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News and Comment January 2024

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11 January - We are well and truly stuffed

It took 20 years and a four part ITV series to prove to most people that the institutions and people who rule us are fundamentally incompetent, corrupt cover-up merchants. It took four Channel 4 programmes and a public enquiry to prove to everyone who was interested that the Metropolitan Police and the Hampshire Constabulary are Institutionally Corrupt but that took 34 years so I suppose it could be argued that things are getting better.

The venal Paula Vennels was given a CBE for services to the Post Office long after the Sub-Postmaster injustices came to light which doesn’t surprise me at all. When I was a manager in the GPO I was compelled to put forward names for OBEs whether anyone was deserving of a gong or not. Basically middle ranking managers were given awards for not falling down on the job too badly.

incompetence rules. I spent four of my GPO years clearing up the neglect of a predecessor who subsequently rose to the top of NHS management and somehow or other the police too. All the right boxes ticked and another CBE awarded.

Such things have been going on all around us for years and few have been interested up until now. Why, for example, is the Leader of Bexley Council a Baroness? I am tempted to say it is for services to blind eyes. Need I remind you that she refused to report a Councillor thief to the police and re-appointed Craske to her Cabinet knowing full well what he had definitely done? Then, running short of talent, she appointed a Crown Court perjurer. Documentary details on request.

Literally no one knows what Teresa O’Neill did to justify her Baronetcy and one is left to assume it is for being Chief Poodle to Boris Johnson.

Councillor James Hunt spends his time nurturing young people, notably in theatre and the thousands of South London scouts. Councillor Ahmet Dourmoush organised 40 truckloads of relief supplies for last year’s Turkish earthquake victims. They get nothing but I don’t think either of them are arse-lickers.

The whole system is crooked. Mick Barnbrook and @tonyofsidcup both declared vexatious for asking too many questions. In Mick’s case the Acting Chief Executive wrote a presumably libellous letter to the ICO and went on to be CEO in Southend and then CEO of London Councils, There is no way one can reach such positions in possession of an average number of scruples. Am I back to Paula Vennels again?

It is probably barely worth noting that liars are promoted. The Bexley Council Officer who assured me that his road designs fully conformed to Transport Research Laboratory reports Numbered 641 and 661 was promoted to be Head of Highways after the author of those reports personally assured me the road involved did not even begin to conform to the TRL recommendations. When you are next snarled up in an unnecessary Bexley traffic jam you should give a thought to the competence of the Council’s promotion procedures.

I suppose the immediate sacking of a Bexley employee who reported her boss’s paedophilia in a vain attempt to protect the children on the premises is relative chicken feed. (He was later convicted in Woolwich Crown Court). What about the use of CCTV to track someone wrongly suspected of child abuse and the sacking of the CCTV operator who prevented the evidence from being destroyed? Maybe it is time I returned to the bigger fish.

While another Bexley CEO was climbing the greasy pole to Tower Hamlets he was under investigation for Misconduct in a Public Office. I wrote to the Government Commissioners running Tower Hamlets after its elected Mayor was suspended but was dismissed as a malicious blogger spreading nonsense when all they needed to do was phone Greenwich police to confirm that every word was true. The CPS managed to lose all the evidence after the investigating officer had retired. Convenient that! The same CEO later failed to report a housing fraud to the police. Honesty in Government? Forget it.

Police cover-ups are the norm. When a three year old boy died following total neglect by Bexley Council social services the police maintained that he accidently rolled off a sofa. Darenth Hospital said he died from 39 separate injuries and if you look hard enough you can find a photograph on Bonkers of a lifeless black and blue body. Published with his family’s permission I might add.

Thanks to a less than honest police force Bexley Council’s Baby R never became as famous as Haringey’s Baby P.

When Bexley Council employed singleton night staff too fond of the hard stuff Bexley Council indulged in a whole load of dirty tricks in an attempt to hide the fact that their poor decision making caused an elderly lady to die alone. It took a year for the information to leak out when two ex-members of staff with active consciences provided BiB with the details and documentary evidence. One had been given a fat pay off and a Non-Disclosure Agreement. (I didn’t use that evidence because it only confirmed what the colleague had said. He didn’t get a pay-off.)

Returning to the infamous Craske case where the only honest comment emanating from Bexley Police was “the investigation has been crippled by political interference” Elwyn Bryant and I later stood in my MP’s office in Portcullis House and a Scotland Yard Officer put his arm around Elwyn’s shoulder and said “I am going to get a result for you on this” and went on to tell me that as many as eight Bexley Police Officers could find themselves dismissed. When his report came out it was a 16 page description of wrong doing and a final page of “nobody did anything wrong”. I can only assume that the investigating officer was so annoyed with his bent bosses that he decided not to amend his report to suit their crooked verdict. I sent the file to what was then called the Independent Police Complaints Commission and they refused to accept it.

Institutionally Corrupt not just in London but Kent too. I have the evidence obtained by my former MP that they protect their own and their former Bexley Councillor Police Commissioner must know it.

I can’t finish without mentioning Sadiq Khan’s promise not to extend ULEZ to Outer London. Who knew that London Mayors lie?

Allison Pearson, the Daily Telegraph contributor said in today’s issue that “some people need shooting” and maybe that would prove to be an effective way forward. The Conservatives have been absolutely bloody awful since the scamdemic began and steadily getting worse with successive Prime Ministers. Labour is shifty, untrustworthy and well and truly into bargepole territory and the LibDems; least said the better and not just because of Ed Davey and the Post Office.

Did someone mention Reform UK? Another bunch of charlatans. A limited company owned by Richard Tice and Nigel Farage and not a proper political party. In favour of compulsory vaccination and busy recruiting poisonous trash for General Election candidates.

It’s enough to make me consider voting Conservative again. Seriously, the others are so scarily awful! But so are the Tories. What can one do?

Enough ranting for one day. I spent most of it with Mick Barnbrook in a Margate hospice. It is perhaps fortunate that he is no longer well enough to have strong political opinions but said he was going to vote Reform at the GE. Not a bad ambition for a bloke given a week to live on 7th December. He’ll probably make it too!

 

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