Banner
any day today rss X

News and Comment September 2013

Index: 2009201020112012201320142015201620172018201920202021202220232024

17 September (Part 2) - Only obeying orders maybe; but inventing, truth bending and sinking in the council’s own mire

PrevaricateMr. Barnbrook is fond of using the word ‘prevarication’ which is really just a posh word for lying, a little less harsh perhaps but much the same sort of thing. He accused councillor Colin Campbell of prevarication following his shameful appearance on the Sunday Politics Show. The one where he claimed that Bexley council allows filming, “you only have to ask”. A lie if ever there was one as a subsequent Freedom of Information request proved. (See image below.)

Residents have asked for permission to film on ten occasions within the past two years and everyone got the standard brush off.

No permission
Mick Barnbrook’s complaint that Campbell had lied, sorry, prevaricated, on national TV because no one has ever been given permission to film a council, cabinet or committee meeting was met with another quotation from the rule book…
Protocol
So Lynn Tyler, Legal Services’ Team Manager comes out with the same old garbage about the rules allow filming but it's up to the chairman - all of whom are under instructions from she who must be obeyed. Then Tyler gets really desperate…
Irrelevancies
Totally irrelevant nonsense from someone who should know better and who now looks like an idiot. What is an awards ceremony to do with council meetings?

As part of Mr. Barnbrook’s case he referred to his own recent request to film a meeting which was turned down by Mr. Hollier, Head of Human Resources…
Refusal
Ms. Tyler is really clutching at straws now. Just because the council leader refused a filming request doesn’t mean it’s the norm she says. In the real world, the leader allows no dissension, everyone knows that. However thanks to Tyler’s weasel words, Councillor Campbell did not stray from the truth - to quote the dictionary - when saying that anyone could film, just ask. But it certainly wasn’t the whole truth.

By the end of her letter Ms. Tyler appears to totally lose the plot. She knows that she must maintain the pretence that everyone at the meeting was being disruptive because if that was not the case she must acknowledge that councillor Cheryl Bacon was advised to act outside the law; so Tyler repeats her previous lie about group disruption…
Police
Bexley Action GroupYou have to wonder how Ms. Tyler knows that, she wasn’t there and neither was any councillor or council officer. By the time the police arrived the only people present in the council chamber were four members of the Bexley Action Group; Mick Barnbrook, Elwyn Bryant, Nicholas Dowling and Peter Gussman. Also present, having been refused access to Cheryl Bacon’s illegal ‘Closed Session’ meeting, was Danny Hackett, the Labour party candidate for Lesnes Ward at the next council elections, and me.

I can tell you exactly what happened when the police arrived. Mick Barnbrook stood to appraise them of the situation and was stopped in his tracks by a smiling Bobby who said they knew everything about Bexley council because “I read Bexley is Bonkers”.


Cheryl BaconHaving thus broken the ice we had a friendly chat about the undemocratic ways of Bexley council and then they asked us what we planned to do next. I said we were going to go home, so we then stood and made our way to the exit. The police did not eject us, as their own press release said; “No offences had been committed” and we were sitting quietly in a public building. The police were not at liberty to sling us out and no council official was around to ask them to do so.

Mrs. Lynn Tyler is prevaricating on an industrial scale. Whether she is inventing these things on her own initiative or under instructions I have no idea but I see no alternative but to make a formal complaint about her to the Chief Executive. No one but Nicholas Dowling put a foot wrong at that meeting and some councillors have been kind enough to acknowledge that fact. It’s about time our lying council learned when it is wise to stop digging.

At least there is some satisfaction in knowing that the two policeman who attended the Civic Centre and read this blog will now have absolute proof that Bexley council lies constantly.

Complete Lynn Tyler letter.

 

Return to the top of this page
Bonkers is a cookie free zone. Not a single one