4 March (Part 2) - Hill View views
Writing
the report of
last week’s planning meeting was not something I was looking forward to and
it wasn’t just that it takes more than four hours to go through a one and a half
hour recording, picking out the relevant bits, typing them out and then checking
to make sure that the quotations are accurate. More worrying was that I knew
from messages received beforehand that some people were expecting the boot to be
put in in good and hard against certain people seen to be the villains behind the
scenes and those correspondents were likely to be disappointed.
If any reputation for integrity is to be maintained only what the recording reveals can be safely
reported but sometimes the gossip is interesting, and occasionally, better still (?), it might
be mischievous. Nevertheless it may still be worth wider distribution with the proviso that
it fails to meet Bonkers’ usual standard of proof and may be bunkum for all I know.
It is entirely possible that some anonymous comments are from those with axes to grind; but
I sometimes suspect that concerned Conservatives are behind them, perhaps
even councillors. Whatever the case I need to destroy any real chance of the sources being
identified so the following message is in reality an amalgam of more than two recent comments
about the Hill View planning application, edited into a single message. Every comment is
genuine but as will be apparent, not necessarily provided in the sequence shown below.
Excellent report and a good summary of how it was stage managed. It is interesting to note that the
third East Wickham councillor, Steven Hall, was not present. I think he tried to warn us how it
would play out and suspect he is deeply out of favour with the inner sanctum. He must
be odds on to lose his Audit Chairmanship. We would be sorry to see him go but it would appear that
East Wickham is now being micro managed by the FC.
Local residents apparently wrote in to try and stop Hunt representing them but
the FC overruled everybody. Hunt is in the pocket of the FC and has his sights
on the Children’s Services cabinet position (Perrior leaving).
The chairman, leader, a few planning members, and James Hunt got together with
officers and planned the entire evening. It was not popular with everyone in the
Tory group. Mr. Burke caused massive problems for the Council with his
report and will be speaking. It’s why the planning meeting on the 6th February
had to be deferred. It put the Bexley First project in danger!
There were some ten Tories canvassing in East Wickham on Saturday - its the only time
we see [deleted description] Hunt and he still tries to avoid residents. When he gets to the cabinet
I hope he does a better job with the Scrutiny of Children’s Services - no wonder Bexley’s record isn't good.
Some of that rings true, especially the rigging of the meeting in advance. Par for the
course in Bexley but I find the criticism of James Hunt hard to swallow. He made a good case
against the Hill View scheme last Thursday and there is no evidence at all that councillor Hunt
is any of the things alleged in the emails, nor Steven Hall for that matter. I understand from
other sources that it was James Hunt who personally contacted affected residents and met many of them. I
think you will know who the initials FC refer to.
Gossip blogs are dangerous territory so there will be no quick repeats, but I do
rather like the thought of spreading dissension in the council camp.