And another one

Another new addition to The Blogger’s blogroll. James Barlow is the Constituency Chairman for the Conservative Party in Bristol West and he is also standing as a city council candidate for Cotham in the local elections.

His blog is a very dapper, measured, sensible and, er… Conservative! He’s an IT bod by trade so you’ll find a lot of techno-babble going on over there too. Great if you want to know the ins and outs of RSS feeds at least.

Barlow is yet another one asking questions about Bush Rat The Photoshop Faker in Lawrence Hill. Indeed it seems the only people not showing any interest in this story are the local media. Presumably there’s no public interest in an election candidate from the party running the country deliberately misleading the public in order to get elected to office?

Not as far as the Oxbridge chumps running the BBC and the recently self-styled working class lads risking their lives for us down at the Evening Cancer’s newsroom are concerned anyway.

Posted in Blogging, Bristol, Conservatives, Cotham, Local elections 2007, Local government | | There is 1 comment

The Blogger investigates… The mystery of the missing candidate

A palpable sigh of relief here at Blogger HQ as Bristol East MP, Kerry McCarthy returns to her blog after a break of almost three weeks.

Surprisingly her online absence on this occasion had nothing to do with the obsessive human rights tourist clearing off to Palestine on yet another freebie to engage in yet another sanctimonious bout of hand-wringing over the holy land.

Instead she’s been away, we’re told, due to a burglary at her real home in London, technical problems with her website and, of course, because she has to juggle an incredibly busy schedule. (Has anyone ever heard an MP claim not to be superhumanly busy?)

Whatever she’s been up to, Kerry’s now certainly back with a bang. She even spent most of the early hours of this Saturday morning producing breathless descriptions of herself swanning around being terribly important like some kind of low-rent Prawn Dimarolo.

The Blogger was particularly drawn to Kerry’s entry ‘VIPs come to Bristol’ about one of those rare days when she was actually in the city.

“Had a VIP-filled Monday this week, with Meg Munn, Minister for Women and Equalities,” gushes Kerry.

Meg Munn? VIP? I don’t know either…

But it was Kerry’s engagements towards the end of her day that caught The Blogger’s eye:

I raced across town to meet Alan Johnson in Stapleton Road … Our next stop was the City Academy … Final stop was Barton Hill for some campaigning with Alan and a meeting with Labour members at the Crypt, where we also got a chance to chat to some of the young people from the Barton Hill Youth Project.

And who might Kerry and Education Secretary Alan Johnson be campaigning for in Barton Hill during this election period then? Why no mention of the candidate? Why so coy about telling us? Barton Hill is, of course, in the Lawrence Hill ward where the candidate is none other than the Photoshop faker Busharat “working for Britin” Ali (Blogger passim).

Oh dear. Seems like Kerry is doing some of her own photoshopping now and airbrushing her own imbecelic candidate out of his own election campaign. Is Bush Rat not being mentioned by Labour’s senior ministers and MPs in the hope we’ll not notice their candidate’s gone missing? Maybe we’ll conveniently forget about him?

This little episode goes to prove what many have been claiming. That Lawrence Hill is a serious target for the Labour Party at these elections and their senior figures have little compunction in foisting someone like Bush Rat, whose conduct shows he’s unfit for office, on Bristol and Lawrence Hill and turning a blind eye to any of his unsavoury conduct.

And let’s not forget Lawrence Hill is the poorest ward in Bristol with some of the city’s most vulnerable people living there. Don’t these people deserve any better then? Any old yes-man with a Labour membership card will do for them presumably.

Kerry ends her blog entry:

Then another mad rush across town to catch the 5.30 to London, arriving in Westminster to catch Billy Bragg’s St George’s Day reception. Had a group of friends down for the occasion, and got them all into the public gallery to watch the 10pm vote, which they found highly amusing. Can’t say I blame them!

Don’t you think your time might be better spent here in Bristol sorting out your disastrous and embarrassing constituency party Kerry? Maybe instilling some decency, values and a sense of reponsibility in them for starters? And perhaps ensuring those annoying little details are properly in place? Like making sure your candidates are actually fit for office before selecting them.

It’s rather more important than getting pissed with your mates in Westminster, sucking up to Billy Bragg and boasting about it on your blog.

Posted in Blogging, Bristol, Labour Party, Lawrence Hill, Local elections 2007 | | There is 1 comment

Bush Rat the Movie: 'Working for Britin' (sic)

Here it is. Meet Photoshop faker Bush Rat Ali the Lawrence Hill Labour Bhangra Boyo (he’s also head of the South Wales Muslim League). Laugh then cry as you realise the kind of imbecile the people who run the country think is fit to run our city. This is not a joke.

Catch it whilst you can. The Labour Party are pulling this from Youtube as fast as they can…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5601HhRQ68c]

Look out for The Bristol Blogger’s EXCLUSIVE inner city election round-up and analysis this weekend…

Posted in Bristol, Labour Party, Lawrence Hill, Local elections 2007, Local government | | There are 4 comments

Bristol Labour Photoshop Horror!

Bush Rat Photoshop special
Thanks to Guido Fawkes for the photo.

Seems the Labour candidate for Lawrence Hill, Busharat Ali, has been caught faking photographs of himself on stop the war marches. Full details here.

Ali has also been somewhat coy about how long he’s actually been in the Labour Party and how long he’s been in Bristol. Quite a candidate.

COMING SOON: Busharat Ali – The Movie (I kid you not)

Posted in Blogging, Labour Party, Lawrence Hill, Local elections 2007 | | There are 13 comments

Where the Blogger leads the mainstream follow…

Firstly, a couple of new links added to the site:

A Labour-friendly blog from some of the crisis hit home care staff threatened with privatisation, redundancy and pension cuts – http://bristolhomecare.blogspot.com/

A new Ashton Court Festival blog where you can donate money to pay off their debt and have another festival this year – http://www.weloveashtoncourtfestival.com. There’s a flashing icon on the right of the page they’ve kindly provided too.

Meanwhile, only a month in and it looks like The Blogger is already beginning to set the local news agenda for the ‘professionals’.

Here’s an Evening Cancer headline from last Friday 20 April:

Divide and rule...

Which seems remarkably similar to what The Blogger was saying on Wednesday April 18:

Election round-up

And Venue’s getting in on the act too. Here’s The Blogger on Wednesday April 11 and Thursday April 12 on Dan Norris MP:

Dan the fabricator

And here on Wednesday 18 April is Venue’s pseudonymous ‘Joanna Houseman’ (geddit?) on… Well blow me down with a feather if it’s not Dan Norris…

Dan Norris - Venue

Feel free to take my stories then chaps. Oh and don’t bother with any acknowledgements if you don’t want – they’ll only make you look like you get your stuff off the internet.

And finally…

I see today both The Cancer and BBC West have both seen fit to report as lead stories the fact that some bloke who used to live in Bristol has had some of his paintings sold at auction.

Ring any bells? Here’s The Blogger on Monday:

Banksy pant wetting

How does The Blogger do it?

Posted in Blogging, Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Media | | There are 3 comments

FREE gift for every reader!!! The official BNP Bristol dartboard

Couldn’t be easier to set up… Download this screen, print it, cut out your FREE dartboard, attach to your wall and start the fun!! (Darts not included)

BNP Darts board

Easy to use… Hours of entertainment… Great for dinner parties…

Instructions: Simply lob your darts at the heads of local members of the BNP featured on the board and rack up the points according to The Blogger’s carefully calibrated scoring system:

eg. Nick Griffin’s head – 50 points; Bald bloke’s pate – 20 points; Fat bloke in fake (Made in China) England shirt – 10 points, Nerdy young Tolkien fan – 10 points; etc. Remember head shots score double!!

COMING SOON: Why not collect the set?

‘Prick his pomposity’ – Peter Abraham and the Bristol Tories’ dartboard
‘Score double on the dribble’ – The Bristol Lib Dem dartboard with realistic dribbling Kiely
‘Burst their bubble’ – The Bristol New Labour dartboard
‘Puncture their annoying bike tyres’ – The Bristol Green Party dartboard

(With thanks to Bristol Indymedia and Bristol UAF for the photo)

Posted in BNP, Bristol, Local elections 2007 | | There are 8 comments

BNP: taking the Michaela

The Evening Cancer reports that BNP Nominating Officer, Michaela Mackenzie is running as a candidate in the Scottish elections as well as for councillor in South Gloucestershire. The campaign from her Warmley home for native Scots’ rights is no doubt going down a storm north of the border…

The Blogger learns that the BNP got members with Scottish-sounding names in from England in order to have enough candidates to qualify for their election TV broadcast. Interesting use of favourable immigration rules there.

Posted in BNP, Bristol, Bristol Evening Post, Local elections 2007 | | There are 2 comments

Banksy balls: radical chic extra!

From The Sunday Times ‘Home’ supplement. No further comment required!

Banksy chic

Posted in Banksy | | There are no comments yet

Banksy balls

Banksy ratsBanksy Clifton

I suppose it’s some sort of an achievement to have people like local Lib Dem rubbish czar Gary Hopkins gushing over your work. It denotes a high level of recognition and acceptance by the blandest section of the mainstream at least.

But surely it’s a bit depressing for Banksy to know his work’s political content is being highly rated against yardsticks such as Ming Campbell, Lembit Opik and Mark Oaten? It certainly acts as a stark warning to The Blogger: you know the game’s up when some ridiculous Lib Dem fuckbucket off the council starts calling your work “art”.

Anyway, it seems one place Banksy’s work hasn’t quite penetrated yet is the so-called ‘intelligence community’. A recent copy of Eye Spy the – wait for it – ‘Intelligence Magazine’ seems to think it has found exclusive evidence of a terror plot.

Photo Special: ‘Al-Qaida missile graffiti near Houses of Parliament’ it proclaims in its latest issue. Then says:

“It’s incidents such as this that has forced the UK to think differently to counter the threat of home grown terrorism in the UK. This graffiti shows two rats assembling a rocket launcher opposite the House of Commons. Analysts believe it is a warning to those who govern the UK that they are vulnerable – even in one of the world’s most recognised landmarks”.

The graffiti in question is pictured above (left) and looks, to this analyst at least, suspiciously like the work of Banksy. Let’s hope ‘those who govern the UK’ are suitably warned…

[Hat tip: Paul Stott’s I Intend to Escape…]

Meanwhile back in Clifton, Bristol the great chief of all things rubbish, Hopkins, has discovered yet another new talent. Alongside his career as an insurance salesman, pizza delivery man and bloke who’s transformed Bristol City Council into one of the five worst local authorities in the UK we now learn he has another skill – authenticating works of art.

It seems a new Banksy work may have appeared in Clifton in early April (pictured above, right). On cue the usual bout of pant-wetting adoration at the mention of Banksy begins courtesy of the Council House, the local BBC and the Evening Cancer.

But then something strange happens… Doubts arise… Is it really a Banksy? Across Bristol the internet throbs to the hum of this vital question… Then a gnomic statement from Banksy’s spokeswomen – “He said it’s not him, but then he always says that”…

Until at last Hopkins – believed to be jetting out to New York City to advise the Warhol estate very soon – offers his opinion after thorough consultation with his chargehand at Sita Services:

A city council spokesman said he doubted the work was a genuine Banksy and was likely to be removed.

They don’t really get it do they?

Posted in Banksy, Bristol, Clifton, Lib Dems, Media | | There are no comments yet

Waffleshed Latest

Waffleshed

More phoney baloney emanating from the Watershed in the wake of its £6m government handout entirely for the benefit of the city’s wealthy, if underemployed, ‘creatives’.

The world’s most pretentious cinema manager, Watershed boss Dick Penny, gushes to Maurice Fells in the Evening Cancer’s Seven mag:

We want to give [The Watershed] more of a Covent Garden feel … Maybe we could create an environment that’s something like a Parisian flea market, with stalls full of products made from the creative energies of the people selling them.

Maybe you could Dick. Maybe you could. But perhaps you should actually visit Covent Garden and notice its mixture of shops, markets, bars, restaurants, cafes and theatres first. Then return to your building and notice it consists of a cinema, three bars and a foyer with enough space for a rack of post cards.

Dick also treats us to some predictable digital waffle. Get this:

“One thing we’re working on is the ‘mobile environment’ around us by making the public ground-floor space a wireless landscape for audio experiences which can be sent to a specific device. This could be the recreation of a historic event on the dockside, or it could be original music.

“We are trying to create a canvas that artistic and creative people can use. Eventually, we could send these audio experiences to your mobile phone.”

So that’s it then. Six trestle tables for Dick’s mates’ bric-a-brac stalls and the wages for a UWE graduate to write some ringtones… That’ll be £6m please!

Sensibly Fells neglects to mention Penny’s crazed plans to ethnically cleanse the docks of anyone Bristolian or working class. Presumably to prevent the pretentious bearded snob sounding too much like, er… A pretentious bearded snob!

Posted in Bristol, Developments, Harbourside, Media, Middle class wankers | | There are 2 comments