Overspend watch

Posted on August 14, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Three months into the latest Labour leadership of the council and the financial cracks are beginning to show. First we had the announcement of a £5m overspend on the new Redland Green School, blame for which is still a matter of speculation although rest assured it’s us that’s got to pay.

Then we have the small matter of the overspending going on in adult care services while lame duck social services boss, Peter Hammond, prevaricates over crucial decisions on the future of the home care service and the council’s care homes. Decisions on both should have been taken in May. Hammond currently has the autumn pencilled in as decision time now, almost six months of unplanned expenditure later than expected.

Now we find that officers have blackmailed a further £2m – not budgeted for – out of the Labour cabinet for the proposed Hengrove Park development or the so-called “Healthplex”.

Last month’s cabinet meeting was told by senior officers – who shoved the documentation under the cabinet’s noses at the last minute to prevent any proper scrutiny taking place – that the whole project was “at risk” if £2m was not forthcoming from the council immediately. This money is now needed prior to any income from the land sales that were always supposed to cover the council’s commitment to a project that is meant to be a partnership with the SWRDA and the private sector.

Needless to say Labour Party bosses paid up. Although whether we’ll ever get this money back is a matter of debate. The best officers could say was that “a large part of the infrastructure costs MAY be recoverable from the SWRDA” and “it is ANTICIPATED that APPROXIAMATELY 50% of the cost will be covered by external funding”.

How delightfully vague. How delightfully Labour in Bristol. Already overspent by £7m and counting…

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

Bristol democracy watch

Posted on August 14, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Democracy

Here’s an interesting one. Last week Labour’s transport executive member Mark Bradshaw, who’s gone to the effort of actually getting elected by us, told the Evening Cancer he was not in favour of the proposed South Bristol ring road and that it “won’t work”.

Saturday saw a response, also in The Cancer, from the unelected SWRDA who argued “the ring road is the key to unlocking the areas potential and attracting big business to the south of the city”. They also argued that the road was vital for the regeneration of the south of the city.

It’ll be interesting to see whose view prevails on this in the long-run. Will it be the view of our democratically elected councillors, the vast majority of whom are overwhelmingly against the road? Indeed new council boss Helen Holland was re-elected this year on the basis of an election campaign against the ring road.

Or will it be the view of the unelected businessmen with Merchant Venturer connections that make up some of the SWRDA board members?

Watch this space.

Posted in Bristol, Developments, Labour Party, The Downs, Transport | | There are no comments yet

A towering example

Posted on August 13, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

The television event of the summer finishes tonight with the last episode of Anthony Wonke’s eight part documentary, The Tower, at 10.35pm on BBC 1. If you haven’t seen any of this so far, watch it while you can.

The premise is straightforward. The show follows the conversion by Berkeley Homes of a riverside former council block ‘Aragon Towers’ on Deptford’s Pepys Estate into the ‘Z Apartments’. These are expensive private flats, duplexes and penthouses offering “not only some of the best views in the capital but also stylish, light-flooded interiors and a specification providing the ultimate in high-rise living, style and sophistication.”

It then contrasts Berkeley’s Canary Wharf clients – part of London’s new economic elite whose concerns range all the way from obtaining an overpriced room with a view with a suitably urban, edgy backdrop to when the first gastro pub might finally appear in “up and coming” Deptford – with the day-today struggles of the residents of the Pepys Estate, examples of contemporary London’s marginalised, abandoned and disintergrating working classes.

A slow-burner, this, at times, bleak and gruelling documentary is developed over its eight episodes into an extraordinary tour de force teasing out contemporary economic realities and the appalling class divisions we are re-creating. At some point in the series you leave the 21st century entirely and realise that we have returned to the Dickensian squalor and Disraeli’s two nations of the 19th Century. How did we get here?

The star of the show is Lol Gilbert – a man so nice he gives heroin addiction a good name – who along with his mate Nicky, who he met in a skip, collects scrap metal every day to sell to feed their heroin and alcohol addictions respectively.

This pair might not sound too promising or wholesome. But you’d have to go a long way to find a better example of humanity, decency and dignity in the face of the most appalling adversity than Lol Gilbert. He puts the willfully ignorant privileged elite buying up his area and tearing up his life to shame.

It’s your last opportunity tonight to catch Lol and his life of quiet desperation. It’s worth the effort.

Lol, The Blogger salutes you. You’re the TV star of 2007. Why has nobody noticed?

Posted in Bristol, Developments, Journalism, Media | | There are 2 comments

For fuck's sake

Posted on August 12, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Brand Development Manager

Bristol City Council has been shutting down local area housing offices, providing services near to where council tenants actually live, for years now. The latest round of closures – done in the name of “improved access” – reduces these area housing offices in Bristol to just eight in total.

So what are the council spending all this money they’ve saved on then? Er, some well-paid “brand managers“. And what the hell will this latest shower of pen pushers with corporate job titles earning £15 an hour be doing? Well, this is what the job descriptions say:

An exciting new opportunity has arisen to manage the effective implementation and adherence of Bristol City Council’s new Access to Bristol “A2B” brand.

The Access to Bristol brand signifies the council’s vision for customer excellence, and the experience customers should expect to receive. The brand enables the Council to better communicate and reinforce its service values, objectives and principles to build positive public recognition and trust.

The Council is looking for a dynamic manager with a focus on delivery. As the brand guardian, you will be responsible for ensuring compliance to the A2B service values and performance criteria across all areas of the council.

Reporting to the A2B Brand Manager, and working alongside the Brand Development Manager, you will be influential in the formation of the brand strategy and its direction.

Managing a team of Project Officers, you will need to be skilled and experienced in planning and managing an annual programme of service audits, to review the performance of departments against brand protocol and standards including customer feedback. You should have the proven ability to translate the findings into action plans for key stakeholders, covering changes to business processes, the management of business performance, and the instigation of training and development programmes to embed a customer centric culture.

You should be passionate about improving the customer experience and delivering service excellence. You must possess excellent communication, negotiation and influencing skills, with the ability to develop collaborative working relationships with Senior Colleagues in a confident and credible manner. A positive and tenacious approach is key.

Brand Compliance ManagerDon’t worry. I’ve read it five times and I don’t know what the fuck it means either. Although I’d hazard a guess that the point of the job will be to convince the public, despite heavy cuts and closures in more of the council’s frontline services for some of the city’s poorest and most vulnerable people, that these services have now, miraculously, become “more accessible”.

So what Labour boss Helen Holland meant in May – when she promised “more openess and transparency” from the council – was yet more overpaid, superannuated professional liars insulting our intelligence while idling around the Council House on their high horses wittering on about “the customer experience” and “brand protocols” like it’s actually important.

It’s not. We’re fucking taxpayers not customers and the council runs a monopoly. It’s not like we can take our business anywhere else is it? What’s the point of a monopoly employing marketeers?

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

Pass the sickbag: Writers' Rooms

Posted on August 11, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

This week’s toe curling effort in The Guardian Review’s regular Pseuds Corner slot, ‘Writers’ Rooms’, comes from pretentious old fart, Picasso biographer John Richardson. The upper class twit says:

“I loathed school, but the advantage of going to Stowe was its fantastic 18th Century architecture and landscape layout, which gave me a passion for classical architecture from the age of 13.”

The other advantage of going to Stowe of course is that it affords you to live opulently in Manhattan incessantly name-dropping to wide-eyed journalists.

Posted in Journalism, Media | | There are 2 comments

Greener than thou

Posted on August 11, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Corn starch bagThe Sun
An ungreen corn starch bag? A green newspaper?

We all know what bloody environmentalists are like once they get going, so it might be asking for trouble bringing this up, but I notice that both of our green blogger friends Vowles and Charlie Bolton are implacably opposed to former rubbish Czar Gary Hopkins’ demands that biodegradeable corn starch bags are introduced to line our recycling bins.

Vowles says:

Where is the sense in manufacturing something (like corn starch plastic bags) specially to throw away – even if its biodegradable?

If people carefully wrap their brown bin waste up properly each day to make newspaper parcels, ensuring several layers are used and that there are no leaks in the parcels, then there should be few problems.

And Charlie says:

To put it another way, whats wrong with wrapping waste in newspaper?????

But what’s so green about newspaper? Why are these two buying newspaper when they could read them for free on the internet? To put it another way: where is the sense in buying something (like newspapers) specially to throw away – when you can get a free and totally wasteless version?

I think we should be told (and I suspect we probably will be).

Posted in Bristol, Global warming, Green Party, Lib Dems, Local government, Southville | | There are 20 comments

"The hacienda must be built"

Posted on August 10, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Joy Division

… And I suppose that wanker off the telly sort of did it.

“I used to say some people make money and some make history – which is very funny until you find you can’t afford to keep yourself alive.”

At a cost.

Tony Wilson 1950 – 2007

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Lib Dems' pretend friends

Posted on August 10, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Steve Webb MP

Super-geek Northavon MP Steve Webb has come up with a hilarious little jape to entertain the press for August.

The man charged with writing the next Lib Dem election manifesto – a document that combines the realism of an In the Night Garden script with the political acuity of a Trotskyite anti-war speech – has fired off a press release – “for a little light relief” – regarding the popularity of the three main political parties on the ultra-boring and ridiculously over-exposed Facebook.

The bore claims to have calculated that 40% of LibDem MPs are on Facebook compared to just 12% of Tories and 13% of Labour supporters. He also claims to have over 1,000 “friends” himself on Facebook.

My isn’t he popular? Er, no actually. At least not according to one of his constituents, Nathan, who says:

Steve Webb is a facebook whore – he was identifying every young person in the area of his constituency and adding them as a friend, rather than the other way around. I promptly denied his request when I received one.

What kind of saddo invents pretend friends on the internet for fucks sake? Then advertises the fact to the national press?

Can’t wait to see that manifesto of yours Steve, especially now that you’ve been well and truly outed as a fantasist.

Posted in Blogging, Bristol, Lib Dems, Media, MPs | | There are 3 comments

"The logical conclusions of an anti-establishment loner"?

Posted on August 10, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Ho, ho, ho…

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=8413146821944842079]

Hat Tip: 9/11 Cultwatch blog

Posted in Conspiracy theories, Loonspuddery | | There is 1 comment

Moderated comments off

Posted on August 10, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

As an experiment moderated comments have been turned off on this blog. So it’s post and watch for the next few days…

Posted in Blogging, Bristol | | There is 1 comment