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News and Comment May 2021

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18 May (Part 2) - Leader’s choice. Waffle or walk

It is a barrel scraping day again so I will follow up on a reader’s comment from last week. His theme was that some Councillors are not value for money and the 2018 intake in particular had proved to be especially poor. Several names were named and I didn’t think his criticism was entirely fair.

ְ“My Councillor Christine Bishop has never been mentioned on your blog” he said and I promised to prove him wrong. But I can’t. A software search of the blog source data finds nothing apart from when she became Mayoress to husband Brian snd a single reference to “waffling”.

Much the same is true of Councillors Christine Catterall - no mention except when she went well off topic in a budget debate - and Adam Wildman. Nothing reported here except when he asked a question designed to curry favour with the Leader. I unkindly described it as “arse licking of the highest order”. Oh dear, maybe I shouldn’t have done that.

So maybe my reader knows more about what I have written than I do.

Where we did agree is on the distinct tendency for Councillors who resist the party line to disappear, either from Chairman roles or worse.

At the same time as I was being reported to the police for “criticising Councillors”, Councillor Peter Catterall was praising me for holding the Council to account. Whatever happened to him?

Deputy Leader Simon Windle - described here in 2011 as “too decent to be a Bexley Councillor” - was also noted as being polite to opposition Members and was caught out responding to public questions about reducing allowances. He stood down in favour of Councillor Colin Campell. We can only guess why.

More recently the far too honest Deputy Leader Rob Leitch baled out at the first opportunity and his successor, the never criticised Louie French, is going the same way. Will Alex Sawyer survive? Another Cabinet Member not afraid to plough his own furrow.

May 26th (Full Council) should be an interesting day.

Note: In my opinion, Councillors Richard Diment and Howard Jackson have earned their keep since May 2018.

 

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