Some good news and some not so good news for Bexley Council.
Dimitri has decided to abandon his complaint against the Mayor for
not allowing him to ask a question at Full Council and the LGO will not be
asked to intervene. In my view that is the
correct decision. Don’t devalue the big complaints by submitting little ones.
Maybe I should take my own advice but on the other hand I have not made a
complaint about any aspect of Bexley Council since
Councillor Craske thought it
was a good idea to insult a member of the public who was asking a question.
(The response was a lie which was proved to be so by the official Minutes of the meeting!)
This morning I made a formal complaint against Bexley employee
Kelly Wilkinson for blocking my road
to anything bigger than a motorcycle and sidecar.
30 May (Part 3) - Abbey Wood Village. The end
When there were high hopes that Wilton Road would develop into a thriving
little shopping centre (†) once the Elizabeth line opened Bexley and Greenwich councils provided £300,000
to get it tarted up a bit. They took more than a third of it back in
planning fees but no one expects total generosity from any Council.
One of the things they threw in for good measure in 2016 was a website.
www.abbeyvillage.co.uk. It was never updated and to cut a long story short
that domain name is now legally mine. I have only once received a request for a
site update so it is now more out of date than ever.
The only activity is the occasional email to me as webmaster asking whichever
trader to provide a service and I have to print them out and hand deliver the
requests. With only four exceptions I do not know traders’ email addresses either.
There have been three such requests this week.
The domain name
(both .co.uk and .uk) comes up for renewal on 17th June, £47 each plus VAT for
three years. The web space comes free. Another long story.
Because traders have no interest in the website the decision has been taken to
abandon it and it will therefore disappear in not much more than two week’s
time. If anyone has a use for the domain, please ask.
† It didnְ’t.
30 May (Part 2) - Here he goes again
Mr. Kulvinder Singh submitted yet another planning application
(24/01647/FUL) on 238 Woolwich Road this week. That’s the site he
wrecked so severely
in 2018 that his neighbours were forced to sell up and move away. Only Singh would buy.
This time it is a side extension, two new bedrooms and two new bathrooms. There
is a long record of similar applications on various Bexley properties, some
retrospective and some initially rejected but a compliant Bexley Council always eventually falls into line.
There cannot be much doubt about which way the decision will go on this one.
Five Tories and a Singh.
30 May (Part 1) - Knee Hill is shut
but no one knows why.
At 9.30 yesterday morning I was on my way to Petts Wood by car, with a large bag
of tools in the boot in case any anti-car nutter thinks the SL3 is a viable option,
heading in a westerly direction on Abbey Road and intending to turn left into
New Road. From a distance I signalled to a learner driver waiting at the bottom
of New Road to cross my path and ascend the hill. He didn’t move and when I
reached the junction the reason became clear. Five buses were trying to wiggle past
parked cars and negotiate the stupidly designed kinky junction.
When it was clear of buses I turned left in front of the learner who was
understandably very hesitant but within 100 yards or so encountered another SL3
descending the hill so I pulled into a parking space to give him a clear run.
However the bus flashed me to proceed and when I looked in the mirror I saw the
reason why. The road was blocked again with a queue behind me.
Usually when Bexley Council or a utility imposes traffic chaos on the area the
local Facebook page will give the reason why but not this time. An inquisitive
friend walked up Knee Hill to see what might be going on. Just after 2:30 p.m.
the answer was absolutely nothing. There was some fencing in need of repair
but no indication that any work was in progress.
Mr. Inquisitive phoned the Council but the Contact Centre said that the
Highways Department had not answered their phone all day so there was nothing
the lady could do to help.
By yesterday evening there was a rumour circulating locally that Knee Hill
might open this afternoon.
A couple of months ago I mentioned Knee Hill to the Councillor in charge at
Bexley Council and suggested that the existing kerb line could be eased out by
about 18 inches on both sides without impacting any tree. Every regular user
will have breathed in as he passes an off route bus short-cutting to the garage
and wondering if his wing mirror will survive or mounting the low kerb on one of the bends. Another
couple of feet would make Knee Hill a lot safer than it is.
The Councillor’s precise words were “It’s never going to happen” which was perhaps his way of
saying Councils are stupid and always will be.
29 May (Part 2) - Where’s the Swingers’ Party?
So
some guy called David expects me “to brighten the next month” with
election comment when I don’t really know which way to jump myself. Amateur political
punditry is probably best avoided especially when one’s only claim to very
obscure electoral fame is winning the office sweepstake with the closest guess to
the elected partyְ’s majority in both 1983 and 1987. In fact I was almost spot on
in ’87 with a guess of 104 seats. It was actually 102.
I think I can also claim to have much more finely tuned political antennae than
Rishi Sunak but then so does everyone likely to be reading these words. Utterly clueless isn’t he?
Within the past year I have felt more than once that I would vote Conservative
if they fulfilled their promise to get rid of Inheritance Tax and even in the past week that prize chump
Jeremy Hunt has said it should be done, but he hasn’t. I don’t see the tax as
stealing my life savings - though it will - but the government ensuring that
several people will not have enough money to put down as a deposit on their first house.
14 wasted years and a squandered 80 seat majority. The Conservatives could have done so much but
few MPs proved to be Conservative in anything but name. Now they hope I
might be an enthusiast for more of the same wet behind the ears LibDems.
My political pendulum is a somewhat knackered device with its leftward swing
crippled by the knowledge that I am “scum” (© Angela Raynor) and “a
racist” (© Wes Streeting), not to mention being the subject of legal action by a
local Labour activist apprehensive of her on-line comment being given wider circulation.
It doesn’t matter how competent Daniel Francis (Labourְ’s candidate for Bexleyheath and
Crayford) is or how caring Sally might be; while their party harbours so many
deeply unpleasant people it won’t get my vote. They even support the London
Mayor, or at least claim to do so. But I have my doubts about that.
29 May (Part 1) - A disgrace to Bexley Council
Coptefield Drive was close to being blocked all day yesterday. A van driver had parked in the orthodox manner and a black car was tucked in behind it;
all fair enough but then a lunatic in Mercedes P1 XND parked
end-on opposite leaving a 65 cm gap to the kerb.
Unfortunately Bexley Council
does not enforce the 50 cm
kerb rule because of their assumed lack of numeracy skills among the enforcement staff. They cannot be
trusted to handle a tape measure, but never mind, the Mercedes driver had only
blocked the road to large vehicles and as far as I am aware none came past. But
then we had the pleasure of welcoming LD71 EBJ to the scene and there was no way through.
The red car is mine and neighbours from both sides of the road took a look at guiding me through
but a quart will not go into a pint pot. So after a brief use of the horn and an
enquiry at the nearest door there was nothing to do but wait and contemplate a call to 101; but what good would that do?
I walked away and left it but was fortunately around to see the driver return. Not a word was said as I photographed her several times. Then as
she opened the car door I spotted the Bexley Council badge and I held it open for a moment to take note of the name.
Kelly Wilkinson.
I think she asked me to let it go, not absolutely sure, but there was nothing
said that was unduly bad tempered. I said she would soon be all over Facebook (I am not sure
why I said that) but nothing more until after she had left when a neighbour
would have heard me call her an idiot preceded by a suitable adjective.
This sort of behaviour might be acceptable if she had explained that she was on
an emergency call (if she was) and there was nowhere else to park (there was) but to
remain absolutely mute is really rude, although maybe not for a Bexley Council employee.
I am minded to put in an official complaint about Ms. Wilkinson if only to see what excuse Bexley Council comes up with. Personally I don’t think there is one for saying absolutely nothing. Perhaps she is from the FOI Department.
28 May (Part 3) - Knee Hill is shut all week
I
suppose closing the turn right lane on Woolwich Road because Knee Hill is shut
all week seemed like a good idea at the time but if someone breaks down in the
remaining lane it can only result in chaos.
This unfortunate lady did her best to remove the cones with some help from the
van driver who backed up to assist. He made a small gap in the cone line and went on the wrong side of the road to get there.
Not sure why that was necessary but a spur of the moment decision to help presumably.
Photos from the front of an SL3 with an ambulance on blue lights and a siren stuck behind it. Eventually the lady opened a
bigger gap into the turn right lane and we were able to creep by. Well done her.
The reason Knee Hill is shut may be a state secret.
28 May (Part 2) - Sixty years of elections
My suggestion that I had
a personal voting intention swingometer is not a very good analogy as it
implies that it could move to the left, but that is never going to happen.
Instead it quivers violently somewhere near the middle with occasional lurches
to the right while the suspension hook might snap off at any moment and send the
whole contraption crashing to the ground. (A spoiled paper!)
Meanwhile here is a picture from 16th October 1964 as Marjorie and I sat
listening to my transistor radio as the General Election results came in and both of us
becoming more depressed at the news. I think that radio will be in the roof
somewhere. A red leatherette covered wooden box. I really must start to clear
out all the old junk but it was a circa 1957 birthday present from a favourite aunt.
Marjorie came from Southend and had been working at that
telephone exchange desk since before I was born. We went from the prosperous
“You never had is so good” to “the [devalued] pound in your pocket” and
eventually cap in hand to The International Monetary Fund for a bale out!
Madness is repeating the mistakes of the past expecting a different outcome.
28 May (Part 1) - Boxley-is-Bonkers
I am envious of a long term BiB reader; he rid himself of Sadiq Khan by merely
swapping a vowel. He now lives in Boxley which is out Maidstone way. He thought
you might be amused to see that incompetence is not confined to his old borough.
The parish election on 2nd May resulted in the wrong candidate being elected.
Six seats were up for grabs and the Returning Officer read out the first five
names correctly but inexplicably skipped numbers six and seven and announced
that the candidate who came last had been elected.
The declaration was immediately challenged but nothing could be done about it.
The Returning Officer had spoken and in law that is it.
Only the High Court can overturn the result and the expense is likely to be
beyond the means of the man who lost out.
In typical fashion the Council has shrugged its shoulders and not even apologised.
Kentonline has the story.
27 May - Wagwan endz mandam? (*)
A weekend drive to Malmesbury was an eye opener in several ways. The M25 was
restricted to 50 m.p.h. from Junction 5 (Sevenoaks) almost to Junction 7 (M23)
with Junction 10 signed as being “shut”. The M4 was restricted to 50 as far as
Reading and to 40 around Newbury. Nowhere was anyone working.
All of it due to the installation of emergency stopping places which would
have been installed in the first place if the Smart Motorways had been built to
the original specification. I felt the journey was a metaphor for the whole country,
nothing is done right and the consequences are dragging everything and everyone down.
Contrary to the many illuminated notices, Junction 10 was in fact open but
whether to all exits drivers could only guess.
My son, just home from a trip to Europe where his mission was improving vehicle safety,
said that Smart Motorways are by far the safest to drive on and the implication
was that whoever made the decision (Sunak and a non-entity
called Mark Harper) to bow to tabloid opinion was not very
bright. As a political aside he has met the Shadow Transport Minister (Bill Esterton) several times because he turns up at all the industry safety events
to learn his brief and no Minister ever has.
Wiltshire is as you might guess very much Conservative territory but their Net
Zero policy is going to see the farmland around my son’s village disappear under two billion (†) solar
panels and protest posters were everywhere. The Lib Dems look like mopping up
the protest vote which is ironic when you think that if it was not for those
idiots we would be benefitting from cheap and reliable nuclear power right now and not on imported gas.
When asked recently how old my granddaughter was I said 13 but time has flown
even faster than I thought. I was subjected to non-stop
Spotify via an ear offending Bluetooth speaker for most of Saturday. Teenage (she is approaching 15) music has changed
since Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley in a pair of too tight jeans (according to my mother) and my own
daughter’s preoccupation first with Saturday Night Fever and Grease and later
Madonna. The song Greased Lightnin’ could not be played in polite company because of the inclusion of
the word shit and Madonna took things a step further.
How things have changed. Some of today’s songs require translation into English.
Google ‘Roadman Slang’ if you are as ignorant as I am. You too can then glorify shanking a peng ting.
Fortunately she doesn’t seem to be influenced by it and
recently achieved school notoriety by telling the
school’s smoking, vaping, drug dealing (and arrested) bully exactly what she thought of him and
got away with it. There is the
Young Citizen of the Year Award to be respected
and the D Day beacon to be lit. I forgot to photograph her certificate from the Mayor and
glass statuette but let’s say it was in a different class to Bexley’s plastic tat.
While watching her take her first driving lesson on a disused airfield a Bonkers’ email arrived. It said
I’m sure the election will throw up some amazing stuff. Iְ’m relying on you to brighten the next month. No pressure then!!!
Do I really have to? At present I have two metaphoric pendulums before my eyes. One is firmly stuck in
the Sunak richly deserves total humiliation position. I have met many people in
my life who go to work and make a total mess of things but none ever set out to
do that. There are so many things where Government policy could be changed towards a more
Conservative position at little cost but Sunk [sic} is the first person I have
come across who appears to go to work solely to eff things up as much as possible.
The other pendulum, the one on which party to vote for, oscillates wildly daily
or even more frequently. I couldn’t tell you where it is today!
Another email commented on
the Section 32 exemptions and the fact that some
missing addresses are easily found on the web. That is true but the example
given is out of date. The contentious issue the blog was trying to address was purely the absence of such
addresses from the official Council Register of Interests and why, not whether it can be
found elsewhere, such as this website. My personal view is I don’t much care as long as they live locally and know their ward well.
Over the years some of the reasons for an address being absent from the Register have
come my way and none have been frivolous. Returning if I may to Malmesbury for a
moment, one of my son’s friends stood for election in 2021 (Covid delayed) and
got so fed up with the death threats he didn’t bother earlier this month. It is
not only in Khan’s London that you might be smoked by a shank wielding road.
† My estimate based on
claimed output.
* What’s up local friends?
25 May - Zero transparency leads to wanton waste
It all began twelve years ago when Bexley Council, rather more bent than it is
now, was in panic mode about what might be uncovered by Social Media
users and bloggers. A newish phenomenon at the time. A joker from Crayford was the most vociferous and
occasionally foul mouthed critic and touted the idea of a bus trip around the
borough to see what sort of houses Councillors lived in. There was no way he
was going to do it and even less chance of anyone coughing up the price of a
ticket but the Councillors of the day, fresh from reporting every identifiable
critic to the police, went into headless chicken mode.
The bus trip idea provoked several Councillor lemmings into invoking the then new Section
32 of the Localism Act 2011 and
followed Councillor Craske into obscurity. Never being keen on justice Bexley Council
decided that hiding their addresses should be counterbalanced by
publishing those of their critics.
A London wide check of
Section 32 exemptions
found 15 in the whole of London, eleven of them among Bexley Conservatives and most
of those new applicants scared of buses.
To be exempted from registering an address in the Register of Interests a
Councillor has to persuade the Monitoring Officer that there is a danger of
violence or intimidation.
Currently 13 Bexley Councillors hide their addresses from public view. Zainab Asunramu,
Larry Ferguson, Sally Hinkley, Mabel Ogundayo and Nicola Taylor; all Labour, and Conservatives
Teresa O’Neill, Frazer Brooks, Bola Carew, Kurtis Christoforides, Andrew Curtois, Andy Dourmoush, Cameron Smith and
Janice Ward-Wilson.
You can see who has claimed the exemption and we know it can only be because of the threat of violence or intimidation.
The observant may notice that the man who had the most
reason to be fearful in 2012 no longer considers himself to be at risk.
Councillors Cheryl Bacon, and Chris Taylor have similarly jumped ship.
What we don’t know is what sort of reasons
for issuing an exemption certificate are accepted by the Monitoring Officer. Dimitri thought we ought
to know and in April 2023 submitted an FOI. Not for the specifics relating to
individual Councillors but just a general idea of what is enough to convince the
Monitoring Officer. Bexley Council wouldn’t play ball and neither would the Information Commissioner. Secrecy and
rule bending is the name of their game. Dimitri is not a man to give up easily so he took the case to law.
The verdict was delivered last week; a little progress but not much.
The ICO, always ready to move the goalposts, had claimed that the information
provided to the Monitoring Officer was personal and therefore exempt under
Section 40 (not 32). He went off on a ridiculous tangent about them declaring interests
before Council meetings, as though that was relevant to a home address. That was
essentially Dimitri’s grounds for Appeal and the fact he hadn’t asked for personal information.
The judgment confirmed Bexley Council’s incompetence by revealing that Councillors
were able to merely phone the Monitoring Officer requesting a Section 32
exemption. Nothing was written down and Bexley Council genuinely has no idea why the
exemption was granted. (And we pay our useless Monitoring Officer £104,522 a
year!) A
mild reprimand was given because the correct FOI response should have been ‘Not
Held’ rather than the refusal to cooperate.
Only five Councillors had made their applications in writing and the inference to be drawn
is that their reasons relate to things going on in their personal lives. One case was
more extreme than the others - the Judgment refers to it as a Special Category.
This is likely to be the special circumstances of the Baroness. Going into detail may well allow identification of individuals and for that
reason Dimitri’s request for more information was not accepted.
Another big waste of money then? Yes, but clearly Bexley Council’s fault. All
that was requested was anonymised reasons for the granting of Section 32
exemptions to which the answer should have been “Five Councillors are at risk
from their personal lives and relationships while in the remaining cases we regret that we failed in
our responsibility to take adequate notes”.
The ICO would not have had to make up excuses and the Tribunal Appeal Panel
would not have been required.
All that has been gained is confirmation that Bexley Council has never been blessed
with competent Monitoring Officers and the ICO is inclined to make up the rules as it goes along.
“As I understand it, nominations are vetted by the current and former Mayor” is a quotation from Tuesday’s blog. A Councillor friend has kindly expanded my limited knowledge of the selection process as follows…
The current Mayor [Ahmet Dourmoush] chairs the selection meeting while the
previous Mayor [Nick O’Hare] is vice-chair. The next previous Mayor [James Hunt]
is a member and Labour have a representative too. James Hunt was relegated to
just a panel member this year. Next year he will fade out of the picture - at
most just a substitute member.
The probability is that the Scouts will continue to submit more nominations
than anyone else. A criterion in the ‘Individual’ category is that service must exceed 20 years.
Many Scout and Guide leaders will easily reach that goal and being the largest youth group in the Borough it’s, like
you said, simple mathematics.
Hope that helps.
Councillors don’t usually (that is never) send in detailed information like that
which is deliberately false so it is the case that our Scouting former Mayor
could have been easily out-voted - but he wasn’t. If I was being really
mischievous I might remind @tony that the panel was 25% Greek Cypriot and 25%
Turkish Cypriot and two of the Awards went to Turks. Surely that has to be looked
into? 😃
Maybe @tony could submit one of his infamous FOIs asking for a list of nominees
by organisation who were rejected.
23 May - A pretty good day outside of Downing Street too
You wait four whole weeks for a Council meeting to report and the webcast
falls into an audio pothole after 55 minutes never to be heard of again.
Never mind, the important bits went out OK and we learned that Sue Gower (MBE,
JP, MA, PGC,E QTLS, GDPRP, FCIM and probably more) was to be elected unopposed to
be our new Mayor with Lisa Moore her deputy. A former Mayor had told me more than a month ago “You
will approve of the new Mayor” and he was right, I do.
Some Councillors are always friendly and some are most definitely not. Sue is in
the former camp and I have corresponded with her on and off for more than ten
years. I wrote a blog entitled Superwoman in March 2014 and to this day wonder
how she has managed to fit so much into her life. If you want to feel a little
inadequate take a look
and if that is not enough there is another.
Oh, let’s go the whole hog and splash the web space cash on 15 megabytes of Councillor Janice Ward-Wilson’s
informative words
Sue’s Deputy, Lisa Moore,
is another Councillor who reached out in my
direction before her election and has maintained friendly relations ever since; not
constantly but a a long way from another who both reports me to the police and
blocks me on X thus ensuring a bad press whenever the opportunity arises. Why
Bexley’s many decent Councillors tolerate her Leadership I have no idea.
On the other hand the calibre of her Cabinet has improved over the years, Peter Craske left
last year followed by another step in the right direction last night. No more Philip Read,
another Councillor who has been a little too fond of making malicious trips to the Police Station.
Mayor Sue Gower’s thanks.
Councillor Steven Hall then thanked the outgoing Mayor Ahmet Dourmoush for his “amazing” year in which he officiated at more than 700 events
and raised more than £37,000 for charity. Ahmet is another Councillor who always
went out of his way to be friendly with me and no doubt many others. Labour
Leader Stefano Borella was similarly effusive in his appreciation of Ahmet.
Ahmet thanked everyone for their support, after which the audio feed cut out.
I donְ’t think there is another Council meeting until well into June. Sorry to be vague but Bexleyְ’s website has
followed the website audio into a black hole. Will there be any politics to report in the interim period?
The website is back up. Next meeting is Children’s Scrutiny on 19th June.
22 May (Part 2) - Bexley’s new Mayor is
Councillor Sue Gower. An excellent choice! An amazing woman.
22 May (Part 1) - Corruption everywhere
I used to think that corruption was confined to what I would condescendingly
refer to as Banana Republics when my job involved communicating with many of
them. My responsibility was India and China and, telephonically speaking,
downhill from there. Apart from South Africa under its Apartheid Government the
whole of Africa was ‘mine’.
In Africa cables would mysteriously disappear - the termites ate it, honestly,
we didn’t nick it - and so in extreme cases would their telephone exchanges.
When Lagos could not be raised one morning (in 1982 from memory) we discovered
that it was sited on the floor above the accounts department and it had to be
burned to the ground to hide the evidence of where the money was actually going.
It couldn’t happen here; but then the following year it did. BT’s (actually its
forerunner) was similarly infiltrated - but no exchange incineration.
To introduce a bit of Bexley to this blog; at much the same time, it was
discovered that the managers of BT’s Crayford Engineering Depot were flogging
off bits and pieces to third parties on a massive scale, but unless anyone
knows better, all trace of it has disappeared from the records.
I recall that in my one and only meeting with the Post Office Corporation
(pre-BT) Chairman that he was convinced that there was corruption everywhere and
I thought he must be deluded, but now I realise that in his elevated circles he
would be seeing things that I didn’t.
I didn’t come across corruption again for another ten years when I found to my
horror that the local police were far from honest and coincidentally my daughter
became involved with the Morgan family, a member of which had been murdered in
1987 just as he was about to expose police corruption.
It was still thought to be an almost unique event but probably it wasn’t. We
have very recently seen the Post Office Horizon scandal and now the contaminated
blood fiasco - if that is not too lighthearted a word to describe it. Before
that it was Hillsborough, Grenfell, Test & Trace, lobbying and MPs house flipping. It would seem that
whether it be police, politics pandemic or Post Office the ruling classes do whatever
they damn well please without fear of retribution.
The Morgan and Langstaff (contaminated blood) inquiries have one thing in common. Theresa May. After nearly thirty years
of refusal by successive, mainly Labour, Home Secretaries to consider the
possibility that senior police officers might be bent, she alone stuck her neck out
and ordered an inquiry. It found the Metropolitan Police was Institutionally
corrupt, not only in 1987 but right now. Only one police officer lost his job
over it, the one who tried to expose the shortcomings from within. Several less
than honest Commissioners are collecting fat pensions.
As Prime Minister, Theresa May was not a shining example, but as a compassionate human being maybe she
is. It was Theresa May who as Home Secretary ordered the Morgan inquiry in 2013 and as PM, Langstaff in 2017.
And now we have no spare prison places. How convenient.
21 May - Scouting suspicions; Statistics and Singh
I first became aware of
Bexley’s Civic Awards in 2011 when I turned up early
for a Full Council meeting and found something else going on. I had no idea what
it was until the Mayor became all stroppy because the newcomers didn’t clap loudly
enough. We had inadvertently barged into a Civic Awards ceremony. Succeeding
Mayors have shown more sense and held separate meetings in relative privacy.
Last Friday another 39 volunteers were honoured, 24 in the Adults
Group. Among them was Karen from Citizen’s Advice; Alf from the Air Cadets, Maureen who manages a Youth Group
and Sharon who inspires children. David runs an Allotment Association,
Andrei champions hockey teams in the borough along with musical inspiration Julie. Dominating the list is Derek, Lee, Richard, Dawn, Nicholas, Adam, Lynn, Andy,
Vivienne, Daniel, Kirsty, Timothy, Alison and Chase
representing local Scouts; Two Karens, a Sue and an Alison from Girl Guiding and
Lucy who runs the Brownies. Robert Baden Powell would be proud.
Additionally Ilkay and Rauf were given Outstanding Achievement awards for service to the Turkish Community. The full list may be seen at
https://www.bexley.gov.uk/about-council/recognition-awards/civic-recognition-awards.
As I understand it, nominations are vetted by the current and former Mayor
which this year would be Ahmet Dourmoush and James Hunt. Ahmet is a big wig in
the Turkish School in Blackfen and James is top dog in South East London scouting;
the Air Cadets too. Both excelling in their chosen fields as far as I can see.
On the other hand it looks to be a bit incestuous, something I have been
reminded of before, but more likely it is nothing more than
statistics. Two Turks is neither here nor there out of 39 awards and one might
guess they took a leading role in
the earthquake relief work last year.
Scouting is by far and away the biggest youth movement
locally and probably nationally too and is run by huge numbers of volunteers. Each year more
of them will qualify for an award nomination
and the number will swamp any similar group. Are there any other similar groups in Bexley?
Except when
Mr.
Singh was given an award Bonkers has not reported on them but it is nothing
new for the Scouts to collect the bulk of the awards. No one else seems to be very
interested in making nominations, they have got into the habit of putting names
forward while hardly anyone else has cottoned on.
Maybe that is a reason for abandoning the awards scheme or maybe more people
should get involved, but given the nomination rules, Scouts will outnumber Singhs, and thank goodness for that.
Yesterday’s blog very nearly didn’t get published because
I considered it to be a barrel scrape too far and the number of readers who
might be interested in disability issues would be few. But I had no better ideas and time was short -
there was a train to catch - and the Publish button was hit rather than Delete.
What I hadn’t thought about is that the relatively few people who have an
interest in SEND issues probably feel neglected and pleased to see some coverage
of them. Hence more feedback than usual; but no one noticed that in my rush to
catch the train the blog went on line with the wrong date and stayed that way for more than 24 hours.
One reader was so complimentary about what I considered to be yet another
self-indulgent blog that I genuinely thought he was
being sarcastic, That conversation strayed from SEND to my prediction that the
political classes are so corrupt that it might lead to a “massive rebellion” and
how I felt it had become necessary to be very careful about what one says in which sometimes feels like a Stalinist state.
We confessed to being racists (© Wes Streeting) because we both voted for
Susan Hall which led to a discussion on Sadiq Khan.
As it happened I sat next to a Sadiq Khan lookalike while waiting for a Northern
line train at Moorgate and facing him on the train the similarities were
even more remarkable than the earlier side-on view. Same hair colour and style, same skin tone,
nose and mouth shape; just a slightly less round face and the fact I was not riding in a
bullet-proof limousine told me it wasn’t him. I felt sorry for the man; who would
want go around unprotected looking like Sadiq Khan?
I mentioned how some of the comments I hear about Khan are unkind to say the
least although maybe not undeserved. “What sort of things?” asked my new found
friend. Hence the little joke pictured here. That sort of thing!
Yes I did laugh! Shameless!
There will be a Council meeting on Wednesday for those interested in more serious matters.
19 May - Bexley answers the question while most donְ’t
As an alternative hobby to submitting one hundred plus
FOIs in not much over a year may I suggest one FOI to 100+ Councils? A lot less
work for a similar amount of data.
While perusing WhatDoTheyKnow
I was initially enthused by a list of Bexleyְ’s CCTV locations until I realised
it was 15 years old and pre-dates the traffic spy cameras. If I may digress,
yesterday I was approaching the Knee Hill traffic lights and the unnecessarily
large yellow box when the car behind me switched on its blue lights and siren.
It was unable to overtake so I used the rapid acceleration of the EV to very
quickly tuck myself into the exit of Hurst Lane a few feet away from the lights so
that ‘blue lights’ could pass. As the exit from the yellow box was clear when I
entered it and I don’t think I actually came to a complete standstill I should
be in the clear; but it is yet another example of how easily yellow box
junctions dish out injustices and why no one is very happy about anything any more.
Sooner or later there will be a massive rebellion.
Back to the WhatDoTheyKnow archive of FOIs. I found one which had gone to a large number if not all
Councils. It was a simple enough request about the number of children being
educated at home but many Councils regard the number as a State Secret
while others said it would cost too much to count them all.
To its credit Bexley Council answered the question in full albeit a full two months late.
Probably it is not something of very wide interest but having dug out the answers it may as well be posted here.
1. How many children/young people within your Local Authority with an EHCP have no school or setting
named in Section I of their Plan (as at Jan 24)?
Answer: 13
2. How many children/young people within your Local Authority with an EHCP are electively home
educated (as at Jan 24)?
Answer: 26
3. How many children/young people within your Local Authority have been awarded and currently access
Personal Budgets for Education (as at Jan 24)?
Answer: 21
4. How many of the Personal Budgets for Education currently accessed have been provided as part of an
Education Otherwise Than At/In School or College (EOTAS(C)/EOTIS(C)) provision described in their
Education Health and Care Plan (as at Jan 24)?
Answer: 13
5. How many of the Personal Budgets for Education currently accessed have been awarded to
children/young people who are being Electively Home Educated (EHE) (as at Jan 24)?
Answer: 3
6. How many of the Personal Budgets for Education currently being accessed are awarded in the form of
Direct Payments to families (as at Jan 24)?
Answer: All of the above
7. What is the total annual cost of Personal Budgets for Education within your Local Authority (as at Jan 24)?
Answer: £170,377.22. This varies all of the time but this figure is the agreed amounts as at Jan 24.
8. What is the total annual cost of Personal Budgets for Education allocated as Direct Payments to
families within your Local Authority (as at Jan 24)?
Answer: As Q 7
I suppose it would be cheeky to point out that the authority that pays out £170,000
to families educating their SEND children at home
lavishes quite a lot more on keeping their Director of Children's Services
in the style to which he has become accustomed?
Note: SEND - Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
EHCP - Education, Health and Care Plan.
EOTASC/EOTISC - Education Other than In/At School or College.
18 May - A pain in the backside
It has now been established that Dimitri Shvorob is not
vexatious but he may be A Very Naughty Boy guilty of harassment under the
Environmental Information Regulations. Every time he asks a question that can be
contorted into having an environmental impact, like the Information Commissioner’s
example of Zebra crossings causing additional vehicle pollution, to which I might
add its flashing beacon might cause one more gas fired power station to be fired
up, poor old Dimitri will be in trouble. Any question which causes a stressed
bureaucrat to sigh and expel additional Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere will put Dimitri’s question in jeopardy.
A ridiculous scenario obviously but that is where crooked decisions by crooked organisations lead us.
Somewhat to my surprise Dimitri was not critical of yesterday’s blog which trod
an uneasy path between him and Bexley Council which had wrongly accused him of
vexatiousness. By the legal definition maybe he is not vexatious but yesterday an email
from me to him used the term “a pain in the backside” which amounts to much the same thing.
In my book anyone whose mission is to expose the worst aspects of Bexley Council cannot be
all bad but his boundaries are different to mine. Collecting
information as a hobby activity is unappealing to me and not just because there is a cost associated with it.
An
hour or two’s work on each FOI according to Bexley Council so one might
guess that Dimitri’s 100+ FOIs came in at under £5,000. Not a lot in the grand
scheme of things but a guess was not good enough for
the mysterious Mr. Chapman who asked Cabinet Member David Leaf to be more precise.
Having posed the formal question in writing Mr. Chapman indulged in his own
little bit of wastefulness by failing to turn up to put it to the Council in person and
was apparently oblivious to the cost of asking a question which required far too
much historical research. Deputy Leader Leaf was much more sensible and
didn’t bother with dusting off his abacus and merely guessed that Dimitri has cost us all a few thousand pounds.
For David’s full answer click the extract above.
£5,000 or whatever the true figure may be will pale into insignificance
compared to the cost of the months of ICO work; dreaming up a dubious legal workaround
to dig Bexley Council out of its hole, writing a 31 page reply and handling the inevitable Appeal.
Everywhere one looks this country is bogged down by red tape and unnecessary
regulations and the tax implication is why we all feel worse off. The FOIA was
Tony Blair’s handiwork. What happened to David Cameron’s
Bonfire of the Quangos? Another Tory lie which has led to the highest taxes ever.
17 May - Information Commissioner moves the goal posts
I have spent rather too long wading through the Information
Commissioner’s 31 A4 page response to Dimitri Shvorob’s complaint about
being
labelled vexatious by Bexley Council and was a little surprised to find BiB
named within in it. I was immediately ready to be critical of Bexley Council for
informing the ICO of my reporting role in this affair when a more careful
reading of it revealed that it was Mr. S. himself who had made a reference to
Bonkers. He felt that the reporting of his exploits here might be a reason for
him being treated harshly by Bexley Council.
BiB has not always fully supported Dimitri because he does things that I believe
dilute his more reasonable enquiries. Where I would be content to see confirmation that Bexley Council is less
than honest and quietly regard that as a success, he, in his own words, is “not a chap to suffer in silence”.
In the past I have attempted to be fair to both sides, Dimitri, because he can be a good source of
news, and Councillors who do not deserve to be called “scumbags”. (When they are not!)
Some readers may have noticed
the use of the word funambulism (tight-rope walking) to explain my dilemma.
While happy to record that Bexley Council sometimes acts like a bunch of
crooks - because it undoubtedly has in the past - evidence of any recent repetition has to be solidly based. Refused FOIs are a reason for suspicion but
are not proof. I do not approve of the Leader devoting
a Full Council report to exaggerating her case against Dimitri to try to justify a
refusal to answer his legitimate question while acknowledging that some are distinctly trivial and may well be annoying.
As correspondence with several Conservative Councillors would reveal;
I have questioned what Dimitri actually does with the information he collects. There have been
occasions in the fairly recent past when I have asked him for a copy of an FOI
response and found that he doesn’t keep them - although he may do now
- and he has himself had to ask Bexley Council to remind him of what questions he has asked.
His excuse would be that they had taken six months to answer and Gmail only keeps mail for 90 days.
This is not good and
makes it hard to give unreserved support and I have told him that he tends to take things too far.
The City Events/Lucy
Beckwith business comes immediately to mind. I have felt that some follow-up
questions have been knee-jerk reactions, the sort of thing that one might briefly consider
as a mischievous wind-up but doesn’t actually do.
So what did the Information Commissioner make of it all?
He considered ten complaints and if I was being mischievous I would say that he
found against Bexley Council in nine of them. But that would be misleading, the
verdict was that Bexley Council was wrong to rely on the
vexatious provisions (Section 14.1) of the Freedom of Information Act; vexatiousness
being applicable to repeated questions rather than individuals.
The ICO believed that the Council should have relied on Section 12.4b of the
Environmental Information Regulations which allows for rejection on the grounds
of harassment. I can see some logic in using the Environmental laws in relation to a ULEZ
question but to apply it to the provision of Zebra crossings as the ICO has done
looks to be a stunt to circumvent the limitations of the FOIA vexatious
provisions. The ICO attempted to justify their manipulation of the law
but could come up with only one such example
“Information about improvements to existing pedestrian crossings and
proposed pedestrian crossing locations will affect the state of the elements as
they will require changes to pavement layout and are likely to affect traffic
flow, thus having an effect on vehicle emissions. Consequently, the information
sought by these requests falls within the definition of environmental information.”
That must surely be a load of convoluted old nonsense which perfectly
illustrates how officialdom is always able to twist the law in their favour.
Going down the EIR route with its harassment provisions rather than
the FOIA and vexatiousness (which the ICO agrees cannot apply to Dimitri’s complaint) requires the public interest
to be considered so the ICO had to return to Bexley Council to get them to
retrospectively consider that issue.
The likelihood is that a devious ICO is well aware of this Get Out Of Jail Free Card
and is happy to hand it to Councils on a plate. It makes Dimitri a relatively easy target.
Apart from his more recent questions relating to the pedestrian crossing he had
hoped to see installed, Dimitri took a scatter-gun approach to FOIs with
questions to 20 different departments averaging six questions a month. (None of which is illegal.)
Bexley Council took the view that the questions were of no public interest and served no purpose beyond Dimitri’s
personal curiosity or even a desire to bog them down in bureaucracy. They
claimed that the occasionally “combative” approach and the number of questions amounted to harassment.
Having been recommended to use the Environmental Information Regulations instead
of the FOIA Bexley Council were able to enforce their ‘FOI’ ban and Dimitri’s
behaviour has left him a sitting duck under the EIRegs.
Bexley Council has had to back down on its total FOI ban - which explains them
answering one last week - and have assured the ICO that
they will answer any future ones which they deem to have an element of public interest.
The Commissioner has specifically rejected Dimitri’s assertion that his FOIs are
unwelcome because a truthful response would damage the Council’s
political leadership and I think they are right to do so. I have never
considered that to be the case; more often it is the refusal to respond which is damaging and
not any suspicion of what the answer may have revealed.
So how can all that be summarised? It appears that the BBC website on vexatiousness
will not have to be rewritten but an unscrupulous ICO is more than willing to
get around the law by defining a Zebra crossing as an environmental issue.
Bexley Council comes out of it reasonably well. The persistent ULEZ questions
were undeniably ‘environmental’ so it was entitled to use the EIR (but lacked
the legal expertise to know about it) and having
been given the nod by a devious ICO it can hardly be blamed for switching the
attack from Vexatiousness to Harassment.
The costs incurred by both the ICO and the Council must have been horrendous and
one has to ask; For What? I cannot think of a single item to introduce here as an
example of how we are all better off for knowing the answer to one of Dimitri’s questions.
And as if to prove that Dimitri is in combative mood, I have already seen his draft Appeal.
I think I now have a big splinter in my bum. Not being entirely for or against
Bexley Council. Against some of Dimitri’s FOIs but fully behind his campaign for
a clear petition statement from Bexley Council and fully confirmed in my opinion of the
Information Commissioner’s Office. Their chosen deviancy was not predicted, only
that the long wait for an answer indicated that they were up to some form chicanery.
Is any Quango worth the expense? Do we have a partial explanation for the record 70
year high levels of taxation?
16 May - How did it go so wrong?
Rather
later than usual the 2024 table of London Council Tax rates has been
completed. The advantage of waiting until May is that it gives the consistently
lazy Councils; Camden, Lambeth, Newham, Southwark etc. time to get their latest
rates on line, but there is not a lot that can be done about those that use the
finest of grey fonts on a light grey background. Fortunately Bexley has never
presented a problem and is notable only for being the biggest financial failure over the past 30 years.
In 1994 Bexley’s Band D tax rate was £340 a year and now it is £2,155. 30 years of
inflation would have taken it to £691. Are services three times better? I think we know the answer.
Excluding the two Councils that went blue in 2022 Bexley retains its position as
the highest taxing (consistently) Conservative borough in London.
15 May - ‘V’ for vexatious, vindictive, vendetta
As we move towards crunch time I cannot help but compare the allegedly vexatious Dimitri
Shvorob with the late Michael Barnbrook who earned himself the same accolade
from Bexley Council. Both knocked up more than 100 FOI requests, Dimitri single
handedly while Mick did so over a much longer period while allowing himself to
be an FOI funnel for five of his supporters.
Both gentlemen planned petitions which might embarrass Bexley and both were derailed by
the Council’s unprincipled political maneuverings - an outright lie in Mick’s case.
Perhaps their worst ‘sin’ of all is that both put themselves forward for election as
Councillors, twice in Mick’s case and once coming within a literal handful of
votes short of success. Standing against a Conservative candidate is sure to reap retribution.
Allotment campaigner Rita Grootendorst
(Tory Bexley wanted to get rid of allotments) did it in Erith in 2010
and her 500 odd votes was easily enough to allow the Labour candidate to slip
through and deprive the Tory Mayor of his seat. Unforgiveable!
Rita
was mercilessly pursued for her unorthodox gardening ideas despite them winning her
an
Award from The Royal Horticultural Society. Undeterred Bexley Council went down the legal route, first getting
their
mates from Arnsberg Way to arrest her and then seeing Rita in the
Magistrate’s Court under Section 215 of the Town and Country Planning Act. Bexley Council lost
and as far as I know they gave up on being the nasty vindictive tyrants that too many of their employees are.
There are not many avenues through which to hit back at out of control authorities.
There is the Information Commissioner, the Local Government Ombudsman and the
Independent Office for Police Conduct or whatever they are calling themselves
this week. (They have a record of changing their name every time their reputation is trashed by yet another scandal.)
My experience of the three of them is not very great - in both senses of the word. The [then] IPCC
refused to look into Bexley police conniving with the CPS and Bexley Council in
order to “resolve Councillor Craske’s situationְ”
as they described his arrest. The IPCC reply was not so much as a refusal to
investigate as a meandering mess that simply failed
to comment on it. To this day I remain convinced that Craske was not charged
with the criminality traced to his phone line because Boris Johnson, Mayor and
Police Commissioner at the time, had given the order to de-arrest him; but we will never know for sure.
I think I only complained to the Local Government Ombudsman once and that was over the Council Leader
reporting me to the police for ֧“criticising Councillors”. The LGO rejected my
complaint on grounds which might be summarised as “any nut job can make a
malicious report to the police and it is for the police to sift the wheat from
the chaff”. I suppose in a way they were right.
I have no clear recollection of my few brushes with the ICO apart from them always
coming up with some cock and bull story to excuse their friends in Council but
Mick Barnbrook’s complaining about his vexatious label is easier to recall. The ICO upheld his FOI
ban because he was a racist who had made enquiries about a black Monitoring
Officer who had found the inquisition stressful. History showed that Mick’s
suspicions were correct. The racist allegations could only have come from Bexley
Council still angry that Mick very nearly defeated Steven Hall as a BNP
candidate. Mick was no racist and joined the BNP in pre-UKIP
days because it was the only anti-EU party.
It takes a long time for officialdom to construct a waterproof tissue of lies to
build against a resident who has incurred their displeasure. The fact that I am
still awaiting the ICO report from Dimitri - assuming he is still speaking
to me after various implied criticisms - is probably not a good omen. Senior
Council staff are nothing if not dishonest; they have to be
to cover for their incompetence.
In the Gutter
Hugh Neal’s Erith based blog
reached a major milestone yesterday, its 1,000th
weekly edition without a single break in 18 years. Hugh
made the right decision when he chose a weekly interval. He won’t be getting
emails enquiring after his health following three days of silence as I do. If he
ever misses a Sunday it would surely mean very bad news.
As yesterday’s blog will have indicated, a public presence does tend to give an
easy access to local Councillors. Hugh reported a nasty fly tip that appeared overnight in Appold Street
this morning.
Councillor Borella (Labour Leader) responded 41 minutes later.
Out of the gutter
My road was given its annual sweep this morning.
The Country Style mechanical sweeper inevitably went down the middle of the road
courtesy of the Elizabeth line commuters but fortunately the area right outside
my house was clear so there was not much of an excuse for a poorly done job.
But it was poor nevertheless. The grit
which has occupied the gutters for as long as I can remember was shifted nearer to the middle of the road.
Back in the gutter
Bexley has
fallen foul of the Local Government Ombudsman again.
The Council decided that a homeless father did not deserve more considerate
treatment just because he had a young child to look after. They maintained this
line of attack until faced with a Court Order.
They claimed that the father did not want to proceed with his housing
application unless his son was included and closed the case. The
Ombudsman found that Bexley did not explain their decision to the father and
kept no contemporaneous notes or telephone recordings to support their excuses to
the Ombudsman who unsurprisingly ruled against the Council. They were ordered to
apologise to the claimant and pay him £200 compensation.
It’s
becoming something of a habit.
Note: The original complaint is a year old; the LGO ruling
was made in March 2024.
12 May - A new lark in the park
A rare fine day
for the Lesnes Abbey Farmerְ’s Market today and the local Councillors (Belvedere
ward) came up with the novel idea of being there to hold an impromptu surgery.
I didn’t like to intrude as they were busy at the time I wandered by and in
any case I was dressed like a tramp because Iְְ’d merely taken just a few minutes
out from a small gardening job.
Please excuse the particularly poor mobile phone
photos taken at a distance but that is unmistakably Councillor Sally Hinkley.
Never slow to be critical
of Councillors who don’t do surgeries @tonyofsidcup immediately popped up with a Twitter/X question.
Maybe Councillor Hinkley will forgive me if I partially answer the question for
her. Over the past week she has given me advice about what can be done to tackle a
bad landlord and dug out some information about a questionable planning
decision; both BiB postbag items that did not merit a mention here.
She also did me a little favour that has absolutely nothing to do with Bexley
Council, just a nice gesture from someone who tries to do nice things.
Daniel can speak for himself; or choose not to if he has any sense!
For Blog Number 7,013 it is barrel scraping time again.
FOIs
Yesterday’s report that Bexley Council had responded to @tonyofsidcup’s FOI
request by saying they did not know who represented them on the Oxleas NHS
Trust is likely to be them resorting to buggering him around again. It is
foolish to assume that Bexley Council will be straight forward and honest about anything.
A quick look at Oxleas website
reveals that Councillor Janice Ward-Wilson (Conservative,
Crook Log) serves as Governor at the Trust; and if that is not
enough it is only six months since Bexley Council announced that appointment.
@tony had asked for information on the last four years of appointments. That
information remains unavailable due to Bexley Council’s ignorance.
Aaron Newbury being Janice’s predecessor doesn’t look to be very democratic. He
is an unelected Conservative activist, not a Councillor entitled to represent the
population at the NHS Trust.
Lidl
It took years for Bexley Council to approve the Lidl store in Belvedere but a
similar proposal for Erith has fared rather better. 233/00298/FULM in Fraser
Road was approved a couple of days ago in only 18 months. 18 Conditions imposed,
among them not to open for customers before 8 a.m. or after 22:00.
Funambulism again
Coincidence I am sure but since sticking my neck out
two days ago
by saying that the leading Labour Councillors have always been ready to engage
in correspondence on Council matters, two matters have arisen which merited a
few words and in both cases a helpful response came flying back.
I may have been critical of them from time to time but not so often that I can
remember when, but it is only Conservative Councillors who are so
thin-skinned that they block me from looking at their Twitter/X posts.
Councillor June Slaughter
A
last minute edit on 9th May saw some praise for Councillor Slaughter stripped
from the narrative on the grounds that reminding the Council Leader that in 2014
June was the only Councillor who stood against a Council campaign of lies might get
her into retrospective hot water, but casting caution to the wind June gets
another well deserved credit here.
Following @tony’s (him again!) complaint that Sidcup High Street was
strewn with rubbish Councillor Slaughter got busy. It is not appropriate to
reveal every string pulled but suffice to say that the culprit has been
identified and the problem should now go away.
You must know by now that a resident who asks to be identified here only as @tonyofsidcup
(which is difficult to do when Bexley Council publishes his real name in their
Full Council Agenda) has been declared vexatious
for making too many Freedom of
Information requests. A legally dubious decision upon which the Information
Commissioner has been pontificating for several months.
In what may be an indicator of things to come an FOI which @tony submitted on 1st
May has been answered by Bexley Council. Disappointingly they have no idea who
represented Bexley on the Oxleas NHS Trust in recent years which is a bit odd to say
the least but at least @tony received a polite response.
According to Bexley Council’s website there will be a Council meeting in two weeks time but none at all in June.
Maybe they are just slow to update their meetings page but it currently looks like Bonkers will
struggle to report anything significant for a while. Maybe the Information Commissioner will rule against Bexley soon in
the vexatious
FOIs dispute but apart from that it looks like trivia will once again be ruling the roost here.
Yesterday’s suggestion that Bexley Labour had something to celebrate brought
forth a contrary view. Not so much on the LGBTQ+ issue but the fact that Bonkers
does not generally give Bexley Labour a particularly hard time.
The reason is not hard to find. 60 years of political observation taught me to be wary of left wing parties but there
can be no denying that locally Labour’s elected Members have always, since 2009 anyway when I began to take a closer interest in them,
been well intentioned and scrupulously honest.
The new complaint is that if you ask a Labour Councillor a question the answer will be the same as if you ask a Conservative. That is that you
won’t get a reply at all. And if you ask a Labour Councillor to help in a dispute centred on
a dubious policy exercised by the Conservative Council they wonְְ’t. Ergo; they are all the same.
I have no recent experience of that sort of thing but it certainly used to
be the case that Labour Councillors could be relied upon to do the decent thing
when their Conservative counterparts were lying their socks off. Maybe it is different
now. If I include just the odd word here and there I can still only muster six names out of
Bexley’s twelve Labour Councillors who I have ever spoken to or corresponded with. That’s 50%
but on the Tory side the figure falls below 30%.
I am pretty sure that if I emailed a question to either of the two most recent
Labour Leaders I would get a reply within 48 hours and probably a very
comprehensive and detailed one. We may not always agree politically but there
are no obvious signs that civility has flown out of the window.
One can only speculate on how it is that an anti-Tory
email sent to every Labour Councillor came to be totally ignored. Perhaps the
two parties are in some respects ‘all in it together’ as alleged or maybe there is a history of which I am not fully aware.
Perhaps it would be best not to fill in between meetings with trivia? Anyone
know who the next Mayor will be? Maybe it is time we had
a really poor one again to liven things up a bit.
8 May - Something to celebrate
Bexley’s Labour Group has had a good couple of weeks.
First their LGBTQ+ Motion supported by the Conservatives and then their man
avoided defeat on May 2nd; although 111,216 Bexley/Bromley residents may be less than happy.
However the former deserves celebration and
Labour Leader Stefano Borella has issued a Press Release.(PDF.)
There were two messages of support for
the mini-rant about my 49 minute six mile
journey to Sidcup last Friday both of them providing examples of how Bexley
Council has gone out of its way to make travel more difficult.
Unfortunately both have been reported here before. A lost slip lane in Danson
Road can cause tail backs to Crook Log and
before and after photos may be seen here.
Nearer home is Florence Road, a previously minor residential route which has become
the
only road exit from Abbey Wood’s Elizabeth line station and bus terminal. (About
12 buses an hour.) During the morning and evening rush the
deliberately
engineered congestion in what is a one-way street has a knock on effect in
Wilton Road, up Knee Hill and along Abbey Road which in urn blocks the exit from Fossington Road. The sort of clever stuff which one has come to expect from Councils.
Left: North. Right: Southern exit on to Abbey Road. Top centre: Fendyke Road.
To be fair to Bexley Council they made most of their changes in 2001, long
before the Elizabeth line became a consideration. Then in May 2009
they
installed the exit width restriction. The Conservative Councillor for the area
at the time, one John Davey, pronounced it utterly bonkers and as with many
things he was right. As is often the case in Bexley, the idiocy was engineered
by Andrew Bashford, subsequently promoted to be head of the Highways Department.
The weekend suggestion goes further than my own. It calls not only for the width
restriction to be taken away along with the parking bays at the southern end but also the removal of the footpath
opposite which goes from nowhere to nowhere.
There is absolutely no need for it. Nobody heading on foot to the station from
the south or west will use it when there are much shorter options and those
coming from the east would use the east side footpath.
Removing the west side footpath would allow Florence Road to be wider than it
was when it was a two-way street so it would be more than good enough for two
lanes (eastbound and westbound) to exit on to Abbey Road and relieve Fendyke Road residents of the high speed rat run.
Such a scheme would however require intelligent thought and there of course lies the
major impediment to such a scheme. Maybe John Davey could sponsor it, he had the
foresight to predict the problem 15 years ago? Bonkers he said then, absolutely
bonkers now.
4 May - Another reason not to vote for Rishi Sunak
This afternoon’s news is another reason to want to see Rishi Sunak and his
Parliamentary party totally annihilated. He failed to back his candidate in the London Mayoral
election which must surely mean that he secretly backs Sadiq Khan. C40 cities, Net Zero,
crime unchecked, higher taxes, unlimited immigration etc. What is the point of a Conservative
who is nothing like one? Absolutely nothing.
London as we used to know it will not survive another four years of Khan and I doubt I will
still be living here in 2028.
On a slightly related issue I have
continued to Mute (on X/Twitter) anyone who posts juvenile or abusive
comments. It makes for a much better reading experience. This afternoon I
realised as a name disappeared from view that I had Muted a Bexley Councillor. I
decided against reversing the decision because I don’t think I have ever read
anything worthwhile from that particular source.
I am wondering how the X algorithm will deal with a Follow and a Mute on the
same account. @tonyofsidcup survives by a whisker.
At the last Full Council meeting
Leader Teresa O’NeilI expressed her frustraton at the disruption to travel in the
borough caused by a plague of utility road works. I think she might do better to
look at her own policies over the past 18 years.
This morning I needed to be in Pett’s Wood by nine o’clock, a distance of exactly
ten miles from home or 10·3 via Sidcup High Street to avoid the stupid width
restrictor on The Green. I left at eight o’clock precisely and the first six
miles to Sidcup took 49 minutes. Once across the boundary with Bromley it was
plain sailing, four miles in 14 minutes.
The really slow going began at the northern end of Penhill Road where there was
a queue to enter it. Local readers will recognise that I was taking pretty much
the route of the SL3 Express bus. It would have taken at least 25 minutes to get
from Penhill Road to Sidcup. The scheduled time from Bexleyheath Library to Chislehurst station.
There were no utility works, no cones, no temporary traffic lights. The problem
is increased traffic and
junctions
designed to restrict flow. Five minutes might have been saved if Rectory
Lane was closed off. That corner gets blocked because traffic cannot turn
into the Lane because of traffic emerging from it. For those unfamiliar with the
area, it is a single track road with passing places. I have not driven down it
since 2012 when I struggled to get through it in my then new tiny Kia Picanto.
Black sacks were in
evidence on Sidcup High Street again but were gone when I returned 45 minutes later.
I thought that
blocked drains was the most obvious sign of Council neglect in Bexley but not everyone agrees.
The streets of Sidcup are said to be littered with rubbish but is that really
the same? Blocked drains are wholly Bexley Council’s responsibility whereas filth on the
streets is put there by people. Traders have to pay for waste collection so the
sacks are probably from residential flats above the shops and without rear
access. Missed ‘bins’ become an even more serious problem if they are sacks and left at
the mercy of any passing fox, or rat or crow.
When were those footpaths last jet-washed?
Note: I unexpectedly found myself passing this spot at 16:50. It was clear of rubbish. Councillor June Slaughter knew who to call. 50 years of experience paid off!
Council Leader Teresa O’Neill did us the usual favour of reducing her 26 page
report to Full Council to a mere six minutes and 19 seconds but managed to use her favourite word, ‘fantastic’
within the first sentence. It was the unanimous Con/Lab vote on the LGBT+
Motion that won the praise, quickly followed by two more Fs. Councillor Stefano Borella’s
Fiftieth birthday and Councillor June Slaughter’s Fifty years as a Bexley Councillor. “It is a Fun time all round tonight.ְ”
She praised the staff who had turned out during the recent storms and
commiserated over the borough wide road works. She had reminded the Government
that Outer London still has digital black spots and Cabinet Member Caroline
Newton had spent the day with the Education Minister discussing SEND issues.
“The DfE has been very complimentary over the SEND improvement plan.”
The Leader took credit for the SuperLoop extension from Bexleyheath to Abbey
Wood and Thamesmead and she has also asked that the DLR be extended to Belvedere.
Councillor Cheryl Bacon (Conservative, Sidcup) asked the Leader to praise the reduction in missed bin
collections and the newly installed litter bins. Cabinet Member Diment
answered. “It is a tribute to those that go out in all weathers and pick up
around a million bins a month, 99·98% of them without error.”
The first of the new bins have been installed in Blackfen and more will be
installed over the next nine or ten months.
Councillor Peter Reader (Chairman of the Audit Committee) asked a more erudite
question. Could the Leader assess the Government’s proposals to tackle the
backlogs and delays to Local Authority audits by external auditors?
Deputy Leader Leaf was keen to answer. “It is a very important issue and there
is a massive backlog and there is a process in place to draw a line under audits
which have gone back over many many years. Unfortunately Bexley is caught up
despite our accounts being ready in time.” 2022/23 is still outstanding.
Councillor Borella mentioned the Children Services overspend and asked how
confident the Council is that it will not repeat the overspend this year and
how far away is the next Capitalisation Directive? This Government has not given
Bexley a Fair Funding Review despite the Leader seeking help at the Local
Government Association, London Councils and the House of Lords. “What is going on? Nothing!”
“Should she not reflect on her position after 17 years?”
Stefano said he was talking to the Mayor about more Superloops, for Welling
perhaps? The Council should cooperate with their counterparts in Greenwich.
The Leader said she was working very hard on budgetary issues and every penny of
expenditure is being monitored. “The reality is that there are unknowns at the
moment with multi-year settlements.” (A reference to the forthcoming election.)
“Bexley is punching above its weight and I am proud of that.”
Councillor Lisa Moore (Conservative, Longlands) asked what progress is being made with the reorganisation
of Children’s Centres. Cabinet Member Read said the changes went live in
November 2021 “with the aim on focusing on the first 1,0001 days of a child’s
life which is based on the Government’s guidance document. Most registrations
are coming from the more deprived areas of the borough indicating that the
targeted services do correlate with the needs of the community as intended.
1,056 children are attending regularly.”
Councillor Larry Ferguson (Labour, Thamesmead) said that the Leaderְ’s written
report acknowledged that “housing problems are significant but she does not get to
grips with them. She says that it is further exacerbated by Government
Agencies working on designated schemes for asylum seekers and refugees. There
is also the problem of other London boroughs placing their homeless in Bexley.”
“The party opposite is well aware of the problem but does not want to take the
bold step of building or strictly enforcing our own construction targets for
affordable homes. We are in a desperate situation. They could use the unused £3
million allocated to affordable housing through BexleyCo but you either want to
spend the money or you don’t. They could take a hard look at their own planning
system. It won’t do for developers to rock up with proposals and
bold-facedly
come back to say that affordable homes do too much damage to their profit
margins. There must be some developers who can meet our needs to some degree at
least but BexleyCo has put forward yet another plan for Erith with no affordable
housing. Where is BexleyCo providing affordable homes?” [This is a
condensed version of Larry’s lengthy speech.]
Teresa O’Neill responded by saying that Larry should speak to his Labour
Councils who block book accommodation in Bexley hotels which puts the cost of
controlling the anti-social behaviour that occurs in those hotels on Bexley’s taxpayers.
Cabinet Member Cafer Munur said that £3·5 million is an extremely small
amount of money [fewer than 20 houses?] and he wants “a bigger bang from the
buck”. He had to go back several years to Old Farm Place to find a significant
BexleyCo build of affordable homes. It then transpired that it was only twelve homes.
Fortunately for Cafer the Mayor decreed that it was time to bring down the
curtain on the Leader’s Report.