Helen Holland reckons this is defamatory. So I'll publish it …

Posted on March 19, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

Yep. Helen reckons the email below is defamatory and – wait for it – she’s “referred the correspondence to the Head of Legal Services in the City Council”. Ooh er missus! McNamara’s on the case.

Please see this article for further details. And look out for the full text of Helen’s laughable legal threat coming soon …

Dear Councillor Pickup,

Thank you for your immediate response, a refreshing change for BCC. Can you confirm that you did not attend the corporate reception at GCCC as part of “World Class West”?

Can you also confirm that none of the Labour Administration of Bristol City Council attended – as this seems to fly in the face of the statement on record:
“Attendance of over 100 members of the political and business community at the Bristol reception, including explicit endorsement in the media and at the event itself from Cllr Helen Holland, Leader of Bristol City Council.”

Can you explain in light of the above why none of you (including Helen) have declared attending this reception as hospitality in the Register of Members Interests?

Thank you for confirming that the expansion of Sefton Park is the more expensive option, however I am perplexed as to why you think it is more desirable. The parents of every child at the school do not agree, nor do the local residents, nor do the parents of children who have no local primary school place allocated to them, nor do the governors of the school. In fact your administration have achieved a level of unity and common interest in our community which I have never seen before. A pity therefore, that you are pitted against the people rather than representing them.

When I wrote to you during 2007/2008, you assured me that scrapping the plan for the new Brunel Primary School would have no effect on the delivery of new primary places for Bishopston for September 2009. Can you now admit in light of the epic deficit in primary school places in our area for September 2009 that you were wrong, and that my concerns were entirely justified. Humility in the face of personal failure is much more attractive than your previous record of arrogant “I know better” bravado and bluster in the face of reason. Normally politicians say “well if you’re not happy elect someone else” – the point is we did elect someone else, and you have excluded our elected representatives and ignored the views of the community involved from this process.

Actions speak louder than words – if you believe that children come first, then reverse your decision and build a new school.

Kind Regards,

Xxxxxxx XXXXXXX
Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx, Ashley Down, Bristol BS7 (Bishopston Ward, Bristol West)

Posted in Bishopston, Bristol, Bristol West, Education, Labour Party, Local government, Politics, Whitchurch Park Ward | Tagged , , , , , | There are 8 comments

RED TROUSERGATE: endgame?

Posted on March 18, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

After a firm kick up the backside from new Lib Dem transport supremo, Jon Rogers, council officers have finally published the long-awaited Railway Path consultation.

And what a result! It’s General Public 6 Red Trousered Developers 0.

Here’s the consultation’s entirely predictable conclusions in full:

The key outcomes were:

o That green, open space should be preserved.
o That the wildlife corridor, in particular the hedgerow, should be protected.
o That the regeneration of the former Elizabeth Shaw factory site should take place within the existing boundary and that the Bristol and Bath Railway Path should stay in the public domain.
o That the individual accesses to the cycle houses are flawed with concerns about safety risks; changing character of path; de facto private gardens; impact on existing natural environment; security risks.
o The importance of Bristol as a ‘Cycling City’ and the need to protect cycle routes.
o Concern that land sale would set a precedent.

In conclusion, although there is general support for the regeneration of the former Elizabeth Shaw factory site the majority of those participating in the consultation felt that the development should be contained within the original footprint of the factory site and the Bristol and Bath Railway Path should stay in the public domain.

The majority of individual respondents and groups/organisations felt that plot 1 should not be sold although there were some suggestions for a compromise solution with partial development. A greater majority felt that plot 2 should not be leased particularly for individual access points – many respondents felt that these were unnecessary to the development. There was, however, some agreement to provide an access across plot 2 to the square, café and other facilities.

Meanwhile the council officers’ lame excuses to Rogers for not publishing the consultation earlier look even lamer.

“We accepted questionnaires until two weeks after the closing date as quite a number were still coming in,” they explained.

Then they claimed, “we inputed those questionnaire ourselves rather than paying someone, as we were getting criticism for spending too much money on the consultation – this has taken longer as it’s been additional work on top of people’s heavy workloads.”

But wait! The report says there were only 33 questionnaire responses sent in by post. So even if they had all arrived after the closing date, it’s hardly a major task to get them entered into a database is it?

Was there another reason for this delay? Maybe related to Square Peg’s desperate efforts – with the full help and support of David Bishop’s fawning planning department – to get planning permission granted on the land last month prior to the consultation’s publication?

Although this eventually got delayed until 1 April – ho, ho! – by the planning committee after Ferguson proposed building just 6% affordable housing – rather than the required 30% – in his development for snooty people.

But don’t go expecting this latest overwhelming victory to campaigners to be the end of the controversy just yet. For starters, Ferguson will no doubt soon be bleating and blackmailing, claiming the development will be unable to go ahead unless he’s given the right to trash the Bristol and Bath Railway Path.

Then there’s the small matter of who now takes the final decision on the – still – undecided land sale. The council is claiming the decision now rests with their deeply unreliable property and finance senior officer Carew Reynell, while the Parks Forum claim they were told that the decision would be made by the council’s Parks and Green Spaces Strategy Board.

Even now, at this late stage, this one is still up and running …

Posted in Bristol, Bristol and Bath Railway Path, Bristol East, Developments, Easton, Environment, Housing, Lib Dems, Local government, Merchant Venturers, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | There are 40 comments

Biggles and the IT cost conundrum

Posted on March 17, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

Oh dear, oh dear. Are our friendly city council senior officer class telling porkies to our politicians again? Or are our politicians just telling us porkies?

An intriguing document arrives in the Blogger’s inbox. Published by Bristol City Council, it’s called, “Information Systems and Technology Strategy” and is dated December 2008.

And what interesting reading it makes, confirming much of what our new Lib Dem cabinet friend Squadron Leader (I kid you not!) Mike “Biggles” Popham told us just last week about the city council’s grand plans for a glorious new era of business school inspired multi-million pound integrated IT systems.

And yes, the council is intending to invest a large sum of money creating a bloody great database. But not to improve services to you dear reader nor to make life easier for the average council employee.

Instead the system’s designed for our new council “strategic directors” on six figure salaries to fuck about looking at statistics. Or obtain better “management information” as they learned to called it on their now desperately outmoded MBA courses. Hurrah!

Now, according to Biggles Popham last week, this business school IT bollocks was going to cost us, the council taxpayer, about £2m.

Not so says the strategy, which very vaguely costs this latest little council officer escapade at between £7.1m – £12m over the next three years. Given that IT projects in the public sector almost always go over budget, we could easily be spending £5m a year on this then.

And remember there’s no guarantee it will work and even if it does, the supply of better “management information” is unlikely to directly impact on services. Will the buses become cheaper? Our schools better? Will traffic congestion disappear in a puff of digital logic? Will more be spent on care for the elderly?

To give you some idea of the sums of money we’re talking about here, at the last budget meeting our clueless and out-of-touch politicians spent hours bickering over the £3m they’re allowed to spend by officers.

Meanwhile unelected and unaccountable Chief Exec Ormondroyd has decided – in a recession – to spend five times that amount on her personal IT requirements without any political oversight or discussion whatsoever. Ain’t life grand?

This is now getting ridiculous. First we’re forced to fork out from our council tax to make a bunch of unaccountable, faceless mediocrities rich beyond most of our wildest dreams and now we’re told we need to pay out 12 million quid for an IT system for them to do their jobs with.

What next? Dedicated staff to wipe their arses for them?

Meanwhile, those in the comments section who believe that this whole IT charade is leading inexorably to an outsourcing deal with Chief Constable Colin Port’s friends at IBM’s South West One may be correct. Here’s some of the last but one section of the strategy:

5.1.2 Partnering
Although we can achieve some incremental changes over the medium and long term by releasing existing capacity, in the immediate future we are faced with the need to make a step-change quickly …

… We can only achieve this step-change in capacity and capability by working with strategic partners …

… We will be open to the potential of partnering for all
these phases – and will consider carefully whether to contract with the same or different partners for each one …

… Partnering need not be confined to commercial providers …

While supporters of open source software will be glad to hear the council are thinking of scrapping their cheapo deal – giving us value for money – with Open Office as they think it is “causing problems with document exchange and system integration”. Hmmm.

Anyway, chocks away! Looks like it’s time Biggles Popham got on the case and found out what’s up with our money, what?

Posted in Bristol, CONsultants, IT, Lib Dems, Local government, Politics | Tagged , , , , | There are 8 comments

Bristol's top newspaper in back on the streets shocker!!!

Posted on March 16, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

Bit late with this news. KRS got here weeks ago in fact.

It’s not just Barbara “call me ma’m” Janke back who’s back in the fold. Because yet another old friend has risen almost Lazarus-like from the dead. None other than that notorious award-winning smiter of the high and mighty itself.

Yes folks The Bristolian is back. Apparently being produced from somewhere in the depths of Patchway by some people considerably younger than Ian Bone, the first issue is on the streets now and another is on the way I’m assured.

A pdf of the issue is available below.

bristolian-issue-1-a4-downsampled2

Posted in Activism, Bristol, Journalism, Media, Politics | Tagged | There are 14 comments

Lib Dem IT technofix horror

Posted on March 15, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

Newbie Lib Dem finance wizard, the Hampshire businessman and former Tory Mike Popham – who’s been a councillor for less than two years – has granted an interview to the Cancer.

And this owner of a software company providing services to government is keen to spend money on er, software:

“We have some great staff at the city council who are working very hard. But we don’t have the right software to allow them to do their jobs as well as they could.

“It comes down to communications, the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing. Computer systems work well, for instance, for individual departments or sections of the council.

“Problems arise when staff in another part of the authority need to know what their colleagues have been up to or are intending to do or what the latest is on services to a particular client or member of the public.

“Accessing information is piecemeal at the moment. That must be a great frustration to council staff.

Popham then tells us, “Departments need to have access to common data”. While the Cancer chips in with, “IT improvements could, however, cost several million pounds.”

Excuse me? What year is this? Popham wants to spend several million pounds buying software to access common data and improve communications at the council?

Could someone tell Mike there’s an entirely free, extremely efficient and up-to-date system for doing just this job. And it’s free. We call it the internet.

Posted in Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Clifton, CONsultants, Lib Dems, Local government, Media, Politics | Tagged , , , | There are 29 comments

Laming

Posted on March 14, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

It’s about child protection really, but the latest Laming report (pdf) published this week makes some interesting comments in a general sense about well-paid town hall managers:

The time is long past when the most junior employee should carry the heaviest burden of accountability.

The performance and effectiveness of the most senior managers in each of these services should be assessed against the quality of the outcomes.

While Laming told a press conference on Thursday:

Alongside the titles and the salaries must be the public accountability that goes with the job.

The personal accountability of the most senior managers in all of the public services now needs to be fully understood.

Well said that man. If you’re taking a six-figure salary then you take responsibility. Personally and publicly. No hiding behind councillors. No blaming subordinates. No quiet resignations and payoffs.

And yes. I’m talking about you David Bishop. It’s time you faced the public and explained your conduct. That’s what you get paid the big bucks for – not for hiding away like a coward.

Posted in Bristol, Bristol and Bath Railway Path, Bristol East, Developments, Easton, Local government, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | There is 1 comment

Legal news

Posted on March 13, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APj_-6HUg1s]

Fine sport at yesterday evening’s highly entertaining 14 minute marathon cabinet meeting as our morally challenged snob of a new leader, Babs Janke, treated us to a remarkable lesson in relativism as she defended her racist councillor, Shirley Marshall (Blogger Passim).

You can view the whole sordid episode above but the thrust of Babs’ argument is that a straightforward Tory budget amendment proposing to reform the administrative structure of the council to save money is as offensive as hurling racist abuse across the council chamber at Asian councillors.

Not sure many people will really buy this. Especially as Babs has a bit of form in defending the indefensible among her own councillors. Remember this is the woman who declined to state publicly and on the record that she had no knowledge of John Astley’s paedophile activities prior to his arrest.

“Your children: safe in Lib Dem hands unless it interferes with Barbara Janke’s leadership ambitions.”

However, for many of us, the revelation of the evening was newbie cabinet member, Councillor Tim Kent, the latest in a long line of pompous twits handed a position of power in this city.

He decided – for convoluted reasons that needn’t concern anyone in the slightest bit sane – that the Tories asking questions about his racist nutjob colleague calling Tory councillor Jay Jethwa a coconut was in fact “defamatory”.

And – this is the best bit – he asked council legal boss, Stephen McNamara, for advice on the matter and McNamara sagely agreed.

Surely this isn’t the same council defamation expert, Stephen McNamara, who along with his close colleague PR girl Simon Caplan threatened legal action against day care campaigners in 2005 because, “placards bearing the names of individual social services workers in the FACS review team were displayed in public.”

“If necessary,” thundered the great legal brain, “the council will take legal action through the courts to prevent any such activity.”

Naturally such activity continued and McNamara was immediately provided with names and addresses for servicing of his writs and – four years later – we still await that sensational trial …

McNamara’s just the man for quality legal advice on defamation then Tim. Please do let us know what he tells you so we can all piss ourselves laughing.

Posted in Bristol, Budget, Conservatives, Lib Dems, Local government, Politics | Tagged , , , | There are 6 comments

RED TROUSERGATE: shambles, complete and utter

Posted on March 12, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

New Lib Dem transport boss, Jon Rogers has been asking some questions about the whereabouts of the public consultation into the Greenbank public land sale (Blogger passim) and has posted a response in the comments.

The responses he’s had from council officers are pretty remarkable and have been quite reasonably compared to the kind of excuses you might get from a kid who hasn’t done their homework.

They also seem to indicate that senior officers at the council don’t possess the most basic kind of project management skills. Let’s have a quick look at their excuses:

(1) Officers have said that the report is not yet ready. “We are finalising the report this week”

(2) They accept that they have not handled this well. “We should clearly have advertised this and given timescales on the website which is I think our main omission.”

(3) They hope to publish the report by the end of the week. “We are expecting to publish the consultation report by the end of the week. I’m not sure how the report will be made public but I’ll check. I’ve asked for an amendment to be made to the website to let people know in the meantime.”

(4) It’s taken longer than we expected for a number of reasons:

“a) We accepted questionnaires until two weeks after the closing date as quite a number were still coming in and we didn’t want to not incorporate people’s comments

b) We inputed those questionnaire ourselves rather than paying someone else to do them, as we were getting criticism for spending too much money on the consultation – this therefore has taken longer as it has been additional work on top of people’s heavy workloads

c) the person [ … ] who has been dealing with pulling the data together has been off [ … ] for the last week

d) We have spent some time double checking the data and ensuring that the conclusions we are reaching are correct as we don’t want to get this one wrong – again this has added to the time in turning it round

It’s pointless running through all these points in detail. Make your own mind up. And feel free to draw your own conclusions about this fantastic coincidence where officers were “finalising the report this week” – just as the Executive Member starts asking difficult questions – while simultaneously not being “sure how the report will be made public”!

You might also want to try and figure out what they think project management is down at the Council House.

To manage a project – such as, say, a simple public consultation – you basically have three variables: people; time and money. By organising and managing these three resources you should be able to successfully complete your project on time and to budget.

So what happened with this project?

People: ” the person [ … ] who has been dealing with pulling the data together has been off [ … ] for the last week”. So why wasn’t this planned for? Do officers not book their holidays in advance? Why was there no planning or contingency for staff absence?

Time: “We accepted questionnaires until two weeks after the closing date”. In other words the time available was randomly expanded by 100% because someone felt like it half way through the project.

Money: “We inputed those questionnaire ourselves rather than paying someone else to do them, as we were getting criticism for spending too much money on the consultation”. Or – if you believe these complaints really exist – they cut the budget half way through the project for PR purposes.

What a total fucking shambles. Whoever organised this should be sacked. They’re an an incompetent idiot wasting considerable sums of public money and screwing up our city into the bargain.

They might as well have taken this £12k (plus the handsomely renumerated officer time on top) of our hard earned council tax and flushed it down the toilet.

What are we paying six-figure salaries at the Council House for exactly?

Posted in Bristol, Bristol and Bath Railway Path, Bristol East, CONsultants, Developments, Easton, Environment, Lib Dems, Local government, Merchant Venturers, Politics | Tagged , , , , | There are 82 comments

The Hollywood post

Posted on March 11, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

Kerry McCarthy has tagged me about this list of DVDs which Barack Obama gave Gordon Brown.

The films are:

Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Casablanca, Raging Bull, Singin’ in the Rain, Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler’s List, Vertigo, The Wizard of Oz, City Lights, The Searchers, Star Wars: Episode IV, Psycho, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sunset Boulevard, The Graduate,The General, On the Waterfront, It’s a Wonderful Life, Chinatown, Some Like it Hot, The Grapes of Wrath, ET: The Extra-Terrestrial and To Kill a Mockingbird.

You get two points for owning them, one point if you’ve seen them and no points if you’ve done neither.

I own none of them although I used to have The Searchers on video many years ago. (Bonus point?)

I’ve seen: Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Casablanca, Raging Bull, Singin’ in the Rain, Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler’s List, Vertigo, The Wizard of Oz, City Lights, The Searchers, Psycho, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sunset Boulevard, The Graduate, On the Waterfront, It’s a Wonderful Life, Chinatown, Some Like it Hot and To Kill a Mockingbird.

I’ve never heard of The General(!).

That’s 21 points (22 with my bonus).

Personally I’d switch Raging Bull for Goodfellas and would have found room for Bonny and Clyde and Woody Allen. Then there’s Network (can’t have too much Faye Dunaway) and Lynch to think about.

By way of anecdote, I remember years ago taking Ms Blogger to see It’s a Wonderful Life on a Sunday afternoon just before Christmas at the Watershed . She moaned all the way there about boring old black and white films and then cried all the way through it.

I’ll tag Bristle KRS; Bristol Dave; Paul at the catchily titled Furniture Reuse Network’s Blog – which I keep meaning to add to the blogroll and Charlie – how Hollywood are Bristol’s Greens?

Posted in Blogging, Bristol, Bristol East, Culture | Tagged , | There are 18 comments

Lost and found? Or buried?

Posted on March 10, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

Update on Friday’s blog about this mysterious missing public consultation into this unusual sale of protected public park land at Greenbank, engineered for Merchant Venturer George Ferguson’s personal benefit by council planning boss David Bishop.

Now new Lib Dem transport chief, Jon Rogers, announces on Twitter that “I have asked for copy and for it to be published. Not yet had satisfactory answer.”

Er, hello? What’s going on here? Surely if one of our democratically elected representatives asks a public servant for something they just do it? Isn’t that their job?

The only satisfactory answer from “Dodgy” David Bishop should be, “Yes, I’ll get that consultation for you right away Jon and then I’m off to post it on the web.”

This whole episode becomes more and more bizarre. First the head of planning makes a private arrangement over the telephone to sell a piece of protected public park land to a developer, conveniently forgetting to take any notes or minutes for the public record. Six months later he pays out £12k of public money to initiate a public consultation into the sale of this land he’s already agreed to sell. Then he refuses to show anybody the results of the consultation while the planning application on the land – which he’s legally responsible for – goes through.

The stench arising from this affair and especially from “Dodgy” Dave gets stronger by the day. When are our politicians going to get the strength to act and do something about this?

Meanwhile, Bristol City Council’s officer love-in with George Ferguson continues unabated.

For it now seems that as far as the council’s concerned if you’re a wealthy public schoolboy and a member of the Merchant Venturers then that makes you an expert in just about anything.

George’s latest council gig is as a keynote speaker at their South Bristol Digital Neighbourhoods Launch, where it seems George will star as some sort of self-styled expert on computer technology and the poor.

At first sight this seems a strange platform for a man who specialises in creating upmarket developments for the very wealthy to be promoting his repulsive ideas from.

So how long, then, before his skint architectural practice Acanthus Ferguson Mann is moving in on Knowle West and the red trousered hypocrite is expressing his oafish views about all the “pointless” open space up there?

Posted in Bristol, Bristol and Bath Railway Path, Bristol East, CONsultants, Developments, Easton, Environment, Knowle, Local government, Merchant Venturers, Politics, Twitter | Tagged , , , , , | There are 18 comments