21 March (Part 1) - Councillor John Waters. Fingers in many pies, and gorging on them
Councillor John Waters (Danson Park, £12,864) is a busy man eager to ride
rough-shod over the population and fill his pockets where he can. Back in 2004 he
voted for installation of a new mobile telephone mast dismissing local residents’
concerns with the well known fact that “there is more danger of radiation from
a domestic vacuum cleaner than there is from a mobile phone mast”.
More recently when the Embassy Court development in Welling was said to not
comply with the plans shown to local residents John Waters dismissed complaints
with “Residents have to accept it is a large building and that it is all water
under the bridge now”. A real man of the people I am sure you will agree.
Apart from his strenuous efforts to do his best for Bexley residents he
selflessly serves as director for several companies.
The Thames Innovation Centre
(TIC) is one and Invest in Thames Gateway London is another, where, as with the TIC,
he is joined by councillor Linda Bailey (also Danson Park, £22,141). The Chief Executive
of Thames Gateway is Aman Dalvi who until he got a better offer had been Chief Executive of TIC.
Mr. Dalvi as far as I know has no other connection with Bexley council.
Further research reveals that councillor Waters is the local authority
appointed governor at Chislehurst & Sidcup Grammar School. The school is in
Hurst Road, Sidcup as parents trying
to park nearby will know to their cost. He is also a director of Bexley
Manor Nursery School (BMNS), in Penhill Road.
Its website says the head
teacher is J.M. Waters, but it is not John, it is Jennifer Margaret. Not a coincidence. The
website 192.com shows a Mrs. J. Waters living at 147A Knoll Road, the same address as
the councillor gives on the council’s website.
So
John and his wife Margaret run a small
business, a nursery school and it would seem likely that Mrs. Waters at least
draws a salary from it. Companies House reports it to be a limited company with
shares owned by Mr. and Mrs. Waters in a 30%/70% ratio.
Is it a flourishing business? All that is known so far is that the total assets fell
from £58,000 in 2009 to £52,000 in 2010. So maybe rubbing along just keeping
its head above water.
Of what interest is this to Bexley’s taxpayers? Isn’t it just the usual wheeling
and dealing and using their contacts for the purpose of self-enrichment
rather than spending the time protecting residents from phone masts and planning
consents gone wrong? Maybe it is, but the council’s accounts throw a little light on
where the Bexley Manor Nursery School gets its income from.
Last year Bexley council doled out £127,721 to BMNS. Some of it was to pay for the Early Years scheme whereby
pre-school children can get free nursery education, but not all of it was for that; the
council accounts don’t give a breakdown. In the preceding years the sum was £124,626 and £114,710. The Waters
household will have benefited by the head teacher’s income.
So what is the morale of this every-day story of tax beneficiaries? It is that
if anyone believes that councillors get themselves elected to serve the
community and not to serve their own bank balances they should probably think
again or go and talk to the fairies at the bottom of their gardens. How is it that
their own businesses manage to take a share of the taxpayers’ largess and
successfully feed it to their own bank accounts, but the ones they run on our
behalf (TIC) haemorrhage cash on the grand scale?