Partnership news

Posted on February 10, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

We know only too well that Bristol City Council’s pair of jargon obsessed New Labour leadership dronebots, Bum Disease Ormondroyd and Helen Holland, are very keen on this whole ‘partnership working’ malarkey.

Martin Whitelock even reports on this blog that just this evening Helen was banging on about her administration’s ‘increased partnership working’. But just how keen she is on this nonsense is evident from one of her recent Cabinet meetings where they gormlessly rubber stamped one of the council’s most extraordinary partnership arrangements yet.

Because, thanks to the bunch of aging Trots, Bennites and weird old remnants of Militant in Jan ‘n’ Helen’s Community Development team, partnerships between Bristol City Council and – I kid you not! – some of the country’s most notorious Jihadist organisations are now in place.

A brief read through the minutes of the last Cabinet meeting reveals, under the item ‘Voluntary and Community Sector Investment Budget – Allocation of Funding 2009/10‘ (pdf), that £50k has been given to the Bristol Muslim Cultural Society (BCMS) to help “strengthen and promote community cohesion in the city, particularly in new communities, faith communities and promoting understanding and respect across community divides”.

Sounds like a suitably vague New Labour social cause. While the BCMS is, of course, the power base of our friend ‘A Muslim in Bristol’, Farooq Siddique, who – despite his wacky 9/11 conspiracy theories and obsessive comparisons between the state of Israel and Nazi Germany – has been embraced unquestioningly by the city’s liberal establishment as a progressive and moderate Muslim voice.

Indeed so popular are Farooq and the BCMS that they are not only funded by the city council to promote ‘community cohesion’, they are also insinuating themselves into another whopping slice of the funding pie as part of the the Home Office’s ‘Preventing Violent Extremism‘ strategy in the city, which is aimed at stopping Muslim youngsters becoming radicalised.

This means Farooq will be perfectly placed to flog his view to the city’s receptive liberal establishment that Muslim radicalism is entirely the fault of the UK’s foreign policy and has nothing whatsoever to do with certain strains of Islamism that are surprisingly easy to come across in the UK.

The BCMS’s nice cosy relationship with Bristol City Council is openly reflected on their website. The city council takes pride of place on the ‘Meet the Team‘ section of the site and is first on the list of BMCS’s ‘Current Parnerships’ alongside many of the usual local suspects – GOSW, Voscur, the coppers, Avon Fire & Rescue, Bristol University and so on.

But wait! Who’s this also listed as a ‘Current Partner’ of the BCMS?

Only the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC). Who the hell are they you ask? Well, here’s what the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism (pdf) has to say about them:

The activities of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, MPACUK, have given cause for concern. Although its rhetoric is often extremist, MPACUK identifies itself as part of the mainstream British Muslim community, describing itself as “the UK’s leading Muslim civil liberties group, empowering Muslims to focus on non-violent Jihad and political activism” … MPACUK has been criticised for publishing material on its website promoting the idea of a worldwide Zionist conspiracy, including the reproduction of articles originally published on neo-Nazi and Holocaust Denial websites, and is currently banned from university campuses under the NUS’s ‘No Platform’ policy.

The use of ‘Zionist’ as a replacement for ‘Jewish’ is common on the MPACUK website.

MPACUK has also articulated Jewish conspiracy theories through the language of Zionism describing it as an “octopus that now penetrates every western nation and pushes it to start world war three upon Muslims” and warning that “Any man who knows anything of Zionists, knows that they will not stop until the Muslims ‘followed by mankind’ are dead or enslaved.

News articles referring to the Jewish community have appeared on the MPACUK website and white nationalist websites.

Charming bunch eh? But don’t worry … It gets worse.

Back in 2006 it was revealed that Asghar Bukhari, the founder of MPAC, sent notorious Holocaust denier David Irving a £60 donation and a gushing letter of support proudly headed with a misquote he attributed to John Locke, “All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to stand idle”. (The better informed will already know that it’s Bristol’s Edmund Burke who didn’t say this)

When questioned about this, MPAC brushed aside criticism, hilariously claiming that the media were “twisting an innocent gesture of support (even if gravely mistaken) into more than it is”.

Yet another dodgy ‘Current Partner’ of the BMCS’s is the Islamic Human Rights Commission.

This lot are big fans of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the brains behind Iran’s Islamic revolution, and they advocate ‘absolute rulership of the clerics’ and ‘Islamic government’ among other things.

The Stephen Roth Institute have this to say about them:

Shadjareh and the IHRC subscribe to the radical Islamist belief that Jewish conspiracies are afoot to undermine Muslims, and they liken Jews and Israelis to Nazis. Members of the IHRC’s board of advisors have even called on Muslims to kill Jews. They include the Saudi Islamist Muhammad al-Mas’ari and Muhammad al-‘Asi, an American convert to Islam who was banned from preaching at his mosque in Washington, DC, and has been a frequent visitor to Britain

Tasteful stuff isn’t it? Jan ‘n’ Helen truly have us on the threshold of a whole new era of exciting partnership working here don’t they?

But what you really have to ask is what checks are Bristol City Council, its Cabinet and its ridiculously mis-named Scrutiny Commissions carrying out before handing over £50k of our cash to an organisation?

Certainly doesn’t seem to involve bothering to look at their website does it?

Posted in Bristol, Conspiracy theories, Local government, Middle East, Politics, Race, The British Left, The Trots | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | There are 39 comments

MOTION OF NO CONFIDENCE – Full Council Meeting, 10th Feb 2009

Posted on February 10, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

By Martin Whitelock

The inevitable happened:

– LibDems will wait until the June election in the likelihood of being voted in by the electorate as they are now the majority party in Bristol.

– Conservatives got severely reprimanded by LibDem and Labour for initiating the motion of no confidence so close to the June election, as an unnecessary use of council time and public money (as reflected in the four public statements). But, who can blame them?

– Conservatives attack Labour for their primary school closures, and try to force Libdems to take control of the administration ahead of the forthcoming elections.

– Helen Holland defended her position as leader with a rise in educational performance (but let’s not forget the measures keep changing), increased partnership working and administrative openness (including access to information).

– Charlie Bolton (Green Party) supported the motion of no confidence mainly on the basis of his objection to the privatisation of health care.

– the debate centred on policy differences between the three main parties (though it’s increasingly looking like two – Lab and LibDem) when I was expecting a discussion on any evidence for the basis for ‘no confidence’ or any substantive failings in the delivery of services. However, some fun was had by two councillors (Con-Peter Abraham and Lab-Peter Hammond) who had a lengthy disagreement about whether a senior officer visited Stockwood school about its closure.

A thought occurred to me. If Bristol is truly a green city, how come it only has ONE green councillor?

Posted in Bristol, Conservatives, Education, Elections, Green Capital, Green Party, Home Care, Labour Party, Lib Dems, Local government, Politics | | There are 45 comments

Mimosa meltdown?

Posted on February 6, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

The Mimosa Healthcare Group who run Kingsmead Lodge Nursing Home have now twice been invited by the Evening Cancer to comment on the major allegations of abuse going on in their home.

Here’s the organisation’s formal responses so far:

Mimosa Healthcare, which runs Kingsmead Lodge, has declined to comment while a police and CSCI investigation is being carried out.
Bristol Evening Post, Friday 30 January 2009

The Bristol Post contacted Mimosa Healthcare director Barbara Cotman by telephone and e-mail and took a copy of the detailed allegations to Kingsmead Lodge yesterday to give her a chance to respond but she declined to do so.
Bristol Evening Post, Thursday 5 February 2009

Looks like they’re staying pretty tight-lipped doesn’t it?

It’s a pity then that Mimosa’s PR team didn’t bother to mention this to their Operations Manager Mark Butler, who I think we can safely describe as completely and utterly barking mad and a major liability to Mimosa, its clients and their business partner Bristol City Council, whose social services department are probably having a collective nervous breakdown right now as you read this.

For Mark has taken it upon himself to fire off a highly original and entertaining – if somewhat irregular – letter to a relative of one his beleagured home’s residents – Steve Norman – which provides a fascinating insight into the investigation he should be conducting and tells us all we need to know about how Mimosa are really treating these issues.

From the general tone and content of his letter, you’re really left to wonder whether this man should be responsible for vulnerable adults or should be locked in a secure institution for them.

Butler’s letter can be read in its entirety by clicking the image above and here. But let’s take a look at a few passages in detail.

In fairness to Butler, it all starts rather well, “The relationship that our staff have with families is built on trust and openess,” he gushes in his opening para.

But what’s this in paragraph two?

“We have had numerous complaints from our female staff about your intimidation and aggression towards them and a number of them have raised complaints about your bullying behaviour.”

What an extraordinary coincidence this is. Less than two weeks after receiving a number of detailed allegations from five former staff (make that six – another one’s been to the police this week. Ed) and from a number of relatives of residents at the home and just days after the home was plastered all over the front page of the Evening Cancer, Mark’s uncovered evidence that one of the most voiciferous complainants is – would you believe? – a bully and a sex pest.

Now the cynics among us might find the timing of Butler’s claim troubling. Particularly if you consider that Norman has visited his parents regularly in the home for over two years now without incident or complaint.

But lo and behold – after he turns up on the front page of the Cancer making serious allegations against Butler’s business – he’s suddenly a notorious bully, a danger to women and the subject of numerous complaints. You couldn’t make it up really could you? … Although Butler obviously has.

By para three of the letter Butler’s really in to his stride. “You … have been instrumental in leading a campaign involving certain aggrieved ex-members of staff against the home and its staff, culminating in the article in the Bristol Evening Post,” he rages.

Blimey. Let’s unpack this one a bit. ‘Certain aggrieved ex-members of staff’ say Mimosa. A campaign is it? Really? And how do they know that this is simply a case of ‘aggrieved ex-members of staff’ making trouble for them?

Mimosa received five different sets of extremely complex and detailed allegations from these five ex-staff less than two weeks ago. Allegations that Mimosa seem desperate to keep out of the public domain and are too terrified to comment to the press on. Another former staff member even came forward to the police this week.

So are we to believe that Butler has launched and concluded a hugely detailed and comprehensive investigation into these complaints all on his own in 2 weeks and is thus able to conclude, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there’s no case to answer and it’s all just a lot of hot air and lies from Mr Norman?

Why haven’t Mimosa told the press this then?

And can we also conclude that Mimosa have already fully investigated the new allegations given to the police this week that they haven’t even heard yet? Is Butler clairvoyant too?

It begins to look like Mimosa’s real response to these allegations has been to pack Butler off to Kingsmead Lodge to run a crude smear campaign against Mr Norman, their former employees and any other people making complaints against them while not bothering to investigate any of the allegations in the slightest.

Which makes you wonder what Bristol City Council make of all this. They’re the people ultimately responsible for the residents in Mimosa’s homes and they’ve been desperately assuring people for a week now that a serious investigation is proceeding.

Last Friday they told the Cancer, “The city council is committed to a full and thorough review of the claims made and the investigation with our partner agencies is ongoing.”

And this Wednesday they said, “We do take the welfare of the people placed by the council in accommodation very seriously and we do have robust strategies in place to protect residents.”

And now we find – from the horse’s mouth – that what their partner agency have actually been doing for the last week is not investigating the claims with any seriousness at all.

Instead they’re busy inventing tall stories and appear to be about to start some crappy little smear campaign against Mr Norman while claiming that the whole thing is down to a few ‘aggrieved ex-staff members’.

Is this what Bristol City Council call a robust strategy for protecting people? Crude smears and cover-ups devised by a retard?

Not that social services are in the best position to criticise anything or anyone very much. By the end of para 3 of Butler’s inane rant he says, “I understand also from Social Service colleagues that you are organising a protest outside the home at some point.”

Whoops! You shouldn’t have written that down Mr Butler. That information was contained in a private Email sent to Liz Sutton in Adult Community Care, Bristol City Council by a whistle blower and complainant.

This is confidential information that Bristol City Council, as the formal investigating body in to the allegations, should not be sharing with Mimosa without permission. What other information from whistle blowers have they been casually handing over to nutjob Butler and Mimosa?

I suppose at least we now know – as idiot Butler has spelt it out in writing for us – that Bristol Social Services won’t be respecting basic client confidentiality issues during this case.

Ms Sutton, meanwhile, a social services manager who doesn’t apparently respect client confidentiality might as well clear her desk now …

By para four of the letter you can almost see Butler’s eyes glazing over, the three mile stare and the saliva dripping on to the keyboard. He’s now screaming “VENDETTA”!!! for chrissakes.

Of course it’s a vendetta Mark. What other possible reason could there be for a major police investigation in to your home and a series of damaging stories in the local press?

Get a grip man. Calm yourself down. How about treating yourself to a good meal? Perhaps your staff could put some sedatives in it for you too? Please can they? For all our sakes.

Butler’s final flourish is particularly intriguing. He laughably demands an apology then darkly concludes the correspondence threatening that he “reserves the right to seek other redress”.

Ooh, er missus! Can’t wait for this. What do you have in mind then Mark?

On current form, stripping naked, putting a paper bag over your head and running through the streets of Bristol waving your dick around while screaming “look this is Steve Norman” isn’t out of the question is it?

Could I suggest that it might be time Mr Butler took some gardening leave?

Toodle pip!

Posted in Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Local government, Politics, Privatisation, Social Care | Tagged , , | There are 13 comments

Kingsmead Lodge: the allegations begin …

Posted on February 4, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

Bit of a hoo-ha down at the Counts Louse this afternoon, I’m told, over this public forum statement to the Health Scrutiny Commission about the Kingsmead Lodge Nursing Home abuse scandal (Blogger passim).

It seems that our dearest of dear old friends City Solicitor Stephen McNamara decided – at the very last minute of course – that this statement should be heavily edited because “there is a police investigation”.

This change of plan was was announced to the public forum speaker – another old friend, rumbustious Day Care campaigner of yesteryear, Steve Norman – by McNamara’s chief lackey Louise Martin just minutes before the meeting was due to begin

Alas, poor Louise, not the brightest of sparks and apparently not too up on this new fangled Human Rights stuff, was immediately lost for words when she was told by Norman he had every right to say whatever he liked and this was enshrined in article 10 of the Human Rights Act, a copy of which was conveniently located on the meeting room wall! (Presumably it’s for decorative purposes only?)

Louise could only respond with the line “there is a police investigation”.

So fucking what? When did a police investigation stop you speaking at a council meeting? Surely Mr McNamara isn’t once again inventing non-existent legal tosh to cover the arses of his devastatingly useless social services colleagues and keep inconvenient facts from councillors and the public is he?

But we digress. Norman, the only forum speaker on the day, predictably stood up and started to read this brilliantly constructed and rather eloquent statement (do you have an interest to declare? Ed.) in its entirety anyway.

At which point: enter stage right four of McNamara’s burly security boys to physically remove Norman from the city’s haven of free speech …

Anyway, here’s what Norman said before he was removed from the meeting for no reason, other than that some sleazy private health care provider raking in money from Bristol council taxpayers don’t want you to hear it and the council’s happy to play along:

Kingsmead Lodge Nursing Home Abuse/Neglect

Members probably read in Friday’s Evening Post that the police, the CSCI and your own social services are investigating allegations of abuse at Kingsmead Lodge Nursing Home.

This home, run for profit by Nottingham based private healthcare providers, Mimosa, is where Bristol City Council Social Services chooses to place some of the city’s most vulnerable elderly people.

Now five former staff from the home have come forward and made sworn statements regarding what’s been going on at this home. The allegations include:

Abuse of residents
A culture of bullying and harassment
A lack of support to staff from management
Abuses of Health & Safety guidelines
Basic healthcare policy and practice ignored
Inadequate reporting procedures
A lack of equipment
And “a regime run by bullying and fear where you would suffer repercussions if you spoke out or reported any incidents.”

I do not have time to read the statements in their entirety but I urge members to take the time to do so. They are included in this statement.

Allegations you’ll find in the statements include:

“I witnessed a 70 yr old resident thrown against a wall”;

“I have witnessed the removal of residents buzzers at night”;

“I have seen the contents of sedative capsules mixed into food”;

” I was told to hoist residents on my own”;

“Staff were working twelve hour shifts sometimes with no break”.

You will also find horrifying incidents such as this:

“A resident was found in bed with a cup of tea which had been spilt. The resident was obviously scolded

The RGN on duty was more concerned with what her family were going to say than carrying out emergency first aid to cool the scold.

So it was approximately one and a half hours – and after myself and another care assistant keeping on at her – that she carried out first aid.

Eventually cold compresses were applied and a Doctor called.

I was also asked to take responsibility for this incident by the RGN.

Alas, that’s as far as Norman got before security moved in. However, he has confirmed he will be back at more meetings with more allegations as will relatives of former residents of the home and former staff.

So it rather looks like our PR-savvy council have decided the best way to deal with this hugely serious affair is to spend the next couple of months creating some kind of demented circus of speeches and physical evictions from the Counts Louse in order to preserve a non-existent right of privacy to one of their shoddy private healthcare providers.

Wouldn’t it be a little more dignified if the council allowed the allegations to be aired and then calmly did their job of properly investigating them?

What do they have to hide?

COMING SOON: Worker blew the whistle two years ago but nothing was done … Police have evidence from investigation into Kingsmead in the autumn but refuse to press charges … Has Mimosa Healthcare’s Nottingam-based Operations Manager, Mark Butler, now holed up in Kingsmead Lodge, gone completely mad? And much more …

Posted in Bristol, Health, Local government, Politics, Privatisation, Social Care | Tagged , , , | There are 7 comments

Public money: private abuse

Posted on February 3, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

You may have read in the Evening Cancer on Friday that police are investigating allegations of abuse at Kingsmead Lodge Nursing Home in Shire.

This private residential care home, specialising in dementia, is run by a Nottingham-based company, Mimosa Healthcare Group, who sell their product with the motto “Where people Matter”.

In recent years – since, in fact, our councillors unaminously voted in 2005 to farm out all of our care of the elderly to businesses in order to pay off a multi-million pound overspend run up by incompetent social service senior managers – places like Kingsmead Lodge have been used extensively by Bristol City Council Social Services.

Now five former staff from the home have come forward and made sworn statements about what’s been going on in this home.

The allegations, which the Cancer’s been a little reticent to spell out so far describe “a regime run by bullying and fear where you would suffer repercussions if you spoke out or reported any incidents.”

And there’s a lot more than this, which The Blogger will be posting later in the week.

Mimosa declined to comment to the Cancer but they’ve certainly been busy since the story broke on Friday.

Yesterday saw Mimosa begin their fightback with the usual soppy PR moves. A new management team seems to have miraculously appeared at the home and a private meeting for relatives of residents in the home was held.

This meeting predictably excluded the family of the complainant and the press. Instead they were left to freeze outside the home and threatened with arrest while Mimosa’s top brass were left unchallenged to imply that all five former members of staff must be lying.

If you’re interested in this story, keep an eye on the public forum at the council’s
Health Scrutiny Commission tomorrow at the Council House.

Posted in Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Health, Local government, Policing, Politics, Social Care | Tagged , | There are 8 comments

"Rachmanists with an equalities policy"

Posted on January 31, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

Tenants across Bristol of so-called “social” landlord Places for People are no doubt delighted to be receiving news of their increased service charges this week.

With the RPI standing at 0.9% and falling and the headline inflation rate at 3.1% and crashing towards zero for April, the greedy bastards have decided to raise charges by up to 30%!

That’s right. Some of the the city’s poorest people are being hit – by a charity that claims to “conduct our business in a socially responsible and economically sustainable way” – with charge increases at over ten times the rate of inflation at the start of the most brutal economic downturn since the 30s.

Places for People, of course, are the Housing association that pay their Chief Executive, David Cowans, a whopping £257,000 a year plus extraordinary pension benefits. Will Cowans be taking a pay cut to reflect the tough times and perhaps help reduce the financial impact on his tenants?

No reports yet of Britain’s sleaziest landlord removing his snout from the trough…

Posted in Economy, Housing, Politics | Tagged , | There are 96 comments

Jew watch

Posted on January 30, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

It was only a matter of time …

Forget ZIONISTS! That’s so last week. The first story has now appeared on Bristol Indymedia the sole point of which seems to be to identify that someone is up to no good on the basis that they are Jewish. Avoiding any obvious Jewish stereotypes, the story’s ingeniously called ‘The plot thickens’. Here’s the relevant bit:

Lloyds TSB Chairman, Sir Victor Blank, is a governor of Tel Aviv University, Chair of Union of Jewish Students/Hillel, a member of the Advisory Board of the United Jewish Israel Appeal and is involved in Labour Friends of Israel. UJS/Hillel assists members of the pro-Israel Union of Jewish Students, a group that works to silence pro-Palestinian voices on British campuses … Blank [is] believed to have influenced the move against Interpal. Hitting charities that help Palestinians only serves to support Israel by shutting off the trickle of aid that organisations like Interpal manage to get into Gaza and the Occupied Territories over years of Israel’s brutal siege.

So the story is that a man involved with some random organisations “is believed” (by whom?) to have influenced something or other somehow. And the compelling evidence for all this? Er, he’s Jewish!

Posted in Activism, Bristol, Bristol Indymedia, Journalism, Media, Politics | Tagged , , | There are 6 comments

What rough beast?

Posted on January 25, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

Our dear old friend, Bristol’s high-profile Muslim spokesman and ‘community leader’ Farooq Siddique, has popped up in the comments to explain why the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto have nothing to do with The Holocaust. It’s semantics:

The term holocaust originally derived from the Greek word holókauston, meaning a “completely (holos) burnt (kaustos)” sacrificial offering to a god. It is in this context that said i was NOT referring to the Holocaust i.e the gas chambers

This an odd subject for semantic hair-splitting, particularly from a chaplain of a Russell Group University and from someone who apparently doesn’t know the difference between a proper noun and a common noun.

The other obvious observation here is that this is 21st Century Britain and we don’t speak ancient Greek but contemporary international English. So while Mr Siddique’s etymological ramblings might be of some vague academic interest do they bear any relation to reality?

No. Neither in popular usage nor in more serious academic and historical circles would you ordinarily find Mr Siddique’s peculiar and particular definition of The Holocaust. It does not – and never has done – solely refer to people who died in gas chambers as Mr Siddique claims.

While the gas chambers are a haunting and memorable symbol of the crime. They are not its entirety.

No, The Holocaust is a shorthand term for a long process of systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution on the basis of race by the Nazi Party that culminated in the horror of ‘the final solution of the Jewish question’ and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

On a brutally practical level is Mr Siddique saying that the hundreds of thousands of Nazi victims shot dead and buried in open graves in Eastern Europe are not victims of The Holocaust because they didn’t die in gas chambers? How about those that were worked to death in labour camps? Or starved to death in concentration camps? What of those randomly shot in the back of the head? Beaten to death? Used for medical experimentation? Tortured to death? Do they not count any more?

Then what of these 100,000 that perished in the Warsaw ghetto at the hands of the Nazis? Does anyone – apart from Mr Siddique – say that these people were not victims of The Holocaust? Why would anyone claim this?

I’ll leave it to you to try and figure out why a self-appointed Muslim ‘community leader’ with Islamist leanings and a penchant for 9/11 conspiracy theories might want to start to revise the history and meaning of The Holocaust but perhaps it’s salutary to see what some of Siddique’s close compatriots are thinking.

This is an op/ed piece from the Gulf News in early January. It’s an English language newspaper of record in the Gulf region, not a fringe publication:

Today, the whole world stands as a witness to the fact that the Nazi holocaust was a mere lie, which was devised by the Zionists to blackmail humanity. The same Zionist entity swindled the world out of billions of dollars over the years to compensate the wrong and unjust which they claim to have been inflicted on their people.

This, meanwhile, is from an open letter to US President Barack Obama “penned by a galaxy of Muslim scholars thinkers, political activists and academics”, of whom the best known in the UK is probably Yusuf al-Qaradawi who was welcomed to London as “a progressive” by then Mayor Ken Livingstone.

Here’s some excerpts of those progressive views:

Do not expect normal relations with the Arabs and Muslims and those who espouse truth and justice in favor of the peoples of the world unless the injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian nation and primarily supported by the United States is lifted

We deeply realize that every sane person believes deep inside that no other nation in history has suffered injustice like the one inflicted upon the Palestinian people.

This unlimited support of Israel results in the violation of all international laws and moral values

We would like to remind you of the point of view reached at by many of the distinguished academic scholars in America and Europe that assures that the events of the 11th of September 2001 were nothing but fabricated drama by some influential forces in America in coordination with Israeli Mossad

There is clearly a movement out there trying to turn the national and political conflict in Palestine into a racial and religious one. Regardless of which side you support, this turn should be confronted and resisted for reasons that lie for all to see in the cesspool of European 20th Century history.

Posted in Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Conspiracy theories, Middle East, Politics, Race, The British Left, The Trots | Tagged , , , , , | There are 138 comments

Is the council about to dump our recycling abroad?

Posted on January 24, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

Fascinating comment in the minutes of the city council’s Resources Scrutiny Commission of 15 January.

Councillors querying officers about what would happen to household recycling waste that could not be sold, as seems increasingly likely, were told:

recycled material that could not be economically sold could be sent elsewhere as the contractors SITA had a number of world wide contacts, however, costs associated with this remained with the City Council;

So having paid extra money to recycle our waste, we’re now going to have to pay even more so that SITA can ship the whole lot out to some obscure developing world tinpot dictatorship to dump in the ground. Welcome to the Green Capital!

If, as seems to be the case, a pile of festering, worthless crap is indeed worthless, can’t we just save a load of money and face reality by putting our ‘recycling’ in the bin and dumping it in our own hole in the ground? Or is that not green?


Posted in Bristol, Environment, Green Capital, Local government, Politics, Recycling | Tagged , | There are 29 comments

New cure for Cancer

Posted on January 22, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

What you won’t be reading in tomorrow’s Cancer …

News drifts in from the Lubianka that another round of cuts will start being implemented at the troubled media empire tomorrow.

With advertising revenues crashing and circulation in freefall already at the Cancer under the unsteady editorial guidance of Northcliffe hatchet man, Mike Norton, it now appears that it’s time for the credit crunch to take its toll as well.

It’s tipped that the already chronically understaffed editorial and news staff will be hardest hit with a lot of journalists being forced on to the city’s lengthening dole queues. While the inevitable merger of the Cancer and sister paper, the Western Daily Press, must be even more inevitable now.

Still, it might prove good news for us bloggers. With Norton unable to pay for proper journalism any more, watch out for a lot more unpaid voluntary writing and commentary in the paper courtesy of Norton’s ‘community’ contacts.

This can only means more comedy columnists can’t it? That’s more loonies ranting about the Holocaust and more public school twits inventing self-serving transport statistics. Bring it on Mike!

Posted in Blogging, Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Economy, Journalism, Media | Tagged , | There are 11 comments