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News and Comment August 2023

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20 August - When Up is Down and Right is Left

TweetAt the beginning of July Bexley Council invited Conservative GLA Member and now Conservative Mayoral candidate Susan Hall to their Civic Offices to talk about “defeating Sadiq Khan”. It was definitely a Conservative Party event because Susan said so and as you can see below there were no Labour faces in attendance. They’ve confirmed that they weren’t invited.

It will take a lot to persuade me to vote for Susan Hall next May but the fact that a publicity stunt was staged in the Civic Offices rather than the Conservative Party Clubhouse does not much bother me. It probably did not cost taxpayers a significant sum of money so why should anyone care?

@tonyofsidcup is not quite such a forgiving soul and submitted a formal complaint about the abuse of public facilities by the ruling group. It was inevitably rejected. Bexley Conservatives never do anything wrong.


“Given one of the candidates could be elected Mayor of London next year, it would be remiss of us not to quiz them on what they would do for our residents & our borough if they were selected/elected".


Well yes; but that does not get anywhere near answering the question and why have they not invited the other candidates?

The Appeal was dismissed too and the Monitoring Officer has made more of her ridiculous statements to justify the decision - and fails. It was not a Conservative event despite all the faces below being 100% Tory.

Nice of the Monitoring Officer to call the Conservative Mayoral candidate a liar. (See Tweet.) I’m sure she will appreciate it.

If the M.O. had simply said that Conservative Councillors and activists meeting in a Conservative controlled Council Office was too trivial an issue on which to waste time I would probably have agreed. But she did not.

Her only defences…


• The Leader has a responsibility for policies affecting the borough which includes issues relating to The Greater London Authority. (So far so good!)
• The meeting was not a Conservative Party [Upper case P] event and the absence of the Labour party [Lower case P] does not mean that Council premises were used for a Conservative Party event. (Idiotic.)


Followed by the gleeful statement…


• There is no right of Appeal against the Monitoring Officer’s decision.

Conservative Group
I have long believed that a dishonest Council needs a suitable Monitoring Officer who is prepared to say silly things to shield a Council from its follies and preserve his or her job. There is nothing here that will change my mind.

 

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