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News and Comment November 2017

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19 November (Part 3) - Drawing a line

It is not infrequent for messages received by BiB to refer to “the Bonkers team” but there isn’t one. Maybe there was such a thing some years ago when Mick Barnbrook and Co. would more often than not invite me to meetings of his little group of activists, but there was never more than five of them and I tried to keep my independence. They would provide material for BiB but they had no direct input to it.

All of that has gone, Peter died, Nicholas went away for personal reasons, Mick moved to Ramsgate and Elwyn and John are both past 80 and beginning to slow down.

So it leaves just me - with no one with whom to discuss strategy - and there are times, like now when making the right decision is burdensome. (I am talking about libel. Not alleged but proven in Court.)

Maybe I can take you back a few steps so you know where I am coming from.

This website grew almost by accident when there was more interest than expected in Bonkers very first story. Bexley’s road engineer Andrew Bashford blatantly attempted to deceive me. He gave an assurance that his carriageway design for Abbey Road was supported by and fully complied with the independent research of experts in the field and published by the Transport Research Laboratory. He had not bothered to check that my son was Head of some Department or other at TRL which did that research.

It was not difficult to get ‘the expert’ to take a look for himself and ridicule Bashford’s claim. How unlucky could one man be? Not that unlucky it would seem as he is still employed by Bexley Council. Maybe that demonstrates how Bexley Council welcomes deceit and misinformation.

For all that the blog would have likely quickly died if Teresa O’Neill did not think it was a good idea to ask the police to arrest me for, quote, criticising Councillors. The police who were instructed by the IPCC to apologise for their actions later told me that they had been assured I was threatening violence and arson. It would have been nice if the police had checked things out before jumping in with both feet.

The Leader’s behaviour is not easily forgiven and it hasn’t been. Every time I get close to deciding It’s time to bring Bonkers to an end another Councillor does something really stupid.


BlurThere were the obscenities posted in my name and traced to Councillor Craske’s phone line, Councillor Cheryl Bacon’s lies about how I misbehaved in a Council meeting and more recently the Masseys’ allegation to the police that I had revealed all the personal details of their daughter. I had publishing the photo you see here. No clue as to who the subject might be was given.

The new Chief Executive removing the Press Desk as her first act didn’t help either.

Far worse in my view was the pursuit of blogger John Kerlen who was accused of encouraging the posting of dog faeces through a Councillor’s letter box. He did not mention dog faeces, he did not mention any Councillor and he did not provide an address.

It was a total fabrication by Bexley Council supported by Bexley police. They knew what John actually said because they had it on file but they took that false statement and maliciously prosecuted John. It cost him £20,000 in barrister’s fees to prove his innocence. If challenged I can put the police papers on line here to prove the claim, I never throw anything away.

You may therefore suggest that BiB is revenge for the lying stupidity of senior Bexley Councillors and some of their officials and I would not argue with you.

Whenever Bexley Council provides an opportunity, and they do quite often, BiB will hit back with the truth about what Bexley Council is up to. With great care regarding accuracy I might add and so far Bexley Council, nor anyone else for that matter, has tried to argue that a blog has been inaccurate.

Which brings me back to the current dilemma and no one available for the bouncing around of any thoughts on the matter.

Another Bexley Councillor has a big problem, sued for libel and lost. It’s a matter of fact and BiB has published Court documents that prove it. As yet, nothing else. I have access to more documents, emails and text exchanges which look to be embarrassing, but should they be published?

At the moment I am thinking not. They may go some way towards illustrating how Councillors generally have no great interest in ethical business practices but will publication damage the real target, Teflon Tess and her utterly unscrupulous cronies? Probably not.

It may be that you have seen the last of this subject, all the documents apart from the actual letter of apology - which has not gone out yet - are there for you to see. Those documents are the proof that lie behind recent blogs.

To progress to Phase II and publish the email trail which led to the libel proceedings might not be pretty.

The Councillor has never done me any harm so for now at least I am going to leave the subject there.

I might well have taken a different view had the case concerned a different Councillor.

 

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