21 March - Beyond contempt. Beyond the rules
Every now and again Bexley Council issues a reminder that it is fundamentally dishonest.
On Thursday their Code of Conduct Committee will meet for the first time in a
year, the main task being to appoint an Independent Person. Supposedly an
independent member of the community to assist the Committee to reach decisions.
It helps enormously if you are a Conservative, and preferably from a politically active family.
However the Agenda reveals that there were four new complaints against
Councillors last year and as is usually the case every single one of them was dismissed.
The first on the 2021 list below is mine. The Code of Conduct says that social
media blocking is not allowed unless the levels of abuse are exceptional.
Councillor Philip Read Twitter blocked me in July 2013, on the 15th,
the
day I announced I had opened an account.
Obviously there had been no exchange between us although Read soon got busy
streaming abuse in my direction. When Teresa Oְ’Neill reluctantly joined Twitter
she opened with Bonkers on the block list. Obviously no comment from me again so
both blocks were a blatant offence against Bexley Council’s own rules.
But Conservative Councillors are beyond criticism and to be fair it is more than
likely that the complaint never got to the Committee but flung out by the
Monitoring Officer of the day, someone not renowned for his impartiality.
Interestingly, maybe, this is the first time I have seen the result of my
complaint. I was told that the response was so secret that I could only read it
if I gave my email address to a private security company with which I had no
relationship. I refused to do so and was refused a straight answer to my
complaint.
When you vote in May please remember that certain Bexley Tories are dishonest,
maybe even corrupt, and probably always will be.
Note: I was sent
this link about Cressida Dick anonymously and passed it on to Alastair Morgan who
was grateful because he had not seen it. He told me that tomorrow the Metropolitan
Police are due to publish their response on being labelled ‘Institutionally
Corrupt’ by a Home Office sponsored inquiry panel. They have already refuted
that finding so tomorrow’s is sure to be a whitewash.
Alastair was promised an embargoed advance copy so that he can be prepared for
press enquiries. It was not forthcoming.