31 May - How to win friends and influence people
The police in Bexley, some of them at least, are making strenuous efforts to
engage with the community. It started in Thamesmead
after the murder of Olamide Fasina and was extended to Welling a few months ago.
The main thrust has been the circulation, by email when possible, of Newsletters
and a steady flow of information, not all of it too stuffy or serious, on
Twitter. The police may be on Facebook too but I don’t often go there. An unstructured mess
beyond my IT skills unfortunately.
The result appears to be that local beat bobbies are regarded as more
human and sympathetic than before and even I have been won over to a
considerable extent; and I have more reason than most to regard them all with deep suspicion.
In Bexley the police refused to take action against a councillor who
misappropriated more than two thousand pounds of taxpayers’ cash, prematurely
stopped the investigation of another for the obscenities that originated on his
phone line. That was followed by a politically motivated cover up and lies aimed
at blaming the victim rather than the prime suspect. Three consecutive
Bexley police commanders were implicated in the two cases. A fourth sanctioned lying
about residents when asked to do so by Bexley council.
Beyond Bexley, my son-in-law’s brother was murdered
with police involvement and the cover up extended to Commissioner level and a string of Home
Secretaries (Blunkett, Straw and Blears) were just as bad - until Theresa May came along.
As you will hopefully understand I can’t quite get my head around the concept of
an honest copper and it doesn’t help that my associate, Mick Barnbrook, was a
Police Inspector in Bexleyheath 20 years ago and if you give him half a chance
he will regale you with non-stop stories of bent
senior officers who threaten various dreadful sanctions against any lower grade
pleb intent on treading the absolute straight and narrow.
When PC
Chris Molnar who is the Thamesmead Twitter-in-Chief began to web stream his
speed gun activities my first thought was “you’ve blown it now Chris”. I watched
on line as he stood around a bend on a near empty two lane in each direction dual
carriageway pulling in those who were paying insufficient attention to the 30 m.p.h. limit.
Fresh
from another ‘lecture’ by my son - whose business is road safety - on why
fixed speed cameras are effective only as cash cows and Bexley council’s admission
that they have no statistical data to justify the installation of speed cameras
in Bexley Road
and Brook Street, I had very mixed feelings about
PC Molnar’s web streaming. (†)
May‘s two speed camera blogs attracted a good 50% more web hits than the usual
level so one might guess that unjustified speed cameras on hills are not
generally welcomed. I told Chris Molnar of my misgivings.
However there was little need for concern.
One might speculate from his response that PC Molnar recognises that the use of
discretion-free
dumb yellow boxes is a blunt instrument which merely accelerates the widespread feeling
that Britain is no longer a fair society. His was a far more sensible approach. Chris
Molnar and his colleagues were doing no more than dishing out advice and not points on
licenses. Click image to enlarge it.
Those driving closer to 50 than 40 m.p.h. were not so lucky but drifting
a little over the limit, quite a lot over the limit some might say, was rewarded
only with a gentle warning of the possible consequences. PC Chris Molnar is doing a
good and honest job, he’ll never get promoted.
† Bexley council has suggested asking Transport for London for information.
Is a backwater like Brook Street a TfL responsibility? Seems unlikely.
30 May - Does anyone still read the Highway Code?
Weekends at the end of the month do not make for a busy website so please
excuse the lack of effort today; on the blog at least. Quite a lot has been
expended on showing a five year old the sights of London.
Commuter parking regularly extends a full ten minutes walk from Abbey Wood
station which is unsurprising given that parking closer
can cost £3·80 with an unjustified fine on top.
Half-term visitors to Lesnes Abbey do not improve matters.
Some of the regulars
pay scant regard to safety. The van that features in Photos 1 and 2 has been there,
at a T junction, all week, including today, and encourages pedestrians
crossing the road to do so where it is less than safe.
The people carrier in Photo 1 blocked the dropped kerb for all of Thursday afternoon - probably
an abbey visitor. The white car in Photo 3 is there most days and makes a blind corner
even more dangerous. I had one narrow escape myself when someone swung
around the corner far too fast and came close to hitting me head on.
Maybe the local Bobby should remind them all that parking on corners is not
recommended in the Highway Code. At least it used not to be, it’s a few years
since I read it. No one’s perfect.
29 May (Part 2) - Net worth? Worse than nothing
Bexley council can choose some very strange business partners at times. A company with no money and a County Court judgment against them to run a library and Dex Property Management to look after an empty building.
A
company with a West One address, next to no money in the bank and loads of debt.
Why would anyone choose Dex to safeguard property?
Sometimes such things reveal a link to Bexley council via family or employment
connections. So far, nothing on this one.
Note: Enquiry provoked by knowledgeable BiB reader.
29 May (Part 1) - With one bound (or boundary) he was free!
Councils can do whatever they like. It’s easy because they set and manipulate
their own rules. The
debate about the proposed new ward boundaries would appear to be a case in point.
Bexley council’s General Purposes committee is responsible for electoral matters…
This gives a secretive council a problem. General Purposes Committee meetings are open to the public and the Local Government Act 1972 allows the press and public to be excluded only when specified matters are due to be discussed. They include…
Information relating to any individual.
Information which is likely to reveal the identity of an individual.
Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular
person (including the authority holding that information).
Information relating to any consultations or negotiations, or contemplated
consultations or negotiations, in connection with any labour relations.
Information in respect of which a claim to legal professional privilege could be
maintained in legal proceedings.
Information which reveals that the authority proposes, (a) to give under any
enactment a notice under or by virtue of which requirements are imposed on a
person; or (b) to make an order or direction under any enactment.
Information relating to any action taken or to be taken in connection with the prevention,
investigation or prosecution of crime.
Nothing there about electoral matters. Hence the big problem.
The council accepts that the amount of work involved is too much for the Committee…
So what to do? The obvious answer is to set up one of their Sub-Committees.
Just because the main Committee doesn’t feel able to do a
subject justice does not of course constitute a legally acceptable reason to
exclude the public from proceedings, and indeed the council’s Constitution
allows access to Sub-Committees, I know, I have
occasionally attended them.
So what does a secretive council do to get around that? Easy. You call the Sub-Committee a Working Group. There is nothing in the
Constitution about Working Groups. As Linda ‘Biffa’ Bailey famously said “I can
do what I like”, and so can the council.
28 May - Public exclusions and secret Sub-Committees
Yesterday’s secret Boundaries Commission meeting provoked a considerable
amount of correspondence. Kevin Fox, Bexley’s highly paid meeting fixer didn’t
reply to Mr. Barnbrook’s request for something more definitive than Fox’s ‘understanding’, instead it came from his boss, Deputy Director for HR and
Corporate Support, Nick Hollier. One can only assume that Mick Barnbrook’s reference to the criminal investigation that followed
the last occasion he was excluded from a meeting and
his promise to start that process again if wrong doing was uncovered, put the matter above Fox’s pay grade.
Mr. Hollier’s letter was not an unreasonable one and the relevant part read as follows…
As is its usual practice, the [Boundaries] Commission wishes to provide a briefing for
Members which will focus on the general activity, processes and timescales that
the review will require from the Council. The Commission has stated that this
is not a public meeting. The meeting is not a meeting of any committee or
sub-committee established under the Council’s constitutional and governance
arrangements, nor is it a meeting that any statute provides should be open to
members of the public.
Polite and businesslike you might think and I would agree; but
truthful? Probably not.
Messrs. Barnbrook and Bryant are nothing but thorough when hunting down the
corruption and dishonesty that pervades Bexley council, they had been exchanging
messages with the Boundary Commission too. These told a very different story.
The meeting was called by Bexley council and the Commission had been “invited”
to attend and were “guests”. That may of course be simply semantics and Civil Service protocol but
the next bit couldn’t be. The Commission stated it had no input to the meeting’s
arrangements and would not object to a public presence. That decision was Bexley council’s and no one else’s.
My own attempts to extract information from within Bexley council fell mainly on
stony ground. The best I obtained was a suggestion that council leader Teresa O’Neill
has already had a meeting with the Boundaries Commission and rapidly abandoned
the position she and her voting fodder adopted at last July’s meeting.
The Tories amended the Labour Motion to exclude reference to numbers
The reason was said to be that the Commission was not ruling out going lower than
the 42
councillors proposed by the Labour group. If true it would be very funny.
What is not so funny is the further suggestion that an illegal meeting has been
arranged for next week.
I wasn’t able to attend the most recent General Purposes meeting on 14th April which was chaired by
the historically dishonest councillor Peter Craske, but its Agenda confirms that the council and the
Commission had already met and that things would move more quickly than at first anticipated.
To this end a General Purposes Sub-Committee was to be established.
Sub-Committees of public meetings remain public but next week’s and its Agenda
has yet to appear on the council’s website. This is already in contravention of
the Local Government Act which prescribes seven days notice. It may be down to
incompetence and in most councils it would be, but experience suggests that in
Bexley the reason will be rather more sinister.
Their allowances are on the line and as many as possible must be retained.
Losses must be guided towards Labour areas. Public exposure is the last thing
the Conservatives will want.
27 May (Part 2) - “A mob of nasty evil people”
There is nothing new here I am afraid but it annoys me more each time I see it. Bexley council must know by now that it is effectively entrapping motorists with their unmarked shared Residents’ and Pay & Display parking bays.
This
motorist photographed today had paid his £3·80 for two hours parking but he left
his car on the wrong side of a white line. Well as there is no instruction
anywhere to say that one side of the line is Residents only and the other is
shared Residents and Pay & Display, why would he even bother to look?
On some days residents legitimately park over the white line rendering it invisible.
The situation has been
reported several times before and Bexley council is
always looking at BiB (there was more evidence of it earlier today) so you can
be sure that they know exactly what they are doing. As someone said in a letter
to the News Shopper more than six years ago, “Bexley council has been taken
over by a mob of nasty, evil people who seem to thrive on other people’s pain and hurt”.
It sums them up to a tee. They know exactly what they are doing but they carry
on doing it because it helps pay their inflated salaries.
I wonder if the Traffic and Transport responsibility being transferred to
councillor Alex Sawyer will make any difference. He is always ready to tell us
how honest, open and transparent he aims to be and to some extent he has been.
Perhaps he will arrange for suitable signage will be added to the cash machines in Abbey Road
or maybe to the road itself? Well one can hope.
See also
January’s blog.
27 May (Part 1) - They went for gerrymandering in 2011. What this time?
There was an intriguing meeting listed in the Appendix to Agenda Item 12 of
last Wednesday’s council meeting. A meeting tonight about ward boundaries.
Bexley Conservatives’ record on boundary revisions is a shameful one. In 2010,
council leader Teresa O’Neill made the front page of the News Shopper by saying
she was considering reducing the number of councillors. She did absolutely nothing about it.
A year later Bexley’s Conservatives put forward
proposals to change the Parliamentary constituency boundaries. The general
idea was to ‘lend’ Thamesmead some surplus Tory votes from Welling and move the
more easterly parts of Thamesmead voters into Bexleyheath but not enough to dent
the Tory majority there.
A blatant bit of gerrymandering aimed at painting Thamesmead blue but the Tories
justified it on the grounds that Erith and Sidcup had a lot in common - like
both being home to munitions factories in the First World War.
More recently the Labour Group returned to the subject of borough boundaries and put forward
a
Motion calling on a reduction in the number of councillors. As is always the
case, the Tories threw it out lock, stock and barrel. When UKIP suggested that the same
savings could be made immediately by reducing allowances by one third (†),
the Tories threw that out too. What else from a group whose primary purpose is to look after themselves?
However in September 2014,
Teresa O’Neill wrote to the Boundary Commission. It couldn’t
have been a more vague letter, it merely asked for a review.
The Boundary Commission and its rulings are very obviously of supreme importance to democracy
in Bexley as they are everywhere and definitely something the public should know about.
However Bexley council has never been a strong believer in democracy and in this
case it has placed two obstacles in its way. Firstly the time of the meeting is
not given and secondly it is not shown at all on the on-line calendar of meetings.
An enquiry elicited a comment from Mr. Fox, the council’s senior committee
officer, to the effect that he “understands the meeting is not open to the
public”. Perhaps Mr. Fox has forgotten that council meetings are regulated by
Statute and his ‘understanding’ has no bearing on such matters.
Maybe something more definitive will emerge during the course of the day, but
the last time Mr. Fox gave advice on the exclusion of the public from meetings
the police took an interest and Mr. Tuckley, the Chief Executive, his Legal Officer, Lynn Tyler and
the lying councillor Cheryl Bacon continue to be
investigated for Misconduct in Public Office two years later.
† Also reported on 7th March 2015.
26 May (Part 2) - Crossrail speeds on
Installation
of the electricity supply support columns on the London bound Crossrail track appears
to have been completed and I was fortunate to arrive just as attention was being
diverted to the ‘down’ side on Saturday.
A small crane made its way to the crossover site where it briefly lowered its
road wheels while switching tracks and then returned to Eynsford Drive.
The interval between the first and last of these photographs was twelve minutes
- just before 4 p.m. 24th May 2015.
The column hangs on one small hook while four nuts and bolts and a big spanner secure it to the ground support.
Just a few minutes later and off they go to fix the next one.
More Crossrail related blogs.
26 May (Part 1) - Lesnes Abbey grinds to a halt
With
Crossrail providing something new to report every week it is easy to
forget that there is another fairly major building project underway nearby.
The
Lesnes Abbey Woods Enhancement.
Bexley council’s glossy leaflet includes a timetable for the project. Six months
are allowed for construction of the new visitor centre after demolition of the
old one. These two pictures were taken 20 weeks apart.
Not much to show for four and a half months work is there? Elsewhere parts of
the park which were cleared to provide better views are now dense nettle patches.
25 May (Part 2) - Crossrail forces a U-turn
The attention to detail by Crossrail and their contractors has always been
impressive. Everything is done thoroughly and whilst some of their signage has occasionally shown
a lack of local knowledge,
it is quite hard to pick fault, although there are members of
the Liaison Committee who do their best to do so.
It may only be a small point but I feel the picture below sums things up pretty
well. When Bexley council puts out temporary No Parking signs there will be one
somewhere in the general vicinity of the restricted area and a couple of cones dotted here and there.
Not so with Crossrail, you get a cone that actually indicates what it is for every five feet along the road.
The occasion was the long awaited Gayton Road weekend closure and two way working
in Wilton Road. The road markings, One Way arrows etc. had been changed and a
short central white line painted in and whenever I looked the traffic was flowing
well. Apart perhaps when the occasional clown insisted on parking in the turning area.
I had to wait for the one shown to move on a few feet and not block the view.
The
object of the closure was to progress the diversion of the utility services
around the new station’s footprint. To be perfectly honest I did not see an
awful lot of progress and the roads had reverted to normal operation by the middle of Sunday afternoon.
There was plenty of progress elsewhere. The tunnel approach. the station area
and the track extending out towards Belvedere were all scenes of much activity.
25 May (Part 1) - Why the news blackout?
There was a serious incident at Abbey Wood station late last Saturday evening. The Police Neighbourhood Team Tweeted about it, so did Southeastern Railway and it popped up on my PC's screen alert at about the same time.
I had expected a report to appear on The News Shopper’s website on Sunday morning but it did not.
Not only was there no news but the police Tweet disappeared and Teresa Pearce MP
who confirmed she had seen that Tweet knew no more about the incident.
I feared it might be a
Crossrail related accident as they were due to take over
the line an hour or so later, but the men on site knew nothing about it next morning.
It took until midday today for the News Shopper
to carry a report and it says no
more than Southeastern’s Tweet.
There has been one report that there was a fatality but why a news blackout
so total that the police withdrew their Tweets and the News Shopper has had to
create a story out of nothing?
Been there, done that!
24 May (Part 2) - Not good enough Eileen
Hugh Neal’s blog reports today that Bexley council’s meeting with residents concerned about the proposed
use of the former Homeleigh Care Home as temporary
accommodation for the homeless did not go well.
His informants said the meeting was not signposted so that attendees were unsure
about whether they had gone to the right place at the right time, there was no
agenda and neither the council officers not the councillors present were able to
answer simple questions.
This is not at all what I expected from my own brief conversation with the
responsible Cabinet Member Eileen Pallen when I spoke to her last Wednesday
evening. She appeared to be genuinely anxious to handle the potentially delicate
situation in a professional manner. She specifically said that she had
instructed council officers to select occupants very carefully to avoid the
unpleasant and even dangerous situations I have seen in my own street when
unsuitable people are placed in an otherwise quiet road.
Hugh’s report implies that the Cabinet Member did not attend the public meeting
which is very odd. Alex Sawyer
attended nearly all the Splash Park meetings when
he was responsible for its future.
It has
been reported that councillor David Hurt (Conservative, Barnehurst ward) was at the residents’ meeting and thought that their concerns
would be fully addressed if one of them put their case to the Planning Committee. A clearer case of dismissive
arrogance would be hard to imagine.
That resident would be given five minutes and then torn apart by aggressive councillors
before his case was rejected. It is essential that their concerns are properly considered
long before any plans are formalised and put before the Planning Committee. Badgering the
cabinet member is absolutely essential.
It is alleged that Bexley council has appointed
a property management company to
look after the premises. Their website (see image) does not inspire confidence.
Note: Homeleigh is in Northumberland Heath ward.
(Councillors Read, Reader and Seymour.)
24 May (Part 1) - Shocking or what?
As far as I can judge from the available statistics, rather fewer than 50% of
regular Bonkers’ readers follow BiB on Twitter so maybe some readers will not be
aware of the debate about
the future lettings policy of Orbit Homes for their remaining Erith tower blocks.
Probably I have led a sheltered life but I found the following statistics to be
absolutely shocking. Around 20% of the dwellings house criminals.
The new plan is to restrict the occupancy rate for the “economically active”
to 50% of properties and “prolific offenders” to no more than 20%. Is that very
different to how it’s always been?
Not the sort of graffito one usually finds in Abbey Wood. I wonder if the
wall owner who commissioned it is aware that Bexley council
plans to sell that Wilton Road site and it could be built on?
Photographed 14:55 today.
21 May (Part 2) - A good start but a disappointing ending
Yesterday evening’s council meeting was a celebratory affair. An opportunity
for Tories to slap each other on the back, move a few deckchairs around the
ship to make room for prodigal sons whose sins have been forgiven and display
the usual arrogance and contempt for democracy. Something some elderly ladies
sitting close to me were quick to observe.
The main object of the evening was the game of Buggin’s Turn in which
councillor
Sybil Camsey was due to be made mayor. The Labour group put forward their
preferred candidate, councillor Edward Boateng, and Conservative John Wilkinson
proposed his Brampton ward mate Sybil Camsey.
John Wilkinson may have assumed
during his address that the election of councillor Camsey was a
foregone conclusion but the leader who seconded the appointment avoided that
mistake and councillor Camsey was predictably elected with 100% of the Tory vote.
Councillor David Hurt had already been selected as deputy mayor.
I have never thought much of councillor Camsey and that stems from her assertion
in July 2011 when she said that
Bexley council never takes any notice of petitions, so Elwyn Bryant, who had
embarked on one at the time, would be well advised not to waste his time.
Young and naive as I was four years ago I thought this was an outrageous comment but
as numerous people have seen since, it is nothing other than the absolute truth.
After
disappearing for 20 minutes, presumably while six inches were snipped from the
mayoral robes, mayor Camsey emerged resplendent in scarlet.
It was a little disappointing to note that from that point until she brought the
meeting to a close the new mayor spoke with admirable clarity and a degree of
confidence I have not seen from the top table before. Her predecessor may have
been a nice man for all I know but his trademark as council meeting chairman was
always one of bumbling buffoonery. My hope for
another Val Clark figure to put an element of farce back into council
meetings may well have been dashed for another twelve months.
A mayoral tradition is that they announce a favoured charity to be the recipient
of their fund raising effort. Mayor Camsey said hers would be Special Needs
Children which provoked a round of applause from Mick Barnbrook. Then I
remembered he has an SEN grandson. The previous mayor raised over £15,000 for his charity.
The formal business included nodding through the leader’s cabinet appointments. With councillor
Gareth Bacon exposed as the highest paid councillor in London and
stepping down from his least well paid job (deputy leader of Bexley council) the
way was clear for Alex Sawyer to make a dash for the almost top spot. He takes
Traffic and Transport responsibilities with him too, previously the domain of councillor Don Massey.
Sawyer’s place was taken by Batman Craske renowned for his dexterity with the
forked tongue, rude words and One Armed Bandits. The future of the Splash Park
now lies in his hands. Councillor Don Massey picks up
Bacon’s Finance and Corporate Services role.
The Rogues Gallery will need updating.
Councillor Stefano Borella proposed that some Labour names be appointed to
outside bodies but he was given short shrift. Then Labour councillor Daniel
Francis put forward a Motion
regarding the scheduling of meetings. The Conservatives’ preferred timetable is
that more than four months should elapse between decision making and Scrutiny…
That the Public Cabinet meeting be moved from the 21st July 1015 to the 6th July, an additional Full
Council Meeting be scheduled for the 20th January 2016 and the Full Council
Meeting on the 20th April 2016 commence at 19:30hrs.
The latter being a reference to the Conservatives being able to debate their
Motions at late starting meetings but leaving no time for Labour’s
Motions. A blatant attack on democracy by the ruling party.
Both suggestions went down like lead balloons and were duly rejected unanimously.
Surely councillor Francis has been a councillor in Bexley long enough to realise that
a Teresa O’Neill priority is to clamp down on Scrutiny. Why else would she have reduced
committee numbers from seven to three last year?
Councillor Stefano Borella proposed another eminently sensible amendment. He saw
no reason why payments totalling £18,000 were introduced for Scrutiny
vice-chairman for the first
time last year at a time of supposed council austerity.
That the special responsibility allowance for Vice-Chairman of Overview and
Scrutiny Committees be deleted and the special responsibility allowance for
Cabinet/Scrutiny Liaison Member be halved.
This too was rejected unanimously by the nasty party. Surely councillor Borella has been
a councillor in Bexley long enough to realise that Bexley Conservative’s
priority is to line their own pockets as generously as possible and sneaking in
new allowances for their members is to be expected?
The meeting ended about 80 minutes after it started.
During a leisurely exit, Mick Barnbrook proposed to his fellow Bexley Action
Group members that they make an immediate donation to the mayor’s fund for
special needs children. He attempted to make his way to the mayor who was by
then wining and dining at the taxpayers’ expense. Unfortunately he was barred
from approaching the mayor by an uncharacteristically officious, Dave Easton,
who runs beanos such as last night’s.
I suspect that Mr. Barnbrook being a man of principle will find some other way
of presenting the mayor with a modest cheque, but it was not a good start to the
mayor’s fund raising effort.
21 May (Part 1) - Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t
Bexley has a housing problem, you’ve seen the newspaper headlines about families sent to Manchester, you may have given a pound to the ‘rough sleepers’ who congregate in and around the road crossing subways. Maybe they are attracted to Bexley because of its reputation for cheaper accommodation, maybe UKIP have a point and the situation is the result of uncontrolled immigration. I don’t know but it’s not hard to imagine that being homeless must be among the very worst things that can happen to a family or individual.
A
week ago Bexley council, or perhaps I should say councillor Eileen Pallen, the cabinet member for Adult’s Services,
announced that it was going to use the former Homeleigh Care Home in Erith
for temporary housing accommodation.
Almost immediately I was on the receiving end of a small deluge of email
notifications expressing alarm and my first reaction I am sorry to say was “God
help the residents of Avenue Road”. I am influenced by the fact that Bexley council
has for more years than I can remember leased a house opposite to mine. It has been
a crime centre, occupied by drug addicts, drug dealers and ‘night workers’.
I have seen superficially attractive young women sun bathing in the front garden
smoking and begging money and mutilated by scars on their arms. A neighbour who
left his house at the wrong time bears an ugly scar on his forehead after being
bottled by an addict. Another was threatened with death for failing to mend an
addict’s television aerial. The police and ambulance service have been kept very
busy. All in a quiet residential area and all because of Bexley council. And
then earlier this month the recent occupants were rounded up and - according to rumour
- sent to Manchester.
Last week the broken windows were replaced and a new family moved in. What a
difference, so far at least. Clean curtains instead of tobacco stained nets,
ornaments on the window ledge and a cat peering out of the window.
The stream of nocturnal visitors looking for ‘a fix’ has gone and all is quiet again.
The years of sleepless nights for the immediate neighbours were due in part to Bexley
council’s reluctance to act swiftly. The police
would take occupants away and two days later they would return, the police probably every bit as
frustrated as those who have to live nearby. Twice the problem has been solved because
the occupants were jailed - and then Bexley moved in someone just as bad.
Councillor Pallen’s scheme is obviously well intentioned and in principle to be
welcomed and applauded. The success or otherwise of her Homeleigh initiative will
be dependent on careful selection of the families housed there. Not everyone who is
homeless is a threat to society, most will probably be no different to you and me.
If I lived near to Homeleigh and was attending this evening’s meeting I’d be
pushing Eileen Pallen hard on her selection criteria and what she will do and how quickly
if she gets it wrong. But councillor Pallen should be congratulated on her plan
to keep local families local when they fall on hard times. Manchester is
welcome to Coptefield Drive’s drug addicts. Children can safely play outside again.
The scheme is subject to planning permission but the existence of so many Tory
sheep makes that a mere formality.
20 May (Part 2) - Chaos by design
Bexley council’s road design team’s priority is to introduce
as many pinch
points as possible. Too many junctions which once allowed two vehicles to pull up alongside are now the scene of
day long traffic congestion. Presumably
creating roundabouts which cannot be navigated by large vehicles is sheer
incompetence, but with Bexley council one can never be quite sure.
With Harrow Manorway being the only North South route into Thamesmead and Crossrail
likely to increase traffic levels by the end of 2018 and Sainsbury's
in two months time, sensible people would not expect the road width to be reduced,
especially when there is no shortage of adjacent spare land. But Bexley is
intent on inflicting misery whenever it can.
At mid-day yesterday en-route to East Ham I joined the
northbound traffic queue just south of the BP petrol station expecting to be held up for three or four minutes. I
wish! 17 minutes later I passed the roundabout where on the far side there was a
queue only to the Barge Pole pub. I can only assume that drivers were choosing
to divert via Yarnton Way or Eynsford Drive. The northbound queue must have extended up Knee Hill by then.
The reason was that a large articulated lorry heading to the Crossrail base in Felixstowe Road could not get around the new roundabout. Traffic
flow had been diverted to the eastern side of the roundabout. i.e. the correct side and not as shown in this morning’s pictures below.
When the driver attempted to turn left into Overton Road he could not because of
the queue of traffic that had built up there too. Does it really take
nearly six months to build an inadequate roundabout?
20 May (Part 1) - More road chaos due
Several people have asked if I can explain what is to happen in and around Penhill Road next week and apart from the obvious fact that more havoc is to be wreaked on Bexley’s road system, I really do not know.
The
published traffic order is far from being a model of clarity. I particularly like
the instruction not “to turn right at Danson Underpass at the junction with the roundabout junction with Penhill Road Sidcup.
Cryptic crossword aficionados may click the image to try to make sense of the complete thing.
I am informed that there is a mobile display board at the Danson Roundabout which is equally confusing.
19 May (Part 2) - Electrifying pictures
Knocking down stations has not been the only thing that Network Rail has been
doing for Crossrail this month. Preparations for track laying nearer the station has been
moving on at a pace, there are the first signs of the overhead electrification, Gayton Road is soon to be closed while the utility services are diverted around
the new station site and the pile driver has been moved back into the station area.
Herewith a variety of photographs from the past two and a bit weeks, some through grubby windows and a couple on a mobile phone. Ugh!
The plastic utility conduits which extend under the railway line groan like organ pipes in the wind.
The electricity supply columns awaiting installation before last weekend, being
readied for installation on the Saturday and standing erect by Sunday.
More Crossrail related blogs.
19 May (Part 1) - He’s in the money!
A journalist phoned me last week and asked questions about councillor Alex Sawyer. The fact he lives in Welling - if he didn’t he would not have been able to be elected as a Bexley councillor - and his wife and son claim to live in Witham in Essex was high on his agenda.
I
wasn’t able to tell him a lot he didn’t know already but I sent a follow up
email with a little more information which wasn’t acknowledged.
I had been told that an article would be posted to the Mail Online on
Sunday but I am afraid I forgot all about it.
The accompanying local newspaper extract appears to be making the same point.
It’s perhaps a little unfair, Priti Patel is not the most expensive MP in
Britain by quite a long way and I rather suspect the £50,000 a year that Alex
takes home to Welling - or wherever - is included in the expenses total.
But it’s a lot of money and after Alex Sawyer is given the deputy leader role in
Bexley tomorrow evening and is rewarded with the £17,519 which goes with it, he will be rivalling his predecessor Gareth Bacon who
was the highest paid Bexley councillor on £108,000 a year. Plus £12,418 for
his lying wife.
In 2010/11, when Bexley council was doing its best to hide Alex’s relationship
with Priti and their peculiar living arrangements - he claiming Welling, she
Witham - Bexley council
prematurely destroyed his nomination papers in order to
circumvent an FOI request.
Bexley councillor
David Leaf is Priti Patel’s Research Assistant. A politician’s
priority is too often to help themselves first and their friends second.
18 May - Bexley borough. The decline and fall
From a Sidcup correspondent comes a report complete with photographic
evidence of what happens so very quickly when Bexley council decides that it can
stop looking after its parks and open spaces.
Whilst
Bexley’s webmaster has yet to be informed Sidcup Place has been left to the
ravages of wind and weather and Mother Nature.
What was a beautiful walled garden a year ago (Photo 1) is now partly bare and partly
overgrown and is in no danger of winning the Britain in Bloom competition.
This is likely to be the Bexley we have to look forward to under the relentless programme of cuts. Street cleaning,
grass cutting, leaf clearance, security and graffiti clearance are all reduced or abandoned altogether.
And 27 parks and open spaces are on the list for possible sale.
Click image for council web page.
16 May (Part 3) - 28 years later
From the South East Railway Society website. The station just managed to make its 28th birthday. (See also 5 a.m. pictures.)
16 May (Part 2) - Back to election squabbling
There has been a complaint about the
6th May’s blog, the one in which I
expressed disappointment that the Erith & Thamesmead Conservative Association
website was continuing to say that the Labour Parliamentary candidate had been
“difficult”, and her supporters worse, days after serious doubt had been cast on the statement.
Click image for the original complete web page.
The matter would have been laid to rest except that the complainant has asked
for the blog to be modified retrospectively because it associates one
Conservative, about whom I know little, with the long list of Bexley Conservatives who have proved
themselves to be less than pleasant people many times over.
I am reluctant to change history significantly or attempt to completely obliterate any mistake I may
have made but I will clarify things in the hope that the complainant will feel less aggrieved.
Long before the election campaign began in earnest the Labour candidate for
Erith & Thamesmead told me that
she very much hoped that the Conservatives
would not run a dirty campaign. Given some of the personalities behind it, I
could easily identify with her fears.
The local Labour campaign was remarkably clear of negativity.
My literature
collection only includes the word Conservative once. Stefano Borella (PPC,
Bexleyheath & Crayford) mentioned Bexley council’s failure in the area of
Children’s Services, a simple statement of fact. Their websites were clean too
and to be frank, Labour doesn’t appear to have the expertise to post hurried and
possibly ill-considered updates.
The most damaging part of the Conservative’s web attack on Teresa Pearce was first made public by the
sponsor of the ill-fated Erith & Thamesmead hustings and
its author, or maybe its co-author, was
a leading member of the Conservative election team. It may be that the statement
was insufficiently checked but the E & T hustings were cancelled at the 11th
hour and it was essential that a message was put out quickly.
As you might imagine, Teresa Pearce was very upset at being labelled difficult when all
she had done was voice her concerns about the possibility of a legal challenge
if a Tory chairman at the hustings proved to be a problem. I have a copy of the
email, it is entirely reasonable in tone, and she was right to be concerned.
After taking advice, the sponsor agreed. It was his main reason for calling a halt.
The reference to personal attacks was redundant.
Not only was the reference redundant but enquiries suggested it was untrue. No one
could produce evidence beyond “I can’t remember exactly what was said and by
whom” and the Facebook page on which the ‘personal attacks’ may have taken place
was hastily removed. One might surmise that a Tory organised website would not have
disappeared if it contained evidence of abuse by Labour councillors and supporters.
The Facebook page has been
partially recreated from screen shots. There is nothing in it that I
consider to be anywhere near being abusive.
The
complaint came from Elizabeth Anderson, one time Conservative local election
candidate, writing from her Conservative Future email address. She began by
saying that my blog footnote referring to Anderson Shelters was unnecessary as she
knew what one was, well I suppose you would if your name is Anderson.
Ms. Anderson says she posted the page critical of Teresa Pearce in haste and I
am sure everyone can appreciate that the weekend before an election is going to
be busy and there may not be time to check one’s sources. However the eagerness to
post negativity is in marked contrast to Teresa’s wish for a clean campaign.
Elizabeth Anderson has written “I do feel the tone at the end of your blog post
is entirely unreasonable” and that I “should not judge anyone purely by any
experiences you may have with others”. She goes on to state that she believes I
once shared her political views. She is right, I still do but in Bexley the
Labour people are so very much nicer than most Tories have proved to be.
Ms. Anderson removed the offending webpage when she realised it may not have
reflected the whole truth, but not until the day after the election when any
damage it may have done had been done. I am happy to accept that Ms. Anderson is
not like some of the Tories with whom she is associated. They may not have
bothered to remove unjustified criticism, Elizabeth did.
Anna Firth didn’t.
16 May (Part 1) - The best laid plans…
Now what was it that Network Rail management told me by email on Thursday, oh yes…
This coming weekend (16th/17th May) we will be demolishing the roof of the old
station building and the following weekend (24th/25th over the bank holiday
Monday) we will demolish the building structure itself.
The plan is to start some minor demo works from 10:00 and get going on the roof
properly at 14:00, so you can get a few more hours in bed and still catch it!
I’d suggest the afternoon of Saturday 16th and the afternoon of Sunday 24th as
some interesting times for some good photos.
Advance notice is always most welcome but the boss’s plans seem not to
account for his contractor’s aim to get the job done in the shortest time possible to reduce his costs. Below is
the sight that greeted travellers just after 5 a.m. this morning
At Church Manorway where another email had said that
the delayed installation of the
overhead electricity supply columns was scheduled for today, there was nothing to see
apart from a few tubes and ladders scattered alongside the track.
Note: Recording Crossrail progress is proving to be a little
divisive, the purists correctly say there is no good link to Bexley council, but
I’m afraid it is now a case of “I’ve started so I’ll finish”. The purists will presumably
not appreciate the link which has been added to the top of
the Crossrail Index which will pull down the most recent Crossrail Press Releases
(as announced on their RSS feed).
14 May - Money wasting and money grabbing
The programme to replace the not even two years old failed blocks in
Bexleyheath began on 16th March and was scheduled to take eight weeks, which was last Friday.
A report from a reader who lives by the Arnsberg Way/Chapel
Road junction said the new surface looks a lot better than the light
coloured blocks so on a rainy Thursday morning I went to have a look.
I think the lady reader is right, the Woolwich Road junction (Photo 1) doesn’t
look at all bad now that Bexley’s award winning impractical fashion statement has been
abandoned there. Unfortunately the job must have over-run and there were traffic
queues on all approaches to the Mayplace Road West junction where an attempt was being
made to patch up the broken blocks.
New speed cameras are springing up everywhere and not just in Bexley. A reader
in Bromley has said a pair have been installed close to her house on the site of
a long abandoned Gatso device. She has lived there for nearly 40 years and does
not recall there ever being a serious accident.
The Bromley camera reported is not on a hill which is the preference in Bexley.
This is Bexley Road, Erith this morning.
It’s not the steepest hill around but gravity will help to keep the revenue flowing.
At two recent council meetings Bexley has rightly bragged that its road traffic
accident statistics are pretty good. Only two hit the headlines last year and
both had similar causes, a child ran into the road on a sudden impulse without looking.
Cabinet member Don Massey was at pains to point out that Bexley’s road design
was not a significant factor and no driver was prosecuted. He said he could not install a
pedestrian crossing outside Trinity School
where there have been safety issues because there was no money for it. But there is plenty of money for new cameras
where there does not appear to have been a history of accidents.
Maybe an FOI will elicit the justification for these revenue raisers.
After packing up a wet camera and heading to the bus stop I saw a van take camera
avoiding action, It went around the traffic island on the wrong side. Genius!
Maybe it will have registered -30 m.p.h. and any
determined boy racers who might exist in darkest Erith could adopt the same trick.
When there is nothing much to say should one shut up and attract more web
hits because regular readers keep coming back to check, or find something,
anything! to fill the void? Still not sure after five years of near daily blogging.
Sidcup
Today I had a DIY job planned. Not especially difficult but potentially dangerous
single handed. A friend came over from Bromley to help, arrived half hour late
and the first words were “bloody Bexley council, they really are crap”. It
transpired that a traffic queue extended from the centre of Sidcup to
Chislehurst Station. It’s going to be the same tomorrow apparently but to be
fair to bloody Bexley council I believe it is emergency gas works. And Sidcup wouldn’t
recognise itself if its roads were not jammed solid.
Speed cameras
Yesterday’s report on speed cameras in Brook Street provoked more such reports.
Be careful in Bexley Road, Erith (a steep hill again) and North Cray Road too
(designed for 60 m.p.h. working but now reduced to 40) where it is said new pairs of
yellow money makers have sprung up.
News Shopper
It was not a good day for local newspapers.
The News Shopper offices in Petts
Wood are to be closed and the operation merged with their South West London
base. Another money saving measure.
As if to prove my suggestion that too much news is nothing more than
regurgitated Press Release, the News Shopper today
reported that the first Crossrail track had been laid between Plumstead and
Abbey Wood. The pictures were almost identical to those
published here on 22nd March.
The reason is that
Crossrail issued a Press Release today.
Incidentally, Abbey Wood station is scheduled to have its roof removed on
Saturday 16th May and the walls knocked down on Sunday 24th. In both cases the main
activity is due to start in the early afternoon. The morning will be devoted to
protecting the site and making it safe.
The Socialist Republic of Newham
I had to make an unscheduled trip to Newham today, the elderly aunt has taken a
tumble and is in Newham’s University Hospital. Another pretentious name, I’m
sure it used to be called Newham General. The incident has delayed this ‘filler’
blog by six hours and I suspect it will take up a lot of time over coming days
with a similar impact on BiB.
I’ve stopped trying to get through to Newham’s council tax office and
there has been no reply from
corporate.complaints@newham.gov and as far as I know they still
plan to prosecute the
95 year old for non-payment of council tax. I am hoping their
written confirmation that a direct debit authority is in place and the bank statements showing an up
to date payment record will be an adequate defence in court.
12 May - Public Service Announcement
A lady I first met at Anna Firth’s - remember her? -
impromptu Splash Park meeting
on Wednesday last week tipped me off that there was no good going on
in Brook Street this morning. Brook Street connects Upper Belvedere with
Northumberland Heath. She kindly sent me a photograph too but as I was
not far away I made a quick diversion.
Sure enough men in yellow jackets - one with a TfL logo - were putting the
finishing touches to the installation of two new speed cameras which replace a
single old Gatso device.
As was
noted back in 2009 Bexley council, or its Safety Partnership, has a habit
of putting speed cameras at the foot of hills and in places outlawed by
government guidelines - but that way it raises more money.
Speed cameras probably don’t do anything apart from raise money. When I ask my
son, who used to chair a relevant European Union safety committee but now finds there is
more money in advising industry bodies, what good they do he wanders off into
mathematics and speaks of reversion to the mean. I think he is saying that
accidents are random, they go up - and a camera might be installed - and then
they go down, and they would have done anyway. Perhaps easier to understand is
that accidents at speed camera sites do go down, but by no more than they go down
everywhere else.
Perhaps I’ll ask Mick Barnbrook to raise an FOI on the number of accidents at the Brook
Street site in the last three years. It’s too long since we last heard his name here.
My new Splash Park friend said that Bexley is Bonkers performs a vital Public
Service role. I hope this announcement saves readers from being robbed.
11 May - Don’t blame Greenwich
The roundabout being very slowly constructed on Harrow Manorway would appear to have quite a lot in common with those which Bexley built on Wickham Lane and at Ruxley corner five years ago.
Both took many months to construct, caused
enormous traffic queues and when they were
finished, large vehicles couldn’t get around them.
Albion Road is just as bad.
The same seems to be happening (see Photo 2) at the entrance to the new Abbey Wood Sainsbury’s (Photo 3) due to open on 29th July.
As the authorisation certificate clearly states, this is a Bexley council project.
Let’s hope that is completed earlier than the 13th August indicated on the license.
The road I have lived in for the past 28 years and three days has the dubious
distinction of being the first in the borough to be equipped with fibre optic cable TV. More
than 20 years ago and I have forgotten the name of the company that did it.
There were lots of independent cable TV companies at the time and now they are
all Virgin. Barely a week goes by without Virgin Media sending me an A4 sized envelope
which goes unopened into the recycling bin. Virgin once stole £20 from my mobile
phone account and they will never get another penny out of me.
If you discount the false start Thames Water made last year it looks as though
I’ve been chosen for an early water meter too. I can’t say I am an enthusiast even
though as a single occupier I may make a saving. I just don't like the idea of
looking askance at a visitor who asks to use the toilet or having to put a
padlock on the front garden tap.
Last
week all the street stopcock covers were painted white by a gang that arrived in
several Thames Water vans.
Mine wasn’t painted because there isn’t one. It’s a long story and it’s actually
Bexley council’s fault but I don’t feel like explaining, it will be more fun to see
what Thames Water decide to do about it.
If people start to use less water and the bills go down what do you think Thames
Water will do? Jack the prices up so that their revenue is protected of course.
I was suckered by this notice I found on
the Murky Depths blog yesterday afternoon.
In haste I read it that on Saturday 9th May, between 00:00 and 05:00,
Crossrail (or more accurately their contactor, Network Rail) would install
overhead power support columns around the Eynsham Drive area. A much later and more careful
reading told me that Saturday 00:00 to 05:00 was 24 hours before I read it and that
the notice implies that the line would be closed all weekend and it hasn’t been.
In
ignorance and partly spurred on by the fact that I got a ticking off last week from someone
who insisted that Crossrail has absolutely nothing to do with Bexley council -
true but tough luck if you don’t like it - I took myself down to Eynsham Drive
at three in the morning to see what was going on.
Absolutely nothing. The scene was much darker than it looks in the photograph
and the wagon was just parked there apparently full of rubbish. There was no
indication that support columns had already been installed on the Church
Manorway to Eynsford Drive section.
According to the Murky Depths Blog, Abbey Wood station will come down between
midnight and six in the morning next Saturday. Why they should choose to cause noise through the night after
getting so much criticism when the last bit
of the footbridge was demolished I have no idea especially when it looks like a strong puff of
wind might do the job. (See 13th May for updated information.)
More Crossrail related blogs.
Note: Photo handheld for 1/5 second at f3·2 and 3200 ISO for those interested in such things.
9 May (Part 2) - Council tax. Where’s Bexley in the league table?
Rather later than usual the update to
London councils’ tax historical records has been added to Bonkers. Those pages attract a
surprising number of web searches so
2015/16 is a worthwhile addition.
I was hoping to see Bexley drop from its lowly 24th position to 25th but
it was saved by Sutton council (formerly 25th worst †) which whacked up its rate
so much that it dropped down a place.
However Bexley got very close to dropping a place too. Last year it was £12·30 (at
Band D) away from being 25th worst. Now the margin is a mere £1·68.
(†) This is always incredibly difficult to describe. Arguably
it should be 25th best but it sounds wrong. But you know what I mean anyway.
Bexley council’s claim that it is a low tax borough is a fraud on the electorate.
9 May (Part 1) - Councillor Philip Read. Respect for that!
Five years ago there was no money, today, where I am at least, there is very little news.
However I am grinning widely at the fact that I appear to have won the election.
Teresa Pearce is back in Parliament, Ed Miliband is not in Downing Street and
UKIP made a mockery of the First Past the Post electoral system.
Of
course I am not a winner in the same sense as Will Tuckley is an election
winner. As Returning Officer he can claim a very healthy fee. Bexley council is
not sufficiently open and transparent to have made the sum public but judged by
the statements made on the pages of more honest councils it seems likely that
his winnings will be around £4,000 per constituency, and Bexley has three.
An altogether different sort of winner is councillor Philip Read who taunted his
Labour counterparts more than four months ago with his prediction for 7th May.
Not only did his crystal ball work, he put his money where is mouth is and put a
bet on it. Respect for that!
I wonder if he was able to negotiate a special rate through councillor Peter
Craske who is the betting industry’s paid mouthpiece?
Craske
spends his waking hours making up excuses for the onward march of High Stakes Betting Machines.
Note: Will Tuckley is Chief Executive of Bexley council and
one of the very highest paid council officers in the land even without these
annual bonuses. There is to be an election of some sort every year until at
least 2020. Bexley’s Head of Electoral Services told me a year ago that there
was one every year until 2022, if I remember correctly.
8 May (Part 2) - The results are out and well known. Maybe a little of this won’t be
Well that didn’t go according to plan did it? I had a hunch the Conservatives
would be comfortably the biggest party, I even agreed with Anna Firth that the
majority could just about be absolute but obviously was not all that confident
or I would have made a trip to the bookies’ shop.
The local result is by now well known; there is no change. For me in the Erith
& Thamesmead constituency the big surprise was that Teresa Pearce increased her
share of the vote by 5% and the Conservatives dropped 4% even after Anna Firth
put up a magnificent fight. I had expected Anna (Conservative) and Ronie Johnson (UKIP)
to damage Teresa’s majority.
The established parties probably have an armoury of software tools to tell them
how well their campaigns are going. Ten days ago Teresa Pearce told me in confidence
that she expected Ronie Johnson to take 17% of the vote. She was absolutely correct.
Last night I watched BBC TV but soon discovered I was getting more raw result
information from Twitter than Dimbleby & Co. They would analyse the high profile
seats while ignoring the run of the mill constituencies.
I eventually realised that the results ticker tape was missing from the bottom
of the BBC screen, I switched to Sky and there it was.
I watched until Erith & Thamesmead came up and mischievously sent a text message to councilor
Danny Hackett to thank him for for providing a better results service than the
BBC. Then I thought I should text congratulations to Teresa Pearce but I am not
very good with mobile phones and pressed the wrong button. The phone called
Danny instead. ‘End Call’ obviously doesn’t work very quickly. It ended the call
but not before Danny’s phone rang. Danny called me back.
I don’t think Danny was sure whether he should be celebrating or crying. His
friend Neil Coyle had brought Simon Hughes’ 30 year political career in
Bermondsey to an end with help from Danny among others. On the other hand Ed
Miliband had learned nothing from Danny’s hero Tony Blair who knew a thing or
two about winning elections. Danny was bravely seeing Miliband’s defeat as a new beginning
and an opportunity to take a different course.
Danny, gave me a masterclass in political strategy over best part of an hour. I
found it very insightful and his views more than a little surprising as well as
refreshing. He told me that Ed Miliband would be gone by midday or there would be trouble.
I won’t go further than that because one day Danny might be party leader and the
subject of much Googling. Maybe it’s safe to mention one thing. Danny was scathing
about the 20 year old politics student Mhairi Black who defeated Labour’s
election strategist Douglas Alexander on behalf of the SNP. I refrained from
commenting that I knew of a 20 year old politics student who swept aside a much more experienced man in some place
called Lesnes Abbey. The youthful newcomer doesn’t seem to have done too badly.
Eventually Danny returned to his bottle, or whatever it was that was keeping him
awake at five in the morning, and I was able to send a text message to Teresa Pearce. I would
have sent one to Anna and councillor Stefano Borella but I don’t know their numbers. I am
not a Labour supporter but I would have liked to see Stef kick David Evennett’s
backside but sad to say the Bexleyheath & Crayford result was an almost exact
mirror image of Erith & Thamesmead.
8 May (Part 1) - What will the future hold?
70 years ago today the country was celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany and looking to the future. Today, at this early hour, we are again looking to the future and maybe the Eurosceptics are hoping once again to keep a lid on foreign tyrants.
I’m
afraid that somewhat contrived introduction is to provide an excuse for
these old photos taken in Leyton, Essex as it was then known, in 1945 just a few yards
from the Orient’s football ground.
I am in both photographs but I doubt whether I was celebrating anything more than getting
nearly 50% of the celebratory custard into my mouth.
As you may see, there are almost no men to be seen. My own father didn't come
back home for another 384 days. Stuck in India and Burma flying Liberators and dropping supplies.
Blog timed 00:17.
7 May (Part 3) - Splash Park ripples
I thought I had finished with blogging for today but the Splash Park is going to have to
take precedence over gardening again.
The campaigners’ FaceBook page contains some mild criticism of my
most recent
blog. Apparently I did not repeat that Alex Sawyer is not prepared to spend any council
money on entertaining children. I did
make it clear the previous day but some people want to read it every
day. Who am I to deny anyone their pleasure?
“Cabinet member Alex Sawyer has been keen to tell us at every opportunity that he
is an honest man doing his best to spend no money at all
but save the Splash Park nevertheless. He probably walks on water too.”
And here is part of what Bexley Conservatives voted on at the budget meeting.
Note how Bexley’s budget depends absolutely on making all the
proposed savings. The Conservatives voted to do that. At that stage the Splash
Park was effectively dead and buried except that councillor Francis and Faye
Ockleford have made councillor Alex Sawyer’s life very uncomfortable. It’s
fortunate that it is Alex in the hot seat, it could be someone really unreasonable like Don Massey.
I joined this fight
unasked and from the sidelines because I doubted anyone other than Teresa
O’Neill knows better than I do just how devious Bexley council can be. I felt it
was important to make sure as many people as possible who want the Splash Park
to survive to know exactly what they are up against. I’m amazed that Faye has
managed to have the success she has had but more help should be welcomed and
arguably some of it, for understandable reasons, wasn’t.
Twice during this election campaign I have invited Anna Firth into my house.
Firstly to tell her some of the unpleasant history of Bexley’s Conservative council, and then
last Monday night to tell her I thought her Splash Park campaign was in danger of
being counterproductive.
I urged her to do something about it and within hours she had collared Alex Sawyer and
told him he was going to be at the Splash Park for 7 p.m. yesterday as a last ditch
effort to establish common ground. I told Anna her website was ambiguous too. She changed
it, few politicians listen to us mortals. Teresa Pearce does but she might have difficulty
in pulling Alex Sawyer’s string.
Faye Ockleford (Campaign Secretary) was not entirely left out of the loop. We have exchanged 22 emails since
the weekend. Faye is a believer in free speech and would not have dictated what
I wrote, but I wanted to make sure it met with her approval. She told me it did.
Anna Firth gave it her blessing too.
If they can pull in the same direction through an intermediary then why not face
to face? Poles apart politically the leading protagonists may be but if there is
to be any chance of overturning Bexley council’s decision to kill off the Splash
Park some hatchets have to be buried. Apart from Priti Patel MP (Mrs. Sawyer) and Teresa O’Neill
no one but Anna Firth is likely to be able to command that Alex jumps and he jumps.
Make the most of Anna’s offer was my message. Or should I have stood idly by and done nothing?
Now what else was missed from yesterday’s near midnight blog?
The councillors accompanying Alex Sawyer were Peter Reader and Philip Read. The
third one for Northumberland Heath is Melvin Seymour. Peter may be OK but I
wouldn’t trust either of the other two. I twice saw Melvin Seymour stand in a
court witness box and spout falsehoods he must have known were untrue. The
police officers present certainly did. The object of the exercise was to put a
Bexley resident in clink. Philip Read had separately given the police false
information aiming for the same goal. It’s all on the record. Be very wary if
either of them should get involved.
Something else that cropped up last night but went unmentioned. Can members of
the public address scrutiny committees? Alex thought not but he is wrong. I
can’t put my hand on it now but somewhere I have a letter of confirmation. It
requires a request in advance to the appropriate chairman who may or may not
grant it. I last saw a member of the public address a scrutiny committee three years ago.
The committee voted to ignore him of course but the procedure is there to be used.
There is
a new News Shopper report on line today. It reads like one of Anna
Firth’s press releases. She is a bundle of energy. Use it.
7 May (Part 2) - Election Day arrives. Tomorrow the real fun will begin
I’ve had three people contact me this week concerned they had been disenfranchised. All
three had no Polling Card but two cases resolved themselves very easily. The postman delivered
one Poll Card yesterday and a phone call to the Civic Offices revealed that the other resident
was safely on the electoral roll, card or not. Well done the Royal Mail.
The third case was rather more interesting. It came from Northumberland Heath where a man had lived
with his wife for the past twelve years without any electoral problems.
This time the couple did not receive Poll Cards
or the letters that should have preceded them and the council said their address wasn’t
showing on the system. As a result they would happily take the couple’s council tax but wouldn’t be allowed to vote.
I put the man on to Dave Easton who heads up the electoral team and in my experience
an all round good egg.
Dave fixed the problem within 24 hours, a clerical error apparently. No one minds the
occasional error if it is promptly put right. Dave’s reputation is intact, enhanced even,
which is more than you can say for the Mayor of Newham who has still not responded to
last Tuesday’s complaint.
Deciding who to vote for today was a nightmare. The lesson for the future must
be Do Not Make Friends With Candidates. Voting for one feels like stabbing three
in the back. I eventually found a formula which justifies my decision and I
think I can happily live with it.
When I
arrived at the Polling Station, Teresa Pearce’s husband and sister were just
about to leave but UKIP candidate Ronie Johnson and his agent were passing through.
They were persuaded to pose for a photograph.
All three of E&T’s principal parties offered me a ticket for the count but I
declined them all. It’s a long night, Will Tuckley doesn’t like people taking
photos and I wouldn’t know which group to sit with.
I’m sure I would be welcomed by the Labour people, always friendly even after I
have skirted around the edges of upsetting them. UKIP would be OK too even
though I have seen almost nothing of their local campaign and expressed some
disappointment, and Mr. and Mrs. Firth would be just as good. I’m a lot less
sure about their supporters. I’d feel uncomfortable that’s for certain.
So it will be the telly and Radio 4 for me and maybe it will leave me less tired
on Friday than I was after the count for last year’s election.
May the best man or lady win and that I retain three friends.
7 May (Part 1) - Great news. Batman Returns
Tomorrow morning I may or may not be feeling content but today I feel very
much buoyed up. The owner of the phone line that magically self-generated
pornography is to re-enter the cabinet. Apart from the fact that he will run off
with another £13,000 of our money, that is brilliant news.
No one since he resigned for personal reasons back in 2012 has really
been able to take his place. Councillor Don Massey does his best to
insult members of the public at council meetings but he is not in the same class
as Peter Craske. Massey once apologised for
ranting on about UKIP’s Bexleyheath & Crayford Parliamentary candidate Chris Attard. Craske would never make that mistake.
His modus operandi when faced with a question was usually to lie.
Repeatedly.
When he was reported to what was then called the Standards Board he would lie to
them too so that they found it easy to find him not guilty.
When his excuse was proven to be a lie the Standards Board would accept a
different excuse. It was a bit like a European Referendum. If you don’t get the
right excuse the first time, request another one.
Thank you Teresa O’Neill, you have made my day.
I imagine that Elwyn Bryant and Mick Barnbrook will be euphoric too and get back
into the swing of asking probing questions at council meetings. Mind you, the
council appears to have introduced a new rule on public questions. You are not
allowed to ask one if you once stood at an election in opposition to the
Conservative Party. That has already ruled Mick out once.
Is there so little talent on Bexley council that they have to choose Craske to
fill a hole? Looks like it.
Note: For technical reasons the stream of pornography that
flowed along Craske’s telephone line in May 2011 is currently unavailable in
unexpurgated form. I suppose I am going to have to find time to fix that, or
more simply, just remove the password requirement.
The Batman outfit is significant because a second round of pornography contained
several Batman references. Funny that!
6 May (Part 3) - A pool of talent pools their efforts. Maybe
I went to the hastily convened Splash Park meeting this evening. Anna Firth was wondering if anyone would turn up. I was wondering if she might be lynched. This afternoon’s News Shopper report had stirred passions in an unhelpful way. Just what the meeting was not designed to do, but as I’ve said before, the News Shopper has become a bit of a rag, good for little more than copying what they read on the web. In depth reporting? Don’t make me laugh!
Before the meeting started I had a nice chat with councillor Peter Reader. I was
trying to think what I might have last said about him. I remembered he was a
decent enough Planning Committee chairman but beyond that my mind was a blank.
But he was very pleasant and said he wanted to keep the Splash Park open. He
convinced me with a comment it would be undiplomatic to repeat here.
Including Anna, three councillors and the leading lights of the Save Committee
there were just over 20 people there freezing on the pavement until twenty past eight.
Anna Firth put her case very well. One lady said to me afterwards that although
she was Labour through and through she believed Anna when she said she really
did want to save the park. There were raised voices
at times but some progress was made.
I think Anna convinced most people that she would stick around whatever happened
tomorrow. I extracted that promise from her a few days ago although a number of
people have said her website says, or at least implies, that her interest is
conditional upon votes.
When I wrote that horribly long blog yesterday morning I took advice from three
sources and walked the tightrope very carefully, refining the words over several
hours. Anna’s website gets a couple of minutes attention each day. It probably
could be improved if time permitted.
Alex Sawyer the responsible cabinet member took a leading role and put his foot
in it a couple of times. It didn’t take a lot for hostility to rise to the
surface but he put on a pretty good show overall. He convinced me that he really
does want to see the Splash Park continue, either that or he relishes the
prospect of being pilloried here for the rest of his life - or more likely mine.
The long awaited technical report has been with the council for a couple of
weeks but Alex Sawyer has not seen it yet. Deputy Director Toni Ainge is charged with
writing a long and comprehensive covering note.
The man who used to do the pool maintenance was on hand - he's retired now - and
the message coming from him is that the water quality is poor because no one
does his job any more. It included not only thorough pipe cleaning, late into
the night if necessary, but also hauling out those who paddled in unsuitable
attire. He also said that he kept daily records of water quality over ten years.
Alex Sawyer maintains that everything before 2014 can’t be found. Maybe they
should put their heads together. I think they probably will.
There has been a dispute over who came up with the latest plan to rescue the
pool first. The businessman who is behind that scheme stepped in to rescue Anna from
some of the criticism from which it may be possible to draw conclusions.
A conclusion I came to is that the suggestion that the council might move the southern playground across the road and build houses is without
foundation. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, the council has never said
any such thing but opposition voices have expressed that fear and it has been
repeated here. There are sure to be councillors who would like to see that
happen but it has never been official policy. The council must know it would be
a breach of trust for which they would never be forgiven.
So the expectation now is that Alex will get his long awaited report within the
next two or three weeks, and that all the interested parties will get together
by the end of June to thrash out what they need to do. Either Mrs. Firth or Anna
Firth MP will be there.
There is no way the Park will open this year. Alex Sawyer probably hasn’t got
the money and the retired maintenance man said it takes three months to do a
thorough overhaul. So too late now.
I was tempted to include the words ‘Knock their bloody heads together’ when
writing yesterday’s blog but didn’t as I was anxious not to upset anyone too
much. However I think it is fair to say that this evening may have achieved the
goal I was hoping for. Nothing to do with me, I just listened while I froze.
6 May (Part 2) - Things to come? A cautionary tale
One of Bexley council’s money saving schemes is to push the borough further on-line than it is already. It’s almost inevitable, everybody is doing it.
Across the river Newham has been an on-line only
council for a couple of years. If you don’t sign up and log on you get nothing. Whether you are 19 or 99 they demand
that you are computer literate.
As as result my aunt - 95 in a couple of weeks time - can no longer apply for
visitors’ parking permits or get her bins emptied of anything other than
‘standard stuff’. In Newham that does not include jam jars.
She used to get the parking tickets in person at the town hall and phone for the
bins. Neither is possible any more.
I think it was on 17th March that I went over there and she presented me with
her council tax bill which had arrived that morning. Being of the old school she
used to hand deliver a cheque for the full amount to the town hall. Banned now.
I suggested she paid by Direct Debit and never have to worry about the bill
again. It was a dreadful rigmarole but I managed to set it up on-line. You would
think entering the reference number would tell Newham council all they need to know, then
just add the bank details. But no, they wanted her full name and full address before being
able to add the truly necessary details.
On 2nd April a letter of confirmation arrived. No need to do anything it said. So far so good.
Yesterday
I arrived in East Ham to find the nonagenarian close to tears. A
letter had arrived that very day to say that if she didn’t pay the two months
overdue within seven days they would commence legal proceedings. There was an
emergency contact number on the reverse. I rang it.
After interminable announcements telling me I should use the web rather than
bother their fat arses an automated voice asked me to state clearly what service
I required. I said “Council tax”. It echoed back “Council tax”. Then after a
short delay it said “Council tax has no voice mail. Goodbye” and cut me off.
I called again. I said “Direct Debit” but the robot said that Direct Debit was not a
recognised phrase, it would have to connect me to the assistance point. I think
the lesson I learned was that you may as well just say “FU” whatever sort of
assistance you are seeking.
The line then made loud burbling noises through which I could just about hear
that string of announcements being repeated. Eventually a lady answered, the
burbling noises disappeared, and she immediately understood my requirements
and put me through to the right extension. Except that no one answered.
The switchboard
lady came back on line and said she couldn’t get through, “it
often happens”. I asked if she could try again but she said she couldn’t because
there were only two incoming lines and I was holding them up. Nevertheless she
took pity on me and tried again. With the same result.
This time when she came back on line she said she had spoken to one of her
colleagues and ‘Council tax’ had not answered a single call since last week. I
asked her to connect me with Sir Robin Wales, the elected Mayor and renowned
useless individual.
The operator said neither he nor his office took calls from the public. I asked
how one could ever complain to these self important and vastly overpaid morons.
She said there was an email address.
It is corporate.complaints@newham.gov.uk which I
place here in case it one day
proves useful to another of their frustrated residents and because I rather hope
that its unencrypted presence will result in Newham being spammed to hell.
I got on to my aunt’s bank today. Almost needless to say
the money was taken on schedule at the beginning of the financial year.
Administrative mistakes happen but the decision to go entirely
on-line and put an impossible system in place is not
an admin. cock up. It is what councils run by thoughtless idiots do.
Bexley next?
6 May (Part 1) - No shelter for Anderson
Time constraints dictate that long and complicated blogs cannot appear on
consecutive days. Yesterday’s involved checking facts with a number of people
and took six hours to complete. Today may produce a number of ‘quickies’.
It must be the inevitable result of tight budgets and the need to compete with
the internet but I really do think the News Shopper is a shadow of its former
self. Gone are the days when Linda Piper would sit grandly before assembled
councillors and have their inanities plastered across the following Wednesday’s front page.
Now their reporters have no time to do other than regurgitate press releases and
what they have read on the web - and live off Brian Barnett’s photos.
I may be nit picking and I accept that given the state of investigative
journalism in Bexley I should not be surprised, but I was disappointed to see that
the News Shopper’s web report on the cancelled Erith & Thamesmead hustings included a reference
to “restraint in the face of some very personal attacks”.
I still don’t know how the comment is justified. I asked to see the evidence and if a
Labour supporter or councillor had been obnoxious you would have read about it
here. No one has a Get out of Jail Free card here.
However the only comment forthcoming has been “I can’t remember exactly
what was said and by whom” and that from the horse’s mouth - or rather keyboard.
It looks increasingly likely that the attacks didn’t happen or the word attack has been redefined.
Anna Firth the Conservative candidate for Erith & Thamesmead didn’t
see any abuse and hasn’t - probably wouldn’t - put below the belt and
potentially misleading stuff on
her website. But Bexley’s own Conservatives
have no scruples whatsoever. They rushed to publish something that implies that
someone on the Labour side has been up to no good. It’s still on the E & T Conservative Association website
and has been since last Saturday - but for some inexplicable reason dated for tomorrow.
I can understand politicians making merry at the opposition’s expense in the
heat of an election campaign but not leaving it there for five days when the
criticism they are so eager to promote is totally discredited.
That is not the mark of an honest party and once more tells you what you need to know about
the special breed of Conservatives that infest Bexley.
The E & T Conservative Association webpage is the work of Elizabeth Anderson,
the Lesnes Abbey ward wannabee at last year’s local election. Obviously birds of a
feather and all that, she has joined the right party for her. Not an ounce of decency in any of them. Ok, if you must
quibble, most of them.
There is
a postscript to this blog.
‘No Shelter for Anderson’. Please excuse dreadful pun. You
need to be more than 70 years old.
5 May - Splash Wars. What’s the point? Work together or Bexley council wins
May I say straight away that the slogan you see below is not an endorsement of Anna Firth for Thursday. It’s the rather unfortunate
result of the way browsers display scrolling images. I have not found any way in
the time available of forcing an offset so that something less contentious appears.
One hell of a row has broken out on
the Facebook page operated by the Save Belvedere
Splash Park campaigners.
The organisers are “outraged” by being caught up in an election campaign against their express wishes. They and their
followers are incensed that Conservative candidate Anna Firth has, as they might
put it, muscled in on their Save the Splash Park campaign. I might be too but Anna is not without a
few ideas and may be in a position to influence affairs if properly ‘tamed’.
Given that Anna circulated a letter yesterday
(see below) which has her election slogan emblazoned across
the top it is easy to see where the renewed outrage comes from, but the central point of Anna’s letter is not
entirely without merit and does not deserve to be dismissed out of hand.
I would
agree that the letter implies criticism of Teresa Pearce by reminding
electors that she is the only candidate who has had direct access to Alex
Sawyer, hardly surprising, he selected her as Erith & Thamesmead’s Conservative
candidate and he is also the man who has the Splash Park plug in his hand. There is an election
coming, Anna is a politician, almost anything goes. It’s what happens.
Teresa could equally say that she attended two of the three public meetings
while Anna was still shopping in Orpington. (For the record Anna doesn’t live in Sevenoaks.)
Her protégée Eliot Smith has gone where wise men fear to tread and entered the
Facebook fray. He seems to be a sensitive soul and thinks their language is
“vile” although the worst I could find was a string of asterisks. It’s admirable
that Eliot’s vocabulary is above the level commonly heard on buses at school out
time, but positions have become entrenched and his lone voice has not found
favour. Meanwhile Bexley council will be engineering
the Splash Park’s demise.
My first words on this subject were…
Personally I do not rate the chances of retaining anything worthwhile at the top
of Heron Hill at all highly. Bexley council under Teresa O’Neill has not
improved the borough in any shape or form except when spending money from Boris,
lotteries or housing associations. Hers is a scorched earth policy which is
interested in nothing other than ensuring that Bexley’s 24th position in the
council tax league doesn’t get any worse.
Can anyone point to any example of Bexley council responding to public pressure and putting its hand in
its pocket? No, it simply doesn’t happen.
The Splash Park deputation saw for
themselves how minds have been made up. They have no friends behind the blue nameplates.
“The Splash Park must go” and if councillor Daniel Francis and his Labour colleagues can
be humiliated and shown to be ineffective in the process so much the better.
My default position with politicians is not uncommon. The first assumption must
be that they are lying or that there is an ulterior motive. In five years of
correspondence with Teresa she has shown herself - to me at any rate - to be
above all that. Never have I found her to be anything other than totally open and I have
got to the stage when I no longer consider that Teresa might just possibly be leading
me up the garden path.
Anna on the other hand I have known for only five minutes. She seems like a nice
lady to me but she is a politician and at this time in our relationship
inevitably comes with the baggage one associates with her ‘profession’.
She tells me nothing, at least not by comparison with Teresa. When I asked Anna
how Bexley council compared to Sevenoaks where she is a councillor she wouldn’t
say. I rather suspect “dare not say”.
When the News Shopper reporter asked what all reporters seem to think is a
good opening question, “How old are you?” Anna again refused to answer. It’s a
tiny thing and it’s an irrelevant nosy question, unless perhaps the candidate is
exceptionally young, but I found the refusal strangely off putting.
So with my defences hopefully intact I too will attempt to follow in Eliot
Smith’s Facebook footsteps.
Cabinet member Alex Sawyer has been keen to tell us at every opportunity that he
is an honest man doing his best to spend no money at all but save the Splash
Park nevertheless. He probably walks on water too but by the lowly standards of Bexley’s Tories Alex may well be an
honest man, albeit one under the thumb of a very dishonest woman. One prepared to
trot off to the police station if she believes she is being undermined.
Take a look at Anna Firth’s letter. Ignore the electioneering, Just read her
five numbered points and stop there.
Click or scroll for whole brochure.
Now stand back and think of where we are now and where we were six months ago.
There is not an awful lot of difference despite Daniel Francis’ best efforts.
The council claims it commissioned a technical report within days of last
November’s protest meeting but it is still not available.
Does anyone seriously believe that expert consultants looking for their fee
would not have come up with an answer by now? Much more likely is that Bexley
council didn’t like the answer.
Closing the Splash Park, moving the southern playground across the road, closing the library
and selling the lot to one of their favoured housing developers is a near irresistible temptation
to a near broke council. The half million pound a year
black hole that Tesco
created in The Broadway makes it even more likely.
Make no mistake, Bexley council’s preferred option will be to close the Splash
Park. They’ve made it absolutely clear that they are not going to come up with
any new cash and they refuse to ring fence or otherwise allocate Cory’s
generosity to the Splash Park. It is on course for closure, always has
been. Meanwhile there is an almighty squabble between Mums and Dads from Bexley who
want to save it and a mother from Halstead who wants to save it.
From what I hear Anna’s ideas are not as new as she might want us to believe and
the campaign organisers have already conducted exploratory talks along very
similar lines. If so I begin to see even more clearly that there might be “outrage”.
Even so there is little room for rivalry. Call Anna’s bluff. Embrace the ideas
whoever thought of them first, get her truly on board if she is willing to jump.
Persuade her to elaborate on her ideas before the election. She is offering to
meet at the park at 7 p.m. tomorrow evening. Then vote for Teresa or Ronie
if you wish. No one has to know. But the priority must be to get some flesh put
on the skeleton plan whoever thought of it first.
Ask Anna what she plans to do if she finds she has lost the election on Friday.
I have. She said, and I have it in writing, that there are several local issues
that she feels strongly about and will continue to fight for. The Splash Park is one of them.
It sounds almost too good to be true and if she reneges on the promises you will know she is just another crooked
politician and good riddance. All prejudices safely intact.
Anna Firth’s latest Splash Park message may or may not have won her a few
votes among the general population, it may have upset the local Labour party,
their supporters and the campaigners but nothing can be done about it. A clever
politician has pulled a rabbit out of the bag. Whether or not it is a cynical
stunt or a genuine offer only time will tell.
The Splash Park campaign needs every bit of help it can get. Bexley council will
do everything it can to close the Splash Park. What is wrong with having one
friend on the inside if it is a genuine one? And you never know, Anna just could be.
My message to the campaigners would be “Object to Anna taking this issue too far
into the realms of politics if you wish but can you afford not to clutch at her
straw? What will you say to your supporters if the battle is
lost and they remind you that ideas, maybe not entirely new ones, were rejected.
Ideas which may be just as promising as those Daniel Francis first came up with, just because those ideas
came from someone wearing a blue rosette?”
Having once again trodden the blogging tightrope
I can see only too well why I was never cut out to be a politician. In their
world nothing is simple and no ground can be given which is perhaps why we are
where we are nationally, let alone in Bexley. Yet another blog which risks upsetting
half the readership. Perhaps I should take up fishing.
4 May (Part 2) - Mayor Marriner on the way out. Now another one likely to be all at sea
Just
a little bit of Bexley council news before I stick a DVD in the player. I understand that
councillor Sybil Camsey has been chosen to be Bexley’s next mayor.
I don’t think she likes me, I am always being given ‘the eye’ but other
councillors have tried to reassure me, they say she doesn’t like anyone.
We have had a long line of incompetent mayors - as meeting chairman that is.
Maybe councillor Sharon Massey was the best of a poor lot. Perhaps she knows
that and it is why she can’t stop trying to take over from the hapless Howard
Marriner when he gets in a pickle.
And for those who are not yet sick of election news, four more election leaflets
have been added to the collection.
James Brokenshire in Old Bexley & Sidcup and
Conservative,
Labour
and LibDems in Erith & Thamesmead.
4 May (Part 1) - Crossrail looking good. Shame about the station lift
Yesterday’s blog started life as a thought on Saturday evening, a bit of
Photoshop work circa 6 a.m. Sunday, some emails to featured parties to tell them what
I was doing and provide an opportunity to react, and then lots
of sorting through not so very old old messages not to mention finding the words to string it all together.
It’s not a quick job and a little bit nerve racking because what you don’t want
to do is get facts wrong. It was nearly 1 p.m. before the blog was finished and even
now it duplicates the reference to a certain Bexley councillor. Stuff it, I’m not
going to rewrite it again, it’s a bank holiday and difficult things are off the agenda,
so I am afraid you are lumbered with a Crossrail update, there's not been one for
nearly three weeks.
That’s because nothing very spectacular has been going on.
There was a bit of piling just east of Abbey Wood station a couple of weeks ago and there’s
been some gigantic plastic pipes going down big holes to the south of the platforms.
Whilst Abbey Wood has not seen an enormous amount of work - the station
looks as if it may yet see the 28th anniversary of its official opening - down at the
Plumstead end it really does look like a proper railway now. Neat fences and
buffers and the track which bypasses the tunnel portal to make a connection with
the North Kent line. The target completion date is only a few days away, then
trains will be able to deliver track and similar materials to the tunnel.
So here’s a dozen pictures, all but the first two were taken over this holiday weekend.
Slow but steady progress as you can see, except perhaps on the Abbey Wood lift. I’ve not been to the station very often over the past three weeks because of the
dreaded flu bug but every time I’ve passed by, the Platform 2 lift has been out of order. Same yesterday. Maybe I am just unlucky.
More Crossrail related blogs.
3 May (Part 2) - The link up at The Link
There was no hustings in Erith & Thamesmead this evening for
reasons which
are not absolutely clear. However Anna Firth, the Conservative candidate and
Teresa Pearce her Labour counterpart were at The Link to apologise to any voters who
might not have heard the bad news. In the event there was no more than five or
six who didn’t know the event was off.
Teresa had brought along her husband and a couple of councillors but Anna had
come alone from Sevenoaks (†) which I thought was very courageous. I was rather
relieved because I was not looking forward to having to mingle with some of her supporters
but Anna is always friendly.
I find both Teresa and Anna to be delightful ladies and do not detect any hint of
animosity between them. Teresa must be a little upset at being called
“difficult” but both candidates are as mystified as each other over where that came from.
There is no evidence that Anna had a hand in it, I feel sure she didn’t, but
maybe she is not fully up to speed on how Bexley Tories operate.
If you are fed up with this subject may I suggest you take a look at
the Thamesmead Grump? He has made fun of most of the election candidates.
After what has been going on here today I found it to be a very welcome relief.
† I really must learn to remember that Anna Firth may be a Sevenoaks District
councillor but she lives only a short distance beyond the Bromley borough boundary.
3 May (Part 1) - Tories say Labour silence equals 1,000 words. So here’s a few thousand which are anything but silent
This blog is not going to win me any new friends. it may even lose me the few
I have but I am not going to stand idly by while misinformation about the
ill-fated Erith & Thamesmead hustings circulates.
If my sources dry up afterwards, so be it; I can get on with doing something
more useful with the rest of my life.
It has been said that the hustings were wrecked by Teresa Pearce, aided and
abetted by her supporters, this in my opinion is complete balderdash and I aim
to set out the facts below so that you can judge for yourself.
I think she has been a first class local MP and Teresa has become a good friend
of both me and Bexley-is-Bonkers over the last five years. Only via the net you must
understand, I have not spoken to Teresa since
last year’s Erith Fun Day.
I’ve seen more of Anna Firth and I like her too. Twice recently I have saved
Anna from pursuing certain courses which would have caused her embarrassment. I
don’t favour either candidate and you won’t read any criticism of Anna in what
follows - apart perhaps of the company she keeps. Teresa knows I have always
voted on national issues at General Elections and she knows which party attracts me most for that.
I applied the same logic at the local election which is why the Tories did not
get my vote in May 2014. In writing these blogs the aim has always been to
debunk the dishonesty of local politicians. I believe that a lot of that has
been hovering over the hustings cancellation.
When this election campaign began I asked Teresa what she was hoping for. She said she
would be happy with anything so long as it wasn’t “dirty”.
So back to the recent hustings issue. It was sponsored by Erith company Silon7
Limited and was to be chaired by Eliot Smith, Head Boy at Trinity School. So why was it cancelled?
There’s no one better to ask than the sponsor. Liam Connolly the company owner
sent me the following email at 14:17 on Friday 1st May.
Erith & Thamesmead Hustings
03 May 2015
The Link Thamesmead
After a number of emails and comments posted on various social media platforms,
it became necessary to take advice as to Silon7 sponsorship of the Erith &
Thamesmead Hustings.
Silon7 has been advised that an official notification it received with regards
to the process that was used to arrange this meeting could be viewed as a
possible foundation for legal action against Silon7 if it continued with its
sponsorship of this event.
It is with regret that Silon7 Limited will no longer be in a position to sponsor
this meeting and hope that Erith & Thamesmead voters understand that Silon7 only
intention through Erith.Link was to provide an opportunity for them to question
candidates not become involved in possible legal proceedings from a political party.
Silon7 would like to thank Eliot Smith for his hard work and commend
his restraint in the face of some very personal attacks in his role of trying to
make this event happen. I can assure everyone Eliot’s only motive has been only
to see voters have the opportunity to question candidates not to influence this
event in anyway.
Silon7 has advised both Eliot Smith and ErithLink not to make any further
comment on this matter and apologise once more to the voters for not being able
to make this meeting happen.
That statement was published on the company’s website, at least I think it was.
Eliot Smith sent me a link but I never got around to following it.
There is no suggestion anywhere that Liam Connolly was at fault although there
are two very pertinent points in that email. One is the legal angle and the
other is the reference to the “very personal attacks” on Eliot.
Now that this dispute is out in the open I asked Anna Firth and Eliot for
evidence of abuse and Teresa Pearce to defend herself.
Anna says she was kept totally in the dark which may well be true, I know she
only learned of the cancellation from me. Eliot has yet to come up with any
evidence and the Facebook page has been taken down. I would have thought it
would have been left on line if abuse by Labour members was clearly there
because it would strengthen his complaint.
Teresa was not at all keen on releasing her email to Eliot but did so on
condition I did not publish it which is not ideal but I can assure you it did
not object to him being chairman, it merely drew on her past experience and
pointed out what could happen if the chairmanship was subsequently seen to be
partial. Like the sponsor, she was worried about possible legal challenges if things went wrong. I am
breaking my promise to Teresa here but this extract may give you an inking of what was said…
If a hustings ‘looks’ as if it’s been run to
favour one candidate then it affects that candidate’s election expenses.
Now I know that's not how it is but it could be perceived that way.
I wanted to help by pointing out that having a chair that is not seen as impartial could cause a
complaint being raised after the event.
I am more concerned about how the questions are going to be handled.
Will they be from the floor, written and picked at random or from the chair?
Looks to me as though Teresa was trying to be helpful. Nowhere does she say she
was objecting but there was an expression of concern. It could easily be argued
that she forecast what the sponsor eventually discovered for himself.
Eliot
might well have been an excellent chairman but he has made no secret of his
political leanings. He has been seen with Anna Firth innumerable times and been
featured in her leaflets. He even posed with her outside Teresa’s house
(adjacent Photo) which looks more than a little provocative to me.
I do not see how anyone interested enough in politics to chair a hustings is
ever going to have no personal bias, the skill is in hiding it. On that score I
am not absolutely convinced that Eliot would be the perfect chairman. There is
not a lot to go on but one thing worried me.
I imagine Eliot was still at school when the sponsor sent out the cancellation
notice but by late afternoon he was passing it on to each of the candidates.
Unfortunately for Eliot half the candidates passed on his note to me and they
were not all the same. Eliot had seen fit to wish the minor party candidates and
Anna Firth ‘Good Luck’ but Teresa and Ronie Johnson (UKIP) got something
altogether more curt.
Worse in my opinion was that the favoured candidates got a 98 word explanation for
the cancellation. Labour and UKIP did not.
Those 98 words included…
The Labour candidate has made this very difficult and both myself and
Erith.link have been the subject of rude messages and personal attacks on social
media and email from Labour councillors and supporters.
It was when that message started to appear on Twitter and
on the Erith and Thamesmead Conservative Association’s website
that I began to look for justification. Anna Firth could provide none, she had not
visited Facebook herself and I think she just assumed that what she had been told must be true.
Eliot has not come up with any evidence either and Facebook and the evidence therein has
gone. Well perhaps not quite. Nobody in this game fails to take screen shots so I have
recreated Facebook to the best of my ability. I don’t see any abuse. It
doesn’t even get especially heated. Some nobody calls the Conservatives scum.
Councillor Endy Ezenwata calls Eliot Smith a Poster Boy and I suppose he is,
given that he peers out of Anna’s leaflets. In any case Eliot says he likes the
epithet. (See first image above.)
I think Anna Firth is almost certainly innocent of direct involvement in the smear campaign and if I
had to guess it would be that councillor Philip Read will be behind it all. Him
calling Teresa Pearce a bully is a supreme piece of irony.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if at least one Twitter account was created
specially to spread falsehoods.
Click the one shown here.
Brand new account. Only four followers. Suspicious don’t you think and claiming
just like Philip Read that Teresa Pearce’s silence speaks a thousand words.
Well Teresa may be reluctant to engage in such a dirt war but no one on the Tory
side can show me a single thing Teresa has done wrong. She agreed to attend the
hustings, she gave a friendly warning about possible expense problems based on
her past experience but rude and difficult she most definitely was not.
Why is Anna Firth’s team making up this nonsense? Ok I’m guessing, but it’s a pound
to a penny it is masterminded by councillor Philip Read. Anna Firth still
appears to be an innocent at large as far as I am concerned.
Do take time to
read through the Facebook recreation if you didn’t see the original, and
tell me if you think Teresa has been rude. Even her more enthusiastic supporters
were quite mild mannered by social media standards.
There may not be a hustings at six o’clock this evening at The Link but if you
go there you will meet a candidate or two. They will be apologising for not
being provided with the opportunity to answer voters’ questions.
2 May (Part 2) - Meet your Erith & Thamesmead election candidate
You may have thought you had heard the last of
this saga, or maybe it’s a
farce, but both Teresa Pearce (Labour) and Anna Firth (Conservative) intend to
turn up as arranged outside The Link tomorrow evening at six. Both candidates were
keen to do the hustings and neither are going to be put off by
juvenile squabbles between some of their supporters. Go for it girls!
The Link, Belvedere Road, Thamesmead, SE2 9BS.
2 May (Part 1) - Should have been a Bonkers reader
As every BiB reader should know, Bexley council racked up its car parking charges by 50% last month. Unfortunately Lorraine Shepherd from Belvedere knew nothing of Bexley council’s greed and fell straight into their trap in the Abbey Wood station car park. The News Shopper carried her story yesterday.
Maybe
Chris Attard’s (UKIP Candidate, Bexleyheath and Crayford) criticism of the paper
is not far removed from the truth although my guess is that it’s not so much
bias in favour of the Conservatives but a lack of budget. They just swallow Bexley council’s press releases and haven’t the time or money to see if they are
anything like true.
If they had bothered to make the trip to far flung Abbey Wood they
may have noticed that Bexley council’s references to “site notices by the pay
and display machines” may be the truth but they are not exactly helpful.
The only way that a commuter to the Gayton Road car park would be aware in advance that
the price was to rise from £3·80 to £5·70 was if they are the sort of nerd who reads every
word of Bexley’s Legal Notices or alternatively they are a two foot six inch midget equipped with a magnifying glass.
The
price notice was strapped to the second post from the right in Photo 1 and at
knee height. There is no other Pay and Display point in the Gayton Road car
park. The man responsible for raising the prices and doing his best to keep them
secret is councillor Don Massey, the same man who introduced the bin tax.
1 May (Part 2) - The Erith & Thamesmead hustings. It’s off, definitely off
Well that burst of optimism
didn’t last long; the Erith & Thamesmead hustings are now off. Very definitely
off. It would appear that the sponsor was at risk of legal liability, I assume
under the election expenses laws, should anyone subsequently suggest that one party had exerted undue influence and it was effectively their show.
There have been suggestions of bullying from some quarters but the correspondence that came my way
was all totally businesslike. However during elections, emotions can run high.
A big thank you to the sponsor whose intentions were entirely honourable and to
Eliot Smith who stepped into the breach when the originally proposed chairman
had to pull out. Now I am never going to learn anything about any but the two
highest profile candidates.
For the record, the original pre-cancellation
announcement may be seen here.
As may be seen; all the candidates had agreed to speak.
1 May (Part 1) - The Erith & Thamesmead hustings. Will they or won’t they?
The Erith & Thamesmead hustings appear to be drifting rather unconvincingly towards being ‘ON’.
The venue is booked (The Link, Belvedere Road, Thamesmead) for 18:00 on Sunday
3rd May and the candidates attendance is mainly confirmed but there is scant
information on precise arrangements.
There is as yet no published Agenda and candidates
deserve to be given time to prepare them if opening and closing speeches are proposed - and how long should they be?
There is probably no time to arrange written questions in advance to be chosen by some dubious process
as happened in Eltham a couple of days ago but no system for questions has yet been announced
nor how candidates will be expected to answer them.
All rather unsatisfactory I think you will agree.
Note: Based on information from candidates early this afternoon.
Click image for more details.