11 April (Part 2) - From Russia with Love
Let’s face it, Bonkers has gone downhill since Bexley Council said Mick
Barnbrook was a racist, banned him from making Freedom of Information Requests -
there was a very direct correlation between the two - and he bought a bungalow
on the Kent coast. (No connection.)
Right now I am the only member of the old gang who is on the right side of 80
- just - and I am always on the look out for someone who might just possibly become the
new thorn in the side of a dishonest Council.
A possibility might be Dimitri Shvorob without whom BiB would not have been able
to report in such detail on the Conservatives’ failure to meet their 2018
manifesto promises. His FOIs on trees, new green spaces, wi-fi,
broadband and lavish untendered parties have been invaluable.
Just as Mick used to do he shows up at Council meetings to ask questions, proper
ones that is, not as faux-Tories asking Cabinet Members questions designed
to provide them with bragging rights.
When Dimitri asks
his questions next Wednesday - assuming he is not filibustered out of
existence of course - he wants everyone to know that
he is an election
candidate looking for votes in Sidcup.
The Falconwood Tory wannabe who I have always found to be a decent young
fellow has to curry favour with Councillor Craske by asking a
question to which everyone already knows the answer. Dimitri wrote to Frazer
Brooks to make sure he was already aware of the facts. Maybe I should let
you see what Dimitri wrote…
Dear Frazer,
I understand that you submitted a “public question” for the April 13 council
meeting, asking Cllr Craske, Cabinet Member for Places, whether his 2018 pledge to plant
1,000 street trees by the end of 2020 was fulfilled.
I admit it is a bit odd to see three current Conservative candidates, including yourself, once
again take the podium intended for members of the public, not for politicians. A critic could
call you a supporting actor in an unbecoming spectacle where you and your two peers
pretend to be members of the public to lob softball questions at your seniors, ready with a
preening speech. You abuse the platform and “crowd out” genuine questions.
Hardly a good look for an aspiring people’s representative.
The alternative hypothesis I prefer is that you really have not been able to get this
information from Cllr Craske in any other way. I have had Cabinet Members, and Council
Leader herself, ignore my own questions, so you three having the same experience would not be at all surprising.
Fortunately, I have this information, coming from the council after a FOI
request, and can answer your question even better than Cllr Craske himself.
The question was: “In 2018, the Cabinet Member for Places pledged to plant 1,000 new
street trees by the end of 2020 - can you confirm whether you met that pledge or not?”
Unless I missed a pledge made personally by Cllr Craske, I believe you are referring to a
pledge by the 2018 Bexley Conservatives election campaign. I should say that it was, ahem,
phrased, as a wish rather than a pledge - “we want to see … “ - and it did not explicitly point
to the end of 2020, but said “by 2020”. (I actually thought it meant the beginning of 2020).
Getting even more pedantic, the wish/pledge talked about “new” trees, not “planted” trees.
What’s the difference? Here in Sidcup, on Hadlow Road, 5 trees were planted, but only 4
new trees remain, one of them badly leaning and likely needing replacement;
it might be 3 in a short while. The difference is 20-40%. However, let’s brush this aside and focus on planted trees.
Only financial-year totals are available - Bexley’s financial year is April-to-March - so If you
want to “stop the clock” on December 31, 2020, you need to adjust a full-year number for a
part-year. You also want to decide when you want to “start the clock”. I think that May 2018,
the beginning of the 2018 council term, is the right choice - but you may disagree. Finally,
you want to decide if you want to count trees planted in Bexley, but at someone else’s
expense. Personally, I think it would be odd for the council to claim someone else’s credit,
but your opinion may differ.
With these choices made, let’s get a calculator and look at the numbers, i.e. financial-year
totals of trees planted. (The original files are available on request).
2017-18: 237
2018-19: 385
2019-20: 186
2020-21: 149
In addition, there are two special cases where even the financial year is
not known exactly: in 2019-21 - i.e. over two financial years - 57 trees were planted in
Falconwood, and 129 trees were planted around the new Crossrail station in Abbey Wood. It is not
clear if the Abbey Wood trees were paid for by Bexley or by Crossrail.
If you add all the numbers above, you get 1,143. But this includes the 237 trees planted
between April 2017 and March 2018, before Bexley Conservatives were making their wish.
Subtracting them takes you down to 906. So there’s your answer. 1,000 trees were not planted.
(How many trees were planted? That’s where all the choices above come in.
You definitely need to subtract a portion of the 2020/21 total, to remove January-March
2021. If you believe that “by 2020” meant “by the beginning of 2020”, the 2020/21 total
has to go in its entirety, and a large chunk of the 2019-21 numbers as well. And then there
are the 129 Crossrail trees. Depending on these choices, you will end up somewhere
between 600 and 850).
I hope this was helpful. If you feel that I answered your question, perhaps you can withdraw
it so that mine, slotted next in the April 13 agenda, has a better chance of being answered?
(Wouldn’t you like to know if a council-tax rebate may be coming, to compensate us for the
Summer of Stink? How much did Bexley claw back from Serco for the weeks without
service?) If not, I too will look forward to the response of Cabinet Member Craske.
Best regards,
Dimitri