Palestwhine #2: "Israel's shops"?

Posted on January 12, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

I see George Galloway’s call to anti-Israel protestors to “shut down Israel’s shops”* on Saturday didn’t just result in the entirely British-owned Marks & Spencer being targeted by activists.

In London, during the protest, it seems that that well-known Israeli shop Starbucks was attacked.

The Chief Executive and Chairman of Starbucks is a US citizen, Howard Schultz, who just happens to be Jewish.

I wonder how long before someone will decide the corollary to Mr Galloway’s “Israeli shops” is “Israeli people” or British people as some us like to call them. Some people would say this is already happening.

* Galloway has subsequently got a lackey to mount a somewhat baroque defence of his words, perhaps with an eye on the DPP and incitement laws:

“The piece on page nine of the print edition of today’s Observer, and online, reporting yesterday’s pro-Palestinian demonstration in London unfortunately includes a damaging misreport of comments made by George Galloway MP.

“The par reads: ‘In one of several speeches delivered in Kensington Gardens, George Galloway, leftwing MP for the Respect party, called on protesters to go to shopping centres and “shut down Israel’s shops” in what was believed to be a reference to retailers, including Marks & Spencer, which have come under fire for selling Israeli-sourced goods.’

“1) The quote attributed is wrong. Mr Galloway spoke of “Israel shops”. The language is precise. There are in the two shopping malls he mentioned mobile retailers called “Israel Shops”, which are staffed by Israelis and promote Israeli/West Bank goods – Dead Sea skin products etc. Mr Galloway was being extremely careful to focus his comments precisely.

“2) Not only did Mr Galloway not intend to refer generally to retailers, he is on film the night before speaking in the London Muslim Centre explicitly and categorically stating that Marks & Spencer should NOT be boycotted, explaining that it is a public company owned by shareholders like any other and has nothing to do with Israel.

“This is a very sensitive area, where innuendo and mishearing can have dangerous consequences. (It is highly regrettable that the reporters seek to explicate what they think Mr Galloway meant by passively referring to what unnamed people might believe, in fact groundlessly given the misquote.)

“We are insisting on an immediate online correction to the story and a suitably prominent correction in the next edition of the Observer. In our view, this piece can be easily read to impute motives and beliefs to Mr Galloway which, if they were true, would be considered reprehensible by the right thinking public. They are not true.”

So Galloway was simply referring to a couple of stalls in local shopping centres? You can believe it or not. Judge for yourself at about 2.45:

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iSbmvnB5mdw]

Posted in Middle East, Politics, The British Left, The Trots | Tagged , | There are 25 comments

Palestwhine #1: not just protest, M&S protest

Posted on January 11, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

Some activists in Bristol – appalled by Israeli actions in Gaza and possibly spurred on by oaf Galloway urging protesters to “shut down Israel’s shops” – yesterday took their protest to Jewish-owned retailer Marks & Spencer in Broadmead, writes Bristol Indymedia.

The protesters argue M&S “support illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land” and “they support the ultra-right wing Israeli government”, albeit only through trade.

Now considering the unsavoury history of antisemitism in Europe and its early expression through the targeting of Jewish businesses, all in the quite recent past, you have to wonder if this is not an unwise and potentially counter-productive tactic by the protesters.

Especially as any effect they have will not be on the Israeli government as they say or on “Israel’s’ shops”, whatever that rather vague term means, but on a British Company famously in Jewish ownership.

These protesters are headed down a dangerous path. While they’re unlikely to be anti-semitic themselves and would be devastated by such an accusation, they need to consider the context they’re operating in quite carefully.

Hamas, the Palestinian group they romantically describe as a “resistance movement” and support are openly antisemitic and many of their fellow travelers in the pro-Palestinian camp in the UK, such as Islamist groups and the oddities of 9/11 truth movement, are antisemitic too.

In this context, is taking your protest to Jewish-run businesses in British ownership really that wise?

Posted in Activism, Bristol, Bristol Indymedia, Broadmead, Middle East, Politics, The British Left, The Trots | Tagged , , , , | There are 36 comments

Carole Caplan gets angry as Heather Tomlinson exit is confirmed … by Heather Tomlinson!

Posted on January 11, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

By Our Correspondent

If last week you heard what sounded like the distant rumble of thunder then it was probably actually the sound of Carole Caplan storming around his Council House PR hidey-hole having had his plan to hold ‘the Council cannot confirm Heather Tomlinson’s forthcoming exit …’ line blown out of the water.

Having had this line faithfully trotted out for a week or two since the story was leaked to the Evening Post by a councillor, it seems another journalist from an esteemed local organ called the city council several times last week seeking comment.

Carole’s brilliant plan to hold the ‘nothing can be confirmed or denied’ line was shattered when the journalist told Carole’s crew that in fact they had (and had had for some considerable time) a copy of the resignation round robin email that Heather herself had circulated to all education department staff and 160 odd schools a few days after the story had broken! Doh.

Cue grumpy Carole’s (albeit high pitched) ape-like mid-afternoon noises …

Posted in Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Education, Local government, Politics | Tagged , | There are 4 comments

New for the New Year … Meet The Spongers!

Posted on January 10, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

The Spongers will be a new and irregular feature on The Bristol Blogger for 2009.

(Cartoon by Evelyn Post. Evelyn Post is The Bristol Blogger’s resident cartoonist. He has a woman’s name)

Posted in Bristol, Evelyn Post, Local government, Middle class wankers, Politics, Privatisation | Tagged , , | There are 2 comments

City Council budget balls: go figure

Posted on January 9, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

The ruling Labour group has unveiled what it calls a prudent budget for hard times … but Council leader Helen Holland says there will be no cuts in frontline services

Bristol Evening Post, 9 December 2009

That makes things pretty clear then.

So what’s this on the Unite union’s Bristol Caretaking blog, that supports the boys who are responsible for looking after over 7,700 council tenants’ and leaseholders’ homes?

Bristol City Council management have submitted there final HR proposals for Caretaking Services… You can find them here (Click on caretaking halfway down the page).

What does this proposal mean:

Nearly All caretakers face a cut in pay and benefits.

These cuts range from approx 2.54% – 33.52% (£7,433). See appendix D of the report.

In fact these figures will be larger as the value of current benefits to residential staff is disputed. Management state the average difference between the figures they use and the real value is approx £800pa. This will be an immediate loss to affected workers that will not be recognised or protected.

No pay rise for three years.

This means roughly 50% of staff will not have had a pay rise for 6 years!!!

No residential caretakers in 2 areas, but in the other 11 areas there would be between 2 and 4.

The final decision will NOT be made by councillors, but by the head of paid service. (Is this the cabinet bottling out?)

Demoralised and unmotivated staff.

More chiefs and less Indians .

Caretakers and their families becoming further in debt and forced into bankruptcy.

Perhaps Helen could explain the subtle difference between her deliberate targeting and shafting of her lowest paid staff, the withdrawal of many of the services they provide and what she would consider to be an actual cut to a frontline services?

The women’s a bare faced liar. Let me repeat that again for the benefit of her lawyers. Helen Holland is a liar.

Worse, while this so-called Labour leader is pissing on the poor by cutting their wages and impoverishing them during a recession, she’s personally arranging a £400k slush fund so her new executive officer friends on six-figure salaries can have a conference and travel-abroad budget under the guise of ‘international marketing’ for the city.

After all, the executives who will benefit from Helen’s largesse, dumpy frump Bum Disease Ormondroyd and her sidekick – that copper from Sheffield who doesn’t know where Easton is – really deserve a £400k pot of money to play marketing with don’t they?

They’ve worked in Bristol for all of six months now, trousered the best part of £200k of our council tax between them and have managed to produce a new staff chart, dishing out new job titles and more money to the same old has-beens who have neither the intellectual capacity nor the training to do their jobs whatever they’re called. What productivity.

Helen, you’re fucking clueless. This is the biggest economic crisis of most our lives and your response is to cut the wages of the low-paid while aimlessly wittering on about marketing and inventing pointless job titles for pointless executives. Get a fucking grip or do us all a favour and resign now and take all your absurd sponging executives with you please.

Meanwhile, today’s Cancer carries a report from Lord Sainsbury’s Centre for Cities think-tank claiming the city could lose 20,000 jobs over the next three years depending on the severity of the recession.

The wonks also say, “The City Council’s response to the recession has been hesitant” and they require a “better understanding” of local economic conditions.

This of course has been refuted by the city council’s fantasist-in-chief, PR girl Carole Caplan.

Despite being demonstrably unable to accurately count the number of pavements on a small bridge, he blusters, “Whilst some of the data and information in this report is helpful and welcome, the claim that the city council has made a ‘hesitant’ response to the recession is totally unjustified and inaccurate – and not backed up by any kind of legitimate research.”

Unlike, presumably, the legitimate research that’s gone into the council’s brilliant recession-beating grand plan to spend £400k on hotels, flights and fine living for senior council executives to market the city abroad?

Caplan also conveniently forgets the comments (pdf) of his own finance chief, Carew Reynell, who openly admitted in December that he hasn’t bothered to do any work to “mitigate the impact of the recession.”

Calling the council’s attitude a “hesitant response” is generous. Those of us without the benefit of an expensive education and a well-paid job in a thinktank would just call it totally fucking useless.

Posted in Blogging, Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Budget, Economy, Labour Party, Local government, Politics, Trade Unionism | Tagged , , , , , | There are 17 comments

Kate Pollard

Posted on January 8, 2009 by The Bristol Blogger

Sad news arrives that Totterdown community activist/whirlwind Kate Pollard died in hospital in Sydney on January 2nd after a long fight against cancer. Kate died with her family in Australia, which is where she wanted to be.

Kate will be well known to many people in Totterdown – where she made her home – as well as in many other communities across Bristol. Through a long community work career Kate battled daily against injustice alongside other ordinary Bristolians making those small differences that we often take for granted but that really matter.

In Totterdown, Kate’s kindness, common sense, empathy and organisational skills allied to an extraordinary ability to persuade and cajole the people around her to stop watching the telly and actually do something will be sorely missed.

Even up until Christmas, despite a debilitating illness and all the way from Australia, Kate was still contacting Totterdown residents, using those persuasive skills to make sure the things that neeeded doing were going to be done.

Towards the end of 2006 Kate published her book, Totterdown Rising. The full title of the book is revealing : Totterdown Rising: The Story of a Community Enduring and Surviving a Planning Disaster.

It was typically Kate that a book about a community that was deliberately split in half and decimated to make way for a road that was never built, was not about a community beaten into submission by a hopeless council’s misguided obsession with the motor car but a story of how people rebuilt their community and reinvented that special Spirit of Totterdown right there in the face of uncaring and misguided government.

Kate was no victim; she stood on her own two feet. And she understood that people and communities had to stand on their own two feet too. You should never just be the passive and convenient victims of the grand schemes of those in power. Communities and their people, regardless of circumstance, can always rise again and fight for another, better day.

In a time when every two-bit political careerist and calculating bureaucrat perfectly understands the financial value and political utility of ‘the community’ to their own plans and their business partners’ profits, Kate understood and could communicate the real value of our communities here in Bristol – they’re our places to live, work, love, learn, laugh, cry, organise, manage, fight, win, endure, survive and sadly, die.

Friends of Kate in Totterdown will be organising a bash in a few months time with music and dancing and revelry to celebrate Kate’s life. If you knew Kate and want to be involved, email the Blogger and your details will be passed on.

Posted in Activism, Bristol, Bristol South, Local government, Politics, Totterdown, Transport | Tagged , , | There are 10 comments

News from ze Heatherbunker: ze final direktive

Posted on December 31, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

(Cartoon by Evelyn Post. Evelyn Post is The Bristol Blogger’s resident cartoonist. He has a woman’s name)

HAPPY NEW YEAR – we’re off to a good start anyway …

Posted in Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Education, Evelyn Post, Local government, Politics | Tagged | There are 4 comments

BRT: York notes

Posted on December 20, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

Private Eye’s ‘Dr B Ching’ has been taking a look at First Group’s ftr (which stands for “future” public transport!) bendy buses that have been operating in York since 2006.

The system is very similar to the bendy bus BRT scheme proposed for Bristol, and we learn that First Group boss, the maybe/maybe not Labour donor, Moir Lockhead insisted in 2005 that, “ftr is the perfect solution for local authorities in the battle against congestion.”

Alas, now York City Council reveals that there’s been a 1.9% drop in bus use between 2006-07 and 2007-08 – in the time, in fact, since “the perfect solution” got underway.

Satisfaction rates among the public have fallen too. In 2003-04 71% were satisfied with their bus service in York. Today that figure is just 68% while there’s also been huge amounts of complaints about ticketing and delays.

Fans of open government will no doubt be interested to learn too that the architects of this cut-price public transport tripe – First Group boss Lockhead and, then, Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling – met to specifically discuss ftr in October 2005.

But alas we shall never know what was said as department of Transport officials say “no notes were produced” of this meeting.

Nice to see such transparency and openess between big business and government around our future transport needs isn’t it?

Posted in Bristol, Labour Party, Local government, Politics, Transport | Tagged , , , , , | There are 72 comments

City council budget balls (3)

Posted on December 18, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

Well, well, well. What’s this in yesterday’s letter to Chancellor Darling from the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, explaining why this month’s inflation figure of 4.1% is above the government’s target rate of 2%?

It is likely that overall CPI inflation will return to target in the first half of 2009 and then move materially below it later in the year. It is possible that I will not need to write a further open letter to you in three months time. Indeed, given the short term outlook for inflation, it is quite possible that I will next need to write to you to explain why inflation has deviated by more than one percentage point below the target during 2009.

So the Bank of England says it’s likely that inflation will be 2% by March and may fall to 1% later in the year.

Why then – as The Blogger’s already been asking – is Labour boss Helen Holland proposing a council tax rise of 3.5% supposedly in line with inflation next March? Does she know something Mervyn doesn’t?

Unlikely. Although she has got the audacity to claim: “[this budget] is helping people who are going through hard times themselves by keeping the council tax increase down.”

Yes. Helen’s’s keeping it down by putting it up!

Elsewhere, through the Council House looking glass, the sheer negligence of Holland’s shitty little management regime is perfectly illustrated by an unattributed briefing to the BBC claiming that the council “is facing pressures no one predicted”.

Er, hello? Why over the last 18 months has no one at the council bothered to figure out what might be happening to our faltering economy?

Don’t we pay finance boss, Carew Reynell, a handsome six-figure salary to do this kind of thing? And don’t we pay a Chief Executive even more? In fact isn’t there supposed to be £1million a year’s worth of top management talent running the show?

And what do we get for that?An anonymous briefing claiming they can’t be expected to predict the fucking obvious.

Well, here’s a few predictions for the gormless ones:

With unemployment, nationally, heading for 2 million by Christmas and redundancies now announced at South Bristol’s largest employer, Computershare, it’s pretty bloody clear what’s going to happen next year.

Large scale unemployment; large scale bankruptcies; large scale house repossessions. Council tax revenues will fall; all other council revenue streams will fall. Benefit, social service and housing costs to rise dramatically and that’s before we even begin to look at supporting bankrupted families to stay in their own homes.

This means we need action from the council. Not fucking marketing strategies. And it’s all actually very simple.

So simple there’s no real political argument between left and right about this, although there might be an argument between out-of-touch loonies at the Council House on six-figure salaries and everybody else with a functioning brain.

The fact is the city’s budget has to balance while tax rises are completely out of the question as they will only add to peoples’ misery while defying all macro-economic sense.

That means cuts. And deep ones. The Blogger expects something in the region of 5-10% across the board (in line with every other business in the country) with contingencies for more as reality takes hold next year.

And these cuts need to be designed, agreed and implemented now. Not randomly imposed willy-nilly in the middle of next year in the midst of a social, political and financial crisis “no one predicted”.

The choices are simple too. We can continue to maintain a luxury class of arts, cycling, equalities, sustainability, regeneration, walking, healthy eating and public relations officers at £30k, £40k, £50k, £60k a year, all of them blatantly and uselessly using up valuable public money directly at the expense of the unemployed, the old, the young and any other vulnerable person in this city likely to really suffer next year as the country’s, the city’s and the council’s finances fall apart. Or not.

We could be planning to do something about this right now. Why is this so difficult for the Labour Party – of all people – to see?

Posted in Bristol, Budget, Economy, Labour Party, Local government, Politics | Tagged , , , | There are 21 comments

Bad losers of the year award

Posted on December 16, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

Take a bow Bristol City Council as more evidence of decrepit leadership and the collapse of moral authority at the Council House is revealed.

Another example of Bristol City Council blatantly bending and abusing the law and legal process to help their business friends arrives in the inbox. And once again it’s all about the council helping local developers make money at the expense of our green spaces.

The recent very costly five day public inquiry into ‘Town Green’ status for Castle Park brought by campaigners trying to prevent the city council’s developer friends Deeley Freed from building the typical office/retail/luxury flat mixed-use crap on part of the much-loved park staggered to a most unusual close on Friday 5 December.

Bristol City Council were represented by Leslie Blohm QC from Bristol’s St John’s Chambers who, according to his own publicity, “‘takes the other side to pieces”.

Oh yeah? Not quite. For it seems that the city council and Blohm got wind of the fact that they were on the verge of a humiliating defeat to the campaigners – generously represented by employment lawyer Daniel Bennett working pro-bono.

But Blohm and the city council – arrogant to the last and not being ones to quietly resign themselves to the inevitable – came up with a most intriguing – if pricey – strategy to temporarily fend off defeat … Filibustering!

Yes indeed. On the final day of the hearing held at the Old Council House on Corn Street, it turns out that Blohm deliberately spent the whole day summing up his case.

For three two hour sessions the QC rambled inanely on to run down the clock and prevent the campaigners’ summing up and the inquiry officially ending.

Now the hearing is adjourned until January 7 when Mr Bennett for the campaigners should finally get his opportunity to sum up and stick it right up the city council and their idiotic QC.

The Blogger understands that the reason for the city council’s expensive delaying tactics may lie in a House of Lords appeal decision due shortly, which the council are hoping may contain some unlikely shred of a ruling in their favour.

Let’s hope so for their sake as the inquiry’s Chair, Vivian Chapman QC, is said to be less-than-impressed with the council and their brief’s poor conduct.

Posted in Bristol, Bristol West, Broadmead, Developments, Environment, Local government, Politics | Tagged , , , , | There are 6 comments