30 June - Money back at the third attempt
I
suppose I should quickly update the situation on the Metro Bank ATM which on 30th May took back
my £50 because I do not have eyeballs in my kneecaps. One might have thought
that a credit would be automatic but no.
On 3rd June I phoned my bank, First Direct, and they said that I would be sent a
claim form and given a provisional refund within five days.
Two weeks later I called again and was told that unfortunately nothing at all
had been done following my earlier call and this would be urgently remedied. Once again nothing happened.
On 23rd June a third phone call
elicited another apology, an admission that no action was taken following my
report but on the following day the £50 was credited to my account.
Why should an account holder have to make a single claim let alone three? The
procedure should be totally automated. No money should result in an automatic refund.
Anything else suggest that banks have a vested interest in dishonesty.
While making preparations for
installation of a drive bollard
to combat inconsiderate commuter parking there is no time to post much here.
On another parking related issue my attention was drawn to a new Traffic Order being rushed through By Bexley Council. (Click the extract to see the whole thing.)
Signed off on 25th June and coming into operation tomorrow. Another reduction in
parking capacity of course and it may be justified; I don’t know the area.
I wonder if Andrew Bashford (Head of Transport) knows it any better than I do because he
places Marne Avenue which is close enough to Welling station to be affected by it, in Sidcup.
Can that be true? Estate Agents do not agree. If Marne Avenue is in
Welling, does it make the Traffic Order invalid?
It’s a pity that Mr. Bashford cannot move as quickly with
our local CPZ.
28 June - Erith. Hard to get to and who wants to anyway?
Erith Placemaking was on
the Scrutiny meeting agenda. Who
comes up with these ridiculous names? Councillor Philip Read (Conservative, West Heath) said that Erith is
an awful concrete monstrosity which died. Not for the first time he pointed out
that you cannot get to Erith from the North because it is more than a little wet
on that side and it is blocked from the South because of idiotic road closures. It is
much easier for the bulk of Erith’s residents to shop elsewhere.
Another
problem is vandalism; refurbished areas are wrecked within 24 or 48 hours of
reopening and recently the pier was set on fire. What is being done about it, he asked.
(Photo 2, library picture.)
The Council officer said he was very aware of Erith being divided by the railway
and the dual carriageway and blamed TfL for nothing being done about it since
Philip’s suggestion was first put forward
six years ago. “It is a tricky issue” he said.
(More recent reference.)
Designing out vandalism is another tricky one. You don’t want the place “looking like a fortress”.
Philip Read repeated his view that until access to Erith from its “hinterland” is
improved, “it is going to struggle.” It requires another access into the town and reopening Avenue Road is the obvious solution.
Councillor Stefano Borella (Labour, Slade Green) supported Councillor Read.
“Erith is a 1960s planning disaster.” There should have been a fly-under where the fish roundabout
is now and Thameslink trains should stop there.
A Council officer said that Erith was “talked down but it has a lot of strengths
like its accessibility”. Maybe he had not been listening earlier on.
Councillor Lucia-Hennis
(Conservative, Crayford) remembered Erith in its prime but “we have lost the
river police and the deep water wharves. Greenwich got the cruise liners that could
have come to Erith. Erith was built on its river”.
Cabinet Member Cafer Munur said that Erith’s jetty (and pier) was handicapped by being
fixed and didn’t rise and fall with the tide. The pontoon was removed with the
Morrison’s development and its absence precludes use as a commuter river boat terminal and
the financial case for one is not there. Councillor Munur slipped into
the debate an assurance that the Morrison’s supermarket is not in any danger of
closure. He had met the bosses recently. “Erith can look forward to substantial changes [for the better].” It
will look more like a traditional High Street.
Councillor Sue Gower (Conservative, Bexleyheath) said that some of the shops in
Erith were plagued by shop lifting and anti-social
behaviour to the extent that customers avoided them to stay safe.
Councillor Sally Hinkley (Labour, Belvedere) spoke highly of the regenerated River Gardens. “They
are brilliant, really good and beautiful.” The Council officer said the
remodelled gardens opened up the river to the town in a way never seen before.
They wre so enthusiastic that I took myself there last Thursday to see how much
better they are now than before. Maybe I went to the wrong place because I
couldn’t see how they were any different to what they have always been.
And they were closed. Like may people, I won’t be in a hurry to go back to Erith.
N.B. Photo 4 is of the jetty and not the long pier which is a few hundred yards to the East.
27 June - Pee’d off with butt kicking
The next item on the Places Agenda was every Council’s favourite occupation.
Fining residents in order to raise as much cash as possible, except that in
Bexley things may not be going entirely to plan.
Since July 2024 the Council’s litter enforcement contractor,
Wise Ltd, has issued more than 2,800
Fixed Penalty Notices for littering, dog fouling and spitting etc. It has a three
year contract operating at varying times for 76 hours a week.
Of the 2,800 plus penalties issued, 2,327 were for cigarette butts, 136 for spitting,
35 for a surreptitious pee but only 1.277 people paid up. 977 fines were written off
and 66 were simply cancelled many of them because they should never have been issued in the first place.
Belvedere and Crayford were the worst affected places, 25% of the borough total
each, with Erith on 17%, Bexleyheath at 16·5% and Sidcup on 11.
Staff retention figures indicate that no one much likes fining fellow citizens.
Councillor Sally Hinkley (Labour, Belvedere) said that the number of
prosecutions was so low as to offer little incentive to pay. It was explained to
her that FPNs, unlike Parking Penalties, represented a criminal offence and could
have you sent straight to Court for non-payment. The
Council officer explained that because of that the usual legal checks applied.
How good is the evidence and what is the prospect of a successful prosecution?
When asked how Bexley Council success rates compared with other Councils he said
that such figures are not published but “it is much better than
the previous
contractor who I will not name”. (Councillor Borella was less reticent and named them.)
Councillor Cheryl Bacon (Conservative, Sidcup) asked if there were more operatives in
Belvedere and Crayford or whether the people there are less well behaved. The
Council officer did not know but would carry out the necessary data analysis.
Labour Leader Stefano
Borella asked what was probably the most sensible question of the night;
how much are we paying Wise Ltd and with such a low payment success rate is it
worth doing. The Council officer declined to answer the question in public.
Councillor John Daveyְ’s (Conservative, Sidcup) question was a fairly good one
too. “Do we keep a record of people who don’t pay so that we can track
persistent or repeat offenders?” Once again the Council officer didn’t know the answer.
Councillor Rags Sandhu (Conservative,
Bexleyheath) asked what checks
are made on identity data offered by potential offenders. Another question to which an answer was declined.
Chairman Cameron Smith, while drawing the discussion to a close did at least see the ‘funny’ side of the debate and apologised to any
member of the public listening who heard so many questions and got so very few answers.
Litter enforcement looks to be another contract ripe for Reform UK’s DOGE group.
At yesterday’s Places Overview and Scrutiny meeting the really big question
was weeds. Why are so many shooting up from every kerb stone that is. It was the
first question from a Councillor and they were still discussing the pesky things
twenty two minutes later, albeit with a brief divergence into that other roadside
nuisance, the House of Multiple Occupation. (“The occupants tend not to take
responsibility for waste. People just do not care.”)
Councillor Slaughter “wished the weeds weren’t there”, residents complained
about them and they are worse now than ever. Councillor Davey said that
residents complained about weeds when he was out doorstepping.
They were told that weed killer is applied three times a year, exactly where was not specified. The first dose was
completed on 11th April and a second application was begun on 9th June. Weeds
are removed mechanically once dead but not before. Country Style operatives
“do not have the strength” to pull out green weeds by hand.
The third application of weed killer will start on 26th August
and continue for six
weeks. Councillor Gower asked when we could expect to see the end of them and
some were so longstanding that they were beginning to destroy the footpaths. The
Council officer carefully added six weeks to 26th August abd came up with 8th
October. Then after a significant pause managed to add 14 (the time it takes for
them to die) to eight and make 22. 22nd October that is. Thank goodness for
clock watching dandelions.
Obviously the survey that said that Bexley residents are almost
the most unhappiest in the country is a load of old tosh. Their biggest gripe is weeds.
25 June (Part 2) - Starmer continues the well established decline
Starmer is going to ‘invest’ in twelve Lockheed Martin F35A fighter bombers
and equip them with nuclear weapons which may only be used by permission of a
fickle US president. Let’s hope the lefties do not succeed in their long term
ambition to get rid of Trident and leave the country even more defenceless than it is now.
Whilst the options
at present are few this is not the big investment in British jobs that the Prime Minister claims. At most, 15% of the £80 million
unit cost will go to British companies. Where did we go so wrong?
I lived in and around Farnborough, Hampshire from 1949 to 1984 and saw many wholly British
aircraft developed and tested there. From the Spitfires and Lancasters which
were a common sight circa 1950 through Gloster Meteors. De Havilland Vampires, Sea Vixens, Hunters. Buccaneers, Harriers. Lightnings, Valiants,
Victors, Vulcans, Javelins, Jaguars and Typhoons to mention only those that saw
military service. And these names just off the top of my head without recourse
to Wikipedia etc. The Mach 3 Bomber A.K.A. Concorde is omitted!
Which Government first decided that Britain did not have the money to defend itself? It
started with Harold Wilson whose government cancelled TSR2 and it has been all downhill since then.
Note: The 17·5 pence programme is a 166 page book.
25 June (Part 1) - No more messing around
And another one… Up my drive and this time on to the lawn yesterday; I had planned to cut
it during the afternoon. Yes, honestly.
It’s the fourth invasion in a couple of weeks and it will probably get worse if Bexley Council ever gets around to
installing the CPZ.
(Two months with no sign of action yet.)
At least this driver had the good
sense not to block me in but it was the last
straw. Next week I have a man coming round to survey the drive for a bollard
installation. 19 years after it was installed the 32mm waste pipe I laid
underneath the block paving running from the public footpath to the garage
electricity consumer unit will find a purpose in life.
Foresight eh?
24 June (Part 2) - A storm in a talking shop
One of my Reform UK contacts gave me a fright a week ago
by saying that he and four of his colleagues had attended a Cabinet meeting. How
did I come to overlook that? But it turned out to be a Cabinet Committee
meeting which is not one I usually attend.
The meeting was wholly about the money pit which is BexleyCo. At the last
meeting, the Chairman, about whom I have an unenviable collection of emails from
work colleagues, accepted that things were progressing too slowly and there
would be no dividend for Council Taxpayers until 2028/29. Without a webcast I have no idea if things
have got worse since then, however what was clear from X (Twitter) etc. is that
the Reform crew were not impressed.
They claimed that about 10% of Bexley Council’s budget was trickling down the
BexleyCo drain which was instantly disputed by Daniel Francis MP. I don’t know
why he thought BexleyCo should be defended because he used to say it was
a bit of a disaster. “We are lending money to be pee’d up the wall” he said. But not any more.
In
an X exchange with @ReformBexley and their supporters he said that their arithmetic was all wrong and that
nothing like 10% of the budget went on supporting BexleyCo. More like 5%
was touted. If Bexley Council has pumped £64·7 million
into BexleyCo, how does that compare with the total expenditure?
@tonyofsidcup provided some evidence. (See associated Table.)
Reform’s 10% claim may be the roughest of estimates but the MP’s lesser figure
is beyond me. @tony whose financial qualifications are infinitely greater than
mine suggests it is something to do with net and gross revenues but goes on to
say;
“Under £600 million on services and £80 million on capital makes around 10%”.
Where can a lesser figure come from? And why would a Labour MP push one?
Who really cares? £64 million is a lot of your money with nothing much to show
for it, but the MP is still arguing that Reform has committed a major faux pas.
Wisely, Reform, or at least their most vociferous supporter, seems to have dropped out of this argument undefeated. Not for
them the condescending tone of a Labour MP defending the dubious financial
decisions of a Conservative Council. Quit while you are ahead! And Reform most likely are in Bexleyheath.
I have no real idea why the MP decided he should support an outfit that built
zero affordable homes last year. Neither have I any idea
why @tonyofsidcup has spent so much time on X defending the local Reform branch when his only
reward is that they blocked him. Similarly I am not sure why I defend Reform
either when prominent Reformers send me solicitor’s letters, four I think it is
now but I am losing count, demanding that I sign a gagging order so that I
cannot ever reveal what I have in a big fat file.
Stuff that!
BexleyCo Index.
24 June (Part 1) - I told you so
As the first anniversary of one of the most calamitous days in British political
history approaches I took a quick look back at what was being said here a year or
so ago. The forecasts were surprisingly accurate which is not a sign of genius
but merely the benefit of a voting memory that extends back to 1964 when Harold
Wilson made his mark as a Labour Prime Minister by instantly wrecking the economy and devaluing the
pound. “The pound in your pocket” and all that.
But even after that collapse you could buy a dollar for 41 pence. it is more like 75 pence now.
Socialism
and economic stability has always been a pipedream and the promises made last
year by Daniel Francis, MP for Bexleyheath and Crayford have proved to
be every bit as hollow. Every aspect of the economy has
taken a dive. NHS waiting lists have been creeping up despite patients being
sent overseas for treatment. A friend who started hiccupping on Easter Sunday
and not stopped since has a hospital appointment next November for what could be
a brain tumour.
An ineffective Border Force and the illegal invasion has gone from bad to worse. Great British
Energy has done nothing. Formally set up last month it now has a website and a Chief
Executive Salary of £350,000 a year but it wil never be an energy supplier and
who would put their trust in it if it did?. Energy prices are higher now than when
Labour replaced the hapless Tories and their promised £300 reduction in the
average electricity bill is nowhere to be seen.
The only sort of ‘anti-social’ behaviour being tackled is speech
of which the Government disapproves using laws introduced by the utterly stupid Sunak and Co,
The ambition to recruit new teachers on the back of the VAT raid on education
(allegedly the UK is the only country in the world stupid enough to tax
education) was formally abandoned last month. The not especially large amount of money
raised by the class war on education is to be spent on housing the illegals.
Among last years’ forecasts was that Labour would be much the same as the useless
Tories “but with bells on” and I may have dropped a clanger there because they are
obviously far worse than that. The curbs on freedom of speech are punitive
except perhaps for the brainless chanting of anti-Jewish comment
on the streets of every major city.
There was even a reference to giving away Gibraltar and the Chagos Islands, lumped together as “sovereign territory”.
Labour treachery is a given.
Predicting ever more stealth taxes was not a very difficult one but the specific monetary
attacks on older people and the disabled was a bad miss on my part. I was on
firmer ground with “I will enjoy watching red voting lemmings crash on the rocks
below the cliff and become yet another generation that never votes Labour
again”. In retrospect, enjoy was not the right word. too many people have been hurt by Labour.
I was also wrong about anticipating relative personal immunity from Starmer’s tax raids
being neither rich nor poor but my net income has not come anywhere near rising at
the rate of inflation. Under Labour I am around £1,000 a year worse off than a
year ago and I am now a Lidl shopper rather than Sainsbury’s. ( A little
to my surprise some of Lidl’s own brand stuff is noticeably better quality than Sainsbury’s.)
The statement that Starmer is nothing but a liar was easy to justify even a year
ago and is widely accepted now but the
forecast he would be gone in 18 months may prove wide of the mark; but one can
hope. On the other hand “rich people rushing from our shores” was absolutely spot on.
The mystery is why polls are still showing 25% support for the most incompetent
Government ever. Train drivers, doctors, the workshy and the illegals
presumably.
23 June - Rachel thieves again
No more Labour Facebook revelations today; maybe they have banned all the obvious rebels. In fact the only new Contact form message is from the property correspondent complaining that his enquiries are being limited by the Labour Government’s iniquitous doubling of Land Registry search fees from £3 to £7 and asking why it is not on the Starmageddon list. It is now. 9th December 2024.
22 June (Part 2) - Strike up the banned
Yet another long term Bonkers reader has come forward to say
he was banned from Sidcup and Bexley Facebook Group; his offence was making
a comment critical of Sadiq Khan. He knew that his Facebook
counterpart (opponent?) Claire Hedderman was a Moderator there (screenshot supplied) but maybe didn’t realise that she was
a Labour
Party candidate in East Wickham in 2022.
In better news there has been a report that both Claire and
Dave Lovelace were
banned from their local Nextdoor group. Maybe not recently, the message is rather vague on timings.
I lasted a week on Nextdoor myself, I was overwhelmed with advertising spam so I banned myself by deleting the
registered email account; nextdoor@etc.
22 June (Part 1) - Who goes there?
For the second time this week I’ve
stumbled across something I rather wish I
hadn’t. Who is Cafer Munur apart from being a Bexley Councillor (Conservative, East Wickham at the time) since 2014? The
one I know of has been friendly enough towards me on the rare occasions our
paths have crossed but I am not sure who this one is on X.
Are there any more? It’s not the most common of names but on the other hand
anyone can open an X account with any random string of characters. Maliciously or otherwise.
The single follower follows @BonkersBexley too but maybe he jumped to the obvious conclusion and it is wrong.
But it is not the follower who is interesting, it’s the 16 accounts that are followed. I
am not sure I can bring myself to list them all here but it ranges from OnlyFans -
which Wikipedia tells me did not exist before 2016 - and Nick Griffin of the
British National Party through @BarelyLegalFootJobs and @HungShemales to - well
you get the idea. Look for yourself.
Are there any more Bexley links? Well none that couldn’t be explained away by people making wrong assumptions.
Maybe someone set the account up, drifted away from it and then forgot the
password so that an unwanted account is forever suspended in cyberspace.
Anything is possible.
21 June (Part 2) - Luke is no longer singing from the same Hymn Sheet
People
banned
from local Facebook Groups for having the wrong political opinions or voicing
their suspicions about biased manipulation of the news do not all take it lying down.
For this report I must rely on two informants, one of whom, several days ago, sent the list of
Bexley and Sidcup Moderators (it was not featured here at the time but note final entry) and more
recently one who was able to contact Luke Green (Musical Director at Christ Church, Bexleyheath)
via his church’s website and let him know what appeared to be going on on Facebook.
It is said that Luke promptly disappeared from the Admins list. Maybe someone
not yet banned will provide the evidence? (There may be some confusion between
the Sidcup and Bexleyheath Groups.)
There is no suggestion that Luke Green was in league with the Labour lot.
The reverse is more likely.
21 June (Part 1) - Safe route cut
I’m
pretty sure this has been
featured here before but another report of outdated
signs landed in the Inbox. This one is on Harrow Manorway opposite Sainsbury’s
and has been redundant since Crossrail construction got well underway.
It used to offer a safe route to the station but was blocked by Bexley Council
while Felixstowe Road was
reconfigured in 2019 and never reopened
when the job was completed.
If you follow the sign as I did yesterday the path comes to an end under the flyover but all
is not lost. Someone has removed a section of the fence around the Felixstowe
Road car park. It probably doesn’t offer much of a shortcut to the station
compared with crossing Harrow Manorway but it does mean that following the sign
is not a complete waste of time.
A friend gently took the mickey
out of me for monitoring a redundant road sign (Photo 1 taken today) for the
past 18 years and never remarking on the far more glaring error only a few feet away (Photo 2).
I confess to never having noticed that the signpost is as stupid as the average Councillor and as misleading as a Bexley FOI response.
The aforesaid friend refers to a sign which directs traffic from Abbey Road (B213) along Wilton Road to Abbey Wood station and the car park. Fine, except that there is
no access to any car park via Wilton Road. Not even to the eponymously named car park from Gayton Road.
My library of photos say the access point was dug up in November 2018 and never reopened (Photo 3) to vehicular traffic
when the Gayton Road reconfiguration was completed seven months later.
The No Left Turn sign (Photo 4) faces the wall so neither especially good nor really bad. Just typical Bexley.
Always remember that Bexley Council does not neglect its northern outposts.
19 June (Part 3) - Uninvited guests
HK17
CHG didn’t show up this morning but he/she has had three days of penalty
free illegal parking and maybe thinks his/her arm has been chanced more than
enough.
Having been in hospital for four days and recovering for another seven I thought
I was ready to risk a trip to the shops. Not nearby Sainsbury’s because their
prices have become ridiculous, they think we don’t notice 3% price increases
every month or two, but Eynsham Drive Lidl in my condition makes a car trip advisable.
But it wasn’t to be. I found a large Toyota on my drive. No idea who it is and
it is happening too often. The grey van was there a few weeks ago and
another last Monday.
It will only get worse
when the CPZ is installed.
I looked into getting a bollard earlier this year but the two companies I
approached, and even tried to place an order, turned out to be cowboys.
The plan would not be to have a bollard raised all the time as that may be inconvenient
to myself, but to pull it up in front of unwanted vehicles. Then go away for a few days.
19 June (Part 2) - Facebook Frauds?
This morning’s Bexley and Sidcup Facebook post was accidentally deleted. Entirely my fault, no sinister interference from outside. This recreation
cannot be identical to the original.
I
am banned from the Bexleyheath and Sidcup Group
for exposing the political
manipulation of its content. Not as big a sin as favouring infanticide but all
disreputable Labourites have to start somewhere. Without access to their shady
Group I am wholly reliant on ‘spies within’. Readers who have not yet been
rumbled and banned; and I cannot use everything sent to me for fear of identifying them.
However I think I can get away with saying that the Moderator going by the name
of Lou Filey has, temporarily at least, been replaced by Ben Hopton, who may
very well be a work of fiction. Well it would be complementary to some of their comments.
(Evidence of Moderation was supplied.)
One of the FB spies would appear to be pretty hot stuff at detective work
and found that the banner image on Ben’s page can be traced back to a
holiday brochure published in 2017.
Fancy that!
A Labour activist who indulges in petty deception.
Not content with borrowing an eight year old pretty picture he shows himself in
skiing gear. But is it him?
Further investigation - isn’t AI wonderful? - reveals that it might not be. See below.
Some of the supplied screenshots suggest that both the Welling and Crayford
Groups have been similarly infiltrated. I await more evidence but meanwhile it
may be wise to treat all the local News Groups with a great deal of suspicion -
although to be fair I have not had any misgivings about my local SE2 Group since
the Moderator was changed a very long time ago.
I first became aware that Labour politicians could not be trusted in the 1950s
but more recently went through a period (of around ten years) when I discovered that
there were exceptions. Unfortunately the Starmer era has demonstrated all too
well that lying is a way of life for modern Labour with a huge dollop of treachery
and incompetence mixed in. How can any of them condone what goes on in their name?
Incidentally, I did a little research on how one would abort a full term foetus.
I had imagined that it would be pushed into the world in the normal way while
thinking that such a procedure offered no advantage an uneducated male (†) could see over a normal delivery. I wish I
had kept my nose out of it. How does a lethal injection and dissection within
the womb sound; followed by pulling the bloodied bits out limb by limb?
One local MP thinks
that is a good thing.
† When my children were born I was not even allowed to
be in the hospital until after the event.
19 June (Part 1) - Scrap metal
A
reader sent me this photo and asked when was there a bus lane on
Harrow Manorway? The answer is from the year 2000 until 1st March 2017 when
the Crossrail contractors moved in. Since then
I have passed the redundant sign hundreds of times and stopped noticing it.
Oddly enough the bus lane was something I queried with Bexley Council
when it was installed. What was the justification for a 150 metre long bus lane
on a road which sees no traffic congestion (those were the days!) and could not
possibly improve bus times?
The answer was that it was not installed in order to benefit buses but as a ruse
to double the parking fines for motorists who waited for train passengers above
the old railway station. (Bus lane fines were double those of yellow line offences.)
Once again Bexley Council was breaking the law and doing its best to cheat
residents. Nothing much changes.
The sign has been redundant since the flyover was reconfigured for Crossrail but it is not the
oldest redundant sign; locally at least, that prize goes to the New Road Layout
sign underneath the flyover on Abbey Road. That has
been there since 2007
and still is.
Maybe Bexley’s rotten Council could offer a scrap merchant a licence to go around and collect them all?
18 June (Part 6) - Jess Phillips. Minister for Women and Girls
I have been informed that aborting full term children is justified because it will reduce the number of prosecutions for illegal abortions.
In that case decriminalise Class A drugs. That should slash the number of
criminals in circulation too. Better still get rid of the Conservative’s speech
laws, or at least stop abusing them for political purposes.
The Daily Telegraph tells me that six women were prosecuted under the old
abortion laws in the past three years and those who panicked with
justification were acquitted. If there were any reasonable excuses for killing
viable children there would be Conservative support but there was little. Four
of the eight Tory votes recorded were MPs playing silly buggers. Voting both for
and against. The sort of idiocy one might expect from the modern Conservative party.
The
Government front bench is dominated by women, every one of them a dishonest failure.
Reeves lied that she was a BofE economist and plagiarised a book. Yvette Cooper claims to have always
been in favour of an enquiry into the rape gangs in which the Labour party is
complicit. Ministers claim that concern for the fate of abused girls is “dog whistle politics”.
And now they would have you believe that they are in favour of a Public Enquiry.
One from which Civil Servants, Councils, Police Officers and politicians are to be exempted.
This lot as bent as a corkscrew? No, worse than that; foul mouthed fish wives but without the equivalent level of intellect.
Back in 2021 I did a feature on Jess Phillips who has since become the Minister for Safeguarding and
Violence Against Women and Girls. It is repeated below but it may be difficult to read on a small screen.
For that reason the pearls of wisdom she posted to Twitter, as it was then,
are summarised here. Starting with mild criticism, but almost certainly untrue,
of actor Lawrence Fox; “he is crap”. A single Piss Off, bollocks (four times), shit (four
times), fuck and variants thereof twelve times, a prick, a pussy, a twat and a
couple of tits. Arse, bitch and bellend barely count, all in 26 short posts.
With such delightful femininity on show you can almost forgive Kier Starmer for not being sure what a woman is.
And now the bellend Jess makes laws that the rest of us are supposed to respect. I don’t.
From 6th May 2021…
I
woke up after a restless night with mind still not settled on the preferred candidates for today’s elections.
Then top of the Tweet pile was this poisonous bilge from Labour MP Jess Philips. Mind instantly made up.
My politically active friend from yesterday was right. Anyone who votes Labour
today will be supporting twisted minds like that of failed Labour leadership contender Jess Phillips.
Thanks to too many people like her the party deserves to die.
Have some more of Jess’s gems…
Jess Phillips. Tolerated as an MP. Labour, attracting all the nasty people.
18 June (Part 5) - HK17 CHG. No MOT
Reader
Kaz, no I’ve not a clue, {s)he’ְs a new one on me, emailed to suggest I do an MOT check on
the
PCN gambler who at the time of writing (13:30) is still leading a charmed life.
As you can see his MOT expired just long enough ago to conceive a child and murder it.
The gov.uk website says it should be reported to the police. Ha! When did you
last see a police officer get off his arse for anything less than hurty words?
He’s
back. By 08:45 we have the PCN gambler back on station. If he can get away
with it today he will have saved the price of a discounted PCN in local car park fees.
He may be an inconsiderate wotnot but maybe he knows that Bexley Council is totally useless.
Most people do.
18 June (Part 3) - BexleyCo indexed
Despite being legally threatened more times than I can count by one of
their local candidates I am on reasonably good terms with Reform UK. I have met
a couple of their people and even been invited to one of their meetings.
This week they asked me what I knew about BexleyCo, Bexley Council’s
unprofitable money pit. I imagine that Reform UK will be putting it on their
DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) list for examination. I hope so, there are
BexleyCo blogs which refer to £150 million loan facilities and losses. Never a profit.
I thought the best way of helping them through 7,576 blog entries was to provide
an Index. A bit risky perhaps because producing an Index of dubious activity was
part of the evidence sent to the police and Court by Reform’s deranged
candidate. For the record there are 32 little Indices hidden away on Bonkers
most of which do not appear on any menu. If you do not know the URL they are in effect invisible.
However one must accept that one thoroughly bad egg does not a party make and
treat the remainder of the leadership with respect.
The BexleyCo Index is now ready for
perusal. Nearly 100 entries so not for the casual observer. Get stuck in there
Mr. Yusuf. Bexley used to have almost the lowest taxes in London; now there
are few higher. Someone is screwing us big time.
Our regular dropped kerb and footpath blocker did not leave until about 9 o'clock
last night and did not get a PCN. Everyone else who parks there gets a ticket
which leads one to suspect it is
a Bexley Council inside job.
Another FOI may be called for.
18 June (Part 1) - Wickedness beyond comprehension
Do
you remember those Halcyon days when our Labour MPs only wanted to freeze your
Granny to death? 4,000 of them according to their own estimate. Could things
become even more appalling? Well yes as
the Starmergeddon list makes clear.
Wickedness, incompetence, disloyalty to the country and the most amazing stupidity have always been the
hallmark of Labour Governments but this one takes things to a whole new level.
Our Prime Minister tells us that people who would prefer that our daughters were
not raped with bottles and arrested as prostitutes are right wing terrorists
(his most recent proposal for non-conformists) and
his MPs think their abuse is a price well worth paying to appease their voter base.
Daniel Francis, MP for Bexleyheath and Crayford is part of the majority that was
not only content to kill your Granny, he is now absolutely OK with killing your
Grandchildren too. He must be the most despicable man in Bexley. A man who never
tired of telling us when he was a Councillor that he had a daughter disabled at
the moment of her birth. Fortunately for her the new law was not in place then or there
may have been an alternative option.
How does this inhumane monster live with himself?
Did I ever bore you with the story of how I came to pay for an abortion? It was
in the 1970s soon after the Sex Discrimination Act came into force and I was
manager of a middle sized telephone exchange employing about 250 people. Under
the new rules the sexes were mixed; before the Act it was females by day and
males at night. I was no longer able to keep 16 year old girls away from 40 year
old men in the middle of the night.
One morning a young woman rushed past me in floods of tears and I asked her what
was wrong. It transpired that the Personnel Manager, one Brian Goulden, had
arranged an abortion for her after it was discovered that a 40 odd year old
Supervisor had impregnated her in his office. Brian did not think to inform me
that I had an unforeseen night time problem.
To get to the point, Brian had sent the 16 year old to an abortion clinic with
£160 of Post Office money but the price had gone up and she was rejected. I gave
her £20 of my own money so that she got the job done and I never saw either her
or my money again.
Under Post Office rules I was not allowed to sack the father who was a
Pakistani and older than me. I didn’t think to ask his religion. It would not happen now. Under
Daniel Francis’s baby killing rules, Brian Goulden would have a whole nine months to remake his arrangements.
If you hate the unconscionable evil bastard who is Daniel Francis you will be in good company.
17 June - Bexley’s useless Council allowed HK17 CHG to get away with it yesterday, so now he is a regular
It was all too predictable. Block someone’s drive all day with
Bexley Council’s implied permission and it’s carte blanche to do it every day.
Yesterday’s inaction resulted in an FOI asking why no
action. Neglect is costly and
Bexley Council needs to learn that lesson.
I have all the reference numbers of previous reports. I think I will do another
FOI asking what became of every single one of them.
Both photographs taken at 10:16 this morning.
16 June (Part 2) - I was wrong. Maybe Bexley is the most useless Council in London
With no response via the webform
(twice) I thought I would call the advertised parking services phone number
020 3045 3000 but after innumerable button presses it said that they only accepted webform requests.
The phone number is a sham and a lie condoned by Cabinet Member Richard Diment.
I was pretty annoyed by it and although it was not my intention to call them the
website thrust the Press Office number 020 3045 4850 in front of me but that was
another waste of time because their mail box was full. Gill Amas’s job will be a
nice six figure saving for Reform UK if/when they are elected next year.
The robot on the general number 020 8303 7777 connected me somewhere, I really don’t know where and that ultimately led nowhere too.
I am not Reform UK’s biggest fan - why would I be knowing what I do about a local Chairman, but last Saturday morning I heard Nigel Farage
cleverly say all the right things on Talk Radio and then just minutes later read Kemi Badenoch in the Daily Telegraph being an
absolute idiot - just as I was beginning to make allowances for her.
Kicking the Conservatives out of their self-serving gravy train in Bexley cannot come soon enough.
The failure of Bexley Parking Services to respond will now result in a costly FOI to ask why not.
16 June (Part 1) - Frightening to think Bexley is probably not the most useless Council in London
The
last time I reported illegal parking in my road was on St. Valentine’s Day and it
was another waste of time so I didn’t bother any more; until today that is.
HK17 CHG arrived around eight oְ’clock and I reported it for dropped kerb blocking before nine. He/she is
pretty much blocking a neighbour’s drive and he may not notice until he tries to get to work later today. (Shift work.)
At nearly two o’clock and after a second report and the CEO having completed his
11 a.m. to 1 p.m. local CPZ round, there is still no PCN. Maybe the car belongs to a Council employee because
they consider themselves to be exempt from all rules.
Now, in all probability, we have yet another Liz line commuter who thinks he can
park wherever he likes in future.
Quite recently a Councillor said to me - in writing - that Bexley has been
scraping the barrel for competent Cabinet Members. I didn’t think he had Richard
Diment in mind, but now I am not so sure.
Photo 3 is another example of today's silly parking. On my drive
an uninvited van with yet another vehicle blocking the exit. Good job my current
incapacity means I am going nowhere - except perhaps a bit mad.
15 June (Part 2) - Sadiq Khan is a cheating bastard
Well
he is Labour; it goes with the territory and we shouldn’t expect anything better.
I pay all his punitive motoring taxes on Auto-pay and
it works well enough, certainly better than the system at Dartford which can
involve paying up front and then they confiscate your money if you don’t use the crossing often enough.
TfL simply tot up your usage and debit your bank account; easy except this time I have been short changed.
My car is eligible for the £10 a year concession on the Congestion Zone. Or at
least it was, the concession ends on 24th December. Khan’s Christmas present for
EV owners. My renewal was due on 11th June
and Khan has taken the full amount for what will be barely six months. No pro-rata
reduction. Hard luck if your renewal is due on 23rd December; you will get one day’s concession and not a year.
I sometimes play the fantasy game of choosing which individual one would
eliminate if some deity or other granted the power. There are some pretty
attractive targets out there but for me Khan always wins.
15 June (Part 1) - Deceiving Sidcup
I am in no position to keep up with misrepresentation by
the Administrators of the Bexley and Sidcup Facebook Group having been banned from it after exposing them
as Labour activists masquerading as public spirited citizens, but
while I
was away further evidence of their bias landed in the Inbox.
Here is a very small selection of some images sent. Readers appear to be unhappy
with the politics there but Lou thinks he/she is the arbiter of free speech. Anti
every party apart from his/her own. (You will get
a ban if you argue. Or maybe a solicitor’s letter, like I did.)
It is said that Labour’s lies over WASPI Women is another banned subject.
Labour activists acting in ways that only they appreciated is nothing new. It has been
going on for years.
14 June - In praise of NHS Services. Shame about London Ambulance Service. Is it always so bad?
With any luck I am done with hospitals for the foreseeable
future and the excuses for neglecting Bonkers largely disappears - except that
there is not much of the usual Council fare going on at present. Just the usual
unending Bexley Council inflicted road blockages and occasional political idiocy. There may be even
more waffle here than usual!
I must place on record that the much maligned NHS have done a brilliant job for
me over the past six months or so; firstly at Queen Elizabeth, Woolwich, then at St. Thomas
and finally a referral to specialists in Hertfordshire and a private
hospital nearby. Nine scans in eight months is not bad going! Five within 24
hours of each other! There was no viable alternative and strictly speaking I was a
bit over the usual age limit but Dr. V. from Guy’s (and Q.E.H. on Mondays) made the case
for me for which I will always be grateful.
It was either Hertfordshire or Liverpool - no one else in England offers suitable
treatment - and Hertfordshire can only tackle three or at most four patients a
week - so I felt rather privileged to be accepted there.
I saw how the NHS relies on overseas staff. Algerian, Romanian, Polish, Ivory
Coast, Kenyan, Pakistani and Italian were all in evidence and there were more I
didn’t get to speak to. Every last one of them was brilliant - well an English nurse
over-ruled the Pole and thereby put me through four hours of pain because rules
are rules - but we won’t go into that.
Now I am in recovery mode feeling more than a little dazed and confined to
barracks for several weeks to come. No more than three I hope.
The only let down was London Ambulance Service which insisted that a DA17
address meant I was the responsibility of Kent Ambulance. When that nonsense
fell flat they said (according to the people in Hertfordshire) that LAS only
collected people who had been delivered by ambulance. As if someone like me who
got himself into hospital by train was by definition fit enough to come back the same way after treatment.
In the end I came back via Dartford bridge in a minibus which will be lucky not
to get a speeding ticket. (And only then because LAS had delivered a Lewisham
patient to Hertfordshire and she qualified for the return trip and a diversion
to Belvedere was just about acceptable.)
For the record, my daughter, who is employed for her ability to dig out rules
and regulations, sent me the following which may be useful to someone somewhere.
Meanwhile, watch out for more mindless waffling as I watch disturbing news
unfold.
Options to resolve discharge problems…
1. Appeal to the hospital discharge coordinator
• Every hospital, has a Discharge Liaison / Patient Transport Manager.
• They can override transport blocks by arranging:
o Non-Emergency Patient Transport Service (NEPTS) with an appropriate
provider;
o Or in some cases, London Ambulance Service can be booked under a
borderline address exception with senior authorisation.
2. Escalate inside the hospital
• The hospital is responsible for ensuring safe discharge. It is not
acceptable to insist on ambulance-only discharge and then fail to provide it.
• If the transport team cannot resolve the issue, the patient or family
should contact Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) to escalate formally.
3. Escalate to London Ambulance Service
• LAS has an out-of-area discharge policy for cases where patients treated
in London live just outside Greater London.
• The hospital transport coordinator can submit a formal exception request to LAS.
• LAS PALS can also be contacted directly:
Tel: 020 3069 0240
https://www.londonambulance.nhs.uk/contact-us/patient-advice-and-liaison-service-pals/
4. Engage the relevant county NEPTS provider
• If the address technically falls under a neighbouring county (e.g. Kent),
that county’s NEPTS provider may be responsible — though there are sometimes
disputes about “repatriation from London”.
• In this case:
o East of England Ambulance Service NEPTS (my hospital’s area ): Tel: 0345 605 1208
https://www.eastamb.nhs.uk
o G4S NEPTS (for Kent & Medway patients): Tel: 0800 096 0211
https://www.kmpt.nhs.uk/get-involved/patient-transport/
• The hospital transport team should liaise with the relevant provider and coordinate the booking.
5. Request alternative funded transport
• If none of the above options succeed, the hospital still has a legal duty of safe discharge.
• The hospital can fund a private ambulance or an appropriately adapted taxi
in exceptional cases — this is common when NHS boundary issues block standard options.
This is not the first time I have found London Ambulance Service to be extraordinarily poor.
In 2010 they
made me crawl on all fours through fifty feet of snow because
they refused to stretcher me to the ambulance and after complaint insisted
my drive is only six feet long so it didn’t really matter. How can people
tell such easily disproved lies and expect to get away with it? (But they
did.) They can’t
all be part of Starmer’s Government.
10 June - Avoid First Direct bank and be very careful with The Metro ATM
There
are no Council meetings until 25th June and then a ridiculous six in a fortnight
to report. On top of that there are far too many medical appointments coming up so the
chances of anything noteworthy appearing here for the next several days are minimal.
Noteworthy did I say?
On Friday 30th May the cash dispenser I like to use in The Mall (Bexleyheath) was out of
order. It still was a week later but that is not very relevant here. I found
another ATM at Metro Bank which I had not used before.
After the usual button presses it said to take my money but standing close to a black machine without any
lighting I could not see it. The keypad etc. is just below waist level as is
normal but as I discovered, the money dispenser is two inches above knee level -
I checked yesterday. Anyone with a beer belly or pregnant will have no chance of seeing it.
It was only as the machine whirred that I saw my money disappear.
Reassured that the machine was working I made a second withdrawal successfully
and assumed with all of today’s high tech the money would be credited to my account more or less straight away.
No such luck, it still hasn’t been.
I rang First Direct a week ago and was told you don’t get your money back unless
you ask. So I asked. They said they would send me a letter about a claim within five days - I
am still waiting - and they would then spend 28 days thinking about whether I
should get my money back or not. They specifically warned me that I might never see it again.
Now I am faced with finding a new current account provider. One that doesn’t
assume that a customer of long standing who keeps a stupidly high balance in a current account is not a liar.
I dropped into Nationwide yesterday. Looks promising.
8 June - Labour hates free speech
From a resident who has kept a low profile on the Labour run Bexley and Sidcup News
Facebook Group and therefore not yet been banned comes news that
Harry Varney’s pro-Reform comments have been removed. I
assume that is correct, I cannot check myself because I was banned for being
critical of the Administrators. It is believed that Harry Varney has been banned
too. Harry had said with a one word comment that he was pleased with Reform UK’s
policy of abolishing 20 m.p.h. limits on ordinary roads.
Lou Filey the Admin. remonstrated with Harry for “Literally saying that Reform
want more dead children”. Obviously Lou Filey has no idea what the word
literally means. Or maybe he or she is just one of the many Labour loons trained in distributing false propaganda.
If you Google the words ‘Lou Filey Facebook’ you will discover an association with several of the local groups. Members should be wary. Very little in Labour politics is open, transparent
and above board.
Their
other Administrator,
the one who compared me to a Fascist Brown Shirt,
is also arguing against Reform UK. The Bexley and Sidcup News Facebook Group masquerades as a residents’ news group, or at least it did when I joined it.
But all the while it is affiliated to the Labour Party. It is not
impossible that Labour people have been overcome with honesty since I joined;
but I doubt it. Labour and honesty are not words that live happily together.
Over in Blackfen there is a new X Account (@B<ories) run by Councillors who
make no secret of their loyalties. All Uni-Party politicians can be rogues but
only Labour are consistently dishonest. It is not a surprise that the youth of today chants
Starmer is a Wanker in night clubs and football fans have
their own variant.
Surely it is anyone who continues to be bamboozled by Labour who needs to give his head a wobble?
Today’s Telegraph headline.
7 June (Part 2) - Gridlock in Bexley again. It really is time to retaliate through the ballot box
The fence repair has to be on hold for a few weeks because of a whole diary full of
forthcoming appointments though I do have an idea how I can tackle it with some accumulated scrap wood. The
affected section is not visible from the house or the public road and footpath
so appearance is not the priority. (Electrification may be!)
I might have made a start on it this afternoon but I had been volunteered to
install a second Ring Doorbell for a friend in Footscray. How do I keep letting myself
in for these jobs? Bearing in mind how Bexley has been gridlocked by
uncoordinated road digging for weeks on end and yesterday Facebook complainers
were speaking of two hour crawls across the town centre; my twelve to fifteen
minute bus journey took nearer 40; I considered myself lucky to get to Bexley
Village in just under half an hour.
But there my luck run out. Bexley Village was closed.
No warning of course; that would be asking too much of our useless Council. Who was the idiot who
cancelled the bypass thirty years ago? (See image.)
There are no other bridges over the Cray so it was a case of backtracking all
the way to Sidcup. The delay was not excessive but on the return journey the
slow moving Southbound queue extended from Knoll Road in Sidcup to half way
along Penhill Road in Blackfen. The SL3 was most definitely not an Express bus service.
Roads have always been Bexley’s downfall; it was daft as a brush planning which was
responsible for creating Bonkers in 2009. I will resist telling the Transport
Research Laboratory Report story again. Suffice to say Bexley Council lied and then promoted the plonker
responsible to be Head of Highways. We should not really expect any better road and utility repair coordination than we get.
Beneath the seething hatred for politicians I am increasingly feeling that the only way forward is to get rid of every
existing Councillor next May. Not just a few as with UKIP in 2014 because just a
few hold no power. The majority strangles the small parties and Independents at every opportunity, and the
senior officers, mindful of their gravy train, will hinder and maybe ridicule
them as some of my UKIP friends will remember. A Deputy Director made and
distributed a video
with the express purpose of taking the pee out of UKIP.
On current polling form there is a chance that Bexley can have something like a clean
sweep of fresh ideas next year. The existing lot really do have to go. Every last one of them. Half a dozen exceptions maybe.
7 June (Part 1) - I may be on the Prevent list already (†)
There
was supposed to be another exposé of the local Labour activists' dishonest
manipulation of their Facebook groups which masquerade as innocent local news
providers this morning but maybe I have annoyed them enough already.
I woke up to find the front garden vandalised. I heard some banging
and shouting in the early hours but it sounded a long way away so I did not go to the window.
I very much suspect it is targeted; if someone wanted to take a short cut to Fendyke Road then my neighbour’s fence would likely fall down if you sneezed in
front of it. And why spend time smashing up the bird feeders too? None of my neighbour’s cars or gardens were damaged.
Unfortunately the health issues and other commitments will not allow me to
attempt a proper repair for the next several weeks. Meanwhile the fence hole is filled with barbed wire.
To those who might say have you reported it to the police I would reply, don’t
be silly. There is no evidence and it is not a thought crime so they would not be interested. Actually maybe it
is. I would like to see the culprits publicly hanged drawn and quartered.
† The Government has decreed that anyone who harbours evil thoughts is a Terrorist in need of Prevent training or worse.
6 June (Part 2) - Police, Fire or Ambulance (or Coastguard in appropriate places)
Notices
have been going up across the borough reminding people to
dial 999 in an emergency. Don’t most four year olds know that? Why does Bexley Council
put up signs across the borough when they are supposedly skint and recently had
to borrow £10 million to get by?
The sign pictured here went up at the end of my road about a month ago but it
took a neighbour to nudge me into seeing how stupid it is.
The QR code (enlarge image and scan it) routes to the Safety Partnership’s website but maybe it would be more useful
if I overlaid it with one that led to Bonkers.
Everyone knows the emergency code 999 but when I managed my first telephone exchange (one of four in the City) 999
was only 27 years old and nine years newer than the actual exchange. (MANsion
House opened in 1928, the second automatic telephone exchange in London. HOLborn was first.)
Back then in the age of telephone dials (if you were not still on a manual exchange) people were still asking why not 111
which would be marginally quicker to dial than 999. There were two reasons. Signaling
(dialling) was by a loop interrupt system. One line break indicated dialling a 1
etc. but rattling the receiver on its ‘hook’ also broke the connection which
could easily generate a spurious 1 and occasionally a triple 1.
To avoid false calls from a triple rattled receiver the GPO played safe by choosing 999
which could not reasonably be generated accidentally. It was also advertised that
in the dark a 9 was easy to find. Put two fingers at the end of the dial and
drag it around from there. That could not be done with a number like 555 and 111
would, as stated, give rise to too many false calls. 999 was probably a better
choice than the American 911 which was also chosen to prevent the spurious 1 problem.
For technical reasons, in London it had to be a three digit code but in most
places the third 9 was redundant though no one let on about that because of the
inevitable confusion. Probably that doesn’t apply any more; I am far too out of touch nowadays to know.
If
these Safety notices are a waste of money it is at the lower end of the waste spectrum. Reform UK
is being asked how they might save millions in Bexley when/if they take over in 2026.
Tom Bright, Reform UK’s recent election candidate, is getting the hang of how Bexley
Council operates. There is as he no doubt suspects, total secrecy wherever possible with an eye on currying favour
with the Leader and the lucrative jobs she is able to hand out.
To my mind, secrecy is Bexley’s biggest failing and the lying whenever it suits their
agenda. Very few Councillors are truly competent as anyone who has listened to as many
Council meetings I have will know. As long as they can claim to be no worse than
other Councils who have more money to spend, everyone other than residents are happy and rests on their laurels.
I can identify with Tom’s X commentary; the Councillors are squabbling among
themselves and the more talkative ones will admit that the standard of
recent appointees has been “scraping the barrel”.
The X conversation continued with a question for Tom from a resident.
Where is he going to save the money?
Answering questions from the public completely first time around might be a good
start. Bouncing bad faith responses around the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Courts
costs plenty, as does not dealing with SEND issues correctly. Looking after
children at £16,000 a week EACH is an outrage.
And then there are the ridiculously high salaries. If/when Reform UK takes over
across a wider area there may be an opportunity to force them down across the board
so that salary inflation is not necessary to attract the requisite skills. It is
not very obvious that the present racket has achieved that.
There have been senior officers in Bexley who by playing musical chairs have
been able to earn £40,000 a year over several years from Golden Goodbyes alone. Salaries extra.
Is there corruption to be sorted out? Almost certainly.
A year ago
Bexley Council more or less admitted that their management is poor.
Extremely poor. There is plenty of scope for a new broom and a clean sweep.
6 June (Part 1) - Labour activists run Facebook locally. Don’t expect honesty and integrity
BiB readers continue to taunt
the
self-appointed dictators who run some Bexley
Facebook Groups who retaliate by banning anyone who dares to expose them for
what they are. But not all of their critics have been caught out yet, hence the screenshots on which this blog is based.
Reform UK recently announced that that were against 20 m.p.h. speed limits and
Labour people hate motorists even more than they hate the general population.
Some activists have
gone on record as preferring 10 m.p.h. limits oblivious to the
fact, as they always are, of the dire effects on the nation’s economy.
One of the dictators’ soon to be banned readers responded to Reform’s news with
the single word ‘Good’ which was twisted by the sort of twisted mind possessed
of Labour extremists that this referred to deaths. Specifically child deaths to make things more emotive.
Comprehension skills are, as usual, sadly lacking.
Labour then trotted out some dubious statistics which are provided by dubious
statisticians to sell to the gullible who see it as an excuse to fleece
motorists with hard to justify fines.
As you may remember I have access to my own advice on that subject. My son
helped set up the Euro Ncap testing facilities in this country and
finished up in charge of it taking extraordinarily high frame rate video of crashes in order to analyse the impact data. He is now contracted to every heavy
vehicle manufacturer in Europe and with contacts with those in China and Japan.
All three of the vehicle research institutes in the UK, the manufacturers of
most of the buses you see in Bexley every day, the European Union and all the UK governmental
departments that I had perhaps better not mention here.
I think he knows just a little bit more about vehicle safety issues than any
Labour activist. The last I heard about 20 m.p.h. limits is that there is no
hard evidence that they are a benefit to mankind overall. The jury is still out.
I know from him that one of the Conservative governments wanted to raise speed
limits because of the economic advantages but were beaten down by the loud
mouths in the Green movement. Now I am restricted to 50 on the M4 in order to
lower my emissions - in a fully electric car. The Conservatives were not
Conservative and have paid the price. Labour are idiots and liars as they have been
throughout my life, and Reform, while far from perfect, do at least occasionally get
things right. And as far as I know do not masquerade as fellow citizens running Facebook Groups with the intention
of spreading biased information and suppressing all opposition.
Though one can appreciate their need to do so.
The Catholics
hold an open air religious service in Lesnes Abbey each year - at least they
used to - I didn’t notice it in 2024 but I may have been away. Alternatively they
may have become exasperated with the swarm of Traffic Wardens who descended upon
them. Well they did seem to put their faith in
the
parking on the footpath god rather more than most visitors to the park.
Unsurprisingly as Allah extends his reach over London there will be a Festival
in the Park tomorrow for ’Families’ and ’Kids’. Is it still half term?
Presumably not.
Do you remember when a lying Conservative Cabinet Member said there could be
no
more Festivals and Funfairs in Danson Park because they damaged the grass?
Anyway UI Adha 2025 is free; not the Fun Fair or the Ice Cream presumably but if you own a
Prayer Mat you are welcome to take a look. The Muslims I know all make
excellent spicy food, so if you are free and curious it might be worth looking
in. It is not just for men apparently. (Why do they need to say that?)
If it doesn’t rain you may not get your backside wet.
At least it looks as though the Traffic Wardens can say at home. Parking is free.
I am otherwise engaged. I have a date in a pub - again! - with one of the new
breed of politicians who hopes to give the Tories a kick up the bum next May. I
am here to help achieve that! It is time for a change.
4 June - Factory on fire. Fiery fools
Erith burns
I called Hugh of Maggot Sandwich fame this morning to ask how he was getting on
with his Covid related problems but he was more excited by the factory fire
raging at the back of his garden. He said there are new houses dangerously close by.
Why are new houses allowed to be built where industrial danger still exists?
No doubt Hugh will have something to say about it
next Sunday on his blog.
Meanwhile a much cropped photo to give you an idea of the fire’s ferocity while
Hugh gets on with preparing more and better ones before more formal publication.
About 5 a.m. this morning.
Motoring morons (Featuring BC70 UNU)
My driving licence will have its 62nd birthday next month. My test was
passed first time (when that was not very difficult) but since then I have never
had my car come into contact with another nor offend against any law. Speeding,
parking or getting trapped inside a Yellow Box Diment.
As such I think I can deny any suggestion of being a reckless driver with no consideration
for others. Last Saturday I drove to Malmesbury and took only three
minutes longer than the Waze App said the journey should take, I don’ְt always hang about, but yesterday
it took me 70 minutes to drive the exactly ten miles to an address in Pett’s Wood.
While there I admitted to being fed up with driving because there are far
too many people driving and too high a proportion being apparently
brainless. It is only a matter of time, I feel, before one of them crashes
into me but I keep going mainly in order to raise two fingers at the bastard Khan.
“Don’t let the buggers get you down!”
No sooner had I left my friendְ’s house
I found myself in nearby Oxhawth Crescent just before school out time. I am not sure where the
school is but the narrow 1930s built road was lined with parked cars on both
sides. Yellow zig-zags included.
I drove gingerly down the middle of the carriageway; firstly because
of the barely adequate width and secondly because as ‘Crescent’ implies,
forward visibility was restricted.
I was about 250 yards through the parked cars (I was back there today and measured it with the odometer as 0·2 miles)
without meeting anyone and was just on the final straight (see Photo 1) when BC70 UNU
emerged from a drive, presumably without looking, straight into my path.
No one was doing more than a walking pace so there was no danger of collision
and I expected the driver to merely acknowledge his mistake and back into the
drive. (Me in red and him on full lock.)
But no. He kept his thumb on the horn and absolutely refused to reverse. As
a silly old you know what, it was all my fault and I should not have
attempted to pass the parents waiting for their children as that was
dangerous. As he became increasingly aggressive and overbearing I decided it
wasn’t worth risking him pulling a knife so I reversed until I found a convenient
dropped kerb that was not fully obstructed by a parked car. Fortunately at
no time during the confrontation did any other vehicle come up behind me.
How is it that such stupid and aggressive people are not behind bars? White,
early forties, should have known better.
During what passed for a conversation the moron claimed he could not reverse
back over the dropped kerb he had recently used because the drive was not his.
Apparently he had used it to effect a three point turn and didn’t want to
use the drive a second time. A three point turn down there? He must be nuttier than I had at first assumed.
3 June - Reputation trashed worldwide
I have no idea why this video is unavailable via BiB because it is showing perfectly right now on YouTube
and the code used here is the same as always.
The
In Labour’s police state where bad words, or even repeating politician’s own words (†)
can give you a stretch in jail one has to be very careful about how you might
describe our Prime Minister. I will be as polite as is possible in the
circumstances. He is a lying scumbag. A scumbag intent on ruining your quality
of life with taxes and petty restrictions on what you can discuss with some
mates in McDonald’s or wherever.
It is however a joy to behold the countless videos which portray him as the
malign dictator that he is. Videos by ‘citizen journalists’, minor celebrities
and comedians alike. (Search for Intel Lady on YouTube.) They get the occasional
adverse comment but no one puts up a proper counter-argument.
I can only imagine what ‘sensible’ Labour politicians think about the situation.
My own Councillor deserted X at the end of last year effectively isolating herself from
would-be critics.
If you can’t stand the heat etc… and my MP on X is wise enough to keep away
from politics and confines herself to commenting on house fires and fun fairs.
Not so Daniel Francis MP (Bexleyheath and Crayford) who trots out all the dictated propaganda which fools no one.
No one cares if an MP makes a fool of himself, that has always happened but what
is new is an MP, that is Keir Starmer, making a fool of the entire country. The
video featured here is from the USA where people are horrified by what is
happening in Britain under Labour, ruthlessly exploiting bad Tory laws. If you listen to all 20
minutes of it YouTube will kindly present you with more in the same vein.
We are ridiculed for putting up with the
tyranny, tinged with sympathy for the
oppression which reminds me of East Germany in the 1960ְs.
Someone who must be about the same age as me sent his verdict on 80 years of British Prime Ministers.
• Clement
Attlee (1945–51) My father said that when he returned from the war his
wages were cut by the then Labour government. He said he would never vote for them again.
• Winston Churchill (1951–55; 2nd time) The greatest?
• Anthony Eden (1955–57) Suez
• Harold Macmillan (1957–63) ‘Youְ’ve never had it so good’
• Alec Douglas-Home (1963–64) Weak
• Harold Wilson (1964–70; 1st time) Shifty. ‘The pound in your pocket’
• Edward Heath (1970–74) Obsessed with Europe
• Harold Wilson (1974–76; 2nd time)
• James Callaghan (1976–79) The winter of discontent. ‘Crisis? What crisis’
• Margaret Thatcher (1979–90) Formidable
• John Major (1990–97) Devious behind that smile
• Tony Blair (1997–2007) So many of todays problems originate from his tenure
• Gordon Brown (2007–10) I’m going to sell the country’s gold next Monday
• David Cameron (2010–16) Wet
• Theresa May
(2016–19) Terrible Home Secretary who managed to maintain that standard in
the top job
• Boris Johnson
(2019–22) A rogue
• Liz Truss
(2022) !!!!
• Rishi Sunak
(2022–24) Out of his depth
• Keir Starmer
(2024– ) The worst?
It’s pretty much in line with my own thoughts although maybe we would be in a better
position now if Liz Truss had been less hasty and given time to develop her
ideas. It is hard to conceive of anyone worse than Starmer.
Note: The links are the reader’s.
† I once quoted exactly what a Bexley Councillor said and made no comment on it
but found myself on the wrong side of the law; which is why I am very suspicious
of the sort of people recruited to prominent positions in Reform UK.
2 June (Part 2) - Council stupidity. Labour dishonesty
As mentioned, or at least alluded too in the recent past, keeping this website alive is challenging.
There are ongoing health issues and there is another date with a hospital bed coming
up, to which may be added those of a close
friend which is increasing the workload. The usual range of domestic chores are
somewhat neglected due to shortage of time - and energy - and when this short
note is completed there is some gardening to do which will consist mainly of
ruthless strimming and weed killer.
Fortunately I seem to have sorted out the various other people’s computer
problems which occupied the best part of the last two months. Faulty components and
unreasonable requirements played a part.
A number of people have asked me to mention various subjects which will be
briefly covered below. Firstly may I say that although readers are welcome to use the
anonymous Contact form please, if not using the reply address, just leave it blank and not
fill it with fictitious gibberish. If the address field is filled in the
facility attempts to send an acknowledgement and if it is invalid it
bounces around inside the email server for five days until it gives up.
One recent correspondent has twice impersonated the Crayford Reform UK candidate
with a made up email address; not in a malicious or critical way, so I have no
idea what the Reform connection is and I cannot reply and ask.
@tonyofsidcup
Our old friend Tony is still arguing with Bexley’s parking people and all we are
getting from it is that the senior management therein is either as thick as two
short planks or deliberately obtuse. It may of course be both.
Westminster Council’s decision was
upheld in
Court. Bexley is not interested.
I long ago reconciled myself to the fact that Councils in general and Bexley in
particular are riddled with stupidity from top to bottom and until next May at
least, nothing can be done about it. Fortunately Tony has not reached that stage yet
which helps to keep Bonkers alive. Just!
I am still hopeful that Bexley will not allow stupidity to get the better of them
when they introduce a CPZ to my own road.
Unless they mark out the parking bays it will continue to be obstructed daily.
The van in Photo 2 parked on a corner not only made it difficult to negotiate
but it blocked the view to oncoming traffic. It was there for five days over the bank holiday.
Even Bexley Council cannot be so stupid as to ignore the opportunity to sort out
the problem can they? Unfortunately we know that they can be.
Pubs in danger
In all my 38 years in Bexley I have
only been inside ten of its pubs. Two are now demolished, one was only once and never again thank you very much, three were Wetherspoons
and three were for political meetings in the back room. Which is why I do not
even know where
The Great Harry is.
(It was in Belvedere apparently.)
I don’t like beer enough to spend more than £4 a pint on it so my choice these
days is limited. I only drink half a pint at my quiz pub since Rachel Reeves caused the price to go up from £3·50.
Anyway, apparently The Great Harry is closed and likely to be turned into 32
ubiquitous flats (23/00433/FULM) in order to continue the uglification of
London. I am asked if the Sidcup based developer, Kallarview is reputable.
I think the fear is that
Mr. Singh
is up to his tricks again. The 2023 application form shows no sign that there is a connection.
Department Of Government Efficiency
From Reform UK, but not
directly to me from official
sources as far as I can tell, comes this X news that they will be looking carefully at
Bexley staff posts which attract exorbitant salaries for doing nothing
essential, like a Director for Transformation. Looking at the bright side
for a moment; the very highest salaries are no higher than they were ten years
ago and arguably incompetence is now at a lower level than it was back then.
From 2009 to 2015 I didn’t have to struggle to find an example of dishonesty on a daily basis.
They are much better at concealing it now.
I said beware of local Facebook Groups
because they are run by the Labour party and one should not expect honesty from them.
A BiB reader put my scepticism to the test and posted a pro-Reform comment.
Like me, and others, he got
an instant ban too. He complained to the Moderator and he was unceremoniously
blocked. Labour are despicable. It is true isn’t it? Britain really does need to
be reformed.
2 June (Part 1) - Fancy a bungalow? Cheap
Another two social houses being auctioned in Bexley.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/162660590#/?channel=RES_BUY
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/162660569#/?channel=RES_BUY
Updated list with links.
30 Bourne Mead, Bexley
2 Eynsford Crescent, Bexley
15 Marden Crescent, Bexley
34 Pengarth Road, Bexley
53 Pengarth Road, Bexley
Pengarth Road, Bexley (One bedroom flat)
20 Rye Close, Bexley
44 Stansted Crescent, Bexley
44 Stansted Crescent, Bexley (2nd sale attempt. Price reduced)
33 Oakhouse Road, Bexleyheath
Parkside Avenue, Bexleyheath
80 Pelham Road, Bexleyheath
Crayford Road, Crayford
Dale End, Crayford
Dale Road, Crayford
60 Heath Road, Crayford
83 Heath Road, Crayford
179 Iron Mill Lane, Crayford
187 Iron Mill Lane, Crayford
22B Iron Mill Lane, Crayford
235 Iron Mill Lane, Crayford
176 Maiden Lane, Crayford
206 Maiden Lane, Crayford
234 Maiden Lane, Crayford
4 Medway Road, Crayford
Russell Close, Crayford (Not on Street View)
20 Stour Road, Crayford
52 Jenningtree Road, Erith
22 Springhead Road, Erith
26-32 Burnham Road, Sidcup
11 Diana Close, Sidcup
204 Ellenburgh Road, Sidcup
5 Ellenburgh Road, Sidcup
63 Footscray Road, Sidcup
2-48 Heron Crescent, Sidcup
50 Mallard Walk, Sidcup
23 Maddocks Close, Sidcup
56 Maylands Drive, Sidcup (a flat)
56 Maylands Drive, Sidcup (2nd sale attempt. Price reduced)
Maylands Drive, Sidcup (Semi-detached)
17 Partridge Road, Sidcup
30 St. Andrews Road, Sidcup
29 Beal Close, Welling
19 Berwick Road, Welling
18 Burnell Avenue, Welling
39 Burnell Avenue, Welling
79 Darenth Road, Welling
47 Denton Road, Welling
17 Ridley Road, Welling
Rye Close, Welling
70 Tyrell Avenue, Welling
2 Wycliff Road, Welling
1 June - The Mayor. It has been a very good year
Bexley Council managed to
mess up
the Mayor making webcast again which will have been a
disappointment to the families of those involved who may have wished to keep
a copy as a memento, however nothing political will have been lost because
it is always an exercise in back-slapping and the occasional bad joke.
However this year all the speakers were sincere in their praise of outgoing
Mayor Sue Gower. This tribute from Labour Leader Stefano Borella is typical:
opposition Councillors are not always quite so fulsome in their praise.
This audio clip brings two of my favourite Councillors together.
Councillor Stefano Borella (Labour Slade Green) speaks in praise of Mayor Sue Gower (Conservative Bexleyheath).
I really have no idea what a man as generous and nice as Stefano is doing in a party that freezes pensioners and squeezes the disabled.
The Conservatives probably don’t deserve Sue either.
Note: The reference to Darren is of course Sue’s husband who
has not been well recently but thankfully pretty much recovered now.