Fwd: In support of Alphonse Daudet Touna

Posted on March 30, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Alphonse Daudet Touna and his music are well known and well loved all over the country and nowhere more so than in his home town of Bristol.

For those who haven’t come across him, he is a composer, instrument maker, musician and teacher from the Cameroon who works tirelessly to promote cultural and inter-racial harmony through the medium of traditional African music. You may have heard his music accompanying wildlife programmes on film and television.

Over the last year or so he has taught 500 people to make traditional African instruments, he has taught over 5000 children of all ages in 50 Bristol schools to sing, dance and play African percussion; he has held 20 workshops for young offenders in local prisons and a dozen workshops for 200 drug users; he has visited elderly people’s homes and disabled groups to bring them the rhythm of his drums and the beautiful, haunting sound of the balafon, all hand-crafted in his own workshop.

Last month alone, over 2000 children visited the Empire and Commonwealth Museum to take part in workshops designed to give them an insight into the African slave trade and its abolition.

Such is the demand for his services that he has had to set up a Social Enterprise company (Sul’Art Ltd) and recruit a band of helpers, with the mission “to be a major force in promoting cultural harmony through the exploration of African music, arts and heritage”. (www.sul-art.co.uk)

With his Afro-Jazz band, Hélélé, he has amazed and delighted audiences at festivals and carnivals all over the country including the harbour festivals in Cardiff and Bristol, Ashton Court and Oxjam, and on many occasions at the spiritual home of Bristol Jazz, the Old Duke in King Street. (www.myspace.com/helele)

As if all this wasn’t enough for one man, he has established a multi-national choir at St Nicholas of Tolentino Church which sings in over a dozen languages.

A great deal of Alphonse’s work is done to assist charitable and voluntary organizations. His services are so much in demand that in his “spare” time he is studying for a PGCE because Bristol City Council and the City of Bristol College want to use him in more and more of their outreach work.

But the Minister of State for Nationality Citizenship and Immigration has decided that he does not want Alphonse Touna in the country. He doesn’t want to renew the work permit of the man who does far more for racial harmony than perhaps 99% of the population at large.

If you believe that Alphonse should be given indefinite leave to stay in this country so that he can continue his much-needed work, please:

Write to the Minister:
Liam Byrne MP
Minister of State for Nationality Citizenship and Immigration
The Home Office
2 Marsham Street
LONDON SW1P 4DF

Please forward your letter c/o Chris Chapman, Easton Business Centre, Felix Road, BS5 0HE so that we can deliver it personally on Tuesday 15th May when we intend to visit the Home Office.

If you want a sample letter, email Chandra_moon@yahoo.com and she will forward one to you.

If you would like to join us on the bus on 15 May, please email me at chrisc@eastbristolenterprise.co.uk and let me know.

Sign the petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Alphonse

Please join us on College Green, Bristol on 24th April at 6.00pm to celebrate with music, singing and dance, what Alphonse has done for this community.

Posted in Bristol, Easton | | There is 1 comment

Middle class wankers of the week

Posted on March 29, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Wanker HQ

Congratulations Bordeaux Quay – the “revolutionary project” to serve wealthy people food for inflated prices in a minimalist Harbourside location – you’re the inaugural winners of The Blogger’s prestigious ‘Middle Class Wankers of the Week Award’.

At an event at the ego-eaterie (surely eco? ed.) last week, The Blogger learns, the food was not prepared by a lowly cook or even a run-of-the-mill chef. Oh no. The food was prepared by nothing less than an “artiste-cuisiniere” who, prior to serving the food, performed a mime representing the meal for a fawning audience of gullible twats!

Pass the biodegradeable sickbag…

Middle Class wankery beyond the call of duty says The Blogger. A free subscription is yours.

Posted in Bristol, Harbourside, Middle class wankers | | There are 9 comments

The Chocolate Factory

Posted on March 28, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Chocolate Factory Stairs

Greenbank resident Flowerdahlia has posted a load of photos to Flickr of the empty Packer’s Chocolate Factory. The factory was shut last last year by owners Elizabeth Shaw when they moved the last of their manufacturing operation overseas.

The building, which has iconic status in Easton as a genuine remnant of its disappearing industrial working class past, is currently set to be demolished by house builders Persimmon. They want to replace the factory with one of those annoying suburban-style new build estates.

This has pissed off quite a lot of the local community who have campaigned against the Persimmon plans and are trying to save the factory from demolition. The prognosis is not that good however. English Heritage have declined to list the building and a planning appeal from Persimmon will be heard quite soon that they may well win.

I’m no architectural expert but the building looks to me like a fine piece of late Victorian industrial architecture that could be converted into something quite impressive. Local architect George Ferguson has even expressed an interest in the place. He’s recently been working on Paintworks on the Bath road, itself a quite impressive conversion of a disused paint factory.

Posted in Bristol, Developments, Easton | | There are 2 comments

Top tips for journalists

Posted on March 28, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Scoop!

#1. When on assignment in Iraqi Kurdistan make sure your driver is aware of the different Iranian opposition groups operating in the territory

News that US journalist Michael Totten‘s visit to meet the leadership of english-speaking, social-democratic moderates from the Iranian opposition went awry when his driver dropped him off at the wrong opposition group HQ.

Totten instead spent the afternoon in an armed camp of the military wing of the Iranian Communist Party!

(Hat tip: Harry’s Place)

Posted in Blogging, Journalism, Middle East | | There are no comments yet

Whitewash? Postscript

Posted on March 27, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Toyin in the Abbey

Big shout out to Toyin Agbetu of Ligali, whose generally rather poor performance – by his outspoken standards – at the Points West abolition debate on Sunday, The Blogger thought not worth mentioning.

Well the boy’s certainly come good today after being arrested at Westminster Abbey for interrupting a church service to commemorate the abolition of the slave trade attended by the Queen and Tony Blair .

The activist, probably to avoid vomiting at the pomposity of it all, rose to his feet in the middle of the service and shouted “this is an insult to us” and “you should be ashamed” as he headed for the altar.

He then told the queen she should apologise and said, “I want all the Christians who are Africans to walk out now,” before being manhandled out of the Abbey himself.

He then held an impromptu press conference outside the Abbey telling the assembled crowd, “The monarch and the government and the church are all in there patting themselves on the back. It’s just a memorial for William Wilberforce.”

He was then arrested and taken away in a police car pronto.

Meanwhile, whilst the Bristol press continues its news blackout of Bristol’s Coalition of Black Groups (COGB) and their dissenting views, the black national press is certainly taking an interest:

BRISTOL – Nelson Mandela has boycotted plans to commemorate the bicentennial of the act abolishing the slave trade in Bristol after hearing of bitter divisions within the community and accusations of racism and intolerance…

The Nation

The Blogger knows of at least one local journalist, not averse to receiving the odd handout from the public purse themselves, who has declined to cover COBG claiming they’re “bitter” at not receiving funding from Abolition 200.

A view that concords, precisely, with the spin emanating from Barbara Janke, her Lib Dem black councillor and appointed black community spokesperson Shirley Marshall and the city council’s press office!

Posted in Abolition 200, Bristol, Merchant Venturers | | There are 3 comments

Greedy's now greenie!

Posted on March 27, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

The beared weirdo

Remember George “Greedy” Micklewright the personality-free Labour leader of Bristol City Council from 1997-2002? Probably not.

Micklewright, who assiduously marketed himself as a local government finance expert, actually presided over a crippling £350m budget deficit during his time in office. Although he was probably best known for his appearances with “business friends” in upmarket Bristol eateries and his personal backing for the millenium makeover of the Centre.

Widely loathed, this hideous, concrete OAP death trap was described by Micklewright and his supporters as “going to be like Barcelona” before it was built. Then when questioned on its un-Barcelona-like qualities after completion he helpfully explained that, “it had looked good in the pictures”.

Micklewright was sensationally booted out of office in 2002 when he managed to lose the ultra-safe Labour ward of Filwood after 23 years in office to a Liberal Democrat half-wit.

There then followed a Reggie Perrinesque decline in his fortunes as the Bristol Labour Party refused to select him for any ward anywhere in the city and the unemployed leader would be found shuffling around Asda Bedminster most days in his tatty rain mac muttering darkly of revenge…

Well folks, it looks like George is back and he’s going after the Bristol Labour Party as The Blogger learns that Micklewright is now ‘advising’ the Bristol Green Party.

Quite what advice he’s giving them should be very interesting. This is, after all, the original architect of the Bristol Airport expansion. The man that first sold the city council’s controlling interest in the airport to First Group then, realising how much money could be made, proceeded to flog the remainder to pay off the city’s debts. The rest, as they say, is history…

Perhaps he’s advising The Greens on electoral campaigning then? For their sake hopefully not. He had such a safe Labour seat he’s never actually done a day’s campaigning in his life. And when called upon to run a proper election campaign in 2002 he was hammered!

It’s actually quite hard to figure out who this is most embarrassing for. Is it the Bristol Labour Party learning their former leader now thinks a bunch of liberal hippies with a political programme based around a city-wide breast-feeding strategy and a campaign for real nappies is a credible alternative to them?

Or is it the Bristol Green Party, so utterly clueless and ill-advised, they have to resort to obtaining advice from some dodgy old political has-been with a very dubious record?

Roll on elections!

Posted in Bristol, Elections, Green Party, Labour Party | | There are 14 comments

Whitewash? Addendum

Posted on March 26, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

According to today’s Evening Post one third of the seats at yesterday’s slavery abolition whitewash church service at Bristol Cathedral were empty.

850 tickets were apparently issued to “civic leaders” for the invitation-only event and 250 of them failed to show with no explanation. Was this an informal boycott of the event? Or could people just not be arsed to show up?

Either way it’s an embarrassment to Bristol City Council, organisers of Bristol’s Abolition 200 events. The city’s role in the slave trade is currently receiving national attention and it really looks like this city couldn’t give a toss about it.

Perhaps more attention should have been paid to Bristol’s Consortium of Black Groups. They represent a large proportion of the city’s black population and announced a ‘policy of non-compliance’ with the city council’s “stagey insensitive activities” as long ago as last year.

Elsewhere, last night seedy toff Dennis Burn, the Master of The Society of Merchant Venturers, showed up on a BBC Points West abolition television debate alongside a group of civic worthies.

The plummy voiced apologist for the slave trade was very much on the defensive. He claimed The Merchant Venturers merely ran Bristol docks and had no organising role in the slave trade itself, which is bollocks. He also tried to distance the Society from Edward Colston, depicting him as a minor figure who only attended two of their meetings.

The toff also declined to hand over the Venturers assets to the city as reparations for their role in the slave trade; forgot to point out that the two schools his organisation run in the city are privately run and for the offspring of toffs and the rich such as himself and he told black people in the audience they were welcome to come begging to his multi-million pound organisation for cash for youth projects if they wanted.

What a charmer.

Here’s a couple of articles around the abolition issue for those wanting to get beyond Barbara Janke’s Merchant Venturer worshipping white-civic-dignitaries-having-a-self-congratulatory-circle-jerk approach to the issues:

… The enslaved persons in the Americas were the first slaves since the days of the Romans whose condition of bondage and status as chattel was passed down from parent to child; and in a cruel irony, as the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans died out the price of the slaves who were already in place, working under horrendous conditions in the US, many Caribbean islands, and some South American nations, merely rose… And there was thus a strong incentive, until the whole institution of slavery was outlawed in the United States, which took several further decades, for slave-“owners” to try to breed their slave-stock as much as much possible, a matter to which many white men in slave-owning communities made a big personal contribution…

The Haunting Legacy of Slavery, Helena Cobban

… The steel workers of Sheffield opposed the slave trade in the 1790s; the United Irishmen did likewise. These were the allies of the Jamaicans, the vast number of Afro-Americans, and above all the Haitian slaves. These men and women waged near constant struggle in rebellion (1760s), in the War of Independence (1776), and in the Haitian revolution against slavery (1791-1803). The drama of the time arose from the possibility of revolutionary combinations of proletarians – Irish, African, English even against the lords of humankind…

An Amazing Disgrace, Peter Linebaugh

Posted in Abolition 200, Bristol, Merchant Venturers | | There are 3 comments

Whitewash?

Posted on March 25, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Truth 2007

Big up to Bristol-based Operation Truth 2007 who interrupted today’s service at Bristol Cathedral celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

Protestor Jendayi Serwah was led away by police after getting into the Cathedral and banging a drum. Meanwhile outside 12 more protestors made their presence felt. As one put it: “Where are the tickets for the African people of Bristol? We are left standing outside.”

A good question. The service was led by that distinctly white terminal idiot the Rev. Mike, Bishop of Bristol and was largely attended by white appointed worthies such as The Lord Lieutenant, Jay Tidmarsh – a Merchant Venturer.

The Venturers, of course, profited from the slave trade and were handsomely compensated when it was abolished. Presumably Mr Tidmarsh and his Venturer sidekicks were at the service to celebrate their rather good fortune?

Other attendees included the typical crowd of wannabees, only too happy to fawn over Tidmarsh and his gang of rogues – Council Leader Barbara Janke, Lord Mayor Peter Abrahams, councillors at a loose end, the usual voluntary sector yes-people and a load of white middle class hangers-on.

Well done Bristol. Another feather in the cap.

Posted in Abolition 200, Bristol, Merchant Venturers | | There is 1 comment

Hypocrite Watch #1

Posted on March 25, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

The strange affair of the Lib Dem Trot

Lib Dem LogoPCSJoe Cole

Meet Steve Comer (second from left above). He’s a Liberal Democrat and a Bristol City Councillor. He’s quite influential in Bristol because he’s an Executive Member and sits on the Cabinet that takes decisions about the city.

Steve is a very busy man as he also has another job sitting on the National Executive of the PCS (Public and Commercial Services Union). This is the civil serviçe union dominated by the far left that has a reputation for militancy and robustly taking on New Labour over public service cuts, privatisation, pensions and the growth of fat cat consultants in the public sector.

The curious socialist sects – far too complicated and boring to go into here – that make up the PCS leadership are not the most obvious political home for a Liberal Democrat like Steve. In fact its downright weird as his party are the Joe Cole of British politics. They might do the odd ineffective trick out there on the byline to impress the crowd but at the first opportunity they’ll be cutting inside to get on the right foot where they play their natural game.

“So what,” you say, “Comer’s the common sense voice of Liberal Democracy amongst the Tankie weirdoes and Trot obssessives of the PCS leadership.”

Not exactly. Comer is one of the Tankie weirdoes and Trot obssessives in the PCS. He’s part of a far left grouping that controls the PCS Executive Committee called The Democratic Alliance. He’s even up for election to the Executive Committee at the moment and he’s signed up, once again, to The Democratic Alliance slate and is promoting their major campaigns including: “No further privatisation without negotiations and agreement.”

He also openly supports the union’s position that in the event of a privatisation being pursued, “there will always be an in-house bid”. And he is currently backing industrial action at the department of Revenue and Customs, “as part of a national civil service-wide campaign against job cuts, privatisation and below inflation pay.”

“These are good, solid, anti-New Labour positions Steve’s taking up,” you say. “It’s just what a Lib Dem should be doing. What’s your problem?”

Well the problem is that when Steve attended a Cabinet meeting on Thursday 22 March 2007, one of the agenda items was ‘Homecare Futures’. And the future of homecare in Bristol is now the private sector after Steve and his cabinet colleagues voted unaminously to privatise the service.

That’s right. The man who in one job opposes – in the words of his PCS boss Mark Serwotka – “dogmatic polic[ies] of outsourcing and privatisation” is doing just that in another.

Comer’s position is mindbending. As a Liberal Democrat councillor he’s privatised a public service “without negotiations and agreement” and ensured that there will be no “in-house bid” to run the service as he would demand as an executive of the PCS.

You might legitimately conclude then that Comer believes that what’s right and proper for his PCS members is irrelevant for low-paid, female home care workers belonging to UNISON and AMICUS that he is directly responsible for. Whatever happened to those fundamental principles on which British trade unionism was founded – brotherhood and fraternity?

You can forget all that old-fashioned nonsense with the likes of Comer. He will have no problem holding two entirely different and conflicting views for two entirely different and conflicting audiences.

There is no longer anything particularly surprising or unusual in this at all. You only have to have observed the principle-free, policy-lite antics of the Bristol Labour Party for years and the Lib Dems more recently to know this. And nationally New Labour has turned rank hypocrisy into an artform.

Liberal and left party politicians of all persuasions dumped the complicated stuff like ideology, class interest and commitment to social justice years ago in favour of personal self-interest. Nowadays it’s all about tactics, contingency and calculation. It’s management, stupid. And that’s what Comer’s about.

He’s a modern party politician. He believes in nothing except his right to get elected to committees and run things in a way that keeps him there and he’ll say anything to continue doing this. The Liberal Democrats will have no problem with this either. They quite like to pretend they’re against things they’re really in favour of like privatisation and the war. There’s votes in it.

The PCS’ response, however, will be interesting. This is a union with a distinctive – these days – militant, left wing image and a reputation as one of the market leaders in defending public services. Can they really afford to have a Tory boy with a pudding basin hairdo and a penchant for shafting low-paid, female public sector workers in their midst?

Don’t hold your breath. The far left for all its fine talk, moralising and carefully honed principles is at least as cynical, back-sliding and capable of extraordinary double standards as the rest of them.

Over to you then Mr Serwotka… Is your union full of shit?

Posted in Hypocrite Watch, Lib Dems, The British Left, The Trots, Trade Unionism | | There are 2 comments

If Muhammad won't come to the mountain…

Posted on March 23, 2007 by The Bristol Blogger

Malik's Audi

Drive him there in the Audi A5 and park up on double yellow lines!

News reaches The Bristol Blogger that Easton Lib Dem councillor and self-styled spokesman for Bristol’s ‘muslim community’, Abdul Malik, thinks he’s now above the law and parks his executive vehicles wherever he feels like in his ward.

This snap was taken by a local resident on St Marks Road, Easton whilst Malik attended a ‘Stapleton Road Action Plan’ meeting – to improve the area! – nearby. Very nearby in fact… Just 5 minutes walk from the lazy twat’s house!

Hat tip: Bristol Indymedia

Posted in Lib Dems | | There are 3 comments