Banner
any day today rss X

News and Comment March 2013

Index: 2018201920202021202220232024

28 March - Dumb insolence

Teresa O'NeillThis is almost certainly going to be the last entry on the March blog. It’s not just because Easter is approaching, though that is a factor, but it simply isn’t sensible to keep producing stories from very little.

Teresa O’Neill, the leader of Bexley council, has learned a lot over the past three years. Marching into the police station with a pack of lies expecting her military wing to close down all sources of criticism served only to expose her contempt for the law. Her activities are far more subtle now.

Few will notice that her council has gone into hiding. It is only a handful of days short of five months since Bexley council last met in full session with what passes for scrutiny by the public and the next scheduled meeting is four weeks away. But councillors still award themselves nearly a million pounds a year for their hard work. That source of information about council affairs has effectively dried up. So have other sources. Nothing much gets answered…


• The first question to council (for April’s meeting) I know of went in last December. Still unacknowledged.
• Further questions went in in February with requests that the council address the Data Protection Act aspects of their policy of publishing sensitive personal data on their website. Again no answer.
• The council is still operating with no Constitution available for inspection. A week has gone by since they were asked to comment. Nothing! If it was my complaint I'd send the file straight to Eric Pickles. Sometimes the BCMG is just too reasonable.
The Complaints Procedure is bypassed so that only one man can dismiss a complaint without any possibility of redress.
• Incriminating notes relating to complaints are destroyed before a complaint is resolved. (Not yet fully reported.)
• Forgetting to take minutes at important meetings (the Craske case) and (conveniently) no one can remember what was said. (Not yet fully reported.)
• The Local Government Ombudsman has still not delivered his final report on mayor Alan Downing’s pen jabbing exercise and year old abuse of the aurally disadvantaged. Nothing happens fast.
• The Crown Prosecution Service ‘lost’ all of Elwyn Bryant’s papers on the Craske affair. The man who was handling the case was transferred elsewhere and the papers disappeared with him. Elwyn has had to start all over again.
• The police asked last week that nothing new is said publicly about their investigation into certain obscenities, not that that one matters a great deal because they are playing their cards close to their chests and there is nothing to say anyway.


You’ll get the idea. Pull up the drawbridge. Say nothing. Hope that critics will lose interest while quietly racking up officers’ pay to ensure their loyalty. Headless chicken syndrome has been replaced by a gang of possums playing dead.

Happy Easter!

 

Return to the top of this page
Bonkers is a cookie free zone. Not a single one