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News and Comment August 2023

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27 August (Part 1) - “Tainted by the actions of Officers”

Moz Hossain TweetOn July 3rd there was a Conservatives only event in the Civic Offices after which Susan Hall the Mayoral candidate said “Thank you to the Bexley Conservative group for inviting me to speak about why I am our best chance of defeating Sadiq Khan”.

Her Conservative candidate rival Moz Hossain said something similar and as the photo clearly shows, it was a Tories only event. Local Labour Leader Stefano Borella said he wasn’t invited and didn’t expect to be because it was a Conservative event.

Mr. Shvorob the Independent candidate for Sidcup at the last Council election spotted that Section 7.2b of Bexley’s Code of Conduct expressly forbids using taxpayer funded resources such as the Council Chamber for political events and made a complaint on that basis. You may, as I do, think that debases more serious complaints but it was, on the evidence available to him at the time, a valid one nevertheless.

The Monitoring Officer rejected it on the grounds that it was “a business meeting” and added that “the Leader and other Councillors met with the Mayoral candidates to ascertain their plans for London and Bexley. It was not a Conservative party event but one to discharge Council business”.

The implication was that the meeting was open to all Councillors to meet all the Mayoral candidates. Not the biggest ever lie to come out of Bexley Council but why deviate from the truth at all? Does the M.O. have zero concept of how she must always be beyond reproach? The meeting was not one “to discharge Council business” but one to discharge Conservative party business. One of the faces pictured has said exactly that.

If the M.O. is prepared to deceive members of the public she is the wrong person for a job which demands total accuracy and honesty - but this is Bexley and perhaps I am naive.

“The meeting concerned was a scheduled Conservative Group meeting, hence no Labour members present” says a Conservative friend who went on to assure me that such meetings are pretty standard stuff before Mayoral elections. “There really was nothing untoward”.

I agree. I would back the Leader totally on her right to call such a meeting and where better to hold it than the Civic Offices?

Another Conservative Councillor said that both parties hold such political meetings, Labour with the unions and the like. “It helps form policy”. Once again entirely reasonable but that was never the issue, it was the Monitoring Officer’s indication that the meeting was open to all which is the problem. Is she simply lax with the use of the English language, ill-informed or willfully distorting the truth to dodge the provisions of Section 7.2b?

Yet another Conservative Councillor has provided something close to the Agenda for their Group meetings which includes rehearsing for the theatre which is Full Council. On 3rd July the meeting accommodated guests as it has done before previous Mayoral elections.

It begins to look as if the M.O. may be on firmer ground with her phrase “business meeting” because in part it was. It was a Conservative Group business meeting but the M.O.’s carefully chosen words about “other Councillors and Mayoral candidates” were an unnecessary variation from the whole truth.

If the attempted deception went to the police with an allegation of Misconduct in Public Office it would not get anywhere near to the seriousness of previous reports. In the past the police initially said a child’s murder was an accident after Bexley Council neglected to act on reports from both GPs and teachers that he was in dire need of protection. This allowed the crime scene to be cleaned in an attempt to hide the evidence. What hope of them taking minor fibs seriously when black and blue four year olds in a mortuary is not a serious matter?

Bexley police failed to act on a Crown Prosecution Service recommendation to charge a Councillor and instead de-arrested him and admitted that “the case was crippled by political interference” before which they crumbled.

I could go on and conflate two associated incidents. A Councillor was hauled before a Kangaroo Court for allegedly providing evidence to me for use in a Misconduct in Public Office complaint which the police upheld but still nothing came of it. An enormous amount of stress imposed on the honest by the dishonest with nothing to show for it.

To make another MIPO complaint now would inevitably see the names of Conservative friends dragged out of me and that cannot be allowed to happen. So the M.O. gets away with being less than wholly truthful.

I am consoled by these words from a well known Conservative source. “We are always tainted by the actions of officers who refuse straightforward answers” and “the M.O. has already caused a couple of issues. We shouldn’t defend the indefensible.”

So that is that. I hope @tonyofsidcup is not too disappointed.

 

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