31 December (Part 2) - Is it close to a one woman dictatorship?

@tony bows out - for now.

1. The Queen
Recalling the story of Bob and John, how would I react if someone - say, a Bexley councillor shamed out of the Section 32 shadows - told me to go back to Belarus? Smugness is a helpful quality: I would smile and say “Thank you, I will do that when it’s safe”. You see, in 2020, Belarus’s “moderate” dictatorship, where “only” opposition politicians risked harassment and jail, was almost overturned at the ballot box. Saved by Putin, the moustachioed dictator Lukashenka retaliated with a wave of violence, followed by a regime of random arrests - where Belarusians with foreign passports became an appealing target, as bargaining chips used to negotiate with EU diplomats. I have no desire to become Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe myself, so going home is not an option.

Belarus, and Russia for that matter, are extreme examples of what can happen when a political leader stays in power for too long. A far more common scenario is stagnation. I think this is what has happened in Bexley under the fifteen-years-and-running leadership of Baroness O’Neill. I have no appetite for unfair Teresa-bashing, but I think it is safe to say - will any Bexley Tory councillors in the audience disagree? - that Cabinets under her leadership have never had a strategy, and just kept “muddling through”. “Muddling through is darn good when your government grant shrinks every year”, Baroness could object - and then I would move to my second criticism.

The #MakingBexleyEvenBetter slogan notwithstanding, Bexley’s leader has never seemed to be one to aspire to high standards. Naughty behaviour by councillors - including Cabinet Members - and senior council officers has been tolerated, and criticism dismissed, rather than accepted and actioned. (Recall Bexley Conservatives’ blocking, in 2022, of “call-ins”, i.e. bipartisan scrutiny of major decisions). A vicious circle of poor decisions and poor attitude has developed, with Bexley residents bearing the cost. Who is to blame for a dodgy corporate culture if not the long-serving council leader?

(One suspects that a side effect of this has been difficulty recruiting new councillors. Consider the recent rise in the number of PR specialists among the Tory ranks. Things on the ground may not be great, but the press release will be!)

This year, Baroness’s commitment to transparent and fair governance was tested by The Great Petitiongate of 2023 - and got a failing mark.

The affair started with your truly examining Bexley’s Constitution to see what it had to say about petitions with over 2,000 signatures, the kind that get the organiser a full-council debate of the petitioned-about issue. The findings were confusing. On one hand, there it was, the statement that 2,000 signatures get the full-council debate. On the other hand, almost in the next sentence, certainty evaporated: now 2,000 signatures *might* get a debate - or merely a committee hearing. That is not all: on the same page, “full-council meeting” turned into “meeting which all councillors can attend” - like a pub quiz - and to top it off, there was a provision to dismiss “inappropriate” petitions, but no guidance on what might make a petition “inappropriate”!

I started by asking Bexley, in a FOI request, what process and what criteria were there to guide the council’s “triage” of a petition between a full-council debate and a committee hearing. “We have no criteria, and no process”, Bexley advised, after a lot of prodding. “The CEO is ultimately responsible”.

At this point, I (very politely) shared my observations with Bexley’s Monitoring Officer and Bexley’s Head of Member Services, the council officer in charge of petitions. (Notably, this is the same gentleman who in 2011 “shunted” a petition with over 2,000 signatures to a committee hearing).“There is some dodgy wording in the Petition Scheme guidance - can you review and revise it please?” No response.

Then, in late June, I submitted the following three FOI requests:

Page 56 of of “Codes and Protocols”, Part 5 of “Bexley Constitution and Codes of Governance”, says:
“If a petition has more than 2,000 signatures, this would be sufficient to trigger a debate at a Full Council meeting. This means that the issue raised in the petition will be discussed at a meeting which all Councillors can attend”. (Emphasis added).
Can you please confirm that “full council meeting” refers to a meeting of the full council. (“A meeting which all councillors can attend” is a broader concept).

Page 56 of of “Codes and Protocols”, Part 5 of “Bexley Constitution and Codes of Governance”, says (emphasis added):
“If a petition has more than 2,000 signatures, this WOULD BE SUFFICIENT to trigger a debate at a Full Council meeting”.
Page 3 of “London Borough of Bexley Petitions Scheme” document says (emphasis added):
“If a petition contains more than 2000 signatures it MAY be debated by the Full Council unless it is a petition asking for a Council officer to give evidence at a public meeting”.
Can you please confirm that a petition with over 2,000 signatures - not deemed “vexatious, abusive or otherwise inappropriate” (cf. a related question about what “inappropriate” is) - will be debated at a full council meeting if requested by the organiser, or provide the full list of reasons why it could not be debated at a full council meeting.

Page 56 of “Codes and Protocols”, Part 5 of Bexley Constitution and Codes of Governance, says: “Petitions which are considered to be vexatious, abusive or otherwise inappropriate will not be accepted”.
Can you please provide the full list of reasons why a proposed petition could be deemed “inappropriate”?

On July 14, I received a letter informing me that my requests were dismissed as vexatious. I wrote to members of Bexley Council’s Constitutional Review Panel - Cllrs O’Neill (chair), Borella, Jackson and Leaf - providing examples of contradictory wording and asking them to consider revisions. Cllr O’Neill responded, saying that Bexley’s Petition Scheme was “in accordance with statutory guidance”.

Local-government finance and local-government development strategies are complicated subjects, where Council Leader O’Neill’s contribution and competence are difficult to assess. In contrast, fairness is something that’s pretty easy to judge, and it is very clear to me that Bexley’s Council Leader does not put much stock in that “British value”. Her replacement is unlikely to be any better - and that is, unfortunately, also part of Teresa O’Neill’s legacy.

 

31 December (Part 1) - Things that didn’t happen in 2023

• My road was not swept. The accumulated grit from the crumbling road surface creates a bit of a racket as it is flung into the wheel arches whenever I am able to take the car out.
• The 30 year old flooding hot spots were not fixed and survive into another year.
• Parking charges were not reduced and remain the highest in South East London. Peaking at £15 for two hours in Bexley while the highest in Greenwich is £7 an hour for tourists who insist on parking right next to the Cutty Sark. (The contrast is even greater if longer periods and season tickets are compared.)
• In parking and yellow box related news, my 2023 Amazon orders - according to their website count - did not reach 200 (only 195) but only because they count multiple items ordered at the same time as a single order. (Two returns. One this week. A USB cable sent instead of a butter knife.)
• Bexley’s Monitoring Officer has not stopped putting loyalty to Bexley Council above transparency on her priority list.
• Bexley Council did not replace broken waste bins despite their advertised promise.
• The opposition party was unable to assist binless residents because their reports and enquiries were ignored.
• Southeastern trains did not run a decent Metro service. 27 minute service gaps at Abbey Wood is not a Metro service.
• The Elizabeth line did not go more than three days without breaking down.
• Air pollution did not decline after the imposition of the ULEZ tax.
• Rishi Sunak did not make a single decision that real Conservatives could support.
• Sir Keir Starmer did not go a fortnight without changing his mind.
• I did not buy any chocolate for myself.

 

30 December (Part 2) - Shenstone School

While contemplating a review of the year it suddenly registered with me that the subject of Shenstone School had not been wrapped up.

On 8th November the Labour Group paraded parents in front of Full Council as part of their campaign to expose the alleged problems with development of the new school; a subject I knew nothing about.

In an effort to remedy that situation I emailed Cabinet Member Caroline Newton and asked for a few pointers. Caroline is not a Councillor I have contacted before but she was always friendly enough when I used to go to her Scrutiny meetings; it was therefore disappointing that no reply was forthcoming.

What I forgot to mention here was that Caroline did eventually reply but by then the November Council meeting was no longer topical. It was remiss of me to leave the impression that I had been totally ignored.

Caroline had been out of the country for a protracted period and inevitably faced a number of more pressing matters once back home. She nevertheless sent me by far the longest explanatory email ever received from any Councillor and I suspect I must now know more about Shenstone School than any of her fellow Councillors. Far too much to be repeated here but perhaps a web link might be useful.

As the Leader indicated in November there were problems with the first tenders received once subjected to the internal and externally procured due diligence processes. In particular there was insufficient confidence that the bids received would deliver the vision of the project and/or within the budget. The second tendering process is now complete with the contractor choice decision expected within the next few weeks, but it inevitably led to delay and disappointed parents.

There were no financial constraints.

Meanwhile apologies are due to Caroline Newton for the implication that she does not respond to enquiries. She is hoping the school will be ready for September 2025.

 

30 December (Part 1) - A rude awakening

It’s a bad habit but I picked up the phone at seven this morning to browse the news, checked for emails and saw the ninth of @tony’s missives and my heart sank. Was it another that I should quietly dump? However upon reflection it is only the examples he uses to make his point with which I do not like to be associated. Should I ask him to go away and consider returning to Belarus or will that see me given the Bob Stewart treatment?

Bob Stewart, the MP for Beckenham was convicted of racism by a judge devoid of any common sense and Councillor John Davey was accused and rightly exonerated of a vaguely similar offence. Does anyone seriously think either of them is a rabid racist?

Yes they do. Idiot lefties lurk in every crevice of society. My MP’s right hand man called me a racist for correctly saying that more than 80% of her Tweets (in the months immediately following her election) were aimed solely at black people and black women in particular. Fortunately the lovely Nigerian lady who lives next door to me doesnְ’t agree with him. She gave me a litre bottle of Bailey’s for Christmas.

Councillor John Davey did not do a good job for me when he was my Councillor but that doesn’t mean I don’t like him, how could I when he named this blog for me? More to the point, he had posted a thousand amusing Tweets before falling foul of the left wing zealots with one about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Not that their nonsense was entirely unproductive, it convinced me that my flirtation with voting Labour at local elections must end.

But enough of this, you know my views on the the idiot elements who infest left wing politics. Does @tony successfully use his two contrasting examples of alleged racism to prove what we already know? That Bexley Council is crooked from top to bottom, err no; close to the top. Probably, it is not exactly difficult is it?

2. For Pete’s Sake
It is a tale of two elderly English gentlemen - both living in Southeast London, both affiliated with the Conservative Party, both no strangers to controversy, both engulfed by it when they least expected.

One is Bob Stewart, the MP for Beckenham. A retired army colonel who once commanded UN forces in Bosnia, Bob has enjoyed a thirteen-year-long Parliamentary career, during which he employed his wife, described the behavior of a Tory MP colleague convicted of three counts of sexual assault as “folly”, failed to declare directorship of a foreign defence company while sitting on a defence committee, and became friends with the not-100%-savoury autocratic regimes of Bahrain and Azerbaijan. In 2022, when a Bahraini human-rights activist heckled Mr Stewart outside a Bahraini embassy reception, Bob heatedly exclaimed "Go back to Bahrain!" - and ended up convicted of a racially aggravated public-order offence, and banished from the Tory benches, later announcing that he would not seek re-election.

The other one is Bexley’s own John Davey, a Tory councillor since 2006. If being a long-serving school governor, and an artist whose works were exhibited at Hall Place, were not endearing enough, Cllr Davey has impressive - relative to his Bexley Tory peers - green credentials, having twice skipped (intentionally, I choose to think) votes on the destruction of Old Farm, and personally watered street trees during dry weather. You would not believe that Cllr Davey was also Bexley Conservatives’ fiercest Twitter troll - until a misjudged tweet put him in trouble.

In October 2022, commenting on Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe’s criticism of that week’s Conservative government, Cllr Davey wrote “Can we ask for a refund? We can send her back as she’s so ungrateful.” A social-media furore ensued, and resulted in Cllr Davey facing a Code of of Conduct complaint, being suspended from his beloved party, and moving to the Independent desk in the Bexley council chamber. (Crayford’s Cllr Di Netimah was still a Tory back then, so at least John had the desk all to himself). However, unlike Bob Stewart, John Davey was, a few months later, forgiven and re-attached to the nourishing Bexley Conservatives bosom.

Given the similarity of what was said, why the divergence of outcomes? Crucially, Cllr Davey did not address Mrs Zaghari-Radcliffe face-to-face - and did not phrase his suggestion with Colonel Bob’s military directness. It also helped that his case was considered in the friendly court of Bexley’s Monitoring Officer. Instead of simply writing up an opinion, the MO appears to have brokered a peace deal between Cllr Davey and whoever brought the Code of Conduct complaint against him - the individual never stepped forward; if he or she really was affiliated with Bexley Labour, the damp-squib outcome is par for the course - and closed the case before it even reached the Code of Conduct committee.

We know about this from the following paragraph published on Bexley’s web site in October 2023: “The conclusion reached on a review of the initial assessment was that the Twitter post has the potential to breach the requirements relating to Respect and Disrepute. However, a conclusion can only be reached following a formal investigation and determination by the Code of Conduct Committee. The Councillor recognised the inappropriateness of his comments on Twitter and the post was deleted. The sanctions that may be imposed by the Members’ Code of Conduct Committee had in the main been effected. Therefore, a formal investigation was not warranted. The Complainant and the Councillor agreed that the complaint could be resolved informally on the conditions below: The Subject Member to render an apology; an apology had already been posted on Twitter and the Twitter account has been terminated; A summary of the case and the outcome to be noted within a report to be referred to the Code of Conduct Committee.”

However, this was not known at the time. At a council meeting in May 2023, Council Leader O’Neill declared that “the remarks went through a process determined by the Monitoring Officer. The result, as you know, did not say it was a racist comment. The matter has been resolved and we are moving on from that.”

Sorry, Teresa, I did not know that the “result” said that. May I see that “result” please? In May, I made a FOI request asking: Can you please share the Monitoring Officer's (full) response to the Code of Conduct complaint recently made against Cllr Davey, after his “Can we send her back and get our money back?” comment regarding Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. (The alleged offence is a matter of public record, so there is presumably no breach of privacy).

The council refused, on privacy grounds: “We neither confirm nor deny that we hold information falling within the description specified in your request. The duty in Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not apply, by virtue of section 40(5)(B) of that Act. The Council has applied the exemption for the personal information under section 40(5)(B) and will neither confirm or deny whether the information requested is held as to do so would contravene the general data protection principles in the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Any information held by the Monitoring Officer concerning Councillor complaints is not intended for wider disclosure. It would only be considered for publication once an investigation had been concluded and findings made about an allegation by the Council’s Code of Conduct Committee”. I requested “internal review”, pointing out that Cllr Davey’s offence was a matter of public record, and there was no information, except MO’s assessment, that needed to be disclosed. No joy - Bexley repeated its refusal, and I complained to the Information Commissioner, writing:

“A local councillor made an allegedly racist public comment, widely reported in the media, and was complained about to the borough's Monitoring Officer. The MO decided not to refer the councillor to the Code of Conduct committee. I point out that the circumstance of the case are public knowledge – but the MO’s judgment is a matter of public interest, especially when there are concerns about the MO “protecting” a councillor from the local ruling party.” In November, the ICO upheld my complaint, advising Bexley that the council cannot invoke the privacy exemption, and asking them to release the information, or formally refuse to.

If you read the Bonkers blog, you know what happened next. On November 30, the council sent to myself and the ICO a “final” letter reiterating the privacy defence and refusing to supply information. Then on December 1, in a visibly rushed letter signed by a Deputy Director, I was declared “vexatious” and banned from making further FOI requests. Both actions are illegal; never mind the little allegedly-vexatious me, but does Bexley’s Head of Legal - also Bexley’s Monitoring Officer, a remarkable coincidence - really think she can school the Information Commissioner on data privacy? Why are senior council officers spending their expensive time on this? Your guess is as good as mine, but I suspect that it is not to protect the long-suffering Cllr Davey. I know that one of Baroness O’Neill’s closest associates, the longtime Cabinet Member for Places Cllr Craske, is a fan of 1980’s music. Peter, could you please tell your ermined boss about the Streisand effect?

Bexley’s Code of Counduct policy
Newspaper report
Wikipedia - Streisand effect

 

29 December - Arrogant lying law-breaking cowards? The view from Sidcup

@tonyofsidcup has discovered the secret of not having an introductory comment added to his guest blogs. Not submit them until the day of planned publication. Cunning! All I have to say about this one is that @tony always appears to be utterly amazed when he comes to the conclusion that Bexley Council is run by law breaking liars. When will he learn that It is what they do? Wake up Tony!

3. Liar Liar
Pedestrian safety - especially safety of school children walking to school - has been an interest lately. Bexley council is actually not that bad in this regard - because the neighbours are even worse. Labour-run Greenwich built only one pedestrian crossing in five years. Tory-run Bromley is doing a decent job analysing collisions, but then spends money to protect motorists. Bexley builds a zebra crossing now and then, but the decisions seem to be driven by lobbying from influential councillors - for example, the Blackfen and Lamorbey bunch - not by any fair and systematic process.

(By failing to have that systematic process, the council appears to violate a legal requirement - but the council that has been ignoring the legal requirement to develop an Air Quality Action Plan since 2007 clearly views legal requirements as recommendations anyway).

Then in 2023, the council announced a survey of locations near the borough’s schools, with a view to improving pedestrian safety there. Great news! Unfortunately, the plan was undermined by poor execution, and, in my opinion, wasted an opportunity and council money.

One questionable aspect of the exercise was never involving the schools themselves. Ironically, the council paid people to sit for hours and days next to a school and count passing pedestrians and cars but a council officer never stepped inside a school and talked to a headteacher about their road-safety concerns. “All appropriate people have been consulted”, Cabinet Member Diment declared in response to a public question at a council meeting, in Bexley’s trademark display of arrogance covering up for incompetence.

How do I know that the survey’s organisers never asked schools? Because I wrote to Bexley’s 80+ schools and asked them, getting around 70 responses. Seventy headteachers agreed on two things. First, nobody from the council has asked them about their road-safety concerns as part of the survey. Second, nobody from the council has asked them about their road-safety concerns before the survey. On matters of road safety, there has been no proactive contact from the council. Nada. Zilch. Bupkis.

Wait a minute - that’s not what the council had told me!

I made the following FOI request:

In response to an earlier FOI request, Highways team advised that the council … has (a) “an advisor to support schools in updating their School Travel Plans”, (b) a "Pedestrian Skills Officer". Can you please provide the list of these two officers’ engagements with schools since January 2021. I am looking for a list of format “year / officer (one of the two above)/school”.

The council responded with… a list of 58 schools, saying they did not have any further information. “Really?”, I asked in the internal-review request, “Do council officers not maintain records of their contact with schools?” A month passed, and the internal-review deadline came and went on November 25. Then on December 1, the request was dismissed as “vexatious”.

The council tells you they have been busy advising and supporting schools. Seventy schools tell you the opposite. Who do you believe?

News Shopper report.

Note: @tony supplied the list of 58 schools which Bexley Council claimed it had consulted.

 

28 December - Pit Bull @Tony unleashed. Parking is barking

I see no need to comment on this one from @tonyofsidcup except that it came with an answer to yesterday’s question on which Labour Councillor threatens a resident with reporting him to the Police for asking one simple question. I think I should urgently give Mayor Andy Dourmoush a call to warn him that he might be biting off more than he would want to chew while attempting to control a Full Council meeting.

One other thing perhaps; making an online bad parking report while out and about with only a smart phone is simply not worth the effort. I have done it twice and never again.

4. Last Call
As much as Teresa O’Neill and Co. would like to present yours truly as a scandalist who harasses council staff with frivolous, repeated, distressing queries, this image is not close to reality. Repeated queries are actually disallowed by the FOI Act - if you ask a question, you cannot ask the same or essentially the same question again for 6 months. “Frivolous” is a subjective assessment, to use Cabinet Member Diment’s expression.

(I once complained to Sidcup Ward councillors about a “dangerous” unleashed pit bull walking on Sidcup High Street - alongside my then-two-year-old - and asked them to lobby for a dog-control “Public Space Protection Order” similar to Bromley’s. Richard helpfully advised that “dangerous” was a subjective assessment. Then, a year later, another Sidcup Ward councillor, Cllr Bacon, denied my request to briefly speak at a committee meeting discussing a proposed PSPO - targeting dog walkers, but not unleashed beasts roaming the high street. But I digress).

Finally, there is little emotion involved, at least on my part. Once I submit a FOI request, I set a reminder for 20 business days later. If there is no response by the deadline, I complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office and let them deal with Bexley. If the response is unsatisfactory, I explain the “gap” in a request for “internal review”, and set a reminder for 40 business days. If the final response is unsatisfactory as well, I complain to the ICO. There is never a need to argue with council staff - certainly not with the helpful FOI manager, who depends on other teams for a timely FOI response. (†)

I think I can recall only one FOI response that annoyed me, and it came from the Parking team, shared by Bexley and Bromley. The occasion was the 2023 cuts to Bexley’s parking enforcement. I live near Sidcup High Street and can tell you that pavement parking is a problem here. Until about a year ago, one could dial 020 8301 6317, select option 3, be connected to an operator, and tell him the location and the details of the rogue vehicle. This was convenient and quick, unlike the cumbersome - 10 screens! - online form also provided by Bexley, and it was available at seemingly all hours.

Until one day, there was no operator, and a recorded message told me to go online. At some point, a new parking-warden phone line emerged, as an extra option of an existing council number, 020 3045 3000. Well, kind of: since directions on the Bexley web site were not updated, nobody knew about the new phone line. When that problem was resolved - weeks later - it turned out that the new phone line was only available during business hours. Evening and weekend service? Only online.

“Why cut a service that must make money for the council?” I wondered. “Surely, the online form is much less convenient than the phone line, and the volume of parking-warden call-outs fell, along with FPN revenue? Why would the council anger residents *and* lose money?” I made a FOI request with four questions:

1. When did the ‘old’ parking-warden phone line (020 8301 6317) cease operation?
2. When did the ‘new’ parking-warden phone line (020 3045 3000, option 4) begin operation?
3. How many employees (or FTE equivalents) were employed on the "old" line, and on the "new" line?
4. What were the hours of operation of the "old" line, and what are they for the "new" line?

What Parking did in their response is play dumb and pretend that my question referred to 020 8301 6317, not 020 8301 6317, Option 3. 020 8301 6317 is still in service - to report faulty pay-and-display machines and to pay for parking using Ringo - so what “cease operation” are you talking about? Nothing has changed but the phone number!

“I am talking about the old parking-warden phone line accessed via 020 8301 6317”, I explained in my internal-review request. “Not about other services available through the same number”. The council’s final response was dismissive and information-free, so I escalated to the Information Commissioner. Surprisingly, the ICO caseworker considering the case did not pick up on the “020 8301 6317 vs 020 8301 6317, Option 3” distinction, and my complaint was rejected. Once again, the case went to the first-tier tribunal and will be decided by a judge in 2024.

This was not the only odd FOI response provided by Parking, with regard to the same issue of the parking-enforcement cut. A query about why the council cut parking enforcement was put forward to Cllr Diment, the new Cabinet Member for Places, as a “public question” at a council meeting. Cllr Diment praised the online option, and claimed that FPN revenue did not fall following the change. I duly made a FOI request, asking for weekly totals of issued FPNs. The Parking department told me that only annual (!) numbers were available. I let it go. FOI requests are great, but there’s little you can do when a council officer chooses to deceive, and Bexley’s Parking Manager definitely gave me that impression.

† I can confirm that when requesting that BiB reports on his FOI requests, @tony asks that it does not imply criticism of the FOI Officer.

 

27 December - Sectioned

Bexley Council became the borough where more Councillors hid behind the Section 32 [address] exemption than all the other London boroughs combined when a local blogger hiding behind his own pseudonym of Olly Cromwell joked that he was going to organise a bus tour past all our Councillors’ homes. The idiots took him seriously and ran for the hills. It needed a slightly bent Monitoring Officer to authorise the exemptions but there has never been a shortage of those in this town. One Councillor - I have all the documentation to prove it - retaliated by signing a false witness statement for the police which saw Olly prosecuted. The Baroness thinks that is qualification for a Cabinet post in Bent Bexley.

@tonyofsidcup is of the opinion that the Section 32ers are a bunch of undemocratic cowards and he may be right but I am unconvinced that any harm comes from hiding a home address unless of course it is the Leader’s overooking an abandoned school playing field which is thereby protected from development until you move out and hope to get away with it - but that potential criticism falls flat on its face because her address was not hidden.

Let’s see if @tony can come up with a better argument…

5. Courage Under Fire
“Should you be a councillor if you are afraid to tell constituents where you live?” I would like to ask this question to Cllrs Asunramu (Lab), Carew (Con), Christoforides (Con), Dourmoush (Con), Ferguson (Lab), O’Neill (Con), Ogundayo (Lab), Smith (Con), Taylor (Lab) and Ward-Wilson (Con). The ten councillors invoke Section 32 of the Localism Act to avoid publishing their “beneficial interests in land” - a good proxy for one’s address, as most people only own or rent the place where they live - in Register of Interest disclosures, available for inspection on Bexley’s web site.

Section 32 allows councillors to not publish their interests when such disclosure “could lead to the member or co-opted member, or a person connected with the member or co-opted member, being subject to violence or intimidation”. Are a full quarter of Bexley’s councillors really scared of violence or intimidation if they disclose where they live? Genuine personal-safety concerns should not be dismissed - although my question still stands in that case - but it seems far more likely that Bexley councillors abuse Section 32 - because they can, unafraid of pushback from the Monitoring Officer or their party group’s leader. (Of course, one of the leaders, Cllr O’Neill, is part of the Section 32 squad herself - however, this is a new development, possibly related to her House of Lords status). Who cares about the high standards of public service and all that claptrap? “Take the perks, avoid the responsibilities” - now that’s a motion Bexley Conservatives and Bexley Labour can agree on.

While the practice was niche before the 2022 election - I think there were four councillors invoking Section 32; only two of them still do - the know-how was enthusiastically adopted by the 2022 intake. Asunramu, Carew, Christoforides, Ferguson, Smith, Ward-Wilson - all of these are new councillors. The way things are going, will every Bexley councillor “go off the grid” in 2026?

Note the role of Bexley’s Monitoring Officer, who needs to approve a councillor’s application for a Section 32 exemption. A Freedom of Information request asked the MO (a) if any Section 32 applications were rejected in 2022, (b) what sort of reasons were advanced by councillors - no need for names or details - in support of their requests.

The council responded to the first question - there have been no rejections - but declined to answer the second, raising privacy concerns. I asked the council to reconsider - after all, the request expressly asked for anonymised information - but had no luck.

Surprisingly, the Information Commissioner accepted Bexley’s reasoning, as if repeatedly falling to see the word “anonymised”. On to the last stop in the FOI journey - the first-tier tribunal. In a couple of months, a judge will either side with Bexley and ICO, or require Bexley to disclose this information.

PS. St Mary’s & St. James’ ward has already been special, as Bexley’s “bluest”: even in the bad-for-Tories 2022 local election, there were 1·7 Tory votes cast for every Labour vote, whereas across Bexley, the ratio was only 1·08. (“Decisive victory”, according to Council Leader O’Neill). The dashing Cllrs Christoforides and Smith were duly elected - and each made their address secret, with Cllrs Christoforides going on a virtual Section 32 rampage and invoking Section 32 to block publication of his address, his employment, and his partner’s employment. Google tells me otherwise, but I think that Kurtis works for MI6 - and this is great. When bombs start exploding in Sidcup, we need a man who won’t duck for cover. Yipee ki-yay, the 61-year-old man from Horsham! (Unless, of course, the Tory identity prevails).

PPS. A few months ago, I emailed the Section 32 club, gently asking the councillors to reconsider the practice. I received one response, from a Labour councillor, who threatened to report me to the police for harassment. [Dear Tony. I think you should tell me who that was to avoid blackening all their names.] Oh well. However, as I was preparing this post, I found one councillor who used Section 32 but no longer does. A second point for Bexley Conservatives. Cllr Adams, I am willing to forgive your silence on the subject of the ULEZ Task and Finish Group. Welcome to @tonyofsidcup’s Nice list.

Am I alone in being amused by the fact that @tony wil not let me publish his real name?

 

26 December - Boxing clever - or maybe not

Handing over the reins of BiB to a guest blogger at a time of the year when no one has time to read blogs seemed like a good idea at the time but maybe it wasn’t. A couple of them have made me think hard about whether they are appropriate, in this case because the story is linked to Councillors who have sadly died and they were entirely innocent parties.

The following story from @tonyofsidcup evolved from his assumption that everyone with the same good old English surname must be related and in the case featured here there is no evidence that any one is related to another. In fact when I asked the direct question of a friendly Councillor he assured me that the two personalities were not in any way linked.

However the fact that @tony may have been barking up the wrong tree is not the main point of his story. The real issue is that once again Bexley Council had gone out of its way to give the appearance of dishonesty by refusing to answer questions, looking to be thoroughly shady, and eventually taking their usual cowardly way out by declaring @tony vexatious. Sad to say, Bexley Council under Baroness Teresa O’Neill appears to run a show every bit as dishonest as it was ten or twelve years ago. That is, very.

6. Femme Fatale
Being a relative newcomer to Bexley - I didn’t even know the word until 2017, when a property viewing in New Eltham brought me to Sidcup - I missed the golden age of Bexley Conservatives’ power couples, the time when the Bacons, the Beckwiths, the Bishops and the Slaughters roamed the council chamber. [Note: Someone has forgotten the Hurts.] The hallowed tradition of a husband and a wife firmly positioning themselves on the back of the Bexley taxpayer ceased altogether in 2022, when Cllr Christine Bishop chose or was asked not to contest her safe seat, leaving her husband Brian alone on the council’s salary sheet. (Ever the disciplined party soldier, Christine ran in a no-hope Bexley Labour stronghold, and showed up in campaign photos with Bexley Conservatives’ favourite developer, a gentleman with a history of health and safety violations and allegations of assault).

In late 2023, the last surviving member of one of the local Tory power couples, the former Blackfen and Lamorbey councillor Brian Beckwith passed away. Brian’s wife Aileen, who had died years ago, was for many years a councillor for the adjacent Sidcup Ward, @tonyofsidcup’s home patch. On at least one occasion, the two councillors cast opposing votes: when the fate of Old Farm - Blackfen and Lamorbey’s largest green space - was being decided, Brian, representing the ward, voted for bulldozers, while Aileen voted against. Let me be frank - based on their Old Farm votes, I like Aileen more than Brian. Even so, I could have avoided responding to the news of Brian Beckwith’s passing with a Tweet - in my own feed, far away from the official announcement - recalling how, two years ago, the Beckwith name came up in the Bexley Volunteer Event story.

In mid-2021, Bexley council decided to throw a party for the borough’s volunteers who helped residents through Covid. The splashing-out did not feel right for a council that - one of only four across England - applied for a ‘recapitalisation directive’ from the government, a sign of financial trouble. On the other hand, the amount in question was not big - around £50,000, a third of 2023’s ULEZ judicial review bill - with most of the money going to the caterer. In a move that, again, was a bit odd for a council with money problems - but not against the rules - Bexley chose not to advertise the contract. Instead, staff in the Mayor’s office, who were organising the event, reached out to three or four companies, and obtained a single viable bid. That bid was from a fairly new and, in retrospect, short lived company whose sole owner and employee was a Beckwith.

Wondering why a small company belonging to an individual with a familiar surname was invited to bid for a sizable unadvertised contract must not seem outlandish to anyone aware of Conservatives’ “VIP Lane”. I revisited the Partygate after my Tweet prompted Twitter outrage from @bexleynews’ two moral compasses, Cllr Peter Craske and Cllr Philip Read. The duo lambasted me for besmirching the memory of Cllr Beckwith, and at least one of them denied a - never claimed - family connection between the company owner and the late councillor.

I found the businesswoman on LinkedIn and asked her if she was related to Cllr Beckwith. No response. So I made a FOI request, asking Bexley if they knew whether the company owner was related to the late Cllr Beckwith, and, more broadly, if they had any information about why this particular company was invited to bid. The council said they did not have any: the employee who handled the catering contract had retired. “The employee may be gone, but the emails remain”, I reasoned, and asked for the council’s correspondence with the company. A month passed, then an email from Bexley arrived, saying they could not meet the response deadline due to staff sickness, and promising to respond within two weeks, by December 8. Then, on December 1, the FOI request was dismissed as “vexatious”.

Did this query provoke the Bexley leadership into bringing down the vexatious hammer? Did Bexley’s favoured caterer benefit from a family connection? (Maybe *we* did? What if a family connection moved the business owner to patriotically offer Bexley a discount?) Was there a family connection to begin with? I guess we’ll never know.

Note: except for the occasional comma, this and previous @tony contributions have been presented unedited.

 

25 December - He’s full of Christmas Cheer

Before handing over to @santaofsidcup may I wish all readers and especially the nine Conservative Councillors who speak to me occasionally a very Happy Christmas? They never tell me anything very useful but are OK with checking out a few facts - unless they are about Shenstone School of course. What dirty secrets lurk there?

In what is presumably a traditional Russian celebration our Sidcup friend is providing another of his Christmas Crackers, an unfunny joke and riddle about how Bexley Conservatives broke their own rules while entertaining Mayoral candidates Mozzie and Suzie and how their band of loyal liars rallied to their support.

On a scale of 1 to 10, and in my opinion, this one warrants no more than a 2 or 3 among the litany of Bexley Council funny business but then this one is only No. 7 on @tonyofsidcup’s list and I am not privy to what might be coming next.

Despite a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Susan Hall, the Conservative candidate for London Mayor, she will most likely get my vote in May as being the best - only? - hope of defeating that appalling little man Sadiq Khan.

I might have considered the Reform Party no-hoper Howard Cox as a protest vote but he persists in spouting such utter rot about electric cars. Nobody should be forced into buying them as that other appalling little man Rishi Sunak insists because there is a steadily lengthening list of reasons some might want to avoid them. But Cox’s total rot I cannot accept.

What does @tony have to say about Susan the wallet dropper?

7. The Odd Couple
Moz who? As Susan Hall’s mayoral candidacy ambles from a Tweet ‘Like’ for Enoch Powell imagery to a stolen-but-returned wallet - unlike Liam Neeson’s character in Taken, Susan did not even need to inform the miscreant of her “particular set of skills”. One barely remembers that a few months ago she competed in the nomination race with a colourful gentleman named Moz Hossain. (Earlier, Mr Hossain was mysteriously included in the short list by the Tory HQ, while London Tory heavyweight Paul Scully was passed over. Another contestant, Daniel Korski, a David Cameron flunkie turned fake “tech bro”, was derailed by - what else? - allegations of sexual assault). On July 3, both candidates visited the Bexley Civic Offices and met with a group of Conservative councillors including Council Leader O’Neill.

Was it Ok to use council premises for a Conservative Party event? Bexley’s constitution says that council resources cannot be “used for political purposes unless that use could reasonably be regarded as likely to facilitate, or be conducive to, the discharge of the functions of the local authority”. I suppose one could make the case that hobnobbing with a future Mayor could facilitate the council’s business - but wouldn’t such a broad interpretation accommodate *anything*? Think of a (purely hypothetical) cocaine-fuelled rave in the
Bexley council chamber, attended by Michael Gove - would anyone in good conscience dispute such an event’s possible relevance to the council’s negotiations with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities? A Bexley-council-funded asylum-seeker safari on the Kentish coast, led by Suella Braverman? Completely sensible relationship building with a central-government department. etc., etc.

A FOI request asked the council: “Was use of council premises for a Conservative party event within council's rules?” And this was Bexley’s response: “The role of the Leader as outlined within Part 3 of the Constitution includes providing overall leadership to the Council. The Leader is also the principal spokesperson on Council policy or matters affecting the Borough at local, regional or national level, to include issues relating to the Greater London Authority. The Leader and other Councillors met with the Mayoral candidates to ascertain their plans for London and specifically Bexley residents and businesses. The meeting was not a Conservative party event, but towards the discharge of Council business”. (Emphasis added).

Note the claim that “The meeting was not a Conservative party event, but towards the discharge of Council business”. How does this mesh with the fact that only Conservative councillors were present? The council’s official voice never elaborated, but unofficially, it was reported that Suzie and Moz made a brief appearance at a scheduled meeting of the Bexley Conservative councillor group. A little diversion after a work event focused on council business, a dessert rather than the whole meal. And that made it completely alright.

If I were in charge of Bexley Labour, I just might use the precedent and invite Sadiq Khan into the Tory citadel at 2 Watling Street. Maybe Cllr Borella is saving that surprise for 2024.

The meeting was reported here in August and if you read the blog you will see that I didn’t consider the meeting to be a serious enough breach of the rules to be worth an argument, however the Monitoring Officer’s insistence that it was very much a Council business meeting and in no way political despite the exclusion of Labour may well be another illustration of the calibre of people chosen to fulfil such posts.

 

24 December - The last word on ULEZ?

It was bound to happen; @tonyofsidcup has jumped back on to his ULEZ hobbyhorse for the latest in his promised ten part critique of Bexley Council. I might have posed a counter-argument but I can’t, what he says below is entirely true. I am sure Councillor Smith would argue that his Group was rendered superfluous by rapidly developing events but why no one would discuss things with @tony and even denied its existence I have no idea other than it’s Bexley and it is what they tend to do.

8. The Lady Vanishes
As the Bexley council’s finances are sliding into a multi-million hole, the £147,853.20 spent by Teresa O’Neill and her minions on the Tory PR exercise known as “ULEZ judicial review” increasingly looks like small potatoes, but the partisan waste of public money still rankles.

The vast majority of Bexley residents who are not themselves liable for the £12·50 will be pleased to hear that they are not paying the ULEZ charges through their council tax: a FOI response from November indicated that in the first two months of the ULEZ expansion, the council’s ULEZ bill was £0. The small minority of Bexleyites who do have to pay may be wondering - was the judicial-review exercise the only thing that Teresa and Co. did for them? After all, Labour-run Merton and Wandsworth councils each set up a £1-million scrappage scheme. What did the Bexley council do?

It set up a ULEZ Task and Finish Group, composed of four junior councillors (Smith, Adams, Brooks and Ogundayo) and asked to develop mitigations of ULEZ expansion’s impact on Bexley residents. The group got off to a flying start, with Cllr Ogundayo boasting of sterling bipartisan work at a Places OSC meeting. Then, after just a few weeks, the ULEZ Task and Finish Group vanished.

One could be forgiven for thinking that “ULEZ Task and Finish Group” was a sexually-transmitted disease. When asked about the group’s output in a FOI request, the council initially denied it existed! Both Tory and Labour representatives of the group refused to talk about it. (Only the chairman, Cllr Smith, responded at all).

A batch of four FOI requests obtained correspondence between the four councillors, and revealed (a) a plan to set up an online survey, (b) a draft document with the most tantalizing section, “Proposals”, blank. That’s it.

I believe that Bexley did not provide the full correspondence of the ULEZ Task and Finish Group - for example, there was never an email announcing its demise, which is odd - but I feel pretty confident that Cllrs Adams, Brooks, Smith and Ogundayo just did not do a whole lot of work on the project, and were embarrassed to admit it. (Cllr Ogundayo’s refusal to answer questions was especially disappointing - so much for Labour being different!) If you are paying ULEZ charges, please do know that both local Tories and local Labour have done nothing for you. Bexley Tories used the hopeless judicial review as an excuse not to do anything else. Bexley Labour… simply were their usual lazy selves, using Bexley Tories as their excuse.
Bexley Council’s ULEZ report.

On reflection I should perhaps have removed the word ‘small’ from the second paragraph. Among my neighbours the proportion of affected vehicles was nearly half.

The existence of Councillor Smith’s Group was reported here in March and again in September.

 

23 December - Another fine mess…

…I got myself into.

@tonyofsidcup’s next submission is a tricky one for me because he is having a little dig at the Scouts. My father was into the Scouts in a fairly big way until an administrative error dragged him from his reserved occupation in Woolwich Arsenal into the RAF when he was aged 21. I was no more than a nobody in a silly hat in the local group differentiating between grannies and reefs.

With BiB I have got used to laying into the Conservatives one day and Labour the next and maybe they have got used to it too but coming between warring individuals is not to be relished.

I am on reasonably good terms with a number of Conservative Councillors in Bexley who are happy to accept the occasional call to help ensure BiB’s accuracy. Nine of them at a quick count and the the first to volunteer for that duty, discounting one no longer serving, was James Hunt way back in 2011.

James is the top man locally in the Scouting movement and maybe the Councillor I would least like to fall out with. It is a risk I am not willing to take and I felt it was only right that if he was to be impugned here he should be given the right of reply. (It may have been a better decision to renege on my promise to @tony.) He did so very promptly. “It is a load of old rubbish.”

He may be right but second thoughts prevailed and he followed up with an introductory piece followed by a couple of interjections that may be seen below. (I am going to have trouble with my indented italics rule that identifies guest posts. James will appear in a bolder typeface with additional indentation.)

The constant targeting of the Scouts is just distasteful.

Over the last year @tony has flung comments and accusations at almost everyone in the hope of generating some publicity for himself. He has targeted dead local people including the much respected James Brokenshire. He has regurgitated old issues from almost ten years ago thinking he is some community Columbo character looking for a fresh bit of gossip. And all he has done is make a mockery out of systems like FOI etc. He himself has said he has fired off over 100 requests. But he doesn’t understand each one has to be looked at, checked, passed to different teams. He is wasting ££££ asking why volunteers like Scouts with 50 years of service are given a certificate. All that work has to be done by paid staff, wouldn’t it be better spent letting them get our services running, getting pot holes refilled etc. etc.

Sadly he just doesnְ’t understand, and even when it is explained to him, he still fails to get the point - maybe he was never a Scout and has never helped his community as a volunteer.

Now he is targeting Scouts again. And it's just getting tiring. So let’s spell it out for him, again…

Oh dear! I thought it was just me who drags up ten year old scandals but let’s see what has roused and riled our James.

9. The Last Boy Scout
Hollywood has the Oscars, and Bexleyheath has the Teresas… sorry, Bexley Civic Recognition Awards. Every year, Bexley spends hundreds of pounds to acquire a batch of paper certificates and plastic plaques - were those £70 or £90 a pop? I forget - to give away to deserving residents, nominated by the people of Bexley. In the last two years, fully 40% of the awards have gone to the Scouts - an anomaly which had absolutely nothing to do with Vice Chairman of Bexley Scouts and Vice President of the Greater London South East Scouts, Bexley councillor James Hunt, former Mayor of Bexley, being one quarter of the judging panel. (The panel includes the current Mayor, two preceding Mayors, and a Labour representative, currently Cllr Mabel Ogundayo).

Scout comment: EVERY year since the Civic Awards were started (no idea when that was), there have always been a huge amount of Scout and Guide applications. Why? Scouting is the world’s largest volunteer led movement, since 1908. In Bexley it is the largest youth volunteer group with around 2000+ Scouts, and many leaders/volunteers. Each year the District submits VALID applications for the Mayor to honour those volunteers with over 25+ years of service. Funnily enough there are quite a few! That’s why year after year there are large numbers of awards. Simples.

I calculated the 40% based on the output of an earlier FOI request, which asked for nomination statements for the award winners. A second request asked for nomination statements for Bexley Civic Recognition Awards losers. (The group includes BiB himself, nominated by yours truly, twice.

BiB: I really wish people wouldn’t do that. This was not the first time and I cannot think of many things more embarrassing.

One would think that the borough’s only local-politics blogger would be welcome at civic recognition awards. Not true. Alas, the council rejected the request on privacy grounds - and I chose not to dispute the rejection. What kind of people do not make the cut at the Bexley Civic Recognition Awards? Except for Mr Knight - who perhaps should be considering joining the Scouts - we can’t be sure.

Scout comment: @tony needs to stop chasing shadows and howling at the moon with expensive theories. Maybe he could spend some of his time helping the community with something that will make an impact like volunteer litter picking, reading in the library. His constant whinges and attacks at volunteers like Scouts just has to stop. And just for clarification this is my last year on the awards panel, and next year there will still be lots of Scout nominations and the same the year after and the year after and the year after - until Scouting dies or the awards stop. And its down to four people to decide...not one person. Why does he have a problem thanking people who support our Boroughs young people? I am mindful not to reply to his emails as it just give oxygen to his madcap messages.

But then, could the third time be the charm? ‘Tis Bexley Civic Recognition Awards season again, and this time, we have a new and improved Mayor of Bexley, Cllr Ahmet Dourmoush, on the judging panel. Will he - and, hopefully, Cllr Ogundayo - overpower the Scouts lobby and vote for an award to BiB? (Alternatively, have all local Scouts been awarded now?) There is only one way to find out. Please complete the nomination form, saying why you think BiB deserves a Bexley Civic Recognition Award. https://www.bexley.gov.uk/about-council/recognition-awards/civic-recognition-awards Unless his continuing electrical experiments result in accidental rejuvenation, Mr Knight has missed out on the Young People award, leaving Voluntary Service by Adults and Outstanding Achievement categories, aka Paper (Certificate) and Plastic (Plaque). I feel that Voluntary Service by Adults is a safer bet, but you can flip a coin and go with Outstanding Achievement.

Your reward for completing the nomination form is the next installment of the FOI countdown!

 

22 December (Part 2) - When choosing restaurants make Marstons the Lastone

Absolutely no one reported having a good meal in The Morgan, Belvedere, people even now are still stumbling across the blog.

One who did so yesterday wrote as follows. The lady included a few clues as to her identity and they have been stripped away, but in all other respects it is unedited.

Just read your blog on The Morgan; if that doesn’t make them pull their socks up, nothing will. Even allowing for it being busy pre-Christmas there is no excuse for vegetables not being cooked properly and very tardy service.

I am not planning to go there again and will therefore never know if they improve but let’s hope they do as the area needs a decent restaurant. A friend went to the William Camden in Pickford Lane and had an appalling meal after a very long wait, so it makes you wonder where we can go. Anyway, good on you for stirring them up; have a good Christmas, with tasty sprouts.

In all my 37 years in Bexley I have never been inside the William Camden and won’t because of their reputation for issuing parking fines. One of my ancestors was a William Camden but as he was born in Australia and died 98 years ago in Borneo I doubt there is any connection.

I used to go to the Miller & Carter at Hall Place and never had anything other than an excellent meal there but it began to be very expensive. Maybe I should stop being such a meanie.

 

22 December (Part 1) - Counting down to 2024

When @tonyofsidcup offered to fill a page or two of BiB over the Christmas period I was in two minds about it. Whilst both he and I habitually criticise politicians of every colour, in my opinion he is inclined to see no good in any of them whilst I think most of them are simply ineffectual and not thoroughly bad people - but some undoubtedly are.

Despite our broadly similar outlook on politics we frequently disagree on the detail. I suspect that may be because I look on from the position of a disaffected Tory while he may be looking in from the opposite horizon. Whatever the truth of it, I took the lazy route through the dilemma. Let him have his say; there are valid views other than my own.

His ten point submission is a little on the long side for readers with busy Christmas schedules but thankfully not as long as his contribution to the ULEZ debate. What follows is just the episode 1 - with one or two injected comments - and then the first of his main points. Enough to keep me going until the New Year. Thanks @tony.

I would like to thank BiB for his coverage of the escalating conflict between Bexley Council and the Information Commissioner, triggered by my FOI requests. It is certainly peculiar to see a London council venture into illegality, unafraid of a fairly aggressive regulator. Gangster Al Capone famously went down on tax-evasion charges - will Baroness O’Neill be undone by an arrogantly rejected information request? I will not bet a penny on it - but will watch the developments with interest.

If I could make two tiny edits to the BiB story, it would be (a) to upgrade a “FOI king” to “FOI emperor”, for obvious reasons, and (b) to remove the words “he may be an annoying individual”. I may have annoyed the Baroness and her minions, but I do not think that a fellow Bexley taxpayer has cause to regard me in the same way. “100 FOI queries in 18 months” may sound like a lot, but most of these were straightforward document requests, which should have taken a minimum of council officers’ time.

[BiB: Come on Tony, everyone must know by now that BiB blog titles are whenever possible outrageous or obscure puns. Also the phrase ‘maybe an annoying person’ was lifted from the BBC website where journalist Martin Rosenbaum used it to defend frequent FOI submissions by people such as yourself. It should not have been assumed that it was in any way personal.]

What good came of them? I improved my understanding of a number of local issues - pedestrian safety has been a major interest lately - and resolved a few local concerns. (Sometimes a FOI request can act as a complaint because: loath to an admit error, the council starts moving). I also discovered and, with BiB’s invaluable help, made public a number of things that ought to be embarrassing to Teresa’s crew. It’s a big question whether Bexley Conservatives can still feel embarrassment, but if they can, this may deter them from further shenanigans. Bexley residents win.

[BiB: Sorry Tony, after 14 years of taking that route I know that it simply does not work. Whilst Councils are protected by the police, the ICO and an ignorant electorate there is no way short of revolution that anything will change.]

With 2023 on its last legs, let’s recap the more interesting FOI requests of this year. (Many of them have already appeared on BiB). Coming in at number 10….

10. The Green Mile
Are you an idealist or a cynic? If it’s the former, you can think of Green Flag Awards - an annual certificate awarded by Keep Britain Tidy to parks that meet certain criteria - as an incentive for a council to improve its green spaces. If it’s the latter, you may see them as a way for a council to get some good publicity in exchange for a £400-plus application fee, without doing anything on the ground. Guess which way the #MakingBexleyEvenBetter council is swinging?

By no means an outlier among fellow London councils - Greenwich, for example, paid for a Green Flag for the green space at Eltham Crematorium - Bexley Council has grabbed the figurative flag pole with both hands. I remember how, in the halcyon days when I wasn’t blocked by @bexleynews on Twitter, I read how a Green Flag given to Danson Park meant it was recognised as one of the world’s best parks. Take that, Yellowstone!

This year, it was the turn of Lesnes Abbey Woods. A FOI asked “What improvements have been carried out at Lesnes Abbey Woods in 2020-23 specifically to meet the requirements of the Green Flag accreditation?” The answer was a short and honest “None”.

Note: The introduction and inserted comments were seen by @tonyofsidcup before publication and he did not request any changes.

 

21 December (Part 2) - By Royal Appointment

Since enduring the grey Brussels, raw potatoes and a dismissive manager at The Morgan in Belvedere I have repeated the story to everyone who will listen. Commiserations to anyone who booked Christmas lunch there.

Among those who had little choice but to listen was my son via the family WhatsApp Group. He responded by rubbing my nose even further into the tasteless Marie Rose sauce by saying that he had taken his Christmas Dinner with Royalty. Bloody show off!

He explained that Prince Michael of Kent has for many years quietly given awards to those who make the biggest contributions to road and vehicle safety. My son’s company was behind three of the awards this year. I had better not go into greater detail in case there is some sort of commercial confidentiality involved somewhere but next time he tells me that Bexley’s Highways Department is talking BS or if he says their road planning is either malicious or incompetent, I shall be even more inclined to believe him.

 

21 December (Part 1) - If it doesn’t look right…

It was in the dying days of British Telecom (now officially BT) just before privatisation. International telephony with a few exceptions was automated only to the major western democracies and computers used only for sending out the bills.

Possibly because no one else wanted to do the job I found myself in charge of some ancient switching equipment and 1,300 staff working 24/7/365 shifts. To more easily get to grips with it all I moved my office and support staff from the Headquarters building and we plonked ourselves inside the exchange. How can you manage a place that cumbersome from afar?

After a while I noticed some odd things going on.

• Some staff had been given the wrong and more generous annual leave allocations. (It proved to be a reward for turning blind eyes.)
• Staff gambled and lost huge sums and didn’t seem to care.
• One on only £100 a week bought an almost new Rolls Royce.
• There were occasional fights among staff allegedly about money.
• Occasionally a phone would be left ringing and if I went to answer it might find someone asking how he could pay for his phone call.
• As manager I would occasionally receive written allegations from overseas alleging that spouses were engaged in extra-marital affairs with staff members and one at least included documents to ‘prove’ it. They did no such thing but it was one of the last pieces in the jig-saw. Some of the documents, complete with staff ID numbers, had found their way to Zimbabwe and should never have strayed outside British Telecom’s accounting system.

I’ll skip exactly how it was done but I set up a system which set an alarm and recorded the numbers if it detected a call through the exchange that fell outside normal parameters and gradually it built up a pattern. My bosses were not interested in my suspicions but British Telecom was still loosely connected with the GPO and their Investigation Department was still contracted to BT. I paid a secret visit to them meeting up at dawn in a greasy spoon on the Gray’s Inn Road.

They did the necessary and 103 members of staff were convicted of fraud, some serving prison sentences. I got a thorough grilling by the Chairman himself - he was keen to know why my own bosses had directed me to look the other way - and the official report estimated that £12 million had leaked into the hands of Rolls Royce dealers and the like.

If it quacks like a duck…

Forty years later I find myself wondering again.

• Bexley’s oldest and listed pub on Heron Hill comes tumbling down and Bexley Council turns a blind eye,
• The remains are left in a dangerous condition and Bexley Council doesn’t care. It was left to Belvedere’s Labour Councillor Daniel Francis to make a report to the Health & Safety Executive and Bexley Council did nothing to help.
• A monstrous carbuncle (© King Charles III) is built behind a property in Woolwich Road with many trees destroyed and a small incursion made into Lesnes Abbey Woods. Despite the concern expressed by Councillor Slaughter and others it is granted retrospective planning permission.
• The developer was given an award at the Civic Centre.
• He is feted by one of his local Councillors, John Davey, while his ward colleague and Planning Committee Chairman wisely stays away.
• The new Planning Chairman and his wife line up alongside the developer and his extended family for a photo opportunity.
• Conservative Party candidates, Councillors and the current Planning Committee Chairman’s wife line up in the developer’s front garden as part of their election campaign.
• A candidate waves her election leaflet alongside the developer inside his own front room!
• John Davey is persuaded not to object to a relevant Planning Application.

All of the foregoing has been reported on BiB over several years. Minor things individually perhaps but put them together and it all looks a little murky. I am developing a sense of déjà vu and begin to understand why one of the developer’s clan tried to run me off the A2016 with their sideways ramming manoeuvre.

And in case you were wondering, yes there is a link all the way back from West Heath Road to Heron Hill. Maybe when Christmas is over and done with the links can be revealed.

Note: The photograph was taken on 15th October 1980, in a different telephone exchange and three years before the events described above took place.

 

20 December (Part 2) - Bexley Council. Is it ennobled at the top and nobbled at the bottom?

I have made the same mistake before, confusing Woolwich Road and West Heath Road and thinking any planning application therein must be associated with our old friend Kulvinder Singh, which is how I came to spend so much time watching last week’s Planning Committee Meeting. 2 West Heath Road being among the addresses under consideration.

It is a long time since I looked in on a Planning Meeting so I was a little surprised to see it was no longer Chaired by the affable Councillor Peter Reader and his former Deputy, Councillor Brian Bishop, has taken over the reins.

I know nothing about Brian Bishop except for the photographic evidence that he and Mrs. Bishop are great mates with the Singh family, well known to long term BiB readers as property developers here there and everywhere and famed for everything from falsely accusing me of attempting to photograph their grandchildren to attempting to run me off the road while driving.

Despite it looking like a waste of my time I persevered with the webcast because Councillor John Davey was going to object to more building in West Heath Road and my suspicious mind wondered if that might be because it is only a few doors away from his own address. In John’s own words “It is an excessively large structure for this garden considering the shape of the garden at this point which is somewhat unusual. This property has had a number of applications and an enforcement action. Previous construction has not conformed [to] the Planning Applications.”

He went on to list six recent Planning Applications which had been approved but why only six is unknown, there have been 18 since 2018. One needs deep pockets to fund that sort of number. It is the sort of behaviour we have come to expect from a certain quarter.

The new Application would have been nodded through by Planning Officers if it was not for John Davey’s intervention. He announced at the meeting that he didn’t much like the plans, as is his right.

As Councillor Davey indicated, it might be a long meeting and it was, tedious too. At the two and a half hour mark all the Councillors took a short break, John Davey included. Who he may have spoken to while off camera is not known but he said it was a Planning Officer. One well versed in the art of arm twisting presumably because there was a complete volte-face from the former objector…

That is very weird isn’t it? How is it that excessively large suddenly isn’t? Who might be behind the application? Could it be another of the Singh clan? The Singh name is everywhere, even next door to me but the name on the application is Mr. I Khun Khun without a company name, Google however threw up Mr. Inderjit Singh Khunkhun of 2 West Heath Road trading as ISK Construction Limited.

Fly-by-night building companies in this part of the borough bearing that name are best not left univestigated. They tend to be linked. Am I about to bark loudly up a wrong tree?

Note: There was an anonymous allegation two years ago that 2 West Heath Road did in fact belong to you know who. Well the same architect was involved so it probably does.

 

20 December (Part 1) - In the clear

It was past eleven at night and the mobile rang. “There is a Luton style van up to no good at the flats opposite. Looks like fly tippers”.

“Well get its number because I am in Chingford.”

When I got home I discovered that the Coptefield Drive dump had been cleared. Do Council contractors do their job in the middle of the night? All we need now is for Country Style to empty the bins.

Speaking of Chingford, Waltham Forest Council has partially fixed their speed limit conundrum. They had 30 m.p.h. limit signs on entry to what they were pretending to be extensive 20 m.p.h. zones. Within those zones the roads were painted with 20s in white circles and roadside flashers complained if you did 30 or even 21.

It’s been that way for months but all has now changed, There are shiny new 30 repeater signs through the supposed 20 zone. The road painting and flashers are still there unchanged but the legal signs are all now 30s.

Why is it that so many Councils are happy to cheat and behave illegally? Is nowhere safe from the corruption that pervades pubic services in Rishi’s Britain?

 

19 December (Part 2) - Computer says No

I eventually got to the bottom of why BT had refused to transfer a 50 year customer's telephone number from one side of Yarnton Way to the other - it wasn’t easy.

The Twitter Team I alerted to the problem were OK as far as they could go and confirmed that moving the number should be possible. They referred me to the Home Moves Team where the automated phone call response assured me that BT had a commitment to excellence but the lady who answered was far removed from that. If the computer said No the answer was No and no I could not speak to a higher authority. That is not allowed.

I am really happy that my only connection to BT now is the pension and Christmas cards to the four old workmates who are not yet dead.

I took a trip to Wolvercote Road to discuss the preferred way forward with the old lady and found the door entry system broken. The door cannot be opened remotely from any flat and if my 90+ year old friend is ill in bed and the doctor calls she has to descend eight floors to let him in; and Peabody has left it like that for at least four months. If the blocks are coming down they won’t want to spend the money and why should they care?

Once inside we decided to call the Home Moves Team again and struck lucky. The lady was just as perplexed by the situation as I was. It was a long call with several breaks for off-line enquiries.

The reason for not being able to move the number across the road is that the new block has no telephone infrastructure - or at least that is what the Openreach system is reporting. The address does not appear on their database and a number cannot be transferred into nothingness.

From today the old lady will not have a telephone service. The BT lady could not have been more helpful but she did not know if the new flats would have analogue copper lines or equipped for what BT calls Digital Voice.

When I was in the new flat nosing around I saw that the telephone sockets were of the old RJ11 type that has been in use for many years but there were also some RJ45 (Ethernet) face plates dotted around without any obvious sign of a socket behind them. I thought that was a bit odd in this day and age but there was an Openreach fibre termination inside a utility cupboard.

The best the BT lady could do was initiate a new installation but with no knowledge of whether it would be digital or analogue and given BT’s (and Virginְ’s) commitment last week to not force Digital Voice on elderly customers in future it becomes a complex situation.

The system will now generate a new phone number because of Openreach’s failure to register the new address on their system leaving BT without any firm information which may have helped resolve the situation.

All they could offer is that if and when a new line is installed some time in January with any luck they will be able to swap the number back to what it was - if Openreach has not given it to someone else.

I am reminded that my first little telephone job in Fleet Building, Farringdon Street EC4 (now demolished) while awaiting a more permanent appointment was number allocation. All card index, no computer. The policy was not to reissue an old number until it had been dormant for at least six months to minimise the flow of wrong number calls. Nowadays it is in the lap of the Gods. Does any service ever improve over time?

If I had more notice of this impasse I could have temporarily ported the number to my friendly ISP for safe-keeping.

Another thing I learned. The Wolvercote towers are not to be demolished straight away. Peabody plan to fill them with short term lets. It’s all about the money.

 

19 December (Part 1) - Leaf him alone

I have been here before and I know it is a broad generalisation; but it has always seemed to me that if you want to find corruption within political parties it is probably best to look among the higher ranking Conservatives in Parliament, including the Lords, but if it is hatred and nastiness to the core of their existence you crave then look no further than Labour’s hangers on.

Alongside you will see three Conservatives. one from each level of government, the GLA, Westminster and Bexley Council - the Baroness (Lords) being occupied elsewhere presumably - out reassuring residents following the ULEZ bomb in Sidcup.

Innocent enough you might think but out of the blue a notorious Labour supporter steps in to link a terrorist crime to one of which Deputy Leader David Leaf was entirely innocent, indeed he wasn’t there at all.

He offered support to a friend who threw a bottle while out of his mind on drink.

What motivates Lefties if it is not hatred? We see it most Saturdays when the trendy get out on the streets to wish Jewish people dead. You can bet your life that none of them will be card carrying Conservatives or even former or lapsed ones like me.

This is the same anonymous - irony is not within their ambit - Lefty who put on line the comment “What a nasty cowardly man you are Malcolm” after BiB had drawn attention to its support of a letter published in The Times advocating death for Nigel Farage. Not content with that I was reported to the police locally because I disapproved of policemen using batons on defenceless women. Then to top it off sent a solicitor’s letter to say I would be sued if I ever identified the anonymous moniker here again. I had not for the simple reason that I did not know it.

Isn’t that the whole point of anonymous accounts?

The crime to which Councillor David Leaf is supposed to have been complicit occurred more than 16 years ago - no mention of that obviously - and he wrote a letter to the Court in support of a friend’s previous good character.

Attempting to besmirch David’s good name is not the same as the occasional reference here back to Councillor Craske. He did what he did and the police confirmed it to me several times in writing. I was directly the object of his hatred - the police said it was a Hate Crime - but David Leaf did absolutely nothing wrong and it is none of the Lefty’s business.

The Tweet (X) included a link to the Kent-on-line article which was how I was able to find it.

Give me David Leaf as a friend any day over a vindictive Lefty. Absolutely no contest.

It does decent Labour people of which there are many no favours at all. Why do they tolerate those who do little but trash their reputations?

 

18 December (Part 2) - Peabody on the move? Possibly

In March 2016 I was privileged to be invited by Peabody Housing to a meeting at which they revealed their plans for the tower blocks on Wolvercote Road and sixteen months later much the same plan was presented to Bexley’s Places Committee. In brief the old blocks were costing £2,000 a year to heat at 2016 prices and had to be demolished sooner rather than later.

And they are still there but maybe things are at long last making progress. I know a lady who bought her Wolvercote Road flat more than 50 years ago and as she heads towards her 100th birthday and having survived two years of stressful date slippage is about to make the move to the other side of Yarnton Way. A number of her friends have been helping with shelves and flat-pack assembly etc.

As she was told she had to be out by the end of January one might assume that Wolvercote Road will come tumbling down at some time in 2024. Or 2025, or maybe later.

The new flat looked rather nice but may prove to be a little too high-tech for a nonagenarian.

BT has unbelievably refused to transfer her 50 year old phone number to the new address. That would have been a five minute job when I worked in an old fashioned electro-mechanical telephone exchange. A press of a button now. Maybe I will have to make a complaint on the lady’s behalf.

 

18 December (Part 1) - FOI King Tony

As we wait for @tonyofsidcup’s next response to Bexley Council’s latest round of law breaking, a summary of those he has made since last May before which date records were not kept.

• Request for reasons for so many Bexley Councillors hiding behind Section 32 exemptions. (Not answered.)
• Request for reason for closing the bad parking reports phone line. (Three requests allegedly because of inadequate answers.)
• Enquiry about rejected election nominations. (Withdrawn by @tony)
• Request for reason for forgiving Councillor Davey for his allegedly racist Tweet. (Not answered in defiance of Information Commissioner’s instruction.)
• Request for the official definition of the term ‘Full Council Meeting’. (Deemed vexatious.)
• Request for guarantee that Bexley Council would follow its own rules on Petitions. (Deemed vexatious.)
• Request for information on what would constitute an inappropriate petition as referenced by the rules. (Deemed vexatious.)
• Request for information on standards applied when appointing a Monitoring Officer. (There were none!)
• Request for statement of the Chief Executive’s role in elections.
• Request for statement of action taken on specific parking enforcement request.
• Request for circumstances surrounding publicity photographs of two London Mayoral candidates in the Council Chamber.
• Request for Leader’s emails referring to ULEZ. (Not answered. Case with Information Commissioner.)
• Request for details of the purchase of the Lesnes Abbey Green Flag Award.
• Request for details of the contract with an event organiser. (Not answered.)
• Questions about road safety. (Five different locations.)
• Request for correspondence between Members of a ULEZ sub-Committee. (Four different requests. There was none!)
• Request for dates of Louie French MP being a Bexley Cabinet Member.
• Request for costs of ULEZ defence.
• Request for information on the School Streets scheme at Our Lady of Rosary School. (Immediately dismissed as vexatious. Now with Information Commissioner.)
• Request for Council’s report on pedestrian crossings. (Immediately dismissed as vexatious. Now with Information Commissioner.)
• Request for road safety measures taken in Slade Green. (Immediately dismissed as vexatious. Now with Information Commissioner.)
• Request for emails to City Events Ltd. (Immediately dismissed as vexatious. Now with Information Commissioner.)

I had expected more FOIs of a frivolous nature but remain puzzled as to what can be done with some of the information. I would however conclude that the Council Leader is very keen to subvert any large petition just a she was in 2011.

Note: This a BiB summary of a list supplied by @tonyofsidcup. The FOIs were answered except where noted.

 

17 December - Becoming Peter Craske

When BiB wanders well off topic there is usually an attempt to contrive an obscure link back to Bexley Council but yesterday’s OT ramble became far too long. The plan was to steer the story around to Batman Craske.

Batman is not a character with whom I am familiar, probably the wrong generation or something and when I bought one of the films at random several years ago I didn’t much like it. I think it may have been ‘The Dark Knight’ and in retrospect it was probably not very clever to watch one film from the middle of a long running franchise, so when last month Amazon listed the first four of the ‘modern’ series for £22 complete with new Dolby Atmos soundtracks I succumbed.

Having watched the first of them I think I understand how Batman became what he is although I must have missed the bit on how he gained his supernatural powers.

I can’t see myself becoming a Batman fan; never once have I been tempted to wear a T-shirt bearing any sort of slogan let alone go to a fan convention but thatְ’s because I have probably always led a boring existence. Would it be a pictorial pun too far to say ‘all power to the elbows of those who do’?

Some people take their obsessions far too far, like the sender of the following two batty emails. Please excuse the language…

Wed 17/10/2012 10:15
Name: Bruce Wayne
Email: bruce.wayne@gothamcity.com
Comments: Hi Malcolm,
What the fuck is this site about ay? Why don’t you get a life and go out on the razz and get laid you 40 year old virgin, you mother fucker cock sucker.

Wed 17/10/2012 11:56
Name: Robin
Email: robin@gotham.co.uk
Comments: GET A LIFE!!!!!!!!!!
Seriously you need to get out more mate.
Alright no one likes the Council but they’re here to do a job. You don’t actually have a clue about most of what you are saying - It’s all just rants without any evidence to back things up.
In summary:
Get a life, move out from your mum’s house, get a job, get laid, stop being a prick.

Like everything on the Internet, messages can be traced. Not something one can normally be bothered to do but in this case I made an exception. The source IP address, 62.189.157.68, was one of a block of 64 owned by Parsons Brinkerhoff who among other things offers consultancy services on road design etc. The IT manager at Parsons Brinkerhoff accepted my server logs as proof that the messages came from his offices and thought it was more than likely that a visitor had used a mobile device at their premises.

From there the source was all guesswork. Councillor Craske who was Cabinet Member for roads at the time denied that he had placed a contract with Parsons Brinkerhoff despite the company issuing a Press Release (PDF) four months earlier which said otherwise. Bexley Council issued their own Press Release too which was at http://www.bexley.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=7279&p=0 but that link has long since gone.

 

16 December - From the Morgan to Manhattan

While I was queuing for my uncooked spuds and grey Brussels at The Morgan last Sunday, the two ladies in front of me were discussing cinema visits. “What was the last film you saw?” “I can’t remember” came the answer. “Oh, I saw Oppenheimer at the IMAX in Greenwich but it was spoiled by being far too loud.”

Nerdiness got the better of me. “There are only 30 IMAX film equipped cinemas in the entire world and none of them are in Greenwich.”

Just because the director chooses to use an IMAX film camera does not mean that you will always see it in that format, it will nearly always be scaled down to ordinary 35mm film size or more likely to digital. The image quality should be very good but if you want to see IMAX in all its 15/70 glory you will have to go to Leicester Square, the Science Museum or Waterloo.

The projectors had to be modified to accommodate Oppenheimer because the platters (horizontal spools) were not big enough to accommodate a three hour film. It is eleven miles long and weighs about 600 pounds. Kodak had to set up a new film manufacturing line for black and white film because no one had ever done IMAX in black and white before and so did the processing laboratory.

The conversation continued at the table.

When asked why Oppenheimer had to be so loud I resisted the temptation to say that Atomic Bombs tend to go off with a very big bang and gave the official explanation. Film loudness is set at what the industry calls Reference Level and every cinema should adhere to the standards. I have heard of cinema managers reprimanded for not sticking with the standard.

Reference Level is pretty loud with an average around the 80dB mark peaking at 110 or so but probably not for long.

In a large cinema auditorium it is difficult to get things right at every seating position because everyone needs to be able to hear what is going on so some might experience even higher sound levels.

Modern home cinema equipment can be similarly calibrated for Reference Level and it is certainly too loud for some people but it definitely brings an extra dimension to the experience.

When I ran a double bill of the two Top Gun films for friends at home I reminded them that I like to run the system at a life-like level and my father used to take me into the test cells when he was developing jet engines in the fifties and sixties so I know what they should sound like. One was so impressed by the end of the session that he said he was going to buy such a system for himself, but then I told him how much good audio equipment can cost these days!

Conscious of the possibility of hearing damage I keep a Sound Pressure Level meter by my side if a film is likely to be noisy so that I can keep an eye on the peaks. As expected they go over 100 for a very short time and occasionally past 125 for so short a time that only the meter is aware of it. Those sort of levels all the time would be dangerous but SpecSavers report my ancient lugs to be perfectly OK. I think I am the only one of my similarly aged friends who does not use hearing aids.

Maybe that is because I have never been a headphone user. I made my first amplifier and accompanying loudspeaker when I was only 14 years old and once played it loud enough to have the police at my door. Only ten watts too. (The speakers were much more efficient then what they are now.)

That’s quite enough nerdiness for now!

Note: 15/70 comes from the width of the film and the number of sprocket holes per picture frame. Some lesser cameras are IMAX certified. Those used for Top Gun Maverick for example. If you are still with me at this stage you might wish to look at this YouTube from the IMAX Waterloo projection room. Not at all like The Odeon where I used to give a helping hand at the weekends.

 

15 December - Blame the managers

Two weeks ago the dustbin men could not reach my address because of a stupidly parked car and I said I would pass their comments on to Richard Diment, the Cabinet Member for bins. Quite by chance I bumped into him in the street, so I did. He in effect confirmed what the bin men had said, their complaints are not breaking through the Country Style management barrier.

It was much the same this morning and the men repeated their comments, they really are a nice set of blokes doing a vital job but they said that the only way that anything can be done to resolve the problems they encounter is for residents to complain.

As we know to our cost, that doesn’t work either.

Meanwhile, fewer than 50 yards away the public no longer have access to the plastics and tins recycling bin. I am not sure whether I should blame cultural diversity or Country Slop management who encourage malpractice by not bothering to mend the bin locks over many years.

P.S. Using Richard’s £126 a tonne incineration costs I have calculated from the past two weeks data that my annual residuals disposal cost is about 95 pence. Am I due a rebate on by £2,000 a year Council Tax? Being ‘old school’ I went the Imperial route and 2,240 pounds to a ton. Near enough I hope.

 

14 December - Please insert the word ‘some’ where appropriate

It is at times like these - Bexley Council acting once more like a law breaking bully boy - that I realise that 14 years of their pubic exposure has been pretty much a waste of time. Why is it that so many politicians have the nature of the thug who immediately punches noses if his elbow is accidentally nudged while carrying his pint of lager?

Rational and better educated people might strike up a conversation on how the mishap could be remedied and perhaps even become friends. But that is not what politicians do. They sincerely believe that they are superior beings who are never wrong and even when they clearly are will never admit it, which is why lying is their stock-in-trade and the metaphorical punch on the nose is the only response known to them.

They can behave like that because rampant nepotism has placed like minded Neanderthals into similar positions of power to lie, cover up and protect each other against all criticism.

I have often wondered what might have happened if Council Leader O’Neill had picked up the phone - the number was in the book at the time - and asked me what my beef with Bexley Council was instead of marching up to the cop shop and demanding that they arrest me. If she had negotiating skills that went beyond thuggery, BiB would probably have disappeared very quickly and I would not have had to spend an hour every day at the keyboard and she might not be quite as widely despised.

Some of the Council Officers are not any better. It’s like the stories retired Metropolitan Police Inspector Michael Barnbrook used to tell me. If an honest cop didn’t turn a blind eye to the corruption of more senior officers he would soon find himself transferred to the other side of London and suffering the house removal costs and disruption to his children’s education etc. Which is probably why so many Council Officers appear to be so bad at their jobs. Honesty is not their best policy,

During my last year at BT the top brass decided that direct recruitment to middle management roles would be a better way forward than nurturing home grown talent; which is why I found myself working alongside a former CPS barrister. I couldn’t help but think that a barrister should be earning a lot more than I was so concluded we had recruited a failure. And so it proved to be - crooked too but that is another story.

One might speculate that much the same applies to Bexley’s Legal Officer, once described to me by a senior voice within Bexley Council as a confusing flip flopper, and…

At this point, 09:55, I had to stop writing to meet up with half a dozen of those with whom I shared lunch on Sunday. I didn't mention the subject and none of them have ever made the connection between me and BiB but they were soon discussing how poor their meals at The Morgan were. The phrase ‘gone downhill’ was used again and one who used to be a regular there related how she had seen an ‘over your head’ chair fight and had heard of a scalding incident which wasn’t taken seriously.

And now that I am back home it is 14:35 and I have completely lost my train of thought, but here we go anyway

… who has not exactly covered herself in glory in recent months. Another case presumably of a lawyer who was unsuccessful in her own legal circles and opted for a cushy number in Bexley instead. The same goes for Highways where Bexley has at the top of their tree someone who could never hold their own in commercial practice as, for example, my son who provides consultancy services to governments and major vehicle manufacturers across the globe employing several experts in his field to support him. I know exactly what he says about roads in Bexley and other Councils and none of it is good.

Recently I have watched @tonyofsidcup try to arrange meetings with Bexley Council in an attempt to head off some of his disagreements with them but with limited success. The bully boys and girls are still in charge and when they cannot or will not answer his questions reach for the double-barrelled shotgun of vexatiousness.

I fully accept that @tony can be a difficult individual, unwilling to take No for an answer or ready to be fobbed off by metaphorical fists thrown by political thugs in the direction of his olfactory protuberance. I have no idea what he does with the collected information; is it like me buying too many DVDs, watch them once and put them in a box to be quickly forgotten? Irrational perhaps but strangely addictive. (But technically streets ahead of streaming - but that is another story too,)

It doesn’t really matter if @tony is obnoxious or charming , neither is an excuse for Bexley Council’s absolutely blatant law breaking. Why don’t they invite him in for a chat? (Because they have not learned a thing since Teflon Tess pleaded with her military wing to have me arrested “for criticising Councillors”.)

More than 100 of his FOIs were answered, apparently quite happily, but then someone decreed that he would not be allowed to make any more. To quote the Council’s response verbatim “we do not have to provide you with a refusal notice if we decide not to deal with any further requests for information received from you”.

Contrast that with what the Information Commissioner says on its website. “You cannot refuse a new request solely on the basis that you have classified previous requests from the same individual as vexatious”.

I do not know where @tony is going with his complaint next, he and I do not enjoy the same relationship as I did with Mick and Elwyn Bryant years ago, but I expect him to be in touch with the Information Commissioner before long.

Will he win his case easily? I doubt it very much for the reasons already stated. “Rampant nepotism has placed like minded Neanderthals into similar positions of power to lie, cover up and protect each other.”

There really is no hope left for this country. It is corrupt from top to bottom and I do not believe there is the will among the present population to do anything about it.

I think I did well and truly lose the direction of travel on this one. Never mind. If I remember what I meant to say there is always tomorrow or the next day.

Note: In Bexley the majority of the current crop of Conservative Councillors were first elected in 2014 or later. I had none of them in mind today but a few of those who date back to 2006 and earlier remain as the all-powerful ‘thugs’ who dictate the past and present direction of travel. They are interested in little other than self-preservation. Regular readers will hopefully know which of the remaining old-timers are exempt from this criticism.

 

13 December (Part 3) - Crap from Complaints

According to Bexley’s ‘Only Following Orders’ FOI and complaints stooge, asking what proportion of a planned Pedestrian Access Improvement Scheme has so far been delivered would not be in the public interest. Did it really fail so spectacularly that it has to remain secret?

There is no way that @tonyofsidcup will let that one go unchallenged and the ensuing argument will cost Bexley Council taxpayers far more than simply answering the question. With luck it will further tarnish the reputation of Leader Teresa O’Neill who @tony believes to be behind his FOI ban.

BiB will relish the opportunity to help him out. As the BBC website said, he may be an annoying individual but only questions can be deemed vexatious not the questioner.

A similar FOI about a £125,000 School Travel Highway Scheme suffered the same fate.

 

13 December (Part 2) - Crap in Belvedere

At a time when Bexley Council has closed down - there are no significant meetings in December, in fact there are none for another six weeks - Bonkers will no doubt keep the pot boiling by straying some way off topic.

Marston’s the owner of the apology for a restaurant in Clydesdale Way, Belvedere did not respond in any way to Monday’s criticism so a return to the subject would appear to be in order.

The company website says they are “obsessed with delivering a great experience” and to my mind poor food, overcharging and treating guests with total disdain doesn’t quite fit that claim.

I attempted to fill in their survey but when I typed in The Morgan as requested the site responded with an error message. I got through it in the end.

The Bonkers’ mailbox received two messages from readers who no longer go there and a third from someone who many of you know but who wouldn’t thank me for providing any identity clues who said…

The Morgan used to be lovely. At the time it was run by a lovely, efficient, wonderful manager who has since moved on and the Morgan has nose dived.

The hamper is a Christmas gift from my Internet Service Provider (†). I doubt there is anyone in Bexley on BT, Sky, Virgin, TalkTalk etc. who has had anything other than a price increase but mine knows how to treat a customer. Marston’s never will.

Over fussy website. It did not like the Definite Article.

† I have been with this small privately owned ISP since the days of dial-up internet and I am their oldest customer in both senses of the word. To survive, they now only accept commercial customers with IT Departments that will not bombard them with brainless support questions. “The web is OK but my wi-fi doesnְ’t work.” Nearly always clueless nonsense.

 

13 December (Part 1) - Crap in Abbey Wood

The flood picture must have been taken quite early yesterday afternoon because it was dark by the time I had to drive along Harrow Manorway just before 5 p.m. There was an unexplained queue of traffic from the flyover onwards and only when I arrived at the Yarnton Way roundabout did the flood become apparent and by that time it was deeper with no possibility of turning back.

One carriageway was blocked by an abandoned car with water lapping its doors and half way up its wheels. Fortunately electric cars are well waterproofed so I went through it at pretty much the normal speed - for a roundabout - and spent the evening planning a blog on Councils which don’t sweep leaves from gullies.

The road was totally blocked when I returned at 11:30 - no forewarning obviously - and after detouring through Belvedere, Facebook told me the flood was most likely caused by a blocked sewer. The road is reported to have re-opened at around 7 a.m. this morning.

Bexley Councilְ’s neglect may not have caused the flood but it certainly causes bin contamination. The sofa and bed are now blocking access to the plastics and tins bin so the paper bin which had contained a great deal of recyclable cardboard, much of it mine, is now contaminated with plastic. The paper bin has not had a lockable lid for the past four years and at almost every meeting Bexley Councillors whinge about residents who are irresponsible rubbish dumpers.

 

12 December (Part 3) - Stop the War!

I emerged from Abbey Wood station around 6:15 last Saturday so frozen that my legs didn’t want to take me home in a straight line, let alone divert to Abbey Wood Road to see what the anti-war rally was all about.

My natural inclination is to be against terrorist organisations - Hamas is in effect the government in Palestine - and in favour of democratically elected Parliaments - Israel is the only Middle Eastern government of the type Western civilisations might recognise. (For how much longer will I be able to say that with Sunak in charge?)

Fortunately I didn’t need to go to St. Michael and All Angels Church to be able to report on events there because the following from one of the organisers covers it well enough.

I don’t know the names of the placard carriers pictured below but I have bumped into the bearded gentleman a few times. He is a retired Union official who, at meetings I attended, always exerted a steadying and rational influence on any of his colleagues who might be straying deeper into left wing territory. A long winded way of saying he seemed like a decent bloke to me with views that were difficult to disagree with.

Not being in favour of war is another of them. The following text from Bexley Labour Left has been reformatted but not edited…

Seven police officers initially stationed outside the Erith and Thamesmead Constituency Labour Party’s AGM on late afternoon Saturday reflects how local politics is changing.

Such a step was previously unheard of and wouldn’t even have been fleetingly considered by the CLP in years gone by.

As the constituency MP and a number of councillors were among the 40-odd people who attended the meeting at St. Michael and All Angels Church in Abbey Wood, it seems clear where the request for police officers to be present came from.

Set against a national backdrop of two MPs being murdered over the past decade and the increasingly strained nature of todayְ’s politics, some nervousness is perhaps understandable.

But Bexley Labour Left (BLL) would like to unequivocally state that no such threat comes from or will ever come from this group or anybody connected to it.

Its members are only interested in intellectual debate and policies to create a better society, and not intimidation of any kind or acts of violence.

Leaflets, with a proposed motion printed on them calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank to stop mass death, suffering and destruction, were handed to party members as they made their way into the church.

For the most part, they were well received with a bit of conversation in some cases in what was a jovial atmosphere.

BLL learned that despite one particularly principled and praiseworthy plea from the floor, the newly-elected chair at the meeting dismissed any suggestion of hearing the motion on an emergency basis with limited overt support from others.

His reasoning was the motion is complex and would take too long to discuss, and AGMs are traditionally only to elect officers. But there is a recognition by some party members, privately at least, that the conflict in the Middle East is an urgent matter that needs to be debated, and the motion will now hopefully work its way to the CLP via one or more of its branches.

The motion and the preamble to it that was widely circulated prior to the meeting is reproduced below.…

---

Residents of the boroughs of Bexley and Greenwich will be outside the Erith and Thamesmead Constituency Labour Party’s AGM to call for a permanent ceasefire in Israel.

They will carry placards and distribute leaflets at least half-an-hour before the meeting is due to start at 4.30 p.m. on Saturday, December 9th, at St. Michael and All Angels Church in Abbey Wood (Abbey Wood Road, London SE2 9DZ).

We would welcome your newspaper/website sending a representative to cover the event. Spokespersons will be on hand to fully set out the aims of residents.

Over 1,000 Israeli civilians were killed in southern Israel on October 7th by Hamas with hundreds taken hostage, while Israeli military forces have subsequently killed more than 15,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza alone. Only a total ceasefire, to enable a political solution to be negotiated, will bring an end to the bloodshed, destruction and mass deaths of innocent men, women and children.

The Erith and Thamesmead CLP (and its branches) should pass the motion below at the earliest possible opportunity.

MOTION
This CLP calls for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank as the only way to stop the deaths of more innocent men, women and children further to the thousands of Israeli and Palestinian civilians who’ve already lost their lives.

The current conflict is also leaving many more people injured or maimed, laying waste to whole neighbourhoods and has displaced over a million people.

No matter how long it takes or hard it is to achieve, only a negotiated political settlement can provide any kind of solution.

This CLP also notes:

•No military solution is possible in this conflict.
•Escalating levels of violence will not achieve a lasting peace.
•The sanctity of all human life should be recognised and respected.
•Humanitarian pauses will only possibly provide temporary respite, and cannot, by definition, bring a permanent end to the killing.
•Unless the fighting stops, many civilians will be unable to access food, water, medical supplies and fuel - or adequate levels of such.
•War crimes and breaches of international law, as a matter of legal principle, do not justify greater breaches of international law and war crimes.
•Families, particularly with young children, left homeless by the conflict have no prospect of rebuilding their lives while it continues.
•Calling for a ceasefire is an important first step in ending the horrifying scale of bloodshed. Politicians, political parties and governments cannot ignore overwhelming public calls for a cessation in hostilities. And the countries who are the diplomatic, economic and military backers or enablers of the warring parties, have the power to make them stop immediately.
•All hostages and political prisoners should be released.

Note: Not being well versed in left wing politics I was not sure who “it seems clear where the request for police officers to be present came from” was alluding to. I sought clarification but there was no clear answer as to who might have thought that the usual bunch of old-timers who organise and attend such events was likely to breach the peace. My money would be on our MP but BLL is far more diplomatic than I am. Seven coppers? Not quite the 25 sent to arrest and pepper spray a man sitting quietly in a cafe but maybe almost as ill-judged.

 

12 December (Part 2) - Bone headed Bexley

My Bexley Magazine showed up about a month ago and one of my neighbours took a closer interest in Page 4 than I did.

On 11th November he asked Bexley Council for a replacement food waste bin because his had had a fatal encounter with a refuse truck.

He heard nothing more so yesterday made a phone call.

Apparently Bexley Council doesn’t have any nor do they have the slightest idea of when they will.

No chance of his left over turkey bones going into the right bin this year.

Is this a case of too many bins falling under the wheels of a lorry or the same sort of forward planning that failed to see the Elizabeth line coming?

 

12 December (Part 1) - If at first you don’t succeed…

How many planning applications for 238 Woolwich Road now? There was another last week. 23/02870/FUL.

In case you have forgotten, 238 Woolwich Road is where Bexleyְ’s favourite property developer purchased a bungalow and built some sort of concrete bunker in the back garden without planning permission. It slightly encroached on Lesnes Abbey Woods and whilst the Planning Committee was sufficiently concerned that they insisted on a site visit, he still got away with it.

His neighbour lost trees from their own garden and their woodland view was ruined. Eventually the unwanted stress and imposed costs drove them out of their house. There is a step-by-step Index to the saga.

The new application is for the bungalow, not the bunker. Will having close contacts with Bexley Conservatives pay dividends this time?

One property developer and five Conservative election candidates.

 

11 December - The Morgan, Belvedere. A place to avoid

Yesterday I joined 17 friends for Christmas lunch; we went to The Morgan in Belvedere. We know it is not terribly good but those of us who have no car find it convenient.

I was booked in for a carvery as I judged that the set Christmas Dinner might be incompatible with my need to avoid gluten. As it happened the three people sitting nearest to me had all done the same.

There was no option to pre-order a starter or dessert and I assumed I could simply choose once there. This proved to be incorrect but when the manager failed to find a home for a prawn cocktail I said I would take it.

It was without doubt the worst prawn cocktail I have ever experienced. It was served in a small enamelled dog’s food bowl and contrary to the menu, there was no lettuce or cucumber. (The guest sitting opposite me took the glutinous bread.)

Until I looked at the menu later I was unaware of the omissions, it was the total lack of any taste which was most apparent and the tough and chewy prawns.

They really were horrible and when I was done with them I asked a lady further down the table what hers were like. She too had found them close to inedible and to my alarm wondered if they had not been cooked.

The manager ushered at least six of us to the carvery counter where he told the server that mine was to be a small one. The first I had heard of that but it proved to be a blessing. I expected to be asked for my choice of meat but it was two small slices of turkey or nothing. I was a little surprised but it didn’t bother me at the time. Nor did just the one lonely blanketed pig.

I topped up with vegetables, greyish Brussels sprouts, peas, carrots and anaemic looking roast potatoes. There were no parsnips although a lady who was served before me said she found one left in its bowl.

Brussels sprouts are a favourite with me and it would be a rare week when I don’t cook them at home. Mine remain green and are easily bitten in half. The Morgan’s were not only grey with a hint of green but had the consistency of string so that they could not be bitten through. I have no idea how they managed to do that. Overdone outside and close to raw inside.

However it must be a house specialty, one of the roast potatoes was raw too. Hard with a taste reminiscent of the faint aroma of a freshly cut potato.

I wouldn’t have said anything about any of it except that when the same manager came to take the money I was asked for £!9 and not the £10·75 plus £5·95 indicated by the menu. I didn’t get an answer beyond two courses being £19 and three courses £22 so I decided it was reasonable to complain about the quality of the Brussels and the Prawn Cocktail. To say he couldn’t have cared less would be a gross understatement, not the slightest indication of regret and this rather unkempt individual immediately turned to the event organiser who was checking through his bill too.

I suppose such a poor manager thinks he can get away with ignoring eighty year old customers - all of us were well past 70. Maybe this permanent reminder of the standard of his catering and management skills will teach him that not all of us are helpless geriatrics.

 

10 December - Broke(n) Bexley

When did Bexley Council last sweep your road? I am not sure about my own but I noted the accumulation of gravel from a deteriorating road surface before nearby Carrill Way was resurfaced in May and it has not moved since. When I drew it to the attention of a Councillor on 28th June he said his road was much the same.

In mine the Council has a reasonable excuse although it is perhaps self-created. From Monday to Friday dawn to dusk the kerbside is fully occupied by Elizabeth line commuters who are unwilling to pay £15 a day to park nearer the station.

Walking there may however represent a health hazard; last week I very nearly went base over apex at the station end of Fendyke Road because the footpath was entirely covered by slippery fallen leaves. The drain gullies were completely blocked by them.

Bexley Council would rather pass its costs on to the NHS and flooded householders than fulfill its own obligations.

Gayton Road, adjacent to the station, has not been swept in months either and the accumulated leaves there have been pulped into some pretty decent compost for any enterprising gardener.

Perhaps this is an opportune moment to display a photo of the concrete blocks displaced from Felixstowe Road to Gayton Road where they have made the traffic congestion even worse than it was before.

Bexley Council with typical lack of forethought made almost no provision for people waiting to pick up passengers from the Elizabeth line trains and the result is either a total blockage of two bus routes or footpath parking.

The latter has now been curtailed by placing a number of concrete blocks such that if a car is parked alongside them a bus cannot get around the corner. Most cars, but not all, now park on the opposite footpath.

This is exactly the sort of road planning one has come to expect of Bexley Council. When they promote the man who lied to me about the reasons for narrowing roads in contravention of official guidance to be Highways Manager it is all rather inevitable.

Yet another example of Bexley Council’s senior management having to be liars in order to climb the greasy pole.

Note: My son was Head of the Department that issued the guidance so I was able to get expert confirmation that Bexley Council lied.

 

7 December (Part 2) - The important word is ‘Permanent’

At first I thought that the Bexley Labour Group had sent me a sort of Press Release on a subject which seems to have divided my friends and acquaintances, but on closer inspection I see it comes from an outfit that goes by the name of ‘Bexley Labour Left’ which I find slightly confusing with its implication that there is a Right Wing in Bexley Labour.

But to the point… they are “calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank as the only way to stop the deaths of more innocent men, women and children further to the thousands of Israeli and Palestinian civilians who’ve already lost their lives”.

As someone who for no particular reason has always had Jewish friends I think I can go along with that but can we rely on a terrorist group to honour it? History suggests that is never going to happen and will that group abandon their avowed aim of eradicating Israel from the map?

But there is no harm in asking for “all hostages should be released”.

If you agree then maybe a trip to Abbey Wood Road SE2 (not to be confused with Abbey Road, Belvedere) is in order? But it’s not for me, I have an appointment in Richmond on Saturday afternoon.

I’ve not been able to find this call for a Palestinian ceasefire on the web so I have created this cheap substitute here.

 

7 December (Part 1) - Waste not want not

The reason I am happy to go along with Bexley Council’s recycling schemes is that it is not very difficult to stick to their rules and they stopped fining people for leaving a black sack by the side of a bin or when vermin, human or otherwise, makes off with a bag and dumps it in the next street.

If we went back to that sort of tyrannical regime I think I might don my rebel’s hat and do what rebels do. Not much chance of that under Cabinet Member Richard Diment I would have thought; oh wait a minute, isn’t he the man behind the proliferation of yellow money box scams?

Yesterday I said that I didn’t spend much time looking at political websites but by following links I ended up on this one which included the interesting statistics that may be seen below right.

Fairly trivial amounts of paper and tin cans get put into the green bin but a shocking third of the rubbish that goes into it is food waste. The 10% of textile waste I can understand, who would phone for the collection of the tattered square of muslin I found a couple of weeks ago at the bottom of the pile of tea towels in a kitchen drawer? It went in the bin but nothing similar has happened before that I can remember. Old towels go in the shed and garage as rags until they disintegrate.

It’s the same with food. Who buys so much at inflated prices for shrink-flated products that 30% goes in the bin? Do we have a population comprised mainly of juvenile fussy eaters? What happened to domestic science lessons at school? Has any single thing in this country improved over the past 40 years?

Once again I can adopt a holier than thou position, I know exactly how much food has gone out of my house uneaten this year. I found two ‘baby’ new potatoes at the back of a fridge drawer that had escaped from their pack and had gone black and squishy. I cut them into smaller pieces and put them in the garden compost bin which Bexley’s Labour administration kindly subsidised for me 20 years ago. Still going strong.

My food waste bin is in pristine condition and used for storing toilet rolls. I suppose there is some sort of tenuous link between its intended use and mine.

A Council which can’t spell waste on their website featuring waste! Oh well; it is Bexley afterall.

 

6 December (Part 2) - On a high horse making up rules on the hoof? Looks like it

I don’t know about you but I was getting a little confused about the numerical allegations surrounding @tony’s Freedom of Information Requests so I asked for clarification.

Could he really have submitted 115 FOIs in 18 months while I have got by on only four in 12 years? Probably. @tony has only kept records since last June but extrapolating that number makes 115 totally believable. He is not going to dispute that but when I suggested there must have been a lot of duplicates he said No. Not more than two or three when Council replies were delayed long beyond the legal time limits; he prefers to ask for a Review which is not the same thing as a repeat.

Were there many duplicates as Ms. Bonham claimed. Let’s assume that @Tony forgot a few but “most” of the time “you asked further questions”? It doesn’t sound very likely, especially so when the letter came from a Council not renowned for its honesty.

But hang on a minute, Madam Bonham does not dispute that more than 100 of the FOIs were answered in a routine manner without demur. So they weren’t vexatious were they? She can’t come back now and claim they were, only perhaps that @tony is not a cost free zone. Suggesting the former will make her a laughing stock at the Information Commissioner’s Office when those numbers get to Wilmslow.

Did she not seek legal advice before making up stories on the hoof? Does the Monitoring Officer ever give good advice?

It is admitted that there are only twelve FOIs held up by this latest act of stupidity and Ms. Bonham kindly provided their reference numbers and the relevant Department that was asked to answer. Seven are clearly each on different subjects, so assuming that @tony has not trawled the extremities of triviality they cannot be vexatious. Why would he do that on the most recent seven when the previous 100 plus were perfectly acceptable? To quote the BBC website, @tony may be a very annoying person but that does not make him vexatious.

Five FOIs were to Member Support and Electoral Services. It is reasonable to suppose that they are @tony’s enquiries about his proposed road safety petition, the subject on which the Council Leader said he had been given an answer on 15 occasions. Well if they can’t guarantee not to make up new rules at the 11th hour as they did in 2011, what do they expect?

Now we are getting close to the truth. One FOI has got up the nose of the Leader and (some Tory Councillors) and @tony’s refusal to accept her somewhat worthless, in my opinion, guarantee that petition procedures would be followed - they weren’t last time they came into play - has sparked the vexatious label; and maybe this particular FOI is.

But using that single example to put a stop to the other seven as yet unanswered questions is entirely wrong. Wrong and probably unlawful. As for using the previous 103 which are history now as supporting evidence; it is a joke, as I am inclined to think Ms. Bonham must be, although I acknowledge that to preserve one’s job at Bexley Council one has to kowtow to Teresa O’Neill. (A retired Finance Director told me exactly that.)

If I was @tony I would ease up on the FOIs; what does he do with the information? Very little of it ends up here so I would judge that most of them are not terribly important and whilst answering the average FOI doesn’t cost much, 115 begins to add up. However the response pretty much proves that at its core Bexley Council is as dishonest as it always has been and I think I know who is at the centre of that rotten apple.

 

6 December (Part 1) - More crookedness

I don’t often look at the local Labour or Conservative party websites, the latter in particular can be years out of date, so what is the point? However there is an interesting new page on the Labour site about how Bexley Council sets out to fleece the motorist. It implies that Bexley Council did not have police agreement to their seven new yellow box junctions and failed to give any publicity that might warn the unwary of their presence. The Council hopes that residents will be poorer by close to £400,000 each year.

The only use of CCTV in Bexley for any form of crime prevention is for enforcing those box junctions plus school zig-zags, U-turns and No entry signs.

Parking charges were raised by 30% and a 20 m.p.h. Zone was imposed on Albion Road, “a policy opposed by Rishi Sunak”. (The fact that one preceded the other by about seven years is overlooked.)

The road maintenance budget is now less than it was in 2017 which is pretty obvious to anyone who leaves home.

There is the obligatory support for ULEZ, obviously some forms of fleecing are more acceptable than others, and a reference to a Council Leader who could not quite bring herself to condemn the camera vandals.

My first impression was that it was a decent enough page of political knockabout but it made me think about my weekly drive across Greenwich to Waltham Forest. Both Labour controlled and both far worse for bus lanes and 20 limits than Bexley, although Greenwich appears to be rather lax on enforcement.

Waltham Forest puts cameras everywhere and last night a friend there told me how turning right out of his own road before 9:30 in the morning had provoked a £65 bill that very day. Another decent bloke who now hates his Council - which to my mind is a very good thing.

Waltham Forest has 20 limits more or less everywhere, well sort of. They paint the figure 20 in a circle on the road and install lots of flashing things by the side of the road which go off if you should dare to do 21 - and then remove all the traditional repeating 30 signs. However the standard red circled 30 signs on entry are still there and my car reads them and therefore tells me that the whole area is still legally a 30 zone.

In just one place on the edge of Epping Forest there is a single algae covered 30 repeater sign hidden by a tree which they forgot to take away. I really don’t know what the legal limit is in Waltham Forest. Some bits are definitely 20 but elsewhere motorists are expected to play a guessing game.

 

5 December - A bunch of crooks?

When Bonkers was started in September 2009 it was a collection of pages on a variety of subjects on which Bexley Council had either failed or stepped outside the law. One of them detailed how in the years 2000 and 2001 I wrote three times to Bexley Council about seven different things and as a result I was threatened with the vexatious label with a ban on making further enquiries.

Sensitive souls weren’t they? At least Mick Barnbrook got away with 100 over five years before they decided he was a racist and @tonyofsidcup pushed the boundary to 115; a figure he disputes, without any hint of being similarly accused.

Bexley Council suggested I was a racist too after I asked why the signposts in Lesnes Abbey park were in English and Vietnamese instead of perhaps English and French. The signposts have gone now but the BIB page hasn’t; you may read it here. The local Councillor to which it refers was Daniel Francis and I am still a bit sore with him for not contesting the threats made by the Chief Executive.

Interesting that way back in 2009 my complaint was that follow-up letters were necessary because first replies never answered the question. Nothing gets any better in Bexley.

I had half forgotten but the ‘Vexatious’ page contains a link to the BBC’s website which explains how banning someone from making FOIs using the vexatious tag is illegal and the link still works - even if the BiB page pre-dates the code update that makes provision for mobile viewing. I will have to fix that. (Done now!)

Back in 2009 I was firmly of the opinion that Bexley Council was a bunch of crooks and it is disappointing to note that they may still be.

@tony is not unaware of the law on FOIs and vexatiousness and is undeterred by Kate Bonham’s unlawful FOI ban. Because she didn’t reply to his complaint about it he has already referred her to the Information Commissioner.

He wrote to me too and most of his words are reproduced below…

There is absolutely no danger of me curtailing FOI activities as a result of Ms. Bonham’s letter. Thankfully, it is impossible to “blacklist” (Louie French style) a person from making FOI requests - a FOI request can be vexatious, a FOI requester cannot.
I know this, Ms. Bonham may know this, Ms. Narebor (Bexley’s legal czar) knows this, the ICO knows this - and may take action against Bexley for non-compliance with FOI legislation. (As if Bexley wasn’t in hot water with ICO already.)
This would be ridiculous if it weren’t also depressing: two senior council officers, each paid well over £100,000 pa - Ms. Bonham no doubt busy assisting Mr. Thorogood in trying to stave off Bexley’s financial collapse - are spending their time on *this*.

ICO ruling: “Just because you are a really annoying person is not sufficient grounds for turning down your freedom of information applications.”

By being stupid at the turn of the millennium, Bexley Council laid the seeds for criticism and ridicule over the following years and it would appear that history is being repeated.

 

4 December - Here they go again

I used to think that Bexley Council was the most dishonest organisation I had ever encountered in my life. Maybe I had better rephrase that more accurately. There was a time when I knew that Bexley Council was the most dishonest organisation I had ever encountered and there is quite enough evidence within these pages to support that view.

A Chief Executive and Council Leader who colluded to allow the former to transfer his employment to another Council with a Golden Goodbye and huge sickness pension which taxpayers are still funding. A Council Leader who abused credit cards and received a suspended prison sentence. A Deputy Leader who refused to report her boss to the police. A Leader who worked hand in glove with the police to stifle criticism and a Chief Executive who colluded with them to get criminal charges dropped. I hope that is enough for now but there is more if you remain unconvinced.

Very few of the senior officers were honest. We had a husband and wife Director and Deputy team with one marking the other’s annual assessment and another who did not possess the professional qualifications which his job description demanded. Fortunately every last one of them has gone and with one or two possible exceptions their replacements appear to be in an altogether different league. At the time I wouldn’t have trusted more than one of the Cabinet Members but if I overlook the one I saw commit perjury in a Crown Court witness box the present crew appear to be both honest and reasonably competent, well most of them anyway!

I have speculated in the past that the spotlight of social media, webcasts and maybe even BiB had steered a thoroughly rotten borough into the realms of respectability but another thought has recently occurred to me.

I used to know of and regularly cooperate with five Council agitators who would ask questions at every meeting but for various reasons they have all gone now. One specialised in submitting Freedom of Information requests. My favourite was “Please provide a photocopy of the Mayor’s official diary for Friday 21st March 2014”. It was refused but the Information Commissioner intervened. The diary entry showed that the denied strip show in unlicensed premises was an official Council, or at least Conservative, event.

Probing Freedom of Information requests were effectively banned when Michael Barnbrook, a man who was friends with Stephen Lawrence and his father before Stephen was murdered and who financially supported a little mixed race boy who would otherwise have had a much more miserable life was labelled a racist by Bexley Council. Racists can’t make FOIs apparently and the ICO confirmed it.

Mick had asked one too many questions about a black Council employee who he was sure was being less than honest - and perhaps he was because he lost his job soon afterwards. But it was a way to silence Mick who had submitted around 100 FOIs over about five years, many of them close to being duplicates because the first question was never answered.

This is pretty much what Mr. Shvorob said at last month’s Council meeting. He was accused by the Council Leader of submitting 15 FOIs and he told her that if the Council answered questions in the first place most would be unnecessary. Revenge has now been taken.

Just like Mick was ten years ago, Mr. Shvorob has been banned from submitting more Freedom of Information requests. An Appendix to his banning letter lists 115 from the past 18 months, in excess of Mr. Barnebrook’s tally and over a much shorter period.

The letter goes on to accuse Mr. Shvorob of submitting FOIs that cause staff distress; poor things. Mick was accused of that too when his FOI responses proved their dishonesty.

Mr. Shvorob occasionally sends me copies of his FOIs; about once a month if my email Inbox is any guide and once or twice I have found them to be at the trivial end of the scale. Of the 100 I knew nothing about many appear to be duplicates, presumably because Bexley Council has employed its favourite trick of not answering the original question.

So now we have no one I know of regularly keeping a watchful eye on Bexley Council.

Scrutiny meetings are no substitute for FOIs. As has been noted here many times, Councillors’ questions are very often not answered properly and most Councillors meekly accept the situation as if they were not very interested in the answer anyway.

The banning letter was signed by the Leader’s loyal servant Kate Bonham, Deputy Director, Finance & Corporate Services.

Note; His friends and supporters may wish to know that Mick Barnbrook has been in and out of hospital for the past two years and is currently in a very serious condition in Margate Hospital. His many friends will no doubt be wishing him all the best.

 

3 December - It wasn’t me guv!

Two beds, one sofa and one pushchair. I didn’t own that much clobber when I set up my first home in 1965.

At £126 a tonne Councillor Diment won’t be very happy. Maybe it is time someone recognised that only two residents who use that facility have their cultural roots in Britain and one is me who maybe stupidly separates paper labels from tin cans and parcel tape from cardboard packages.

The rubbish may of course come from ְ‘professional’ fly tippers in caged trucks but there has been no evidence that they do anything other than remove scrap metal.

 

2 December (Part 2) - Small Business Saturday

There is a special day, and sometimes a month, for everything. Does anyone take any notice?

Bexley Council is purporting to encourage us to shop locally while in reality doing the opposite.

Amazon delivered me this year’s 192nd package today so I am on course to pass through the 200 barrier before the end of the year.

My disenchantment with Bexleyheath for shopping began at least 20 years ago when the only buses to take me there were the 229 and the 469 which took slightly different circuitous routes. I could quite literally walk home - it is mainly down hill - more quickly than be on a slow bus. The Freedom Pass at age 60 and laziness put an end to that. (Before the 469 terminated in Erith obviously.)

Then there is my possibly irrational fear of parking fines. My driving licence is a little over 61 years old and I have never been given a parking ticket and I have no wish to start now.

Some of that may be illogical in 2023 now that we have the 301 bus which can get me to Bexleyheath in 15 minutes but old habits die hard. I long ago got out of the habit of local shopping except for a bit of DIY stuff in Toolstation (Belvedere) and the like.

While the slightest mistake with parking payment can cost £60 or whatever the going rate is now, not to mention the plethora of yellow box junctions, little shops will have to go bust while Bexley Council thinks it is a good idea to place obstacles to shopping locally in my way.

The only exception I make is for birthday cards for which I go to Card Factory rather than pay £2·50 a go from the rubbish selection to be found in the local Sainsbury’s. With luck the 301 can get me there and home again in an hour.

Note: 192 deliveries, two refunds - one; batteries past their sell by date and two; a loudspeaker stand that wobbled far too much. I have no idea how they did it but the money was back in my account only 70 minutes after I dropped it off at the Post Office. There was also a £14 refund for something that I neither complained about nor returned. I decided that sorting that out would be more bother than it was worth. Thanks Amazon.

 

2 December (Part 1) - From Vision to Vinyl. A Cabinet meeting report

There was only one topic of conversation at last week’s Public Cabinet meeting; money and Social Care which is money by another name.

Mr. Rowbotham the Director of Social Care said there was not a lot new to say and certainly nothing that would be of great interest here. His staff had produced a ‘Vision’. (Click for PDF.) Councillors Seymour (Conservative) and Borella (Labour) thought it was a good one. The latter asking that carers should always be looked after.

The Council Leader said that “In-year budget monitoring is not in a great situation at the moment with pressures coming through that everyone across the country is seeing”.

An overspend of £7·93 million to the end of September was reported all Directorates having contributed to it with Children’s Services being at Number One. The Capital programme is slipping with BexleyCo and Shenstone School heading that particular list. Council Tax collections are down.

Deputy Leader David Leaf said the overspend would be met from reserves. The new payment agreement would see a minimum pay rise of £2,226 or 3·8% extra for more senior staff. £3 million extra overall. The unions had asked for 13% extra for everyone.

Cabinet Member Richard Diment repeated his plea that residents stop putting recyclables in the green bin as it costs a lot of money. Every tonne of waste that does not go in the green bin saves £130. Parking Services are forecast to break even this year and PCN revenue is climbing. The situation at Felixstowe Road is improving.

Labour Leader Borella put in a plea for the pot hole money to be put to good use as potholes was the Number One complaint by residents “on the doorstep” but the Conservative Leader said that Bexley’s allocation was still unknown. Whatever the outcome Bexley has allocated an extra £1·6 million to fix potholes.

Councillor Borella managed to take another swipe at the In and rapidly Out Prime Minister Liz Truss who had allegedly almost single handedly wrecked the British economy, “a massive impact”, and Baroness O’Neill of Bexley said he “sounded like a broken record”.

 

1 December (Part 2) - Things that didn’t happen in November

Shenstone School explained
My email of 13th November to the Cabinet Member for Education never did elicit a response.

Dear Councillor Newton,

When I was at last Wednesday’s meeting the Labour Group attempted to put on some sort of show trial on the subject of Shenstone school, even dragging along parents who would not in practice be heard beyond the Council Chamber. It all seemed rather unnecessary to me and there must have been quicker and more effective ways of getting answers or action.

I need to report it on my blog but handicapped by the fact I know nothing of the Shenstone problems beyond the Leader saying that there were tendering problems.

A month ago one of the parents successful at the LGO asked me to report on Shenstone school suggesting that there was some sort of scandal there but I was unable to do so because a search on the Council website produced a blank.

Can you point me at an Agenda/Minutes that might educate me or perhaps you could give me a brief history? I don’t need much; readers have short attention spans!

Maybe Caroline is still struggling with her TalkTalk connection.

Parking problems solved
Bexley’s response to my complaint that the refuse cart could not always reach me due to bad parking was that the bin men had never complained, so this morning I asked them why not.

Four of them gathered around me, friendly well spoken bunch too, and they said the Council doesn’t listen to them and the only way forward was for residents to complain.

They said more which maybe should not be repeated here, but I think I will tell Richard Diment what the problem was said to be.

At 2pm, six hours later, that blue car is still there with no parking ticket to be seen.

New Road closed for two weeks
It was supposed to be closed for gas works for two weeks but the day after Roger Keene revealed that SGN's contractor had not asked for a road closure, Bexley Council came to its senses and relented. To the relief of all bus users including me.

Evidence provided
Another case of No, Not, Never. The anonymous alleger (is that a word?) of wrong doing by our Council Leader has not come up with anything to support the claim. Not just nothing worthwhile, but nothing at all. If he cannot do better than that I will be tempted to remove the blog.

Rishi Sunak
Did something sensible.

 

1 December (Part 1) - Defiance!

When Councillor John Davey made his wisecrack about sending Nazarin Zaghari-Ratcliffe back to Iran because of her suggestion she might become a Labour Party activist, I was very nearly alone in thinking as I did and actually saying so. It enraged the wokerati both in the Labour party and elsewhere.

The Conservative Group in Bexley felt that they had to respond to the humourless and subject John Davey to disciplinary procedures but in due course decided that he was not a racist. How much public money was wasted in confirming the obvious?

Mine was not quite a lone voice, the reliably rebellious @tonyofsidcup has a soft spot for him too. so much so that he thought he would try to get to the bottom of what really motivated his critics and to see if the Monitoring Officer was capable of total transparency.

Using the tactics from the Mike Barnbrook era of ten years ago Tony made several FOI requests but Bexley Council told him the whole business was personal and exempt from the provisions of the FOI Act and refused to say if they even had any information on the case.

After jumping through the various hoops and getting nowhere Tony took his case to the Information Commissioner who soon came to the conclusion that it had not been as personal and private as Bexley Council tried to make out. Among other things, the Leader’s statement at Full Council was deemed to be the Council’s official position and therefore it was not all that private and personal.

The ICO also pointed out that other disciplinary hearings had been given publicity, albeit sometimes with names redacted, so why not John Davey v Nazarin?

They ordered Bexley Council to come clean and respond in a proper manner…

Did they come clean? Well not really,

Gina Clarke, the Freedom of Information Officer, under orders presumably, continues to refuse to provide any information.

It’s almost enough to persuade me that a dishonest Bexley Council is covering up racism.