Tag Archives: University of Bristol

Scary Monsters: #2 The Body Snatchers

Patrick Cotter O’Brien, “The Bristol Giant” born 1760 in Kinsale, County Cork; died Hotwells, Bristol, 1806, was over eight feet tall. He fought exploitation by showmen and opportunist medical careerists and was imprisoned for his cause.

He became his own promoter and to enjoy privacy ventured out in the hours of darkness to sometimes startling effect. His final wish was to be buried securely under 12 feet of concrete. This was difficult to achieve as the surgeon John Hunter was to steal his body before burial. He was forced to hand it back and Patrick’s last wish was granted at St Johns Chapel.

A century after his death the ghouls of Bristol University tried to rob his grave but were thwarted by the steel reinforcement and the outrage of local people. Another violation occurred in 1972 when the ghouls examined Patrick and re-interred him. The site was redeveloped in 1986 and Patrick was taken away. It is said that he was cremated respectfully although the Royal College of Surgeons still display one of his arms!

I ask the question, what was the purpose of these outrages? It cannot be scientific, as ample study was done on the sensitive Patrick when he was still alive. Also many people living today suffer his affliction. Can anybody enlighten me about the body snatchers who abuse us even after death?

ROCKERFELLER’S TERROR ERROR

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A thick American in Bristol

Before the Reverend’s empty-headed State of City effort got underway, the event was interrupted by protestors against forced animal swim tests at the University.

Up front at the time was tedious know-all and obscure historian of the Renaissance, Evelyn “Rockerfeller” Welch, the university’s vice-chancellor, imported from the US to sell us their right wing bollocks.

“It’s not enough to have a banner. You need to make interventions that make lives better,” shrieked the snooty old fool at protestors as they were roughly ejected by her hired thugs.

Er, maybe this alleged expert historian should check out some local history before publicly sounding off? In 1989, when animal rights protestors decided on an intervention beyond waving banners, they tried to blow up the university’s Senate House!

Is Evelyn promoting terrorism?

THE REAL STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS

Last night the Reverend Rees delivered his final State of the City speech from the University of Bristol’s shithouse Wills Building. Here’s a response:

Marvin, your State of the City speech seems to be a list of things that haven’t been delivered or resolved in your time in office. 

Most of the key infrastructure projects that previous Labour council’s failed to invest in remain uninvested in but with a tab left to be picked up by the next administration. 

There’s no funded mass transit proposal. It’s stalemated due to a lack of agreement between two bickering Labour Mayors who have prioritised their own personal animosity and egos above the needs of the city and region. 

The city continues to have deep divisions along race and class lines despite all the talk about diversity, equity and inclusion and tackling the “issues”. Where are the measurable outcomes showing improvement? 

But then you did watch the Colston statue come down and spot a self promotional media opportunity rather than a chance to trigger a real attempt to tackle the city’s long standing divisions. 

Congratulations Marvin, you built some homes (the vast majority at market rates with many being bought by private landlords) and yet still managed to miss every housing target you set yourself. 

The housing waiting list has increased to 20,000 families. The highest it has ever been, despite officers actively discouraging residents from going on the list “because it’s a waste of time”. 

Homelessness remains noticeably present everywhere, except, maybe, in the Bearpit, despite your promise to solve it. 

The vast majority of the 14,000 homes with planning permission are not being built and you try to blame a minority opposition party for this failure to deliver.

Still no arena, public or privately funded, anywhere. And tens of millions in public funds sunk into an elitist city centre cultural venue because of a binding legal contract signed on your watch. All while deprived suburbs lose community/cultural facilities.

City Leap has potential but so far isn’t unlocking any private investment and is falling behind its real investment plan, never mind this unsubstantiated £1bn you constantly quote at the press.

Goram Homes also has some potential but your planning delays means it’s falling massively behind schedule.

Bristol Waste is a basketcase with a revolving door board of directors. A direct result of poor corporate oversight. Your political interference in its business planning, meanwhile, has undermined any efforts to reduce costs. 

Elsewhere, your council is still complicit in developing SNCIs despite declaring an ‘Ecological Emergency’ and creating plenty of photo-ops of Labour politicians standing in fields saying how important green spaces are. 

There’s still no real plan for achieving net zero despite declaring a ‘Climate Emergency’. 

Then there’s the poorly implemented CAZ, almost as if it was designed to fail and disrupt. 

You are creating only one Liveable Neighbourhood and this is being poorly implemented and poorly consulted on with middle class neighbourhoods getting disproportionate input while poorer neighbourhoods are ignored.

Local CiL projects, especially transport and parks, are not being delivered partly because staff are being taken away to work on “headline grabbing” strategic projects.

The budget gap is currently larger than the Bundred one under Ferguson and there’s still no realistic plan to address it beyond service reduction and selling off council property. 

SEND?!?!! Say no more. Your “Deputy” Mayor hasn’t a clue what she is doing just like the chain of useless Labour education leads before her. Our kids and, increasingly, their parents are paying the price of this serial incompetence. 

The Dedicated Schools Grant is effectively in special measures and your administration is just crossing it’s fingers and hoping the government doesn’t pull the plug on this ever growing debt.

Basically Marvin, you have left behind a stinking pile of crap and then have the nerve to lecture the councillors who will have to clear up your shit about how the city should be run!!! 

Get da fuck!

NEW UNI BOSS IS SNOOTY RACIST

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“Horrendous racist snob”

Can we be among the first to welcome horrifying racist snob Evelyn “Rockerfeller” Welch MBE to Bristol as the new Vice-Chancellor of the city’s wealthiest education corporate, the University of Bristol? Harvard educated US citizen, Evelyn’s down home credentials include being “a scholar of the Renaissance and Early Modern Period” and Provost and Senior Vice President at King’s College London.

The rest of the press has wet its pants with excitement because Evelyn is the mother of Florence Welch. She’s singer with posh band Florence and the Machine whose bland wailing is heavily promoted on rotation by the corporate music biz and is exactly the kind of posh shite for wankers that punk rock was created to destroy.

What the press isn’t telling you, however, is that Evelyn has run into a spot of bother at Kings College over a statue there of a slaver. Thomas Guy had links with the Spanish slave trade in the 17th century, which earned him £400 million in today’s money and his statue takes pride of place at the university. Seventy-five per cent of the student body told Evelyn as the mastermind of the university’s ‘People & Culture’ strategy and head of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion to get rid, which she hasn’t done. 

Instead Evelyn demonstrated the kind of empathy only a Harvard education can provide.  She announced, while on a panel of self-regarding snobs talking about ‘Statues and the Public Space’ at a ‘History Matters’ conference in London, that if students didn’t like the statue they should just “walk around it”! What a shame Evelyn wasn’t in Bristol two years ago to tell Black Lives Matter protestors that they should just walk around the city’s statue of Edward Colston.

Why is our city’s establishment importing yet more elitist racist dross into our city to replace the racist dross we already had?

THE SOCIETY OF MERCHANT NITE SPOT BOSSES


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Bristol City Council managing Covid

Bristol City Council is using council tax money and government public health handouts for Covid to, er, promote nightclubs!

£15k from the Covid Outbreak Management Fund and £15k from the council’s Growth and Regeneration budget were used last year to pay the council’s ‘Night-time Economy Advisor’. 

This year the money will come from the government Covid cash and from the council’s private sector partner, Sound Diplomacy, “an international consultancy” who are going “to develop a framework to capitalise on the cultural, social and economic benefits that night-time industries offer the city”.

Other partners in the Sound Diplomacy project include Master of the Merchant Venturers David Freed’s Deeley Freed; Merchant Venturer Marti Burgess’s Lakota nightclub; Motion nightclub; the University of Bristol; the Bedminster and City Centre BIDs and PfP Capital Limited

So who’s likely to benefit from the public money handouts that are likely to emerge from this corporate night time industry framework then?

Watch this space

DIVIDE AND RULE

Even by the Reverend’s underpowered standards, this year’s State of the City Address – where Rees shows up Bristol University’s Great Hall and delivers a lecture like a ponce  – had very little to say. 

The big policy announcement from this re-elected Mayor basking in second term glory with the city at his feet was, er, a plan to possibly close Park Street to traffic.

However, this bizarre little observation hidden in among the weeds of Reverend’s rambling caught our eye:

“In September’s Full Council, three people made statements, in turn. The first argued against housebuilding on Western Slopes and urban sprawl. The second, concerned about private rents, told me to sort out the housing crisis – that would require me to build homes. The third made a statement against children living in tall buildings and there is of course a wider campaign against height.

I suggested that they all need to talk to each other. All three made an argument, that to be solved, required compromise from the other two.

It’s fine to point at me but what’s needed is a city conversation.”

State of the City Address, 21 October 2021

In other words, leave me alone to make money licking wealthy arse and you argue between yourselves suckers

THE HISTORY PERSON

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It looks like “Little Read” Olivette Otele, Bristol University’s new high-profile woke diversity hire brought in to foghorn A HARMLESS LIBERAL VERSION OF THE HISTORY OF SLAVERY at us, is going to be very good value indeed. One of Little Read Olivette’s first moves was to announce on Twitter that she wanted “to put together a list of UK based black scholars 1/ historians with a PhD in History or PhD students. 2/ working on the history of slavery, memory, memorialisation and legacies of the past (Atlantic, Transaharian, Indian Ocean).”

Unfortunately her request didn’t go down too well with some chippy WHITE ACADEMICS who felt left out of the ELITIST WOKE HISTORY PARTY. But they had no reason to worry because Little Read soon returned to Twitter to explain, “I’m told that as identity is fluid, ONE CAN CHOOSE TO BE BLACK. So white born can choose to be black and non white born can choose to identify as black as in political blackness.”

So that’s all right then. Anybody white can just pop on a black identity like A PAIR OF UNDERPANTS every morning when they get dressed and become a black scholar. Who knew being a black scholar was so accessible these days? Indeed WHAT THE FUCK IS BEING BLACK ANYWAY if we follow Little Read’s advice to its logical conclusion?

And yes, before you ask, we are paying Little Read handsomely to educate our young people in this deranged drivel. Happy days.

PONCEY EURO ELITIST APPOINTED TO STEAL LOCAL PEOPLE’S WORK

PONCEY EURO ELITIST APPOINTED TO STEAL LOCAL PEOPLE'S WORK

After years of members of the public working hard at grassroots organisations like COUNTER COLSTON and the BRISTOL RADICAL HISTORY GROUP, the thieving old white men who run the University of Bristol have finally woke(n) up and appointed a PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF SLAVERY. They will “examine Bristol’s connection to the transatlantic slave trade”. Work that has already, largely, BEEN DONE by our city’s grassroots historians anyway.

The university old boys have hired Sorbonne-educated hack, Olivette Otele, with a press fanfare that has somehow eluded less prestigious local historians tackling the same subject without THE ELITE EDUCATION, the ‘DIVERSE’ BACKGROUND and a PROFESSIONAL PR DEPARTMENT talking them up.

Anyway, won’t it be interesting to see whether Olivette, who lists “memorialisation of the past” as an interest, publicly demands the IMMEDIATE REMOVAL of Colston’s statue from the Centre?  Or will she piss arse about ‘NUANCING‘ in the elite-style, making CRAP EXCUSES and rambling on about ‘corrective plaques’ and the like?

Watch this space.

BUSINESS NOT BOOMING

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It’s trebles all round for the variety of FAILING BUSINESSES run by our council. At last month’s Cabinet meeting, politicians not only agreed a further £6MILLION HANDOUT for Bristol Energy, which has now had £37.7million of our money, but decided that Bristol Holding, the parent company for Bristol Energy, Bristol Waste and their low key data gathering firm, Bristol is Open, now needs AN EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN on a cool £150k a year.

This expensive appointment is the prelude to the council’s City LEAP energy venture where public assets and infrastructure such as wind turbines, solar panels and local heat networks will be handed over to Bristol Holding, basically A PRIVATE FIRM outside any useful public oversight. The holding company will then be able to use these assets as sweeteners to attract private sector investment. A plan that has all the characteristics of yet ANOTHER COUNCIL GIVEAWAY TO THE PRIVATE sector.

The Reverend’s finance chief, Craig “Dick” Cheney, also used City LEAP as the excuse for keeping his LOSS MAKING SHAMBLES of an energy firm afloat for reasons he didn’t make very clear. Will we end up funding this LOSS-MAKING VANITY FIRM indefinitely while the private sector gives it a wide berth and cherry picks other valuable public assets for PROFIT? It was also quietly announced at the same meeting that Bristol University was pulling out of the underperforming joint venture data gathering firm Bristol is Open. Although it’s not yet clear whether the university JUMPED or were PUSHED.

How long before our council is handing any ‘smart city data’ they’ve gathered about us over to the private sector hawks that are circling?