The Bristol Blogger

Get out writes …

I hear that the most serious concern within the leadership of Bristol Labour and Tory Parties right now is not the cycle path at all. By the sound of rumblings in the Council House the uppermost thing on the mind of the Labour Chief Whip Colin Smith, Lord Mayor Royston Griffey, Helen Holland and Richard Eddy is: a fabled photograph of Helen and Eddy looking extra friendly in a break of the Council budget debate. The villain is Lib Dem deputy leader Jon Rogers who apparently tried to take a snap on his mobile phone (despite the fact that meetings are web cast and the press and TV are admitted anyway). Serious threatening letters have been sent, apologies demanded and assurances sought that the photo will be destroyed - if it even exists.

Presumably the thought of the cosy picture being used in political leaflets caused panic! Mind you, considering Labour don’t even bother to use real photos in their leaflets (remember your story here?: http://thebristolblogger.wordpress.com/2007/04/26/bristol-labour-photoshop-horror/) it’s hard to see why they are so worked up by whether the photo exists or not.

No sign yet of a formal press release announcing the arrival of “Junket” Jan Ormondroyd to run Bristol City Council.

So we’ll just have to make do with the one that the council’s PR girl Simon Caplan did back in December.

Presumably in the spirit of co-operation and compromise it lists the views of all the political party leaders at the council.

So Labour leader Helen Holland says: “[Jan] will bring to Bristol the skills and experience needed to support councillors in our drive to make a real difference to the lives of local people - and promote our city regionally, nationally and internationally.”

While Lib Dem leader Stevie Comer says: “I am very pleased to be able to welcome Jan to Bristol.”

Tory leader Bunter Eddy meanwhile says: ” I believe we have made an excellent appointment that will be good for the city council and for Bristol as a whole.”

And Business West boss John Savage says: “” I am delighted at the new appointment. Business West looks forward to continuing good partnership working with Bristol City Council and we wish the new Chief Executive every success.”

Hang on a minute …

Did we just mention unelected multi-millionaire Business West boss, Merchant Venturer and SWRDA Board member John Savage?

And since when did he become entitled to equal billing alongside Bristol’s elected representatives? What’s going on here?

And where’s the Green Party’s view on all this? Why don’t they get a say?

Usually we’re told that, legally and constitutionally, the Green Party aren’t formally recognised as a political party for funding and administrative purposes by Bristol City Council because they only have one councillor and they need at least two to be treated as a party.

Now it appears this situation around funding and administration has been arbritarily interpreted by Simon Caplan and the city’s council officers to mean that the Greens are not entitled to a formal voice in general city council press releases.

This is despite there being absolutely no constitutional or legal reason whatsoever why the Green Party can’t appear in this kind of city council press release.

And why - if the Greens are being denied a voice because they only have one elected councillor - do Business West, with no elected representatives at all, get an official voice on a Bristol City Council platform?

Can we assume then that the views of unelected millionaire businessmen are more important than elected politicians down at the Council House?

Bristol’s most pompous man has found this week’s most stupidly pompous bandwagon to jump on.

Peter Abraham,  Bristol’s serial civic cross-dresser and deputy Tory leader, announced in yesterday’s Cancer: “a citizen’s allegiance to Crown and country ceremony could give young people a sense of belonging and help tackle a loss of national pride.”

Rather than take the piss out of this dress wearing Tory grotesque ourselves we’ll leave it to Olly’s Onions to sum this shit up …

The promise of a few crappy bits of children’s play equipment for their wards was enough for the Labour Party to buy unequivocal Tory support for another year at last night’s budget meeting writes Jon Rogers.

Once again Bristol Labour Party are firmly in control at Bristol City Council thanks to the support of the Bunter Eddy’s bargain basement Tory Party.

The coming year will see the Labour/Tory alliance attempting to push through the BRT scheme on the railway path and attempts to build a PFI rubbish incinerator in Avonmouth among other things.

Let’s hope this play equipment is very, very good indeed as its cost will be far higher than the £295,000 listed price.

A blog combining Bristol University, the Conservative Party and wealthy students you say. For real?

It appears so. And one of the first items on the new BUCA (Bristol University Conservative Association) Blog finds our new student idealist friends getting straight down to serious business and arranging their invitations to Tory Party front bencher, the appalling Caroline Spelman’s bucks fizz reception happening next week.

This could easily be the work of some new and as yet unknown comic genius in the city. Highly recommended.

Meanwhile, the entirely unremarkable Ashley Fox, Tory Councillor for Westbury-on-Trym has somehow managed to get himself a gig as a Tory Euro candidate at the next EU election in 2009.

To support his efforts, the militant europhobe’s set up a blog - Fox 4 Europe. All decked out in the Union Flag, it’s actually a fascinating insight into how reactionary and unsophisticated the Tory Party still is at the grassroots.

Not at all what “Ordinary” Dave Cameron and his Notting Hill public relations lackeys would have us believe that’s for sure.

Confusion, consternation and plain anger tonight across the leafy suburbs of Bristol as the news comes in that the Bristol and South Gloucestershire Conservative Association’s events listing website is down.

Fear not. As part of the Bristol Blogger’s political inclusion remit we are happy to list those forthcoming Conservative events in full:

Stoke Bishop Tea Club
Monday February 18 2008
Stoke Bishop Village Hall
Guest Speaker: Mr Mike Brayley of the Rotary Club of Nailsea and Backwell
Contact: Noreen Billingham

Bunter Eddy’s Pie Club
Thursday March 16, 6.00pm
The Grand Lodge of the Church of the Latter Day Tories, Headley Park, Bristol.
Bunter’s monster monthly pie scoffing social. This month features a world exclusive with the official unveiling of the latest Pieminister pie aimed firmly at the mass frozen foods market - “The Bunter” (it’s full of shit!)
Guest Speaker: Major General Sir Bernard J Rufton Bufton Tufton, Esquire (Retd), MA (cantab), MBE (Hons), CBE, M.Phil, BBC, CBGB, OMG, HTML, WTF, LSD will talk at great length on “Me and my gollies”
Booking advised.

The James Barlow Lectures
Cabot District Girl Guide Hut, Westbury on Trym
The Chairman of Bristol West Constituency Conservative Party and leading local Conservative thinker presents an exclusive set of policy-related lectures. Not to be missed!

1 March 2008: Are a team of 200 Chinese coolies with rickshaws the solution to Bristol’s transport problems?

15 March 2008: The European Council of Ministers: they eat babies

22 March 2008: Is taxation the real cause of global warming?

These lectures are all FREE and are funded by SWRDA’s Sustainable Futures Policy Fund for the Promotion of Community Involvement in partnership with Bristol City Council’s Equality for All Diversity Challenge Fund and the Home Office’s Social Cohesion Quality Award Scheme for Inclusive Communities.

Annual Dennis Thatcher Memorial Golfing Day
Thursday 23 March 2008
Early start as usual. This year’s gin breakfast will be kindly hosted by Sid and Doris Bonkers in their garden shed, Sea Mills.
Golf clubs optional bring your own Gin!

Conservative Future’s Nazi Theme Ball featuring the Big Prize Herman Goering Look-a-like Contest
Friday March 21 2008
The Bristol University Vomitorium
£10 a ticket
Authentic costumes and top notch Nazi regalia available to rent at very reasonable rates. Contact Dennis Burn c/o Society of Merchant Venturers

Ordinary Dave’s Let’s Make the World a Greener Place Bristol to Bath Charity Cycle Ride
Sunday 16 March 2008
Join your fellow local Conservatives and help make the world a better place by cycling from Bristol to Bath.
For further details and the exact meeting place, please call Barbara Lewis at the end of next week when she hopes to have found out where the Bristol and Bath Railway Path actually is.

(That’s enough Bristol Conservative Events, Ed)

How wide do they think the cycle path is?

A quick roundup of cycle path related shenanigans …

The meeting arranged for Tuesday 5 February 2008 at 7.30pm is at Easton Community Centre, not Easton Leisure Centre or The Cornubia.

The scale of opposition and anger to the plan to turn the Bristol and Bath Cycle Path into a bus route is now becoming clear. A petition set up to oppose the plan on the council’s website has gained over 5,000 signatures in under a week. A discussion forum on the BBC website is also demonstrating a similar level of opposition to the plans.

As does the rumour reaching the Blogger that one Bristol City Councillor has received over 800 emails opposing the plan. The recipient is likely to be Labour’s Mark Bradshaw, who is fronting the plan at present.

Anyone who has emailed Bradshaw may have to be patient though, as Bradshaw is known to get his local government officer assistant Roger Livingston to find out the political affiliations of any his correspondents before he sends them a reply.

Bradshaw also cropped up on the front cover of the Cancer today defending his plan. The newspaper already seems firmly on board, headlining the article ‘Welcome to the Future’ and giving the plan the thumbs-up in an editorial.

Tuesday night saw Bradshaw appear on BBC Points West. His tired line - that buses and cyclists can coexist on the path - is still broadly the same as the one in his press release last week.

However Bradshaw’s own project board who are responsible for developing the plan seem to disagree with him on this in their own minutes (pdf):

“It was a Sustrans policy to support the return of former railway corridors to public transport use as long as there was no negative impact in the amenity value for cyclists. It would be difficult to demonstrate this.”

Which hasn’t stopped Bradshaw trying to demonstrate exactly this anyway. Not least through the publication of some unrealistic sketches of a very wide cycle path indeed demonstrating bicycles and buses “coexisting” in his brave new world:

While Bradshaw and Labour take all the political hits on this at present, the Tories and Lib Dem are keeping very silent on the issue and so far haven’t responded to any emails and taken a public position.

This might be because their respective leaders, Bunter and the Pudding Basin, have been party to these plans all along and have nodded through tens of thousands of pounds worth of expenditure to work up a scheme that may well end up in the dustbin due to an entirely predictable public outcry.

Lib Dem boss Pudding Basin Comer is even a councillor for the Eastville Ward, which the cycle path passes through. So much for his local knowledge then.

The Greens meanwhile, who have been handed the issue on a plate, have not failed to take an opportunistic shot at this open goal. Having spent last weekend reading through the documents obtained by the Bristol Cycling Campaign through a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, the Greens have released a lengthy statement with some decent observations, which at least has saved the Blogger the effort of trawling through these interminable documents.

The Blogger’s eye was, however, caught by the minutes of a discussion the BRT Project Board (pdf) had about their communications strategy:

Richard Rawlinson (RR) raised the issue of awareness raising on BRT proposals. KH considered that this needed to be linked with GBBN and other initiatives to provide a more strategic approach. Peter Bartlett (PB) suggested use of a common overview context setting text across scheme communications activities. DO considered that more proactive communication strategy would assist with stakeholder support (eg Business West) as schemes develop.

So what the hell does that all mean? Well in practice “use of a common overview context setting text across scheme communications activities” seems to translate as “we’ll keep our heads down and force the public to use FoI legislation to find out what’s going on”.

More coming soon as it happens …

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

Other means of creating hot air …

Bristol City Council is planning another gimmick to help define the council’s top priorities for the future - even though they’ve done this all before and miserably failed to deliver the priorities.

The gimmick will take up the first two hours of the next meeting of the full Council on January 15th 2008 - and the public are invited to submit statements to the gimmick that will then be discussed by the city’s 70 elected councillors.

The meeting will be webcast live - and you can follow proceedings online at www.bristol.gov.uk/webcast

Welcoming the gimmick, Cllr Helen Holland, Leader of the Council, said: “Our last pointless gimmick - the Citizens’ jury on Waste - was a hugely spectacular waste of money to tell us the blindingly obvious.

“But since we have no vision for the city beyond a few hackneyed buzzwords - “delivering high quality”; “value for money”; “services for all”; “drive forward change”; “safer and healthier for all”; “deliver visible improvements” - and neither do we have a manifesto we thought we might as well wheel out yet another gimmick to patronise the electorate with instead.”

Leader of the Liberal Democrats Group, Cllr Steve Comer added: “To be honest I’m an out-and-out careerist and so desperate to be noticed I’d sign my party up for anything for a bit of publicity, even one of Bristol Labour’s ridiculous see-through gimmicks that serve no purpose.

“Many Bristol residents feel promises are made but not delivered. This gimmick gives councillors an opportunity to pretend otherwise.”

Leader of the Conservative Group, Bunter Eddy said: “Cor! I hope pies, cakes and cream tea are served too.”

Public statements telling this lot where to get off should be submitted in writing by 12 noon on Monday, January 14th 2008 – by post to Democratic Services Team, Room 220, The Council House, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR, by fax to 0117 922 2146 or by e-mail to democratic.services@bristol.gov.uk. Anyone requiring further information can phone the Democratic Services Team on 0117 922 2362 (Minicom – 0117 922 2115).

What the Tory Party in Bristol calls a leader . . .

What with the impending disaster that will be the Museum of Bristol; the introduction of a Residents’ Parking Zones tax; increased parking costs; a £100k spent on a pointless citizens’ jury; council care homes about to be privatised on the basis of cooked books and a fiasco unfolding in the home care service, you might have thought the Tories and their leader Bunter Eddy might have had a few questions to ask of the Labour-run council.

Not quite. Bunter - who along that pompous tosser of a sidekick, the unbearable Peter Abrahams, put this shower of Labour shits into power - will be focussing instead at next week’s council meeting on the urgent and important issue of a private email sent by a Lib Dem councillor to their colleagues.

What planet are Bunter and his dumb-ass Tory colleagues living on? Do they give a toss about this city and the people in it? Or is it that the city council provides a rather pleasant environment for a few of the city’s privileged Rotarians to sit about influencing things for themselves, collecting a bit more money through their expenses and making shit jokes?

You have to wonder how much longer Eddy can last as Tory leader now. He clearly lost an election badly that he should have won in May and now he’s brown-nosing the opposition he should be tearing to shreds!

Here’s Eddy’s impending contribution to our democracy in full:

MQ24 COUNCILLOR R EDDY TO ASK COUNCILLOR J
PRICE, EXECUTIVE MEMBER FOR NEIGHBOURHOODS

Q1. Does the Executive Member recall receiving an email on 19th November 2007, from the Liberal Democrat Housing Spokesman, Councillor Popham in connection with her recent offer to meet with Members to discuss the impact of changes in Housing Services?

Q2. Does she feel that Councillor Popham’s rather injudicious response (obviously only intended for the consumption of Liberal Democrat Councillors), in which he said “….many of these things I presume we would have implemented, so we cannot have us providing adverse feedback to the public via Labour on things we implemented….”, does anything to enhance the perception of local government?

Q3. Does she agree with me that such flagrant cynicism and politicking is wholly inappropriate for a Party, which seeks to present itself as a responsible Opposition?

Q4. Given the propensity of Liberal Democrat politicians to score such own goals (e.g. the recent “Calamity Clegg” dossier), what advice would she give to “Ponderous Popham” regarding his future use of Council email facilities?

Bunter Eddy: the term “stupid Tory cunt” could have been invented for him couldn’t it? He’s a fucking disgrace.

But all this does show up rather nicely the reality of Cameron’s Conservatives doesn’t it? Beneath the poor quality veneer of their PR lies the same old selfish, self-interested business clique who’ll do anything - even support an openly dishonest Labour regime they should oppose - as long as it continues to oil the wheels of their and their friends’ business interests.