Local media assisted departure from reality of the week

Paul Barnett, the city council’s unpopular and unwanted head of Cultural Services appears to be back at his desk and spouting his usual brand of complete and utter nonsense to the Evening Cancer.

Trailing the fact that the city council’s cabinet is about to award £250k for a ‘slavery legacy commission’ to continue the work of last year’s Abolition 200 project, Barnett assures a credulous Cancer hack that Abolition 200 was the “most impressive community-led programme in the UK”.

Oh yeah really impressive Paul. Apart that is, from the fact that the events were boycotted by Bristol’s Coalition of Black Groups (COBG), representing every black-led organisation in the city; the centrepiece church service at the Cathedral was half empty with more black faces outside protesting than were inside praying alongside the Merchant Venturers and that the whole year of Barnett’s “celebrations” were marked by a large amount of exceptionally virulent and outspoken complaints from certain vociferous elements in the city.

Luckily, presumably to maintain our local paper’s reputation for balanced and truthful reporting, the Evening Cancer does nothing in its article – like, say, speak to someone from COBG or any of the other many dissenters – to dispute Barmy Barnett’s deranged and completely fictitious press release they’ve copied out.

Barnett also assures the Cancer about “the change from 18 months ago, when there was a lot of hostility to the idea of Abolition 200, to now when a recent public meeting to consider the steering group’s legacy report was a positive and constructive debate.”

However unfortunately for Barnett seven Cancer readers have used the comment function on their website to have their say. And what d’ya know? All seven show “a lot of hostility to the idea of Abolition 200″.

You can fool some of the people …