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News and Comment January 2024

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5 January - Feedback

There was only one comment about @tonyofsidcupְ’s series of essays and it was about Councillors withholding their addresses from the public record.

I first inspected the Register of Interests in May 2011 when it was necessary to visit the Council Offices to view them by appointment under supervision. Elwyn Bryant and I laboriously copied them into a note book and none of the Councillor’s property interests were hidden. The following day Councillor Peter Craske blogged that Elwyn and I had engaged in homosexual activities in that tiny office under the nose of his invigilator but that is another story.

The subject came to the fore later the same year when eleven Councillors suddenly claimed that their lives were in danger and their addresses were withdrawn from public view. It required the agreement of a compliant Monitoring Officer but compliance is a prerequisite for being a Bexley M.O. It was newsworthy at the time because the other 31 London Councils combined could only muster four threatened Councillors. It was reasonable to assume that Bexley was indulging in some sort of fiddle because that was its standard operating mode twelve years ago.

But it is no longer 2011 and politicians are more vulnerable than they used to be. When I had an MP who would talk to me I knew that she was constantly threatened by miscellaneous nutters and gradually I have changed my mind about the Section 32 exemption.

Why do we need to know where a Councillor lives? I once delivered a package to one of my Councillors and briefly stepped inside his front door. I know more or less where another lives because of the excessive number of election posters that appear in her window every four years but when they are not there I am not sure exactly which house is hers. I haven’t a clue where the third one lives and it really doesn’t matter.

It might be more sensible if the law said that all property interests should be declared except the home address but as the law stands now the Monitoring Officer must be persuaded to grant an exemption before it can be hidden.

I think @tony’s interest arises not from his desire to send Christmas cards but from wanting to know what sort of reasons are being used to justify the exemptions. I will imagine some!


• My house backs on to an open space which is ripe for development but I don’t want anyone to know that I am being given special treatment.
• I don’t actually live in the borough but I lied on the nomination paper.
• My estranged partner is inclined to violence.
• @tony is out to get me.


What are the Monitoring Officerְ’s thought processes when deciding whether to allow an exemption or not; or is no thought involved at all?

I doubt @tony wants to know the where Councillors live, basically he wants to know if the current Monitoring Officer is as dishonest as all her predecessors, and that is why Bexley Council has taken the cowardly way out by declaring him vexatious.

 

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