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MARKETS: IT’S LIKE THE FIRST WORLD WAR!

FAILED CHARITY BOSS ANNOUNCES 2014 TOUR! UNIONISED WORKERS NOT INVITED!

HorseWorld boss Mark Owen (left) perfects his fiddling-whilst-Rome-burns dadrock pout

Ark at ee, it’s our old friend MARK ‘NOT THAT ONE’ OWEN, the moribund boss of troubled equine charity HorseWorld!

Of course, when we say “troubled equine charity HorseWorld” it should be pretty clear by now just where the problem lies…

Still, having terrorised his staff by doling out redundancy notices, Bristol’s COMMUNICATOR OF THE YEAR continues to work hard to undermine the hard-earned reputation of the organisation which pays for both his shiny new Audi and his not-inconsiderable salary. This week’s wheeze: trying to ignore his legal obligations under employment law.

Yes, thanks to his financial shenanigans, more than half of HorseWorld’s employees are now unionised, and we understand some heavy-hitting regional union reps have been in touch with both the charity’s trustees and Owen himself to arrange meetings this week.

As one source told The BRISTOLIAN:

Owen is shitting himself that the unions are now muscling in…

And in the words on another:

As usual Owen is refusing to answer them, [claiming] HorseWorld ‘does not recognise a union’…

Well, that’s okay then..?

Meanwhile our fearless leader has decided to put on a brave face with all this turmoil around him and go on tour with his dadrock band!

Sadly you’ve missed the first date – last Saturday at the Anchor – but you can still catch them this Friday at Blue Lagoon on the Gloucester Road, Saturday 1 March at Oldland Common’s Dolphin, at the Crown in Staple Hill on Saturday 22 March, and then back at the Blue Lagoon the following Saturday.

As they say:

Expect an eclectic mix of “anthems” from Oasis, Kings of Leon, The Killers, The Jam, The Foo Fighters, The Stereophonics, Wheatus, The Verve, Primal Scream – to mention just a few!

So if you’re a horse lover, one of the workers whose jobs are at threat thanks to Pinocchiowen’s business ‘skills’, or you just like covers bands, get on down…

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOLMWOOD: ANOTHER POINTLESS INVESTIGATION EXPOSED!

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THE BRISTOLIAN has been passed sensational information from a Freedom of Information request that reveals that there was a major, unpublicised investigation regarding the safeguarding of residents at the ‘The House of Horrors’, HOLMWOOD HOUSE last year.

According to information contained in the response to the request, an investigation took place at the home in May 2013 and it involved Bristol City Council, the police, the NHS and the home itself. The reason for the investigation is listed as “physical abuse and neglect through medication error (x4)”, which suggests that, yet again, serious issues in the dispensing of medicines have arisen at the home and that other residents at the home have been abused.

The outcome of the investigation, as usual, was a fudge with the council concluding, even after their intervention, that “some areas show improvement seen (sic) but inconsistencies are now being addressed through a specialist support team.”

The report also tell us that Holmwood instituted a voluntary ban on all admissions between 3 June 2013 and 23 August 2013 while Bristol City Council were supposedly monitoring the home. This is the period in which AN ELDERLY WOMAN DIED twelve days after leaving their care, having inexplicably lost her swallowing reflex and one third of her body weight.

So it looks like a safeguarding investigation took place at the home just prior to this death and seemingly no lessons were really learned and opportunities were missed. It makes you wonder what it would take for the owners and managers of the home to be prosecuted and for the dump to be shut down.

Will the authorities tolerate absolutely anything in their godforsaken private care homes?

HORSEWORLD BOSS PINOCCHIOWEN DIGS HIS HEELS IN & SENDS OUT REDUNDANCY NOTICES

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The latest news from inside FORTRESS WHITCHURCH is that troubled equine charity HorseWorld is to close its visitor centre in just over a month – on 27 February – despite a supposed ‘consultation exercise’ running until 24 February.

It comes on top of the sad news that today 28 REDUNDANCY NOTICES were issued to staff. Sources indicate that amongst those being primed for the chop is Animal Welfare Manager Jerry Watkins. That’s right: instead of acknowledging their terrible – and costly – business decisions and resigning themselves, the clique around MD Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen have decided to sack a bunch of already underpaid employees, including the one with the most professional experience of actually running an animal sanctuary!

If rumours are to be believed, cowardly Pinocchiowen sent Watkins his redundancy notice whilst he was away ~~on holiday~~ representing his country as UK team captain at the Khartoum International Tent-Pegging Competition…

At this rate all that will be left of HorseWorld will be a paddock full of expensive, incompetent senior managers.

[Edited 29/1/14]

BLUE MONDAY: HORSEWORLD BOSS PINOCCHIOWEN BRIDLES AT CRITICISM

CRISIS – WHAT CRISIS? HORSEWORLD BOSS PINOCCHIOWEN GOES ON THE PISTE WHILST HIS CHARITY’S STAFF FEAR FOR THEIR JOBS

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Just days after putting 28 staff on notice of redundancy, troubled charity HorseWorld’s managing director Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen and chairman of trustees John L Newman are obviously feeling the same extreme levels of worry and fear as those whose jobs are actually on the line. How else could one explain their movements these past couple of weeks?

You’ll recall, by way of background, that serial bungler Owen managed to lose millions of pounds of the charity’s money since joining just a few years ago. He then spectacularly failed to get his flawed planning application – backed by three trustees with professional property development interests – past clued-up councillors.

So this January kicked off with them handing notice to dozens of their low-paid staff that they probably won’t have a job in a few weeks’ time. It’s to the credit of the hard-working animal lovers who actually keep HorseWorld going that despite all the stress and uncertainty caused by their idiot bosses they have simply been getting on with caring for horses and donkeys.

Meanwhile, their esteemed MD? Gone ski-ing. Yes, an expensive week-long skiing holiday for Mister-80k-Per-Annum-Plus-Shiny-28k-Audi Mark Pinnochiowen.

Rome, burning? Pass me my fiddle!

And the Chairman of Trustees? Surely he’s around to field the flak and take the concerns of staff to heart? Well, er, no actually. He’s said to be sunning it in Barbados, returning in a few weeks’ time.

The need for these hard-pressed holidaymakers to pack their cases and ship out suddenly might just explain the careless and hurried approach to their redundancy announcement two weeks ago.

Having ordered the affected 28 in a meeting that they were not to go public, or involve unions, and to keep the whole thing in-house, word naturally leaked out and found itself in your humble ‘Smiter’.

Cue a boardroom panic, a quick purchase of Employment Law For Dummies, and lo and behold, the next day a press release was issued (which even the ~~Evening~~ Bristol Post was highly sceptical of), claiming the charity is consulting on redundancies with ALL staff (except the MD, presumably).

So, to recap: first scare the life out of 28 people. Then extend the fear to roughly sixty. While they quake and tremble in the wake of your redundancy process fuck-ups, what do you do? Leave the country. Simples.

Can it be long before these muppets start offering expensive consultancy packages on crisis management?

LONG FACES AT HORSEWORLD AS CRAP BOSS PREPARES TO SACK STAFF

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Sad news reaches us from inside troubled equine charity HorseWorld… Thanks to shocking mismanagement under the Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen regime – which pinned all hopes on a misconceived development project – it seems that staff have today been told of MASSIVE JOB LOSSES on the horizon.

Of course, the cuts won’t be felt by Owen or his equally culpable senior management team, who together presided over a financial nosedive at the previously solvent and successful horse charity (latest estimates suggest losses of more than £2 million in just three years). Instead around TWENTY-FIVE MEMBERS OF STAFF will be dismissed at the end of February – including some involved in vital animal welfare work. Figures supplied to the Charity Commission indicate that HorseWorld employs 43 people, so that would be nearly 60% OF JOBS LOST. Even by Pinocchiowen’s more fanciful figure of 62 employees, that’s still a staggering 40% of employees getting the heave-ho thanks to their boss’ failed development gamble.

Whether workers and volunteers there are prepared to stand for this shameless attempt by Owen and his clique to save their own jobs at the expense of everyone else remains to be seen…

LEAKED DOCUMENT!!! BRISTOL MAYOR’S CHRISTMAS DINNER REVEALED

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Your caring sharing BRISTOLIAN does it again! Bringing you all the news that matters right up to Christmas …

Our spies on the third floor sent us this earlier today. A copy of THE ACTUAL MENU that’s been prepared for Mayor Fergo and his really unlucky minions invited for Christmas Day. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas to all our readers. we’ll be back smiting in the New Year!

MARKET FARCES! BRISTOL COUNCIL’S NEVER-ENDING MISSING MONEY MYSTERY

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Cash gone missing, whistleblowers ‘disappeared’, finances ‘of concern’: council’s most useless department still in total chaos after 18 months…

The latest audit report reveals that Bristol City Council’s crisis-hit MARKETS SERVICE – where £165k disappeared last year without any coherent explanation – remains ‘of concern’. This is how it’s been for eighteen months now. Will it ever end?

The BRISTOLIAN can also reveal that, so far, the main action taken by Facilities boss Tony ‘THE TOERAG’ Harvey and his gormless gopher Markets boss Steve ‘God Botherer’ Morris to sort out their financial disaster area was to redeploy two whistleblowers out of the department under the guise of a departmental reorganisation!

One of the whistleblowers was even subsequently awarded thousands in an OUT-OF-COURT SETTLEMENT after it turned out the recruitment process they used to get rid of them was er, bent!

Having disposed of their troublesome staff late last year, Harvey and Morris then immediately forked out on pricey agency staff because their new staff structure didn’t comply with the council’s financial regulations! And, we’re told, the idiots squandered a further £5k on a consultant to try and sort out their ongoing financial mess.

This obviously failed because here we are a year later with a department whose finances remain – and we quote – “of concern”. So just how much more money are council taxpayers expected to fork out so that these two can piss £165k of public money up the wall and cover it up?

It’s certainly mighty convenient for the two men in charge that whistleblowers have been ‘disappeared’; £165k remains totally unaccounted for and no one can get to the bottom of the financial circumstances in the Markets Service don’t you think?

Meanwhile, there’s no sign of the investigation promised by the service’s political boss Sir Gus Hoyty-Toyty aftfter he revealed last summer that cash had been stolen from the Markets Office safe.

It’s obviously bent middle managers calling all the shots on Hoyty-Toyty’s watch then.

PINOCCHIOWEN’S LAST STAND? THE ‘CUNNING NEW PLAN’ OF HORSEWORLD BOSS

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HorseWorld boss Mark Owen: full of pony

Trustees of troubled charity HorseWorld meet tomorrow (Wednesday 18 December) to consider what they do next after the SPECTACULAR FAILURE of MD Mark Owen to persuade local councillors to give him the green light to fill Whitchurch’s green belt with lots of unaffordable posh houses.

Faced with a CRISIS of Becher’s Brook proportions, the trustees have important decisions to make that will decide the futures of many staff and still more animals.

Under Owen’s watch in the last five years HorseWorld has shipped millions of pounds – but frittered away hundreds of thousands on consultants working on his ill-judged master plan. This came crashing to the ground at the first fence last month when BANES councillors showed that they could think for themselves and act in the best interests of local people who didn’t want posh houses and a big arena, thank you very much, by voting against Owen’s plans.

And when they voted against his harebrained scheme to knock down the visitor’s centre and sell off prime land to profiteering property developers, they didn’t do it by half-measures.

Comments from councillors considering the application included:

…10% affordable housing was not good enough…

…information about visitor figures was not clear…

…not convinced the proposal would solve HorseWorld’s problems…

…10% affordable housing was not enough, it should be 35%…

…not convinced there were very special circumstances outweighing the need to protect the Green Belt…

…information about transport issues was incomplete…

…worried about transport issues…

…HorseWorld, with 100,000 visitors a year, should already be successful…

…not convinced about the commercial viability of HorseWorld…

…concerned about the impact of a new housing development on the local primary school…

So that would be a resounding ‘no’, it would seem.

Since then Owen has FURIOUSLY STOMPED around the local press fuming that his failure to get the nod for the plan means the charity will close. ‘It’s unsustainable,’ he whines. Well, insiders retort, it’s certainly unsustainable to retain this INCOMPETENT TWAT on £80,000 per year (plus 28k company car).

Owen’s HorseWorld business model has long been seen to be redundant, and now he should be too.

So is this the moment when trustees finally ditch the hapless Owen so he can spend more time playing guitar in his pub covers band?

At the meeting Owen is expected to plead with his trustee bosses for CLEMENCY. His latest ruse will be to tell them they can overturn the BANES decision on appeal, and he has already started a petition. A bit late in the day for petitions, but you can expect some (non-local) people – including staff – to sign it. ‘Think of my mortgage… err, I mean, the horses!’

Alongside this petition strategy is the key part of his new vision – the immediate closure of the existing visitor centre, home to 24 horses, donkeys and ponies, and employer of several low-paid staff. Retain the rest of the charity land as a small scale sanctuary for animals, he’ll urge, but scale down the operation. ‘Oh, and keep me as MD, pretty please!’

There is of course another option for trustees. It’s not one which Owen will recommend to them, but maybe like the BANES councillors did, THEY’LL PROVE THEY HAVE MINDS OF THEIR OWN…

Flog the Audi;
Sack this expensive failure and his overpaid management cronies; and
Move to a different model that puts long-suffering animals and hard working charity staff first.

It’s an option that would allow HorseWorld to continue working, but in creative co-operation with the local community, not against it.

Nobody in their right mind would believe councillors who overwhelmingly rejected an application by 10 to 2 votes would just overturn the decision on appeal. But are HorseWorld trustees in their right mind?

The acid test will come at this week’s meeting…

PS: For over a year Owen has been telling anyone who’ll listen that if HorseWorld failed to get planning permission he would RESIGN. He hasn’t.

What Mark Owen tells the Charity Commission – not quite what he tells BANES…

I say 62, you say 43, let’s call the whole thing off!

But then he’s been telling everyone he employees over sixty staff (most notably going with the figure 62, as shown on the HorseWorld website here and here, and in submissions to BANES Council – see page 92), when official figures submitted the Charity Commission claim the true figure is 43.

Pinocchiowen indeed.