Thursday 26 February 2009

Want to know who actually supports all this equalities shit?

James Barlow has higlighted this one with the posting of two Youtube videos of Bristol City Council's budget debate.

The first video is Jay Jethwa, who is quite reasonably proposing to scrap a department which costs millions and basically gives money to BME communities for...well, for nothing really.



Then it's up to Shirley Brown (neé Marshall) to respond.



A few things you should know about Shirley Marshall - she was jetting off to Florida for 6 months at a time with her then-fiancé Byron, returning only to participate in meetings, however unimportant, so that she just stays within the "attendance" rules for claiming councillor's allowance of £900 a month. She was being paid £900 to do absolutely fuck all for the residents of Ashley. This has been highlighted on Indymedia a good few times, to be met with bizzare indignance by the Lib Dems (perhaps unsurprisingly), who came back with stories of illness etc.

Secondly, referring to Jay Jethwa as a "coconut" (i.e. brown on the outside, white on the inside) is a disgraceful display of racism from someone who is supposed to be supportive of equalities. By saying this, she is implying that Cllr Jethwa is "siding with white people" over this wasted money, and that by somehow opposing the payments made to "legacy commission" (to achieve...not much) she was "against black people".

What's the betting that Shirley benefits quite well from the legacy commission et al payments? She seemed to get quite angry, and seemed almost threatened. Time to do some digging, methinks.

UPDATE
Here are the meeting minutes from the last meeting of the Bristol Legacy Commission.

the Legacy Commission approved an investment of £26,500 for the first six months for the establishment of BME Chamber of Commerce;


What the fuck is a BME Chamber of Commerce, and how does it differ from the existing one?

Also, from a document in 2008,
The council has allocated a budget of £250,000 this year. This is expected to attract significant match-funding both regionally and nationally to support this work.


Big business. There has to be something more to Cllr Shirley Brown's anger.

UPDATE 2
The Conservative Group Chief Whip has raised a formal complaint.

2 comments:

seebag said...

Ive just sent the following email to Shirley Brown and will post any reply I get
I've just seen a webcast of you speaking at a recent BCC meeting. You are clearly racist, bigoted, inarticulate, over emotional and not competent to speak. I would dearly like to know why you think you have any part to play in the running of our city.

banned said...

Shirley Marshall seems to be a totally shouty lady and I hope she doesn't come and minister to me.

Keep up the good work Dave and Deadbeat Dad, exposing this horrid woman.