3 February - Is history about to repeat itself?
The following comment must be prefixed with the usual health warning about
broken links. It will refer back to events which fall within the (currently) six
and a half year wide blog black hole. A gap which came about following an
injudicious global rename a year ago doing considerable damage to the site
structure which went unnoticed until the error log overflowed and killed it.
To support what follows a small number of three and four year old pages have
been restored but they may contain link errors. probably best not to go beyond
reading the text. So what is this all about?
It arises following yesterday’s report on
the malicious complaint against
Councillor Danny Hackett. A reader asked why it was handled by a Council Officer
and not Councillors while I noticed that the HR Manager was no longer calling himself the HR Manager
and Interim Monitoring Officer.
The first question was easy to answer. It is not reasonable to go to the trouble and
expense of convening the Code of Conduct Committee for every trivial,
vindictive, mischievous, spiteful or utterly ridiculous complaint every time the
irrationally obsessed runs amok with a bottle of green ink. The Labour inspired complaint met pretty well all of
those criteria so it was metaphorically binned.
My
own question is more complicated. When I searched the web at the weekend
because of the Covid test centre revelations Bexley’s website confirmed my view
that Mr. Hollier was the Interim Monitoring Officer. It also said his title had changed
from Head of HR to Deputy Director Corporate Services and HR was in the hands of
an underling. At a time of job cuts and pay freezes Council management requires promotions
to ensure ends meet. The title change didn’t warrant a mention here, Nick Hollier was still responsible for HR but perhaps not so directly as before.
The recent complaint against Danny Hackett revealed that contrary to what is
still on Bexley’s website today, Nick Hollier is no longer Interim Monitoring Officer.
If there is an appeal it will go up a level to the Monitoring Officer.
It is probably necessary to explain the history of Monitoring Officers in Bexley.
The first I remember was a Ms. Hogan who became embroiled in Bexley
Council’s decision not to prosecute their former Leader for dipping his hands
into the till. Whether she left because she was too honest for Bexley
or something else I have no idea but there were reports that she
gave up on being a solicitor at around the same time.
If you trawl through those links to even older blogs you will see that Bexley
Council refused to disclose if there had been a pay off even after the
Information Commissioner instructed them to do so. You will also see that a Mr. Akin
Alabi was appointed Monitoring Officer in Ms. Hogan’s place.
Mr. Alabi was obstructive at times but it will be part of his job to protect
Bexley Council from prying eyes so that is to be expected.
Several years went by before my legal contact John Watson noticed that
Mr. Alabi’s
name wasn’t showing up on the Law Society’s members’ list and an FOI
revealed that being either a solicitor or a barrister was
a
requirement of his job in Bexley. A written enquiry to both the Law Society
and the Bar Council for confirmation of registration drew a blank on both.
It was not impossible that Bexley Council had accepted an overseas qualification but
they
refused an FOI on the subject. the
decision was challenged and rejected. The case went to the Information Commissioner.
It is here that the true colours of Bexley Council in 2016 came to the fore.
Instead of being truthful and either saying that Mr. Alabi had the qualifications
or he had not and they didn’t care, they banned John Watson from contacting the
Council for six months because he was causing “distress and embarrassment”.
In 2016 there were six residents monitoring Bexley Council’s activities and
one of them managed all their FOIs. Michael Barnbrook was the FOI man and by that time had
submitted just over one hundred on various subjects over about eight years.
The Information Commissioner rejected Mick Barnbrook’s complaint about the FOI which Bexley Council
had refused to answer on the grounds
he was vexatious. It was his third FOI each
asking about very different aspects of the same subject which means that in law he was not vexatious.
To be vexatious one must be repetitive.
The ICO decision was taken
under the auspices of their Group Manager who doubled
up as Leader of Stockport Council. How incestuous can these quangos get?
Mick sent a fat file to the ICO to make his case; they told him they were not
going to answer because he was a racist intent on making trouble for a black
man which Mr. Alabi is. The ICO reinforced their decision by saying that Bexley Council had submitted a confidential file on Mick and
the rascism allegations could only have come from them.
For
the record Mick Barnbrook was a member of Bexley Council for Racial Equality
while a serving police officer and a member of the Greenwich equivalent when
working for that Council following retirement. As a police Inspector he was
Sports Mentor to the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence and
gave evidence
in support of the Lawrence family at the Public Enquiry.
As if that was not enough Mick stepped in to support a black police officer who
was subject to racial abuse from senior officers and was able to save his job at a disciplinary hearing.
But it suited Bexley Council to label Mick a racist because of his one time membership of the BNP.
Whilst Bexley Council refused to talk about the Alabi situation as befits a
Council that thrived on opaqueness and dishonesty they did make changes. Mr. Alabi
no longer showed up at Council meetings as Monitoring Officer and
his
title disappeared from official documents.
A couple of months later
a
replacement Monitoring Officer appeared on the scene, one Terry Osborne but
she
didn’t last long. HR manager Nick Hollier took her place and appeared uneventfully at Council meetings.
And so it continued or so I thought; but wrongly. The Danny Hackett complaint
was thrown out by the one time HR Manager now Deputy Director of Corporate
Services. No mention of Monitoring Officer.
Further enquiries revealed that Mr. Alabi has been reappointed to the Monitoring
Officer job. He will either have acquired the requisite qualifications or Bexley
Council has dropped their requirement of legal qualifications. Bexley Council
can appoint whoever they like so there cannot be any law breaking as such but
the question will be have they learned the lessons of the past and now realise
that lying and covering up is not a sensible course?
As yet Mr. Alabi is not showing on the Law Society’s list but he may have requested the
omission and it could, who knows, be time to offer congratulations.
My main concern is that my conclusion over the past couple of years that Bexley Council has cleaned up
its act is mistaken. What if it is only a case of no one has been looking beneath the requisite stones?
This blog is far too long already but in for a penny etc.
I was once accused of racism. While at BT I became suspicious that International telephone calls were not
finding their way on to bills. Long story short, I connected a computer to the
telephone network and cross referenced the billing system. The machine gradually worked out where the leak was
and pinpointed the sources of the naughtiness.
Out of 103 people implicated 102 were not native British. For programming a colour blind computer
which took more than a year to come up with its answer which was totally
unpredictable and during which time I had moved on to another job, I was labelled a racist.
So being labelled a coward by an anonymous Tweeter when I do not hide my identity is not really a big deal.
