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News and Comment June 2014

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30 June - Miscellaneous meanderings

It’s been a quiet month with just one council meeting to report and even that wasn’t real business, more like another excuse for self-congratulation.

A few snippets of information arrived by email during the last few weeks which might not have merited comment at the time but with the June blog about to slip from view a quick round up may not be be totally out of order.


MeetingBexley council’s website has never been well organised which must contribute to maintenance problems. Not only are councillor details still wrong three weeks after they were given new jobs but an eagle-eyed reader noticed that visitors are still being directed to the old Broadway site. The image shown was extracted from the council’s meetings calendar this morning. It’s not a one-off, all scheduled meetings show the same old address.

Following the report that Director of Environment and Wellbeing, Peter Ellershaw and his wife Toni run a building company whilst raking in a quarter million from Bexley taxpayers, I was told they weren’t the only ones.

It was alleged that Director Mike Ellsmore runs a music business in Faversham, which seemed a little far fetched to me. It’s true that a Mike Ellsmore is mixed up with the music scene in Faversham but I have yet to find a positive link with the Bexley one. If you know better and have proof…

To my mind the business links of the recent Isle of Man immigrant Mark Charters are more interesting. He came to Bexley from Northampton County Council in July 2007 and promptly hired a firm of consultants called Ophira Ltd. By some enormous coincidence Ophira was founded in 2007 and comes from Northampton. Bexley’s website doesn’t say much about Ophira but the company website is more revealing; it lists the contracts they have managed to attract. Job one, Bexley, job two Bexley, job three Somerset and nothing since. Why would Bexley’s new Director of Education pay money to a new company with no track record whatsoever who happened to come from his old home town? Old Pal’s Act perhaps?

There have been emails about the illegal strip show at councillor Lucia-Hennis’s Charlotte pub in Crayford but only to confirm that Bexley council is not doing anything about her licence breach. Anyone who complains gets the official brush off. “Unfortunately, you are not a concerned party into any current investigation into the Charlotte Public House and, therefore, any details are confidential.” Did anyone expect otherwise?

An estate agency boss told me that according to one of his trade papers there are only twelve houses for sale in Bexley that could be considered affordable by someone who can only scrape together an 18% deposit which is apparently the average for a first time buyer. It’s a shocking figure made worse by the fact that twelve affordable properties is the best figure of any borough in London.

I am still taking Google’s Data Protection message with a pinch of salt; all the best BiB pages featuring certain Bexley people are still indexed. If that changes it wouldn’t be difficult to retitle the pages, perhaps edit them and park them somewhere else. New pages get indexed by Google very quickly, sometimes only a matter of hours.

 

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