26 February (Part 1) - Free speech v dishonesty - The trial
The
much deferred trial of Olly Cromwell is on again. This time it is at
Greenwich Court 1 at 10 a.m. on Friday 13th April 2012. Sandra Bauer, the Bexley
councillor whose cunning stunt of tittle-tattling what she
thought she had seen on Twitter to her good friend councillor Melvin Seymour and
convincing him that Olly had been “urging people to put dog faeces through my letter
box” is to be called as a witness. In his signed statement to the police Melvin
Seymour said Olly referred to councillors as “lying, stealing, cheating ****s” and
that because of Olly’s activities “both my address and my daughter’s addresses are in
the public domain” and he “feared for the safety of my family”.
As has been made clear before, Olly did not put Seymour’s address or anyone
else’s in the public domain, that statement was a product of Seymour’s
imagination and presumably part of a spiteful attempt to cause Olly maximum trouble.
Seymour placed his address in the public domain by standing as a councillor and
allowing Bexley council to name him as a
recommended painter and decorator. It seems
that Olly’s allegation of lying and cheating was not too wide of the mark.
Everyone is welcome to turn up and listen to Sandra Bauer and see if she is
going to be more truthful in court than Seymour was in his police statement.
Note dated 17th August 2012. At
an appeal hearing
where both Seymour and Bauer were called as witnesses and cross examined
it became clear that it was Seymour who had dishonestly exaggerated the content of the Tweet
in order to attempt a miscarriage of justice and Bauer had merely sent him a copy and took no part in its embellishment.