Treason, gunpowder and plot edition
"They're plotting in Gloucester, marching in Taunton, protesting in Bath and singing battle hymns in the Dean. The English are stirring ... Will the peasants revolt?"

[Most links removed]
P R O T E S T

NATIONAL DEMO NOW!
The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) is demanding that a national trade union demonstration against cuts should be held this year in late November or early December. At present the TUC is not planning a major demonstration until 26 March 2011. The PCS is asking all trade union branches to demand trade union executives and the TUC general council support the PCS's call for a demonstration now. The most likely date for an action is December 11.

FOREST OF DEAN
Foresters are united in their opposition to a sell-off of public forests in England including parts of the Dean. A meeting, on November 1, set up a steering group to act as a source of “reliable information regarding the possible threats of a sell-off of the Forest woodlands and to coordinate opposition. Colin Smith, chairman of Friends of the Forest, said: “We declare our strongest opposition to even the slightest threat to our public woodlands, especially, of course, to the Forest of Dean. We hope all local environmental groups will unite to nip this lunatic suggestion in the bud.”

HANDS OFF OUR FOREST!
A massive protest in song to stop the proposed sale of Forestry Commission woodlands will take place at the Fern Bonfire, Speech House Field, Coleford, Forest of Dean on Saturday November 6 from 6pm. Anyone who attends can join in a resounding rendition of the 'Battle Hymn of the Dean' – last sung when the woodlands were threatened in 1993. Penned by the late Lily Dunn, the rallying call will hopefully be backed by the Forest of Dean Male Voice Choir members. Be there!

BATH
Bath Anti Cuts Alliance are organising a protest to coincide with a B&NES full council meeting to vote on cuts. Meet outside the Guildhall, Bath on Tuesday 16 November from 5.30pm.

TAUNTON
Taunton and West Somerset Trades Union Council is organising a march and mass rally on Saturday 6 November in Taunton to protest against Somerset County Council’s budget, which is set to slash £43 million worth of services with a loss of 1,500 jobs. Anyone wishing to take part in the protest should assemble in French Weir from 10.30 am. The march will set off at 11.00 am. Speakers includes Robin Head of the National Union of Teachers, Councillor Andy Govier (Labour), Councillor Ross Henley (Liberal Democrat) and Lisa Youlton of UNISON, as well as speakers from the PCS (Public and Commercial Services Union) and the RMT (Rail, Maritime and Transport Union).

GLOUCESTER
There will be a march and rally against cuts in Gloucester on Saturday November 20. The march starts from Gloucester Park at 10:30am sharp.

VODAPHONE
Bristol joined the #UKuncut protests last Saturday and successfully shut down £6bn tax evader Vodaphone's shop in the Broadmead shopping centre for the day. More such actions are promised and the protestors even seem to be picking up support from Westminster with Bristol East MP, Kerry McCarthy applauding their action.

FIXTURE CONGESTION
Don't fight 'em, bankrupt 'em! Planning an action in Bristol on a weekend? Why not s-t-r-e-t-c-h those resources and make sure it coincides with a Rovers or City Match? Help the boys in blue feel the pain of those 20 per cent cuts coming their way. After all, we're all in it together right?
City fixtures - http://www.bcfc.co.uk/page/Fixtures/0,,10327,00.html
Rovers fixtures - http://www.bristolrovers.co.uk/page/Fixtures

ANTI-CUTS BLOG
Some anarchists have started an anti-cuts blog called Anti-Cuts Action Bristol and Bath. The strapline is "Don't Rock the Boat, Sink the Fucker". All contributions welcome.
http://anticutsaction.wordpress.com/

U N I O N S

AMBULANCE WORKERS
Ambulance workers in Bristol, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and parts of Somerset might be balloted over strike action say Unison. Great Western Ambulance Service is changing shift patterns but staff say it will mean some shifts starting at anti-social times and just one break in 12 hours. Unison are promising "to work in partnership" with the ambulance service over the matter. Expect an abject cave-in then.

In related news Great Western Ambulance Service boss David Whiting has quit after just 19 months.

BBC
Bristol NUJ are asking people to support BBC staff who are on strike for 48 hours this Friday and Saturday over the corporation's proposal to cut their pensions. They say, “Staff face losing tens of thousands of pounds over the course of their pension. The new BBC scheme will cap pension increases at only 1% a year. NUJ members have voted overwhelmingly to take industrial action.”
Messages of support to bristol@nuj.org.uk and campaigns@nuj.org.uk

KIRKLEES
Council workers are poised for strike action in Kirklees, Yorkshire after Unison members voted in favour of holding a ballot. The ballot comes as Kirklees Council threatens its workers with hundreds of compulsory redundancies. If passed, industrial action would happen in mid-December. Branch secretary Paul Holmes says the level of discontent has escalated since the job losses were first proposed. He said: “I was surprised how angry people were. They’re angrier than they were two months ago.”

B R I S T O L

CPS
A Bristol lawyer says trials are collapsing in Bristol because prosecutors are swamped with work due to a recruitment freeze at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). However, the bosses' spokesman and cover-up artist Barry Hughes, head of Avon and Somerset CPS, says, "I do not recognise the crisis being described."

The lawyer, Steve George, an associate solicitor with Bobbetts Mackan, says: "Within the last month eight or nine trials I've personally dealt with have collapsed due to papers not being served properly by the CPS."

Ian Kelcey, chairman of Bristol Law Society, confirms Mr George's story claiming the CPS was understaffed and under-resourced. "It's not just Bristol. It's happening around the country. If we don't have a proper criminal justice system we will be moving very quickly towards anarchy," he said.

JUNKET JANKE
Crisis? What Crisis? Bristol's Lib Dem leader Barbara Janke flew out to Spain this week to attend the EUROCITIES 2010 Zaragoza conference. The conference "focuses on the analysis of how cities develop innovative tools to create a strong identity and to promote themselves at different levels, both nationally and internationally" (sic). Ms Janke attended the junket with her absurd £72,000 a year part-time Director of Place. The cost is unknown as is the point.

CULTURE
There's still no shortage of money available to Bristol City Council to employ consultants. Latest through the door is the Chair of Culture South West, Peter Boyden, a "cultural strategist”. He's produced a report: “Can Bristol afford not to have cultural ambition? A Provocation”, about “networked ecologies” and “cultural clusters”.

The economic meat of the report, such as it is, appears in a 'Why culture matters' section. This finds Peter - openly begging for public handouts to vested interests - claiming “A top-class cultural offer underpins a strong business economy” and “creative industries represent a significant growth sector in the city and the wider West of England area”. Evidence for this is not included. Which is just the kind of voodoo economics that also tells us hosting four World Cup matches will earn Bristol £150m and used to tell us that the city was a growth centre for the financial services industries, before, that is, they all went bust and we had to bail them out at the expense of the poor, the old, the weak, the frail and the ill.

The overall idea behind all this crap seems to be to throw money at marketing sections of the publicly subsidised culture industry to an international tourist class so that locals can work in dead-end service jobs on minimum wage.

CUTS MEETING
Bristol City Council''s Quality of life Scrutiny Commission meet to discuss cuts on 8 November. Arts, festivals, libraries, waste disposal, sports, licencing, voluntary sector grants, housing, homelessness, pest control and food safety will all be under the microscope. This is one of the few times councillors will be publicly discussing their proposed cuts.

CALL TO RATION SERVICES
Bristol City Council's auditors, Grant Thornton, have told the council they will need to ration or reduce the level of services they deliver in order to achieve proposed efficiency savings of £9.2m and balance the budget in 2010-11.

AUDIT
The council's auditor's have also queried the performance of their 'transformation programme' and whether it provides value for money. The centrepiece of this business school waffle is Chief Executive, Jan Ormondroyd's woeful new call centre in Whitchurch where half the calls from the public go unanswered while council tax collection and housing benefit claims are screwed-up in their hundreds.

MORE AUDIT
The auditors have also advised council managers and the cabinet to try and find out what the hell is actually happening in their own organisation. "The Council should develop its corporate performance management arrangements, to ensure both the Strategic Leaders and Cabinet fully understand how the Council is performing," they say.

NON-DOM TAX LOSS NEWS
Bristol City Football Club have announced a £11m loss for the year. Their auditors say, "These conditions indicate the existence of a material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt about the group's ability to continue as a going concern."

This is the football club that Bristol City Council wants to hand public land to at a knockdown price on the basis that the club's new stadium will bring huge economic benefits to South Bristol. Quite how a financial basketcase on this scale is beneficial to anyone - apart from footballers on £10k a week plus pay deals - is not something Bristol City Council have explained.

HOUSING BENEFIT
The Guardian has identified Bristol as an area of high rents where housing benefit changes are likely to have a big impact. The ConDems propose to cap housing benefit payments; force single claimants under 35 to live in shared accommodation; cut jobseeker's allowance (JSA) claimant's housing benefit by 10% for every year they remain out of work and reduce the local housing allowance (LHA) - the amount a council is able to pay in benefit - from the 50th percentile to the 30th percentile of market rents.

MORE HOUSING BENEFIT
Over 8,000 tenants in Bristol will lose out under the new housing benefit rules say local housing professionals. Most will be in work or pensioners.

RENTS
Information is beginning to appear suggesting that social housing rents in Bristol are set to rise by 50% plus.

SCHOOL TRANSPORT
Bristol City Council are cutting free bus passes for pupils travelling to faith schools. The council spends £400,000 a year transporting pupils who live more than walking distance from their nearest church school. The cut is part of a £3.7 million programme of spending cuts in its children and young people's services budget.

POOL NEWS
Campaigners are claiming that plans by Bristol City Council to convert the former Bristol North Baths in Bishopston into a 'state-of-the-art' NHS health centre, library, hydrotherapy pool and flats have become unworkable due to the recession. The council's developer Chatsworth Homes had hoped to fund the project by demolishing the former library in the and area developing luxury flats. However, this is no longer possible “due to uncertainty in the property market”. The Victorian swimming baths have been closed for five years now, despite continuing protests from the local community, and the building is deteriorating rapidly. Bristol City Council claim that “work is taking place behind the scenes”.

ON THE BUSES
Contracts to run 60 subsidised bus services in Bristol are being put out to tender by Bristol City Council. The 60 contracts are worth £5m and fifty five per cent of the bus services supported by the authority are currently run by First bus. Despite some of the highest fares in the UK, First say their Bristol operation “is not an extraordinarily profitable exercise". Few people in Bristol are likely to believe this.

HOMELESS
Homeless women sleeping rough on the streets of Bristol will come to serious harm because of the lack of a women-only night shelter in the city say homeless charities as some of the harsher realities of the spending cuts become clear.

FERRIES
Bristol City Council has transferred a £38,000 transport subsidy from the Bristol Ferry Boat Company to Number Seven Ferries for 'a commuter service' that will no longer run to the railway station at Temple Meads. We reported last week that the Bristol Ferry Boat Company had cancelled their service claiming it was uneconomic. Lib Dem transport boss Gary Hopkins justified the new subsidy saying, “it makes Bristol a much more attractive place.”

THE CAVALIERS
Jim White, a former Lib Dem Cabinet Member in Bristol, has accused Bristol City Council officers of having “a very cavalier attitude towards public money” after a freedom of information request revealed that 74 flats in Knowle West that officers proposed demolishing due to "inherent structural defects" were in fact structurally sound. Mr White says the cost of demolition of the 74 flats would be between £3.5 million and £4 million. He said, "demolishing these buildings is a lazy idea that seems to display a lack of understanding of the finances of property development."

ELITIST TWAT
The University of Bristol's Vice Chancellor, Eric "shall we go for lunch?" Thomas, says university tuition fees rising to £9,000 a year is "welcome news".

B A T H

QUITTERS
Two senior Bath politicians have quit their parties. Both former mayors; Sir Elgar Jenkins has left the Conservative Party and Peter Metcalfe the Liberal Democrat Party. Sir Elgar has been a member of the Tory Party for more than 50 years and says he has “lost faith in the ability of his party's national front bench”. Metcalfe, who has been a member of the Liberal and Liberal Democrat parties for more than 40 years, says he is "very disturbed" by the coalition's stance on child benefit and other social security issues.

COMMUNITY HEALTH
The B&NES Community Health and Social Care Services partnership is set to be privatised. A spokesman for the partnership says, "In order to accommodate pressures and to be viable for the future, the new organisation may need to carry out a degree of restructuring or reorganisation of staff, just as will be required within other council and PCT activities.”

1,700 staff are currently being consulted on the changes that will establish either a charity or a community interest enterprise underpinned by a limited company. Another option would be for the partnership's services and staff to be taken over by the council or the Royal United Hospital NHS Trust and remain in the public sector.

DIY CUTS
Bath and North East Somerset Council is asking people to come up with their own ideas to help the council save millions. The council has already told their divisional directors to come up with plans to trim their budgets by up 10 per cent and has now launched a website inviting people to address the following questions: what should we do less of? What should we cut altogether? What services should we protect?”

S O U T H G L O U C E S T E R S H I R E

LOCAL AUTHORITY
South Gloucestershire Council is pressing ahead with plans to radically restructure and "change the way it provides services". This week a scrutiny committee voted in favour of the proposals, which will see the council commission the private sector to provide services rather than deliver them themselves. Huge job losses and a significant drop in the quality of services are expected.

N O R T H S O M E R S E T

BUSES
The Nailsea town bus service, run by North Somerset Coaches, may have to stop running if changes are made to the amount paid for OAP fares. The number two and four routes which run from Nailsea to Backwell throughout the day may be pulled. North Somerset Council currently pays 91 pence for every journey taken by a pensioner using a bus pass. This funding will be cut by up to a third.

VOLUNTARY SECTOR
A disability charity only has the cash to stay afloat for the next three months. The Nailsea Disability Initiative has enough money to pay the rent on its shop unit in the town centre until the end of January. The service is staffed by volunteers and rents an office at Crown Glass Place. It relies entirely on grants, fundraising and donations to cover its annual running costs of around £20,000. The charity gives advice to disabled people on how to claim the benefits they are entitled to and sees between 750 and 1,000 people a year.

COPPERS
Police 'beat officers' covering Worle, Locking, Hutton, Banwell, Winscombe, Sandford, Puxton, Kewstoke, West Wick and Wick St Lawrence in North Somerset have been told that their positions are likely to go. Avon and Somerset Police have refused to comment.

G L O U C E S T E R S H I R E

LOCAL AUTHORITY
Conservatives on Gloucestershire County Council are calling for the number of councillors to be cut from 63 to 53 to save £80,000 a year. The change, they say, would bring the county in line with the national average and recognise the council’s diminishing financial resources.

BED CLOSURES
Bed closures at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital have led to a decline in patient care according to a consultant. Roger Close, an orthopaedic consultant at the hospital, says a cut in the number of beds has meant some trauma patients have not received the level of care that they might have had. This summer 45 beds at GRH were closed on a trial basis. This smaller trial went ahead after initial plans to close up to 200 beds to save £30million caused a public outcry.

S O M E R S E T

LOCAL AUTHORITY CUTS
Somerset County Council's cabinet has voted unanimously to cut their budget by £43 million as part of an effort to reduce a £75 million deficit. The cuts include shedding 1,500 jobs, halving the road repairs budget, scrapping the arts budget in its entirety, slashing bus subsidies, axing eight out of 18 household waste recycling centres and undertaking a major review of libraries. Services for children with special educational needs and the disabled will also be hit, while people receiving more than 20 hours home care will be told to fund the extra hours themselves or move into care homes. Over 200 protestors attended the meeting.

D E V O N

NHS
Nurses face pay cuts and office jobs are being axed as bosses at Plymouth's Derriford Hospital seek to save £27 million this financial year as well as achieve massive efficiency targets. The hospital chiefs say "radical changes are needed".

C S R

CARE
The government has quietly dropped legislation for free provision of personal care at home for people - mainly elderly - who have been discharged from hospital.

HOMECARE
The Local Government Association is warning that councils might have to restrict adult care services to those who have "critical" needs. If councils tighten eligibility criteria to exclude those whose need for care is currently classified as "substantial" it would mean no one living in their own home would be able to access such care.

Bristol City Council's new adult care proposals seem to confirm the LGA's fears. Bristol is now looking to focus its homecare services on elderly people requiring high care provision – such as people with dementia - while closing any residential homes for these people. Meanwhile the future of homecare for frail older people with lesser 'substantial' care needs is not directly addressed.

NHS
King's Fund chief economist John Appleby says the 0.1% budget rise for the NHS promised in the Comprehensive Spending Review is inadequate and that “cost shunting” by the NHS on to local authoritiy budgets is inevitable, particularly for post-hospital care.

EDUCATION
Money for school sport in the former Avon area is to be axed by £2 million a year. Funding for eight School Sport Partnerships in Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire and Bath and North East Somerset will be withdrawn by the Department for Education in August 2011 as part of the comprehensive spending review. Staff working for the partnership will be made redundant in April.

SEARCH AND RESCUE
More than 100 people protested at Rest Bay, Porthcawl last weekend over proposals to restrict search and rescue operations in the Bristol Channel, currently run from Chivenor in Devon. Chivenor currently provides 24-hour search and rescue cover across south Wales, north Devon, Somerset, and the Bristol Channel. Under the new proposals night-time cover would be provided from Culdrose in Cornwall or from Anglesey. The protest campaign has spread to south Wales from Devon where it was launched by the mayor of Ilfracombe.

BISHOP HAS A BASH
The Bishop of Bath and Wells has told the House of Lords that government spending cuts could leave hundreds of thousands of people homeless in the next 25 years.

RESEARCH
The IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research) has published a brief but useful overview of the Comprehensive Spending Review.

P R I V A T I S A T I O N

PLUNDER NEWS
Bristol's GPs and practice managers are being invited to attend a special conference - 'Managing Change in General Practice' - that "will provide an in-depth view on the government’s white paper - ‘Equity & Excellence: Liberating the NHS’". Taking place at the Bristol business lair, Leigh Court Mansion, on 17 November, the conference is being organised by entirely disinterested parties such as as PKF Accountants, Veale Wasbrough Vizards lawyers and Royal Bank of Scotland - the bankrupt bank!.

AWP
Staff at the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust say plans to turn the partnership into a foundation trust “have passed the point of no return”. The partnership has been working towards foundation status for three years now. Many AWP staff believe foundation trust status is a prelude to further privatisation. It will certainly allow bosses to ditch national NHS pay, terms and conditions agreements in favour of local settlements.

POST OFFICES
John Bowman, president of the South West branch of the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters, has spoken out about legislation to privatise the Royal Mail. He claims there is no specific information about what the government are going to do about Post Office branches once the legislation is passed. Mr Bowman says 40 per cent of sub-post offices business comes from the Royal Mail. "Post Offices won't be shut down, we'll go bust instead," he says.

SWRDA
Vince Cable's Department of Trade will take charge of disposing of business and technology assets from the scrapped South West RDA, while Communities Secretary Eric Pickles will manage the land and buildings sell-offs. The South West RDA is listed as having 55 land and building assets. The list includes plots three and six at Temple Meads, Bristol along with phase three of the Bristol business centre and Bristol Science & Technology Park. The assets are expected to go to the highest bidder and the cash to the Exchequer.

E C O N O M Y

GRADUATES
Unemployment among graduates is at its highest for two decades. Around 21,000 people - that's 8.9 per cent or one in eleven - who left university last year, are without a job six months later, as graduates suffer from the effects of the recession, according to a study by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU).

UNEMPLOYMENT
The cuts will result in 1.6m lost jobs across the UK over the next five years with the private sector taking the biggest hit. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) says the impact of the government's spending cuts on the workforce, along with the imminent rise in VAT, will be greater than the official estimate from the Office for Budget Responsibility. Research by the CIPD has found that around 900,000 jobs will be lost from the private sector, with another 725,000 jobs expected to be cut across the public sector. This equates to around 16,000 jobs in Bristol - about the current jobless total - based on calculations by the Guardian last week.

DISTRESSED ASSETS
There's been a 126 per cent rise in distressed asset sales in the west in the last six months, largely due to insolvency cases. Pubs lead the way with a 189 per cent increase in sales.The hotel market is affected too, with the number of distressed hotel businesses sold in the period increasing by 90 per cent. Distressed restaurant sales were up 67 per cent while the retail sector stayed flat, mirroring last year's busy levels.

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY
The commercial property sector in the South West continues to feel the effects of recession. James Gregory, RICS, a partner atAlder King, says: "We are seeing a mixed picture for the commercial property sector in the South West. The year started positively, but falling stock markets, worries over the impact of spending cuts and the sustainability of the recovery have created a degree of caution, which is impacting on the commercial property sector.”

PLANNING
It looks like the ConDems will be embarking on a developer-friendly overhaul of the planning regime in the next parliamentary session. Planning minister Bob Neill says, "It's important we help our businesses and not hinder them with unnecessary burdens, so they can continue to be competitive and invest in communities throughout the country."

Business minister Mark Prisk says, "We must stop putting obstacles in the way of British businesses. They will be the driving force behind our future economic growth."

These are exactly the same businesses and developers who were the driving force behind the profitable asset-price bubble that collapsed in 2008. They have subsequently set about bleeding the welfare state dry to pay for their greed and errors. That's some investment in communities throughout the country.

LEPs
The ConDem's plan to boost jobs in the regions will be a "failure in large parts of England", a Government minister has said. Mark Prisk, the Business and Enterprise Minister, says there are "strong concerns" among business leaders about local enterprise partnerships (LEPs). These bodies - very loose coalitions of businessmen and local politicians - could be "in danger of failing to aid economic growth" he says in a leaked letter.

Business Secretary Vince Cable last week confirmed the West of England, which is made up of Bristol, Bath, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, will be among the first wave of LEPs. They will replace regional development agencies when they are scrapped in two years' time. However funding arrangements for this new body are, as yet, unclear.

B U S I N E S S

AVIVA
Aviva, Britain's second-largest insurance group with a large employment presence in Bristol is consolidating. They are selling their Taiwanese business and are looking at further disposals. They are also cutting several hundred jobs in Canada and shutting their final salary pension scheme in the UK in order to save £400m.

BRISTOL EVENING POST
Around 25 jobs will be axed at Northcliffe Media in Bristol, home of the Evening Post and the Western Daily Press. Production of the Daily Press will be moved to Plymouth.

A E FINCH
Bristol signmakers A E Finch & Co Ltd have gone in to administration. Eight jobs will be lost.

BANK OF IRELAND
Fifteen jobs are to go at the Bank of Ireland on Temple Way, Bristol as part of a restructuring scheme. The losses will be from project management staff and group services who manage the bank's properties. About 850 people are employed at the former Bristol & West headquarters, in support services, customer care, group payments and customer operations.

RBS
Staff in Bristol working for RBS, which has just announced a £1.4bn loss for the third quarter of the year, have been told that posts in the bank's insurance department are being moved to Delhi. The bank, 40 per cent owned by the taxpayer, has already shed hundreds of jobs over the last two years. Staff are said to be angry that posts are being transferred overseas.

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