Tag Archives: Whistleblower

BRISTOL WASTE BOSSES HAVE STOLEN OUR MONEY

Leave a reply
Bristol Waste - get in touch
Get in touch! Ask ’em where our money’s gone!

Highly paid waste bosses bought luxury lifestyles with public money while cutting our services. 

Despite the best efforts of Bristol City Council to keep it under wraps, there’s a major corruption scandal brewing at Bristol Waste. 

Multiple sources have now approached The Bristolian telling us that some firms using the weighbridge (or Transfer Station as they now call it) at Avonmouth tip on Kings Weston Lane to dispose of their waste were not formally paying for the service. Instead considerable sums of dirty money have been changing hands behind the scenes between bent bosses.

The Avonmouth weighbridge is a straightforward system that’s easy to monitor with limited opportunities for systematic fraud without the collusion of senior bosses.

Trucks carrying commercial waste drive onto the weighbridge, present a Waste Carriers License, have their registration recorded and the vehicle weighed. The waste is then tipped and the truck returns to a weighbridge and is weighed again. A charge per kilo of waste is automatically calculated, charged to the firm and a waste transfer note issued.

Workers ripping this system off without bosses knowing would be tricky as there’s automated records of how much waste has been recorded as tipped and how much money is collected. The two figures are easily accessible to management and would need to tally. And they didn’t … For years.

Our sources tell us certain firms have been systematically not charged, obviously with the full knowledge and assistance of Bristol Waste bosses. Firms named to us include major corporate players in the waste industry. Who were they paying for their waste disposal?

We understand that a significant whistleblower stepped forward last summer and this resulted in the immediate exit of Bristol Waste MD Terry “I Am The” Lawless and his finance director sidekick Adam “Dumb” Henshaw.

We also understand that Bristol City Council has been undertaking one of its painfully slow arse-covering investigations ever since. When they intend to report, if ever, isn’t known. 

Meanwhile, our street cleaning is being reduced, flytipping not collected and public opening times at waste tips slashed to make up a financial shortfall partly created by thieving bosses on generous six-figure salaries. All conveniently helped out by our council’s slack oversight of a council taxpayer-owned business.

Further concerns have also been raised with The Bristolian over what materials may have been tipped at Avonmouth. If Bristol Waste bosses were breaking the law to fill their boots why would they be bothered about hazardous waste regulations?

Further tip-offs about Bristol Waste we’re currently investigating include stories of bosses signing off massive expense claims for themselves and the latest recently departed interim MD, Jason Eldridge, making generous and expensive use of Plan B Waste Management consultancy. Where a Mr Shaun Eldridge works – Jason’s brother!

Isn’t it about time Inspector Knacker got involved?

Got any info’ on Bristol Waste and its bent bosses? Contact the Bristolian bristoliannews@gmail.com. Discretion assured.

MAYOR GETTING RACY

Leave a reply
MAYOR GETTING RACY

The Reverend rushed to the airwaves and into print within days of the Nazi Post revealing last month, with the help of four whistleblowers, that his council had miserably failed to take any action over 70 INSTANCES OF RACISM among their workforce over the last ten years.

The Reverend’s first port of call was a soft interview with Ellie “Copy Typist” Pipe, roving reporter for Venue-lite website and mag, Bristol 24/7. The Reverend’s crazed mission to EXPLAIN THE INEXPLICABLE appeared on the 24/7 website on Friday 22 February.

The first target from the failed journalist and failing mayor was successful journalism. “There is a massive challenge for the journalistic class in the city as well,” bleated the Reverend, taking aim at those who had recorded, for the public, his latest embarrassing ORGANISATIONAL FAILURE.

The Vicar went on to claim the press were “sensationalising” the issue as the four cases reported in the Post “were being addressed” by his senior bosses. Sidestepping the fact that the whistleblowers had gone to the Post because their cases remained UNADDRESSED while the perpetrators and the senior bosses protecting them remained UNCHALLENGED.

“We, as a leadership, have always taken race and racism very seriously,” Rees breezily assured 24/7 readers. “We have put in place a whole raft of measures to tackle it”. And what measures would they be? Er, we don’t know because the Reverend didn’t say and Copy Typist Pipe DIDN’T BOTHER TO ASK. So that’s all right, then.

The Reverend immediately followed this highly DEFENSIVE INTERVIEW with an appearance among friends at community radio station, Ujima where he was joined by a cheerleader from the local race relations industry, Sado Jirde of the Black South West Network.

Together, the pair spent an hour patronising listeners by batting about long-winded undergraduate seminar observations about race with little reference to the Reverend’s working class black staff  experiencing THE SHARP END OF RACISM right here, right now in Bristol.

It’s all ever so “complex and systemic” listeners were assured as the pair ASSERTED that due to the way racism was “reproduced and remodelled in institutions” it had to be “contextualised”.

Was this because the context of black working class people having their experience of racism BELITTLED AND IGNORED by middle class public sector bosses with large mortgages to service and quiet lives to live was a little too raw and direct for them?

Further highlights at Ujima included Rees whining that he couldn’t be expected to resolve 400 years of racism. Or, it seems, even four straightforward issues of RACISM within his own organisation raised that week by WHISTLEBLOWERS in the press.

The Reverend also went right off the deep end at the Nazi Post. “We all knew about it anyway”; they were “behind the conversation” on race; they were “role playing at being investigative journalists”; they had a “shallow understanding”; they were using “shock terminology” based on “inaccuracies and embellishments” and the headlines “were a great splash but not true,” the Reverend variously BLUSTERED at listeners.

To polish off this hour of PARANOID WAFFLE and EMBITTERED DENIAL, the show’s presenter even chipped in telling listeners that “whistleblower” is the “wrong terminology”. So what is the correct terminology for what this little lot were up to then?

How about “another bloody hatchet job by council bosses and client media on working class whistleblowers”?

 

WHISTLEBLOWING WATCH

Leave a reply

Lies, bullshit and waffle emanated from the Reverend Rees within minutes of his ‘Bundred Report’ into the council’s finances being published on 9 February. Former Audit Commission boss, Steve ‘Sticky’ Bundred, provided the Reverend with TWELVE recommendations he could implement to improve his council’s shit management.

Here’s number 8: “The incoming chief executive should be invited to consider and report on the steps needed to improve the management culture within the Council recognising that any necessary changes will take three to five years to embed. There should be an emphasis on greater openness, professionalism, delegation, mutual respect and better internal communication, but with fewer large and lengthy meetings.”

The Rev Arsecover immediately responded: “quick improvements include a recent update to our WHISTLEBLOWING POLICY to make it easier for staff to flag up concerns,” he blathered. However, a brief search on the council’s website turns up a Whistleblowing Policy last updated on 2 JUNE 2016 because “[the] scope [was] widened to include employees of LA maintained schools”.

Is last July RECENT? And how the fuck does including school staff “make it easier for staff to flag up concerns”? Is this even the recently updated version the Reverend’s referring to? Does it exist? And, if it does, how the hell is it easier for concerns to be flagged up if no one can access the bloody thing?

A further search also reveals the Rev’s new all-singing, all-dancing whistleblowing policy has been NOWHERE near a council committee or an elected representative in the last year, let alone out for public consultation or run past a trade union rep or employment lawyer who might have a few things to say.

All-in-all, the chances of this mystery document – drawn up in secret by unknown officers beyond public and democratic oversight – being fit-for-purpose must be somewhere near ZERO. But then that’s the point with whistleblowing isn’t it? Council bosses hate it and want it to fail and politicians go along with them.

How long before the Reverend has to call a large and lengthy meeting to sort this new mess from his managers out then?

DEAR COUNCILLOR, REGARDING THE PERSONAL VENDETTAS AND THE OPEN PERJURY …

1 Reply

‘Meat Zeppelin’, Councillor Gary Hopkins, watercolours, 2013, @guriben

‘Meat Zeppelin’, Councillor Gary Hopkins, watercolours, 2013, @guriben

From:
To: gus.hoyt@bristol.gov.uk; rob.telford@bristol.gov.uk; wayne.harvey@bristol.gov.uk; matthew.melias@bristol.gov.uk; colin.smith@bristol.gov.uk; mark.bradshaw@bristol.gov.uk; daniella.radice@bristol.gov.uk; tim.malnick@bristol.gov.uk; kevin.quartley@bristol.gov.uk; richard.eddy@bristol.gov.uk; mike.wollacott@bristol.gov.uk; mike.langley@bristol.gov.uk; rhian.greaves@bristol.gov.uk; jackie.norman@bristol.gov.uk; alex.woodman@bristol.gov.uk; mark.wright@bristol.gov.uk; charles.lucas@bristol.gov.uk; barbara.janke@bristol.gov.uk; simon.cook@bristol.gov.uk; christian.martin@bristol.gov.uk; neil.harrison@bristol.gov.uk; anthony.negus@bristol.gov.uk; afzal.shah@bristol.gov.uk; faruk.choudhury@bristol.gov.uk; mhairi.threlfall@bristol.gov.uk; mahmadur.khan@bristol.gov.uk; christopher.jackson@bristol.gov.uk; jeff.lovell@bristol.gov.uk; lesley.alexander@bristol.gov.uk; bill.payne@bristol.gov.uk; naomi.rylatt@bristol.gov.uk; mark.brain@bristol.gov.uk; mark.weston@bristol.gov.uk; chris.windows@bristol.gov.uk; barry.clark@bristol.gov.uk; michael.frost@bristol.gov.uk; glenise.morgan@bristol.gov.uk; clare.campion-smith@bristol.gov.uk; noreen.daniels@bristol.gov.uk; phil.hanby@bristol.gov.uk; claire.hiscott@bristol.gov.uk; olly.mead@bristol.gov.uk; tim.leaman@bristol.gov.uk; jason.budd@bristol.gov.uk; christopher.davies@bristol.gov.uk; margaret.hickman@bristol.gov.uk; hibaq.jama@bristol.gov.uk; estella.tincknell@bristol.gov.uk; gill.kirk@bristol.gov.uk; fi.hance@bristol.gov.uk; martin.fodor@bristol.gov.uk; jenny.smith@bristol.gov.uk; brenda.massey@bristol.gov.uk; sean.beynon@bristol.gov.uk; charlie.bolton@bristol.gov.uk; s.pearce@bristol.gov.uk; fabian.breckels@bristol.gov.uk; ron.stone@bristol.gov.uk; sue.milestone@bristol.gov.uk; jay.jethwa@bristol.gov.uk; david.morris@bristol.gov.uk; john.goulandris@bristol.gov.uk; peter.abraham@bristol.gov.uk; geoffrey.gollop@bristol.gov.uk; alastair.watson@bristol.gov.uk; helen.holland@bristol.gov.uk; tim.kent@bristol.gov.uk; mark.bailey@bristol.gov.uk; sam.mongon@bristol.gov.uk

Subject: RE: IS THIS THE WAY A COUNCILLOR SHOULD CONDUCT THEMSELF?
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 21:13:02 +0000

 

Dear Councillor,

I feel I must bring the following to your attention as a matter of urgency.

This afternoon a senior pollution control officer stated in the Bristol Magistrates Court – while on the witness stand and under oath – that Councillor Gary Hopkins has a personal vendetta against the defendant in the case in which he was giving evidence.

In addition to this alarming fact, the defendant has powerful evidence to show that a second pollution control officer has openly perjured himself under oath.

It begs the question as to why or how a councillor has been able to influence officers in the conduct of their office? Clearly Mark Curtis was not prepared to take the fall for Councillor Hopkins.

I further hope that other councillors will rally around Mark Curtis and support him in what I have no doubt will turn into a witch-hunt to have him dismissed.

The defendant in this case is the same defendant who was denied planning permission recently for the Gothic Mansion, 100 Redcatch Road. Again one can only assume that Councillor Hopkins was involved behind the scene in orchestrating this refusal because he was the person who actually called this planning matter before committee. The very same committee in which I accused Mr Calabrese of being corrupt.

In light of today’s revelation, Mr Woodman should note, that I feel somewhat vindicated.

I have no doubt that this particular case will end up costing tax payers tens of thousands of pounds and all because an overgrown bully, Gary Hopkins, wanted to run a vendetta against a citizen of Bristol who stood up to him.

Unfortunately what has been disclosed here is only a fraction of the evidence that supports Mark Curtis’ statement. However I am unable to disclose further evidence at this stage as it would be prejudicial to the case and because it has not yet been heard in open court. Methinks a big scandal is about to hit the Lib Dems and the big house on the green.

Yours Sincerely

 

Stephen Norman

The case continues tomorrow and Monday at Bristol Magistrates Court (free entry) …

Background to the case here: thebristolian.net/2014/10/23/knowle-noise-annoys/