREDIBLE £602,000 – racked up in just eight months! Much of which – £283,000 – he hasn’t even bothered to account for.

The accounts do show, however, that the Toerag spent £104k on sacking staff and paying out redundancy – and that he overspent £51,000 on markets, which, er, are supposed to earn us money! So why exactly have council taxpayers been subsidising The Toerag’s personal St Nick’s Market fiefdom to the tune of £1,500 a week?

The markets overspending doesn’t stop there: in a special separate column in the accounts listed as ‘Other income’ we find Harvey recording a further £165,000 loss as “Markets Licence income shortfall”. That’s a “shortfall” of about £5k a week. What’s on earth has The Toerag been up to with our money?

One possible explanation comes from the local branch of Unison. In an open letter to Mayor Gorgeous before the budget they said: “We have just had a situation in markets, with a deficit of £200,000 that MAY WELL TURN OUT TO BE FRAUD…”

So that’s all right then. Especially when you discover that another one of The Toerag’s areas of responsibility is… City Council security and cash collection.

Your money safe in their hands? Ha!

NEW BRISTOLIAN OUT NOW!

Bristolian #2 - NOW OUT!

Ahoy there, shipmates – the latest issue of Bristol’s finest muckraking newspaper is now being distributed across the city as we speak!

This edition is packed full of exposés of the overpaid mediocrities running our fair town, with the focus on ‘hands-on but light touch’ MILLIONAIRE MAYOR George Ferguson and his scuttling around overseas at our expenses cooking up development deals with his old business cronies.

There’s also the scoop that Bristol City Council has brought in KILLER COMPANY ATOS – notorious for throwing disabled people off benefits – to manage its workers’ occupational health; a report on shady Facilities Management accounting and MISSING MARKETS MONEY; and news that senior officers don’t know how much of our money they’re spending on CUTS CONSULTANTS.

Throw in a round-up of how UNION BUREAUCATS are betraying ordinary Bristolians, a look at some of the candidates in the upcoming council elections, the story of the POSH NIMBY who tried to shut down a popular pub, and of course the latest entries from SIR GUS HOYTY-TOYTY’S CABINET DIARY, and you have yourself a super, soaraway scandal sheet!

Currently available from:

In addition there are copies around St. Nick’s Market, with St. Paul’s, Bedminster, Windmill Hill, Totterdown, Southville and Kingswood all being covered today or in the next few days. Precise locations will be added as they are confirmed.

More outlets will be added to the distribution list as they are confirmed, and further drop-offs can also be arranged – just get in touch.

++ STOP PRESS ++ STOP PRESS ++ STOP PRESS ++ STOP PRESS ++

Our street team reports back that this edition of The BRISTOLIAN has flown out of their hands so quickly just one day in that they’ve completely run out!

To satisfy the city-wide hunger for real news you can trust, we’ve put ordered a reprint, which will be ready for us to hit Hartcliffe, Knowle West, Sea Mills, Cotham, Hotwells – and other areas not yet covered – next week.

In the meantime, if you can’t wait to get your hands on a paper copy – or your local stockist has already run dry – download a digital version here.

PS:

This issue of The BRISTOLIAN was sent to the printers at 4am on Monday. At 11.28am Margaret Thatcher was found dead whilst “reading in bed”.

Coincidence? You decide.

THE BRISTOLIAN – WEBSITE SEARCH LEAGUE TABLES

It’s been little more than a month since The BRISTOLIAN was relaunched, and already we are seeing a lot of search engine activity on some of our new best chums…

Currently in the lead – if we bundle together searches for ‘Malfoy’ as well – is baby-faced out-of-his-depth council counsel LIAM NEVIN. He nudges just ahead of ‘acting up’ City Director ANGIE ‘PAIDWELL’ RIDGWELL.

Then in joint third place come buffoonish former council boss GRAHAM SIMS, and slash-happy Mayor HIS ROYAL GEORGENESS.

Meanwhile, pulling up the rear we have a three donkey race: accounts-troubled BCC Facilities Manager TONY HARVEY, incompetent ex-top cop COLIN PORT, and in a surprise re-entry, Nevin’s predecessor STEPHEN MCNAMARA.

Of course, we have no idea how much of this frantic googling is down to the individuals concerned making constant vanity searches on their own names – perhaps a Freedom of Information request is in order..?

HARVEY CREAMS OFF BRISTOL

Further confirmation that Bristol City Council managers are bunch of idle scroungers having a laugh at our expense arrives courtesy of Facilities Manager TONY HARVEY.

Struggling to get by on a mere £50k a year, Harvey appears to have come up with a very novel solution to saving money on the huge cost of parking in one of his own council’s car parks.

Rather than forking out for Trenchard Street Car Park like anyone else and taking the short stroll to his Shitty Hall office, it seems he’s awarded himself FREE PARKING PERKS by simply leaving his Volkswagen on the ramp at the front of the building – in a parking space meant for the disabled!

Who says it’s one rule for them and another for us?