13 May - Dishonest then, dishonest now?
Twelve years ago there were three political blogs in Bexley - not counting Cabinet Member Craske’s libellous efforts - but in
the London Borough of Barnet there were at least six.
Since then things have moved on and blogs are not as popular as they used to be.
Bexley
is down to one if one applies the term political blog strictly. It is the same in Barnet, I am only aware of one plus a second which evolved into a
campaign against unfair parking penalties and the blog has become famed London wide. Its origins are still
apparent in its URL. http://lbbspending.blogspot.com/.
(LBB = London Borough of Barnet.)
Occasionally Bexley comes under the parking spotlight. It happened again this week.
Barnet’s Mr. Mustard, not his real name obviously, Tweeted…
"If you have had a letter from Gladstones like the attached on behalf of Bexley or
Bromley Council (but not private parking which I don’t touch) please email me mrmustard@zoho.com - I think these letters are unlawful”.
Mr. Mustard is an expert in parking law who wins nearly all the cases he takes to the Adjudicator so
the chances are that he is right.
I know for a fact that Bexley’s parking department (which it runs jointly with
Bromley) has been prepared to break the law whenever it thinks it might get away it,
like rejecting all Appeals at the first stage hoping that their victim will
go away and cough up and perhaps even more emphatically because I have the report
written by their own auditor which refers to the ‘maladministration’ of the
parking department 13 times. It repeatedly ignored legal advice and preferred to break the law.
I didn’t publish the report on Bonkers because the man who leaked it to me asked me not to but maybe this short extract
from its 21 pages provides a flavour of the sort of behaviour that permeated Bexley Council at the time.
Does Mr. Mustard’s letter suggest that nothing much has changed?
After the Ombudsman ruled against Bexley Council their Parking Department defied legal advice and carried on as before.