16 February (Part 1) - Don’t Wyncham, punch ’em
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About
three weeks ago news came in of a punch-up at Wyncham House, home to Bexley
council’s planning department. It was alleged that one of the planning officers
got into a heated debate with a female visitor and decided that the best way
of getting his point of view across was a swift right hook - or something like
that - and she suffered minor injuries requiring treatment. It’s not the sort of
story that I would cover without a statement by a witness and it was left
unreported. However John Watson of the Bexley Council Monitoring Group, who I
meet now and again, thought some enquiries would be in order and wrote to Chief Executive Will Tuckley.
I don’t know exactly what John said but presumably Tuckley was asked if he could
confirm or deny the reports. Two weeks later and in contravention of Bexley’s
code of practice on correspondence response times, John has heard nothing at
all. Tuckley is well versed in the art of cover-up
and in my view John Watson must be the supreme optimist if he expected a
prompt and truthful reply. Nevertheless the silence goes a little way
towards confirming the initial reports may have been correct. A brief denial
would not take a lot of effort, on the other hand, given Tuckley’s denial of any
police investigation into the obscene blog, would it be worth the paper it was written on?