24 March (Part 1) - Democracy Bexley style
Definitely not a good month so far…
• The mayor’s reaction to a government that wants to
make council meetings more accessible to “citizen journalists” was to ban entry
to the Civic Centre to anyone with such ambitions and enforce it with bag
searches and the threat of arrest by (at one meeting) more police than residents
(average age 68 years) attending.
• An invitation to seek individual permissions for photography met with rejection for everyone who
sought that permission.
• The mayor further restricted the already limited opportunity for the public to
question the council in contravention of her own Standing Orders.
• The mayor singled out three members of the public sitting in the back row of
an awards ceremony for “parsimonious appreciation” or in simple language, not clapping enough.
• The mayor singled out one resident for a lecture on chairmanship skills
and in doing so highlighted her own failures.
• The mayor refused to correct minutes of a meeting which on her own admission
had insufficient time for checking. When it was brought to her attention
that this contravened council Standing Orders the reply said“ the ruling of the
mayor as to the application of any of Bexley’s Standing Orders, or any
proceedings of the council shall not be challenged”.
The common factor as always is an aversion to
exposure of council mismanagement and dishonesty coupled with unbelievable
arrogance. Council Leader O’Neill in reply to a questioner at the
council meeting on 2nd March reminded members of the public
that she had been elected and the questioner had not. True; but she was elected to
serve, not to refuse to properly respond to questions and line her own pocket where she can.
Yesterday I read a letter from a councillor to a resident who was on the
committee of a local organisation with connections to the council and who had written
to a local paper criticising the council. The letter said the councillor would ensure
that the resident would be removed from his committee position if he did not
retract his comments published in the paper. He refused to do so and had to
stand down from the committee because of the threat to the committee as a whole.
I am not revealing the councillor’s name because it would almost certainly
identify the ex-committee member. But I held that letter in my hand last night.
Bexley council is riven with malpractice and dishonesty at the highest levels. Who
could deny it given the Ian Clement affair and the subsequent attempt to cover it up? The
£1,931.95
he claimed has never been recovered.