30 November - No news or slow news?

Maryland. What’s the Point?
Yesterday was going to be a Slow News Day but became a No News Day because a trip to Newham took far too long. While there a glance at the Newspapers, Telegraph and Mail, told me that Newham Council was hitting the headlines. Newham is a strange place; lowest Council Tax in Outer London but mainly scruffy and run down. A mixture of enlightened policies; almost free large item removal and currently free - and still free with conditions next year - residents’ parking, mixed with full on Socialist Republic and woke tendencies.

Yesterday Newham was said to be petitioning TfL to change the name of Maryland Station because Maryland in the USA was the centre of its tobacco growing industry and therefore likely to have been a place where slaves were employed. And why would that interest me?

I was born a short walk away from the station and back then it was called Maryland Point. It lies between Stratford and Forest Gate on what one day may become the Elizabeth Line. The assistant in one of my local shops lives a little to the East of Stratford station and she still calls it Maryland Point.

The original name is thought to derive from being a point that marked a local boundary (mary being a corruption of the Old English word for boundary) and Wikipedia says the name was changed in 1940. This does not explain how I became fascinated as a child by the ‘silly’ name of my local station. Old I may be but not that old!

Where does Wikipedia get 1940 from? Didn’t we have more important things to do in 1940 than rename railway stations?

Whatever its faults I can’t see a Conservative Bexley Council ever coming up with such silly ideas and fortunately Bexley Ohio was not founded until forty years after the last American slave had his shackles removed.

The Sun
The Sun newspaper must have had a Slow News Day last week because it thought it necessary to publish a biography of Bexley Councillor Alex Sawyer and managed to find nothing that I didn’t already know. The Sun headlines that Alex is married to Home Secretary Priti Patel and once employed him as her office manager. Well who better to employ in an MP’s office than someone likely to be totally loyal? He gave up the job the moment the Standards Authority put a stop to the practice.

He now has a job elsewhere. So what?

The only related thing that received adverse comment here was the fact that Bexley Council in far off days kept the relationship secret and got upset when it was revealed.

Alex always speaks like a true blue Tory but how genuine he is is not so certain. He has often said that motorists are unfairly penalised but he is the leading advocate of penalising them further with a plethora of Yellow Box junctions.

When a few years ago four lorries were unable to deliver ‘just in time’ supplies to Crossrail at Abbey Wood - in the days when Crossrail was running a few hours late and not several years - the drivers were faced with the choice of driving around the Wilton Road Florence Road circle causing chaos or to pull in and stop. They sensibly parked up. Alex Sawyer said that was the wrong decision and he recommended that their PCN appeal should be rejected. For that decision he lost my trust for ever.

The Black Hole
There have been remarkably few comments on the gap in the middle of this website. A small hole has existed for more than two years but became worse at the beginning of 2020; a consequence of me dithering over if I wanted to continue with it or not.

Probably I shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of interest because almost no one looks back at blogs more than a month old despite the effort that goes into providing the link backs.

As stated before I am working my way through from 2009 improving things where I can but tracking down better quality photographs has been very time consuming. The revamp has reached March 2013 and most pages will look better although you can’t tell because there is nothing to compare them with!

The main exception to those early blogs is the current year. They are complete and the only others to have been restored are those which support site features such as the blog collections and the photo feature pages. The pages themselves may be found but any links they may contain will almost certainly be broken. They are a one stop shop only.

At the present rate of progress I will probably have to repeat this message in a year’s time.

 

28 November - How did we get here? Who should be blamed?

This is not a time for gloating, libraries and children’s centres across the borough are likely to be closed and 304 staff may be heading for the Job Centre but one cannot help wondering who guided us to this sorry state. For me this picture summarises everything that is wrong with the way Bexley is managed.

Ten years ago we had a Council that hadn’t spoken about Crossrail. The Abbey Wood branch was arguably saved only by the efforts of the Labour MP for Erith & Thamesmead.

You can still view her speech to Parliament here. Go to six minutes and 24 seconds. Business opportunities were impeded by inadequate transport infrastructure in Bexley. They still are.

Council Leader Teresa O’Neill failed to recognise that. One of her earliest campaigns as Leader saw notices exhibited across her Brampton Ward asking for Ken Livingstone’s Gallion’s Reach bridge to be cancelled.

When her good friend Boris Johnson was elected Mayor she saw her chance and Boris complied. I have a letter from the Mayor’s Office saying that Teresa O’Neill was his most favoured politician in London.

My view was that an isolationist Bexley deprived of cross river access could not prosper. The world of commerce would not rush to build in Bexley and with ever slower trains to London, working there would be far less attractive than a local job and thanks to Teresa they would be too few.

Bexley Council for far too long failed to recognise that simple fact and ignored the wishes of residents who had voted decisively in favour of a river crossing in TfL consultations.

The Murky Depths has been telling us of the consequences of Bexley֦’s historical failure. Greenwich has received £11·9 million this year from the New Homes Bonus, Dartford was given £5·2 million and Bexley? A measly £744,000.

Bexley set up BexleyCo to make a profit on housing deals in 2017 since when it has gone through a pile of cash quicker than new bosses.

If you go to Companies House and are familiar with Bexley Council names you will see that of the ten appointed officers at least four are obviously former or current Bexley Council staff.

So far they have achieved nothing for Bexley residents unless you take your pleasure from seeing their planning applications rejected.

Housing has been a major failure in Bexley. On average the Council allows 12 affordable homes a year (© Murky Depths) and as a result has spent millions (it reached sixty million 18 months ago) on temporary accommodation.

The incestuous recruitment relationships between Senior Council staff must contribute to failure; their main motivation is to climb the greasy pole. Bexley’s Chief Executives have come from Croydon, West Sussex, Cornwall, Newham and Lambeth, maybe more, it would take too long to check it all out again.

You don’t have to be a success in those jobs to get one in Bexley, you can even fail to see large frauds more than once and still Bexley will be willing to take a chance and the pay offs as they flit from one sinecure to another can be massive.

£170,000 pay off from Newham Council. How in Hell can that be justified?

Maybe last week’s budget statement will be of some help to Bexley. I think I heard Rishi Sunak say something about milking the Council Taxpayer and every 1% increase raises another million for Bexley. Depending on what they spend it and the old Social Care precept on, it could shorten the dole queue somewhat. Or they could splash out on more Newham style Golden Goodbyes.

Maybe Bexley should be looking to say goodbye to whoever failed in their due diligence on this one. Rockfire Capital went bust. How much will that cost?

Bexley won’t be the only Council in trouble; Peterborough is going down the financial plug hole too.

 

27 November (Part 2) - Nostalgia via new Photo Diaries

Not much progress on old blogs today, that Petition Index took far too long to compile. However old blogs are now restored through 2009 to February 2013. After that there is pretty much a navigation free void right up to 2020. Lots of work still to do but software tools are reporting no internal broken links to February 2013. How long is lockdown?

As occasional light relief Picture Diaries of long forgotten events have been compiled. The pictorial history of Ye Olde Leather Bottle has already been mentioned but there are also pictures of Thamesmead’s Tavy Bridge in all its pre-demolition glory.

Various road related events are also pictured. The Broadway regeneration, the NoToMob’s sorties into Bexley to try to keep Bexley’s parking enforcement legal, the BBC filming for the same reason and the numerous accidents in Abbey Road, Belvedere, caused by the inexpert narrowing in 2009. All pictures at two and a half times the resolution of any seen before.

 

27 November (Part 1) - Not another one!

It is possible that the last couple of weeks will prove to be just as ruinous of the local Conservatives’ reputation as was the 17·5% annual Council Tax increase imposed by the Labour administration in 2003. Forever regurgitated is the figure of a 40% increase over four years but never returned by the Tories when voted back into power.

The current financial crisis has got Bexley Council into The Guardian and on BBC London News. Accurately reported whatever Conservative propagandists might tell you.

The Council Leader and Chief Executive have come in for a lot of Facebook criticism, some ill-informed, some not. Someone started a petition to get some salaries reduced and a fat lot of good that will do. I have a sense of déjà vu and 100 signatures will get nowhere. When last I looked the Council would turn up their nose at anything under 2,000. In fact they will probably turn up their noses whatever the number.

There was a very similar petition in 2011 when the only way of getting signatures was to stomp the streets and bang on doors.

2,219 Bexley residents eagerly signed up and Bexley Council rejected the petition. Not a word of debate was allowed.

Their reason was the usual concoction of lies which was Bexley’s norm back then. I wasn’t personally involved with the petition but I was sent an advance copy of the proposed form. I had the organisers alter it. Their statement of the top brassְ’s pay was a bit vague and I suggested they copied and pasted the numbers directly from the Council’s website which they duly did. Their form, PDF, may be viewed here.

Bexley Council said that the petition organisers had misled the signatories with wrong salary figures. Figures which were on the Council’s own website. Not a penny more, not a penny less.

In 2011, in fact until much later, Bexley Council was an outrageous liar. I thought things had improved but recently I am not so sure.

To make tracking the progress of that petition an Index to blogs has been created but on reflection it is far too long. Suffice to say the petition was taken up by newspapers both national and local, LBC radio, The Taxpayers’ Alliance, two non-local MPs and the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone. Nothing would persuade Bexley Council to debate the issue. One Tory Councillor actually said “petitions to Bexley Council are a waste of time”. That Councillor is still in office.

Click the image to go to change.org.

 

26 November (Part 3) - Just what is the point? Where is the sense?

For years I have been picking apart the Tweets put out by Bexley Conservatives because so many are designed to deceive and occasionally they are so very obviously untrue. It is surprising that they have not deleted their latest.

More scrupulous people would have had second thoughts about the wisdom of their Tweet. Just what is the point of sending something out to their 1,400 followers when so many of them send it to many more in total with critical comment?

If I have learned anything from my lockdown boredom relief project of restoring old blogs (†), it is the need to safely store as many graphics and photos as possible at a decent resolution for later retrieval.

Photo finding has taken far longer than recoding technically outdated pages. Currently I am working through February 2013 and it is a toss up whether I finish first or the Government regains some sanity.

To make sure @bexleynews mischievous Tweet won’t prove impossible to find in years to come it is preserved here along with the replies.

Two likes and ten adverse comments. There are sensible Conservatives on Bexley Council; most of them probably. Why do they allow their reputation to be tarnished in this way?

† After some restructuring changes more than two years ago were followed by a misjudged global file name change which broke the site almost beyond repair. If it were not for lockdown I would have abandoned it.

 

26 November (Part 2) - Compare and Contrast

If you have been coming here for a long time you will know of my connections with Newham. I wouldn’t like to live there apart perhaps for its low Council Tax, almost free removal of unwanted large items - it has just gone from being free to £20 for six items - and the extraordinarily inexpensive residents’ parking permits. Free for the first car.

Bexley on the other hand has 26% higher Council Tax than Newham and the highest Residents’ Parking fees since 2011. So high nine years ago that they have not raised the price since then and they are still much higher than in Greenwich. Now that Bexley is staring bankruptcy in the face maybe they should copy what Newham does rather than filch its senior staff.

In Newham they have decided that the basic charge should remain at zero but subject the a pollution levy. Good for the least polluting cars but a bit expensive if you own a gas guzzler.

Maybe I shouldn’t be giving them ideas.

 

26 November (Part 1) - Everyone dies!

This Covid thing is getting out of hand. I had a dream last night that I was in W.H. Smiths looking for a magazine - something I never do - and had somehow lost my mask. But I am still alive! How come?

A reader kindly found me a much better webpage for the Excess Deaths count than I found via Google yesterday. Just one of its graphs is shown below. Click on it to go to Public Health England’s website.

Even if Excess deaths continue to run at 17% above expected levels until Easter, they are not on course to exceed those of Winter 2014/15.

 

25 November (Part 2) - What The Papers Say

Thanks to Bexley Conservatives (@bexleynews) for drawing my attention to today’s Guardian, I would never have known otherwise. To me it doesn’t look like The Guardian being upset but Bexley Conservatives upset from having their financial problems get beyond The News Shopper but there is not anything wrong with The Guardian’s financial report. 304 jobs, one in five jobs to go, a £15 million begging bowl is all exactly what the Finance Director said before the microphones a week ago.

The only inaccuracy concerns CCTV monitoring; Bexley Council abandoned that five years ago.

Exactly the same figures as were reported here a week ago and Bexley Council has never had to correct anything written here over the past eleven years. When a Croydon Councillor Tweeted inaccurate information Bexley Conservatives endorsed it. When The Guardian hits them with figures taken from their own mouths they become cry babies. And most of us voted for them!

P.S. I am told that the story was picked up on the BBC London News (TV) this evening but since I didn’t buy a licence and I’m a law abiding citizen I wouldn’t know about that sort of thing. Incidentally, The Guardian is crammed with adverts for jobs in Bexley; all from Academy Schools.

 

25 November (Part 1) - Two little ones

The National Covid Service
I seem to have become a part time Uber driver entirely by chance. Four times in just ten days and a fifth time a week earlier I have taken a friend - different ones - who either needed A&E in a hurry or had an appointment to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. I don’t know whether that is within Johnson’s damn fool Covid rules or not and I don’t really care. In one case the hospital had insisted that buses should not be used and I judged that it was a medical emergency. Anyway; to the point…

For a 10:30 appointment one patient was not seen until just after 4:30 and the other waited from 10:45 until 17:20. The NHS has become a bad joke.

On the cases reported here previously the cancer patient with an appointment deferred from 20th March has still not been given another, the friend with heart failure diagnosed in July and who was recommended for 24/7 monitoring is still waiting and the one with suspected heart problems due a test at the beginning of the year has now been given an appointment for next month. It is easy to conclude that the NHS has become a killing machine.

From the Office of National Statistics. Click for source.

Not absolutely comparable but in the winter of 1999/2000 there were 48,000 excess deaths due to influenza and 44,000 in 2014/15. Not one pub or hairdresser was closed down by tyrannical decree and no brute in a blue uniform bundled old ladies into the back of vans.

Fly tipping
For a short time I thought that Bexley Council must have been very much on the ball yesterday because the rubbish deposited by a dawn dumper on Saturday had gone. However when putting some cardboard and a baked bean can out for recycling this morning I realised that some kindly soul had lifted the Transit criminal’s rubbish into the big wheeled bins. So now we not only have rubbish illegally dumped but the legal stuff is contaminated.

Fly tipping appears to be getting worse. Ten days ago there were four separate heaps dumped along the stretch of Abbey Road on the northern perimeter of Lesnes Abbey. It must have been removed because yesterday there were only three - different ones!

We should perhaps be grateful that it wasn’t dumped in the woods where removal becomes much more difficult but that is exactly what has been happening just across the borough boundary beyond Falconwood Station. It’s Rochester Way which leads to Oxleas Woods. Cans, crisp bags, used nappies, car components, building materials and dozens of discarded face masks litter an area served by four bus stops and only one litter bin. A concerned resident is calling for more bins, warning notices, more responsibility to be taken by Greenwich Council, CCTV and for her Petition to be publicised here.

 

24 November (Part 2) - Would you buy a used car…

Who makes the decisions that have got Bexley Council into financial hot water?

The Council Leader must bear a great deal of the responsibility, she (and he in the past) oversees the recruitment of the top brass who run the show.

Recently people with a track record of failure have been recruited from other London boroughs. If you go back 15 years or more to the Labour Administration, someone decided that the Thames Innovations Centre was a good idea and it bled cash until very recently.

During the corruption ravaged years of the noughties the Leader himself milked the system and when he was found out and ended up in Court for a piffling amount fiddled at the GLA our present Leader refused to report him to the police for a ten times bigger fiddle perpetrated in Bexley. You can get an idea of what went on from just one email.

Cook the books and hide it from the Auditor. Those were the days!

Should anyone put their trust in such people?

Bexley Council has been, maybe still is, the seventh biggest municipal property gambler in the country. £34·2 million spent between 2016 and 2018. Not only the old Blockbuster store in Sidcup but Wickes in Erith (£8·7 million), Pier Road in Erith, Erith Post Office for £925,000, the Job Centre in Broadway, the old NHS site opposite Barnehurst station, and the now notorious Erith Distribution Centre which cost it £9·8 million.

All “to enhance economic viability for the benefit of local people”.

Going in the opposite direction the Council sold what used to be Lamorbey Baths in Sidcup for £750,000 and the new owner sold it on for £1,950,000. “Enhancing the economic viability?” A good one Bexley!

Blockbuster, with very unfortunate timing, is to become a Council Cinema and the Distribution Centre earned not a penny in rent and is now to be sold at a loss to part fund the redundancies which might save Bexley from bankruptcy.

The investment in shops doesn’t look so clever now; maybe shares in Amazon would have been a better bet.

BexleyCo has not yet sold a single house and what is this investment in Rockfire Capital all about? [Note to self, must find time to look into that.]

Who decides on these dodgy investments? It’s easy enough to blame the present crew made up of Jackie Belton (CEO), Paul Thorogood (Finance Director), David Leaf (Cabinet Member for Resources) and Teresa O’Neill (Council Leader) but the misjudgments can be traced back to well before them. BexleyCo was first mentioned here in April 2017 so both it and the sale of the Baths predate all of these people apart from the Leader herself.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Bexley gets to where it is because the wrong people are recruited by the wrong people who were recruited in earlier years. Senior Councillor jobs are just a Merrygoround of back slapping, leg ups and jobs for the girls - well it is mainly girls.

Note: Some of the historical figures shown above were sourced from the 853blog.

 

24 November (Part 1) - Little boxes made of ticky tacky

Sorry, you may need to be as old as me to get that title reference. Google it.

The final part of the Cabinet meeting that should be reported was consideration of Bexley’s Housing Strategy.

Leader Teresa O’Neill said that she wanted to “attract quality housing and make best use of housing already in the borough”. She referred to developments at Hill View, Howbury, Thamesmead, Erith Park, Arthur’s Street, Erith Quarry and Old Farm Avenue. “Bexley offers life chances to our residents.”

The Chief Executive followed up with “providing residents with the homes they need is a priority for the Council. Access to decent affordable housing is a fundamental necessary to help them achieve their full potential” but “there are significant housing challenges to overcome”.

Cabinet Member Alex Sawyer welcomed the Housing Strategy Report saying the Council “does not own its own stock nor do we have significant assets so partnership working is a key strand of our Strategy”. The partners have been complimentary.

“Property ownership is an aspirational choice and sits alongside the entrepreneurial free market capitalist vision that rescued this country from the pits of despair of the late 1970s and will surely do so again when God willing we emerge from the pandemic and the state takes a back seat.”

“It is important that those unable to buy their own homes have access to affordable rented accommodation delivered by the private sector. We need a sustained supply chain.”

He went on to say that the pandemic has caused the proposed review of the Housing Allocation Policy to be deferred.

Cabinet Member Philip Read also welcomed the Strategy and praised the relatively new Thameslink rail service to St. Pancras and various points North which benefits Bexley residents “and when the present London Mayor is just a bad memory we will also be able to say we have Crossrail serving our borough”.

Cabinet Member Peter Craske mentioned that BexleyCo will provide 21 affordable homes on Old Farm Park. He claimed that the Labour Group was against them but of course the truth is that the Labour Group was against the sale of the Park long before any plans were drawn up for it.

There was little left for Deputy Leader Louie French to say but he emphasised the need for infrastructure to support new housing. Shame his boss was dead set against that sort of thing six years ago.

Councillor Joe Ferreira (Labour, Erith) contrasted Bexley’s achievements with Greenwich where “another 117 Council homes part funded by the Mayor of London” have just been approved. He didn’t think the Strategy “went far enough and it was a missed opportunity. It doesn’t provide a clear ambitious vision or how to achieve it. The key test is increasing the supply of homes but it is not clear to me that any additional homes will be built as a direct result of this strategy”.

 

23 November (Part 2) - The final budgetary word?

The argument about Bexley Council flirting with bankruptcy or not rumbles on so with the aid of someone who knows more about accounting than I do, I took another look at the figures.

It seems to be fairly simple. Bexley Council is looking for up to £15 million and Covid19 has made a relatively small contribution to that. Only £3·5 million. Not good but not enough to have tipped the budget irretrievably over the edge.

The bulk of the requirement is due to non-Covid factors causing the reserves to be halved. Whistleblowing finance staff have been forecasting the problem all this year and the Auditor confirmed the Council was in trouble last March. Surely the Chief Executive and Council Leader must check and sign off all the figures?

What I find really odd is that at a Cabinet meeting at the end of January this year the Finance Director forecast that this year there would be a manageable £2 million shortfall. Did he totally fail to see the [non-Covid] problem that was about to hit him head on?

 

23 November (Part 1) - Tipping on the fly

6:30 on Saturday morning and a very large Transit style van pulls up outside my house and this is what was left behind.

Last time I spotted something like this happening and photographed it and made a report, Bexley Council ignored me because? Because it came from me!

So this time I didn’t bother about grabbing a camera.

The good news is that I will not be harbouring dark thoughts about my neighbours.

Note: The inaction in 2016 was taken up by my them Councillor Danny Hackett but despite his best efforts the perpetrator got away with it.

 

22 November (Part 2) - Bexley News. A reliable source of misinformation, propaganda and deliberate falsehoods

In terms of politics I haven’t got an awful lot in common with my own Labour ward Councillor Daniel Francis but there is one philosophy on which we appear to be absolutely as one. If you don’t go around telling fibs then the likelihood is that you will not be contradicted, except perhaps by shameless liars and the ignorant.

There was a case in point this afternoon.

It all started when the Deputy Leader of the Conservative opposition in Croydon and Councillor for Shirley South, Jason Cummings, argued with a Croydon resident that his Council’s bankruptcy was not similar to Bexley’s predicament because Bexley’s was due to Covid and Croydon’s was not.

Councillor Francis posted a correction and backed it up with an extract from the Auditor’s report which confirmed that Bexley Council was in trouble by the end of the last financial year.

Poking my nose in where it may not have been wanted I provided a link to an audio clip of the Auditor saying the same thing. (Click the left hand Tweet below to listen.)

So there is ample proof that what the Croydon Councillor said was ill-informed or in plain English, wrong! Bexley’s Auditor said so both in writing and broadcast to the world on a webcast.

Bexley was in trouble last Spring.

End of the matter? Not a bit of it.

Knowing absolutely that Croydon Cummings might need an eye-test, what did Bexley Tories propaganda machine do? It endorsed the mistaken comment by Reweeting it. Rarely a true word from Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Not ignorance but shameless, a disgrace to honest Councillors everywhere.

 

22 November (Part 1) - Conservative questions and conservative answers

The Labour Group on Bexley Council posed some awkward budget questions to the Cabinet last week and even managed to get a few answers. Then their Conservative counterparts had a go led by Councillor Linda Bailey (Crook Log).

She asked for clarification over the fact that Bexley gets almost the lowest Public Health Grant in the country. “What have you been doing about it?”

The Council Leader said she had made a number of representations to Government about the low level of funding. “It is third lowest in the country and lowest in London. I had a conversation with the minister the other week who accepted that our budget is low and he has gone away to talk to the Chancellor. If I am honest about it unpicking the formula will be problematic but we have landed it at the feet of Government to consider it.֦”

Councillor Andy Dourmoush (Conservative, Longlands) knows a thing or two about finance having run a successful company for many years. He wanted to know how confident the Council is of providing vital services after a 20% staff reduction “and have any budget problems that may arise from exiting the European Union next January been factored in?”

In a shock move the Chief Executive was asked to earn her keep. She had “been carefully reviewing our workforce over the past year” and not filling vacancies “which is to our credit but it becomes increasingly difficult. We are considering the impact and identifying how we might change the way we work and how we might consolidate our organisation. Part of the blueprint is to structure the Council around our priorities”.

“We are very conscious that there will be an impact and we want to mitigate it as much as possible but we want to identify what will stop and what will change.”

“The impact of Brexit is reviewed very regularly We have a range of scenario plans in place.”

Is it just me or is that pathetic? “Structure the Council around priorities.” What do they usually structure it around? Not one specific proposal and given ten minutes I think I could come up with that amount of waffle for far less than £200,000. Credit where it is due though, a lifetime of waffling provides the skill to spew out such words instantly without much effort. But maybe it was rehearsed. Whatever the case, Councillor Dourmoush was far too polite and house trained to throw any spanners into the works. Bet it wouldn’t be the same at a board meeting of the Eden Valley Group.

From Councillor Melvin Seymour (Conservative, Crayford), “Will the auditors take on board and accept what we are proposing? It is pivotal that we satisfy them.”

The Finance Director said the auditor is “happy with where we are”.

Councillor Francis (Labour, Belvedere) had been thinking of nightmare scenarious and came back to ask what options would we have had if the Erith warehouse sale had not gone through “because I think what Mr. Thorogood is saying is that we have not enough reserves for the redundancy payments”. The answer was fairly obvious. More reserves spent, more sales or a bigger begging bowl to Government - the Capitalisation Order.

Councillor Diment (Conservative, Sidcup) asked what the cash flow predictions were but the Finance Director didn’t want them spoken about at a public meeting.

Councillor Nick O’Hare asked about likely Council Tax collection rates this year and next year. Answer: Council Tax collections are about 1% lower than this time last year and Business Rates 5%. Next year the figures could be 5% and 10% respectively. The shortfall this year could be as much a £9 million.

Cabinet Member David Leaf confirmed that it is too early to know what the impact of the staff cuts will be. He doesn’t know what the cost will be. Covid has delayed a number of reviews which may have provided more certainty. More details should be available at the December Cabinet meeting.

All the budget proposals and recommendations were approved unanimously.

 

21 November - Don’t count your chickens

What does Bexley Council have in common with their neighbour across the river; Thurrock?

If you have been paying attention you will know that both invested in failed green energy company Rockfire Capital, about which more another day. In recent years Bexley’s finance department has become expert at copying the silliest of ideas from other Councils which is almost inevitable given their penchant for recruiting senior staff from those councils.

Anything else in common with Thurrock? Well yes. Both are running out of money.

Nothing very unusual about that in 2020 but Thurrock’s plan, in common with Bexley’s, involves a begging letter to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Maybe Bexley’s Capitalisation Order is not exactly the same as Thurrock’s although to the uneducated eye the Local Government Chronicle article (image on the right) makes it at least very similar.

The bad news is that Thurrock’s request was made some while ago and they have just come a cropper with it. Their request fell on unsympathetic ears.

All fingers crossed for Bexley please.

Note: Click image to enlarge.

 

20 November (Part 2) - Bexleyheath gets its first electric vehicle charging hub

Putting Bexley Council’s pathetic 7 kilowatt chargers to shame, Instavolt has installed four 50 kilowatt chargers in the Sainsbury’s Car Park off Highland Road. Not quite as ambitious as Braintree Council’s offering but the best there is for several miles around.

Instavolt has earned a reputation for having the most reliable and easiest to use chargers. Unlike Bexley’s ill-chosen charging partner no mobile App or Membership required, just swipe your Contactless Card and off you go.

Not so good if you have to pay for the car park too.

P.S. I keep being told that electric cars are a stop gap technology and that hydrogen is the future. Tomorrow I will need to travel almost as many miles as I have in my ‘electric’ tank. It will be topped up with overnight electricity costing almost nothing, The nearest hydrogen pump is in Germany.

Company’s link.

 

20 November (Part 1) - Testing times

Does one gradually get used to this lockdown which our mad government knows is based on false statistics? Businesses and life as we have known it is being recklessly thrown on the scrap heap.

I have not been to a pub or restaurant since the beginning of March. Not been in a shop other than Sainsbury’s since June, been on a train maybe half a dozen times in eight months and a bus slightly more.

Can’t visit friends and not seen one for six weeks or so and find myself not really caring any more.

Some people I know are clearly obsessed with or distressed by it all while the only emotion I feel is total, absolute and quite likely eternal hatred of Boris Johnson.

However one of many messages on the subject prompted me to wonder if I should be more worried about the Covid fiasco than I am and I poked around the net for up to date data.

A month ago Bexley was second least affected borough in London and then the numbers started to climb.

The graphics below show how we are faring ward by ward, and that so far 213 Bexley residents have died with Covid on their death certificates. Approximately 100 of them in the past seven weeks. Tragic as that is I would guess the figure is exaggerated or at the very least is not the whole story.

A lady I knew for 72 years was taken to Brighton Hospital with a little problem; the hospital infected her with Covid 19 and gave her a much bigger problem. She died. But what really killed her? Poor heath care in my opinion.

Another lady of my acquaintance was given a hospital consultation this week by telephone. She has very little hearing and gets by with a mixture of shouting and lip reading. The hospital knows she is deaf but insisted telephone was all they could do. Now she hasn’t really much of a clue of what was said. All she knows is that they discharged her.

Another friend was told two months ago he is in urgent need of a heart monitor. Still waiting. Yet another was diagnosed with a heart problem at the beginning of the year. Something went wrong with the test and he was put down for a repeat. Covid came and he is still waiting. The National Health Service is failing in far too many areas.

If Covid disproportionately affects ethnic minorities how is it that Thamesmead East is the best place to be in Bexley?

Source: https://coronalevel.com/United_Kingdom/England/London/Bexley/

 

19 November (Part 2) - And then he said and the other one casually admitted…

After the Finance Director had had his say and Cabinet Member Leaf had finished his well rehearsed 17 minute speech ordinary mortals were allowed to comment. The first to find the unmute button was Councillor Perfect (Labour, Northumberland Heath) who referred to the second consultation on closing Children’s Centres and asked if the first one had been sufficiently robust as it didn’t outline the proposed model.

Instead of asking for the question to be answered the Leader called upon the Labour Leader to ask his. He said he had a long list.

• What was the total number of staff numbers likely to be lost and how many of them would be redundancies?
• What is it as a percentage of current staff numbers?
• How will the Council find the money for the redundancy payments?
• How much do we expect them to cost?
• Would this have happened without Covid?
• Will we have to cut the capital programme to fund the redundancies?

There was no immediate answer to those questions either, instead Councillor Ferreira (Labour, Erith) referred to “£1·8 million of financial pressures not resolved in 2020/21” recorded in the Agenda. “What is it?”.

And why have “earmarked reserves fallen from £48·5 million, to £31 million and to £16 million in successive years?” “Why also have they fallen almost in half in the past year?"

And still answer there was none. Instead Councillor Borella (Labour Slade Green & North End) was invited to comment. He asked if the reduced expenditure on the Freedom Pass was Covid related. No immediate answer so Councillor Mabel Ogundayo (Labour Thamesmead East) was given a chance to participate. “Would the pressure on temporary accommodation extend into 2021/22 and is it built into the budget?”

The Finance Director having been given enough thinking time said that 150 FTE reductions were imminent with another 154·2 by the end of 2021/22. Approximately 50% of the first batch are currently vacant. “304 is approximately 20% of the Council’s current 1,560 workforce.”

“The first £9·5 million of redundancy payments will be from capital receipts [the sale of the Erith warehouse] and if we need to we will use £3 million of reserves.” HR are still working out the likely total cost.

The Government request for a Capitalisation Order is for up to £15 million. It will be funded by a review of the Capital Programme. [Cuts.]

There was no answer to Councillor Francis’ fifth question [Covid] but the answer would seem to be Yes. It’ll be the housing situation that done it! Bexley would be twinned with Croydon, Covid or not.

Councillor Ferreira’s £1·8 million is a mixture of the penalty for withdrawing from oneSource and the costs of disposing of the Erith Distribution Centre. If the Government doesn’t allow the 2% Council Tax Social Services precept this year the reserves will take another hit. His question about falling reserves fell into the Finance Director’s Black Hole.

The Freedom Pass charges are on a three year rolling average and Covid travel restrictions will have made a saving about £50,000 next year.

“The temporary accommodation pressure is £2·7 million this year and the growth next year is estimated at £3·2 which incudes the £2·7 million.”

Having casually slipped in a number of astounding admissions the Finance Director handed over to the boss of Children’s Services. Councillor Perfect’s question was "was the consultation robust” and the Artful Dodger’s answer was “it achieved what it was intended to achieve, that is to generate responses and some were forthright and robustly presented”. I don’t think that answered the question.

At that point Conservative Councillors began to ask questions but that will be something for another day. Will they be as probing as Daniel Francis’s? No way is the likely answer.

 

19 November (Part 1) - A couple of things…

Budget
The mail box suggests that not everyone noticed the link at the end of yesterday’s budget report; maybe I should have made more of it. It is to a report on Bexley’s parlous state by the Local Government Chronicle. However I did totally miss one point. If the Government turns down Bexley’s request to borrow to cover its day to day expenditure, we are up shi… err, there is no Plan B.

This website
As I have gone through old blogs updating the technicalities and improving image quality I have got rid of the old ‘Gallery’ system whereby some blogs linked to a supporting picture page. The pictures have either been amalgamated into the relevant blog or the picture page has been redesigned because the old system was not scalable. That is not mobile compatible.

These new picture pages are now Indexed but the reason for mentioning it here is because there is a brand new one. Now that it is back in the news again there is a Photo feature for all my Leather Bottle pictures. Follow the desecration in a pictorial fashion.

 

18 November (Part 3) - Vote Boris, get Caroline Lucas

The first thing I would do after coming home from work in the Winter of 1963 was grab some coal and light the fire. Those were the days when one could leave school aged 17 - almost 18 in my case - and save enough to buy your own small house in time for your 21st birthday. Something has gone horribly wrong hasn’t it?

Six years later I upgraded to gas central heating and now I have two friends - acquaintances I have met four or five times that is - who have moved over to a heat pump which is a sort of reverse refrigerator that extracts heat from the air outside. Even cold air is 270 odd degrees above absolute zero so there is plenty there for the taking.

I have resisted the idea because it needs bigger radiators than a gas system and would be a bit of an upheaval.

The point I am trying to make is that these things evolve slowly and people decide for themselves when it is right to make a change that suits their circumstances and their budget. Freedom of choice is part of Conservatism as far as I am concerned, so what the effing hell is Boris Johnson doing imposing his (Carrie’s?) will on the masses? No more Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) by 2030. Far too dictatorial and not what one expects from a so called libertarian.

Everyone who has ridden in my electric car thinks it is wonderful, even the petrol heads vow to buy one when they can. When being the operative word.

One used to run a nine seater wagon because he had six children. They have left home now so he has downsized. Just as well there is nothing bigger than a seven seater electric car - the Tesla Model X - and it will cost you best part of a hundred grand.

Maybe there will be a choice for such people in ten years time. It is now possible to get a Transit sized electric van from Mercedes and Amazon have bought several hundred of them. Small vans are made in France and in Sunderland but does anyone do the Berlingo style conversion for wheelchair users? Not yet.

You can buy a 100% electric bus from Alexander Dennis but the technology is entirely Chinese and apart from Tesla every manufacturer sources batteries from China. Why does Boris want to be in hock to China again?

Last year there was a one year waiting list for electric cars and the reason was mainly battery supply. Things seem to be a bit better now.

Listening to the radio today I have heard the most amazing rot spoken about electric cars. They need a new £10,000 battery every three years, they spew out particulates from the brakes, you can’t use them in the wet, they won’t go 450 miles non-stop like a diesel and the National Grid will keel over and die.

Everyone will need a home charger at a minimum cost of £1,600 and they can’t stop quickly due to their weight. (TalkRadio phone in this afternoon.)

There have been many examples of electric cars doing more than a million miles without a battery change. The few that require recycling now are recycled for other uses. Will there be a reason to recycle thousands of batteries a year instead of a few dozen? That could be a problem.

Electric cars only need the brakes if you drive like a loon. Whilst it is usually adjustable the speed of an EV is regulated by the accelerator pedal. Take your foot off and it stops very rapidly. It takes a bit of getting used to but most people like it. If you look at the front wheels of an ICE car they will often be black with brake dust while I can wipe a cloth over mine and it stays clean.

One of the fellows I met at an electric car convention had parked his car in Cockermouth when the flood struck. His Renault Zoe was the only car that drove out of it. The carpets were a bit of a mess but mechanically and electrically it was fine. I saw his video.

Who drives 450 miles without stopping? My car is by today’s standards a charging tortoise. At best around 300 miles of range added in an hour. The best now exceed one thousand miles an hour. What will it be in ten years time? Recharged in the time it takes to go for a pee.

The National Grid says the power situation is manageable. Why do so may people not think that experts have been looking into the future? Craig McKinlay MP has been on TalkRadio while I’ve been writing this saying that there is not enough power available. Are all MPs that ignorant? (Please don’t answer.)

Maybe he should look at these videos and educate himself.

Balancing the Grid Part 1 - Balancing the Grid Part 2 - Balancing the Grid Part 3.

Part 2 is particularly instructive. (Full disclosure: I met the YouTube author once. He is one of the country’s leading battery chemists - and a Scottish Nationalist.)

My home charger is the most advanced you can buy - except for the latest model of the same thing - and it cost me £380 including the installation cost. There is a £500 government grant.

Slow stopping? I constantly worry about being rear ended and when the auto-stop reacted to a pedestrian in the road quicker than I did the seat belt nearly cut my arm off.

If the braking was deficient it would not have met the NCAP5 requirement but idiots are allowed to broadcast unchallenged. Why does that conjure up an image of Matt Hancock?

Whatever the advantages of an EV the big problem with Boris’s plan is, as usual, he hasn’t a clue about how ordinary people live and how tight their budgets are.

A year before I bought my electric car I laid down the criteria it must meet before I bought one. Mine met all the criteria apart from price. Since then not one new model has met my minimum requirements apart from the KIA Soul which is mechanically the same as mine.

All the cheaper models are cheaper for a reason. Fine for pottering around town and maybe a 100 mile round trip but it is still the case that very few will do 250 miles without any need to worry.

Boris Johnson appears to be on a mission to annoy as many people as possible. Long term Carrie’s ideas are probably reasonable but she should learn that we do not all lead her privileged life style. The petrol version of my car is only half the price of the electric although it isn’t nearly as well equipped with bells and whistles.

On the other hand i believe the electric Mini is just a little cheaper than the petrol equivalent. Things may be improving but a true Conservative doesn’t wear a silly little moustache and lets the people decide what is right for them when the time is right for them, which is why I no longer have a coal fire.

 

18 November (Part 2) - The Budget. He said, she said…

Council Leader Teresa O’Neill…

• It is vitally important that we live within our means.
• [On Covid] We have received additional monies albeit at this moment it doesn’t quite cover the total of the in year cost difference we’re predicting.
• [On budget] It is a moving target but fortunately the Freedom Pass impact is going our way.
• [On the budget consultation] It will form part of the decision making process.
• [On the Fair Funding Review] The current system doesn’t deliver a level playing field. Greenwich gets more than us but our need is at least the equivalent of theirs while you could argue that their affluence is much greater.
• Our Public Health Grant is the third lowest in the country.
• We will do what we were elected to do by our residents.

Finance Director Paul Thorogood

• The revenue forecast outturn shows a favourable movement by six million pounds [in part] due to the Covid Grant of £2·8 million.
• Some of the income streams have been volatile particularly parking.
• In addition to the pandemic the Council is forecasting an in year pressure of £3·7 million in relation to out day to day operations. Most relates to temporary accommodation.
• A further Capital Program Review … will allow the Council to reduce its establishment.
• Specific work is needed to review the parking opportunity against the current market conditions. [Gobbledygook but probably code for price increases.]

Cabinet Member David Leaf (17 Minutes and 20 Seconds)

• This administration’s approach, to the forward plan for the medium term and the forthcoming budget continues to remain the right approach to take. [Says he.]
• This administration has consistently put forward financial plans that have delivered key front line services for our residents, kept Council Tax down [relative to other London boroughs Bexley has got slowly worse] and made balanced decisions.
• The legacy of the funding formula brought in by Government in 2006 still impacts on our finances today.
• We inherited plans which led to Council Tax increases of at least 8% year on year. There was an overspend position and reserves had fallen to £5·6 million despite four years of huge [40%] Council tax increases.
• We have run a tight ship in Bexley and closed budget gaps of over £100 million.
• Before Covid we faced closing a budget gap for 2021/22 in the region of £20 million. We consulted and there are around 4,000 and 250 pages of of responses. Different views were expressed. Some residents expressed concerns about increasing fees and charges while others support them.
• There were requests for more reinforcement of parking restrictions and some for less.
{This illustrates the futility of public consultations that provide 4,000 answers. The Council can pick the ones they had in mind anyway and claim to be following the wishes of the people.]
• We are seeking to remove about six million from our establishment costs. There will be some redundancies, numbers are not yet known. We may need to utilise capital receipts.
• While we have strategically deployed some reserves and built up some others during the past our financial plans have never involved relying solely on reserves in the medium term.

Cabinet Member Philip Read

• There is absolutely no doubt that the consultation has been successful. It is clear evidence that we not only want to hear from our residents but are listening to their views as we seek a solution that has regard to our statutory duties and the financial context within which we are operating.
• Since 2014 the overspend has averaged £7·52 million and in every year the gap has been closed.

That concluded the formal report after which Councillors were allowed to have their say but at this point no one had mentioned closing libraries, only one reference to redundancy and no one referred specifically to getting no money from the sale of the Turpin Road distribution centre because it will all go on redundancy payments.

Interesting that the Council Leader didn’t seek to blame Covid for the problems and we are not quite in Croydon territory. Yet.

 

18 November (Part 1) - The wheels come off

I listened to last night’s Cabinet meeting live and will have to go through it again before long. I have known for years that Cabinet meetings are rehearsed and largely run from a script but never was it more obvious than last night. Most Cabinet Members delivered their off-the-cuff comments so word perfect and without a stumble that the Leader’s request for ‘whoever’ to answer ‘whatever’ could not possibly have come as a surprise. I suppose if you are required to skip over the most embarrassing bits an unscripted remark cannot be allowed to escape.

Cabinet Members were not the only ones to have been busy scripting things beforehand. Labour Leader Daniel Francis had a perfectly crafted twelve part Tweet on line just a minute after the meeting ended.

He says it all and I no longer see any urgency to ‘waste’ the morning on a detailed analysis of what was said. I will listen again but only to see if anyone said anything especially interesting. Cocking more than half an ear last night suggested they didn’t. Maybe I was distracted but I don’t, for example, remember the word library being mentioned.

Councillor Francis (Labour, Belvedere) writes…

I’d like to pay tribute to our fantastic London Borough of Bexley staff for all they’ve done to support our residents in challenging times this year.

The months ahead will be very tough for them following Cabinet’s decision tonight which proposes to cut 304 Full Time Equivalence of posts in this year’s budget. If followed through, this process could see the equivalent of up to 230 FTE of staff issued redundancy notices. It has been confirmed tonight that the gap in the council’s budget these cuts will fill existed prior to the pandemic.

The scale of Bexley’s financial position means we do not have sufficient funds within reserves to pay all these redundancy payments. It has been confirmed that the £9·5m gained from the sale last month of the Turpin Road distribution centre in Erith will fund redundancy payments.

It has also been confirmed that if the Turpin Road site had not been sold, that the council may have had to ask the Government for permission to borrow the money to fund redundancy payments. This is a direct result of the projected 47% reduction in the council’s reserves from 2017-2021.

It is this projection of having spent almost £29 million of reserves in four years that led the auditor to say there is “evidence of weaknesses in proper arrangements for planning finances effectively to support the sustainable delivery of strategic priorities over the medium term.”

Despite their claims to the contrary, this position is a direct consequence of following the national Conservative policy of cuts to local government finance over the last 10 years. Our staff stepped up to the plate during the pandemic & their reward is to be issued their P45s.

Along with staff reductions, the proposals to close 4 children's centres, reduce staffing & opening hours from libraries & remove grants from 6 community libraries remain. Despite this level of proposed cuts, the council proposes an increase of 4% in Bexley’s council tax

Earlier this year, the Government asked local authorities to spend “whatever it takes” on the pandemic. Despite their promise, they haven’t followed through & the council are now asking permission from the Government to borrow up to £15 million to resolve these short term spending issues.

It’s likely that Bexley taxpayers (possibly including my grandchildren!) will be paying for the cost of Covid in 25 years time, because the Government wouldn’t recompense the council. As the reserves have been reduced so heavily, the council has no other choice than to borrow the money.

It is also likely that as a result, up to £15 million of building projects may need to be cancelled in order to allow this borrowing to fund the cost of Covid rather than the cost of building new facilities for our residents.

Be under no illusion, after 14 years controlling the council & 10 years in Government, this is what the Conservatives have delivered for the people of Bexley – years of reductions in financial support from Government have left councils in a desperate financial position.

Cutting 20% of council staff while not identifying which departments almost half the redundancies will come from, having to sell buildings to fund redundancy payments & having insufficient reserves for a pandemic is their record, which they will need to explain to our residents.

I don’t think there is anything there I disagree with although some of it would not have appeared in any report I might have written myself.

…or of Conservatives apparently.

 

17 November (Part 4) - Leisure services in deep water

A neighbour told me that his contact somewhere in the Leisure Department of Bexley Council or maybe the Leisure Centre itself - I didn’t ask - had lost his job because Bexley Council is running out of money. It is not at all surprising as this evening’s Cabinet meeting will no doubt reveal.

 

17 November (Part 3) - Green investment or simply green

Council incompetence is everywhere it seems. Presumably a product of incestuous promotions in which one failed senior executive gives a leg up to an old mate from the past.

Thurrock Council is apparently not immune from the incompetence disease.

Rockfire Capital is a company that was doing something or other in the solar panel business and it has gone broke. Some say it was telling investors porkie pies before taking their money.

The image on the left is an extract from a letter sent by the Leader of the Opposition Party in Thurrock to its Council Leader. (Click the left image to see it all.) The one on the right is an investigator’s Court report. (Click for source.)

That report says that Thurrock Council had £450 million invested in Rockfire. Thurrock’s Council Tax payers may have to dig deep.

What a relief that no one in Bexley was silly enough to get involved with Rockfire.

Oh hang on a minute…

 

17 November (Part 2) - Chickens should not be counted

I forget at which recent Council meeting I heard it but it was said that Bexley has not indulged in any of the nonsense inflicted by most Councils under the Low Traffic Neighbourhood idiocy funded by our so called Conservative government. For reasons I won’t bore you with I had to park for 45 minutes yesterday afternoon in a side street just west of the Woolwich Ferry which provided a clear view of the A206 to Greenwich. Jammed solid for a fair bit of the time and making my essential journeys north of the river even more difficult.

There are numerous petitions running within the Royally Incompetent Borough of Greenwich calling for some sense to be applied. Good luck with that in a Labour borough!

However you should not allow Conservative Bexley Council to make you think that they would not be just as silly and they are already talking about more bus lanes and make no secret that their objective is to fleece the motorist out of more money. You might think that Tory Bromley would be a common sense Council but don’t you believe it. Fiddling consultation results is a tool of government there just as it is in Bexley.

There doesn’t seem to be an online news site for Bromley, they still rely on poking paper through letter boxes and this is what they were saying earlier this month about the wrecking of the road between the Princes Royal Hospital and Orpington with a cycle lane.

Click the image above to see all the comment.

The A232. Already narrow but there is nothing a malign Council cannot wreck.

 

17 November (Part 1) - Hoist by his own stupidity

My granddaughter went back to school yesterday having got an attack of the childhood 24 hour sniffles three or four days after one of her village friend’s father went down with the dreaded Covid. Classic symptoms and a positive test.

Despite her own test being negative the whole family was locked up for two weeks, daughter-in-law’s business closed down with no compensation.

Maybe now that the Bozo is caught up by the same nonsense maybe he will sober up and realise how silly some of his own rules are.

One must wonder how infectious this bug is. The man who became unwell and caused the problem never did pass it on to his wife and two daughters. What is the point of masks?

 

16 November (Part 3) - Here we go again. A fourth planning application for the site of Ye Olde Leather Bottle

The developer of Ye Olde Leather Bottle is not lying down after being fined by the H&SE for unsafe demolition practices and being rejected three times by Bexley Council so far for submitting plans that were ugly in 2017 and because they were contrary to the Council’s requirements earlier this year. (They didn’t want yet another care shome.)

The 2017 plan was repeated with few changes in 2018 and the same trick (20/02852/FULM) has now been pulled with the April 2020 plan. Another glorified care home or as the application itself describes it; “Erection of a 70 Bed Care Home with associated ancillary care facilities, staff accommodation, landscaped gardens and parking”.

There is a complete history of the demolition and redevelopment of Ye Olde Leather Bottle available on this site.

There have been a couple of planning rejections at 238 Woolwich Road too.

 

16 November (Part 2) - We’re doomed I tell you; doomed!

A couple of weeks ago I was lamenting the fact that the anonymous messages had dried up, it probably didn’t help that the facility was broken for a while for reasons unknown, but clearly it is working now, half a dozen messages over the weekend and some of them back to commenting on finance matters.

I don’t know who these people are but there have been claims that the authors are working or have worked in the boroughs of Barnet, Newham and Bexley, the first two having become Bexley’s recruiting ground for senior staff. Goodness knows why because neither, that is oneSource rather than Newham, have been shining examples of financial rectitude and current staff (maybe past?) have been forecasting a financial disaster for some time. Enormous frauds going unnoticed, poor choice of software solutions and a prediction that under the same management Bexley would go gurgling down the same drain.

Accountancy is not something I know anything about. I know enough to keep my own out of trouble but that is as far as it goes, when it comes to balancing Bexley’s books my eyes glaze over. I get the impression that most Councillors and some finance staff are the same. I therefore present you with the worries of what I think must be two finance people and two from what claim to be residents. Make of it what you will.

How does Bexley survive with so few reserves? Well basically it removes £8 million of debt on something to do with schools. It seems by taking out the figure from the report Bexley looks better off. A miracle.
Is this a real measure or a sleight of hand? In the narrative it says it’s a professional judgment by the Director of Finance. Whatever it is, it helps keep Bexley afloat with over £30 million of reserves so the tough do not need to get going. It is something over here in Romford our Director of Finance could learn.

The writer provides three documents to back up his case which appear here.

In October Bexley and Havering reported their problems. At Havering they said even after grants from Government they would overspend by £15 million, and they would therefore have to use reserves. Not so at Bexley. Despite a similar story the Director of Finance and his team didn’t mention anything like such a big hit on reserves. On the contrary. Reserves would go up. Is it because the auditors said the Council lacked financial resilience? Or because the Director of Finance doesn’t want to admit it until October 2021. With just £30 million in the Bank there isn’t anywhere to go. But there is no admission. Even reducing staffing only balances the book for next year. Not this.

Once again the author provides documentation, this time from Havering.

The following messages claim to be from residents, or "Angry resident" as one describes himself. I don’t believe he is only a Bexley resident, too familiar with names I would say.

Between December 2016 and December 2018 Paul Thorogood was Director of Finance of oneSource. In that time there was a lot of dissatisfaction with how things were running, within the councils and amongst staff. Things so bad they stopped doing customer surveys. But they did have a finance improvement plan.
A Finance improvement plan was presented to Bexley’s Audit Committee. Members questioned Nicky Morris who said it was ambitious to get things done by December 2020. But she said it was doable. But in two years at oneSource Mr. Thorogood didn’t manage it and since August 2020 what has been achieved?
There will be no update until January 2021 but by then it could be too late. See in the survey from 2018 if anything is different. Same failings three years ago continue so when can residents expect delivery? And with 150 job losses how can they trust Paul to deliver? He’s spent the money and no idea of filling the black hole.

Supporting documents are similar which makes me think it might be a very informed Bexley resident. And to wrap up, yet another…

Are these people qualified? I have my doubts about them all. We are all doomed.

Well that is one comment I can appreciate and understand!

 

16 November (Part 1) - Carrie on Clowning

It is reported that Bozo Johnson is going to make a speech on climate change this week. I blame Ed Miliband’s 2008 Climate Change Act that put into law the requirement to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. It has already cost every one of us thousands of pounds.

It is being said that Johnson will ban the sale of new Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) powered vehicles by 2030. Some ICE vehicle manufacturers have already announced that they will stop producing new ICE vehicles in only five years time. That is not to say that they won’t make them but they will not develop any new models. You can see the direction of travel and it is the correct one, but Bozo Johnson is very wrong at the same time.

The 2030 rumour has already brought out the cynics, sceptics and ignoramuses on Social Media and in newspaper comments.

Electric vehicles (EV) “need a new battery every two years and cannot be recycled”. It takes “five hours to charge for a 20 minute journey”, “they are ׅslow” and they “have no limp mode if the battery goes flat on a motorway”. What is that all about? What does an ICE car do when it runs out of petrol? The engine suddenly cuts whereas an EV will give you a very accurate prediction of how many miles you have left and throttle the performance to maximise economy. When it finally gives up it will still crawl another few hundred yards, or at least that is what braver owners than me have reported.

It is on the record that some EVs have done more than a million miles on the original battery and they are recycled sometimes into home storage batteries. I suppose we will all be forced to buy one of those before long.

The battery on my car is warranted for twice as long as the rest of the car (ten years) but at two years old its charging speed is already dated. If a twenty minute journey is ten miles it would take me two minutes to put the required amount of juice into it at its fastest charging speed. Some more recent cars are nearly three times faster. Twitter is full of clueless commentators.

I don’t really want everyone to switch to electric cars but that is for purely selfish reasons. The one petrolhead in the family boasts that his 0-60 time is more than a second quicker than mine but that is only if he crashes through the gears at just the right moment. In practice he cannot do it, all I have to do is floor the accelerator and just sit there. No gears at all and in a 0-40 race the EV leaves him standing. Full torque output from a standstill and no possibility of stalling the thing, ideal for nipping into gaps at junctions.

I like knowing that I can out perform every family saloon or SUV on the road if the mood takes me and happy to own that superiority for as long as possible.

But even without putting the selfish gene to the fore I still think BJ is nuts, or should I say nut nuts?

There will be enough electricity, the National Grid bosses say so even if the sceptics say all the lights will be going out. However distribution will be an issue and not only for those who live on the fifth floor of a tower block.

My car will only take 32 amps from the mains supply which is pretty much standard at the moment but we are already seeing some that will take 50% more and a very few three times as much. The oven takes another 12 amps or more, the washing machine and immersion heater similar. Then BJ says we can’t have gas boilers any more. Where will my 18 kilowatts of gas heating come from?

The electricity supply to my house has been uprated to 100 amps but it cannot go any higher without digging up the roads and if I use the vacuum cleaner I would be looking at 150 amps. There would have to be some sort of smart meter regulation and then you might wake up with a car insufficiently charged to get you to work.

And did I say that EVs cost far too much? Mine is more than 20% more expensive now than when I bought it with nothing to show for the extra money other than one more USB port and heated rear seats. On the plus side servicing costs are near zero and less than three pence a mile to run it if charging at home. I have only had to charge away twice in two years, once was just playing safe, it would have scraped home anyway, and on both occasions there was no charge. Payment that is.

Most ICE car owners talk total nonsense about electric cars, no one who buys one would ever want to go back to a smelly sluggish noisy ICE car but heavy trucks may be a problem. Electric buses and vans are becoming available, but at a price. 2040 maybe, but 2030? Boris will do as much damage to the country’s transport infrastructure as Sadiq Khan has done to London’s.

 

15 November - Leaves on the Line and Leaves you on the Platform

The Southeastern man zoomed into last week’s Transport meeting and started his presentation with the bad news, from tomorrow train frequencies are to be cut; “to build resilience into the timetable”, as if putting 50% on journey times since 1988 is not enough resilience already. The excuse this time is fewer available staff. The reduction means that only 84% of ‘old’ services will be running to serve no more than 30% of the normal number of passengers.

Councillor Stefano Borella - or Borello as The Transport Chairman as well as the Mayor call him - should probably chair the Transport meeting as he is the only member who knows his fishplates from his sleepers. He was the first to speak.

He praised Network Rail for the work at Hither Green which has fixed most of the signal failures in the area but noted that there seemed to be more elsewhere and the absence of 12 car trains. There were plenty during lockdown No. 1 but “they have literally disappeared”. With reduced services they should be restored, the days of travelling in a carriage alone are gone, he said.

The Network Rail representative said there is still an enormous amount of resignalling work left to do and it won’t be completed until the middle of next year

The other bane of Southeastern life is the nonsense of ‘station skipping’. Stefano said “it’s appalling and I still have not had a good explanation of why. Albany Park has three trains off peak but you may have to wait half an hour. it’s a ridiculous practice off-peak. It needs to stop.”

Councillor Borella (Labour, Slade Green & North End) has run a long term campaign to have a turnaround facility on the Bexleyheath line. There are two that I know of on the North Kent line and there is one on the Sidcup line but if there is a problem on the Bexleyheath line all services tend to stop because there is no way a train can be reversed. Network Rail said that such a facility is now being actively considered.

Councillor Eileen Pallen (Conservative, Barnehurst) was pleased to note that Network Rail had provided funding for replacing trees following the extensive embankment works at Barnehurst.

Councillor John Davey (Conservative, West Heath) was puzzled by why we need station skipping due to ‘leaves on the line’ when there will now be big gaps in services due to the new reduced timetable. The Southeastern man said “there was going to be a review in April but we didn't get around to it, circumstances changed” but he was thinking about a further timetable stretching instead of skipping stops.

He said the skipping is “to improve performance”. I suspect that means reducing penalties for late running rather than trying to help the travelling public.

Note: This meeting was chaired by Councillor Nigel Betts because the regular Chairman, Councillor Val Clarke, was said to be unwell.

 

14 November - Hold on very tight please, the hooligans are out

A variety of subjects were discussed at last Wednesday’s Transport meeting and this report will start with buses. I caught one from the Upton Road stop that day, three of us got on board the single decker which made 18 on a bus said to be limited to 14 passengers. The driver put up his Bus Full notice but three passengers got off at the next stop and before long it was nearly empty. It could have been very inconvenient but it wasn’t.

The TfL representative at the Council meeting said that free travel for under 18s and over 60s would continue.

As always the subject of unruly children travelling for free on the buses got an airing and buses with police officers on board had reduced incidents of bad behaviour “at huge cost”.

Non-school buses not picking up children was said to be a problem; bus drivers gave “mixed messages” and appeared to not know the rules. What were they? Councillor Eileen Pallen (Conservative, Barnehurst) said she had seen “buses absolutely packed with children” and she didn’t think it fair that children should be on non-school buses preventing people going about their essential business.

The TfL man said that “children were encouraged to board the school buses but any bus with capacity should be picking up children.” If reports of variance from that are made quickly to TfL Customer Services it should be possible to trace the driver concerned.

A police officer said that stationing police on buses and around bus stops had reduced crime to “relatively low” levels. “We have been seeing incidents around the bus hub in Bexley (sic). There have been reports of large numbers of school children gathering post-school which concern the public, ourselves and drivers”. Social distancing and safety is an issue because of “the pushing and shoving, some pushed in front of buses. We need barriers there to keep people away from the edge of the road and the local authority has assisted us with some barriers.”

Routes 301 and 401 (to Thamesmead) were a particular problem and police supervised queuing is now enforced. “Members of the public are given priority to get on non-school buses safely.”

Councillor Pallen said she was looking for a longer term solution. The policeman said the barriers were short to medium term but they had reduced the requirement for a police presence. “This is really about education. School heads will have to play a major part in this.”

“In the last three months 16 parents have received warning letters [with copies to schools] about the behaviour of their children. TfL has been sent two recommendations of removal of free travel”

“I don’t see this [the barriers] as a long term solution” and it is made worse by some children not wanting to go home, letting five or six buses go by.

Councillor Pallen said it was not a new problem and some schools denied their children were involved even going as far as to claim that children were buying and changing into other school uniforms to avoid detection. “That is the amount of denial going on.”

Councillor Borella said that the bad behaviour extended into the evening and the police officer confirmed that he had seen that and in Erith too and did his best to deal with it, but Bexley has fewer bus related incidents in the evening than Greenwich and Lewisham to which his responsibility also extends.

There is a bus performance report to come but this report is quite long enough already.

 

13 November (Part 2) - Financial Armageddon looms

There was one item towards the end of last week’s Full Council meeting that should not be allowed to pass unrecorded. Labour Councillor Nicola Taylor’s attack upon the record of BexleyCo, the Council owned company set up to make loadsamoney from building loadsahouses.

Erith’s Councillor said both political parties were concerned about the Auditor’s report on the Council’s finances, it “made for distressing reading”. The report said that “insufficient arrangements were in place to close the budget gap and insufficient plans for financial resilience”. There would need to be “unplanned service changes. This will be an issue that affects us all.”

“Members on the night raised concerns that reserves had travelled in the wrong direction from £60 million in 2018 to £37 million [at the end of the 2019/20 financial year] and even lower now.”

“The Audit identified weaknesses in arrangements for planning finances, it is clear our reserves have been plundered. Evidence of poor financial decisions. Outsourcing has caused poor quality services and increased costs. The lack of a Social Housing programme with the resultant waiting on housing lists for years and years and overspends on housing for three years running. It points to carelessness and incompetence. BexleyCo lost 0·6 million for the second year running and to date not one single house has been built. You {the Conservatives] said Bexley was safe in your hands, this Audit report says not.”

The Labour Leader referred to the lack of Scrutiny by Councillors on the relevant Committees.

Cabinet Member David Leaf appeared to be more subdued than usual saying only that it was a draft Auditor’s report and Labour reduced the reserves to £5·6 million in 2006 and Councillor Leaf added that an example of the Council’s salvation was the million pounds per year raised by the Garden Waste charges which Labour opposed and which was typical of their poor planning. He wasn’t going to take lessons from Labour.

Hollow words now!

A lame response as some of my worried correspondents might agree.

Croydon overspending and no money in the bank. Bankrupt. Bexley overspending. Little money in the bank. Asking to borrow.…
But if it can’t? What next? Someone help. Find out next week at Cabinet. How did Bexley end up here in two years?
Was there financial mismanagement and a poor Chief or is it simply Covid? The auditors said the housing crisis was due to a lack of oversight. The Finance Director agreed. He was totally unaware of a £2 million hole. But is ignorance a defence?

And another…

The front page of the papers are covered with housing overspend. Buried in the latest Council report is the housing overspend. Nearly £5 million, and about half not explained by Covid. So the Auditors and the Labour members should ask where is the housing improvement plan.
Is this basically to add over £2 million to the budget so that it catches up with what we spend? Had this been dealt with years ago, the budget gap would have been £4 million less, two for last year, two for this year. And 150 employees would not be losing their jobs, it would have been more like 50. Failure by Bexley managers has cost people their livelihoods and for us residents loss of services for our children, our parents and our community.

 

13 November (Part 1) - Not Every Journey Matters

There were a couple of items that came up at the Transport Users’ Sub-Committee meeting on Wednesday evening which may be worth mentioning before the formal report appears here. North Cray Road will remain closed in the northbound direction, close to the Ruxley roundabout, for another ten days, possibly a bit longer.

The sink hole that opened up there was a big one, big enough for two transit vans to have fallen into it. The surrounding area had to be surveyed with ground radar equipment before work could start to make sure it was stable enough for heavy ground moving machinery to be placed close by.

The other item is easy to predict, Southeastern are going to reduce train frequencies right across the board. So much for Social Distancing while travelling.

 

12 November (Part 2) - Bexley Council’s distasteful past

While the Government successfully curtails my freedom of movement the site upgrade can continue. Most photos are being re-provided at higher quality, comment that looks in retrospect to be a little too unkind is being removed and a very few blogs quietly lost.

Over and over again I am struck by just how dishonest Bexley Council was back in 2012 and earlier. Some reports which may have made sense to those who followed developments closely back then remain but are too complex for regurgitation now. Police protecting assailants when they discover that he is the friend of the investigating copper, parking fines so unjust that a Deputy Director sends the victim a cheque in payment. A bit too complicated to pore over all over again but some old blogs are much easier to understand.

In 2011 Bexley Council’s cupboard was so full of skeletons that my suspicion at the time was that the only way they could ensure none escaped was to say nothing about anything and answer no questions if at all possible. Many was the time that the Council refused to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling.

They had tried false answers to questions to Full Council and planted questions from supporters to waste the 15 minutes time allowed. They also tried not answering questions at all and filibustering or simply losing them.

They hired bouncers for Council meetings to intimidate the public in case 27 police officers was not sufficient and they rejected the advice of the Under Secretary of State at the Department of Communities and Local Government (Bob Neill, MP at that time) to open up meetings to “Citizen Journalists”.

And then they went for the big one. Change the Constitution pertaining to questions.

• To prohibit questions deemed to be in any way similar to another asked within the last six months.
• Residents whose questions are accepted to have their personal details, name and address etc. published in the Agenda and on the Council’s website.
• Questions relating to staffing levels and salaries not to be permitted.
• The Mayor to ban any question or questioner that at any time he or she has deemed disrespectful, the judgment being entirely the Mayor’s. (One had written to a resident at his home address for being “parsimonious” with his applause at an awards ceremony.)
• If the questioner fails to attend the meeting his/her question to be rejected. (Something subsequently ignored when the answer was favourable to the Council.
• If any question is accepted but rewarded with a non-answer or falsehood the questioner will not be allowed to raise a secondary question.
• Questions must be about policy and not procedural matters.

On 7th December 2012 the Mayor was Councillor Alan Downing. The following question was submitted to him…

Why do members of the public have to have their private addresses published in the agenda for full Council meetings when asking a question, rather than checked and verified as being correct, whereas councillors, many of whom do not show their private addresses in the register of members interests, do not have their addresses published?

He rejected the question and his reason - verbatim - was…

Your question will not appear on the agenda for the next Council meeting. This is because the Mayor does not consider it to be a policy matter and is not therefore permissible under the Council’s agreed protocol.

The policy of not including Councillor’s home addresses in their Register of Interests but insisting on publishing residents’ addresses was not a policy and could not be questioned. Let that sink in. It mattered not to the Council that the questioner might, for all they knew, be a lady taking refuge in a safe house. The policy disenfranchised her.

The Localism Act allows Councillors to withhold addresses from their Register of Interests if they can convince the Monitoring Officer that to do so would put their lives in danger. 15 such permissions had been given in the whole of London, eleven of them were in Bexley.

Eventually the Information Commissioner took an interest in Bexley’s malpractice and a dishonest Council backed down.

 

12 November (Part 1) - A promise amply met by your Conservative Government

 

11 November (Part 2) - Hungry kids. The truth was rather different

From 2011 through to about 2015 this blog existed because four elderly gents and one not so elderly gent put a lot of effort into probing Bexley’s secretive and frequently dishonest Council. FOIs and questions at Council meetings whenever Bexley Council couldn’t dream up a reason to reject them. A similar number of wrinklies watched from the comfort of their armchairs and fed me a constant supply of funny goings on.

In response to their activities Bexley Council stationed up to 27 police officers outside the Civic Offices when holding public meetings and reported me - whose job was to record the dishonesty others had noted - to the police for threatening violence and arson against them.

With the help of Teresa Pearce, my irreplaceable MP, I discovered that the metaphorical ‘threats’ were from another blog - not this one - an extract from which is shown here. It said “I think we need to descend on Councillor Teresa O’Neill with flaming torches and pitchforks, as it would seem that she and her scheming cohorts are impervious to reasoned argument”.

Click the image for a better view.

So dishonest was Bexley Council at the time that they reported me to what at the time they regarded as their military wing in Arnsberg Place and not the author of the blameless words of someone better versed in English Literature than the Council Leader. The quote comes from Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein.

Sad to say nearly half of those helpers are now dead and two no longer live in the borough. Bonkers is reduced to merely reporting what falls in to my hands. Investigative reporting is out of the window, it was never my forté.

However yesterday’s report on hungry children didn’t ring true. Labour Councillors not caring and Tories lashing the cash. Really? Some digging was required.

This is what I found.

Councillor Mabel Ogundayo (Thamesmead East) set up the Just Giving appeal assisted by several like minded helpers. Possibly six of them all told.

The £10,000 donation to food banks authorised by Cabinet Member David Leaf had nothing to do with free meals for needy children during the recent half term. It was signed off at the beginning of last March - pre-lockdown.

Mabel had to get the money to schools and hungry pupils in a hurry and the obvious source of assistance was Bexley Council which could easily get access to the names of poor parents either directly or via their school contacts.

Cabinet Member Leaf poked fun at Labour Leader Daniel Francis’s Tweet about Bexley Council being content to see children go hungry, ridiculed it even, claiming that it was the Conservative Council that ensured that all the children were well fed during half-term.

He said that Councillor Francis's Tweet was not true.

On the contrary I have found nothing to suggest David Leaf's statement was true, the boot appears to be well and truly on the other foot.

When Mabel asked the Council (by email if my researches are correct) for assistance with distributing the money she hoped to raise she was rebutted by none other than Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Councillor Philip Read. He did so on behalf of the Adults’ Services and Education departments too. Maybe he kept them in ignorance.

I am informed that Read failed to respond to any further plea to help distribute the money.

You may conclude that his initial response was an act of political malice which left Mabel in a tight spot and the borough’s children potentially hungry.

I cannot find any school that remembers getting any half-term offer from Bexley Council which is in line with what Cabinet Member Leaf implied.

Some schools definitely made their own arrangements as described by my teacher correspondent earlier this week.

Mabel Ogundayo and her team persuaded some schools to send out claim forms to families normally in receipt of free meals and parents’ consent was sought to share the details with Mabel and Co.

Because some schools don’t look at email during half-term Mabel also sought other confidential routes to parents. In total 19 schools cooperated fully and through her alternative routes she found a small number of children distributed across another 30 or so schools. All were well provided for.

 

11 November (Part 1) - It’s all gone pear-shaped

A year ago and right up to the time that our freedoms were first curtailed I was receiving messages - mostly but not always anonymously - from three boroughs saying broadly the same thing. If Bexley insisted on recruiting Finance staff with a track record of failure and then promoted them, Bexley would be on track for financial meltdown; and so it came to pass although now that Covid has reared its ugly head the link might be hard to prove. The best I can offer right now are the words of a Councillor whose career I would not dream of blighting. “I have to wonder if people can count.”

Yesterday the News Shopper came up with the following headline. Click it to read Lachlan Leeming’s report.
Yesterday I didn’t know where our Aussie friend had got those numbers from because I’d listened to the recent Audit Committee meeting and Full Council and didn’t hear anything about job losses although it wasn’t hard to take a guess after hearing how Bexley’s finances had been allowed to go down the pan.

The Council’s auditor said that with the way things have gone “you will have to make unplanned changes to your service provision.”

Next week’s Cabinet Agenda provided the the information I was looking for…

Job losses loom.

The direction of travel in Bexley is worrying and one of several reasons that make me want to go back to my country bumpkin status of many years ago. Messages sent to me suggest that I am not alone in being worried.

“Job losses are to be discussed at Cabinet. 150 full time staff may well affect more than 200 people as many work part-time.

The impact on services will be diabolical. Is it due to Covid? Seems not as the Council has received millions for its Covid losses and it is lobbying for more. It’s more likely linked to the malaise over the last few years as reserves have shrunk and the financial stewardship has caused the auditors to question financial resilience. And the debate over the housing losses rumbles on. The report online shows further pressures of over £2 million. déjà vu.”

For ten years, maybe more, Bexley Conservatives have been telling us how they save money by improving efficiency but that simply won’t wash any more. There is no way another round of cost savings won’t be detrimental to services. Can anyone point to services that are improved compared to ten years ago? Off the top of my head I cannot think of any other than a few obscure examples provided by profit making companies. Town centre wi-fi. 13 almost useless electric car chargers. Have I forgotten any?

It will be a long time before we see promises like this again.

Note: The email above has been shortened slightly but nothing has been added.

 

10 November - Where did all the money go? asks a Bexley school teacher

I tinkered with the web form code on Sunday evening; it is right at the extremities of my IT knowledge and I can too easily mess it up so it was a relief to see messages rolling in on Monday morning.

One of them was especially interesting in that it referred to the topical question of making sure that needy children do not go hungry. Last week’s Council meeting revealed that the issue is far from being as simple as Labour boroughs pay and Conservative ones don’t.

The new message came from a Bexley school teacher who was not unsupportive of Bexley Council's approach. Like most people he welcomes the Government’s provision of free school meals but he is critical of Bexley Labour’s begging bowl.

“The tactics they are using is very misleading”

“We put plans in place to support kids ages ago and no one contacted my school to offer support but Bexley Labour has been asking people to give money.”

“Did they contact Bexley Council or schools before setting up their fundraising page to see whether we needed the money?”

And the answer in his case appears to be “No”. “What happened to the money?”, he asks.

He is not happy with the implication that Bexley Labour’s request for donations was an official London Borough of Bexley appeal, the bottom of the page implies that it is fully authorised by them.

What Councillor Mabel Ogundayo did along with her five enthusiastic supporters was undoubtedly a good thing and £9,317 - the current total - is commendable and impressive by any standard.

Gaining political advantage or masquerading as Bexley Council itself would not have entered Mabel’s head. Nevertheless the teacher raises a number of good questions and provides evidence that not all school teachers are rabid Socialists. Maybe Cabinet Member David Leaf had some justification for returning to his favoured ranting mode. If so there are two preconceptions I must watch out for in future.

Note: Enquiries reveal that every Bexley School was approached by the Labour Group.

 

9 November (Part 2) - The Leader on Covid and Cabinet Member Leaf on child hunger

I am no doubt weird in some way but I nearly always find Councillor Teresa O’Neill’s report interesting, maybe not as "fantastic" as she often claims it to be but certainly worth a listen. She began last Wednesday’s report with Covid19, we would expect nothing else. Apart from a brief reference to the Peabody developments in Thamesmead she commented on no other subject.

The Leader thanked her team for “what they have been doing in extremely difficult circumstances”. After the initial very quick shutdown and ”changing how services were delivered we then started restoring and a resumption for what we thought was a new normal for some time. Many of the team had to think on their feet to ensure vital services continued”.

“I am particularly proud of the fact we did not close our parks or cemeteries during the initial phase but it sometimes proved very challenging especially with the amount of litter being left.”

“Tests were run locally by Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust and after months of persistence there is now a proper phone waiting system for appointments. We understand it will be updated to include a proper web based booking system in the very near future.”

“After lobbying we have our own testing unit in Bursted Woods. We may also be getting another in the [disused] Felixstowe Road car park.”

“Nobody could image the impact [of Covid19] when we set our budget in March. Covid 19 has hit us as it has hit every other Council. Our challenges have mainly been around lost income, extra costs and new responsibilities.”

“Government has come up with extra money but is has not covered all of the impact so far. Greenwich got more than twice the public health grant than what we got. £6·2 million against £2·8”. Overall the totals were about £26·2 million and £17·5. Bexley has the worst Public Heath Grant Formula in London.

Cosying up to Boris is not reaping dividends.

“The auditor is nervous.”

Questions did not amount to much but Cabinet Member Leaf said that “earlier this year” the Council had donated £10,000 to the Bexley Foodbank “and this week would make a further donation”. Despite that he said that the Labour Leader had Tweeted just a couple of days later that “This Council is happy for children to go hungry”.

Councillor Leaf went on to say that the message put out by Bexley Labour that Greenwich is feeding children but Bexley is not was not true. Greenwich’s scheme (The Healthier Greenwich Strategy) had been in place since 2018 funded in part by Charlton Athletic.

“It provided about a thousand meals last week but there are 9,000 children in Greenwich eligible for free school meals and this scheme does not cover all of them and did not provide 45,000 meals during [the five days of] half term. Different boroughs do different things. Some gave vouchers, some donated to food banks and some stood by until contacted by those in need.”

“Those in need should get in contact with us. In three months the Labour Leader has not held me to account about it, instead Labour is trigger happy in misleading the public on Social Media and whipping up anger and hatred.”

“Some people may have believed his falsehoods and as a result they may not have sought help, that makes me angry and furious. They are nasty, callous and cruel”.

The Mayor indicated that Councillor Leaf was, if you will excuse the pun, labouring the point somewhat.

 

9 November (Part 1) - Lurgy Logic. Is there any?

Dilemmas such as this will have been repeated across the country but I can’t quite get my head around the logic of it all.

Last Monday my granddaughter’s best friend did not show up at school. The reason was that her father had tested positive for Covid19 the previous day and was exhibiting the classic symptoms. My granddaughter had seen him at the school gate the previous Friday, so presumably had many other children. It seems odd to me that someone who must have suspected he was unwell should be out and about. Shades of Margaret Ferrier MP perhaps?

That evening (Monday) my granddaughter was complaining of a headache and a slightly sore throat. Next morning my son informed her school and the head suggested getting a Covid test and quarantine. This was by agreement and not by decree of an over enthusiast school head.

The test facility asked if there was a high temperature. There was not so a fib was required to get the ten year old across the threshold. She had the test on Wednesday morning and by late afternoon - Sod’s Law - she had a temperature. Meanwhile my daughter-in-law who runs her own business had to close it down and suffer the lack of income. My son works from home even in normal times so that was not a problem.

By next morning (Thursday) the temperature had gone and my granddaughter was pretty much back to normal but the rules were that no one could go out whilst awaiting a test result; not even for shopping or to walk the dog on pain of a £10,000 fine.

I am not sure that is correct procedure, there had after all been no Track and Trace, and except that there had been a precautionary test the health of all three of them was normal by Thursday morning. But it was the advice given locally and Bozo's rules have never been wholly sensible.

Meanwhile the school friend’s father had not infected either his wife or his two daughters. My son and his wife continued to have no ill effects.

The test result limped home on Sunday evening. It was negative. The renewed advice was that both my son and his wife could leave the house but my granddaughter is not allowed out until next week.

All because two parents exercised caution in order to protect a school from a possible infection. In return the state was prepared to fine them heavily, potentially starve them for two weeks and cripple their ability to earn a crust.

Assuming the advice given is correct it is a huge disincentive to take childhood sniffles seriously.

The school is very relieved to see a negative result because had things been otherwise they would have had to send the whole year group home and thanks to the slow testing, a whole week after an infected child had run amongst them.

The reason given for the parents being allowed out now but the child remaining in enforced quarantine is that the negative test result might be wrong - but if th etest is wrong why are the parents allowed out?

If the tests are that unreliable one may as well guess the result. I had guessed correctly. The NHS failed to do any better.

 

8 November (Part 2) - Remembrance Sunday

Some pictures my grandfather brought back from France following WWI. He fought for our freedoms from 1913 to 1919 as a regular soldier.

Granddad’s War.

Can someone please remind me why the police are so often called pigs?

More police violence risking a serious head injury.

Provoked? Possibly. But is that an excuse in a trained professional outfit?

 

8 November (Part 1) - Who’s bored?

How do you fill a slightly damp lockdown Sunday?

In my case I was testing some Beta firmware for my car charger after discovering a nasty bug in it about six weeks ago. The company managed to recreate it but it has proved difficult to fix and when the sun gave way to cloud by lunchtime today it put paid to that activity.

I am amazed at how much data can be collected about my power usage from a remote laboratory in Lincolnshire and I haven’t even got a Smart Meter.

With the sun gone it was back to restoring old blogs which probably interests no one. I am getting through 2012 now, checking everything and improving the photo quality when the source is still available to me. Late this afternoon the software reported only one broken internal link where I had forgotten something and that is now fixed.

External links are another matter, most are outdated and they will just have to be left like it.

The exception appears to be Newspapers where references to the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph are still available to view. Ditto the News Shopper which back in 2012 looked something like a proper newspaper. But there is one glaring exception.

In June 2012 a Bexley Councillor was arrested for posting a whole series of obscenities on his blog about four residents who he had taken a dislike to. The source address was traced by the police.

The News Shopper was first with the news and later first to name him while his victims were still being kept in the dark by the police whose priority was to protect the Councillor.

All but one of those reports linked from Bonkers has gone missing. All the archived copies of the relevant ‘paper’ issues are missing too but they are not the only ones to have gone AWOL.

Can it be a coincidence? Or has the News Shopper been got at by a Council which at the time was dishonest beyond most people’s imagination?

Bonkers is undergoing much more than a link check; everything is being brought up to current standards so that most pictures will expand when clicked (as more recent ones do) and old collections of pictures are presented in the format which became standard five years ago.

Some have been collected together and Indexed.

For the few readers who still occasionally submit photographs, the tiny ones which used to be 233 x 155 pixels are now 1000 x 666 (*) or 666 x 666 (*) for the square ones. This allows them to expand with much less loss of quality on big screens. The full width images are 2000 pixels across.

The height (*) is no longer a consideration except that adjacent pictures should all be the same height or the page will look messy.

I originally hoped that all the old blogs would be restored by the New Year but I no longer think that target is achievable.

 

7 November - The epitome of oppression

Several ladies, they have all been ladies, have referred me to a particular anti-lockdown website over the past week or so and if it is of interest to some readers it may interest others too.

The story on the linked page reports that every MP has been served with a notice of intended prosecution for crimes against the British people by someone who as far as I can see, does not give his name.

Much as I would like to see some MPs behind bars, experience has shown that it is hopeless to expect success when arguing against the Establishment. They will swear that black is white if necessary.

Beyond that Judges are part of the Establishment and some are undoubtedly bent - well a couple I have come across were - and many are incompetent. I’ve seen that at first hand too.

We have somehow contrived a form of Government which only works if those within it are competent, democratic and benign.

If one of those qualities is missing we might be in trouble, when all three are missing as is the case now, we are in very big trouble.

Nothing illustrates the malign power of Government more than the edict handed down without a care for democracy by the President of Erith & Thamesmead Conservative Association, a club of which I am ashamed to say I was once a Member.

She and her incompetent and frequently lying colleagues will not allow dissent. A dangerous step for this bunch of oppressors which one must hope will not end well for them.

Err… back to improving the quality of photos in old blogs now. Tedious but probably safer!

Note: Click image for source website.

 

6 November - Questionable decisions and Questionable questions

I planned to begin today’s report by wondering how long it would be before the Tory Twitter Twins were crowing about their Thames Crossing Motion and ridiculing Labour’s strange position, but I was beaten to it.

I can still not really get my mind around it. We have Councillor Bacon (Conservative, Longlands) who just a few years ago stood atop Knee Hill with a placard campaigning against a Thames Crossing now putting forward a Motion to Sadiq Khan pleading for one or two crossings to be built. Historically the Conservatives’ record is mainly one of opposing anything other than a small ferry and Labour’s position has been absolutely 100% in favour of road crossings.

It still was on Wednesday evening but in full on toys out of the pram mode they voted against the bridge. And for what reason?

Because they wanted a DLR extension to be included thereby mixing something that has already been consulted upon and approved but put on hold, with a vague promise. A mixed message like that would court rejection while a more focused one might just possibly be given consideration. Voting against the simpler Motion defied all logic.

The other strange thing is that here we have a @bexleynews Tweet which is actually truthful. How long can that possibly last?

There was more on the Full Council Agenda than river crossings, it started as is usual with Questions.

One member of the public asked two questions. “Why does the Council insist on single sentence questions contrary to its own Constitution?” and why is it illegal to walk an unleashed dog in a park but the same owner with the same dog can walk it unleashed along a road?”

The webcast audio suggested that the resident was supposed to participate in the Zoom call by presenting himself at the Civic Offices but he didn’t show up. One day later under full lockdown conditions it would probably have been illegal to do so anyway. How will that small element of democracy be maintained if Bozo continues to accept false statistics without question?

The first Councillor question came from Mabel Ogundayo (Labour, Thamesmead East). She asked what Cabinet Member John Fuller had done about protecting free travel for under 18s.

He said that along with the Leader, Council officers and London Councils he had joined forces to lobby TfL and the Government continuously.

Councillor Wendy Perfect (Labour, Northumberland Heath) asked Cabinet Member Philip Read if he thought that the Children’s Centre consultation process was flawed. You will not be surprised to know that he did not. A single word answer, “No”. What else did she expect?

Councillor Diment (Conservative, Sidcup) asked for an update on the situation regarding the Annual Corporate Parenting Week. Not a question and it should have been rejected by the Mayor but it is his chosen Charity. The question begged a favourable answer from Councillor Read. Councillor Diment is Chairman of the Corporate Parenting Board so it is not hard to guess at the three way incestuous relationship that allowed the question. The update was too lengthy to summarise here.

Councillor Linda Bailey (Conservative, Crook Log) had a non-question too. She asked for an update on the newly opened Old Farm Park playground and wildlife area. Cabinet Member Peter Craske said he was “very happy”. There will be a commemorative garden to remember the Bexley residents lost to Covid 19.

Councillor Stefano Borella had another non-question. He asked for an update on library services. Cabinet Member Craske said that 94% of library users rated the service as good. New libraries are coming for Thamesmead and Sidcup “thanks to the 2014 Library Strategy which Labour opposed”. Choosing his words carefully Councillor Craske added that “nowhere in the [current] document are there any plans to close a library.”

Councillor Nicola Taylor (Labour, Erith) knew what a question was. “Does the Cabinet Member agree that the lack of affordable housing led to the Housing Overspend in 2019/20?”. Cabinet Member Alex Sawyer said that “the short answer is no, but it contributed to it”.

He thought we should be “building more homes in Bexley and across the country. It is a stain on the character of this country that we cannot build enough homes. Undoubtedly we need to do more.”

At least the questions session ended with a straight forward answer so be grateful that the half hour was not entirely wasted

What Gareth said in 2013. Click image for source page.
What residents were saying back then.

 

5 November (Part 2) - The big Tory U-turn confirmed. Repentance completed

Note: For ease of reading, all the small images will expand when clicked.

There were several subjects worthy of debate at last night’s Full Council meeting but I am going to jump straight to Motions, one of which was about the lunacy of South East London being denied easy access to North East London by a succession of frequently brainless local Councillors and point scoring Mayors.

Skipping quickly and somewhat superficially through fairly recent history: in the middle 1990s there was a proposal to build a motorway style Thames bridge and a Southern access road which would burrow under Wickham Lane in Plumstead on its way to the A2. It was not popular among the Greenies and Lefties and the East London River Crossing was eventually thrown out by a Government inspector if I remember correctly.

The first modern Mayor of London was Labour’s Ken Livingstone who came up with a much more modest plan which had Bozo not been elected to be Mayor in 2010 would have been up and running in 2014.

Along came Bexley’s very own Bozo and with her new friend at the GLA ensured Bexley’s continued isolation. Ken’s little bridge was cancelled by his successor who was more interested in Garden Bridges in Central London.

By 2014 Bexley Conservatives were beginning to wake up to what anyone with a brain cell had seen long before; if the borough was to grow it needed transport infrastructure to attract businesses which could finance its ambitions. Hence the sudden interest in Crossrail and river crossings. Little Bozo persuaded Big Bozo to give Bexley two little river crossings, a very good idea because it would distribute cross river traffic across a wider area of Bexley’s poor road systems.

And then Khan’t came along and either because he wasn’t going to back anything proposed by Big Bozo or because he already knew that his plans would likely place TfL’s finances in jeopardy, he cancelled Big Bozo’s bright idea.

Khan’t has done nothing for Bexley since he cancelled the bridge other than making mainly vague promises about a DLR extension.

Although Councillor Gareth Bacon, GLA member and MP for Orpington was dead set against any river crossing in Bexley back in 2013, last night he put forward a Motion which was all for it

Motion presented to Council on 4th November 2020. A very dfferent Councillor Bacon from the one who stood at the top of Knee hill to campaign against a river crossing.

A slow coming enlightenment. Congratulations to the new MP who unfortunately was unable to partake in proceedings at the outset of last night’s meeting but was there in time for the vote. Councillor Linda Bailey spoke at length while proposing the Motion on his behalf.

Apparently the two crossings which Sadiq Khan’t cancelled without notice or consultation would have reduced road congestion by relieving pressure on the A2 to and from Blackwall Tunnel. Something that Bexley Council failed to recognise when campaigning against Socialist bridges.

Councillor Richard Diment (Conservative, Sidcup) whose election in 2018 may well have doubled the number of brain cells available to the Conservatives seconded the Motion. He said that growth was essential to sustain the future for the residents of Bexley. “Unless people and goods can move freely into and out of Bexley the full vision of our growth strategy will be frustrated. Bexley has many deficiencies in its transport infrastructure. No Underground, no light railway, our roads and railways are radial and links are very poor.” And he went on in similar vein for several minutes repeating my own long held views.

“Across the river may look a short distance but making that journey by road involves lengthy detours with the added frustration of lengthy queues. They often become a problem on the roads in Bexley.” He covered the numerous difficulties of using public transport for the same journey forgetting to add that commerce does not generally travel on local rail services.

In Richard Diment’s view it was a mistake not to have gone ahead with the East London crossing proposed 30 years ago and cancelled by a Conservative government. In retrospect it can be seen that it would have solved a lot of problems.

“The Silvertown Tunnel is too far west to help Bexley’s growth plans. TfL is 20 years old and it has failed to address the problems of crossing the river in East London. It is scandalous.”

As always when it comes to river crossings the two parties were not going to agree absolutely and Labour put forward an amendment to the Motion.

Councillor Stefano Borella - why does the Mayor insist on calling him Borello? - said that the Labour Group had always supported river crossings east of Tower Bridge but went on to qualify that by saying they prioritised public transport.

Presumably Councillor Borella has not been called out in the middle of the night to family emergencies north of the river or simply wished to stay late - in pre-lockdown days - with relations until past midnight.

We heard the expected enthusiasm for buses and bikes and also a fully justifiable account of the Conservatives’ abysmal record on this subject.

“In July 2002 Councillors Bacon and O’Neill voted in favour of the Thames Gateway Bridge and in 2004 recognised its benefits but a Motion in April 2010 put forward by (former) Councillor Tandy thanked Mayor Johnson for cancelling the bridge which in turn lost the £300 million of available funding. In 2013 the then Mayor reopened consultations which led to the famous picture of Councillors Bacon and O’Neill at the top of Knee Hill.

“Councillor Bacon as GLA member attacked the Mayor’s crossing policy at Mayor’s question time. In 2013 the Council’s policy was a ferry crossing at Gallion’s Reach but by 2015 they wanted a traffic bridge from Belvedere to Rainham with no modelling work.” (See also blue image above for confirmation of the preference for a ferry service.)

“An incoherent picture which has damaged the prospect of crossings being built a lot sooner.” A statement of the obvious perhaps but a salutary reminder of Conservative incompetence in Bexley.

Councillor Sally Hinkley (Labour, Belvedere) seconded the Motion and reminded us that Councillor Bacon had said in 2013 at a Council meeting that a river crossing would be “disastrous”.

Councillor Dave Putson (Labour, Belvedere) said that what was needed was more public transport, not roads.

Councillor John Davey (Conservative, West Heath) said he would oppose the amendment “because it puts priority of the DLR over the river crossing. We have always said that we want the DLR coming into Bexley, nobody has said we don’t want this, but my concern is that it puts it as priority over a local road crossing and I think that road crossings are really important. The Labour Party has always been anti-car and in Bexley we definitely need it. Do we trust him [the Mayor] to implement a new DLR much as I would like it?”

Cabinet Member David Leaf shared those concerns with a reference to the Crossrail fiasco and said the crossing was supported by up to 88% of local residents - which is something Bexley Council used to deny. “It is absolutely crucial that we focus on lobbying TfL for river crossings.”

Letter to News Shopper. Every bridge consultation in Bexley had come out in its favour. In 2013 almost everything that Councillor Craske said was designed to conceal the truth.

Councillor Bailey said she would not support the amendment because the amendment “takes away from the original Motion” by introducing another subject “as it is primarily for road crossings to stop congestion in places”.

The Labour Amendment was defeated exactly as you would expect.
Naturally this provoked a Twitter argument later in the day. I think Councillor Borella must have misheard Councillor Davey over a poor Zoom call.

Deputy Leader Louie French summed up and repeated much of the message already heard, that infrastructure growth is essential and in passing had some good news to announce. Bexley Council has renounced Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. “Some modelling suggests that South East London would become a high polluting car park and Bexley would be at a standstill.”

Councillor Bacon’s Motion passed. How could any sensible Labour Councillor vote against it? But they all did. Pure party prejudice. Opposition for opposition’s sake.

Note: An Index to Thames Crossing related features is being prepared.

 

5 November (Part 1) - Lockdown Lunacy

There was a Full Council meeting last night which sounded quite interesting when I cocked an ear to the webcast last night. It is going to save me from idle space filling here while nothing much is going on.

One of the subjects under discussion was the Thames Crossing, a political football throughout the time I have lived in Bexley. Broadly speaking pushed by Labour and killed off by Council Leader Teresa O’Neill and her various cohorts and friends in high places, but in reality rather more nuanced than that.

There are plenty of reports on the too-ing and fro-ing over eleven years’ worth of blogs which I personally find difficult to locate when the need arises so I will pass Day 1 of lockdown with creating an Index of relevant things. It will be work in progress for a while and some of the Indexed blogs have not yet been subject to the site updating which has been going on behind the scenes. Follow links from Indexed blogs with care!

The UK news today appears to be dominated by a care home which has imprisoned a 97 years old lady. Bozo’s lockdown is creating strange situations everywhere.

I have a second cousin, we share a maternal great grandmother; does that make her a second cousin? She is a bit older than me and has always been what my mother described as ‘a sickly child’.

She was life and soul of my 70th birthday party, some would say an embarrassment, but in recent years her failing health has dominated her family’s life. She requires dialysis three times a week, she had a stroke earlier this year and is confined to a wheelchair. Her husband who is just short of his 80th birthday is barely coping and was persuaded that he needs a rest and his wife agreed that she should spend two weeks in a Care Home starting today.

When they arrived this morning they were told that my cousin must spend the whole of her expensive two weeks there in solitary confinement thanks to Covid regulations, so back home she has gone.

Fortunately the local police did not handcuff and arrest anyone on the instructions of a Stalinist Social Worker.

 

4 November - Conservative Women speak sense

Now that we know that on their own admission, Bozo Johnson’s advisers are on a mission to frighten the gullible with figures that they know are wrong and the Government hasn’t worked out what the impact of their countrywide lockdown will be, it is reassuring to know that some Conservatives are still very aware of what the impact of their madness will be.

This open letter on the Conservative women website is well worth a read.

For an attack on Freedom and Democracy itself. Guilty!

 

3 November - Maintenance Day

Bonkers is undergoing maintenance today. There may be some cosmetic disturbances but it should remain operational.

Note 19:00 : The layout problem has been fixed and the database that regulates nearly 100,000 page links which had become corrupted has been rebuilt.

 

2 November - The Party is over

I suppose I should feel sad that Conservatism is in terminal decine but in reality I am not because there has been plenty of time to get used to the idea. True Conservatism was lost when the Heir to Blair, Hug a Hoodie Cameron took charge ten years ago.

I thought May was bad but treachery has been replaced by total incompetence - and lying about statistics. There is nowhere for the right leaning to go any more, Kneel Starmer is an opportunist prat and a failed former Director of Public Prosecutions and so far as I can see, most of his MPs are poor. Just look at the talent lined up on Starmer’s front bench. One issue politicians some with very foul mouths.

Maybe we are due for A Great Reset after all.

 

1 November - Chrome Crackers

It’s the first of the month, the one day on which the website demands an entry and I am away so it is not really practical to do anything much.

How about this?

The Android version of Chrome seems to have reintroduced the bug that distorts the Bonkers banner. Worse than before too. Last time they did it a refresh would fix it, this time it won’t.

The Windows version remains OK.

Last time Google introduced this bug they took about two years to fix it.

P.S. It now seems very likely that the mobile version of Chrome was reacting more badly than the Desktop version to a code error fixed on 3rd November.