31 August - Bonkers resumes tomorrow
Like most DIY jobs, the one that has occupied my every waking moment for nearly four weeks took far longer than expected and ran considerably over budget, but it is nearly finished now. There shouldn’t be any further need to take my computer off line for more than a few minutes instead of the hours on end necessary while some critical stages of the rearrangements were in progress. However enough of the excuses, from tomorrow the intention is to return Bonkers to something like normal service. Maybe I will catch up with the email and phone calls too. Possibly…
That was perhaps the most pointed enquiry about my absence from the blogging
scene but it wasn’t the only one so here I am offering excuses. The fact is
that on the 7th August, almost on an impulse, I decided I would fix a household
problem that had been bugging me for a while and it turned out to be a DIY
project of considerable magnitude which has taken up a great deal of time and
taken its toll on my knees and hands; which will be glad to see the end of it,
but on the other hand I have lost nine pounds in weight!
As there has been little council news around I decided to cease searching for
it and concentrate on getting the DIY project completed as soon as possible.
Perhaps I have taken it too far as I now see with a certain amount of horror
that I have neglected Bonkers for a whole week. I’ve not only written nothing, I
have dropped out of Twitter and reading the local news too. As it happens the
number of incoming emails has fallen off too though whether that is partial
cause or effect is hard to say.
I am expecting the job to be done by Friday leaving only the tidying up and I
will then try to get the Bonkers show back on the read. Sooner rather than later
there will be more documentary evidence of how Bexley police are desperately making up stories to
cover for the lying councillor Cheryl Bacon. The fact that they conflict with
earlier witness statements and their own press releases seems to concern them
not one jot. Their corruption may not be on the Rotherham scale but it is
symptomatic of the malaise which appears to permeate all police forces.
August may have flown by with little to say for itself but nothing much seems to have changed.
Summer holiday or not, the cuts go on
If you have ever wondered what there is left for Will Tuckley to do when almost every job has
been farmed out to some other body you might wish to wonder some more.
As part of its ongoing programme of cuts Bexley council has chopped more people
out of its Human Resources Department by handing over responsibility to the
London Pension Fund Authority. I doubt they will do the job for nothing so the
scope for savings must be miniscule.
All Bexley council pensioners, including presumably former Chief Executive
Nick Johnson on £50,000 a year in very dubious circumstances, have been sent
a letter which begins as follows…
Presumably the HR Department staffing is already reduced below an acceptable
level because no one was available to sign the letter.
Police News
You may remember that a month ago Mick Barnbrook made a number of allegations of crime against
both police and council officials for their role in
the lying councillor Cheryl Bacon
business. The one against Will Tuckley and Mrs. Lynn Tyler was not acknowledged
but just as Mick was about to pursue the matter he was telephoned by the Met’s
Directorate of Professional Standards. They asked what outcome would satisfy him
and he gave the obvious answer; an appearance in court.
For now the case has been referred back to Bexley police for investigation so I
suspect a cover up and a referral in due course to the Independent Police
Complaints Commission is on the cards.
Election News
The way we register to vote is changing
in order to combat the fraud possible under the present system. I received my letter
yesterday which confirms my opt out from the open register has been continued.
I have received one report from someone who says that his opt out has been lost
in the transfer so it may be a good idea to check your letter very carefully.
18 August - Splash Park cleaned for two days out of three
It does seem very odd that
Belvedere’s Splashpark
is so maintenance intensive given that the installation is supposed to be all
hi-tech and state of the art. Insiders say that the maintenance
story is an excuse for what is really a budgetary cut. I am inclined to agree when I see Tweets like the one shown here.
Are we expected to believe that the facility will have to be cleaned again after
just one day’s use next week? It will have gone four days without a clean
leading up to Tuesday 26th. If four days is OK why not go the five days until the so called clean
scheduled for Monday 1st September and open the park on the preceding Thursday?
While
news of council activities has almost dried up this month, the Sidcup regeneration continues to cause havoc
before its scheduled completion at the end of September.
Under the headline ‘Ghost Town’, the News Shopper carried a story last week about
customer numbers being down by
35% in the Mind charity shop. Not surprising given that it is hidden behind a
new bus shelter as well as a contractor’s hut. (Photo 6.)
Approaching from the east one might be forgiven for thinking that things are
back to normal with its two-way traffic sign but that’s only as far as Hatherley
Road and beyond that the road is still littered with holes, materials and machinery.
And what has Sidcup got to show for nine months of disruption? Probably not
very much that will bring trade back to the town. The Hadlow and Hatherley Road
junctions have been revamped in Bexley’s preferred block and kerbless design.
Fortunately the surface will only carry lightweight buses so may
survive for more than twelve months.
Maybe the trees outside Bexley council’s own shop, Sidcup & Co. and the numb bum
inducing granite seats will bring the shoppers back, or perhaps a small
number of stylish new shop fronts. But in reality, Sidcup High Street looks a
little cleaner but otherwise much the same as it always has.
14 August - It was bound to happen sooner or later
I
was obviously delusional when I thought it might be possible to keep Bonkers
going whilst a four year old was running around the house, but it was one long
round of swings and roundabouts and feeding the ducks and then trying to find
something she would condescend to eat. It would appear that the days of dripping
on toast for the main course and sugar sandwiches for afters, like it or go hungry,
have long gone. Now it’s all pizza and paté and woe betide you if it’s the wrong flavour.
I wasn’t too enamoured of her father’s choice of tee shirt either. Click for the bigger view.
The only report I found time to follow up was the one about the Harrow Manorway
flyover being an accident waiting to happen. I’ve seen it myself so a report
saying that people are running across the road as a shortcut to the station and
bus stops now that the central barrier has been removed did not come as a
surprise. Someone’s going to cause an accident was the prediction.
Pictures one and two below were taken very early yesterday morning.
By late afternoon my
reader’s prophesy had come true and a Parcel Force van had swerved off the
restricted width carriageway and severely dented the support for the canopy that
protects bus passengers from the elements. There is a picture of the damaged van on
the News Shopper’s website.
Crossrail were advised by the concerned reader of the danger created by their work
on the flyover and it was suggested a temporary barrier be kept in place to prevent
the foolhardy risking their lives but unfortunately with no favourable response.
The
plan is for the main entrance to the rebuilt station to be from Harrow Manorway and
presumably pedestrian controlled traffic lights will be installed. In fact cable trunking
went in yesterday and it looks as though that may be its purpose.
Nevertheless, it is unlikely to be as safe as the under bridge walkways to the
existing low level station entrance.
11 August (Part 2) - Hurricane Bertha impedes Crossrail
My
excuses for missing most of the weekend’s Crossrail activities are
detailed below, except that my knees were so weak and aching by Saturday I don’t think my legs could have
carried me as far as Abbey Wood station which is how I came to miss seeing the
installation of the station footbridge.
Further up the line work was proceeding on the new track but at Church Manorway
things were not going well. The enormous new footbridge was delivered by lorry
as I watched but although it was attached to the crane and the slack taken up it
was judged to be too windy to risk raising it. With its solid sides it would
provide far more wind loading than the open framework of the Abbey Wood bridge.
The available viewpoints for the Church Manorway bridge installation (below) were severely restricted.
If the bridge wasn’t put in place during the night, one very long trailer is
going to be out of commission for a few weeks!
The final photograph shows the piling required before the track can be laid. A construction worker told me that under the weight of
concrete alone the piles sunk four metres into the ground and a further six metres before they reached solid ground.
11 August (Part 1) - Too much like hard work
My
home office gets snowed under with paper and old technology that I should
probably throw away, I suppose I should get into e-bay but there are not enough
hours in the day. I embarked on a tidy up on Thursday and somehow it escalated
into a massive rearrangement with everything stripped out and one desk cut in
half and reconstructed as two. The computer and associated bits and pieces were
exactly that for most of the time, bits and pieces!
It will take a week to finish the job, shelves are all in the wrong place now
etc. and various cables are either too long or too short. I act as informal beta
tester for new services equipment for my small business customers only ISP -
long story! Sometimes the noise made by Cisco routers and switches drives me mad.
However, that is the main reason for it, in another sense of the word,
being quiet around here in recent days. Plus not much to report. In fact it may
be quiet all week, my grand daughter is visiting. I’d take her to
the Belvedere Splash Park
but the only free day is Thursday.
I’d
never heard of Mrs. Lynn Tyler until Mick Barnbrook sent me a copy of
the
letter he’d received from her. Enclosed with it was
a statement from councillor
Cheryl Bacon that said I and others had been guilty of
running riot in the
council chamber on 19th June 2013. That’s a long time ago now and since then I
have accumulated nine written statements from those present certifying that no
one did anything particularly untoward at that meeting - except that Nick
Dowling had an audio recorder with him - and five more from councillors who
refused to support Cheryl Bacon’s version of events.
As well as Bacon’s statement there were three others, one stuck to the truth and
two were subsequently disowned to various degrees by their supposed authors. Taken together the
four statements didn’t make sense, riddled as they were with contradictions. As Mrs. Tyler is
supposedly a council legal officer I cast doubt on her abilities over several blogs. Would a
competent legal officer really be happy with four unsigned and undated
statements and then send them out to a member of the public without first
checking that the story they attempted to portray was watertight?
Mick Barnbrook tried to find out if Mrs. Tyler (Legal Team Manager) was competent, on paper
at least, to do the job she is paid for using the Freedom of Information Act. After the customary
excessive delays he has a reply to his enquiry.
So as one might have guessed, Mrs. Tyler is another of Bexley council’s clueless
amateurs who have no special qualifications to do the job we pay them for.
Index to related blogs and documents.
Note: The BiB website is running very slowly at the moment
due to a technical problem that should be fixed before the end of the week.
Two years ago the Taxpayers’ Alliance reported that Bexley’s Chief Executive was
the sixth highest paid council official in the land but whilst his salary
has been static since then not everyone’s has. The result is that Will Tuckley is now only in 20th position. Where’s the nearest food bank?
On the other hand, of those 19 with larger snouts in the trough, seven are at
county councils, another six are in major cities, Glasgow, Liverpool etc. and
only six are at relatively tin pot local councils. So Will is not doing too badly after all.
TPA Report 2014.
6 August (Part 1) - Pickles on top
It’s been a
long time coming and Eric Pickles has been called a wind bag a few times along
the way, but today is the day when his impatience with recalcitrant councils
across the land - well England anyway - is translated into law. Councils now
absolutely must allow every sort of recording and social media activity apart
from a live commentary at all public meetings.
No self important lying Cheryl Bacon character may ever again call the police at
the sight of electronic gadgetry.
In Bexley
Nicholas Dowling helped achieve something close to what the law now
allows more than six months ago but presumably we will no longer hear chairmen
claiming that photography and recording is at their absolute discretion. However
anyone intending to Tweet from Bexley’s new chamber may have difficulty. Firstly
the mobile phone coverage is very poor though some say the western end of the
chamber does give some limited coverage.
Secondly the wi-fi is not for public use and even if it was Twitter would be a
problem because that destination, along with Bexley is Bonkers. are on Bexley’s
banned list. The Democratic Deficit (™ Any Labour councillor) lives on.
5 August - Half a foot for little feet
There
has been a surprise development outside Bedonwell Infants School following complaints extending back 20 years
about the footpath access being extremely narrow. More recently the cudgels were taken up by Mr. Chris
Attard who has a child at the school but Bexley council failed to get permission to move the fence and
their priority, goodness knows why, was to preserve the car parking spaces.
The details are here.
Is there any other school in Bexley where car parking right outside the school gate is encouraged?
Chris protested about the lack of progress and his two year struggle against bureaucracy just a couple of weeks ago
at the council meeting but
the exchange was verging on the acrimonious and it looked to me like he was banging his
head against a brick wall.
Then this (Photo 2) happened a day or two ago. The path became a few inches wider. It
should help very thin people walk a bit closer to the fence and maybe it will be
possible for two buggies to pass with care.
I asked Chris if he was tipped off in advance that developments were afoot, but
the answer was no. I doubt there will ever be any acknowledgement that a UKIP
candidate at the recent election may have made a difference, albeit a little one
and nothing like what was originally thought necessary by both Chris and
officialdom.
But it’s better than nothing. Just.
4 August - New for 2014. Twice weekly Splash Park maintenance
Belvedere
Splash Park is a relic from a bygone age when councils thought that adding to
the amenities available to residents was the sort of thing they should be doing,
rather than filling in fountains and selling off libraries and public toilets.
It’s actually not that long ago since councils believed in providing
services rather than cutting them, no more than ten years.
The Belvedere Splash Park was built by Bexley’s Labour administration but didn’t open for
business until after they were voted out of office in 2006 for being seen as
rather profligate with our cash. Not that the Tories handed any of it back and
Bexley’s 24th worst position in
the tax league table is the same as it was eight
years ago. Maybe the Tories are not as clever as they think they are.
A free Splash Park in the north of the borough - there is another in the more
salubrious Danson Park - is probably not something a Conservative council would
be very keen on and true to form, almost as soon as it opened they proposed to
charge an entrance fee. The idea created sufficient protest for the idea to go away,
but it wasn’t forgotten. When reelected in 2010 the Tories tried again only to meet with
the same fate.
In 2014 they may have moved more subtly. The Splash Park in now closed for
Essential Maintenance every Monday and Thursday. According to a council source -
but please remember there are a lot of disgruntled people working there at the
moment and this one may be directly affected by the reduced opening times - this closure is a sham. It’s about
not having to pay the attendants.
When I took a look today all the gates were padlocked and there was no sign of life until two men carrying a
metal toolbox emerged from a shed to look at one of the barriers around a play area. Maybe a nut needed tightening.
Whether this is real maintenance or the sham my informant believes it to be is
hard to tell, but two things occur to me. One is that the pool has not needed
twice weekly scheduled maintenance in previous years and neither does the splash
pool in Danson park which continues to be open every day of the year.
Bexley council wouldn’t have a different policy for the north than the south would they?
3 August (Part 2) - Bexley’s 1914 War commemoration. The parade and the singsong
The man in a yellow jacket who came out of the church just before 11:15 to tell his friends that the ruling classes would be out in ten minutes was fibbing, the exodus didn't commence until 11:45. Then everyone had to be marshalled into place by Mr. Dave Easton who traditionally does ‘master of ceremonies’ at this annual event. Leaving the right size gap between the leading band and the following one for the VIPs to fill at the last minute is done with military precision.
At last everyone is in position and off they go on the short walk to the Clocktower, all except those too grand to put foot to cobble who take the council’s limousine. Who could that be?
It’s that man again! Ian Payne had taken over the Clocktower end of the event ushering people to their seats.
He made the introductory speech too, and some later ones. He began with “Welcome to Bromley” before correcting himself and insisting it was a deliberate error to attract everyone’s attention. Knowing him, it could just be true. The moment everyone erupted in laughter is captured in the fourth photo of the group above. Both the third and fourth reveal who took the limo rather than walk. Teresa Too Posh to Perambulate O’Neill no less.
The mayor’s speech was short to the point of being non-existent, a few words about how nice
the weather was prompting a few comments from a group standing alongside me.
Following that, Ian Payne introduced the singer and encouraged the assembled
throng to join in some First World War songs. At which point I spotted a B11 bus
in the distance and made my way to the bus stop. Life is too busy with other
things at the moment to be able to spare more time keeping this blog alive
during Bexley council’s prolonged holiday season.
3 August (Part 1) - Bexley’s 1914 War commemoration. The prelude
Far too many photos of this morning’s Civic Parade in Bexleyheath to examine
and process right now but here are just a few from just before proceedings got going.
Councillors and partners line up to join the procession. Why so few?
But the public opposite Christ Church, even fewer!
Most councillors dress for the occasion, others don’t. Where’s Teresa? Quite a lot of buses held up.
And more buses at the Asda corner. The No Parking restrictions (cones) were still in place at 12:30,
45 minutes after the parade had passed. Broadway traders must have been well pleased.
More pictures later - probably.
2 August - Doesn’t he do well?
It’s
been a while since I’ve been to Bexleyheath Broadway and I have only read about the Business Improvement
District manager putting sport on a big screen by the clock tower through the summer but haven’t see it yet.
The WW1 Centenary Service from Glasgow is planned for Monday morning, 4th August.
Sport being not my thing, I went along this morning to see the First World War
commemoration organised by Bexley council and
the Historical Society.
I was lucky enough to catch a brief sunny spell which always brings out the best
in the place and I was just thinking that it didn’t look at all bad when a
glance skywards provided an image of the man who has done most to transform
Broadway. No not Boris Johnson and his kerbless no priority junctions and traffic
free-for-all but Ian
Payne the boss of the Improvement District, for it is him who has done more to
make Broadway an attractive destination than Bexley council and its high parking charges and
heavy handed enforcement ever could. This morning it was a pleasant and even
jolly place to be.
Whilst entertaining these thoughts who should I run into but the man himself and as usual he was
out on the front line getting his boots muddy and doing his bit for the troops. I do like a man
who loves his job and knows that a good manager doesn’t spend all his time in an
office but takes a keen interest in the sharp end. Maybe we will see Paul Moore
on a refuse cart or Will Tuckley in the Contact Centre one day.
Ian enthusiastically - I doubt he is ever anything else - told me he had
personally researched the music and songs coming from the adjacent stage and it
will be the same again tomorrow for the Civic Parade. The British Legion were
out in force too.
If only Bexley’s Conservative councillors were as chatty as Mr. Payne, When he is not putting Bexley to rights, Ian is a Tory councillor in Bromley.
It was announced at one of the recent council meetings that the year old
junction of Arnsberg Way with Woolwich Road is to be dug up again. Its disintegration under the pressure of many bus wheels
was reported
here - thanks to a reader - a month ago and was picked up by opposition
councillors who brought it to the attention of the appropriate people.
The remedial work will commence later this month and Bexleyheath will once again
experience the delights of temporary traffic lights.
Council’s announcement.