*** Ashton Court Festival Replacement Cancelled ***

Unfortunatley [sic] this concert has been cancelled.

But, but.... 12,000 people were supposed to attend! Or at least, that's what the Evening Post article said, even though they were charging silly money for tickets.

Wonder why it's cancelled? Did they just read the mood of Bristolian people wrong, or is it partly to do with the fact that my post slagging it off comes second in the Google search results for "Ashton Court Festival"? *evil grin*

Pickles was right

He might look like a fucking walrus, but his scathing attack on Local Councils was of course, bang on.

Why was he bang on?

Because look at the fucking SHIT that our old friends Bristol City Council are having the temerity to foist upon us:

EMPLOYERS in Bristol face a new tax of hundreds of pounds a year for every parking space they provide for their staff.

The city council is looking to introduce an annual "work place levy" on companies that provide staff car parking spaces at their premises.

The move is intended to force more commuters out of their cars and on to their bikes or the city's buses.

Those would be the buses that are punctual, cheap, and reliable, would they?

Details of the scheme are thin on the ground and the amount to be charged has yet to be decided but it has already been branded a "tax on businesses".

No, it's a "tax on commuters". Businesses will pass the cost onto employees that park because they won't be able to afford to/won't want to pay it.

The council says it is "exploring the potential" of the scheme

I bet they fucking are.

which would be most likely to affect businesses in central Bristol. The authority says it would pay for its own staff parking spaces if the tax was brought in.

Fucking unbelieveable. So the Council is going to pay itself, using it's own money collected from council tax payers? Glory fucking be! And how much will that cost to do, whilst achieving the square root of precisely fuck-all?

Bristol City Council hopes that charging companies in this way will force more people on to public transport, reducing taxpayer-funded subsidies and making more money available for transport improvements.

But Bristol City Council hardly subsidises public transport anyway! The only one I can think of is the Night buses. And who the fuck are the Council to "force" people onto public transport anyway? That's not their fucking job. They are there to provide services, not force whether people use them or not. I can just imagine what the transport improvements are, a couple of bus lanes here and there, maybe a cycle path. And it gets better....

The levy could be seen as an example of the new advice given to the West of England Partnership – the body comprising all of the former Avon area councils – to make life "more difficult, more awkward and more expensive" for drivers.

The Post reported on Tuesday that the partnership was told to get tough on motorists by the Transport Planning Commission, a consultation body that includes the University of the West of England, Bristol Primary Care Trust, cycling charity Sustrans and the city's main bus operator, First.

You just couldn't make this shit up, could you? Fuck, and we thought things were bad at the moment.

Fuck you, BCC. Where is the carrot you fucking promised us before the stick? Fucking where? It's dried up and mouldy and lying in the gutter, that's where it is. Go fuck yourselves, you bunch of statist control-freak cunts.

Sorry, what?

Why does the BBC keep losing talent?

Come again? Talent, you say?

Nice work if you can get it

The six-figure salaries of more than 150 bosses of taxpayer-supported quangos have been published.

The highest sum listed was the £394,999 paid to Olympic Delivery Authority chief executive David Higgins.

He was one of eight senior figures at the body earning in excess of £200,000 a year.

Fuck me. That's fucking insane. The list is available in CSV and XML format, and of particular interest is the "Organisation" Column, as it lists just some of the ridiculous organisations ("Horserace Betting Levy Board", anyone?) whose CEOs get huge salaries paid by us.

And fucking for what?

What the fuck is Alan Davey, the Chief Exec of The Arts Council, for fucks sake, doing for taxpayers to justify him earning over £150k? Or the Neil MacGregor, the Director of the British Museum, who puts away over £175k a year? Who the fuck even are "Buying Solutions" (Alison Littley, £150k), "Directly Operated Rail" (Elaine Holt, £180k), "Postcomm" (Tim Brown, £150k), or the "Waste and Resources Action Programme" (E Goodwin, £160k)? What the fuck is the "Olympic Delivery Authority", with a salary bill of it's directors alone well in excess of £2million, and how does it differ from the "Olympic Park Legacy Company"? Why the fuck does the Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey, who let's face it - just make fucking maps, deserve a taxpayer-funded salary of £190k? What the fucking hell are they really doing for the taxpayer?

A bunch of these people aren't even fucking full-timers. Lord David Rowe-Beddoe of Kilgetty, for example, earns £35k-£39k a year (which is a perfectly respectable salary) as a Deputy Chair of the UK Statistics authority, but he only works 4 days a month. David Norgrove is the Chairman of the Pensions Regulator and earns £110k a year, which I would say is still too much for a taxpayer-funded salary, until you realise he's only a fucking part-timer working 3 days a fucking week.

Sack the lot of them! I don't for one second buy this bullshit that they need to offer a decent salary to "attract the right people" - bullshit. They never attract the right people anyway. And what the fuck do these poeple do all day? Really? I'd wager they sit in "meetings" that achieve the square root of fuck all, and occasionally send emails to the organisation rambling about "strategy", "direction", "low-hanging fruit", and "enabling change".

I don't know how any average taxpayer can't read this list and not get fucking livid.

We could save a lot of money by cutting every one of these salaries in half. And would the country be worse off for it? Would it fuck.