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News and Comment September 2022

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20 September - History repeating itself

Whether it be in business or in national politics or here in Bexley it is always the cover up that causes the damage.

When Councillor Cheryl Bacon excluded every member of the public from a meeting because she objected to what just one was planning to do she committed an offence and next day a Director issued guidance to ensure the same mistake wouldn’t happen again.

The correct response would have been to go one step further and issue an apology to affected members of the public. It is not as though there was anything practical that the public could have done about their exclusion but they took a different course. The Council manufactured a lie to justify the bad advice issued to Councillor Bacon. There was a Press Release about a riot in the Council Chamber, a series of unsigned and undated witness statements were invented, some known to have been circulated without the knowledge of the so called witnesses.

One brave Conservative Councillor admitted that what the Council was saying was nonsense and probably got into trouble for it.

When Bexley Council belatedly realised that a police report into the incident did not support their version of events they persuaded the police to rewrite it.

What should have been a simple apology for a misjudgment was elevated to a file headed ‘Misconduct in Public Office’ being submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service by Greenwich Police.

Things appear to be going in a similar direction following the Council Leader writing an article for Conservative Home which claimed that she had met every Manifesto promise since 2006. A claim very easily disproved and confirmed to be largely untrue by the Deputy Director of Corporate Services in his response to a complaint.

However his conclusion was that the Leader was sincere with her claim when she wrote it to which the only response must be disbelief.

The complainant, @tonyofsidcup, appealed to the Monitoring Officer. The MO is supposed to be scrupulously honest although history shows that has not always been the case in Bexley. To be so in a dishonest borough is no doubt difficult and the last two didn’t stay in post very long.

What did the current one say?
Appeal response
An interesting rejection of a legitimate complaint.

We now have two senior Council Officers who cannot bring themselves to say that the Leader actually did meet her 2018 Manifesto promises but are happy to put on the public record that Councillor Teresa O’Neill is some sort of idiot who does not know or perhaps understand what is going on in the borough that she has been failing since 2009. And that the bulk of our Conservative Councillors back her constant failures.

The Monitoring Officer gleefully adds that there is no Appeal against her decision. Maybe not but it can be regurgitated and ridiculed at regular intervals.

The MO’s response in full.

 

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