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News and Comment October 2016

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3 October - The establishment fights dirty

You may have noticed that BiB is reluctant to report the intricacies of stories which are heavily based on legal argument. The detail takes more time to digest than is available to me and as I have no legal expertise whatsoever there is a too great a danger that I might get hold of the wrong end of the stick. The worrying case of the police arresting a Bexley resident as she passed through Heathrow on her way home from a holiday was dropped for exactly that reason. It was alleged the police did it for a lark in support of their civilian employee involved in a marital dispute but it all became so complex that it was impossible to summarise - or fully understand if truth be told.

For similar reasons I have not given a running commentary on John Watson’s Judicial Review application. His complaint is that after getting rather too close for comfort to the truth of the Maxine Fothergill stitch-up he was banned from contacting Bexley Council and his emails were put on a block list.

It is very difficult to fight authority and it requires dedication to even try. Authority in general and Bexley Council in particular will employ a catalogue of dirty tricks.

When Councillor Peter Craske was arrested on suspicion of authoring obscene blogs aimed at me and others, Bexley Council intervened to undermine the case against him. It was “crippled by political interference” was what the police told me.

There is overwhelming evidence that Councillor Cheryl Bacon and former Chief Executive Will Tuckley committed Misconduct in Public Office and ten witnesses to the events of 19th June 2013 wrote accounts disputing Councillor Bacon’s version of events. No witness spoke up in her defence. The Crown Prosecution Service has been considering the case against both of them for an unprecedented (according to police sources) 13 months and their decision must now be imminent. There is absolutely no way that the establishment can see the new CE at Tower Hamlets hauled before a court on Misconduct charges after he was specially selected by government commissioners to sort out the corruption in that borough. How the CPS will manage to circumvent the ten to one majority of witnesses against Cheryl Bacon remains to be seen, but dodge the issue they will.

When Bexley Council’s contracted bailiffs were found to be breaking the law (and fleecing residents) in very nearly every case they handled, Bexley’s auditors accepted there had been widespread malpractice but refused to take action against anyone. Instead they said they only way forward was for me personally to organise a prosecution which they could have undertaken themselves.

When Bromley - which runs the parking enforcement regime for Bexley - was found to have signed unlawful contracts the auditors once again looked the other way while the experts at Notomob said it was the worst case of illegal practices they had ever seen.

Once again the auditors asked a resident to fund a prosecution if they wanted to pursue matters further and once again the crooks-that-be are able to continue their malpractices with impunity.

Bexley Council will set out to crush John Watson’s efforts to protest his disenfranchisement from full participation in local democracy. They have emailed to him various threats to the effect that they will employ a barrister to fight him using your money and mine to pay for him and claim the money back from John.

Then they do not allow John to respond to their emails because they have blocked him from so doing.

It is interesting to note that Bexley Council is not using the ‘expertise’ of their Head of Legal whose job description demands he is either a solicitor or a barrister but appears not to be. The Council’s letters are signed by other Council staff. The correspondence is bogged down in legal argument.

 

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