6 December - Tuckley has no answers so he resorts to idle threats
Will
Tuckley has added his name to those willing to support
the lying Bexley
councillor Cheryl Bacon and has followed much the same path as his minions faced
with defending the indefensible. He has ignored the parts of my complaint which
would prove Bacon a liar and retaliated with threats. I suppose if it is a toss up
between supporting a law breaking councillor and risking a quarter million pound
salary, honesty is likely to go flying out of the window.
To prove his worth Tuckley has come up with a new excuse for law breaking. Anyone who sits
near a member of the public who the council may have reason to bar from a meeting will
be deemed to be associated with that person and similarly barred whether they
are entirely innocent bystanders or not.
The problem with that line of defence is that I wasn’t sitting near to
Nicholas Dowling and his audio
recorder on 19th June, I was sitting where the council directed me to do so. I have for a
year or more tried to sit away from Nicholas and his friends because of their habit of whispering
directly into my ear and hindering note taking. Recently the council has decreed that everyone
recording a meeting should sit together which isn’t helping in that regard.
So let’s begin taking Tuckley’s question dodging apart. He has adopted the “vexatious” line so
beloved of corrupt councils everywhere. I am accused of being a serial complainer whose activities
must be curtailed. If he had stopped to think he may have noticed that I did not complain about
Cheryl Bacon stopping everyone from attending her public meeting as several others did. I did
nothing until I discovered that Tuckley’s council was answering those complaints by broadcasting
lies about me; naming me and implying I was one of a gang rampaging through the chamber.
When
I eventually complained,
nearly three months after the illegally closed meeting, that I had said and done absolutely nothing
to deserve being libelled I made a simple request…
I must ask you to widen your enquiries so as to confirm my account; several
councillors were able to look straight at me and did. They will not be hard to
find. I want to know who it was who labelled me disruptive either personally or
by a broad-brush statement.
I sent it directly to Will Tuckley and it was my first complaint since I wrote to him
in June 2011 after councillor Peter Craske’s internet connection mysteriously generated
a stream of obscenities
directed at me and three other residents.
Mr. Tuckley did not see fit to answer but the Legal Officer Lynn
Tyler did so and ignored my request totally. I was asked to respond to Director
Paul Moore if I was not satisfied with Tyler’s response which I did. I did not complain
about my illegal exclusion from the meeting, that in my view is a relatively minor
issue which proves only that councillor Cheryl Bacon is a useless committee
chairman undeserving of her £2,200 a session fee. Cheryl Bacon being portrayed
as an industrial scale liar is far more serious.
This is part of what I said to Mr. Moore…
My complaint was that councillor Bacon had written untruthful statements about myself
and others and that these were being sent to other members of the public labelling me a
trouble maker when the fact is I sat quietly and said absolutely nothing during the meeting.
As you know from other correspondence, I have written support for that statement from members
of both political parties.
If I may summarise the position, councillor Bacon accused a group of people
including myself of creating a disturbance, none of your chosen witnesses
confirmed it and more than a handful of witnesses are ready to confirm that the
disturbance described by councillor Bacon did not take place. Two senior council
officers have strenuously supported councillor Bacon's account despite neither
of them being at the meeting and having only councillor Bacon's account to fall
back on. This is as stupid as it is dishonest. I trust you will be the first to
explore the avenues I have indicated to arrive at the truth.
Mr. Moore may not have been willing to be the one who discovered the truth
so he didn’t reply.
On 23rd September
I additionally complained about Mrs. Tyler spreading Bacon’s false allegations via
a Freedom of Information response. Once again my complaint was not about being excluded from the meeting…
Presumably no one at the Civic Centre has been prepared to speak the truth on
the record but I know, and have evidence, that others are fully aware of what
the council is doing and suitably ashamed of it. If this situation is not to
escalate further may I suggest you call a meeting with Councillor Slaughter who
was nearest to me and should know exactly what I did at that meeting and with
the Hallkeeper so that he can confirm that he did not accompany the police to
the Council Chamber, and myself, all present.
I referred to councillor June Slaughter because I was sitting very close to her
and she exchanged several ‘knowing glances’ with me while I remained mute. There
were others I could name but she was closest and I felt she might be ready to
speak the truth if approached. The reply came from Human Resources manager Nick
Hollier who decided it would be best not to pursue the truth. He was unwilling
to look beyond the statement by the lying Cheryl Bacon.
Because I also asked for the Hallkeeper’s confirmation that the police entered
the chamber alone (the council had claimed the Hallkeeper was otherwise occupied monitoring entry to
the reconvened meeting) they had to belatedly write a statement for him - one
which in my presence the Hallkeeper denied making.
So we have now got to the stage when I have several times made it clear that my
complaint is about Bacon’s lies and not my exclusion from the meeting and twice
asked senior officers to seek the truth from third parties and none of them are
prepared to do so. What does that tell us?
Tuckley now wishes to close down the correspondence and impose sanctions on me. Tuckley says my “continued accusations against individual officers are not
accepted as fair or reasonable commentary” and he will be required “to take
steps to protect staff generally from the unwarranted attack that you have
subjected them to through your website”. If I continue he will be…
You’d expect better research from someone on a quarter of a million a year. I
addressed all of the Bacon related complaints to Tuckley except in one case when
directed by the council to do otherwise. In the previous three years I have written
once to Tuckley, a couple of times seeking permission to take photographs to
addresses provided by the Contact Centre, and occasionally replied to council staff who have initiated correspondence.
Sanctions one and two will change nothing.
Then Tuckley says that councillors lying, as Bacon undoubtedly has, and councillors committing arrestable offences is
“trivial”, for if he had checked his facts he would know that I have complained
about nothing else. It is interesting to note that the Chief Executive of Bexley
council regards criminal acts as trivial.
If Tuckley is concerned about cost pressures he might consider whether
responding to my first request “I must ask you to widen your enquiries so as to
confirm my account” instead of refusing to do so and thereby provoking follow up
complaints might not have been by far the cheapest, not to mention the most
honest response.
I have named two council officers while covering this issue. One is Mrs. Lynn Tyler about whom I said…
I understand that Mrs. Tyler is the council’s Principal Legal Officer
and, I would assume, bound by certain professional ethics so perhaps it is
reasonable to assume she is merely relaying the information she was fed and I
should not blame her directly for the fabrication.
…and also Mr. Nick Hollier who I no doubt exposed to ridicule because he said a single use
of the word ‘lying’ in a complaint about lying was “hostile, abusive, offensive and unreasonable”.
I asked Tuckley to identify the abusive parts of my email but he has failed to come up
with any. Then the question dodger wonders why he keeps getting repetitive and expensive complaints.
Councillor Cheryl Bacon has lied comprehensively, numerous councillors know it,
several have been prepared to say so and a small number have made their views
clear in writing. Would the L word be repeated so often if the evidence
for it was not plentiful?