30 November - As bad as each other?

I believe that today Mr. Nick Hollier, long time loyalist to Bexley Council, leaves its employ possibly on retirement but good news whatever the reason. My favourite letter from HR Director Nick Hollier was suffixed with the comments that may be read below.

I had very carefully constructed a complaint referencing the lies told about me by his Legal Team Leader. Confirmed as lies by four Councillors from both Parties. It was difficult to complain about a liar without using that word but I was pleased to use the word lying only once - and none of its derivatives.

Mr. Hollier was not happy about what I’d said and based on the one use of the word ‘lying’ threatened me with Unreasonable Customer Behaviour and being vexatious, hostile, abusive and offensive.

If you followed the link above you will know that my complaint was none of those things, nor anywhere close. I would also remind readers that the police regarded the lies as so serious that they sent a file to the Crown Prosecution Service and specifically named Lynn Tyler as being one of several Bexley employees including the Chief Executive who had likely committed Misconduct in a Public Office.

Good riddance!

Things do not appear to have improved since. At an Employment Tribunal not very long ago, Ms. Lorraine Barlow another Head of Corporate Human Resources at Bexley Council impressed the judge with her lack of efficiency. Notes that were lost or maybe never existed were mysteriously found when that became convenient.

This is remarkably similar to what happened in the Tyler case above. She had produced alleged witness statements which were untruthful and denied by their so called signatories, who never actually signed them.

The Tribunal concerned discriminatory pay levels in the surveyor’s department and the claim was not upheld but the judgment (PDF) includes a few items of interest. Like Bexley Council spent £55 million on its Temporary Accommodation Project. In effect doing the reverse of what the Housing Associations have been doing recently.

 

27 November - The New Year brings a new petition

Mr. Shvorob of Sidcup has taken another step towards emulating Mr. Bryant of Bexley. First it was a question at every Council meeting, now it is a petition. Twelve years ago Mr. E knocked on more than 2,000 doors and obtained 2,219 signatures in support of his contention that £208,983 a year (plus allowances) was too much for Bexley’s Chief Executive. Contrary to their rules the Council refused to accept the petition.

The reason given was that the CE did not earn £208,983 and the petition was therefore dishonest.
The salary shown on Bexley's website at the time was, you guessed it, £208,983.

Mr. S. has been seeking an assurance that if he organises a petition asking for better provision for pedestrian safety his will not suffer the same fate. He has been refused such an assurance and has only been able to get a statement that it will be processed according to standard procedures. Shades of Mr. Bryant again, they told him that too.

I am advised that the petition is going ahead anyway and will run from 1st January to 29th February 2024.

Technology having moved on since 2011 the petition will not involve shoe leather, Bexley is forcing it down the on-line route and provided this link. https://democracy.bexley.gov.uk/etc/RPID=16997822&HPID=16997822. Friendly isn’t it? (Edited: The published original was longer but subsequently redacted - see Note below.)

Not only is the link far from simple it doesn’t, for me at least, appear to work. That may be because I do not have a Bexley Council Account; never found the need for one.

If I am right it would appear to be a clever way of restricting access to the petition. Maybe Mr. Shvorob will tell me if it is.

Something that has not moved on in twelve years is that Mr. Bryant’s petition was in the hands of a Mr. Kevin Fox - see letter extract above. The same Council Officer is handling the new one.

Note: Mr. Shvorob has confirmed that the link does not work and has requested it is withdrawn from this blog.

 

26 November - Pointless questions

Councillors’ questions are in the main part of the the theatrical antics of Full Council, most have no benefit over popping an email across to the relevant Cabinet Member but the set reported below may be an exception. Here the Bexley Magazine might be a better medium for getting the messages across rather than preach to no more than five Members of the Public in the Council Chamber. Typical was Councillor Janice Ward-Wilson’s question to Cabinet Member Richard Diment about how much money is saved by putting rubbish in the correct bin.

Residuals for incineration costs taxpayers £126·38p per tonne. Disposal of food waste is cost neutral but if it all went for incineration it would have cost £584,000 a year. 37% of what goes into the residual waste bin is food. Paper and cardboard makes money; £686,000 last year. A figure for plastic, tins and glass is not available but it is “a considerable sum".

Click to see more of Page 4 of the Winter 2023 issue of the Bexley Magazine.

Some areas are particularly bad for recycling and a door-to-door campaign is in progress. The misinformation that Bexley was top London recycler for 17 consecutive years was repeated.

Councillor Steven Hall (Conservative, West Wickham) asked how much the ULEZ legal challenge had cost. Deputy Leader David Leaf went back to 1st July 2021 for a Khan quote. “I have no plans to extend the ULEZ to Outer London” adding “some people wonder why politicians cannot be trusted”.

“In the 2022 election we campaigned to oppose ULEZ while Labour campaigned to impose it. We won and they lost and we therefore had a mandate to oppose the expansion of the ULEZ. It has had a shocking and dreadful impact on residents and business. Of 114,000 vehicles in the borough about 28,000 of them are non-compliant. Our share of the costs of the challenge was £147,853·20 [which includes TfL costs], £1·50 per household. We will continue to voice our opposition to this regressive unfair and punitive charge imposed by Labour.” Another S. Hall, he said will cancel the ULEZ if elected next May.

Councillor Francis (Labour, Belveder) asked why the Council’s legal advice remains a secret. The Cabinet Member said he is following “clear processes” and Councillor Francis is very well aware of them”. Labour are “tax grabbing ULEZ lovers and hit their own wards hardest and ignore the pain and suffering”.

Councillor Chris Ball (Labour, Erith) asked Leader O’Neill if she agreed that vandalism is not a victimless crime. She said that in general she does but as it is a hypothetical question a more comprehensive reply was not possible.

Councillor Ball said that there had been 800 cases of ULEZ camera vandalism plus 200 thefts. Would she condemn those people? Somewhat ambiguously if you study the punctuation she said “I would not, definitely, support any action like that but I understand the frustration”. She quoted a 90 year old man who could now no longer leave home because he had to sell his 25 year old car. Shop footfall is down and “jobs are at risk”

 

25 November - Wind up time

I said my piece on Motions 18 months ago and once or twice since then. “If Labour comes up with a half decent Motion the Conservatives will vote it down so that they can substitute their own and claim the credit for it.”

A Councillor kindly explained to me what Motions are for. They are to “wind up” the other side and now that I know that I can better understand the one Labour put forward a couple of weeks ago.

The wind up here is the word “plagued” and perhaps the implication that Bexley is not a pleasant place to be. Did the Member for Thamesmead East really expect the majority party to swallow that unchallenged?

In the absence of Councillor Asunramu, Councillor Ball (Erith) moved the Motion and immediately referred to “the systemic and endemic issue [of littering] that people are aware of on a daily basis”.

“25 years ago Bexley was a Green Borough but the reality is that we are no longer because in every street, every park, every open space and every verge alongside roads the place is filthy. There is litter, there are weeds and there is fly tipping and a general sense of environmental decline. Everyone sees it, weeds are everywhere and fly tipping is a nightmare.”

Councillor Larry Ferguson (Thamesmead East) who seconded the Motion said that “anyone who walks around my ward on any day would see instances of fly tipping. Bexley isn’t working.” He had sent video clips and photos of fly tippers in action to Council Officers but without result.

The Tories could not allow themselves to be associated with a plague so Councillor Cameron Smith (Conservative, St. Mary’s & St. James) put forward an Amendment referring to its 100+ parks and green spaces, praised residents for their contribution to keeping Bexley cleaner and greener, condemned the fly tippers, welcomed the 20,000 Penalty Notices issued for littering and responded to Labour’s desire for more CCTV surveillance with his own ‘wind up’ gesture; to switch the ULEZ cameras from tax gathering to crime prevention.

For the most part it looked like the sort of Motion that any reasonable person would support but Councillor Nicola Taylor was in an unforgiving mood and engaged in verbal fisticuffs with the Mayor. I believe a grudge from a previous meeting when the Mayor curtailed her speech which overran its time allocation had not been forgiven. This time the Mayor was alleged to have accused her of laughing when all she had done was smile and “I demand an apology”. The depths of pettiness knows no bounds.

The Mayor said he would not apologise after she looked at him as if his serious remark was “some kind of joke” and Councillor Taylor was wasting good debating time.

Councillor Smith thanked Councillor Ball for proposing “this important issue” but put forward his Amendment because, whilst acknowledging that there is a littering problem because of “a few reckless individuals”, it is inaccurate to describe it as a plague, omits the counter-measures the Council is taking and under appreciates the role of litter picking volunteers”.

Bexley has suffered about 5,000 fly tipping incidents annually in recent years which is barely 1% of the total in London. The figure in Bexley is falling but in Greenwich it is 8,666 and in Lewisham 29,515 incidents last year, “which could be describes as a plague. Bexley issues the 30th highest number of fines of any local authority in the entire country. It is inaccurate to describe Bexley as either grubby or plagued.”

Councillor June Slaughter (Sidcup) seconded the Amendment. “Littering is in the hands of residents and there is no excuse for dropping so much as a sweet wrapper. It is people who cause litter.”

Councillor John Davey (Conservative, West Heath) said he was very proud of Bexley being a Green Borough, “it has thousands of trees and low air pollution proving that ULEZ is just a money grabbing scheme and fly tippers are prosecuted. The only residents who are in favour of ULEZ are Bexley Labour Councillors.” He and his West Heath colleague Peter Reader are volunteer litter pickers.

Labour Councillor Nicola Taylor said she was “hearing some agreement that fly tipping in the borough lets us all down and every Councillor will have had residents reporting fly tipping or overflowing bins but we mustn’t rely on volunteers to clean up. We cannot say that It [littering] is the residents’ fault and they should clear it up.”

“Fly tipping is highest in Erith and it cannot be ignored that it is highest where there is a high level of private rented accommodation and we need to look at the role of landlords who dump stuff on the streets. Mentioning ULEZ cameras is a stretch, they are TfL cameras. It was this administration which made all our own CCTV staff redundant and which asks residents to litter pick for free while Country Style pays shareholders and seeks to push down the wages of bin workers. You are saying this is residents’ fault, they must clear it up. What kind of leadership is that? You are using this for political aims.”

For time reasons, Mayor Dourmoush risked a further round of fisticuffs by asking Councillor Taylor to finish to give Councillor Ball time to sum up. She carried on for a further 28 seconds which was sufficient for her to chide the Mayor for turning down her nomination of some litter pickers for Civic Recognition Awards.

The volume captured by my microphone reduced considerably when Councillor Ball began summing up in more measured tones. He said that the differences between the Motion and the Amendment were semantics that didn’t matter to him. He wasn’t interested in what happened in Greenwich and Lewisham but he personally would be happy to accept the Amendment if it was not for the final paragraph about repurposing the ULEZ cameras.

In confirmation that my Councillor informant was correct to say that Motions are about winding up opponents he said “You put that in deliberately which I completely understand, we would have done the same, I get the game.”

The London Mayor has no remit on litter enforcement; “is the final bullet point valid? A Motion should not ask a third party to do something he is not legally allowed to do. The final bullet point is a deal breaker.”

I may not often agree with the former Labour Leader but he is absolutely correct here isn’t he? The Amendment’s final bullet point is there solely to wind up the opposition.

The Cabinet Member for Places said the Amendment was an excellent Motion and that the fine for littering in Bexley would shortly be increased

The Amendment was carried along the usual party lines.

Long long ago Thirty Minute Theatre was a BBC drama series. Now it is replayed several times a year in the Council Chamber.

Overflowing bin and fly tipping in Coptefield Drive.
I had to venture across the Greenwich border to find weeds in the gutter.
(The paper bin was emptied soon after the photo was taken.)

Councillor Smith went on to make his position very clear on X (Twitter). I know I do not get out much in Bexley, the occasional bus ride to Bexleyheath and walking within a mile or so of home but I do not see Bexley as either grubby or plagued by litter and fly tipping. The local bins are left unlocked which is asking for trouble and I don’t think the food waste bin has ever been emptied. Sometimes it stinks, at other times it doesn’t.

Note: I have occasionally seen my own Councillor Sally Hinkley litter picking in Lesnes Abbey park.

 

24 November - Catching up

Now that my DIY distraction is done bar some minor tidying up it is time to return to the neglected BiB post box. ‘Concerned of Watling Street’ continues to be pessimistic about Bexley’s financial outlook - which he links to the senior staff exodus - by drawing attention to the ever depleting Reserves. Down by another £16 million this year. I suspect his messages may be used again once I get time to cover this week’s Cabinet meeting.

A high proportion of email contact is anonymous and I do find those that ask me to publicise contentious issues that they are unwilling to stand by themselves a little cheeky, but in a different category are those that ask specific questions and do not provide a reply address.

Typical is this one…

Subject: Felix Di Netimah
Message: Hi, Enjoy reading the page as and when I can. Any clues or information as to why Felix is now sitting as an independent and no longer a Conservative Councillor?

How am I expected to answer that? As it happens I do have an email from Independent Councillor di Netimah (Crayford) but I was not the intended recipient so it would not be fair to quote it here, but I did make a reference to it six months ago. I am not going to expand on what was said then.

Suffice to say, Felix joins a long line of Councillors who could not get on with the Leader.

 

23 November - Time to give up?

Few would dispute that the Conservatives in Government are now the party of high taxation. Much of it may be due to Covid but who took the series of poor decisions that wasted so much money?

Before the Autumn Financial Statement it was said that tax levels were higher than at any time since the Second World War and then Jeremy Hunt announced…

Financial Times headline.

And after the biggest ever tax cut what are we left with? The biggest tax burden since the Second World War! Says it all, does it not? Hunt’s tax cuts leave most individuals no better off even before fuel costs go up again on January 1st.

There are no Conservatives left in Government and what are we left with? Starmer who endorsed all the Tory mistakes and would have embellished them and Richard Tice’s Reform UK which is not a Political Party with Members to influence its direction; it is a limited company that seeks donations. And Tice wanted every last one of us to be compulsorily vaccinated against Covid. Tice and democracy are strange bedfellows. No way does he get my vote.

 

22 November - Bexley. One very inconsiderate Council

I suppose it must be getting on for twenty years since I first noticed Bexley Council’s preference for closing roads completely when it could almost as easily be kept open and I wondered if it might be for Health & Safety reasons; however I have come around to thinking that the real reason is that Bexley and Councils more generally make no attempt whatsoever to consider the inconveniences they impose on the people who pay their inflated salaries if it makes their own working lives easier.

New Road in Abbey Road is closed again for two weeks for the second time in a handful of months. Once again the reason is gas works at the top end, but is total closure necessary?

New Road resident Roger Keene has drawn my attention to his Facebook post but his comments need to be given wider publicity.

The loss of three bus routes and nearly 30 buses an hour has a significant impact on Abbey Wood and Belvedere. TfL re-routed the 469 to give Upper Belvedere a direct link to the Elizabeth line. Now it is diverted into Plumstead which makes it an unnecessarily slow journey. A disabled lady in New Road now has a long walk which includes the Gayton Road stairs to get a 301/B11 into Bexleyheath. Only this afternoon I had to tell someone waiting for a bus outside the Community Centre in Knee Hill that he would have a very long wait if he stayed there.

Bexley Council really doesn’t care and would prefer that we blamed the gas company’s contractor, but to do so would not be fair.

JDT, the contractor has told Roger that they didn’t need a road closure, it was Bexley Council that insisted on it.

Three days after closure there is no obvious sign that work has commenced and Bexley Council has yet to respond to an email asking why they demanded a closure that the contractor did not ask for.

Can there be any doubt that Conservative Bexley Council works against residents’ best interests?

 

21 November - Shenstone School

At the last Full Council meeting almost two weeks ago the subject of Shenstone School took up a fair bit of time. I expected it to become an interesting story here except that I knew nothing about why Shenstone School had become a problem apart from one of the parents who beat Bexley Council at the LGO recently referring to it as a ‘scandal’.

It’s not easy to write something sensible on a subject about which one knows nothing and a search of Bexley’s website drew a blank. So did two calls to friendly Councillors who both diplomatically said they had heard something but didn’t really know what it was about. (Actually I think that was a genuine response in both cases.)

Eventually I decided that the only way forward was to ask the Cabinet Member for Education if she could provide a link which might educate me or even a couple of short paragraphs of her own which could be used here. Her auto-responder kicked in immediately but eight days later and Councillor Caroline Newton (Conservative, East Wickham) has not replied.

At that Council meeting on 8th November the Labour Group dragged along two sets of parents affected by the delayed opening of Shenstone School which Leader O’Neill at the same meeting blamed on “tendering problems” and as the two aforementioned friendly Councillors know, I saw that at the time as a pointless theatrical exercise which should be castigated here. However I can now see that Labour Councillors may have been frustrated by the failure of the Cabinet Member for Education to answer their enquiries.

Not, in my view, does that make using two sets of parents as exhibits in the theatre which is a public Council meeting a worthwhile exercise because it is not really public in any meaningful sense. My view was restricted but there were no more than five members of the public present, me and the four questioners, one of whom was a former Labour Councillor.

On top of that there were perhaps a dozen people silly enough to waste their evening on the webcast so if the intention was to embarrass the Tory administration in front of an open mouthed borough the stunt was doomed to failure. Despite listening to everything the Labour Group said about Shenstone I still didn’t discover what the problem was. That is frequently the problem with Council meetings generally; they speak in jargon and acronyms such that ordinary people don’t know what they are talking about. Maybe that is the idea!

When first mulling over what to say about Shenstone I expected to go into full on David Leaf mode and say something like “my door is always open for questions, why wait two months for a Full Council to ask your questions?” and usually I would fully endorse his view but when a Cabinet Member does not have an open door or a working email system maybe the Labour Group felt they had no alternative but to resort to pointless gestures.

Note: The DIY job which has deflected me from BiB matters is still not finished. Having to reroute cable buried in the wall was an unexpected set-back but finding that Gorrilla contact adhesive is useless is the latest problem. Good old Evostik was not available locally so I am once more waiting on Amazon to deliver and unusually it isn’t available ‘next day’.

 

20 November - It’s pinch of salt time

On 6th November I tried to be both careful and provocative when referring to what was after all an unsubstantiated allegation. Careful to not write something that could not be defended and sceptical enough to maybe provoke the accuser into providing more information.

The latter aim seems to have been successful because another email arrived….

Firstly, police were informed on the day the Hijack was discovered. Their attitude left a lot to be desired . The phones themselves are the evidence as the hackware is on them and also the number the first phone examined is diverting all calls via 0203045xxx which is O’Neill’s office number. Aside from the fact that putting remote surveillance software on other people’s equipment is illegal, Bexley council’s servers have been used in this instance so there is a potential security breach where hooking up the public’s phones to those servers. So no, it isn’t “tittle tattle” and in view of what OBE has to say about you, maybe you should have your own (and your colleagues) phones similarly inspected.

You will note that I still haven't been given any evidence so this may be a malicious communication. Having said that in all the 14 years of BiB I have never received any email of this type which proved not to be genuine.

While remaining sceptical at this stage I am reminding myself of two things. Bexley’s current Council Leader has never been caught with her fingers in the till but on the other hand there have been several reports on these pages that she is happy to condone criminality in others.

A few that come to mind without doing a thorough search of the files is her refusal to report her predecessor to the police after he abused his Council credit card, a mistake he repeated after transferring to the GLA which took a less lenient position resulting in a suspended prison sentence.

When I complained to Leader O’Neill that what could only have been a Council source had created a blog in my name and filled it with obscenities she knew exactly who to go to to get the blog removed within two hours of receiving my letter. After the police traced the source to Councillor Craske she happily retained him as a Cabinet Member until he resigned in mysterious circumstances earlier this year.

When one of her preferred candidates in the 2014 election received a police caution for theft reports were that the Leader wished to continue with his candidacy and only the Chairman of the local Conservative Association was prepared to stand up to her; but I have nothing more substantial to aim at the Leader so I await the next installment of ‘hackgate’ with bated breath.

As for tapping my own phone, it wouldn’t be very interesting. I can’t remember the last time anything BiB related was discussed on my landline phone and whilst I do speak to Conservative Councillors very occasionally on the mobile any political comment has been confined to despair over the national situation. I must have said before that although there have been a couple of occasions when I have been asked to revise a blog for the sake of strict accuracy, not a single call has ever provided a news story.

 

16 November - Spend, spend, spend

While I am otherwise occupied an occasional contributor has read through next week’s Cabinet Agenda and provided a summary so that I don’t have to; so soon after its publication that one must wonder if this is an inside job.

The following snippet of information is my favourite but only because it requires very little effort to post it here. The mass exodus of staff who don’t want to work for Bexley Council has taken an expensive toll on the wage bill. Five and a half million pounds has gone on Agency staff bills since last April. That is £1,325,000 more than the same period last year, most of it as we have come to expect, in care services and children’s services.

Why have so many senior staff gone to work elsewhere? My contributor holds firm opinions on that.

 

15 November - Excuses, excuses

The last time I took a couple of days off from reporting what little Bexley Council news there is, I had three email enquiries about my possible demise so this time I am making my excuses early. The simple job of moving two old wall lights proved not to be so simple after all and a bigger rewire than anticipated is called for, not to mention the wallpaper repair and new paint job.

In the BiB pipeline is a follow up on 6th November, the Labour Motion on litter picking, Labour’s ‘complaint’ about the tendering problems at Shenstone School which I delayed in the hope that I would get some facts out of Bexley Council - no reply - and finally some Freedom of Information results from our old friend Dimitri (@tonyofsidcup).

 

13 November - Water torture

An amphibious 229 bus negotiates the Abbey Road flood at 8 a.m. this morning and some older photos extending back to 2011. Who is responsible for this ongoing neglect, Bexley Council or Thames Water? Bexley sent their contractor F.M. Conway to the site in September 2012 and a length of pipe was replaced which presumably was an insufficient remedy. There has been no action since.

The news coming in right now reminds me of what was written here three weeks ago… “To my mind Sunak has not done a single thing domestically that I could applaud. It is quite an achievement to get every single decision wrong. That is, not appeal to his so called core vote.”

 

12 November - Cob, Cash, Cabins, Cameras, Campaigns, Copyright and Cancer diagnostics

The Leader’s report to Council was even more fantastic than usual, the F word occurred ten times in the written version which may be a record.

Her summary was fortunately more succinct than the Agenda’s 24 pages. She returned to her techno theme by reminding Councillors that the Council no longer needs to employ an army of inspectors to find issues but instead residents can be relied upon to report them via FixMyStreet etc.

Shenstone school received a mention; despite the tendering set backs “it is an investment in young people and she praised Director Stuart Rowbotham and the late Mr. Robert Shaw, her NHS contact, who both played major parts in bringing the new cancer and heart disease Diagnostics Centre to Queen Mary’s Hospital.

Councillor O’Neill was pleased to have been asked to open the new Welling Bank Hub next month although Nationwide has pulled out with a replacement to be found among financial institutions with large customer bases in the area.

The Cob Horse will be replaced on the roundabout in Belvedere this weekend, “a fantastic piece of sculpture. Absolutely fantastic”.

Sad and serious stories continue to come to light involving the cruel imposition of the ULEZ tax. She was pleased that the Government responded positively to her campaign not to close Railway Ticket Offices. (Did you see it? Nor me.)

Bexley now has “the largest incinerator plant in Europe under our noses”, which may well be an apt olfactory description and Bexley rubbish will enjoy an environmentally friendly short trip to take advantage of Cory’s facility. The Leader made way for questions.

Councillor Lisa Moore (Conservative, Longlands) asked about foster care recruitment. Cabinet Member Read said there were 73 fostering households, some with more than one child, and there are a further 23 post care support households for young people between the ages of 16 and 25. Recruitment processes have been streamlined and numbers are going up. Since April 2023 there have been five more fostering households and seven more offering support and there are more in the pipeline.

Councillor Wendy Perfect (Labour, Northumberland Heath) said that some children are being educated in temporary accommodation and parents are worried. Why?

The Leader said that the “Portacabins are fantastic units” and not like what might be found on a building site and parents are being kept within the information loop. (I was taught in a former army barrack building from 1954 to 1961 with a cast iron coke burning stove in the corner to keep the frost from the inside of the windows. Did it do me any harm?)

Councillor Borella said he nearly fell off his chair when the Leader claimed even a little credit for stopping Ticket Office closures. “The Council did absolutely nothing until after the horse had bolted whereas this side [Labour] went to every single station more than once to urge people to take part in the consultation.”

(The photo here is nicked from a Bexley Labour Tweet. I fully expect to be sued for breach of copyright.)

Stefano contrasted Bexley’s preoccupation with Sadiq Khan’s car taxes when it is itself the highest taxing Conservative borough in London. “Does the Leader condemn the camera vandalism? It is criminality.” He also said that he was present when the photograph used in Tory publicity material was taken and it was definitely the work of a Council photographer.

The Leader was sad at the opposition’s criticism of the Shenstone school project which has at all times “followed stringent processes”. Her ticket office closure campaign “took place behind the scenes”. (Brilliant excuse Teresa.)

On ULEZ the Baroness went into slippery snake mode by not supporting the vandalism while accepting that a lot of people who cannot afford to pay are very frustrated. She has asked for the geographical breakdown of where the fines are being imposed but no information has been forthcoming from TfL.

On the photo issue, “Tweets do not have a copyright. Life has moved on” (a penny for the Monitoring Officer’s thoughts) and when Boris Johnson was Mayor he did not increase his precept for the first four years and cut it in the subsequent four. Khan has racked it up by large amounts every year.

The Mayor of Bexley called time…

The Cob: I went to Sainsbury’s at 8 a.m. yesterday and found some of their price increases unacceptable so drove to the Belvedere Lidl instead. I passed the coned off roundabout at 8:36 and the cob was hanging from a lorry mounted crane. By the time I parked and walked back the cob was safely down on its primitive plinth and the jib retracted. There were no Councillors present but perhaps someone in a yellow jacket was a Council employee. A group of three men confirmed my recollection that the horse had been damaged by vehicles three times but told me there were no plans to barricade the horse which is a shame, there should be plenty of spare concrete blocks now that Felixstowe Road has been tidied up.

The three photographs are definitely copyrighted to me but if Teresa O’Neill can find a use for them she is very welcome.

 

11 November - FOIs delay road safety improvements. Really?

Dimitri Shvorob was not satisfied with asking one question, he went for the maximum permissible two.

“What action is planned based on the findings of this year’s survey of road safety arrangements around Bexley’s schools?”

That was one for Cabinet Member Richard Diment. He confirmed that there are ongoing “surveys of traffic volumes, pedestrian crossings, road widths and casualty numbers at 36 sites across the borough and it has already identified where pedestrian crossings would be useful or a request had been received for a crossing to be provided. They are predominately on journeys to school. Work is in progress to develop firm proposals. Residents and emergency services would be consulted. Implementation will be in the Spring or Summer of 2024.”

Mr. Shvorob said this was the first survey in ten years and asked why no schools had been or are being consulted. Councillor Diment replied that “his officers had consulted with all appropriate people” and went on to state that there might have been more progress if they were not distracted by so many Freedom of Information requests and if they had not been made “progress would be far quicker and efficient”.

In July the Council confirmed that most FOIs can be answered in just an hour or two.

There was a question about the building delays at Shenstone School about which I know nothing and the Cabinet Member for Education was absent, so that is a subject for another time.

There was a slightly strange question from a Mr. Browning who was a Labour Councillor up until the rout of 2006. His question asked how many of the photographs in a recent Conservative Party leaflet were in fact Council property. Petty or what?

The Leader said a lot has changed since 2006, among them the use of email and Social Media. “The way photos etc. are used now is much different”. Taking pictures on phones saves money - no photographer to be employed - and when last week Councillor Newton took a picture on her, that is the Leader’s phone and sent it to the Council Press Office, who owns it?

“When the Council Tweets it out and it is shared around, who owns it? Twitter doesn’t say there is copyright on them. The Council often uses our pictures. The Council is producing guidance on who should do what. Technically it [the leaflet] didn’t have copyright on it. It was taken [stolen?] from Twitter and shared but we need to have the debate.”

Whilst this was going on I was furiously Googling on my phone to see if the Copyright laws had changed but they have not. The copyright belongs to the person who took the picture. Leader O’Neill was waffling, from a strictly legal point of view, but at the same time describing what everyone on Social Media does.

If everyone was as pedantic as Mr. Browning evidently is a lot of us might be in jail. Bexley Conservatives, Teresa O’Neill and Bexley Council are embracing the new normal.

I take the view that anything posted on the internet is likely to be stolen and if you don’t like it put a watermark on the photo or otherwise indicate that the owner places a value on it.

Mr. Shvorob gets reprimanded for wasting time with his questions but Mr. Browning did not when his motive could only be to cause party political embarrassment. Politicians do far too much of that instead of getting on with the job.

 

10 November - Judge, Jury and Executioner

Mr. Shvorob is the new Elwyn Bryant; on a mission to ask a question at every Council meeting. Another common interest is petitions. Elwyn famously trudged the streets of Bexley along with two fellow travellers to collect 2,219 real signatures to present a petition to Bexley Council. They refused to accept it for debate. Why? Because they could.

Dimitri hopes to present a petition on road safety and has been seeking an assurance that it won’t be summarily thrown out on some hastily made up pretext. He has got nowhere so far.

His question to the Council Leader was “What steps did you take in response to complaints addressed to you about the unfair and effectively unusable Bexley Petition Scheme?”

Her reply is summarised below…

The question had already been answered and residents of the borough should know that answers cost money. She said the Petition Scheme was in accordance with statutory requirements and it has been in use since May 2012 and she is satisfied that Bexley’s scheme is lawful.

Mr. Shvorob had asked questions about “hypothetical petitions” and a total of seven Freedom of Information Requests had repeated the same question. One FOI went to the Information Commissioner and another enquiry went to the Constitutional Review Committee “and the same answer was provided every time”.

“Staff would be better employed helping residents” and the Leader asked Mr. Shvorob if he thought answering his FOIs was the best use of taxpayers’ money.

When allowed to respond he made the same point that Elwyn and his friends did more than ten years ago. “If you answered the first question properly the follow ups would not be necessary” and he asked once more that if he obtained the requisite number of signatures would his petition be guaranteed to be debated. He requested a Yes or No answer.

The Leader repeated, for the 15th time she claimed, that procedures would be followed but as those procedures have not changed significantly since 2012 and they allowed the earlier petition to be rejected, Dimitri was not impressed; nor should he be.

I thought that overall Councillor Teresa O’Neill spoke pretty well at Wednesday’s meeting but the response to Dimitri’s question reminded me that she is still the same Teresa who reported me to the police for “criticising Councillors”. Ultimately, like almost all politicians, she will do whatever she likes to escape criticism and if that involves dodging petitions then that is what she will do. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

 

9 November - Back in the fray

Reporting on nothing more than the sale of social housing (click the images for details of more) is no way to keep BiB going, so encouraged by a friendly Councillor I drove to Oakhouse Road last night, encountered a driver who expected me to back off 100 yards when he came round the blind corner at the end when all he had to do was reverse for one car length, and eventually I ended up in the Council Chamber.

I don’t think I have actually attended a Full Council meeting this year (†), preferring the comfort of home, maybe watching a film and praying that the webcast is not a technical disaster.

As such, Councillors, officials and me were all a year older, some sporting new hairstyles and beards.

Counclllor James Hunt was the first to welcome me ‘home’ followed by (in alphabetical order) Councillors Kurtis Christoforides, John Davey, Richard Diment, Steven Hall, Lisa Moore, Peter Reader, June Slaughter, Cameron Smith and you can be pretty sure Andy Dourmoush would have been among them if he wasn’t being tied up in chains. Mayoral ones of course. And for the record he proved to be a very long way from being the worst of the Full Council chairmen I have observed.

Steven Hall (Conservative, East Wickham) was particularly kind with his comments directed at a mutual friend who was very pleased to have them delivered to Ramsgate today.

It was an interesting meeting and even the Motion should provide a pretty good story. When it will land on these pages is not easy to predict. I have visitors coming round expecting me to set up the home cinema. Far more interesting than the theatre which is Councillors’ question time.

† I am embarrassed to say that the last Full Council attended in person (not the very last meeting) was 18 months ago.

 

6 November - Interesting but…

The anonymous Contact facility brings in a variety of information, mainly useful, a little not.

Yesterday’s is in the latter category.

It says that our Council’s esteemed Leader has been caught engaging in serious criminal activity. I would like to believe it but I am not sure I can. Bexley Council and some of its leading members have definitely been involved in criminal activity in the past which were of considerable interest to the police, but Baroness O’Neill has always been one step removed from the real action. Teflon Tess!

In any case, the latest message provides no supporting evidence whatsoever. Without that it can only be regarded as unjustified tittle-tattle.

I would love to see the evidence but if it exists copies should be handed to the police. Definitely not the originals, I have seen how the police can be cowed and corrupted by politicians too often in the past.

 

5 November - Recycling wrecked houses

Berwick Road (Image 1) is new to the market while Crayford Road presumably didn’t sell for £275,000 on 18th October.

Houses being lost to social housing…

 

34 Pengarth Road, Bexley
53 Pengarth Road, Bexley
235 Iron Mill Lane, Crayford
Crayford Road, Crayford
52 Jenningtree Road, Erith
204 Ellenborough, Sidcup
50 Mallard Walk, Sidcup
56 Maylands Drive, Sidcup
30 St. Andrews Road, Sidcup
18 Burnell Avenue, Welling
39 Burnell Avenue, Welling

 

4 November - Making Bexley Even Better

But very slowly…

Felixstowe Road, Abbey Wood, gained some shiny new bollards this week. After approving a poor road design which endangered the lifts and travellers at Abbey Wood station, Bexley Council stroked its chin for four years before it took remedial action. Here’s a photographic history of those four years.

25th April 2019. Before road reconstruction. (Total pedestrian protection.)

23rd August 2019. During road reconstruction.

21st November 2019. Following road reconstruction. (No pedestrian protection.)

26th November 2019. Following road reconstruction. (Dangers recognised.)

Photo taken 11th January 2020 but could have been 1st November 2023. (No changes.)

3rd November 2023. Shiny new bollards. (Note concrete blocks on other side of the road remain.

Hundreds more similar photos.

 

3 November - Recycling old news

Nothing new on the horizon but the bin guessing game continues.

Below left is the Desktop version of Bexley’s bin day forecast (which is correct) and on the right is the Mobile version which has a different format impossible to grab in a single screenshot but incorrectly shows blue and brown for today. It should be blue and green.

Certain Bexley Councillors are always harping on about residents not following the recycling rules but ignore the fact that wrong advice is being given.

Green and Blue or Blue and Brown? That is the question.

How long do you think it will be before the bug is fixed?

 

2 November - Hold on to your wallets

If the Conservatives no longer believe in low taxation is there any point in voting for them any more?

The answer is a definitive No. Bexley is already the highest taxing Conservative controlled Council in London.

 

1 November - The reason energy prices are unaffordable?

As stated several times over the years the software that runs this website falls over if it doesn’t find a new entry on the 1st of the month and usually I keep something newsworthy up my sleeve to fulfill that requirement; however there has been little going on recently, so here is a new take on an old gripe; the nonsense that is this government’s energy policy.

Not just this government of course because the seeds were sown by Labour in the noughties but very little has been done to put things right since 2010. The green taxes are in my opinion ridiculous and benefit the better off at the expense of the poor.

Why are we sitting on enormous gas reserves but importing so much from overseas? Could it be that the government is more interested In protecting its friends living in expensive rural mansions while the poor are huddled around the gas stove for warmth?

Their energy policies are very generous to those who could afford to make the right investments at the right time which is not a lot of use to the average voter. In the months of July, August and September 2023 my solar panels generated enough electricity to pay me £808·22.

Generous enough you might think but thanks to an investment in electronic gadgetry I used almost all of it myself which keeps the bills low. (The no longer available Feed in Tariff guarantees a payment for every kilowatt hour generated irrespective of whether it is exported to the grid or not.)

In image 1 below you can see that my electricity bill is about £20 a month and some earlier bills have been as low as £13. In image 2 it can be seen that I am paying Octopus Energy £50 a month for both fuels while they recommend I should pay £172·03. Despite refusing to pay their calculated figure a credit of £610 has accumulated (Image 3) and it was only last May that I had them repay me £600.

Octopus is reputed to be the best supplier for customer service but I have asked at least six times for an explanation of how they calculated £172 a month which is much higher than my biggest ever monthly bill.

There must be something seriously wrong with their algorithm but I have received only a series of idiotic answers.

And if you thought government policy couldn’t be more stupid I received this letter a few days ago.

After keeping the lights on, heating the house and charging the car I am making a profit of around £2,000 a year. This is seriously crazy but is a direct result of government policy. I will enjoy spending the money using the old excuse of ‘you can’t take it with you’ it and try not to let the sense of guilt become too overwhelming.