26 October (Part 3) - Overage and over price
One of the things I am quite proud about with Bonkers is that it has never
knowingly published a lie or exaggerated to make a point. A few axes may have
been ground along the way
and there may have been the occasionally mistake but in every case I’m aware of there will have been a
correction. Right now I cannot actually think of any at all.
I also believe in being fair to Councillors. There are many who have never had a
bad word said against them and I only bear grudges against the few who have
tried to get me arrested on trumped up charges, and even then it wouldn’t
justify straying from the truth.
And
so it is that we come to Cabinet Member Don Massey. He may have lied to the police, certainly
what the police told me about him was a lie, and his
power-crazed spite may cost us taxpayers tens of
thousands of pounds in police time by the time the complaint is answered, but
that wouldn’t excuse allowing anyone to think he was lying when he probably wasn’t.
At the last Cabinet Meeting Councillor Masssey
went on at some length,
and some thought unnecessarily, about overage in connection with the sale of land to Tesco.
He implied very strongly that the lack of an overage clause in the contract to
sell the Council’s Broadway site was a good thing. In a letter to Mr. Elwyn
Bryant whose enquiry may have sparked the Cabinet meeting diversion, Councillor
Massey was much more direct. His words could only mean that the two subsequent
sales didn’t reach the £23 million that Bexley says the land sold for. (The
auditor said the true figure was £25 million.)
Bellway
Homes staged another of their ‘Showcases’ today and I called in on my way to the
Transport Users’ Committee meeting. Probably because I said Hello to a
Councillor as I went in the Bellway man asked if I was Council. For simplicity’s
sake and because I only had a couple of minutes spare I said “sort of”.
Somehow or other the conversation rapidly moved to prices and I said “of course
the price the Council got for the land is in the public domain” to which the response
was “yeah but fortunately we didn’t pay that much”.
So it is reasonable to assume that Cabinet Member Don Massey’s statement that
sometimes overage clauses are not appropriate was, one might say, bang on the money.
I still think it is pretty reprehensible to try to get me arrested
for republishing a photo, without any details of who might be seen in it, that was already on his unrestricted Facebook page but
the truth must come first.
For the record, it was confirmed to me that the Bellway flats will be in towers up to
twelve storeys high. Some messages received have been suggesting a maximum of
four. The brochure makes it obvious that that must be wrong.