The Bristol Blogger

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?

Willard: Who’s in charge here?
Soldier: In charge? I don’t know man. I thought you were in charge…
Apocalpyse Now

If you’re looking for any hard news about the city these days - as opposed to articles about what the weather’s like or what local cancer charities are doing to raise money over the weekend - why not try page 53 of the Cancer?

Last Friday found our old friend, Merchant Venturer and unelected SWRDA board member John Savage, slipping a highly partisan article under the radar on the advantages of Bristol Airport expansion. It seems he’s even gone to the expense of forking out for his own economists to discredit Stop Bristol Airport Expansion’s economic research.

And today on page 53 we have something that appears suspiciously like a planted article about the Railway Path headlined ‘Green protest could cost us’ in which “an expert” who refuses to be named claims that “green protesters could lose Bristol millions in transport investment“.

Obviously no so-called “green protestor” is invited to reply to these claims and provide some balance to the article. Instead we get a comment from “West of England Partnership spokesman Simon Caplan”.

Caplan, by sheer coincidence, happens to run Bristol City Council’s communication department, despite Labour Councillor Faruk Choudhury recently assuring us that they - along with West of England Partnership - have nothing to do with the BRT proposal. The BRT plan says Choudhury “is only a consultant’s report prepared for the West of England Partnership.”

Not according to their new spokesman Caplan it’s not: “the West of England Partnership is committed to developing a network of state-of-the art rapid transit routes to deliver a step-change to public transport in the sub-region. The partnership is determined to secure government funding for the critical schemes that will form that network,” he says.

Not a mention of consultants there. So who is in charge of these BRT plans? Consultants? The West of England Partnership? Bristol City Council? The responsibility and accountability seems to be shifting on a daily basis now.

Now this is getting fucking ridiculous. It’s like Bristol’s got its very own multi-millionaire Merchant Venturer Forrest Gump character popping up every time something totally crap is announced in the city.

To be honest, the way things are run around here, it wouldn’t surprise us if you woke up tomorrow morning to find Business West boss John Savage’s ugly mug creepily leering at you in your bed while a couple of his local government officer minions, assisted by a grand-a-day Atkins consultant, set up a laptop and delivered a snappy Powerpoint presentation on ‘the delivery phase of your regional household breakfast spatial strategy’.

Should you find yourself in this situation; for god’s sake take the day off work. Otherwise you’re likely to return home later to find Herr Savage and his quangocracy have blitzkrieged the house and concreted the garden in order to carve out some more Lebensraum for his ever-expanding state funded regional Businessreich.

Multimillionaire Savage’s latest unelected power grab, where he supposedly represents us, is on yet another local quango, the West of England Strategic Partnership (WESP) Board (pdf). Here he sits alongside the clueless (although at least elected) triumvirate of party leaders Bunter Eddy, Pudding Basin Comer and Helen Holland.

WESP is the quango that has decided - without consultation or discussion - to turn the Bath and Bristol Cycle Path into a rapid transit route although they also appear very determined to dump a congestion charge on us as well whether we want it or not.

Savage would just have to be involved really wouldn”t he? How could the man who failed to deliver us our Arena not be up for the wanton destruction of one of the city’s most outstanding and popular remaining features? And who else but an unelected multi-millionaire could possibly be at the forefront of moves to create a very special new regressive transport tax that will shaft the poorest in the city a little bit more?

The Blogger says enough’s enough. Savage: go get yerself elected or go get yerself out of Bristol’s public life right now you destructive, self-serving little scrote.

A brief biog of the city’s favourite slave trader brought to you by Channel Zero Bristol …

Hat tip: Bristol 2007’s Weblog 

As The Blogger reported here well before Christmas, a Business West press release published verbatim in yesterday’s Evening Cancer confirms that Business West will be merging with Swindon based GWE to form an organisation, GWE Business West, “to represent the views of its business clients and members at regional and national, public and private sector forums.”

Intriguingly the press release makes no mention of the role of Merchant Venturers and SWRDA board members John Savage and Colin Skellett (Blogger passim) in this new organisation. As predicted, Savage will be the CEO of the new organisation and Skellett will co-chair alongside GWE’s Nicky Morrison - neither a venturer nor a SWRDA board member - who’s quoted copiously in the press release.

Morrison, however, does confirm one of the key objects of this new organisation is to target SWRDA funds, which Savage and Skellett are directly responsible for “independently” disbursing on our behalf:

“The Government is looking for ways to simplify and increase the cost-effectiveness of its business support contracts, and public sector organisations, such as the South West Regional Development Agency and the Government Office for the South West, favour a regional focus.”

No mention is made in the press release about Northern Arc Ltd., a firm set up in April this year specifically to receive £8m worth of SWRDA funding to provide “Business Link services”. Northern Arc is now fully controlled by GWE Business West, which in turn is controlled by Skellett and Savage who are also responsible for awarding the money as SWRDA board members.

At present nobody seems to give a toss about this pair’s multi-million pound conflict of interest at the public’s expense.

COMING SOON: The Bristol Blogger’s John Savage profile - what he doesn’t want you to know …

That tireless worker in the public interest, Merchant Venturer John Savage - a board member of the SWRDA - told us earlier this week in the Evening Cancer after the cancellation of the arena project:

in the end, we are in no doubt that an £86 million bill to be footed by you, the readers of this paper, among others, is unacceptable.

However, it seems that Savage neglected to tell us what he and his fellow board members at the SWRDA think is an entirely acceptable use of public funds.

Perusing through the SWRDA’s last annual report, 2006 - 2007, we find a section headed ‘Related Party Transactions’. And what might this be? Why it’s only a list of payments from our friendly local RDA to organisations in which board members of the SWRDA have a direct personal interest.

And how much public money have this little gang been awarding themselves then? Last year the figure was over . . . Wait for it . . . £20m!!!

Yes, these selfless workers on our behalf who called a halt to the arena because the costs were unacceptable are filling their own boots with public cash to the tune of 20 million quid every bloody year!

This means that over 10% of the SWRDA’s budget is currently going directly to board members’ personal organisations. And this figure will be going up next year when Savage and Colin Skellett’s £8m a year Northern Arc scam is factored in. Then one-sixth of the SWRDA’s entire budget will be going direct to board members.

At least we now know why they can’t afford an arena. It’s obviously not a board members’ personal pet project and none of the money would end up in their organisation.

You may also be pleased to hear that the multi-millionaire membership of the SWRDA board aren’t working for nothing. For their two whole days of work a month they are being paid the grand total of £8,268 a year. Pro rata that’s equivalent to around £90k a year.

They’re all heart ain’t they?

We said on Friday evening that the two Merchant Venturers, John Savage and Colin Skellett, who have seats at the head table of the SWRDA, were currently in talks with Swindon-based GWE to merge their Business West operation with them to create a region-wide business organisation perfectly positioned to cash in on huge SWRDA grants.

We also said that after the merger SWRDA board members Skellett and Savage through Business West would take majority control of Northern Arc Ltd., a company started in April this year to manage £8m of SWRDA grant funds.

We should add that at present, through Business West, Savage and Skellett, already run one-third of Northern Arc Ltd. The merger will simply hand them control of another third and majority control of the firm.

Already it seems Savage and Skellett have used their SWRDA roles to their own £8m advantage. How public spirited of them.

LATER: The full extent of SWRDA board members’ conflicts of interest.

A mere three weeks after The Blogger reported something that according to the Cancer only “emerged last week”, our local newspaper finally spills the beans on the SWRDA’s extraordinary expenses and junketing spending. They say about the regional quango, at the heart of the arena fiasco:

Last week, it emerged that it spent more than £60,000 of taxpayers’ money at a property trade show on the French Riviera.

A delegation from the agency racked up the bill in Cannes at an event described by one guest as a lavish “four-day party”.

Details of the cost of the trip to the Mipim show, based in the Palais des Festivals, were obtained under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.

The details show that in March 2007 - days before Hollywood stars descended on Cannes for its famous film festival - SWRDA was among eight of the nine development agencies in the country to travel to the event.

The figures disclosed under the FoI Act show the quango also spent £61,000 on its annual staff conference at the Center Parcs Longleat Forest holiday village in Wiltshire, plus £28,279 on another staff meeting last year at the Riviera Centre in Torquay.

Its total bill for corporate events in 2006-7 amounted to £278,560.

Well done boys!

Elsewhere today the paper handed space over to Merchant Venturer John Savage, the Chairman of Bristol’s corporate power-brokers Business West and also a member of the SWRDA board that took the decision to pull the arena project.

The self-interested multi-millionaire schmuck used the paper to come over all public spirited on us:

But, in the end, we are in no doubt that an £86 million bill to be footed by you, the readers of this paper, among others, is unacceptable.

Isn’t it touching how Savage and his SWRDA business friends have our best interests and those of the wider public at heart like this? They’ve only gone and stopped the arena for our benefit.

Have they hell! As it will no doubt “emerge” in a couple of weeks, Savage couldn’t give a toss about us or saving public money, he’s actually much more interested in securing the SWRDA mega-bucks swilling around the region and meant for our arena for himself and his Merchant Venturer cronies.

What Savage failed to mention in his selfless paean for the public today was the interesting little bit of business he and his fellow Merchant Venturer, SWRDA board member and Business West colleague, the Enron profiteer Colin Skellett are quietly embarked on at present.

It seems that Business West will be merging with a similar supplier of “business services” for Wiltshire and Swindon, GWE, to form a rather convenient regional organisation perfectly positioned to hoover up funds from regional development organisations like the SWRDA!

The new Chief Exec of this - as yet unamed - organisation will be SWRDA board member Savage and the Chairman will be SWRDA board member Skellett. So it’ll be interesting to see how much of the £40m meant for our arena ends up going to them won’t it?

And don’t worry about any potential conflicts of interest here because obviously these two don’t. If this merger happens, it appears that Savage and Skellett will also be gaining control of a company called Northern Arc Ltd, currently controlled by GWE. Here’s what they do:

a joint venture company established in April 2007 for the purposes of securing the South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA) contract for the delivery of Business Link services in the West of England, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

Yes. They’re a company set up specifically to receive SWRDA funds and it’ll soon be run by two of the board members who are directly responsible for “independently” disbursing those funds. Cosy or wot?

At present it’s believed Northern Arc are turning over about £8m, largely from SWRDA. But it’ll be interesting to see over the next few years how much more SWRDA cash - our arena money - goes their way and to the new Savage/Skellett Business West/GWE set-up.

Well, well, well. Who’s this slithering back up the greasy pole into the higher echelons of Bristol’s public life?

Those fine and honourable fellows of our local creepy millionaires’ misogynist sect, the Society of Merchant Venturers, have only gone and gotten themselves a new head honcho. This year’s keeper of the holy Colston toenail and “The one that you must call the master” is none other than Nicholas Hood. Whoopee! Get those trouser legs up boys!

“Hood, 71,” explains the ever informative Evening Cancer “was educated at Clifton College and was chairman of Wessex Water. Among his other posts, he is life vice president of @Bristol.”

Unfortunately this anodyne description is not the whole story. This former Chairman of Wessex Water made one fortune out of Thatcher’s water privatisation in the 80s and then another fortune when Wessex was sold to Enron to create their ‘global’ water business Azurix in 1998.

Hood was then installed as vice-Chairman of Azurix where he would have worked alongside the convicted Enron crooks Jeffery Skilling and Kenneth Lay. Here again he earned another small fortune and his boss Rebecca Mark walked away in 2000 with over $100m while the obvious questions went unasked by her fellow directors led by Hood. Of course ordinary Enron employees and investors later lost jobs, homes and pensions at the hands of the fraudsters running the bent energy business.

Hood also chaired @Bristol until 2001 before scarpering quickly in the wake of the Enron scandal. In this post he again dismally failed to provide simple financial oversight and squandered around £40m of public money on building an unsustainable personal vanity project instead. The doomed enterprise has recently had to make staff redundant and closed two-thirds of its operation to avoid bankruptcy after a halt was finally called to the millions in public subsidies Hood’s poorly planned and executed attraction required.

Having kept his head down for a few years, it now looks like Hood - who used to like styling himself as “a friend of Prince Charles” to the local press, although references to Tampon Charlie have been rare in recent years - is returning to public life. No doubt he’ll be bringing that selfless public service ethos of his along with him too.

This being Bristol - “The European City of Smug Brownosers” - don’t expect any awkward questions to be asked, however. Instead sit back and watch those entrusted with the city’s welfare happily socialise, dine and lavish ill-deserved praise upon him for the next year.

Hurrah! As part of the national Crimestoppers Conference taking place in Bristol last week on the theme of ‘Engaging Hard-To-Reach Communities’, West Country Crimestoppers held a sumptuous black tie reception on board the SS Great Britain “to thank local and national volunteers and businesses for their support”.

In an especially nice touch, the heroic and hard working crime fighters were even sailed to the reception on a flotilla of ships. How generous is that? So who were these selfless local volunteers deserving of free on-board posh nosh and a roaring piss-up for their sterling work tackling crime on our behalf?

Er, The Lord Mayor of Bristol, the Lord Lieutenant of Bristol, the High Sheriffs of Bristol, Somerset and Gloucestershire, Pig Fucker Gurney, the Chief Executive of Bristol County Council, and our glorious Labour leader Helen Holland were all there - present and correct - at the front of the freebie queue a quite breathlessly excited press release assures us.

As were “key members of the region’s business community” including Business West, the South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA), Rolls Royce and Ladbrokes. Other companies included The Bristol Hippodrome, Mercure and Original FM.

The mandatory self-congratulatory speeches were delivered by our old Merchant Venturer friend John Savage - never one to pass up a free meal - of Business West fame and a board member of SWRDA and the Broadmead brown-noser himself, John Hirst.

Keynote speaker Mick Laurie, the Chief Executive of Crimestoppers, even thanked all those present for all their hard work! Then explained how they were there to share and discuss their experiences and to learn from them for the benefit of “the communities we wish to reach to enable us to develop solutions to help those communities.”

Doesn’t it just warm yer heart?

Possibly not if you live in one of the “communities they wish to reach” such as say Easton, where the residents not only don’t get regular invites to scoff free upmarket nosh while receiving a pat on the back for being wealthy and influential but also have to put up with diabolical levels of unceasing crime.

Stats for the last six weeks show there were 50 house burglaries, 38 cases of street robbery using weapons or violence, 47 occurences of theft and criminal damage to vehicles and several attempted arson attacks in Easton alone.

Brilliant! Trebles all round!