12 September (Part 2) - “Compassion”? Don’t be naive. Exploitation perhaps but not compassion
When I read this letter in the News Shopper on 27th June my suspicious mind
immediately said “plant”. It was near certain that the “newly established cafe” in
Bexley village was Cafe Blanco which has direct links to the Campbell family, Bexley Cabs and through both, Bexley council.
The cafe owner,
Dymphna Byrne, had made the planning application for Bexley Cabs and I was in no mood to
take anything about the cafe at face value. Could the Shopper’s Star Letter in praise of Cafe
Blanco’s owner really be entirely genuine and without ulterior motive? I doubted it but all
efforts to find a link between the Campbells and the author came to nothing. I
concluded that the letter had been submitted in all innocence and have no reason to change my mind even now.
A month after that letter was published a telephone call from a regular contributor said that
the young ladies who had been employed by the cafe owner had never been paid. I’m careful
about things like that, the message may well have come from a trusted source but
I really needed to speak to those directly involved before going with such a
story. And now I have; and the report was true.
There have been so many stories involving the Campbells and their business deals
that the ‘funny business’ begins to look like more than coincidence. There was
the villa in Tenerife,
the pub in Bean, the strange goings on at
Bexley Barbers and
Bexley Cabs.
And now this latest episode. Pick up any Bexley council related stone, find something distasteful underneath. Watch this space, more details another day.