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News and Comment April 2011

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12 April - Harassment and alarm. Headless chicken syndrome - click image to read full version

Letter alleging harassment
So Bexleyheath council (who might they be?) claim I am harassing councillors and alarming them. I suppose I would be alarmed too if I was shown to be incompetent and worse on a daily basis, but harassing them; how come?

The last time I sent an email to a councillor was on 17th September 2009 when I advised John Davey (Lesnes Abbey, £9,543 + £7,782 from the Bexley Care Trust) of the existence of this site, then no more than a page or two. I have made none of the Freedom of Information requests which are admitted within council to be giving them so many headaches. I wrote to the mayor after my very first attendance at a council meeting because having come from a business background myself and not unfamiliar with high-level meetings I was absolutely appalled that her chairmanship skills were so obviously lacking. The mayor told me that she was wonderful and I did no more about it. No point; people that deluded don’t listen.

I did send an official complaint when councillor Craske made personal remarks about Mr. Elwyn Bryant and when the reply came up with an excuse which was proved false by the council’s own minutes I sent it back under the appeals procedure. That came back with another obvious lie but as I had in the meantime seen a letter from the Standards Board for England saying that they were themselves being closed down and in future there would be no sanctions against any local Standards Board however corrupt it might be I felt I had better things to do than pursue a lost cause.

A complaint I made against the mayor when she blatantly played fast and loose with Standing Orders and the timing of questions wasn’t even acknowledged. I haven’t gone out of my way to be awkward with formal questions at council meetings either. I have asked if any precautions have been taken against the council’s website going down during a major power cut as it did when EDF cables were vandalised in July 2009 and I asked what if anything was being done to retrieve the £1,931.95 that the council’s website says is still owed by convicted Conservative fraudster and ex-council leader Ian Clement. I left my questions late so that the council had the option of replying privately by post and was rewarded with no answer at all.

So how else might I have been harassing them? If examining the inner workings of council, much of which they should be ashamed of, is harassment then I suppose they may have a point, but none of it has been made up and I frequently link to original documents or put things within quotation marks to indicate authenticity. If I was fundamentally wrong about anything a reasonable council would have sought corrections but they have said nothing; presumably because they know what is written here is always basically true.

Not really harassment in the accepted sense of the word is it and unlike some others in the council chamber I stand up when requested while the mayor enters the chamber although I must point out it is to show respect for the office, not for her.

Where else should I look for signs of harassment? Councillors’ addresses are mainly on the council’s website when I’ve published a freely available email address I took care to encode it in such a way that it would not attract spam.

Could it be NoToMob that’s upset them? The council won’t be liking their attentions and NTB told me (and it’s on their website) that it was Bonkers that attracted them to Bexley and it was me who provided contact details (including phone numbers with permission) of unfairly penalized residents. Saving motorists a pound or two is bound to get up councillors’ noses. How will they fund their Christmas outings?

What finally tipped this utterly brainless council into showing their hand and proving they read Bonkers so that it becomes worthwhile addressing them directly via its pages? My guess is that the last straw was when I turned up at Boris Johnson‘s little publicity stunt down at Erith station last week. I was the only ‘nobody’ there and got the beady eye from Leader O’Neill. I was there because her office leaks and because Erith Station car park is publicly accessible property and the council had not spent £1,320 on a team of bouncers to cut the riff-raff down to size as she was advocating at a council meeting only two days later.

I never use bad language except when reporting insults traded between councillors. If they don’t like that sort of heat they shouldn’t be in their chosen kitchen - and I don’t make them read the comments anyway - but thanks council for making it appear more influential than it probably is. But there again I may be wrong on that. Mayor Clark won’t like to hear it but the site is not entirely without friends in high places. I shouldn’t put this one in quotations marks because I cannot reveal the source but I will say that someone deeply into Tory politics in Bexley said “your blog is the best thing there has ever been for democracy in Bexley” and went on to tell how councillors read it and are running around like headless chickens not knowing what to do about it. He certainly got that right!

Oh, the alarm thing. Yes O’Neill and co. should perhaps be alarmed. Maybe they would feel alarmed if they knew just how much information flows into me about them.

 

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