It’s always the same after taking a few days off, I don’t relish the ideal of
resuming BiB, however it has to be done. The dishonest bunch that runs Bexley
cannot be allowed to continue without some of their dirty tricks being exposed, but it
will be a soft restart because there is not a great deal ready for publication right now.
I don’t think there are any significant Council meetings coming up, but I can’t be sure,
the Council’s meeting page along with the rest of Bexley’s so called ‘democracy’
site, has been broken since last week. So much for their cheap new contractor. Steria was rubbish (sometimes ten minutes per click) and the new company is no better.
It’s
perhaps a situation not a million miles away from my conversation with an
elderly gentleman, even older than me I suspect, on the Harrow Manorway flyover
this morning who was looking at the Crossrail station site. With no prompting
from me he launched into his list of complaints about Bexley Council.
“Look at what this lot [Network Rail] has done in the last couple of weeks. Have
you seen the new bridge in Bexley village? Six months to build that silly little
bridge. It’s their contractors. Useless and Bexley has no idea how to manage
them. Then there is Lesnes Abbey. Countless millions and all we have to show for
it is a few gritty rough paths and some lumps of rusty iron.”
“A third of a million they paid their Chief Executive and then he left and stole
some money too.”
I think there was some confusion between Nick Johnson, Chief Executive, who took
a £300,000 pay off and £50,000 a year pension when he went to work for
Hammersmith and Fulham, and the previous Conservative Leader who fiddled his
expenses, but the man on the flyover had a pretty good idea about what goes on in Bexley.
I probably should have asked him if he knew about Bexley is Bonkers but didn’t.
The past two weeks in Abbey Wood has seen Network Rail finish the eastern end of
the London bound North Kent platform, progress a great chunk of the new Dartford
bound platform (first train on 20th August), finish the podium on which the new station will be built and
make themselves really popular by further disrupting pedestrian flow on the flyover.
In the immediate future the old bus shelter on the west side of the flyover will bite the dust.
Meanwhile Bexley Council has been working on Lesnes Abbey. The only thing new to
show you is a hosepipe placed on the Visitor Centre roof to try to keep the grass alive.