Evelyn Post's Tory marathon shocker!!!

Posted on September 14, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Tory Bristol North West candidate Charlotte Leslie completes the Bristol half marathon on Sunday…

Charlotte Leslie - half marathon

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

Posted in Bristol, Bristol North west, Conservatives, Evelyn Post, Toffs | | There are no comments yet

Toff's looney index

Posted on September 13, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Cabbage

The latest salvo fired by this emerging toff/green alliance is today’s publication of the Tory’s Quality of Life Report, produced by billionaire environmentalist Zac Goldsmith and Thatcherite oddity John Gummer, fondly remembered by many for trying to force feed his daughter poisonous beefburgers in the 80s.

They report to Lord Snooty Cameron that something called the “Happy Planet Index” rather than GDP should be used to measure our wellbeing.

Well what a spiffing idea that is chaps. How utterly, utterly brilliant and completely sane and rational. Under this genius measurement of our happiness Iran scores 53 and the USA 28!

While an oppressive regime with a legal system based on medievalist superstitions might be an attractive style of government to landowning toffs and their new environmentalist friends – after all one form of right wing authoritarianism is pretty much the same as another – it may not suit the majority of us quite so well.

Indeed The Bristol Blogger could possibly not be too happy banged up indefinitely in an Iranian prison – alongside trade unionists, communists, socialists, anarchists, feminists, queers, prostitutes, drug users, aldulterers or anyone else vaguely normal – with only a public execution to look forward too.

But hell. There’s more to this wellbeing lark than silly old freedom of expression isn’t there?

Posted in Bristol, Conservatives, Global warming, Green Party, Loonspuddery, Politics, Toffs | | There are 7 comments

Educashion, educashion, educashion

Posted on September 12, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Evening Post Education supplemrnt

Well over £1m a year spent on management plus another £1m or more spent on various management consultants and between them, the rest of Bristol’s Education Department and the multi-million pound corporate PR team they can’t even spell and punctuate a fucking advert properly.

The advert above appeared in Tuesday’s Evening Cancer in a special pull-out education supplement tucked away inside the paper to promote local secondary schools to parents.

Unfortunately our city’s education department can’t spell ‘Brunel’ (it’s the ‘Briunel Academy’ according to them) and nor can they write in sentences. . . Surely the headline running across the top needs a full stop?

Who in their right mind would entrust their kids’ future to this lot?

Posted in Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Education, Local government | | There are 3 comments

Billbordering on the ridiculous

Posted on September 12, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Adbusters

More news on the unwanted billboards in St Werburghs. It turns out a Bristol City Council report has recommended their removal because of their effect on amenity and safety in the area and the billboard site also now falls within the Montpelier Conservation Area.

Result? Er, nothing’s happened because, “this would take considerable resources”. In other words it would cost them money better spent on important things like rearranging their office furniture.

Meanwhile the fact that the city council is funding the organisation that owns the site and profits from the billboards they say should be removed seems to pass them by entirely. Whatever happened to paying the piper and calling the tune?

Posted in Ashley, Bristol, Local government | | There is 1 comment

“Fifteen minutes south” (slight return)

Posted on September 12, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Lake Shore - Urban Splash

The ads say:

“A sustainable landmark bringing geo-thermal heating & carbon saving to Bristol”

And that it’s:

“fifteen minutes south of Bristol City Centre”

So what “carbon saving” form of travel gets you from Bristol City Centre to Hartcliffe in fifteen minutes? Walking or by bus you’d get to Asda Bedminster; by bike you’d get to the bottom of Hartcliffe Way (unless you’re super-fit).

That just leaves. . . Surely not. . . It cannot be. . . That they mean fifteen minutes by that well known carbon saving device the motor car?

Are our new best developer friends, Urban Splash, encouraging people to live in Hartcliffe and drive to work in the centre in order to save carbon? Is that the sweet, sweet smell of greenwash filling my nostrils?

Posted in Bristol, Developments, Hartcliffe | | There are 3 comments

EXCLUSIVE: Pigfucker resignation sensation!

Posted on September 11, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Is that an audible cheer we hear coming from the Council House?

The Blogger’s received this email from so many sources that it seems like half the council’s staff are just sitting about waiting for senior officers to finally do the decent thing and fuck off out of our lives:

Gurney goes!!!

There it is. Not even six months of The Blogger yet and they’re already throwing in the towel. Not that Gurney would have a towel to throw in as he’d have privatised it two years ago with the help of a series of management consultants. Perhaps he could throw in the receipt for the towel instead? Along with the bill for the consultants and a ‘best value’ review proving that privatised towels when thrown provide an improved customer experience of up to forty per cent?

You’ve got to admire his front though haven’t you? “There is no right time to leave,” the £130k a year waster claims. Maybe not. But there is a lucrative time for him to leave, which is after he’s served at least three years on this, his most excessive salary yet. He will then receive his very generous public sector pension at that finishing salary rate.

And how long has Pig Fucker Gurney been in Bristol? Why three years of course. What a coincidence…

As for the hopeless case’s achievements, amounting to “five Beacon Council awards and numerous Chartermarks”, what can we say? You’ve earned the right to put a few shitty, meaningless logos on your notepaper. Whoopee!!! What a useful life you’ve led.

But no mention of the mounting chaos he’s left our schools in is there? Especially the load of semi-private city academies that have randomly cropped up on his watch that in turn have created the multi-million pound half-empty rebuilt new PFI schools currently being given away to right wing religious nutjobs while we foot the bill for the next 25 years.

Then there’s that extra £6m Gurney and his overpaid sidekick Heather Tomlinson blew on the “flagship” Redland Green School. We don’t see any little logos on letterheads representing these multi-million pound balls-ups do we?

No mention either from Gurney about social services. What about the multi-million pound debt run-up there on his watch? No mention of scrapped day care services, scrapped home care services or the fact that the concept of care has now totally disappeared from Bristol’s Social Services altogether.

In fact what is it that this clown’s supposed to have achieved? Is there now a charter mark available for bending over and being boned up the backside on a regular basis by big business property developers?

Perhaps The Blogger could be the first to tell Pig Fucker Gurney to fuck off back to Hampshire or Berkshire or wherever it is he came from and to please not bother coming back? (He could even spend his retirement in the shires campaigning for road charging to keep chavscum off the road so he and the missus can get to Tescos in Winchester a bit quicker)

He was overpaid, underperforming and nobody here ever even wanted him – except for a few stupid Labour politicians because they thought he was more stupid than them. . . Which they might have been right about. . .

And finally; a piece of bad news: apparently Helen Holland is “plan[ing] for a seamless transition to a new Chief Executive.”

God help us. What have they got in mind for us this time?

Posted in Ashton Court, Bristol, Local government, Politics | | There are 20 comments

Scrapstore scrap

Posted on September 10, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Mark Walton - scrap the billboard

The ongoing campaign by the community in St Werburghs, represented by its Neighbourhood Association, to get rid of the advertising billboards in the area that don’t even have planning permission to be there has taken a new turn.

A local activist, Mark Boyle, mounted a 24 hour vigil against the billboards on Thursday at the site of some of the offending and legally dubious billboards owned by the Children’s Scrapstore, a recycling charity that moved into the area just a couple of years ago.

It’s all a bit embarrassing for the charity and its retail arm, Artrageous, who arrived in St Werburghs spouting warm words and all the usual voluntary sector, right-on community values nonsense and now find themselves at loggerheads with that same community.

Not that you would know it if you read the organisation’s annual report from last year. Their brassnecked boss tells the charity’s funders and supporters:

The general public support of Artrageous is increasing and we are therefore integrating with the community as we hoped in our plan to move to St Werburghs

And goes on:

It was always a major part of the business plan to increase trade from this area while cementing community links.

Whoops! It must have momentarily slipped their minds – just as they were writing their annual report too – that they’re actually involved in a major row with the local community. Never mind. Who needs the truth? Probably not the public bodies disbursing the public funds to the charity on our behalves.

The charity meanwhile, in its defence, is claiming it needs the money earned from the billboards to remain solvent. They say:

“It may be some consolation to realise the money earned from the boards goes directly to helping children both locally and across Bristol.”

Not strictly true either. The majority of the money actually goes directly on staff wages who in turn might be “helping children both locally and across Bristol” although apparently not the local community they work in.

It might be worth some of these anti-billboard campaigners taking the time to have a closer look at the Scrapstore’s annual report themselves. It reveals that at least two of the trustees appear to have earned money from the charity but have not obtained permission from the Charity Commission to do this.

So it looks like it’s not just planning law the charity’s breaking at present.

Perhaps too, the five “observers” from various local authorities listed in this annual report who, it’s assumed, are supposed to be directly overseeing the tax payers’ money handed to the charity ought to get off their clueless, lazy arses and start doing their jobs properly as well.

Bristol City Council’s observer, incidentally, is Tom Williams a Service Manager for Young People’s Services in the Culture and Leisure Services Department. Wonder how much he’s paid not to notice breaches of the law?

Posted in Ashley, Bristol, Local government, Recycling | | There are 2 comments

CONsultation: how it works (continued)

Posted on September 9, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

CONsultation

Nice example this week of some more analysis-free pant wetting from the so-called journalists of the local press.

As part of his visit on Thursday, much play was made in The Cancer and on the local BBC of the so-called citizens’ jury “on issues related to children” Gordon Brown was also attending during his trip to the new Brunel Academy in Speedwell.

This jury, we were led to believe by our local press, was not just a crafty photo-op for Gordon to beam away alongside some happy, engaged-looking parents out in the provinces but an authentic opportunity for local people to engage and make a difference to government as part of Gordo’s “new politics”.

Fast forward to Friday and The Guardian’s front page: New nuclear row as green groups pull out. Here we learned that most of the UK’s environment charities are pulling out of a legally required consultation process involving 1,100 members of the public over the future of nuclear energy because, the charities claim, the government is distorting the evidence they are presenting to the public.

This huge consultation process is run by an organisation called Opinion Leader Research who are also entirely responsible for collating and presenting – what should be – the objective information for the public to consider on this issue.

So who organised the citizens’ jury at Speedwell on Thursday then? And who provided the objective information to the jurors? You got it – Opinion Leader Research!

Opinion Leader Research have considerable form where Gordon Brown is concerned too. The former head of the organisation Deborah Mattinson is so close to Brown she’s often described as Gordo’s “personal pollster” and the amount of contracts awarded from the Treasury during Brown’s tenure to OLR has been raising eyebrows for years.

On one famous occasion the Treasury even paid OLR over £153k to arrange a one day seminar on “The Skills Challenge: A Public Debate”… Nice work if you can get it!

All this stuff is, of course, very well known by the national dead tree press who just choose not to report it. This is partly because the press traditionally has little interest in – or understanding of – the minutiae of government and power such as its day-to-day relationships and financial transactions but also because these kind of relationships between politicians and favoured organisations are so endemic to government these days they’re considered normal by many Westminster-based journalists.

Now it seems local reporters are only too happy to join in with their own shallow, glowing reports of the great New Labour public consultation deception as well.

(The Blogger, incidentally, is keeping a very wary eye on the citizens’ jury taking place later this week on the future of the city’s waste and recycling services. It’ll be interesting to see how the local press report it.)

Posted in Bristol, Labour Party, Politics | | There are no comments yet

Toffs open day

Posted on September 8, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Society of Merchant Venturers

Doors Open Day today and we’ve just got back from a guided tour of Merchant’s House, the Merchant Venturer HQ, conducted by “the one they call the master” or Tim Pearce to his friends (if he’s got any).

What a gormless toff twat he is… Which are all the qualifications you need to go a long way in this town.

Posted in Bristol, Merchant Venturers, Politics, The Useless Old Fuckpot Files | | There are no comments yet

"Fifteen minutes south"

Posted on September 8, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Lake Shore

Developers Urban Splash are being very coy about where their new luxury ‘Lake Shore’ residential development actually is.

The site of the former Imperial Tobacco factory, nestled charmingly between a dual carriageway and some out-of-town retail sheds, is usually described as being in Hartcliffe although it’s also very near to Hengrove and maybe even Whitchurch.

You’d not know this from the copious advertising the developers have plastered across Bristol recently though. Their preferred euphemism for the development’s whereabouts is “fifteen minutes south of Bristol City Centre”. What are Urban Splash trying to hide?

Nearby residents, meanwhile, are beginning to pick up on the marketing techniques at work here and are becoming concerned about what may be coming their way. Afterall the original Imperial factory, just a generation ago, was sold as a big business, long term “investment” in the area and look how that turned out. Here’s what a resident said to The Cancer recently:

I think it’s great that this site has finally been developed. However, what are the developers doing regarding offering locals (say, currently living within 3 miles of the site) the opportunity to buy any of the apartments? I think it’s great that prices are starting at under £100K but can see these being snapped up by investors and those who are first time buyers etc being left out of luck.
Claire, Bristol

Posted in Bristol, Developments, Hartcliffe | | There are 7 comments