3 November - Vexatious or not? We have the definitive answer
The
argument has been going on for a couple of years now and I haven’t always been
100% supportive of @tonyofsidcup who asks Bexley Council an awful lot of questions;
sometimes in person but more often via Freedom of Information Requests.
Quite how many it is hard to say but in the region of 100 over a couple of years.
Supportive or not I have been pleased to report the answers and his even more
frequent non-answers because without people like
@tony how would anyone know what our Council gets up to?
On reflection I was probably being a bit too critical with the X Direct Message
seen here and originally sent to a Councillor friend six months ago but it
illustrates how my support for his questions was occasionally strained. There
were a lot of them and sometimes I felt @tony was flogging a dead horse and should learn when to give up. One
thing I have learned over the years is that Bexley Council revels in intransigence and it will absolutely never admit to being in the wrong.
My loyalties were similarly divided when the Council Leader delivered her rant
against @tony exactly a year ago. From past experiences I know that Bexley
Council encourages follow up questions because they do not completely or honestly
answer the first one. It is frustrating for the questioner and expensive for the
taxpayer and I have never been sure if the reluctance to give a straight answer
is one of political direction or management incompetence.
In the following audio clip the Leader illustrates perfectly her lack of understanding
of how badly the Council answers difficult questions if it answers them at all.
Everything is marked by the stench of arrogance and infallibility.
Teresa O’Neill speaks: This is a long clip. At the very least listen from 3:15.
I
am not going to repeat previous reports on the saga - those interested can look through
the Index - except to say that new broom Kate
Bonham, presumably anxious to make a good impression with the Leader, decreed
@tony to be vexatious on 1st December 2023. See below.
She had been in post for just two months on a salary of £113,749 plus an
allowance of £5,415.
Kate was backed by the Information Commissioner
who was less than impressed with FOI responses being
reproduced on BiB. Let the public know about Bexley Council? That will never do!
So undeterred, @tony went to law. On 24th October the Court gave its verdict.
Is
Bexley Council every bit as bad as we imagined and has it broken the law
yet again? And what will our Teresa think of her Kate if it has?
To be fair I have been of the opinion that Kate Bonham has in some ways been a
breath of fresh air and I will offer the guessed excuse that she was badly advised by
the legal team which in the past has been extraordinarily incompetent.
Losing in
Bexley Magistrate’s Court and getting its Team Leader reported to the CPS.
Management in Bexley has always been poor and I’d guess some parts of it still are.
Kate Bonham, Deputy Director, Finance & Corporate Services, 1st December 2023.
@tony was given a clear run in Court because Bexley Council, arrogant as ever, didn’t bother to show up.
According to the Court Judgment @tony made a bit of a thing about him providing
a public service through this blog. He may be right but it would have been nice
if he had told me first. However @tony’s real opposition came from the
Information Commissioner who provided a 262 page evidence bundle.
@tony told the Court that with no real journalists operating in the area it was
up to amateurs like him to dig up the facts. The ICO contended that some
of his questions were “manifestly unreasonable” and the remainder were “vexatious”.
There was a single exception but @tony was not really interested in that one so I won’t complicate matters by detailing it here.
The Court said that the difference between manifestly unreasonable and vexatious was “vanishingly small”.
The ICO/Bexley case that @tony’s questions were “self-serving” was thrown out despite
Bexley Council saying they were because it had seen no evidence that @tony made the information available
elsewhere. (Maybe if Bexley didn’t block Bonkers on their web servers they might be better informed.)
The Court said that none of the FOIs appeared to be “burdensome” and the number
was large mainly because @tony chose to break them down into small bites rather
than submit a massive one as a regular journalist might do.
The one question which Bexley Council deemed too expensive to answer (£630 in
connection with ULEZ) was deemed to be an exaggeration. The Court estimated that reviewing 526
short emails would average just a handful of seconds each against the Council’s
contention it would be at least three minutes.
You can see which way the Court was going can’t you?
I have had a copy of the Court Judgment for a few days and spoken about it to a couple of Councillors. Feedback from within the Ivory Tower
is that there is a good number of red faces and not a little annoyance. I hope
it is with the Legal Team who may have shown the level of competence to be expected
of lawyers who have failed to make their way outside a public service sinecure.
The question now is; will Teresa O’Neill apologise to @tony for the broadcast attempted humiliation delivered a year ago?
Note: As this report has been published later than I would have liked, another blog has already
published a summary. It is not correct in every detail and @tony submitted corrections.
The alternating use of @tony’s pseudonym (X handle) on Bonkers
and his real name is at the direction of the man himself. I am sure you must
know who ‘both’ are by now and there is no point in going against his wishes.