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News and Comment April 2024

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16 April - Out Foxed

When Bonkers was in its infancy, Council meeting reports would often include questions from Bexley’s awkward squad, the redoubtable Messrs. Barnbrook, Bryant, Dowling and Watson. John Watson would organise a meeting after every Full Council meeting where he’d suggest and occasionally dictate what the next set of questions would be. By agreement I remained aloof and provided supposedly detached reports of their activities. Bexley Council hated us and had us reported to the police; even got them to retrospectively rewrite their reports on one occasion; but I must not digress too much.

More often, public questions would be thwarted by more mundane methods. There might be no straight answer to a question, a 15 minute filibuster might do the same job and maybe refuse to answer on the grounds that the questioner had once voted for a rival political party.

Totally illegally (the ICO confirmed) anyone unwilling to have his or her address published in the Agenda alongside their name was barred. This effectively excluded people who might be living with their parents or, for example, in a refuge for abused women.

Fortunately most of those things appear to be consigned to the history book except perhaps the simplest method of all. Simply say you don’t like the question and refuse to accept it, preferably at such a late stage that there is no time to submit another.

Head of Committee Services Kevin Fox would often pull that trick supposedly at the behest of the Mayor. He has not forgotten how to do it. Today he wrote to Mr. Shvorob to say his two questions for next week’s Council meeting are rejected as being “frivolous since the Council has provided required available information and explained the position under queries raised under the Freedom of Information procedure”.

I am not sure exactly what that string of barely intelligible words mean as Mr. S is illegally banned from submitting FOIs because he has been declared vexatious.

The rejected questions are not yet known to me. Maybe they were mischievous, dishonest Councils tend to provoke such reactions. One way or another Bexley Council is unlikely to emerge from this nonsense smelling of roses.

 

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