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?
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.