31 August (Part 2) - Follow the science
There have been at least two scientific reports which discredit Khan’s ULEZ
propaganda. One by Imperial College London and the other by a multinational
Consultancy called Jacobs. They concluded in the 2022 ULEZ Integrated Impact
Assessment that “the proposed expansion of ULEZ to Greater London
is expected to cause a disproportionate negative financial impact on the
disabled, pregnant women and the lower paid”.
Khan disregarded it and resorted to his habitual lies and blamed Covid deniers, far right Nazis and climate sceptics for spreading disinformation.
31 August (Part 1) - Lies, damned lies and Khanage
I imagine that both sides of the ULEZ argument will agree that it has been characterized by lies.
Statistics distorted to show that 4,000 people die each year because of what comes out of 10% of vehicles exhaust pipes
when that proportion results from a small snapshot on one day and mortality statistics which could just as easily have
been twisted into every one will die on a Thursday morning instead of Thursday evening.
Sadiq Khan has showered university professors with nearly a billion pounds to
ensure that they support his money grab and then complained that the support was not as untruthful as he had hoped.
Very recently Peter Fortune our GLA Member reminded us that Khan wanted to
charge non-Londoners a fee for driving in a London borough, the perfect example of taxation without representation.
Bexley Tories gilded the lily by saying it was policy and Labour activist and would-be MP Dave Tingle said it wasn’t. But
it was undoubtedly one of Khan’s anti-motorist ideas on which he wasted a great deal of our money.
An intelligent individual would never have embarked on such a scheme.
In January 2022 Khan published a 69 page report
on how non-Londoners could be fleeced (PDF) by
such a tax and 69 page reports by an army of over-paid technocrats do not come cheap.
Bearing in mind the date of the Border Tax Feasibility Study the claim that Bexley Labour urged the Mayor to drop the idea six months earlier is a little strange.
Presumably the megalomaniac Khan rides roughshod over his own supporters as well as the general population.
Personally I find the Tory freedom fighters more annoying than misguided Labour
supporters. Peter Fortune in particular will only ever engage in debate with his
Conservative friends. Whilst I might support much of what he says there is no
way I would vote for an isolationist bubble dweller like that.
30 August (Part 4) - Facing both ways
Bexley Council was as good as its word today
and put up the notices warning of the imminent double yellow lining of Carrill Way. It would
have been better if they could have been bothered to remove
the old consultation notices
but with Councils nothing is perfect.
I took the photos seen here around lunchtime today but while reading the new
notice several hours later the driver of the yellow van returned. I encouraged him to
photograph his wheels as I had earlier (Photo 3) because Bexley Council have refused to
take action against people blocking my drive on the grounds that the wheel was
only against the sloping kerbstone and not the flat portion.
My drive was registered with Bexley Council for enforcement on 18th October
2019. The yellow van driver and his mate come from Dover every day to use the
Elizabeth line.
30 August (Part 3) - It's back!
By popular demand. You may once again report bad parking in Bexley by telephone.
Screenshot taken today.
Leader talks to Julia Hartley-Brewer about ULEZ
The DAB radio was on in another room while I was at the PC circa 9:15. I heard Teresa O’Neill’s unmistakable voice and taking advantage of the delay imposed by Internet Radio was just able to tune in and record the interview from the start. It was on line within ten minutes.
30 August (Part 1) - What is the point of Councillors?
Concrete jungle approved for Crayford. Planning Officers ignore local Councillor’s objections.
“Overbearing” flats in Sidcup but junior planning officer “economical with the truth”
over-rules local Councillor.
London News Online Crayford report and
News Shopper Sidcup report,
both by Local Democracy Reporter Joe Coughlan.
29 August (Part 2) - Twits to the Left of you, twats to the Right
Is there a good side to ULEZ?
If you look hard enough there may be.
It is beyond all reasonable doubt that every time Sadiq Khan opens his mouth another lie will be spewed out.
Innumerable YouTube videos show him blatantly lying. Whichever side of
the ULEZ argument you might be on, Khan indisputably lies and is willing to
spend thousands to gag experts who dispute his nonsense statistics.
It is to be hoped that more people have noticed than just me.
Something else I have noticed is that Prime Minister Sunak is not a
Conservative and has as much backbone as a pink blancmange.
“ULEZ is not the right priority, I don’t think that is the right thing to do and
I wish they hadn’t done it.”
For God’s sake Rishi, you are the Prime Minister, do something about it. Much the
same can be said about every aspect of political life. Rishi Sunak is utterly
clueless and totally useless. Does he not know that blaming other people for his
own failures is Khan’s prerogative, not his.
So what might be good about ULEZ?
I have some neighbours who have never been seen walking down the road. That
changed this morning. Their cars remain parked up much to the chagrin of Elizabeth line commuters.
Ironically, one the neighbours is a nurse and she drives a diesel Range Rover
the same as liar Khan. But older than his.
Like many NHS staff her ethnicity is one reputed to generally vote Labour for Mayor.
Maybe she will have learned that Labour Mayors are very bad news while I have to
learn that voting Conservative can be a very bad idea too.
Strange times.
29 August (Part 1) - Pollution by design
There
isn’t much of a dirty air problem in Bexley although those living close to the
Belvedere industrial units may occasionally disagree. What little there may be
did not suddenly disappear at midnight last night and Khan’s cash grab will do
nothing for air quality in the local pollution hot spot.
Beneath Abbey Wood’s station.
In the evenings, especially when the Elizabeth line is misbehaving as it so often is, the whole
of that area becomes unbreathable due to the gridlock carefully engineered by Bexley Council.
I last exited Abbey Wood station last Saturday at around 9 p.m.
The trapped fumes were unbelievably bad.
Ignoring the under cover car park they have put two bus waiting spaces and five
five minute restricted parking bays right under the fly over. I have seen as many as five buses
congregating there but two and occasionally three is a commonplace.
Cars waiting for returning commuters may have their engines switched off as do
the buses usually, but the
real problem comes from almost stationary cars queuing in Wilton, Gayton and Florence
Roads largely caused by the width restriction that our oh so clever Council
installed at its junction with Abbey Road.
Many of the drivers cannot make an exit from Florence Road because Abbey Road traffic is gridlocked as
they queue for Wilton Road where vehicles queue for Gayton Road, where they
queue for Florence Road where… You get the idea.
Will Bexley Council do anything about it
and allow those heading in an easterly direction an easy exit from Florence Road? Don’t be silly, that’s a question on a
par with ‘Will Sadiq Khan ever tell the truth?’.
Photos taken early this morning. It is far worse in the evenings.
28 August (Part 3) - Quick work
A Council notice issued on today’s bank holiday says that the double yellow lines approved for Carrill Way and adjacent roads may be put down as early as next Monday and vehicles that obstruct the work will be given PCNs.
28 August (Part 2) - Beware of Capita based scams
Bexley
Council has put a lot of eggs into the Capita basket and is not alone in that.
Capita suffered a data breach three months
ago and its shares have tumbled.
Bexley has nevertheless handed over more
responsibilities to their hapless partners without any obvious qualms.
Elsewhere councils have kept their residents informed of the risks that they
face as a result of Capita’s failure.
A search for the word Capita on Bexley’s website draws a blank but thanks to the
borough’s love affair with the Finance Director’s old employer residents are now at risk.
Waltham Forest Council is concerned that its residents will now be subjected to
scams. Bexley Council is apparently not.
A lot more information about this data breach and another two months earlier
is available here.
28 August (Part 1) - The Bogeymen
At
midnight tonight Sadiq Khan will inflict his ULEZ tax on motorists residing
within his fiefdom and those from outside its borders who are sufficiently misguided to want to visit or do
business within it.
It has been estimated that on top of the taxes and fines, London will suffer a
£369 million annual hit on its economy.
I still think that the best course of action is for those outside of London to
never enter it again. Starve the Mayor into submission.
Which of these two men should be got rid of first? The one intent on wrecking our
capital city or the one who could save it but is instead concentrating on
wrecking the whole country?
27 August (Part 2) - Elephants and former Bexley Council staff never forget
Within a couple of hours of Part 1 going on line this morning a reader with a better memory than mine sent me this…
Well the Monitoring Officer failed. Was this not the same reason Angela Hogan
left suddenly a few years ago… I remember there was some coverage of the
event. I will check why the Senior Legal Officer left.
I had wondered if the reasons for Monitoring Officers coming and going over the past 14 years might
make an interesting future story but I must confess I had forgotten Angela
Hogan. As far as I can recall she was pushed out of her job as Head of Legal
Services after being on the wrong side of the affair that led to a former
Bexley Council Leader receiving a suspended prison sentence.
On the other hand it could be that she wanted to shop him contrary to Leader Teresa O’Neill’s wishes. That would be a sackable offence.
From memory only one of Bexley Council’s Monitoring Officers has not left under
a cloud and I would speculate that she was too honest for the job.
Not being caught out is probably the secret to long term survival.
To help my anonymous memory jogger with his research
an Index to all references to Angela Hogan
has been hastily created.
27 August (Part 1) - “Tainted by the actions of Officers”
On
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.
I
cannot claim to have a large circle of female friends but every single one of
them, if the name Khan crops up, say they want to see him shot. It seems to me
that they have very limited imaginations but with luck it will translate to the
death of his dictatorship come next May.
And now to more local news; Scoutmaster and two time Mayor, James Hunt can no
longer use his Jimmy Mizen Scout van. (Today’s Daily Mail.)
I forecast loads of pain come next Tuesday, which Khan will no doubt relish. I
know of someone approaching his 90th birthday who takes an ancient Suzuki to the shops a couple of times a
week and rather too regular hospital appointments and only last week seemed to
have no idea that he could not so much as legally drive to the end of his road.
Khan would happily see him starve and die.
Fortunately he lives in Bromley so thanks to the Blade Runners he may get away
with it. Nearly all of Bromley’s ULEZ cameras are no longer operational.
Trampling over the will of the people is a dangerous game.
Daily Mail headline: Scout master James Hunt (Pictured: third from left) will no longer be able to use the Jimmy Mizen bus donated to the scouts due to the expansion of the ULEZ zone in London.
I occasionally wonder why I continue with political blogging especially when
things hot up somewhat as they have this past week. I have reached a conclusion
on what should be done about the M.O.’s Section 7.2b defence and now have to find the words to clearly
express how that decision was reached and if I can say who and what helped me reach it.
It
is therefore something of a relief to be ticked off quite severely for
the blog
published two days ago. The one about Richard Diment signing the order for
someone to get busy with a paint brush in recognition of what Highway Code Rule 243 says
about parking on junctions.
What his predecessors failed to do in 36 years, Richard has done in three
months. But I am under the cosh for spreading thanks too widely.
Being critical of Bexley Council is not a job to win friends, in fact the
current Leader did her best to get me locked up for it, and I try to give
recognition where possible to the few I may retain.
Some of them have been invaluable over the past few days and a little of that
may leak out soon.
Today’s criticism is that I have given praise when none is due. I cannot go into
detail because I could take a few guesses at who might have used the
Contact Form and if I can do that one may safely assume I will not be the only one.
(But I could be completely wrong.)
However to get to the point and to my admonishment; praising my local Councillor for
“not actually achieving anything” and offering Peter Craske as an excuse is apparently pretty
sloppy reporting. I suppose I must plead guilty to that. I hope I am meticulous with the
serious stuff but some things can, I feel, be treated with a degree of levity.
Unrelenting criticism must surely get monotonous.
Similarly another of my ward Councillors providing a web link
“simply tells us how poor things have become”. Maybe, but I was thankful for it. He didn’t have to do it.
The complaining message refers to a number of similar things which I know little or nothing about but one of them provoked my
guess as to the source, so I had better shut up before a finger is pointed in the wrong direction.
However I think I can safely continue to maintain that Cabinet Member Richard Diment went above and beyond on the Liz line
parking issue, but when asked if it could be mentioned here, he modestly said he would prefer otherwise.
But even he has his detractors. Probably another anonymous message will drop
into my Inbox before too long. What is @tonyofsidcup doing this weekend?
24 August (Part 2) - Next steps
Welcome though it is to see Richard Diment sign off
the Carrill Way yellow line order
it will do nothing, as his Merry Men accept, to tackle the congestion
that inconsiderate commuter parking causes. Instead it will displace the corner
parkers into an ever decreasing number of spaces.
The Council Officers’ comments on the recent consultation are not exactly
reassuring. They appear not to fully understand the problems and they are too ready to pass
responsibility to the police. Police who
I know from recent experience deny that
road blocking is anything to do with them. Is there anything left in British
public life that still works?
It is not unreasonable to wait to see the effect of the new yellow lines but
residents should prepare for Phase II of their campaign.
Herewith the opening shot commenting on what Bexley Council is currently saying.
• There is no evidence that changes to the existing Abbey Wood CPZ will cause displacement to the Carrill Way area. (Maybe not but it is going to go somewhere close by.)
• The Waste Team has not complained regarding access issues but it is not refuted. (I should hope not. I submitted photographic
evidence of it and a neighbour who drives a Range Rover told me only yesterday
that she often has to use the footpath to get it back home.)
• The suggestion that existing parking bays should be marked to reduce the chances of road obstruction is dismissed as being unenforceable.
“Drivers could ignore the markings and park how they would like.” (One must wonder why all the surrounding roads have marked bays.)
• If end on parking causes an obstruction it is a Police matter. (Agreed but
enforcing marked bays would go a long way towards it not happening.
• ‘Free’ marked bays might put an end to the practice but the Council is looking at ways to remove all ‘Free’ parking. (Why are we not surprised?)
• A plea for a full blown CPZ that will cost residents a lot of money was not met with a lot of Council enthusiasm. (I know who put in that suggestion. It came from a household
which got rid of its car for Green reasons.)
•
One of the nine respondents complained that his “several complaints” about
Bexley Council relying on the Felixstowe Road car park “when a car park in
Greenwich has got nothing to do with Bexley” were all ignored. (Everyone dealing with members of
the public has to accept that their ignorance is often beyond belief. The Felixstowe Road car park is firmly within the borough of Bexley.)
• The inability of emergency vehicles to gain access is dismissed as “rare” and
there should be only a “minimum of delay”. (Reassuring to all cardiac arrest victims I am sure.)
• Someone living a long way from Carrill Way complained that he did not get a letter to advise him of the proposals. (Bexley Council went further
than legally required to do.)
• Someone who must have given the range of possible solutions very little
thought, wanted yellow lines everywhere to which the response was this “can be
considered” in future. (Totally unnecessary and unwanted.)
Personally I think the responses are a bit of a mixed bag ranging from the idiotic, marked
bays are unenforceable, to the welcome lack of enthusiasm for CPZs. I shall have to
keep faith in the new Cabinet Member for Places being a lot more sensible than
his predecessor.
24 August (Part 1) - Obfuscation
Probably I should have mentioned it earlier but the Monitoring Officer
replied very quickly to
Tuesday’s email; but it was far from being a
satisfactory explanation of why she dismissed a complaint against the Council Leader with a fib.
Councillors from both parties have been very clear that
there was a Conservative
Party Group Event on Council premises which pedants with too much time on their
hands can argue breaches Code of Conduct rule 7.2b.
No one cares, certainly not me, but I suppose a legally trained mind knows that
a legal defence must be mounted to each and every breach.
“The meeting was not a Conservative party event, but towards the discharge of Council business.”
A business meeting? I could name (but won’t) five elected Members who have
stated otherwise. It’s an outright lie isn’t it? Labour and Independent Members
were neither allowed access nor expected it.
My point, which has been ignored, was that you cannot have a Monitoring Officer whose job it is to ensure
that the Council observes the law of the land and the Council’s Constitution who
will happily invent things to deflect a miniscule amount of criticism of her political masters.
Next time Councillor Daniel Francis raises a point of order in Council and the
M.O. whispers advice into Mayor Dourmoush’s ear can there be any
confidence that her words are not chosen only to please the ruling party, the
Leader of which can dismiss her on a whim?
The Monitoring Officer’s reply to me begins by introducing the subject of
Freedom of Information request. I can only guess what the question was
because it was the first I had heard of it. I think it must have been summarily
dismissed which may well have been the correct decision. I am not an enthusiast
for FOIing trivia and in this case it has little or no relevance to my complaint of less than 100% honesty.
There is absolutely nothing that is new in the Monitoring Officer’s reply
presumably because she cannot admit that the reason for rejecting the complaint
about breaching 7.2b was a fabrication and “the position is maintained”.
At the age of 80 I really do not want to get involved in another police investigation
into Bexley Council misconduct. Even if the matter is serious enough for the police to
refer it to the CPS it is always eventually kicked into the long grass.
Organisations with the power to investigate themselves whether it be the
Countess of Chester Hospital or the Metropolitan Police are always likely to
resort to corruption and call in favours to defend their own.
Should we overlook it when it occurs within Bexley Council?
Ideally the Leader should have words with the Monitoring Officer to ensure that
there is no manipulation of the truth in future, but nothing like that has ever happened before.
As things stand we only have the confirmation that we have a Council Leader who turns a blind eye to
wrong doing. Dare I mention the name Peter Craske again?
I have asked Mr. Shvorob for a copy of his FOI but for technical reasons he is unable to supply one.
23 August (Part 2) - Phase 1. But more to do
It
has been confirmed that Carrill Way and surrounding roads are to get their long
awaited double yellow lines at junctions which should improve sight lines
without actually reducing the parking problems. Two residents were given PCNs
yesterday because there was absolutely nowhere to park without blocking the
road; all because Bexley Council did not see the Elizabeth line coming.
There are several people to thank for this first step in the right direction.
Councillor Sally Hinkley (Labour, Belvedere) made representations
a whole
year ago but got nowhere due to hitting a brick wall named Peter Craske.
Then her ward colleagues Daniel Francis and Esther Amanning
edged things
up a notch with their letter of updated news for affected residents and
don’t forget Conservative Cabinet Member Richard Diment who responded very
positively to a number of emails from residents including me.
Finally to
Daniel himself for providing the link to the announcement when I had failed to find it.
After all his efforts only nine people responded to the Consultation notice but
all were in favour of yellow lines. One was pushing further for the imposition
of a £150 a year parking permit but I have only come across one resident who
wants that and it is from a carless household.
Marked bays and a few more double yellows are all that is required. Maybe Sadiq
Khan’s unjustified tax will solve the problem!
23 August (Part 1) - Wrong Move?
As
if there were not a big enough housing shortage in Bexley a Housing Association
is flogging off a house it bought for a song from Bexley Council.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/86300040#/?channel=RES_BUY
Meanwhile BexleyCo has delivered next to nothing.
22 August (Part 2) - A lie too far
As I hope was made clear two days ago, I considered the complaint against the
Council Leader for holding a political meeting on Council premises to be verging
on the petty. I am sure they must hold strategy meetings in their Committee
Rooms occasionally and which of us really cares if one overflows into the Council Chamber itself?
The complaint first came to my attention on 21st July but not reported here
because I decided there was enough trivia on BiB without adding more.
But the issue is not trivial when the Monitoring Officer, that bastion of
impartiality and honesty for any Council, lies about the meeting.
Susan Hall the Conservatives' Mayoral candidate who absolutely must defeat Sadiq
Khan next May if London is to survive as a thriving metropolis, said it was
a Conservative political meeting. We know that no Labour Councillor was invited
which further indicates that it was a political meeting.
The Monitoring Officer, has stated that the meeting was a business
meeting at which “other Councillors” were present implying that any could attend. Not true.
Another deception is that Councillors met with Mayoral candidates when the truth is
that they only met the two Conservative candidates.
All the indicators were that the meeting was very much a Conservative Group
event as Susan Hall said it was. Everything since has indicated that the Monitoring
Officer is prepared to lie to cover for her bosses most minor of transgressions
against the Code of Conduct rules. viz. Section 7.2b: When using Council resources
ensure that such resources are not used for political purposes.
The Monitoring Officer denies it but the rules were broken and I could barely care less but having a M.O. who is a stranger to the truth is something different entirely.
There is now documentary proof from an impeccable source within Bexley Council
that the meeting was most definitely a political meeting and therefore the letter
sent to @tonyofsidcup was a total fabrication.
She says there is nothing that he can do about it…
… but there is.
Misconduct in a Public Office is a serious offence for which a sentence of
life imprisonment may be passed.
Will Bexley Council dismiss their Monitoring Officer with immediate effect or do nothing and
thereby prove beyond reasonable doubt that it condones dishonesty even where
honesty is the whole raison d’etre for her post?
If she remains as a symbol of Bexley Council’s ingrained dishonesty someone will
have to report her to the police. I thought my days of doing that were over but
what is the point of BiB if it is prepared to gloss over such blatant dishonesty?
22 August (Part 1) - Here we go again, sadly
Emailed
messages like that three paragraphs below, well intended though they are, are a little bit
worrying for they suggest a misunderstanding of my position on the
Conservative’s Mayoral event held in the Council Chamber. Yes it was technically
in breach of Paragraph 7.2b of the Code of Conduct rules but it shouldn’t be.
It would be amazing if the rebuilt £42 million Woolwich Building Society headquarters did not
include Committee Rooms for use of political parties and that is entirely
consistent with the needs of democracy in the borough; and if the room is not
big enough or sufficiently prestigious for guests then why not use a more
appropriate room?
Who cares? Well @tonyofsidcup
did and not for the first time our views differed.
The reader’s email…
For balance, Labour often use civic offices for meetings that are not strictly council business.
Training their political candidates who are not in possession of a council pass is just one example.
They are all as bad as each other.
Very probably, but for me that is not the issue.
For 14 years almost to the day BiB has tried to expose the dishonesty within
Bexley Council and I thought with some success. The number of Councillor bad
eggs has almost fallen off the scale but senior officers, presumably aware that
their jobs depend on it, too often stray from the straight and narrow.
Over the past two days I have come by two pieces of documentary evidence which
confirm that the Mayoral Election meeting was entirely political while the
Monitoring Officer swears that it was not. If you cannot rely on a Monitoring
Officer being honest and transparent all is lost.
I contemplated going directly to the police alleging Misconduct in Public
Office. An untruthful Monitoring Officer is the epitome of malfeasance and
cannot be tolerated. I wrote a long blog on the subject at dawn this morning but
guided by the wise words of a Councillor friend I stood on the brake pedal.
I did however suggest to @tonyofsidcup that he might go down the Misconduct
route but he confirmed that our views differ and that his target was the Leader.
Since then I believe he may have changed his mind and come around to my point of
view.
As a result, things are developing more quickly than anticipated and to ensure that the Press is
reliably informed the following is published earlier than I at first considered
appropriate. But this is serious stuff and maybe needs to be tackled in a more
forceful manner.
Dear Ms. Narebor,
A month ago Mr. Shvorob sent me a copy of his complaint against the Council
Leader alleging that the meeting with the Conservative Mayoral candidates
breached the Code of Conduct rules on using Council resources for political
purposes.
It seemed to me at the time that and it still does that if Councillors
gathering in Committee Rooms to discuss strategy and perhaps overflowing
into other rooms is a breach of Section 7.2b, then consideration should be
given to amending those rules.
However instead of dismissing the complaint as too trivial to contemplate
you chose to accept the rule but make out that the meeting was not political
but “business”. There is a strong implication that Councillors of all
parties and none were welcome and that Mayoral candidates from every party
were present.
You specifically state that the absence of the Labour party and other
Mayoral candidates does not mean that the Council’s premises were used for a
Conservative Party event but clearly they were.
Susan Hall the Conservative Mayoral candidate said it was a Conservative
Group event, as did her rival Moz Hossain who used that very word. Two
Bexley Conservative Councillors are on the record saying the same.
Additionally the Labour Leader confirmed that he was “not expecting an
invite as it is an internal Conservative party matter”.
Yet you have gone out of your way to portray it as a regular Council
business event in order to deflect a rule breach of no consequence whatever.
A Monitoring Officer who is not totally honest and transparent is at the
opposite end of the rule breaching spectrum.
I am sorely tempted to report you to the police with an allegation of
Misconduct in Public Office.
Can you think of any reason why I should not do so?
yours sincerely,
Malcolm Knight
(Resident DA17 5RJ)
In only one week’s time the despicable Sadiq Khan will begin to issue
licenses priced at only £12·50 which will allow the poorest members of
society to kill up to 4,000
Londoners a year and be free of any fear of prosecution. Worse still he is
intent on inflicting as much economic damage as possible on our capital city.
Maybe the 4,000 figure is somewhat overblown because as yesterday’s Telegraph
revealed, Khan paid Imperial College £46,000 to invent that figure (out of a
total payment of £802,000) which was unfortunately not enough money to get their
report peer reviewed.
When an ICL professor indicated that the number might be fiction a series of
emails from the GLA to the college asked them to mitigate the damage the admission
had done to the case for ULEZ. A sham interview with Labour’s resident idiot MP, David Lammy
could be organised in order to obscure the truth with another false headline.
The Greater London Authority Act 1999 is another of Tony Blair’s abominations.
Too many of today’s problems can be traced back to that man but he did at least
have the foresight to include Section 143 into his Act. The Secretary of State can put a stop
to any GLA transport policy that is detrimental to any area outside London.
The fact that Mark Harper has not stopped the extension of ULEZ must indicate
that the Conservative Government is in favour of it.
I can think of no better reason for never voting Conservative ever again. Hypocrites and liars.
Why did Bexley Council allocate £100,000 to fighting Khan in the High Court when
all that was needed was more effective lobbying of their own Transport Secretary?
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.
19 August - Soothsayers Anonymous
As I was saying to another Council man not so very long ago, I have no idea whether the spate of Finance related messages
given an airing here recently come from someone who knows what they are talking
about or are from Disgruntled of Watling Street passed over for promotion with a
grudge against the immigrants from East Ham and Barnet. The latter obviously has its
origins in fact, it is easy enough to verify that neither the Chief
Executive nor her Deputy covered themselves in glory in those boroughs. But what of his other assertions?
It was time for some further research and Google came up with the mysterious
initials CIPFA which I discovered was the Chartered Institute of Public Finance
and Accountancy. It sounds authoritative enough and
they had expressed some
concern about the direction of travel in Bexley (PDF) in December 2021.
It confirms that the pandemic was not helpful to the finances and the savings target of £6 million in 2020/21 was missed but covered by the government’s
COVID-19 grant. A further saving of £12·8 million was planned for 2021/22 and
more for successive years, but what about the criticism of senior staff? What
did CIPFA have to say about them?
It acknowledges that they were newcomers with 20 put of 34 Finance posts
unfilled. “Bexley has struggled to recruit and retain key finance staff.” It
nevertheless concluded that Bexley’s governance was within CIPFA guidelines.
Inevitably there were concerns about the level of reserves…
…which have since fallen further.
Is that in accordance with the warning about a widening budget gap and CIPFA’s insistence that
the reserves must be kept at an appropriate level?
The question must be, “has Bexley controlled its costs sufficiently to meet future budget gaps?”
Our man on the inside clearly doesn’t think so. He links individuals who failed, at least to some extent, elsewhere,
last year’s Accounts still languishing in a pending tray and the departure of senior staff together and draws the worst of conclusions.
For the sake of Bexley’s taxpayers we must hope he is wrong. We do not want another Croydon, Thurrock or Woking here.
18 August - Beware of the dark
I didn’t think this blog reached as far south as Bexley Village any more but apparently it does, at least occasionally. Following on from
the Post
Office story another has surfaced and this time it is a neglected footpath that is causing some aggravation.
Bexley
Council’s record on footpaths has never been good.
Footpath 11 has been lost due
to the fiasco which is the site of Ye Olde Leather Bottle on Heron Hill and they illegally
allowed Bridleway 250 to be blocked by a land owner.
According to
Bexley Council’s Rights of Way map a footpath, part of which runs through
their car park in Bexley Village towards the railway station, is numbered 146
and as the nine photographs that may be seen here show, it is a mess.
Unlit and not quite blocked it may be dangerous to pass after dark and it has
been like it all this year at least. It may have been exacerbated by adjacent building works.
Councillor Cameron Smith (St. Mary’s & St. James) is very well aware of the situation and been pestering the
responsible Council Officer for the past six months and has recently restated
that he regards the situation as “unacceptable”.
But what can a Councillor do when faced with either a lack of staff or useless
staff and what if the adjacent land owners are responsible for the shabby
fences and overgrown foliage and refuse to do anything about it?
Footpath running behind Bexley High Street from car park top left and station car park top right.
17 August (Part 2) - Bexley helps to bail out Capita
If I am asked if I know why Bexley Council recently handed over more of its
responsibilities to Capita the answer will always be “I don’t know”. This time
it is debt collecting and one can only surmise that Bexley’s own people were
making a mess of it or are so reduced in number that they have given up.
Maybe there is a link as the Internal Audit Team is concentrating almost entirely on Finance matters this
year and the Chief Accountant and Chief Executive have decided it is the right time to jump ship.
Who knows what is going on? Does no one audit housing, SEN issues or pothole repair? I heard a whisper that
one of those has got Bexley Council into trouble with the Local Government Ombudsman again.
Page 156 of the Draft Accounts for 2022/23.
17 August (Part 1) - Do nothing Bexley
If
It is several weeks since my road and Carrill Way have been made
especially
difficult for small vehicles and impassable to larger ones but inconsiderate
parking continues on a daily basis.
This Audi (SG22 OLJ) parked on a corner across a dropped kerb caused a few near
misses yesterday as idiots go too fast around a blind corner. Why do people put
almost new cars at such risk of damage?
I didn’t report it to Bexley Council as a resident’s vehicle, displaced from its
usual spot by commuters, had nowhere to legally park either and I don’t
want the enforcement officer to be ticketing neighbours.
The situation is entirely down to a useless Bexley Council
under Cabinet Member Peter Craske doing absolutely
nothing to prepare for the opening of the Elizabeth line. They only had nine
years to do it and all they managed was the introduction of a £7·50 an hour on-street
parking charge within the Controlled Parking Zone leaving those outside of it to suffer the consequences.
Fortunately a more intelligent and less obstructive Cabinet Member is taking the commuter parking issues seriously and
we may get yellow lines at junctions which
will unfortunately displace yet more commuters into places which were once the preserve of residents.
Someone with fewer scruples than me called in Traffic Enforcement anyway and my
neighbour was given a PCN. All because Bexley Council can’t think ahead and has done nothing to protect its residents.
If
you wish to remind yourself of how nationalised industries usually operate you
could do worse than look at the Post Office and Southeastern Railway. I might
have mentioned the NHS too except that a friend who has been neglected and
fobbed off by his GP for the last six weeks took himself to the A&E at Lock’s
Bottom yesterday and was treated very well. Scans, X-rays and ECG within hours,
called in again today for the verdict and sent away with bucket loads of pills.
Now he knows what the problem is and feeling better already.
How fortunate to live in a borough with an Accident & Emergency Department.
Four years ago this borough was
losing Post Offices by the bucket load and Sidcup Councillor Richard Diment
fought for his local Post Office which was eventually reopened, albeit not for long apparently.
The same happened in Bexley village. Its Post Office closed for nine months with no nearby alternative.
It has happened again. The village Post Office has been shut for several months and an enquiry to the
Post Office provoked the unintelligent response one has come to expect from
government employees. “Unfortunately the Post Office is temporarily closed.”
Complaints to the local Councillors are futile. They too will be fobbed off and
can only speculate, as we all can, that the shop has run into difficulties.
Meanwhile the Post Office doesn’t care and continues to say it is open all day.
That’s nationalisation for you.
16 August (Part 1) - Why are we waiting?
I
don’t need to tell you that I am an old cynic when it comes to all levels of
government. Bexley’s so called independent auditor once told me that they had found the Council had been on the
fiddle and agreed that Court action might be appropriate. However the auditor refused to take action unless I
agreed to pay the legal costs and in response I have always assumed that they sign off accounts mainly to ensure that
next year’s contract will be retained.
Why else would the auditor throw Bexley Conservatives their headline grabbing
“it’s a Good News story” lifeline
a year after the skirmish with bankruptcy and just before an election?
But it is possible that unwavering support has its limits because a tip off said that last year’s
accounts are still not signed off nine months after the deadline.
Maybe there is a shortage of local manpower, Bexley’s Internal Audit team was
down to only four people in 2021 (FOI response) when they had oneSource
responsibilities too and things are unlikely to have improved since.
With such low staffing levels the Council probably relies totally on its external auditor.
The Audit Committee passed the 2021/22 accounts to the Director of Finance for signature
in reasonable time but he has not as yet cleared them for publication.
Is something rotten in the State of DA6? Its Chief Accountant has left his post and the Chief
Executive is about to take a leaf out of the same book.
Why?
15 August - If at first you don’t succeed…
As far as I am aware @tonyofsidcup is the only Bexley resident
campaigning for a £12·50 a day motoring tax which if you are a driver like me whose
insurance premium was raised by 47·5% four days ago, is the last thing that
you would want. But @tony does not own a car and doesn’t have to use public
transport to get to work so probably he doesn’t much care, but as Bexley Council agitator he obviously has his uses.
I don’t know what his motive was but rather more than a month ago he submitted a
Freedom of Information request which said “Can you please supply all emails sent
from the Council Leader’s work email address between March 1, 2022 and March 1,
2023 that have “ULEZ” or “Ultra Low Emission Zone” in the message body or
subject, and have “bexley.gov.uk” in recipient’s email address.”
For some reason it reminds me of Mick Barnbrook’s FOI which asked for a copy of
Mayor Sharon Massey’s diary entry for the day she denied attending a strip
club in her Mayoral capacity. The request had to go to the Information
Commissioner to get it answered but sure enough the page said “strip club” or words to that effect.
Bexley Council didn’t want to answer @tony’s request either; you can always tell
when they are busy dreaming up an excuse: they go over time.
What
was the excuse this time?
The job entailed going to the Tools menu of Microsoft Outlook (or whatever) and
from there Advanced Find, enter the Search string and hit the Find now button.
My test run on a very large file of BiB readers’ emails produced 62 results in under two seconds.
Bexley Council claimed that there were either 526 emails in their file or there were 526
which contained the specified words. It was not clear which. They went on to say that it would take an
average of three minutes to read each one and cost £650 of mandarin time to plough through them.
Presumably that means they intended to redact the emails and asked for payment in order to proceed.
The answer is obvious. Reduce the date range to six months and thereby reduce the
potential charge to under £450 below which no charge can be levied.
A better plan might be to accept that Sadiq Khan is a liar and 4,000 of us are not going to die this year because
Tony Blair’s government encouraged us to buy diesel powered cars and Bexley
Council was merely trying to meet its Manifesto promise.
14 August - No contact breakers
UK Power Networks circulated text messages this morning to consumers affected
by the power disruption. New components were to be installed at the
sub-station and in an underground chamber aimed at restoring a stable power supply. Depending
on which phase of the supply houses were on, power would go off again.
UKPN’s response to the emergency seemed to be pretty good to me.
In addition to several text messages and an automated spoken alarm, I received a
telephone call from their headquarters to explain the situation and was given
the name and mobile number of the engineer in charge for use should problems continue.
Today I am going to deliver and install
a new computer I have been building over the
past couple of weeks and I have run out of usable tittle-tattle from unhappy Council officers.
I have lost count, but I must have made in excess of 35 computers from component parts
in the past 15 to 20 years and this was the first to give me a problem. Every
time it was switched on the video output corrupted after a few minutes and it
was traced to circuit board damage. Naturally the supplier blamed me despite
the damage being under a removable cover and next to impossible to break, so that was £149 down the drain.
Luckily it was not running last Wednesday morning or it might have been
damaged again. While writing a blog my PC’s Uninterruptable Power Supply
switched from mains to battery which is unusual to say the least. Later I
discovered that my solar inverter had tripped out at the same time so I put a
voltmeter on the supply. 264 volts! The legal maximum supply voltage is 253.
I phoned UK Power Networks on 105 and they took the report quite seriously and
their van was on my drive within a couple hours. The voltage had dropped to 249
by then but the man saw the voltage log and said he would get a UKPN voltage recorder.
At the time I thought I was alone with the problems but I later heard of two TVs
that had gone off with a bang and someone who called UKPN was told his was
the 86th report from my road and the next one.
A stroll along the road in the early evening found various residents outside discussing their
electrical problems. Some had lost power completely and others said that their
consumer unit RCDs had tripped but the power was still there.
UKPN has since then been telling different callers slightly different stories. They say mine
is the only report of high voltage, it went up to 276 yesterday morning, and
seem to be unable to appreciate that most people have not got a house full of volt meters.
All they know and report is that something must be wrong.
It seems to be certain that a sub-station fuse blew
on Wednesday but some UKPN reports say there is a cable fault and something
underground is to be swapped out today.
The
fact that some houses lost power totally while others only suffered RCD
trips is probably explained by a UKPN engineer who said that the houses were not all
on the same phase supply from the sub-station. As far as I can tell, everyone
with solar panels has had their inverters trip off.
To hopefully stop my TV going bang I am running it from my
recently installed battery.
UKPN said the TV would be replaced if they damaged it but I don’t think they realise quite how expensive it was!
This
illegally parked van nearly caused an accident this morning. It forced traffic
to the wrong side of the road at the T junction which is at the camera position.
Yet another white van came from that direction far too fast and over the white
line by four or five feet. A head on collision was narrowly avoided and the van
driver had to reverse into Abbey Road.
I didn’t report the yellow line parking because it is all a bit of a rigmarole
and Bexley Council doesn’t accept phone reports any more.
Mr. Dimitri Shvorob asked
a question
about that at the last Council meeting and was told the withdrawal of phone
facilities didn’t have much impact on ticketing levels. What he wasn’t told was
the exact numbers of reports involved.
After failing to get them from Council sources he wrote to the Cabinet
Member Richard Diment. Dimitri has not always agreed with me that Richard is one
of the good guys and when I used the term ‘straight bat’ about him in a blog Dimitri was at first sceptical.
However I think I have won him over. Dimitri wrote to Richard who willingly provided the
information that had previously been denied. The number of bad parking reports in
the twelve months leading up to withdrawal of phone reporting is as follows.
That is only about three a day.
The cynics will say that being more helpful than his predecessor Councillor Peter Craske is not a huge achievement but I have found
it to be so consistent that it must be in the DNA. When the local Elizabeth line
parking issues were at their height I wrote to Richard too and his response could not have been more helpful.
I have written to Cabinet Members before but the only ones who ever replied were
Alex Sawyer and Rob Leitch. It is probably no coincidence that both subsequently walked
or were pushed. Careful now Richard.
Note: A different context perhaps but I also wrote to
Councillor Gower to congratulate her on the Cabinet appointment and she replied in a friendly manner too.
As the last few days have revealed, the middle ranking staff at Bexley Council has a pretty low opinion of their overpaid bosses and it’s hard to disagree.
Malcolm, as a current employee of the London Borough of Bexley I must warn you
and other residents of the borough of big changes. Unfortunately the current Chief Executive [Jackie Belton] and Directors which she brought with her
at varying times are determined to undermine the hard work of officers. Some have been played to such an extent that they cannot continue to work
for the authority as it’s got so bad. I’m afraid it will go downhill rapidly.
It is only two years
since Bexley’s former Chief Executive, Gill Steward, who achieved nothing in
Bexley apart from depriving journalists of their desk at meetings managed to
scramble into a job in Cumbria after her £94,000 pay off was spent.
Many in Cumbria were unhappy to appoint someone who had failed in both Bexley and Hounslow and the story was picked up by both
Private Eye and the local press.
“Steward’s role in restructuring has been described as
chaotic, four non-executive directors resigned. One felt “behaviors have crossed
the boundaries of inappropriateness and unprofessionalism” and complained of
bullying. A recruitment drive for replacement directors promoted an organization
with a “warm and supportive culture. A Company Group that has the feel of a
Family Firm” – which was news to several departing directors. This leads to
questions as to whether we are going to face similar issues in our Cumbrian reorganisation.”.
[The ‘Company Group’ was Hounslow’s equivalent of BexleyCo.]
Gill Steward left Cumbria soon afterwards.
Bexley may have a history of recruiting other borough’s cast offs but it pays
them well. Last year the Chief Executive was given a rise of £3,842 and
Directors received up to an extra £11,000. Who did the Director of Place upset
to be awarded only £2,400 in extra pay? Never mind, £182,9710 is not a bad
salary (including pension) for supervising potholes.
Even if you do a reasonable job, if your face doesn’t fit in Bexley you are in for a hard time…
Extract from a Director’s resignation statement.
9 August - Bad investments and non-disclosure agreements
Someone is on a roll at Bexley Council because a second email follows up on the one published yesterday and refers to Bexley’s involvement in the Thurrock fiasco. Bexley, Newham and Thurrock Councils used to be linked via an admin. consortium called oneSource which invested in a solar panel company called Rockfire. Fortunately Bexley didn’t get in too deep but it left Thurrock £500 million in debt. Whether Bexley ever got its smaller investment back remains a mystery.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/15/thurrock-council-hid-losses-gambled-millions-risky-investments
Thurrock
had a Council where only Good News was welcome. Members generally didn’t ask
questions and when they did their senior managers didn’t answer. Is the same happening in Bexley? Why has Jackie
Belton decided that a Master’s degree in Oxford is better than leading a local authority with 200,000 residents?
If people are committed to public service, why run?
Has she and her Deputy Chief Executive, Paul Thorogood [both previously in Newham] something to hide? Maybe your story that
he is going to replace her is his fairy tale ending worthy of the Brothers Grimm.
Maybe he will be given the opportunity to cover his tracks.
It is quite common. Just look at all those non-disclosure agreements imposed
on the various senior managers currently leaving. Apparently the Council’s principal accountant is leaving too and the job is being
advertised by a private recruitment firm.
Was Jackie pushed or did she jump?
This email has been
subjected to minor re-wording because the original
may not have been easy to absorb on a single reading. However the revised
version remains substantially the same.
8 August - Bexley backs Capita
The following is prompted by another of the emails (inset below) received recently - possibly from a Council source - and this time about Bexley’s tax collector, Capita.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/04/cyber-attack-to-cost-outsourcing-firm-capita-up-to-25m
Shares tumble, losses increase. Just another day for Capita.
It seems Capita, who run Bexley’s housing benefit, Council Tax and transactional
services (your payments and debts for the Council) were hacked and a lot of
personal data was taken. Hopefully not our data. But who can tell and why do we trust them with our work?
Delve a little deeper and the Council’s own financial system,
Integra, is a piece of software owned by Capita. How does Bexley end up
this way? And how do Capita get so much work?
Perhaps ask Paul Thorogood or his deputy Nickie Morris, who were senior officers with Capita at Barnet. Just a
coincidence I am sure, but when reading about Newham and what the auditors had
to say about Paul Thorogood, it seems Members couldn’t get the truth out of him.
LGO: Local Government Ombudsman.
Bexley’s links with Capita in both
Barnet and
Newham have been
reported here on
many previous occasions along with Mr. Thorogood’s decision to
adopt
for Bexley the software that wasn’t good enough for those boroughs.
There are too many references on BiB to list all the alleged Capita related failures, some
involving convicted fraudsters in Barnet and Newham, but the links (in red) provide a little of the history.
Bexley’s decision to recruit their senior officers was always more than a little odd.
7 August (Part 2) - A sinking ship
Three years ago
Councillor Cheryl Bacon said that she was concerned about “reserves moving
significantly in the wrong direction” and the auditor spoke of not being able to
meet planned service provisions. It led to a loss of 150 jobs, across the board
service cuts and by a variety of means, a raid on residents’ pockets.
The latest draft accounts from Bexley Council must be driving Councillor Bacon to fevered fingernail
chewing as year by year reserves continue to drift downwards. £91
million soon after her ‘wrong direction’ comment and only £67 million now.
Jackie Belton may have fled the borough at exactly the right time. For her.
Click image for expanded version.
7 August (Part 1) - There is no escape from CCTV
I spent seven hours in hospital yesterday - visiting. My Quiz team friend was
taken to Whipp’s Cross Hospital (Leytonstone E11) unable to breath properly and for various
reasons there was no one more local to be with him. The Elizabeth line helped me
get there in just under an hour and we sat around as a succession of medics
checked him over and said they would return in just a few minutes. An hour later - repeat, over five such visits,
The earlier ones said he could go home later as long as I was there to take him,
then that changed to probable admission because of the high steroid doses and
being on oxygen. At 7 p.m. he was taken to a ward and I was able to leave.
Just before 10 p.m. I received a text message to say he had been thrown out of
hospital unaccompanied and was on the first of two buses home. What a shambles
and the plans I had to assemble a computer and maybe write something for BiB had to be abandoned.
There has been rather a lot of incoming email recently most of which requires some research but this one doesn’t.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12377011/Sadiq-Khans-TfL-broke-law-using-CCTV-traffic-wardens-fine-drivers-landmark-ruling-motorists-owed-millions-pounds-refunds.html
Interesting if the same rule applies in Bexley with CCTV in yellow box junctions
but I can’t believe they acted illegally. I mean, they would take advice from
senior advisors in finance, in legal (Monitoring Officer at the time Nick Hollier) and elsewhere. But it makes you think.
Unfortunately the law is that Councils must use enforcement by officers on foot only for any offence that may be safely
and practically done that way, which allows camera surveillance for banned left or right hand turns, U-turns,
No Entries, driving in bus lanes and entering a yellow box junction when the exit is not clear.
TfL has been enforcing parking offences by camera and thereby acting outside the law.
What do the Civil Service, the judiciary, the police, the banks, every Government quango, the teaching profession, most charities and the NHS all got in common? Infiltration by left wing activists intent
on subverting democracy and common sense?
The left wing infiltration is at every level from Cabinet Members too frightened
to do what is right for the country right down to local politics.
It has been related here before how I have been labelled a Brown Shirt by local Labour
activists and one reported me to the police five times over a short period.
A solicitor's letter claimed that if I did not remove certain blogs I would be
prosecuted despite none of them revealing any names because these cowards are all anonymous.
When I asked a prominent Labour politician why such behaviour was tolerated
there was a shrug and a "what can I do?" response. And it still goes on!
The following was written by me to suppress as far as possible the identity of
the sender but it follows the theme of a recently received email and uses
several of the more important statements.
There are decent people in the Labour Party but whenever you see personal
political abuse directed it ordinary members of the public it always comes from that side of the divide. Cabinet Member
Peter Craske excepted of course.
Hi Malcolm.
I’ve been reading that you suffered much the same
abuse as me; there are some
truly vindictive unelected Labour activists in Bexley. Really scary people.
I was accidentally drawn into an on-line conversation with one of the activists
you mentioned and revealed that I did not support her political views. Instead
of engaging in reasonable discussion she responded by getting her friends to
report me to the Moderators and I was temporarily suspended.
When Membership was reinstated I was able to see that during my absence they had
been calling me by various names and mocking me because I am a Member of another
party; all immune from Moderator attention.
Social Media is a joke and the Labour activists who try to dominate it slowly build
a case against political opponents to get them suspended by the Moderators who
act as if they are their friends. Just as you found yourself, Labour activists
on Social Media are scary and I am left scarred by the experience.
5 August - Storm Antoni backs ULEZ
I don’t have
many car owning friends living in Bexley but between them they own(ed) eight cars and five are victims of the London Mayor.
One of the non-compliant cars has been sold for next to nothing, two are
unlikely to be used again and two owners are still wondering what to do.
And for what reason are so many lives to be damaged?
The fact that Bexley may not have done the best possible job of air quality
monitoring in the past really doesn’t matter, the only thing of any relevance is
that ‘it’s never my fault’ Khan (†) has admitted that the ULEZ charge is not going to make any
measurable difference to Outer London’s air quality. He nearly bankrupted TfL and
ULEZ is his way of making you pay for his incompetence.
Rather late in the day he has taken a few millions extracted from taxpayers via his annual inflation busting tax rises and
intends to distribute it to used car salesmen. £2,000 as a scrappage bonus for
the those who can scramble to the front of his beggars’ queue on 21st August to spend on a compliant car which
has gone up in price by more than that amount solely because of his money-grabbing scheme.
None of that expenditure would be necessary if it was not for Khan’s megalomania. Examine scrappage logically. He is
willing to shell out an extra £50 million
in order to reduce his ULEZ income. What further proof can there be that the real intention is road charging for all?
Khan lies that if my five (now four) older car owning friends take their
vehicles out on the road they will accelerate the death of 4,000 fellow
Londoners but if they pay him £12·50 he will give them a Licence to Kill.
Earlier in the week I decided that I would go to observe today’s anti-ULEZ rally
in Trafalgar Square. Then the weather forecast put me off the idea as it probably did
many others but the combination of the Elizabeth and Northern lines got me to
Trafalgar Square via the Bakerloo line exit while avoiding the worst of Storm Antoni.
I arrived at 11:55 and left 20 minutes later when there were only hundreds of people
getting wet rather than thousands, all waving the usual placards and shouting “Khan out”. I was struck by the fact that
most of the TfL bus drivers were sounding their horns in support.
Obviously nationwide ULEZ as advocated by some Labour front benchers is a very good reason for
all freedom loving people not to vote for that party at any election as the people of Uxbridge concluded on 20th July
but for me it is also a very good reason not to vote Conservative at the next General Election. The weak and two faced policy
flipper Sunak could have used his power to stop Khan in his undemocratic tracks but has chosen not to.
The country is doomed. None of the Lib/Lab/Con opposition party leaders appear to be entirely sane either.
Note: Following publication of the foregoing an anonymous contributor informed me that it wasn’t the
self-appointed Chair of TfL, Sadiq Khan’s fault that TfL nearly ran out of money.
The anonymous contributor believes that George Osborne caused TFL’s demise by
reducing its grant but that was announced in 2015, a year before Khan was
elected. Khan ignored the warning signs and froze fares. But bankruptcy is not his fault.
4 August (Part 2) - Flirting with bankruptcy
I’m sure I said so last year, or perhaps it was the year before, but
probably it was both, that accountancy is not my strong point so trawling through
and commenting on Bexley’s 2022/23 Accounts might be a slightly risky course to take.
Even so I think I can safely say that the trawl has
not so far revealed anything that might be called optimistic.
Whilst no individual departmental spending forecast has been horrendously wrong the cumulative
overspends exceed £3 million with Children and Education being, as usual, the
worst offender, going £8 million over budget. ‘Corporately held budgets’ have
saved the day with a £6·5 million underspend. That is code for “we raided the reserves again”.
High interest rates, which is Government Policy, is driving Bexley ever closer
to the edge just as it does for over-stretched families.
Last time bankruptcy loomed it was averted with
job losses and
the sale of a
warehouse in Erith. Hard to see how that can be done again.
More delving required over the coming days.
4 August (Part 1) - The word according to…
Unsustainable levels of migrations continue to have a significant impact on the likes of housing in the South East. Does my Honourable Friend agree that we must do all we can to reach sustainable levels of migration and when it comes to illegal migration and processing asylum claims ensure that the Home Office cracks down on both the people smugglers whilst also ensuring the likes of Scotland takes its fair share of people rather than just continuing to turn up here and virtue signal?
Louie French MP, Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Far too late now. A 10% per year population increase can never be absorbed
without some sort of breakdown of vital services and with about 10% of that
being diverse unknowns imported by Border Force and provided with free housing,
food and health care unrest is being encouraged.
Britain need more than one long sentence delivered to Parliament Louie.
3 August - Deep pockets. Deep doo-doo
Someone with more free time than I had yesterday looked into the status of nine more properties that became Houses of Multiple Occupation in 2015/16 and came up with something interesting on the Land Registry. All of them were re-sold on the same day, 1st December 2021, for sums in excess of £600,000.
19 Lyndon Road, Belvedere, DA17 5AU • £619,390 • 7 April 2016
Pembroke House, 1 – 3 Pembroke Road, Erith, DA8 1BN • £634,390 • 18 April 2016
28 Glendale Road, Erith, DA8 1BP • £630,390 • 1 June 2016
2 Athol Road, Erith, DA8 1PT • £634,390 • 4 July 2016
15 Athol Road, Erith, DA8 1PT • £634,390 • 20 November 2015
13 Holly Hill Road, Erith, DA8 1QB • £632,390 • 9 March 2016
33 Alexandra Road, Erith, DA8 2AX • £634,390 • 7 April 2016
35 Alexandra Road, Erith, DA8 2AX • £634,390 • 12 December 2016
38 Olyffe Avenue, Welling, DA16 3HY • £634,390 • 4 July 2016
Properties became six flat HMOs on dates shown.
Who can afford to pay £5 million or so on the same day for a
bundle of nondescript houses? One might guess it must be either Bexley Council
or a Government Agency housing immigrants awaiting processing.
What made 33 and 35 Alexandra Road
in Erith attractive to the purchaser but not numbers 37, 53 and 60 which are all HMOs too?
If you have a Government that insists on increasing the population by about
10% every year, mainly through imports legal and illegal, and does little by way
of infrastructure improvements to cater for them there will be widespread
problems. Problems that manifest themselves daily. Not enough housing,
insufficient medical facilities and too many people wanting to move around.
Governments that do that deserve to fail, Governments that encourage it should
be annihilated at the earliest opportunity.
Only the Government is in a position to fix the medical and transport
problems but private enterprise and maybe local authorities are able to contribute towards providing roofs
over people’s heads sometimes in the form of Homes in Multiple Occupation.
Right now my road is blocked by four large vans owned by immigrants who do not speak a word
of English. A couple of weeks ago I suggested to one of them that he temporarily
parked his on my drive to avoid getting a PCN and he did not have a clue what I was talking about.
Bexley is full of HMOs, so much so that the Daily Mail (sorry Dave) did
a feature on it last week. The following local addresses were all purchased
on the same day in 2016 and converted into HMOs over the following six months.
It is possible to see that the Council Tax Band changed but where are the Planning Applications? Maybe you can find them because I can’t.
Someone was able to spend a great deal of money converting regular houses to
HMOs without any regard for the neighbours who stand to suffer the consequences.
69 Ripley Road, Belvedere, DA17 5AH • 6 September 2016
56 Coleman Road, Belvedere, DA17 5AN • 10 August 2016
114 Lower Road, Belvedere, DA17 6DG • 6 September 2016
46 Caldy Road, Belvedere, DA17 6JS • 20 September 2016
2 Mildred Road, Erith, DA8 1AL • 4 July 2016
16 Alford Road, Erith, DA8 1PP • 4 August 2016
35 Lincoln Close, Erith, DA8 2EB • 13 July 2016
13 Elm Grove, Erith, DA8 3BL • 16 March 2017
121 Frinsted Road, Erith, DA8 3LF • 15 September 2016
38 Thanet Road, Erith, DA8 3RB • 19 December 2016
97 Lensbury Way, London, SE2 9TA • 1 August 2016
6 Crayford Way, Dartford, DA1 4LQ • 10 January 2017
Council Tax Band changed on dates shown.
From the Daily Mail article on Bexley’s HMOs.
97 Lensbury Way is a frequent guest on these pages.
18th March 2019,
20th August 2020 and
19th October 2021.
Note. Dave is a regular contributor who does not much like The Daily Mail.
1 August (Part 2) - Paying for Park Prestige
I vaguely remember that when I was at school it was said that you could buy a degree from an American University
and avoid the need to study. True or not I never found out but it is if you have a park
to promote and an electorate to impress.
Bexley Council did nothing new for Lesnes Abbey Park last year but paid £424 of your money
to a Government quango which allowed them to stick a flag on a pole and brag about it.
The only people who do anything for Lesnes Abbey are the park volunteers and the guy who runs
the refreshment kiosk.
1 August (Part 1) - All change at the top
It is probable that
Bexley Council’s Chief Executive resignation was not in
any way connected with the Conservatives’ manifesto pledge to fight the
extension of ULEZ; an attempt that came a cropper in the High Court last week.
Firstly the timing doesn’t look right, Local Government doesn’t work that fast and
secondly that Councillor Dourmoush said on Twitter (X?) there was no connection
which should be good enough for everyone.
The tip off that Jackie Belton was on the way out came via the
Contact Form and
now there has been another. It is quite short so rather than BiB offering an
interpretation of it, why not just publish and be damned?
The latest news on Jackie Belton. Did she resign to do another thing…
Latest rumour is she is going to do studies for a Master’s or something. Or was
she pushed, and therefore expecting a payoff over £100,000 for what is five
years work? Talking of payoffs there are other departures coming up. These are
at Deputy Director level, one a surprise one not so.
In the past 12 months the Human Resources Department prompted a review of its Choices Scheme and made it
pensionable. So anyone leaving could benefit from increased payments especially
under the final salary pension scheme. And who is due to leave? One Nick Hollier,
who used to be the Monitoring Officer but they took this job off him, although
not his pay, and responsible for the same Human Resources team.
Expect more changes and news.
So the allegation is HR improved the pension arrangements and then Director of
HR is taking advantage very soon?
Will those predictions come true? Time will no doubt tell.
Nick Hollier is a name that has been around since before BiB was launched 14 years ago.
When a Cabinet Member wrote an obscene blog about me and three other residents
and I submitted a Subject Access Request which went unanswered for five months;
who was the HR Director protecting the perpetrator?
When Bexley Council lied to me to the extent that the Police eventually sent a
file alleging Misconduct in Public Office to the Crown Prosecution Service, who
objected to
and ultimately rejected a complaint because it unavoidably included
an instance
of the word lying? Right again!
A man like that is going to be missed. £100,000 a year to protect his masters, or in this case, mistresses.