Jesus wept, now we've got mystery consultants and moonlighting PRs

Posted on March 10, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

Willard: Who’s in charge here?
Soldier: In charge? I don’t know man. I thought you were in charge…
Apocalpyse Now

If you’re looking for any hard news about the city these days – as opposed to articles about what the weather’s like or what local cancer charities are doing to raise money over the weekend – why not try page 53 of the Cancer?

Last Friday found our old friend, Merchant Venturer and unelected SWRDA board member John Savage, slipping a highly partisan article under the radar on the advantages of Bristol Airport expansion. It seems he’s even gone to the expense of forking out for his own economists to discredit Stop Bristol Airport Expansion’s economic research.

And today on page 53 we have something that appears suspiciously like a planted article about the Railway Path headlined ‘Green protest could cost us’ in which “an expert” who refuses to be named claims that “green protesters could lose Bristol millions in transport investment“.

Obviously no so-called “green protestor” is invited to reply to these claims and provide some balance to the article. Instead we get a comment from “West of England Partnership spokesman Simon Caplan”.

Caplan, by sheer coincidence, happens to run Bristol City Council’s communication department, despite Labour Councillor Faruk Choudhury recently assuring us that they – along with West of England Partnership – have nothing to do with the BRT proposal. The BRT plan says Choudhury “is only a consultant’s report prepared for the West of England Partnership.”

Not according to their new spokesman Caplan it’s not: “the West of England Partnership is committed to developing a network of state-of-the art rapid transit routes to deliver a step-change to public transport in the sub-region. The partnership is determined to secure government funding for the critical schemes that will form that network,” he says.

Not a mention of consultants there. So who is in charge of these BRT plans? Consultants? The West of England Partnership? Bristol City Council? The responsibility and accountability seems to be shifting on a daily basis now.

Posted in Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Environment, Local government, Merchant Venturers, SWRDA, WESP | Tagged , , , | There are 5 comments

Page 3 stunna!

Posted on March 10, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

I learn former Swansea punk legends Ray “Roughler” Jones and Ian Bone have been working in a top West London recording studio with cult film-maker/producer Greg Hall.

To coincide with the release of ‘The Bank Job’ – featuring all-round cockney geezer/gangster/actor John Bindon – they’ve put together an acapella version of the old Page 3 punk classic ‘John Bindon’.

The result is here:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmE_63JFb3U]

Posted in Bash the rich | Tagged , , , , , , , | There is 1 comment

They shoot horses don't they?

Posted on March 10, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

More bad news for Mark Bradshaw and Bristol’s beleaguered Labour Party administration as another one of their councillors publicly speaks out against the BRT scheme.

This time it’s St George East councillor Fabian Breckels who’s not only spoken out against the scheme:

None of my constituents want the bus route on the cycle path, I don’t think it’s the best place for the BRT so I’m coming out AGAINST putting buses on the cycle path.

But he’s also joined the Campaign to Save the Railway Path!

Joining Breckels is Labour’s Easton councillor Faruk Choudhury. He’s finally off the fence and shouting about his oppostion too.

To soften the blow Choudhury has tried to blame the fiasco on the consultants: “It’s only a consultant’s report prepared for the West of England Partnership which has suggested the cycle path as THEIR preferred route.”

As if these consultants aren’t under any kind of political control? And as if they don’t work to a brief that should be dictated by politicians …

Bradshaw, however, still seems determined to press on with the scheme. He told a meeting of the Physical Environment Scrutiny Commission on Thursday that a consultation would take place involving the scheme for the Railway Path and two other schemes his consultants are hurriedly drawing up.

This is ridiculous. A BRT scheme on the Railway Path is dead in the water. A consultation on it is a waste of public money. The consultants working on it – who failed to do basic research – are a waste of public money. The senior transport officers at the city council – who don’t seem to have any local knowledge – are a waste of public money. And politicians like Bradshaw who sit cluelessly on top of this whole useless edifice are wasting public money.

Stop wasting our time and our money and dump the scheme now!!!

Posted in Bristol, CONsultants, Developments, Environment, Labour Party, Local government, Transport, WESP | Tagged , , , | There are 2 comments

The power of "the Kelly Effect"

Posted on March 9, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

The recently discovered “Kelly Effect” is a very close cousin of the “Bristol Effect”.

And we all know what the Bristol Effect is. It’s the graveyard of ambition where good ideas come to die while talent takes the road to London leaving mediocrity and failure behind to run the show. The Kelly Effect seems to take the Bristol Effect a stage further.

Andrew Kelly was, of course, the brains behind Bristol’s still-born city of culture bid, which singularly failed to galvanise the city. Bristol not only failed to win the accolade but chief judge Jeremy Isaacs even claimed we were “a divided city”. An observation that has been systematically ignored ever since.

Kelly’s failure to in any way unite the city was, however, typically well-rewarded with a doubling of his salary to £80k a year while an office and staff were put at his disposal at Business West’s stately Leigh Court Mansion HQ.

To his credit Kelly has pretty much kept out of people’s way since then. He ran the low-key Brunel 200 celebrations that failed to trouble the headlines very much and he started the Festival of Ideas – basically a series of talks from authors with books to sell.

And in the lead up to this year’s festival Kelly landed something of a coup with the appearance of Samantha Power this week at the Watershed.

Power was someone who was going places. Educated at Yale, teaching at Harvard, a Pullitzer Prize winning journalist and a key foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama, Power was a pretty good outside bet to be the next National Security Advisor to the President of the United States.

Alas one brief visit to Bristol and her career is in ruins! After her Tuesday night appearance here Power returned to London and gave an interview to the Scotsman newspaper the next day. They naturally asked her about the presidential election, which elicited this response on the subject of Hilary Clinton:

“We fucked up in Ohio. In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio’s the only place they can win. She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything.

“You just look at her and think, ‘Ergh’. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.”

Unfortunately there’s no such thing as ‘off the record’ in an on the record interview and Power’s words were published in the Scotsman Thursday and went around the globe within hours.

The comments earned wall-to-wall coverage in the US media – “Monster Bash” was the front-page headline in the New York Daily News, which even labelled her remark “slime-time politics”.

By Friday it was glittering career over as Power issued an urgent and not terribly believable apology:

“With deep regret, I am resigning from my role as an adviser to the Obama campaign. I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose of the Obama campaign. And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months.”

Blimey. Who other poor sods has Kelly invited to Bristol?

Posted in Bristol, Culture, Middle East, Politics | Tagged , | There are no comments yet

Swivel-eyed liberal loonwatch

Posted on March 8, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

Fruit Cake
Fruitcake

A grudging hat-tip to James Barlow for this story, although I don’t see why we should when it’s obvious he’s just signed up to the same ‘They Work for You’ alert as we are.

Anyway, very strange outburst from Bristol West MP, Stephen Williams in the commons on Thursday when he introduced what he described as a petition:

[The Petition d]eclares that despite ongoing human rights violations and the UK government’s own export guidelines, the UK has consistently licensed exports to Israel for military equipment, thus providing material support for Israeli aggression, and sending a message of approval for its actions; further declares that the Israelis have declared Gaza a “hostile entity” within a “conflict short of war” and that the collective punishment of a civilian population is prohibited in international law.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to seek to end the siege on the Palestinians and to support Palestinian democracy by stopping arming Israel; reconsidering the UK’s policy of refusing to provide aid to the Palestinian Authority following Hamas’ election victory in January 2006 and pressing Israel to release all elected Palestinian parliamentarians, as well as other political prisoners; to censure the decision by the Israel cabinet to impose sanctions on supplies of electricity, fuel, and other basic goods and services to the civilian population of Gaza, to cease colluding with this act of State Terrorism against innocent people; and to work towards a just solution based on international law and an end to Israeli occupation.

Now Williams’ underlying demand that those useless Oxbridge tossers at the Foreign Office stop issuing export licenses to UK arms firms and start earning their money by engaging in some seriously robust diplomacy with Israel instead is not itself unreasonable.

But the language he’s using is utterly absurd and straight out of the weally wadical end of the Student Union. Do serious politicians really come out with frothing swivel-eyed nonsense about Israel engaging in “state terrorism” before condemning only the “Israeli aggression” in this two-sided conflict?

Where does he get this stuff from? Off the internet? All he needs are a few knowing references to ZIONISTS; an argument that Hamas are a peaceful social movement providing vital social services to desperate Palestinians; claim that blaming these innocent victims for attempting to kill Israeli civilians is nothing short of immoral and he could get a job on Comment is Free for life!

And as for complaining that Israel has declared Gaza “a hostile entity”, what are they supposed to call it? What would Williams prefer? A Bristol City Council-style press release describing the place as an up and coming Mediterranean family holiday destination?

Come to think of it that could make a good post on a quiet news day: Simon Caplan press releasing Peter Hammond’s response to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Can you imagine ..?

Bristol City Council has expressed a formal interest in submitting a bid for most improved Middle Eastern “Hostile Entity” status for the Gaza Strip.

The city council will be seeking funds in order to introduce a number of dedicated IDF equalities outreach workers into Gaza who will aim to engage with some of the ongoing community cohesion issues within the entity and introduce initiatives aimed at supporting the “conflict short of war”.

A further £250k will be set aside to support the creation of a new Legacy Commission to help deliver greater equality and social justice for people engaging in martyrdom operations and the city council’s ‘Islamists who make a difference’ Awards will also be improved, expanded and developed into an annual entity-wide celebration,

Cllr Peter Hammond said, “The hostile entity has provided an extraordinary outpouring of energy, passion and talent and was – ” (that’s enough city council PR. Ed.)

Er, sorry … Back to Williams … And the final idiocy of the MPs embarrassing rant? What he’s calling “the Petition of constituents of Bristol West” that he presented to Parliament is in fact no such thing. Williams has never publicly collected signatures for the petition and there’s no reference to it anywhere on his website either. What on earth is going on with the man?

Nurse! The screens …

Posted in Bristol, Bristol West, Lib Dems, Middle East, MPs, Politics | Tagged | There are 9 comments

Brass necks of the week

Posted on March 7, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

PrizeFollowing Saturday’s Guardian magazine ‘Big journeys around a small island’ feature, which listed the current incarnation of the Bristol and Bath Railway Path as one of the UK’s great journeys, comes a story in today’s Evening Cancer announcing that the Sustainability South West charity has given the path an award for being one of the “South West’s top 10 urban green spaces”

The Blogger however would like to give out this week’s “You couldn’t make it up if you tried award” to the the path’s wreckers Bristol City Council who, we learn, “were invited to the presentation” and “were presented with a commissioned piece of artwork, made from Cornish pewter and Forest of Avon oak, at a Sustainability South West forum.”

Did they take their sketches of their new proposals for the path along to show everyone then?

Posted in Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Environment, Local government, Transport | Tagged , | There are 2 comments

No selection, honest guv!

Posted on March 7, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

Father Jack
Your child in their hands?

This week’s news on secondary school applications and allocations brings few surprises.

The city’s struggling local authority-run neighbourhood comprehensives – the ones everyone wants to work – continue to remain hopelessly undersubscribed as parents vote with their feet and apply elsewhere.

Meanwhile the city’s few decent local authority schools, headed by the new Redland Green School and followed by St Mary Redcliffe and Cotham School, remain hopelessly oversubscribed.

The Blogger has also made a few enquiries regarding entry to “church school” St Mary Redcliffe in the light of recent headlines claiming that many faith schools may be engaging in the rather un-Christian surreptitious selection of kids.

And apparently in order to apply to get a kid in there you do not necessarily have to bother actually going to church. All you need is a recommendation from your local vicar.

So no doubt church roof replacement funds across a number of Bristol parishes are looking distinctly healthy right now, while a number of Bristol families might be foregoing the Tuscan vacation this coming August.

Posted in Bristol, Education, Local government, Redcliffe | Tagged , | There are 7 comments

Democracy Bristol-style

Posted on March 6, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

Those of you think Bristol is run by an unholy alliance of quangocrats, big business interests and well-remunerated out-of-town consultants with no regard for democracy are certainly getting your worst fears confirmed by the Railway Path fiasco.

Yet another email flutters into the in-tray. This time from three Labour Councillors representing South Gloucestershire’s Woodstock Ward, which the Railway Path runs through.

So what do these three councillors with a direct interest in the proposed BRT route have to say? Er, not that much really because nobody’s bothered to tell them anything:

We hope that you will understand that it is very difficult to respond to a “proposal” when we have not seen any details of it except in the media. Nor, given that it is a project that covers both South Gloucestershire Council and Bristol City Council areas are we at all clear how a decision would be made and what the involvement of individual councillors in any decision would be.

Brilliant. Nothing like consulting with elected representatives prior to taking transparent and open decisions is there?

And needless to say – along with every other Labour politician who’s expressed a view – the trio then go on to overwhelmingly reject the scheme:

However, we are firm supporters and users of the cyclepath/walkway and it would be safe to say that we would take a lot of convincing to support the introduction of buses on to any part of the route.

For how much longer is Bradshaw going to continue this charade over a dead-in-the-water scheme, which no one – not even in his own party – is supporting?

Dump it now! Let’s move on …

Posted in Bristol, CONsultants, Environment, Labour Party, Local government, Politics, South Gloucestershire, Transport | Tagged , | There is 1 comment

Global day of action for Mansour Osanloo and Mahmoud Salehi

Posted on March 6, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

Today is a global day of action for Mansour Osanloo and Mahmoud Salehi, two Iranian trade unionists being held in prison by the Iranian theocracy on charges of “endangering national security”.

This pair are unlikely to get the publicity afforded other less savoury Middle Eastern political activists by some sections of the so-called left who no doubt will be along soon to claim that solidarity with these imprisoned Iranian trade unionists is in fact part of a long-term Zionist/Imperialist/Neo-Conservative conspiracy to launch a nuclear attack on the peace-loving democracy of Iran.

Here’s the message of solidarity:

Thousands of workers and citizens are raising their voices today worldwide. We want Mansour Osanloo and Mahmoud Salehi out of jail immediately and unconditionally. We want workers’ rights respected in Iran without any delay. Organised by the ITUC and ITF with the full support of Amnesty International, many events are taking place simultaneously around the world to back our demands.

In Wellington, Sydney, Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok, Jakarta, New Delhi, Istanbul, Basra, Amman, the West Bank, Tunis, Casablanca, Geneva, Brussels, Oslo, London and Toronto, actions are confirmed and many will visit the Iranian missions with our message, that the Iranian authorities cannot obstruct the genuine workers’ movement and jail these unionists for their activities. We regret the charges set against them. They are not a threat to the national security. Worse still, their health conditions are deteriorating.

The ILO’s Freedom of Association Committee report from June 2007 stresses that the Iranian government must take “all measures to ensure that trade unions can be formed and function without hindrance, including through the de facto recognition of the union”.

In building-up to the International Action Day, the ITF’s inspectors in many countries have boarded Iranian vessels in their respective ports with our message. LabourStart has gathered 5,000 signatures on an online petition. Earlier in January, protest by the Indonesian trade unions forced its government to postpone a Presidential visit to Iran. Concerns are being raised in the national and European parliaments. Many organisations have sent their protest letters. Since Mansour Osanloo was brutally abducted 8 months ago, worldwide protests have not stopped. On 6 March, they will culminate into a mass global demonstration but this will not be the end.

Free Osanloo now!
Free Salehi now!
Respect the workers’ rights in Iran!

Our message of solidarity with the Iranian workers is loud and clear. It will continue to resound until our objectives are achieved.

International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
International Transport Workers Federation (ITF)
Amnesty International

Posted in Activism, Middle East, Politics, The British Left, Trade Unionism | Tagged , | There are 2 comments

BRT: It's turning into rout! Labour Party in meltdown! Cabinet in tailspin! Bradshaw about to nosedive!

Posted on March 5, 2008 by The Bristol Blogger

Stop sign

It looks like it’s game over tonight for Labour Transport boss, Mark Bradshaw’s plan to build a rapid bus route on the much-loved Bristol and Bath Railway Path.

Earlier today Bradshaw’s cabinet colleague and fellow Labour Party member, Rosalie Walker hammered a very well-placed nail into the plan’s emerging coffin when she told a constituent, “I will oppose [the BRT route] but I think you need to contact Mark Bradshaw about this as he is the executive member.”

It’s hard to see how the plan can possibly continue now that it’s been revealed that Bradshaw doesn’t even enjoy the support of his own cabinet colleagues and hasn’t even got the clout or authority to keep them quiet.

It is also clear from Walker’s statement that Bradshaw had gone ahead with the plan without even discussing, let alone getting agreement, from his own cabinet colleagues or party members.

And it’s yet another example – as if it were needed – of the weakness, lack of discipline and hopelessly poor leadership from Helen Holland’s embarrassing mess of an administration. This is a party in office not in power.

Walker joins a growing queue of politicians who are very publicly and very openly rejecting Bradshaw’s plan. They include MPs Kerry McCarthy, Labour and Stephen Williams, Lib Dem; Labour councillor Faruk Choudhury; Lib Dems Sylvia Townsend and Abdul Malik; Tory Lesley Alexander and Green Charlie Bolton.

At present a motion to reject the plan proposed by Charlie Bolton is set to be debated at the next Full Council Meeting on 1 April. But you have to wonder if it will go ahead now. Bradshaw is clearly on his own and this debate can surely only end in a very public and very personal humiliation for him.

Bradshaw’s only known supporters – so far – are faceless city council transport bureaucrat, Colin Knight, First Bus, some transport consultants who don’t know one end of the city from the other and are set to make a mint from the scheme and Cancer editor Mike Norton, who seems to live on another planet.

Perhaps Bradshaw needs to pick up that phone first thing tomorrow morning and tell West of England Partnership boss, Simon Birch, the plan’s cancelled? He can then publish a press release to that effect in the afternoon and all the campaigners can get on with their lives and he can start devising a proper public transport plan for the city instead.

Or he can go on with absolutely no support …

Coming soon: another nail in the coffin. Bradshaw’s Labour colleague Parliamentary candidate Paul Smith interviewed from the Railway Path and he’s not in favour!

Posted in Bristol, Developments, Environment, Labour Party, Local government, Politics, Transport, WESP | Tagged , , , | There are 8 comments