20 August - When Up is Down and Right is Left
At 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.
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.