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News and Comment August 2011

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30 August - Cheats never prosper

I appear to have got into the habit of winding down at the end of the month and short of spare time as I am today I am not going to let my new ‘tradition’ die.

A reader who used to live in Welwyn has put me in mind of the old saying that school children of bygone years would chant at their friends who had been caught offending against the norms of the day - “Cheats never prosper”. I don’t suppose they say that anymore especially after seeing so many politicians with their hands in the till two years ago. How many finished up in jail? Was it four or five? I'm sure my colleague Mick Barnbrook will know, for it was he who was responsible for putting most of them away.

The norm for too many of Bexley’s politicians seems to be to cheat and lie and one wonders where it is going to lead them; my new ex-Welwyn friend gives a clue. He says his council there played fast and loose with the planning of two shopping complexes, one developer took his complaint to court, the judge called the council liars and awarded damages against it of £48 million. Ouch! But it was the council tax payers who footed the bill. It should have been like forty years ago in Clay Cross, Derbyshire, where eleven councillors were made to pay back £6,895 each that they lost their council over a rent irregularity. That was in the days when councillors weren’t able to award themselves large chunks of tax payers money. Now the cheats prosper all the time.

The Welwyn case is still on record at The Lawyer website.

 

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