8 September (Part 1) - The obscene blog - who dunnit?
No idea! I could guess but I would probably be putting two and two together
and making five. Whoever it was has friends in high places, the police in
Bexleyheath are going to inordinate lengths to hide his (I don’t believe it is a her) identity.
First the police wouldn’t talk about it until leaned on by MPs and Ministers.
Then Borough Commander Stringer sent a letter of reassurance that things were
progressing, maybe slowly, but it was all being taken very seriously and
everyone involved would be kept informed. The government Minister received
similar assurances. Then two weeks later came a couldn’t care less sort of
automated response (no signature, wrong reference number) saying nothing could
be done. The police refused to talk about it on the phone as they had marked the file
‘RESTRICTED’ to keep it hush-hush and the promise for someone
to call back didn’t materialise.
It was decided I should
write to the Borough Commander while Elwyn Bryant (also a subject of the Bexley
council inspired obscenity) should probe via a
Freedom of Information request.
For technical reasons the FOI went off under my name. My letter to Commander
Stringer made reference to it. He would have received it by Tuesday morning of
this week and by mid-afternoon the FOI had been rejected for daring to seek
personal information. It’s not subtle is it? Whoever heard of an FOI getting
dealt with within a couple of days? They were in so much of a hurry they
addressed me as Mrs.
The FOI did not seek personal information, it asked for dates, but any excuse
will do when indulging in a frantic cover up. Obviously the complaints procedure
was an essential first resort before going to the Information Commissioner yet again. The
letter to the Police FOI Complaints Unit went off this morning.
Bexley council are busy trying to dodge the issue too. They came up with their excuse of a
response to my Subject
Access Request a mere two months late. It tells me one thing and one thing
only, that Will Tuckley got the police to send the harassment letter. Exactly
the same response as given to a
four month overdue Freedom of Information request. You would think their
obscene blog never happened; a blatant attempt to dodge their responsibilities
under The Data Protection Act. A complaint was called for. The email read…
Dear Mr. Grosvenor,
You appear to have confused my Subject Access Request with Mr. Barnbrook’s
Freedom of Information Request. The response is close to identical but SARs and
FOIs are not the same thing.
I accept that I gave permission to exclude mundane areas of little interest such
as council tax payments or failure to empty refuse bins but you appear to have
excluded everything except for Mr. Tuckley’s ill-judged trip to Bexleyheath police station.
At the very minimum I require to see copies of all the correspondence by staff
and councillors relating to me and my website. For example I know that the IT
department blocked access from council computers in mid-April
2011 because a councillor wrote to someone about it and the mail found its way to me.
I know that the IT department later blocked access to my website from libraries because
numerous people have tried and failed to get it from a library. All this must
have been in response to written instructions.
It is also well known that by arrangement with Mr. Chris Loynes I visited the
council’s offices on 20 May 2011 which must have been logged by him and within a
couple of (working) hours of that visit it had been recorded in scurrilous terms
on the website
http://malcolmknight.blogspot.com in contravention of Google’s terms and
conditions on impersonation. If Mr. Loynes did not do it himself he must have
told someone else who did. There will be correspondence. Similarly there will be
correspondence on the day Mr. Tuckley received my complaint about my arrangement
with Mr. Chris Loynes being made public.
Within the period in question I have received email from a fairly senior council
official and a councillor both from a bexley.gov email address. Unless you find
at least the councillor’s correspondence I will know you have not looked for any.
Do you wish me to give you a little more time or would you prefer I report the
latest failure to the Information Commissioner without further delay?
Yours sincerely,
So who is this Chris Loynes? Head of Democratic Services is the official title, he
runs around after the needs of councillors and as events have shown, looks after the
register of members’ interests. It is that register which was examined on 20th May.
Anyone can do that by appointment, in a more open and transparent council it would
be available on-line. So it is Mr. Loynes
responsibility to look after councillors’ interests and unless he went blabbing about
my visit he was the only person who would know about it. But I don’t know who set up
the obscene blog, I expect Mr. Loynes foolishly blabbed.
I didn’t see Mr. Loynes at the last two council meetings I attended, a council
mole tells me that that is because he has been off sick.
I still don’t know who is adept with Google’s blogspot facility and I’m sure everyone
will wish Mr. Loynes a speedy recovery.