I used to be called a Labour stooge by one of the less
intelligent Conservative Councillors who could never recognise that if he
interpreted a factual report on their activities as being critical it was
more a reflection on their performance than my political leanings.
I am pretty sure that at one point I said that if Labour ever gained power in
Bexley the boot would be very much on the other foot. Labour would be similarly criticised.
Labour Councillors have almost without exception regarded me with a certain
amount of suspicion and they are right to do so. I regarded them with suspicion
too. Former Councillor Daniel Francis told me long ago that Bonkers was one
third conspiracy theory and one third totally wrong and 20 odd years ago he took
the Council’s side when I put in a complaint about Bexley Council. It may have
been when they said I was racist for questioning the multi-lingual signs which
adorned Lesnes Abbey Park at the time. (†)
The uncomfortable feeling engendered by both incidents never quite went away.
My other Councillor Sally Hinkley could not have been nicer or more generous on
many occasions but Danny Hackett (my third Councillor at the time) sent me his
correspondence file with the Labour whip, the aforesaid Sally, and I could barely
believe what I was reading.
That uncomfortable feeling never completely went away either.
And now we have both of them in Parliament (MP and assistant) fully supportive
of the worst Government in living memory with corruption and skullduggery in
plain sight. It is impossible to be anything other than despairing that any
rational person can think we are living under anything other than a thoroughly
nasty regime. From killing old people to banging up innocents for
spreading ‘misinformation’ which we now know to be true.
I have given up on trying to maintain any relationship with either and
presumably the reverse is true. Not a word of support when the Reform UK
candidate demanded money with menaces.
Today my erstwhile Councillor is claiming credit for increasing the Minimum Wage;
something for which the Government provides not one penny. One way or another it is us who will pay.
And talking of pennies, if the pubs pass on the reduction in beer duty - which
they won’t - I might now save something like 70 pence a year at most.
They take us for fools.
† Checked the file. It was. October 2001.