4 April - Burying more lies. Burying more residents?
Not a lot going on at the moment apart from the exaggerated claims being made
by Bexley Conservatives in the lead up to the election in four weeks time. The Agenda
for this evening’s Places Scrutiny meeting does not look very exciting either.
Electioneering
Councillor Craske’s claim that he personally anticipated the government’s free
funerals for children initiative by abolishing the fees last year was typical.
He did but not quite in the way claimed. The suggestion that Labour Councillors were against
it is of course pure fiction.
Councillor
Craske went along with free funerals because Greenwich Councillor Jackie Smith pushed through the
change for the Royal Borough and as Eltham Crematorium is a joint Bexley Greenwich enterprise
Councillor Craske chose to go along with Greenwich’s initiative.
All credit to him but Bexley’s Labour Group moved a Motion at
the March 2017
Council meeting which welcomed Councillor Smith’s proposal to abolish the fees
- which surely indicates they were in favour of it - but Conservative Councillors voted it down. They wanted to take all the credit
for themselves; one might expect that of them.
However to suggest that Bexley Labour was against abolishing the fees is just mischief making.
One has come to expect that too.
The Charlotte public house, Crayford
It is closed, there is no doubt about that but its future is less certain.
After a
government inspector overturned Bexley Council’s refusal to allow conversion
to flats the owner decided to cash in on his good fortune and put it up for auction.
Presumably the new owner will go ahead with the original plan to convert the old
pub to five flats even more unaffordable than they might have been.
Cross at your peril
Thamesmead commuters have another incentive to use Woolwich Arsenal station
instead of Abbey Wood. Thanks to poor planning by Bexley Council they lost their
bus service to Abbey Wood station yesterday or more precisely the bus stop was
taken away. It is now 150 yards south of the station right next to the Knee Hill roundabout.
That may not sound too bad but thanks to Bexley’s failure to complete
the new footpath on schedule it isn’t possible to walk safely back to the station.
Bus passengers can only take their life in their hands and dodge the traffic on
Harrow Manorway. No provision has been made to cross the road in saftey. There
is no access to the pedestrian crossing and in anycase it has been taken out of service.
Thamesmead residents are expendable.
