Compare and contrast:

Posted on December 18, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

“We want our city to be an ambitious city that includes and values all citizens – whatever their backgrounds, needs or lifestyles. We want to drive forward real change that makes a difference to people’s lives. We want to ensure the city is safer and healthier for all. And we want to deliver visible improvements to the streets, parks, open spaces, community facilities and transport links in your local neighbourhood – so that wherever you live you can be confident the council is serving you well.”
Helen Holland, Leader, Bristol City Council, 17 December 2007

Sadly those who work, live and play in Bristol can cite a whole raft of public misadventures which have left the city reeling and dented its ambitions.

The theatre is currently shut. The long-awaited arena has been scuppered by a combination of the city council and the regional development agency. The Colston Hall is still nowhere near fit for 21st century purpose.

The Industrial Museum is closed, its successor is growing ever more expensive and the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum is moving to London.

The Wild Walk is shut and is quietly rotting away on Harbourside. while next door the giant Imax cinema has closed too.

We could go on and say the city the Christmas decorations city-wide ill-befit a place of Bristol’s presumed prestige and, allied to all this, those who travel to and through it daily are greeted by gridlock.

So what is it that’s all wrong about Bristol? A place fast making a name for itself as the city where nothing goes right on the civic front.

Anything it touches, anything it possesses, anything which is iconic and specific to the city, seems to be tainted by inertia, lack of vision, decline or outright failure.

You begin to wonder if Bristol is showing the early signs of what could be terminal malaise.
Comment, Bristol Evening Post, 18 December 2007

Posted in Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Culture, Developments, Labour Party, Local government | Tagged | There are 16 comments

SWRDA: Those executive travel expenses in full

Posted on December 17, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Expenses

You’ve got feel for our friends at the SWRDA – Chair Juliet Williams and Chief Executive Jane Henderson – struggling along on pro rata pay packages with benefits worth around just £166,000 and £170,000 a year respectively.

How do they cope? But don’t worry too much because the pair are also entitled to claim travel expenses. Last year Chair Williams claimed £9984.13 in travel while CEO Henderson must have slummed it a bit and got by on just £8,837.02.

Since Williams only works three days a week that means every time she stepped out the front door to go to work for us, it cost us another seventy-odd quid in travel on top of the £700 we pay her for each day she works.

In comparison, Henderson – who apparently works a full week – only charges us about forty quid every single day in travel on top of her £700 a day salary.

Posted in Arena, Bristol, Local government, SWRDA | Tagged , , | There is 1 comment

Arena petition

Posted on December 16, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

The Bristol Rocks website have started a petition over the arena. Sign it here.

Posted in Arena, Bristol, Local government | Tagged , | There are no comments yet

New sweatshop plan for the city's poor

Posted on December 16, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

After twenty years of failed regeneration wonkery attempting to solve inequality in the city through a bizarre combination of obsessive equal opportunity practice and small-scale community action and six years of Kelly and his culture crowd promising action on inequality in the city through some kind of as yet unexplained and unachieved cultural renaissance, we now have some new kids on the block.

The latest crowd claiming to tackle inequality in the city are Connecting Bristol. Largely made up of Watershed media types, their big idea is digital evangelism; a belief that by giving poor people access to technology it will somehow make them miraculously equal!

And this week finds the organisation unveiling its latest big idea . . . Creating corporate call centres for poor people in poor neighbourhoods to work in no less. Here’s what The Blogger posted about this on to their site:

It’s really hard to tell whether this kind of stuff is the product of naivety or cynicism. Either way I despair of nonsense like this coming out of our local authority. It’s enough to make you think that most Local Government Officers would sign up to the Final Solution if they thought there was a few quid of funding in it.

You can use all the bamboozling corporate spin and nomenclature you like about this but those of us who have been there know that a “customer contact centre” is in fact the crudely rebranded term for a call centre.

Why would you want to promote these places? They’ve been widely described as “modern sweatshops”; “the new satanic mills” and as “the unacceptable face of capitalism”.

OK there’s some hyperbole in such descriptions but it is inarguable that call centres, across the board, provide low pay, low status, short term unskilled employment. Their management is aggressive; the levels of staff monitoring unacceptable; their performance demands are often unachievable; trade unions in these places are usually non-existent or pitifully weak; staff turnover is huge; promotion opportunities are limited and job satisfaction non-existent.

More to the point, this type of employment in Bristol has already been proved to do nothing to tackle the underlying inequalities in the city. Remarkably, for an outfit calling itself “Connecting Bristol”, you seem entirely unconnected to either reality or any recent news.

Just this week it was reported that Bristol is going to lose its Neighbourhood Renewal Funding from the government. This is money that is targeted to specific areas of the country to tackle the problems of poverty, inequality and exclusion.

And the reason Bristol is going to miss out? The city is too wealthy. Indeed, Bristol’s GDP compares with the economic powerhouses of the South East rather than the former heavy industry heavyweights of the north where a lot of regeneration money goes.

This city’s problem is not the overall wealth of the place but the distribution of this wealth. And 20 years of central government regeneration funding has failed to tackle this – “Social and economic inequality in Britain’s cities is highest in Manchester, Bristol and Liverpool we learned (again) just this week.

One of the key reasons for this has been an unrelenting focus on “jobs” regardless of their quality or pay . Particularly in the south of the city, the Neighbourhood Renewal scheme has promoted low-status, low-pay jobs in the retail sector for some years now. OK, they’ve created employment bit they haven’t reduced inequality in the city one little bit. Neither are these kind of jobs likely to.

It’s plainly apparent, if you bother to look at the evidence, that what this city doesn’t need is any more crappy low-pay, low-status – virtual or otherwise – jobs whether they’re based in the city centre or in our local communities or on Mars for that matter. They simply will not solve the problems we are faced with.

Perhaps Mr Hilton could take this on board for when he visits RIBA in January and politely (or not) tell the assembled public sector bigwigs and their corporate friends looking to exploit our hopeless education system, low skills base and vulnerable communities that they can stick their call centres where the sun don’t shine.

Then on his return perhaps his organisation should focus on the things that are likely to successfully tackle the city’s inequalities. That’s the tough stuff like addressing our risible state education system; the urgent need for a major redistribution wealth within the city and the provision of decent skills that will provide the working classes of Bristol with the kind of opportunities and privileges Mr Hilton and his colleagues already enjoy.

Posted in Bristol, Education, Local government | Tagged | There are 2 comments

SWRDA: You scratch my back . . .

Posted on December 16, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

That tireless worker in the public interest, Merchant Venturer John Savage – a board member of the SWRDA – told us earlier this week in the Evening Cancer after the cancellation of the arena project:

in the end, we are in no doubt that an £86 million bill to be footed by you, the readers of this paper, among others, is unacceptable.

However, it seems that Savage neglected to tell us what he and his fellow board members at the SWRDA think is an entirely acceptable use of public funds.

Perusing through the SWRDA’s last annual report, 2006 – 2007, we find a section headed ‘Related Party Transactions’. And what might this be? Why it’s only a list of payments from our friendly local RDA to organisations in which board members of the SWRDA have a direct personal interest.

And how much public money have this little gang been awarding themselves then? Last year the figure was over . . . Wait for it . . . £20m!!!

Yes, these selfless workers on our behalf who called a halt to the arena because the costs were unacceptable are filling their own boots with public cash to the tune of 20 million quid every bloody year!

This means that over 10% of the SWRDA’s budget is currently going directly to board members’ personal organisations. And this figure will be going up next year when Savage and Colin Skellett’s £8m a year Northern Arc scam is factored in. Then one-sixth of the SWRDA’s entire budget will be going direct to board members.

At least we now know why they can’t afford an arena. It’s obviously not a board members’ personal pet project and none of the money would end up in their organisation.

You may also be pleased to hear that the multi-millionaire membership of the SWRDA board aren’t working for nothing. For their two whole days of work a month they are being paid the grand total of £8,268 a year. Pro rata that’s equivalent to around £90k a year.

They’re all heart ain’t they?

Posted in Arena, Bristol, Local government, Merchant Venturers, SWRDA | Tagged , , , | There are 5 comments

Northern Arc Ltd. update

Posted on December 16, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

We said on Friday evening that the two Merchant Venturers, John Savage and Colin Skellett, who have seats at the head table of the SWRDA, were currently in talks with Swindon-based GWE to merge their Business West operation with them to create a region-wide business organisation perfectly positioned to cash in on huge SWRDA grants.

We also said that after the merger SWRDA board members Skellett and Savage through Business West would take majority control of Northern Arc Ltd., a company started in April this year to manage £8m of SWRDA grant funds.

We should add that at present, through Business West, Savage and Skellett, already run one-third of Northern Arc Ltd. The merger will simply hand them control of another third and majority control of the firm.

Already it seems Savage and Skellett have used their SWRDA roles to their own £8m advantage. How public spirited of them.

LATER: The full extent of SWRDA board members’ conflicts of interest.

Posted in Bristol, Local government, Merchant Venturers, SWRDA | Tagged , , | There are no comments yet

2008: Year of the comic book city

Posted on December 15, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

With just two weeks until the frenzy begins, news finally begins to leak out about the city council/Business West £70k a year cultural wallah Andrew Kelly’s grand vision for 2008 – our “city of culture” year.

But first let’s reappraise ourselves of what we were promised by Kelly, 100 per cent backed by a Labour administration, back in 2002:

By 2008 Bristol will have changed as much again as it has changed in the past decade. Bristol’s cultural infrastructure, redeveloped over 20 years, will be the envy of most cities – renewed arts organisations, new concert hall, an arena, a new Museum of Bristol, and new swimming pools – will be just some of the facilities available for the 2008 resident and tourist.

On the surface it doesn’t look hopeful does it? It’s unlikely many cities out there are really envying our cultural infrastructure currently tailspinning into disaster. Meanwhile there’s no sign of a new concert hall – just an overpriced and overrated £18m new Colston Hall foyer replacing one of Bristol’s landmark buildings instead; the arena was cancelled this week; the Museum of Bristol is an over budget farce lacking a serious business plan and more swimming pools have been closed or are under threat than have been opened.

So in the face of this maelstrom of disasters what’s Kelly’s big plan? A new website – Bristol Reads – gives us a clue:


Yes folks after all the high falutin’ talk, vacuous promises and cash expended, what we’re actually getting off Kelly and the council is a crappy fucking comic. Well done.

Posted in Bristol, Culture, Local government | Tagged | There are 4 comments

The great SWRDA swindle (reprise)

Posted on December 14, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

A mere three weeks after The Blogger reported something that according to the Cancer only “emerged last week”, our local newspaper finally spills the beans on the SWRDA‘s extraordinary expenses and junketing spending. They say about the regional quango, at the heart of the arena fiasco:

Last week, it emerged that it spent more than £60,000 of taxpayers’ money at a property trade show on the French Riviera.

A delegation from the agency racked up the bill in Cannes at an event described by one guest as a lavish “four-day party”.

Details of the cost of the trip to the Mipim show, based in the Palais des Festivals, were obtained under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.

The details show that in March 2007 – days before Hollywood stars descended on Cannes for its famous film festival – SWRDA was among eight of the nine development agencies in the country to travel to the event.

The figures disclosed under the FoI Act show the quango also spent £61,000 on its annual staff conference at the Center Parcs Longleat Forest holiday village in Wiltshire, plus £28,279 on another staff meeting last year at the Riviera Centre in Torquay.

Its total bill for corporate events in 2006-7 amounted to £278,560.

Well done boys!

Elsewhere today the paper handed space over to Merchant Venturer John Savage, the Chairman of Bristol’s corporate power-brokers Business West and also a member of the SWRDA board that took the decision to pull the arena project.

The self-interested multi-millionaire schmuck used the paper to come over all public spirited on us:

But, in the end, we are in no doubt that an £86 million bill to be footed by you, the readers of this paper, among others, is unacceptable.

Isn’t it touching how Savage and his SWRDA business friends have our best interests and those of the wider public at heart like this? They’ve only gone and stopped the arena for our benefit.

Have they hell! As it will no doubt “emerge” in a couple of weeks, Savage couldn’t give a toss about us or saving public money, he’s actually much more interested in securing the SWRDA mega-bucks swilling around the region and meant for our arena for himself and his Merchant Venturer cronies.

What Savage failed to mention in his selfless paean for the public today was the interesting little bit of business he and his fellow Merchant Venturer, SWRDA board member and Business West colleague, the Enron profiteer Colin Skellett are quietly embarked on at present.

It seems that Business West will be merging with a similar supplier of “business services” for Wiltshire and Swindon, GWE, to form a rather convenient regional organisation perfectly positioned to hoover up funds from regional development organisations like the SWRDA!

The new Chief Exec of this – as yet unamed – organisation will be SWRDA board member Savage and the Chairman will be SWRDA board member Skellett. So it’ll be interesting to see how much of the £40m meant for our arena ends up going to them won’t it?

And don’t worry about any potential conflicts of interest here because obviously these two don’t. If this merger happens, it appears that Savage and Skellett will also be gaining control of a company called Northern Arc Ltd, currently controlled by GWE. Here’s what they do:

a joint venture company established in April 2007 for the purposes of securing the South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA) contract for the delivery of Business Link services in the West of England, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

Yes. They’re a company set up specifically to receive SWRDA funds and it’ll soon be run by two of the board members who are directly responsible for “independently” disbursing those funds. Cosy or wot?

At present it’s believed Northern Arc are turning over about £8m, largely from SWRDA. But it’ll be interesting to see over the next few years how much more SWRDA cash – our arena money – goes their way and to the new Savage/Skellett Business West/GWE set-up.

Posted in Arena, Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Culture, Developments, Local government, Merchant Venturers, SWRDA | Tagged , | There are 4 comments

No pressing concern?

Posted on December 14, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

The Arena bellyflop found Cancer editor Mike Norton sharpening his crayons yesterday afternoon and attempting to deliver a thunderous editorial on the matter. Here’s a bit of it:

So who is going to be called to account for this fiasco? Why is it that other cities like Newcastle, Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff can fund and build arenas and we can’t?

Why couldn’t an operator be found? Was it just the wrong site? If so, who was responsible for selecting it?

What are you asking us for Mike? Isn’t it your job to bloody well tell us these things?

Indeed had the Cancer bothered to ask a few more questions, do a little more legwork and actually dig around the subject – rather than slavishly publish increasingly ludicrous and unbelievable crap copied off arena-related press releases – there’s a chance the city might have got a better result.

But then, like just about every other lazy-arsed senior manager in this backward city, I suppose doing your job properly is too much like hard work when you can just rest on your laurels and your monopoly provider status blaming everybody else instead.

Posted in Arena, Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Local government, Media, SWRDA | Tagged | There are no comments yet

Tonight Matthew we're going to be The Bristol Blogger . . .

Posted on December 13, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

It’s good news for The Blogger tonight at least. The entirely predictable final cancellation of the ongoing arena fiasco gives us a night off. We’ll just leave the commentary to Bristolians who can do it far more eloquently and intelligently than we ever could:

Bristol City Council and the RDA are an absolute bunch of incompetent idiots. Someone should really organise a protest against them about this. The two things the people of Bristol want most are a decent transport system and an arena as per the one which isn’t now going to be built.
Shaun, Bristol

Good old Bristol Village, running true to form.
Sally, Nailsea

For Gods sake, how much longer are we Bristolians going to allow the powers that be to hold OUR City in the last century. I am positive that mass, peaceful demonstrations would take place to improve life in Bristol in terms of Transport, infrastructure, etc etc if only we were organised and informed. PLEASE PLEASE Bristol Evening Post take up our cause.
Jean, Filton

No surprise is it? There is no doubt more money to be made from housing. The council have again shown what a dinosaur they are, totally incompetent in dealing with every issue that would be of benefit to Bristolians. The list is endless, no decent football/sports stadium,theatre or music venue, poor road network, poor bus service, poor schools, poor hospitals etc etc. Do the honourable thing council and resign on block.
Mark, Brislington

There is nothing left to be said about Bristol City Council, they are completely useless. Anything that Bristol and its citizens want (such as this stadium, better train and road links) is almost always doomed. But on the other hand anything they don’t want is completely guaranteed. Why do the people of Bristol put up with Ms Holland and her bunch of imcompetents, surely this newspaper and all Bristolians could start a campaign to rid the city of these people once and for all and make sure they never work in local government again, then maybe this city could start catching up the 40 years it is behind almost every other city in this country.
Alan, Bristol

Yet again the people of Bristol have been betrayed.The council should hang their heads in shame.
Steve, Bristol

Knight explains why it went wrong by saying “more detailed work on the specific designs and the building and infrastructure costs had to be carried out before we could make a further commitment. This work has revealed that the costs are higher than was originally anticipated…” Doesn’t common sense say you do this sort of detailed work BEFORE you spend the money on the site?
Faye, Horfield

More millions poured down the drain by our incompetent council, first the tram and now the arena, what will millions of pounds be wasted on next I wonder?
swampy, charfield

The Evening Post should make a stand against our incompetent council for the people of Bristol. The issue of not building a venue is just the icing on the cake. BCC is responsible for a whole catalogue of cock ups. It’s about time we got the lot out!
Graham, Bristol

Isn’t it time the city had councillors with vision and leadership?
Paul Tanner, Stoke Gifford

I think if we are all honest none of us really ever thought a wonderful opportunity like this would be taken by the powers that be, who continually hold this city back with their lack of imagination and foresight.
Steve, Portishead

Sad? How about fuming, angry and other words that are unprintable! This is one project that needs to be put under investigation and all involved for maladministration.
Kathryn Courtney-O’Neill, Bristol

It’s not a surprise to most of us our sports stadia are rubbish, our schools are rubbish, our public transport is rubbish, even the rubbish collection is, well, rubbish. You could say the name of Bristol is more or less rubbish
steve, bristol

Yet again the citizens of Bristol have been let down by their elected representatives. We must be the only major city in Britain whose ‘leaders’ seem intent on providing the facilities and infrastructure that belongs in the 1950s.
Gary M, Horfield

What a joke.
comedy dave, bristol

This is an absolute farce.. Yet again, our over paid, incompetant council has sold us down the river.Perhaps, they have been on the same training courses as our neighbours in BANES.Absolute RUBBISH, like the services we all pay so dearly for.
Bob Goff, Bristol

Heads must roll for this at the highest level.
thelittlebigman, bristol

THIS IS A DISGRACE- I can only hope the readers of the Post kick up enough of a stink to make this issue raised in parliament. WE DESERVE BETTER.
Craig, Bristol

The people of Bristol have been let down yet again . The question that should be asked is instead of scrapping the arena why dont we scrap the SWRDA.This bunch of incompetent under achievers have consistantly led Bristolians Duke of York style to the top of the hill only to march them back down again. Bristolians should ask what use are they to Bristol? and are they a good use of public money?
D.McGeer, Redcliffe

Just listened to the Terry Wagstaff interview. No wonder this city is up the creek with people like that running it.
Matt

Another example of our shockingly poor council: it’s SuperTram all over again. Bristol lacks a vision and a purpose – the council seems to charge ever more and deliver ever less: poor schools, bad public transport and terrible leisure facilities. Can we please have some leaders who have both vision AND management skills!
Steve, St George

£13 million wasted, who is going to pay the tax payers back? and who’s neck in on the line for their dismal display. It verges on fraud and theft.
Peter Smith

I am extremely disappointed with all concerned that all that public money from SWRDA has effectively been handed over to private developers to build more unimaginative flats and offices which will not give our city and noticeable benefit.
Scott Jacobs-Lange

The Arena just joins the list of things in Bristol that have been delayed for years or cancelled. This includes the appalling public transport system.We learn today that the new City Council Chief Executive cannot start her job until Easter. This rather sums up the council for me, delay and more delay. Time for an elected Mayor who will get things done!
Geoff Leonard

Can this city really go on like this any longer?

Plenty more comments available at the BBC and the Cancer and on the blogs: Nicolas Webb, Kerry McCarthy, James Barlow

Posted in Bristol, Culture, Developments, Lawrence Hill, Local government, SWRDA | Tagged | There are 3 comments