9 March - Addicted to lies and deception
Bexley is a Council built on lies and over time, with increased public
scrutiny, more sophisticated lies. Gone
are the days when Cabinet Member Peter Craske would deny at Public Questions
that he had placed a £4 million contract with a firm of transport consultants when
he quite obviously had and I was getting anonymous messages from that company with a Batman theme.
The spin machine has been improved almost beyond recognition.
In
her
address to Conservative Home yesterday, Council Leader O’Neill
continues with the oldest lie of all; that Bexley is a low tax borough. Relative
to other London boroughs Bexley is in a worse place now than when Labour lost control in 2006.
She complains that Greenwich gets a bigger grant and has made savage cuts but omits to
mention that Conservatives have been in power both nationally and locally for
the past twelve years but that wrong is not yet righted. Bexley residents
suffer the consequences of that neglect. Hundreds of pounds annually for every household year after year after
year.
She also fails to mention that Bexley has suffered more savage cuts.
The 304 jobs that were lost last year are unworthy of a mention.
Another lie is that Labour Councillors always vote against the so called
improvements when the truth is that they vote for more. Why they choose to vote
against a lesser improvement I have no idea. A strange strategy when it is always used against them later.
The lie about achieving every manifesto pledge since 2006 has already been
comprehensively debunked by me and others (Twitter) several times. The lie about Labour being opposed to high quality
affordable housing is ludicrous in the extreme. Not a single meeting goes by
without Nicola Taylor (Labour, Erith) banging the drum for more affordable homes and Cabinet Member Leaf going on at length about why she cannot have any.
At a simpler level the Leader says that Council Tax will rise by 1·9% but when
the bills arrive in a couple of weeks time you will see that the increase is
twice that. She says that Bexley Conservatives “understand the challenges facing
the organisation with clear commitment to manage the medium term financial
resilience of the organisation” but fails to mention that it was one of only
eight Councils in the country which misunderstood the financial crisis they faced to the
extent they had to apply for a Government bale out, a facility that they just managed to avoid using
by applying even more draconian cuts.
Extract from Conservative Home.