Haven’t updated the blogroll for ages …
Bristol 2007’s Weblog, discussing Bristol’s approach to the slave trade this year is added as is the Doppleganger and the excellent Bristol Grafitti blog (pictured), which has embarked on an area-by-area survey of the city’s grafitti.
If you think there’s any other blogs that should be on here, let us know.
University Plans – here’s our press release
The Evening Post have asked us not to send this to others until after the holidays (because they plan to run a story) – anyone have ideas about where to send it then? Thanks.
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20th December 2007
For immediate release
Contact: John Frenkel, 0117 924 0853
St Michael’s Hill plans are ‘ugly sister’, says local group.
Kingsdown Conservation Group say the University’s latest proposals would produce an Ugly Sister for the brutalist concrete Maternity hospital. Along with the Civic Society and several other local amenity groups, they are calling for revised plans.
Spokesperson John Frenkel said “The University proposes a building double the size of what was agreed by the City Council. The plans even ignore the University’s own design guidance about buildings which would ‘reinforce the character of the area…. help mend the streetscape …. be a positive response to the historic context.’”
“St Michael’s Hill is one of the delights of Bristol, and we were shocked by these proposals. They would spoil the historic environment with an ugly building that is far too big and completely out of place. We just don’t understand the University. They spent a year working with local residents and produced a Masterplan, which the Council adopted. Why bother to have a Masterplan and then try to ignore it?”
In November, the University publicly displayed the Phase 1 proposals, which directly conflict with the Masterplan in many ways. For example, the St Michael’s Hill building would be much too large and its design is unsympathetic. In place of the Masterplan’s four-storey building that steps down the hill in three blocks, they now propose a large horizontal office block, seven storeys high at one end. It could be any office block anywhere.
The University is trying to cram in far too much. Kingsdown Conservation Group calls for a revised design that sticks to the University’s own Masterplan.
ENDS
Notes for editors:
1. The Bristol City Council Supplementary Planning Document 11 “Univeristy of Bristol Strategic Masterplan” is at
http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/Environment-Planning/Planning/planning-policy-documents/new-policy-docs/SPD-11-university-of-bristol-strategic-masterplan.en
2. The Kingsdown Conservation Group’s response to the proposals is here: http://kingsdown.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/KCG response to Uni Phase1.doc
3. The University’s proposals have not yet been submitted as a Planning Application. They were on public display at the Senate House in November.
Next year should see a revamp and redesign for Bristol Indymedia. Here’s a sneak preview of the new logo and here you’ll find an altogether cleaner, brighter, shinier site. They’re taking their lives in their hands with that iTunes link though.
Big shout out to the Arts Council for sticking to its guns and quite properly protecting tax payers money from yet another member of Bristol’s old boys’ network with a snooty accent and promoted way above their abilities.
At last it finally looks like the Arts Council have managed to force the chair of the Old Vic Theatre Trust, Rupert Rhymes, to fall on his sword. The Arts Council has been withholding a £2 million cash grant for the refurbishment of the Theatre Royal in King Street run by the trust in an apparent stand-off with Rhymes for some time.
The theatre, of course, closed down in financial chaos back in May this year, despite already having announced the opening production of its autumn season and printed details in its brochure. Ludicrously Rhymes and his cronies claimed their decision was taken as part of a long-planned refurbishment of the theatre although the money to actually do any building work was quite transparently not in place.
When this excuse fell apart, Rhymes told The Stage newspaper the closure was due to the “poor plumbing” in the theatre and more recently he has taken to ranting aimlessly about the evils of the Arts Council to his mate at the Evening Cancer, Maurice Fells, who has faithfully reproduced this whining nonsense word-for-word in the pages of the Cancer on a regular basis.
The sudden closure of Bristol’s flagship theatre and company with the loss of around 100 jobs and no plans to carry on producing in other venues during this alleged planned closure of just eighteen months was in fact the entirely the responsibility of Rhymes and his hapless board of trustees.
Over the last four years, after the appointment of a couple of highly ambitious London luvvies as the theatre’s artistic directors – David Farr and Simon Reade – the theatre was transformed into a financial basket case as Rhymes and his trustees failed to control the rampant and profligate spending of this dubious artistic duo.
Huge cost overruns creating scenery and sets more suited to an upmarket tart’s boudoir became the order of the day as the pair of shamelessly self-promoting directors produced lavish productions of their own – and their wives! – uninspired adaptations of the classics. The pair of self-publicists even branded their work as ‘Radical Classicism’ in an effort to market their expensive tripe to London critics.
However their “movement” was so obviously self-serving and so utterly shite, boring and cynical that Bristol audiences simply stayed away in their droves and the theatre was effectively run into the ground by May this year when it closed on the verge of bankruptcy.
Despite this breathtaking financial mismanagement, Rhymes and his board have so far stayed in post running a lacklustre ‘Save the Old Vic’ campaign that has failed to catch fire largely because of the lack of confidence most of Bristol’s informed theatre community have in Rhymes and his cronies.
Now at last the Arts Council – by persistently stating their lack of confidence in the theatre trust’s business plan – have forced Rhymes out.
However, don’t start cheering too loudly just yet at the demise of this member of Bristol’s old boys’ network as Rhymes may have the last laugh yet. String puller to the end, he only seems intent on appointing his successor.
What’s needed, of course, to refurbish the theatre, get it reopened and get audiences through the door is a sharp financial operator with a sure populist touch. But what Rhymes is proposing is that another member of Bristol’s old boys’ network takes over – Dick Penny, Director of the Watershed.
Unfortunately Penny doesn’t fit the bill in the slightest. Another luvvie like Rhymes, his Watershed is another financial basketcase, which has persistently relied on shamefully undisclosed handouts from the city council ever since it opened. Neither has Penny any obvious populist credentials – The Watershed’s programming being a text book example of elitism and exclusiveness.
Penny hasn’t accepted the job offer as yet although he has indicated he is minded to. Surely a better recruitment process than this is required for such a crucial post for such a crucial institution?
After months of tortuous negotiations, The Blogger is pleased to announce that we have secured EXCLUSIVE rights to council leader Helen Holland’s Personal Christmas Message by Simon Caplan. Look out for Helen’s exciting seasonal message to the people of Bristol on Christmas Eve – only on The Bristol Blogger.
The Blogger will be taking a break for Christmas from Christmas Eve until the new year. However we will continue to work hard. The delayed Bristol Blogger Sunday Review of Books featuring the new Banksy book Home Sweet Home will be completed.
And The Blogger will be spending the Christmas period writing some sensational absurdist plays:
Waiting For Ormondroyd – in which a tragic Bristolian buried up to their neck in paperwork, surrounded by a desolate sea of filing cabinets, lost CDs and sketches of proposed centres of cultural excellence is forced to randomly utter the contents ODPM reports, equalities communities action plans and Simon Caplan’s press releases into the void.
Pigfucker’s Last Tape – in which a failed bureaucrat is trapped at the bottom of £10m pound hole they have dug with just a tape recorder to waffle their farewell message of hopeless cliches and corporate management jargon into.
Both will be appearing at the Old Vic no time soon.
The term “fab” in this flyer may be laced with a certain irony since the address beneath it places Venue’s new offices on the 2nd floor of the Evening Cancer’s terrifying HQ – that rarely mentioned eighth circle of hell, the Brown Lubianka.
Indeed the never-less-than-excellent Advanced Circuits website’s (“Join over 14.408 Engineering Customers and 838 PCB Assemblers”) must-see Printed Circuit Manufacturing Glossary even defines “fab” as “fabrication”. Spooky or wot?
But then maybe if you don’t mind the company of ghoulish Northcliffe accountants dressed in pinstripes; you urgently need access to cancer charity press releases by the crate load and you don’t mind bumping into a slightly deranged looking Cancer editor-in-chief, Mike Norton, in the lift with his Nazi armband dangling out his pocket as he makes his way to the terrace garden for the ritual burning of the day’s supply of letters from dangerous local lefties, you could well think the place is “fab”.
‘ Tis the end of an era and more bad news for the remnants of journalism in Bristol I’m afraid.
Bit technical this one I’m afraid but it’s probably worth hearing.
To recap:
A £10k cash donation to the Bristol North West Constituency Labour Party has been recorded by the Electoral Commission as coming from an unincorporated association using the name ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ and using a Council House office address where local government officers – not Labour Party workers – paid from the public purse are based. This £10k in cash is the largest donation to any Constituency Labour Party anywhere made this year.
The Blogger has received legal advice on this matter and here’s some of what it says:
“[The donation to] which you refer relates to the Bristol Labour Group and is a matter for the Electoral Commission. The Bristol Labour Group might (or might not – I do not know) share the same members as the Labour Group of Bristol City Council but it is a completely different entity which may well have a constitution and political purposes etc.”
What this means is that ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ that donated the £10k cannot be the same ‘Bristol Labour Group’ made up of Labour councillors on Bristol City Council. As The Blogger speculated some time ago, it appears – legally – that there are indeed two ‘Bristol Labour Groups’ operating within the Council House. Both apparently operating from the same office staffed by publicly funded local government officers.
One ‘Bristol Labour Group’ is perfectly legitimate and is regulated by the Government and Housing Act 1989 and Local Government (Committees and Political Groups Regulations) 1990. This group, once it has issued a political group notice to the council listing its members is perfectly entitled to local government officer support and office space etc.
The members of this group would also not be required to declare their membership of this group in the Register of Members’ Interests as their formal political group notice would cover this.
However, our legal advice also tells us:
“Each group within the council is supported by a group office which provides clerical support etc. The group offices do not work as political sites but as support sites – there should be no “political propaganda on the rates”.
Clearly work such as fundraising and donations for the Labour Party is political work rather than support work. This means any work on fundraising and donations is (a) not work being conducted by the ‘Bristol Labour Group’ as constituted by the political group notice to Bristol City Council and (b) it is not work that should be being conducted by the publicly funded Labour Group Office at the Council House.
This has a number of repercussions:
– as clearly set out in Bristol City Council’s Code of Conduct for Members (pdf), any Labour councillor who is also a member of ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ that is involved in fundraising and donations to the Labour Party needs to declare this in the Register of Members’ Interests. At present no Bristol City Council member has.
– the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 governs the conduct of local government officers acting as political assistants to councillors and the council’s Protocol on the provision of support to Councillors by Members Services staff (pdf) provides further guidance. The use of local government officers, resources, equipment and property for party political fundraising and donations is clearly proscribed in both documents. At present it appears that Labour Party councillors and their political support staff have breached these guidelines.
In view of this The Blogger understands that in the new year complaints will be made to the Standards Board for England regarding the failure of all Bristol City Council’s Labour councillors to register a pecuniary interest in ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ that has donated money to the Labour Party and to Bristol City Council for breaches of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 and their protocol on support to councillors.
A report will also be lodged with the Electoral Commission and all Labour councillors will be approached in order that they can explain which ‘Bristol Labour Group’ they understand themselves to be a member of.
Should be an interesting new year …
£180,000 – the amount of money Bristol City Council will pay their new Chief Executive, career bureaucrat Jan Ormondroyd – who’s never had to take a risk in her life – EVERY YEAR until she chooses to pack it in to pick up her lucrative pension. For this money Ms Ormondroyd has to sit in a plush office far away from any danger and has not, so far, been required to make any concrete commitment or guarantee to produce or deliver anything specific whatsoever.
£152,150 – the derisory amount of money offered by the MOD as compensation in order to keep him THE REST OF HIS LIFE to 23-year-old Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson who sustained 37 injuries including brain damage and losing both legs after a landmine exploded under his vehicle in Iraq. Ben’s family have to be committed to looking after him for the rest of his life on this paltry sum of money.
Ben was also the only wounded soldier in his hospital not to meet Tony Blair, who was eventually shamed into visiting his war wounded, because MOD officials believed Ben’s mum, Diane Dernie, might “embarrass” Mr Blair.
Unlike Blair, Brown or their cabinets full of pygmies Ms Dernie is in fact a model of dignity, integrity and grace in seeking justice and respect for her son.
Regardless of your view on the Iraq war, we should all hang our heads in shame at this family’s treatment by the gang of unscrupulous, self-serving scumbags occupying the Labour Party and running the country.
Welcome to Gordon Brown’s Britain – a country fit for public sector fat cats.
“I, for one, wasn’t put on this earth to make life easy for British farmers, who are a reactionary and misanthropic lot as a rule – gaily destroying wildlife, backing blood sports, feeding animals the remains of their relatives and driving them mad. The EU has done enough to feather their nests; I don’t need to add to their nest eggs when I go shopping. This sort of backward thinking, taken to its logical conclusion, would also see the return of morris dancing, inbreeding and operations without benefit of anaesthetic.”
It’s enough to make you go out and buy The Guardian – Madeleine Fucking Bunting ‘n’ all.
It seems “The Greatest Living Bristolian'”(Hint to da kids: she left town fast at seventeen), Julie Burchill, has come out of retirement (again) and taken time out from her theology degree to slam the middle class useless brigade, their cloying moralising tendencies around food and their tedious obsession with “small shops”.
Julie instead offers up warm praise for her local Tescos. Enjoy – because it’s not often you’ll find a Bristolian writer nailing their subject:
“That I might go looking for proof of my worth over the wet fish counter seems quite eye-wateringly daft.”
The master at work can be found here.
It’s official. A recent Commons answer reveals that empty school places in Bristol have spiraled alarmingly upwards since Bristol’s much touted £270m ‘Building Schools for the Future’ (BSF) programme has started delivering new schools in the area.
In 2001 Bristol had surplus places in secondary schools running at around 8%. Now after the implementation of the BSF programme and a host of new secondary schools we have surplus places running at 13% and climbing.
Let’s just remind ourselves what the brains behind this expensive cock-up, our Deputy Council Leader Peter Hammond, assured us back in 2002:
“These plans have been put together very carefully to make sure pupils will enjoy high quality educational facilities, strategically located to meet the demand for places across the city.”
Well that turned out to be a load of bollocks didn’t it Peter? So why not give us all the best Christmas present ever and resign to spend more time with head up your gormless trade union friends’ backsides? Oh and feel free to take your hopeless boss Holland and your sidekick Bees with you. You’re all proven useless incompetents after all.
