Cutting public sector waste - but not in Bristol

Take a look at this job advert in the Grauniad:

Place-Making Director for Bristol

c£72k + Benefits (2 year fixed term)

Bristol

Vacancy Ref: 22111

Place-Making for a city is about ensuring that it is perceived as somewhere that is attractive to live, work, study, invest and do business in, as well as to visit. As Bristol's Place-Making Director one of your key roles will be to develop productive relationships with stakeholders, developing a common sense of purpose based around a shared understanding of Bristol’s sense of place, in order to improve Bristol’s economic competitiveness.

You will be expected to originate creative ideas for developing, reinforcing and enhancing Bristol’s sense of place and to work in partnership with others to make this happen.

We're looking for someone to help us distinguish our city from all others, and create a sense of pride in Bristol. Someone with:

* Brand development and marketing experience, for complex products or places.
* A good awareness of trends in branding, economic and city development.
* A good understanding of local government, public sector and commercial business environments.
* Senior management experience.
* Ability to successfully drive a business agenda and manage multi-stakeholder relationships.
* A creative thinker with highly developed interpersonal and influencing skills.
* Sound interesting? Then we'd love to hear from you.

For further information visit: www.bristol.gov.uk/jobs

For an informal chat, phone Jon House on 0117 922 2420.

Deadline for applications is 2nd June 2010.

Interviews will be held on 7th June 2010.

Closing Date: 2nd June 2010.

ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR THOUSAND POUNDS to "enhance Bristol's sense of Place"?

What the fucking fuck?

Jandroid, you should be fucking ashamed of yourself.

Get this marketing-speak BULLSHIT the fuck out of our city!

Europe proposes bank levy

Gush the Beeb.

A network of national funds should be introduced so the cost of bank failures are not met by the taxpayer, the EU internal market commissioner has said.

Michel Barnier said such funds would provide part of a broader system aimed at preventing future financial crises.

Banks would be required to pay a levy into the funds which would not be used to bail out failing banks, but manage failures in "an orderly way".

Mr Barnier said: "I believe in the 'polluter pays' principle."

"It is not acceptable that taxpayers should continue to bear the heavy cost of rescuing the banking sector. They should not be in the front line," he said.

And of course, those lovely, warm, cuddly, philanthropic banks won't just pass the cost of the levy to their customers - otherwise known as the fucking tax payer - will they? Surely not!

"Cash strapped" Catholic church asks it's members (and the UK taxpayer) to dig deep

Wait, did I say "cash-strapped"? What I actually meant to say was "Obscenely fucking rich".

Nevertheless, they've got the fucking front to demand that all their rather misguided followers help fund the Pope's visit to the UK.

Roman Catholic churchgoers are being urged to help meet a shortfall of more than £3m pounds in funding for Pope Benedict's visit to the UK.

The Church has asked them to put at least £1m in Sunday's collection - largely to pay for three big open air masses at which the Pope will preside.

But it gets worse...

Because this is a state visit by Pope Benedict XVI, the bulk of the cost is being borne by the UK government.

WRONG. The bulk of the cost is being borne by the UK taxpayer, so fuck you, BBC, and your disingenuous reporting. And you might want to think about rewriting the headline.

But mainly, Fuck you, Catholic Church, you Paedophilia-supporting, increasingly irrelevant, homophobic fairy-believing cunts. Kindly explain to me why I and other people who simply don't share your rather outdated faith should fund a visit of someone - who, to me, is just a random old ex-Nazi in a dress - to the country, to the tune of £8 million pounds? Go fuck yourselves (rather than the choirboys).

What is that thing Theresa May insists on wearing?

It's like an odd sort of helmet-less spacesuit. I know it's not only me that thinks it because people make reference to it in Guido's PMQs chat

But what the fuck is it?

Typical Scaremongering from the BBC

With cars this time, so I feel qualified to point out their false cause for concern.

The computer systems used to control modern cars are very vulnerable to attack, say experts.

An investigation by security researchers found the systems to be "fragile" and easily subverted.

The researchers showed how to kill a car engine remotely, turn off the brakes so the car would not stop and make instruments give false readings.

Except that's not quite true, is it, BBC?

The team got at the ECUs via the communications ports fitted as standard on most cars that enable mechanics to gather data about a vehicle before they begin servicing or repair work.

So, they connected a laptop to the OBD-II port and sent CANBUS packets to do things, then. People have been doing this for ages to build in remote-control features to in-car PCs. You need physical access to this port, so it can't be done remotely. Even if you were to build a wireless OBD-II interface to do it remotely, you'd still need access to this port to fit the transciever.

But yet the BBC have portrayed this story as though we should all be scared to go out driving in case our brakes are disabled by people standing on street corners with laptops.

Thanks BBC.

Theebeesee.*



* Little Peter Serafinowicz joke for you there.

Labour website traffic no worse on "crash day" than most others

So, it looks like it was just a dying bit of spin from Alistair Campbell.



Alexa's traffic info on labour.org.uk showed that the traffic to the website on the 11th May (the day Campbell claimed the site crashed due to "all the people trying to join" was not really any higher than it usually is, and in fact was nothing like the spike the site saw just before the election.

The "too busy to join" message was nothing to do with traffic to the site, which was not much higher than any other busy day.

Fucking pathetic.

Did the Labour Party website really crash under load of membership applications?

The story seems to have done the rounds this morning, but I don't believe it. Sounds a bit like a last-ditch Alistair Campbell spin attempt to me.

We need to wait a day or so until Alexa have info for the actual traffic hitting the server as opposed to Labour just putting the load message up on their server and periodically stopping the web service throughout the evening.

Unless there's a big spike on this graph tomorrow, I'm calling bullshit.



I'm quite happy to be proved wrong of course, but I smell the all-too-recognisable stench of Labour spin here.

Rejoice!!!!

Make sure the door doesn't smack you on your useless sagging arse, you woefully inept gurning moron. I suppose an apology for the wanton destruction of our economy is too much to ask for. You'll have the blood of inevitable Tory cuts on your hands, I'm afraid.

Perhaps the least deserving

I stumbled across this rather odd website today.

They're asking for opinions on:

The Cabot, Clifton and Clifton East Neighbourhood Partnership would like to hear your views on how to spend £15,000 of the "well-being" fund in this neighbourhood area. We would especially like to hear from you if you are a young person (younger than the average voter at least!)

What on earth do Cabot, Clifton and Clifton East need £15,000 for? They're some of the most affluent areas in the city.

This site is being set up by the Bristol Partnership (whoever the fuck they are), and apparently:

The pilot has been set up by the Bristol Partnership as part of taking forward the 20:20 plan. The 10 year strategy aims to put Bristol into the top 20 cities in Europe by 2020. You can find out more about the Partnership on our website at www.bristolpartnership.org

The Partnership is committed to increasing the opportunities for people who live in, work in or visit Bristol to get involved in how the city is run. We especially want young people to be more involved, as well as other groups who are less able to attend meetings in person.

This "dialogue" is a pilot project that has been set up on behalf of the Cabot, Clifton & Clifton East (CCC) Neighbourhood Partnership to see whether people are interested in submitting ideas, and voting for these ideas on how to spend some of the money that the NP has available. It builds on the ideas of participatory budgeting that has been run successfully elsewhere in the UK, but instead of gathering everyone in a school hall on a Saturday morning - we have decided to try using the web.

You know what to do.

The truth on immigration

From somebody who knows what the fuck they're talking about.

I think you're standing for the wrong party, mate

A Labour candidate has launched a personal attack on Gordon Brown, saying he is "the worst prime minister we have had in this country".

Manish Sood, who is standing in North West Norfolk, added that Mr Brown was a "disgrace".

Mr Sood called Labour ministers "corrupt" and said the party had allowed immigration to get too high.

He's quite correct of course. But then, why is he standing for Labour?