18 March (Part 3) - Thames Innovation Centre. Blame this money pit on Labour; well maybe not
“The encouraging start was followed by the Council Leader
flinging insults at the Labour opposition”; a quote from the
blog of 10 March.
Lashing out at Labour has become normal behaviour
for Teresa O’Neill, she is a political animal with
probable aspirations to climbing the political hierarchy via Boris Johnson’s patronage and
Bexley residents are of little interest to her. When questioned this week about the
Thames Innovation Centre (TIC) (which would be bankrupt if the council wasn’t
both owner and client) she said “If you research the Thames Innovation Centre
you will find that we actually inherited it when we took control from the Labour
administration in 2006”. True enough but the TIC had only opened four months
earlier and whilst I accept that the Conservatives may not have been at all keen
on it they have had five years to sort it out but their management skills have deserted them.
When this was put to the Leader she declined to answer.
The TIC lost its high-flying Executive Director in dubious circumstances and its
manager to a police cell and all the while poured in our money in a
way that would make any private enterprise green with envy - and still it makes a loss.
The allegations of bribery, theft, falsification of papers and general skullduggery
which have been leaked in my direction this week defy description and I don’t
think I can possibly reveal detail at this stage. I suspect we will see a repeat
of the instruction that went out at the end of the Ian Clement affair to the effect of
‘better hide this from the auditor’.