The new pain in the backside

Posted on December 13, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Christmas, it seems, has come early for Jan Ormondroyd.

Although she might sound like something very painful up your backside that you should urgently consult a doctor about, she’s actually been appointed the city’s new Chief Executive on a bumper £180k a year!

Jan, whose CV demonstrates a total lack of any knowledge whatsoever of Bristol, is yet another typically ruthlessly ambitious career civil servant off the conveyor belt who’s spent most of her career in, er, Bradford and became a Chief Exec in Suffolk for a few months before fucking off to John Prescott’s rotten borough, Hull, for more money and prestige.

She’s also worked for Prescott’s completely dysfunctional Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) as some sort of consultant doing something incomprehensibly weird and bureaucratic that appears to have enhanced her already lucrative career no end.

Given the extensive background in Prescottism, expect a massively expanded and expensive Chief Exec’s Department obssessed with PR and employing a dizzying revolving door of consultants doing things about “performance management” through “target indicators”. Oh – and don’t be surprised if everything that’s not nailed down is privatised.

So far The Blogger’s discovered no skeleton in the cupboard – or should that be hole in the ground? – to match Pigfucker Gurney’s Portsmouth fiascoes but the search is on…

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

WORLD EXCLUSIVE – Blunkett: "Why are you such a fucking greedy bastard"?

Posted on December 12, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Extraordinary scenes yesterday at the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster when a couple of the Met’s goons attempted to arrest Ian Bone after speaking at a conference on community empowerment at the invitation of the Scarman Trust.

Bone, who spoke at the conference alongside that perfect symbol of New Labour’s moral and political decay, the disgraced and disgraceful former-Home Secretary David Blunkett, scuffled with two coppers accompanying Blunkett after they threatened to arrest him “for public order offences”.

Bone, addressing an audience consisting largely of London-based voluntary sector stuffed shirts and Home Office-types, probably more interested in funding their next career move than genuinely empowering any community, finished his speech with a devastating attack on Blunkett, his failure to attend Parliament on behalf of his constituents and his vast extra-parliamentary income assembled from right wing newspaper groups and speeches to big business.

We were even treated to this New Labour champion of communities and selfless battler for the poor, Blunkett’s, recent comments to the Sheffield Telegraph: “There seems to be no understanding in many restaurants in Sheffield about the nature of glasses used for white and red wine,” says the left wing firebrand.

Blimey. Can you imagine?

On a roll, Bone finished with a flourish telling the audience – and an absolutely livid Blunkett to his face – “if you ask Comrade Blunkett one question today ask him why he’s such a fucking greedy bastard”!

Bone then left the stage where he was immediately confronted by Blunkett’s publicly funded heavies who threatened him with arrest, although they had to back off pretty sharpish when mainly black members of the audience and a contingent from Bristol came rushing to his aid.

Amid this chaos Blunkett rose and was heard plaintively wailing “But you people haven’t heard what I do for the poor . . .”

What’s that then Dave? Shag American heiresses and fix passports for their maids?

A bad day for Blunkett and his hapless heavies was nicely rounded off when, in their haste to get Bone out of the building, they handed him Blunkett’s coat – the only thing they actually had to guard at the event!

The coat was handed back to the pair of, by now, panicking incompetents a few minutes later. Bone said: “The coat was returned as I didn’t want that scrounger Blunkett swanning around on my bus pass.”

Posted in Activism, Labour Party, MPs, Politics | Tagged , | There are 5 comments

First's fine solution

Posted on December 12, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

First Bristol has been fined almost £50,000 for failing to run its bus services on time.The company was fined by Philip Brown, Bristol’s deputy traffic commissioner, £150 for each of the 325 vehicles it operates in the city.
Bristol Evening Post, 5 December 2007

Bus passengers in the Bristol area face a fare hike of up to 20p on a single ticket in the New Year.
Bristol Evening Post, 10 December 2007

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

Parking news

Posted on December 11, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

The Lord Mayor parking at the Chapel

Within just days of the Labour-run administration raising parking charges to ten pounds a day and threatening inner-city residents with a costly Controlled Parking Zone we are given a nice little insight into a Labour councillor’s personal ‘Christian’ approach to parking issues.

The illegally parked vehicle pictured belongs to idle hypocrite and Labour Lord Mayor Royston Griffey. It’s waiting for him outside the Lord Mayor’s Chapel, just yards from parking spaces at the Council House.

Welcome to Christian values Bristol Labour style – “you do what you’re told and we’ll do what we like”.

Hat tip: James Barlow

Posted in Bristol, Labour Party, Local government, Transport | Tagged | There are 3 comments

Rotten Borough: welcome to the Labour launderette

Posted on December 10, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Laundered money

Did ya hear the one about the local political party that returns three MPs to Westminster and has run the city council for most of the last 30 years but doesn’t present any public accounts?

You have now. It’s Bristol’s confusing Labour Party. This party, that dominates political life in this city, appears to provide no coherent financial information whatsoever to the electorate on how it might be operating its finances.

Since 2001 political parties have been required to present financial information to the Electoral Commission on any section of their party (“accounting units” in the jargon) that has an income of over £25,000pa.

So what d’ya know? None of the 43(!!!) sections of Bristol’s Labour Party handling cash that we’ve so far discovered has ever had an income of over £25,000pa since 2001! Fancy that.

This state of affairs should stretch your credulity a little when you consider the party, in this period, has fought two general elections, six local elections and a Euro election in 2004 plus of course it has had to administrate itself, run a network of constituency parties, ward parties and quite a few city-wide party groupings plus maintain regular contact with the electorate.

You might find it especially extraordinary that Labour’s Bristol West Constituency Party, in a marginal constituency where tough and expensive election campaigns on behalf of its former-MP Valerie Davey have been fought, has never, apparently, exceeded this limit.

Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that our local Labour Party’s funding and financial arrangements are so opaque, complex and impenetrably interlinked that they make no sense at all?

A brief look at Bristol Labour’s local election expenditure this year reveals that their funds are spent through a sprawling, incomprehensible and confused network of organisations – all unincorporated associations no doubt! – labeling themselves in various ways as ‘the Labour Party’.

This network starts at the ward level where we find each of the city’s 35 wards has a local Labour group spending money at election times. Then you find more Labour organisations operating at citywide level. So far we’ve discovered ‘the Bristol Labour Party’; ‘the Bristol Labour Group; ‘the Labour Group of Bristol City Council’ and ‘the Bristol Local Government Committee’ all apparently engaged in some form of fundraising and party political spending activity.

There’s also, of course, Constituency Labour Parties for Bristol North West, Bristol South, Bristol East and Bristol West. Again, they’re all spending on elections and are possibly in receipt of donations and fundraising income. Grafted on to these constituency parties – somehow – are also the well-resourced and staffed MPs’ constituency offices where appropriate.

As if this network weren’t confusing enough, you then find that these different organisations appear to be cross-subsidising each other. At the last local elections Labour candidates were generally funded by a combination of their ward level group, their local constituency party and ‘The Bristol Labour Party’. All these groups individually were therefore conveniently spending less than the Electoral Commission’s £25k limit in a year.

A cynic might say that the purpose of such a ludicrously complex network of groups – all sharing the same members – is to avoid financial declarations to the Electoral Commission and the public. So much for Labour’s “transparent and open” regime in Bristol then.

Indeed, if there’s anyone out there looking to launder some money you should try joining the local Labour Party and get yourself a position as a Treasurer or Secretary on one of these 43 separate organisations they’re running. How the hell could they properly monitor what you were up to?

Anyone with any idea how Bristol Labour’s finances actually work is welcome to get in touch.

Note: the beginning of our search into Labour’s election expenditure this year reveals that the Bristol North West Constituency Labour Party, the recipient of a generous £10k donation from ‘the Bristol Labour Group’, spent no money at all on these elections. We continue to dig . . .

Posted in Bristol, Labour Party, Local elections 2007, Local government | Tagged , , | There are 3 comments

Bristol City Council artwatch update

Posted on December 10, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Cock

It looks like The Blogger’s lonely campaign to get the Philip Street graffiti accepted by the city council as “art” just like Banksy – mainly to irritate the fuck out them – might be about to catch fire.

Over on the mysterious Doppleganger’s blog there’s a decent review of the Home Sweet Home Banksy book launch on Thursday night that includes a rather elegant analysis of how subversive culture plays into the hands of late capitalism. His basic argument is that no matter what you throw at the old capitalist beast it will simply manufacture it, package it, price it and sell it back to you for a nice little profit.

However Doppleganger suggests a way out of this bind:

I been reading a lot lately about atavism, the idea that bits of old code and evolutionary dead ends can suddenly spring to life vital and new. Dolphins with legs, chickens with teeth, kids with tails.

Culturally, this would mean streetart exhibiting qualities long thought smothered under the influence of the hiphop spray can and artful acetate. A return to days when spraycans were sniffed by the simple before carving WHUFC or NF or ICF in the deep gloss paint of a park bench. When the tools of the trade where to be found in an tin maths set – clogged tippex, a compass needle, the flint-like edge of a shattered protractor…..

Now it’s official. That Philip Street grafitti is at the cutting edge. How do we get a preservation order on it?

The Bristol Blogger’s Sunday Review of Books Banksy Special is now scheduled to appear around Tuesday/Wednesday. We can confirm that our reviewer has indeed now read the book although they also consumed two bottles of wine at the same time and “can’t remember much of it to be honest but I liked the pictures”.

Posted in Bedminster, Bristol, Culture, Graffiti | Tagged , | There is 1 comment

Rotten borough: Questions and answers

Posted on December 9, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Labour donations

An unincorporated association listed by the Electoral Commission as ‘The Bristol Labour Group’, The Council House, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR has donated £10,000 in cash to the Bristol North West Constituency Labour Party. So what?

Q. What’s an unincorporated association?

A. The law relating to unincorporated associations is not fully settled and it is complex. A popular definition is:

“An association of two or more people who have come together to achieve a common purpose, set out in a constitution.”

However unincorporated associations are not required to register with or be regulated by either Companies House, the Financial Services Authority or the Charity Commission. They are not therefore publicly accountable bodies. Neither is there any clear legal requirement for an unincorporated association to have a formal written constitution or set of rules.

This effectively means ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ can operate with no apparent officials, directors, trustees, employees or any other accountable person. It also does not have to keep or reveal public accounts or financial information. They do not even have to reveal their membership. This allows them an extremely high degree of secrecy in their business dealings.

Traditionally unincorporated associations have been used by organisations whose administration is very, very simple and uncontroversial, such as local and community organisations running things like village halls, parent teacher associations or OAP lunch clubs.

However unincorporated associations have grown in popularity in recent years as vehicles for making donations to political parties. This is because the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA) allows unincorporated associations as “permissable donors” to political parties.

One potential downside to an unincorporated association is that it has no separate legal identity. This means that every member carries the risk of personal liability (including criminal liability). For tax purposes an incorporated association is treated as a company and is therefore liable to corporation tax.

Q. So it’s not illegal to donate money to political parties through unincorporated associations then?

No it’s not. Although an opinion is forming that they provide a loophole in the law that can be exploited to make anonymous donations to political parties.

Q. So could an unincorporated association like ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ be used to disguise large donations from individuals who wish to remain anonymous?

A. Yes they could. The Electoral Commission has even informally confirmed to The Blogger that unincorporated associations could be abused in this way although it is difficult to prove.

Q. What’s suspicious about this £10k donation from ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ then?

A. For starters £10k is a lot of money to raise from a quick whip round of Labour’s councillors for a one-0ff donation to a local constituency party. Also ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ has never donated money to the Labour Party in this way before.

It seems strange too that the money has been donated either side of a local election campaign when you might have thought funds were needed for this. And why would councillors from Bristol South, Bristol East and Bristol West choose to donate their money to Bristol North West?

Finally it’s notable that ‘The Bristol Labour Group’s’ donation to Bristol North West is the largest donation from any local authority Labour Group made to a constituency party this year.

Q. Yes but don’t Labour councillors have to donate a certain amount of their expenses to the Labour Party?

A. Some local authority Labour Groups require this and it is a possibility that the £10k was raised in this way from Bristol’s Labour councillors. But ordinarily councillors would donate their money direct to Labour Party HQ openly and transparently.

This would also be the first time Bristol Labour councillors have donated “blind” to the Labour Party. Why would they all change to an unaccountable and secretive method? (Especially after making such a fuss when they took power in May of running a more “open and transparent” council) And why would councillors from other constituencies donate their money to the Bristol North West constituency?

Q. Surely £10k isn’t that much money to donate in a year is it?

A. For a small, middle class group of 23 full-time politicians, part-time public/charity sector workers and retired people, it’s quite a lot of money to raise. Especially as the group would also have had to find the money to fund 24 local election campaigns as well this year.

Q. Why don’t our Labour councillors just tell us where the money came from?

A. Normally you would expect politicians to make a political judgement based on minimising damage to themselves. They should consider whether it’s more damaging to reveal where the money came from and what’s really going on than it is to allow endless rumour and speculation to swirl around them.

It would therefore seem ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ believe that damaging rumours and speculation about their party funding arrangements are preferable to the truth about them.

There is a caveat to that however. It should be remembered that the Bristol Labour Party has run the city for most of the last 30 years. This has engendered in the party a complete arrogance, egotism and stupidity. So it’s just as likely that the Bristol Labour Party doesn’t know how to make political judgements any more and simply sees itself as above having to answer for its behaviour.

Q. Have any other parties in Bristol donated money in this way?

Yes, two other unincorporated associations – ‘the Liberal Democrat Group’ and the ‘Horfield & Bishopston Unionist’ (sic) – have donated money in this way, albeit less significant amounts.

Many questions being asked of the Labour Party should therefore also be asked of the Lib Dems and Tories. This may explain why the opposition to Labour in Bristol is not interested in taking up party funding issues with them.

Q. How can we find out where the money Labour donated came from?

A. With a lot of difficulty. However, The Blogger’s research team, having made a number of initial enquiries last week, is hoping to approach Bristol Labour councillors later this week. Remember, though, that our resources are limited, so this may take longer.

Q. If it turns out that the donation was legitimate have Labour done anything wrong?

Regardless of the origin of the donation, all members of ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ have failed to register an interest in the Register of Members’ Interests at the Council House. They may have also used city council facilities and political staff for party political, fundraising and donation purposes. This is technically illegal. And, depending on the origin of the cash, there may be issues for them with the Inland Revenue.

Got any questions about ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ and their donations? Ask and we’ll try and answer!

For the purposes of PPERA, a donation is defined as anything received by

the Party or any of its local associations from one single source having a

value of over £200 per year either by way of gift, donation, sponsorship,

subscription, or affiliation, received either as money or in kind

Posted in Bristol, Labour Party, Local government | | There are 4 comments

Banksy Balls at the Arnolfini

Posted on December 8, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Banksy - Blank Walls are Criminal

Trudging home on a windswept Thursday night past the Arnolfini, the sight of a table full of free red wine in the book shop was enough to pull The Blogger in to grab a ten quid copy of Home Sweet Home.

Once in – three glasses of red in hand and hemmed silently in the corner of the tiny shop by at least fifty members of Bristol’s chattering classes – it struck The Blogger that this was an ideal shoplifting opportunity . . .

So you’ll be glad to know that here at Blogger HQ we are now the proud owners of a lovely pristine copy of Space and Social Theory: Interpreting Modernity and Postmodernity.

The only problem is no-one here can understand a fucking word of it. Neither can we find anyone to buy it so it might as well be put back on Monday.

You’ve got to admire the gallery’s anti-theft measures though: fill the place with such a load of incomprehensible shite it’s beyond worthless.

Look out for that EXCLUSIVE Home Sweet Home review in tomorrow’s Bristol Blogger Review (available by about Tuesday).

Posted in Banksy, Bristol | | There is 1 comment

Rotten borough latest

Posted on December 7, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

A friend of The Blogger’s with a good head for figures has produced a very handy spreadsheet listing every donation handed to the Labour Party by a local ‘Labour Group’ since records started in 2001.

‘Labour Groups’ are the ones that organise themselves, often inside our town halls, as highly secretive and unaccountable unincorporated associations for fundraising and donation purposes. And very interesting information this spreadsheet yields too.

We’ve not had time to go into it in too much detail yet. But the spreadsheet indeed confirms that the two donations made this year from ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ to the Bristol North West Constituency Labour Party are the only ones to have ever been made by them using this secretive and underhand method ideal for anonymity and total non-accountability.

Moreover – to give you some sense of proportion here – The Blogger can confirm that their donation – £10k in total – is the largest gift from one of these unincorporated Labour Groups to a Labour Constituency Party to have been made this year.

We can also confirm that Labour’s national network of unincorporated associations – working for the grassroots of a party that promised to clean up sleaze in politics and be “whiter than white” – have between them donated almost £1m since 2001 to the Labour Party.

And because this vast amount of cash has been funneled into the Labour Party through these secretive and unaccountable devices that do not have to keep public accounts or financial records of any kind, this means there’s no way of knowing where any of this money really originated.

This seems extraordinary. A group of people responsible for high-finance, high-stakes stuff like granting planning permission, handling waste, procuring major capital projects, awarding multi-million pound contracts to private sector firms and handing political power at both local and national levels to their associates appears to have been provided with an entirely anonymous, secretive and unaccountable conduit for laundering funds into their political party. You couldn’t make it up could you?

The Labour Party, however, while brazenly running these funny money associations for itself, has been getting its knickers in a twist over certain other unincorporated associations recently. Between April 16, 2003, and March 14, 2006, the Conservative Party received 52 donations from the Midlands Industrial Council (MIC), an unincorporated association, totalling £968,690 – a little less than the Labour Party has raised through its network of town hall ‘Labour Groups’.

Hazel Blears, when she was the Labour Party chairman, even slammed the MIC as an example of Tory ”secrecy” on funding. She’s also described the MIC as a “shadowy” organisation about which little is known and has said:

“If David Cameron continues to remain secretive about such an important source of funding for the Conservative Party then the Electoral Commission should consider the use of its supervisory powers to investigate the Midlands Industrial Council and its donations to the Conservatives.”

Indeed they should and while they’re at it perhaps the Electoral Commission should consider the use of its supervisory powers to investigate this sleazy and unaccountable network of ‘Labour Groups’ – many seemingly operating with impunity from inside our town halls where their hands are actually on the levers of power – and their generous, inexplicable and apparently unaffordable gifts to the Labour Party.

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

Labour funding: an interesting proximity of cash to candidacy

Posted on December 6, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Another day, another ‘Bristol Labour Group’ donation mystery . . .

But first a quick recap: What we have is cash donations amounting to exactly £10k, made in two large tranches, from an unincorporated association – ‘the Bristol Labour Group’, which only has one declared member and is based in a public office, staffed by Local Government Officers at the Council House – to the Bristol North West Constituency Labour Party.

Now The Blogger finds after a careful search of the Electoral Commission’s register of donors that the only donations that have ever been made to any local Bristol Constituency Labour Party – or the national Labour Party – by ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ were these two donations made to Bristol North West this year in February and June.

These donations therefore appear to represent a rather new and novel method for members of ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ to donate money to their party.

It’s perhaps notable too that no similar donations have been made to the other Constituency Labour Parties in Bristol – West, East and South – by ‘the Bristol Labour Group’.

What’s so special about Bristol North West? What’s it done to deserve this extraordinarily generous and entirely original donation from ‘the Bristol Labour Group’?

A question you could ask is: what was the money for? The dates of the donations perhaps offer a clue. £4.5k was donated on the February 9 2007 and the other on June 30 2007. This places the donations either side of the local elections on May 3 2007.

Perhaps, then, the Bristol Labour Group was putting up money to fund their local election campaigns in the wards of the Bristol North West Constituency?

Afraid not. No wards in the Bristol North West Constituency were up for election this year. This makes the donations even more unusual. Wouldn’t this large sum of money have been more useful in, say, Bristol South or Bristol East where there were some tough election battles to fight?

So why the hell would ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ donate a huge sum of money to a constituency party that didn’t really need it on either side of a local election campaign involving their own wards and candidates that would have undoubtedly benefited from it?

Well. There was one election going on in Bristol North West this year. Or rather a selection. A new parliamentary candidate was needed by the Bristol North West Constituency Labour Party to replace their retiring MP, Doug Naysmith.

The candidates list, consisting of local former Filwood councillor Kelvin Blake, London barrister and Lambeth councillor Sam Townend and a couple of deadbeats, was finally drawn up on the 7 May 2007, after the first generous donation from ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ had been banked.

The winner of the contest, Sam Townend, was then selected by the Bristol North West Constituency Labour Party as their Prospective Parliamentary Candidate on June 25 2007. A further donation was then accepted by Bristol North West Constituency Labour Party from ‘the Bristol Labour Group’ on 30 June 2007.

Here’s what some local Labour members and activists had to say about Townend’s selection:

“Sam Townend is a bizarre choice. Kelvin Blake had strong local credentials, a compelling personal story of triumph over adversity, is a good campaigner and had the extremely vocal backing of the Bristol Evening Post. Looking from the outside, I cannot conceive of why they didn’t chose him.”

“Labour have now left Paul Harrod (for the Lib Dems) free to play the local choice card and lost the opportunity to play the “parachute” card against Charlotte Leslie. They have antagonised the Evening Post and lost a chunk of activists over it. Was this a trade union led decision? Just seems very strange.”

“There is no evidence of Townend having much campaign know-how from his poor result in Reigate last time. He got a large swing against the Lib Dems in Lambeth in the locals but that was a borough wide swing against the administration and a particular ward “issue” (some have said there was an aggressively homophobic campaign against the Lib Dem incumbant but I do not have the local knowledge to verify this).”

From UK Polling Report

“The Labour party has made a right pigs ear of this selection, bringing in a London cllr & barrister (with what looks to be a deal of baggage) over a local ex-cllr, Kelvin Blake. This was always going to be a close one. Tory gain, unfortunately.”

From Vote-2007.co.uk

I suppose this is what you get from a constituency party that has Derek Pickup in it.

More soon . . .

Posted in Bristol, Labour Party, Local government | Tagged , , | There is 1 comment