Here’s Bristol’s leading politician and senior member of the government’s Treasury team demonstrating the sharp wit and searing intellect that got her there by, er… Running away from the BBC when questioned on Trident!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyvsATYoZTM]
Bristol City Council’s very, very expensive ‘flagship’ e-democracy site in all its current glory. Are they trying to tell us something?
Bristol, of course, recently lost out on £2m of funding in the government’s Digital Challenge to Sunderland. Perhaps the fact they can’t run a bulletin board has something to do with it?
Oh joy. The six remaining members of Labour’s Bristol West Constituency Party have selected Paul “Supergrass” Smith as their candidate for the next general election.
Alderman – as the insufferable little git likes to be addressed – Paul used to be a city councillor for Whitchurch Park before bailing out in 1999 to concentrate full-time on networking his way to a top salary in the Bristol voluntary sector and chairing the Bristol Labour Party.
Unfortunately his attempts there to develop a reputation as a Peter Mandelson-style fixer have been somewhat undermined by the fact that the local party has been in virtual free-fall for the whole of his tenure. This once powerful institution is now just a rump of the morally retarded, the terminally inept and the desperately ambitious fronted by, er… Alderman Paul!
Smith will be fighting the recently redrawn Bristol West constituency, which now includes the Ashley, Easton and Lawrence Hill wards but has lost Stoke Bishop, Westbury-on-Trym and Henleaze to Bristol North West. Experts suggest that the seat will therefore be a straight (in one sense only) battle between the sitting Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams and the New Labour enthusiast.
Smith is still less than fondly known in his former stamping ground of South Bristol as “supergrass”. He developed the name after a series of lengthy “discussions” with the Old Bill following the Harcliffe riots in the summer of 1992. His efforts to get the people of Hartcliffe to grass up their neighbours are similarly still recalled by many.
Smith received the Bristol West nomination after beating three black men. “Not the first time he’ll have done that,” one insider told The Blogger.
A play in three acts by Harold Pinter-Cider
Act 1, Scene 1
(Wankers Wine Bar, Clifton. Sebastian, Charles, Toby, Harry, Algie and George arrive at the bar in a blaze of pastel pink shirts, cricket jumpers draped around shoulders, flannels and Dior sunglasses. A bar maid approaches. Sebastian waves her over and stubs his cheroot out on her forehead. The bar maid clutches her head in agony, screams and runs off. The bar manager approaches. Sebastian hands him daddy’s credit card and the manager meekly sets about preparing a round of Pimms “with extra fruit”…)
Sebastian: I say chaps. Pukka news what?
Charles: What’s that Sebastian old bean?
Sebastian: There’s going to be a polo match on The Downs this summer.
Charles: Super!
Toby: Fabulous!
Harry: Spiffing!
Algie: Rather!
George: Top Hole!
Charles: Who’s organised that then Seb old chap?
Sebastian: The gals at the Clifton Pony Club with a tincy-wincy bit of help from that dreadful little arriviste Tory. You know that awful Mayor chappie?
Toby: Oh Yah. The silly little man from Westbury-on-Trym?
(sniggers all round)
Harry: Oh gosh yes. The one who owns the garage and thinks he’s part of the aristocracy?
All: (braying laughter)
Algie: Awful man. I heard he buys his own furniture!
(Even more braying laughter)
Sebastian: He Definitely does yah. He’s dirty old goat as well. Clarrissa and some of the pony club gals went down to see him in low cut tops and jodhpurs and he couldn’t do enough for them. Then daddy had a little word in his shell-like and now his committee’s unaminously agreed to let us get the chukkas and the ponies out on The Downs.
Charles: Ripsnorting news what? Well done Seb. Top show. When is it?
Sebastian: July the 22nd. Chukkas off at 3.00pm…
Toby: What-ho! Must tell mummy. What entertainment’s lined up?
Sebastian: There’s the Pimms tent…
All: (loudly) Rah, rah, rah
Sebastian: … And the VIP Marquee …
All: (even louder) Rah, rah, rah
Sebastian: … Which should be £65 a ticket. But pater’s snaffled the lot already so it’s a freebie!
All: (crescendo of braying)
Sebastian: … And as special treaties daddy’s hired Jodie Kidd for the evening for me to shag.
Charles: Top drawer Seb. Can I have a go with Jodie too?
Sebastian: Might as well all have a go what? Might as well get daddy’s monies worth out of her. Haw, haw.
All: (braying, neighing)
Sebastian: Yah. It will be totally, like, amazing what? And we’ve really stuck it to the oiks with this one. The scum are not even allowed to drink or have picnics on The Downs any more and we’re going to have the biggest piss-up of the summer there. Haw, haw, haw…
All: (braying, neighing, snorting ever louder…)
(The other side of the bar. The Bemmie Oik (for it is he) puts down his copy of The Bristolian, eyes the pastel pink tide of toffs before him, then stubs out his Lambert in the ash tray. The bar maid (with a bandage now wrapped around her head) puts a pint of Old Somerset Fuckbuster Dry in front of him. He smiles briefly at her and then reaches for his mobile. He punches a number in and it rings four times…)
Maureen: Good afternoon Beminster Horse Meat Supplies, this is Maureen speaking how can I help you?
The Bemmie Oik: I need to order a horse’s head
Maureen: Certainly sir. That’s no problem. When will you be requiring your horse’s head exactly please?
The Bemmie Oik: Sunday July the 22nd…
(lights fade, curtain comes down, end of Act 1)
COMING SOON: By Harold Pinter-Cider
Charlie and the Humous Factory
Life is hard for bright, kindhearted, young Charlie Bolton living in a Southville shack at the edge of the big city. His mum’s lost her minimum wage job with the homecare service after it was privatised. His bedridden grandparents’ health is declining by the day as their agency care workers either fail to appear or make a botch of their treatment. Many evenings Charlie even has to go without his olive ciabatta, sundried tomatoes and humous dip as the family are so poor.
Then Charlie’s luck changes. He wins a ticket in a tub of organic humous to visit the incredible Tory Wanka’s factory in the middle of town where he learns at first hand about the possibilities of compromising with one another using boring rhetoric like at an exclusive British men’s club.
Charlie and the Humous Factory is great entertainment for all the family with a hilarious cast of characters: Violet Elizabeth Janke who’ll “scweam and scweam ’til council officers make my town green!”, John Kiely Gloop, the useless, dribbling idiot and those incredible little people – The MacNamara-Laras – they run around making things up as they go along!
“Charlie is a total farce”
Bristol Evening Post
“This could mean 3 months repeat advertising for us… It’s brilliant!”
Venue
l-r: sketch and reality
This is a good one. On the left we have a sketch courtesy of architects Atkins Walters Webster of what is supposed to be happening to the old Bristol and West HQ on Broad Quay.
The architects promised councillors and planners they would make the building appear to be “dissolving into the sky”.
The planning committee responsible – chaired by none other than Headley Park’s leading exponent of new urbanism, ‘Bunter’ Eddy, mainly so he could earn a few quid in ‘Special Responsibility’ allowances – lapped up the architects’ PR and gave the scheme the nod.
Not much dissolving so far I’m afraid. Except, perhaps, most of Bristol’s population into laughter at the gullibility of Bunter and his committee members.
Evelyn Post is The Bristol Blogger’s resident cartoonist. He has a woman’s name.
The top picture is a sketch provided to councillors and members of the Development Control (North) Committee in November 2004 as part of the planning application for Redland Green School.
The committee, desperate to dish out yet another public subsidy to the assorted snobs and wealthy academics of Redland, therefore had no hesitation in allowing a four storey, bright orange monstrosity to be built within a conservation area on playing fields and allotments.
The claim at the time was that the school was “cleverly designed” and that residents “would hardly know that it was there”. The Evening Post joined in the fun with a headline on February 13, 2004 – “Spot the school” – and reported that the planners had submitted a scheme “so clever” that it would be “hidden from view”.
The second picture is the result. Really fucking clever isn’t it?
The Bristol Blogger learns that Bristol Tory boss Richard “Bunter” Eddy has been handed a new job to supplement his meagre Bristol City Council councillor allowances.
From today Richard will be working part-time 15 hours a week as an Equalities Outreach Diversity Worker for the Kuumba Arts and Community Resource Centre in St Pauls.
The Blogger learns that the council funded project did not advertise or interview for the post. Instead Eddy was handed the job on a “consultancy basis”. The Kuumba claim this is perfectly acceptable and not in breach of their equal opportunities policies as the post is freelance and fixed term.
Nice work if you can get it!
Here’s a BBC news report of Toyin Agbetu’s ‘intervention’ at Westminster Abbey. Unfortunately it’s been edited by the BBC in order to avoid showing him having a crack at the queen. I’ll endeavour to get a copy of that as it becomes available.
Apologies for the presence of the BBC’s fawning Royal arse-licker-in-Chief Nicholas Witchell.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0qWkRrABXQ]
Bolton, Tory boy Eddy and Lib Dem Kiely. Peas in a pod?
A nice example of the ‘vote Lib Dem get Tory’ administration really running the city was on view for all to see at the the Council House on Tuesday 27 March.
At the Full Council Meeting there, the Labour Party called a vote of no-confidence in Social Services cabinet member, John Kiely, over homecare privatisation. This was defeated when the Tories tactically abstained and the slim Lib Dem majority over Labour won the day. The result means the privatisation will definitely go ahead.
The Tories, who currently hold the balance of power and will continue to do so after this year’s non-event elections, pulled a similar trick over this year’s budget. They got everything they wanted from that too and are blatantly pulling the strings of this Lib Dem administration.
Joining the Tories in abstaining on the homecare vote was none other than Southville’s Green Party councillor Charlie Bolton. It might seem like a no-brainer to most people laying claim to any kind of progressive politics that privatising a service in order to cut costs by half, as the Lib Dems claim can be done, must mean a cut in the quality of the service delivered. It must also involve an assault on the terms and conditions of the low-paid, largely female homecare workers. Where else do the savings come from?
Not something Bolton’s given much thought to obviously. Although he has been agonising a bit over his daft decision on his blog between bouts of cosying-up with his new-found Lib Dem friends.
Bolton also reveals his decision to abstain was taken on the hoof. It seems prior to this meeting neither Bolton nor his party had given the homecare privatisation a moment’s thought, let alone decided their policy on it.
The Green Party experiment in Bristol is not really producing results is it? Despite their progressive-sounding posturing come election time, Bolton seems only interested in bickering with the bearded weirdoes of the Southville Labour Party, mildly encouraging council staff to turn off lights at the end of working day and siding with the Tories on important votes. Hardly the radical programme for the city we’ve been promised is it?
And let us not forget ‘The Alliance for Leeds’ where the Greens, at the first sniff of power, happily formed a pact with the Tories…
