15 April - The one Councillor who did put residents before party
One of James Hunt’s comment on X yesterday reminded me of how
anti-democratic Bexley Council has been under the Conservatives and how much they hate
criticism. When the Maggot Sandwich blogger Hugh Neal said in 2011…
…and his remarks were referenced on Bonkers, Council Leader Teresa O’Neill was up the cop shop like a shot to ask them to arrest me. Not Hugh. Me.
The police later admitted to me in the presence of my MP that the Council’s preferred charge was arson.
At about the same time she ordered that my blog be banished from all Council web
servers and the libraries. They still are. She also ordered all her Councillors never to speak
to me. I have an email of apology from the occasionally flirtatious Maxine Fothergill to whom I had been
chatting in the Civic Offices and who scuttled off abruptly the moment O’Neill appeared.
Or Fat Controller as Fothergill referred to her.
When blogger John Kerlen made a very rude comment about a house he knew belonged to Councillor Melvin Seymour, Seymour signed a statement to the
police claiming that Kerlen had put out a request to his followers on Twitter to
put dog faeces through his letter box. Neither dogs, faeces or
letterboxes were ever mentioned in the Tweet or anywhere else. The statement was
nothing other than the product of a vivid imagination. The police knew that and had a copy of the original Tweet, as I have, but
Councillor Seymour did not. He was not on Twitter. Someone else put him up to making the false statement.
Every critic of Bexley Council was fair game. (For the record John Kerlen
was found not guilty of Malicious Communication on Appeal to the Crown Court.)
And
what has this to do with Independent Councillor James Hunt? He quietly rebelled against the persecution of residents.
He was the first Councillor to come to my house for a friendly chat, soon after O’Neill reported me to the police
for being, as the police said, personally critical of her. When the Queen’s bust was
unveiled on the Clocktower on 9th
June 2013 James broke from the ranks of assembled Councillors to shake my hand. Here is a photo of him doing so.
Probably he got a good bollocking from the Leader. None of Bexley Council’s Leaders have ever spoken to me or
written to me except to acknowledge receipt of my complaint in 2011 about the Craske blog.
(Correction; it was the Chief Executive who acknowledged my complaint.)
James Hunt is for residents not puerile rules and party whips. A true Independent. For the record two Labour Councillors
(only one current) have visited me at home.
Bexley went a long time without much in the way of critics until Dimitri Shvorob
appeared on the scene. For asking too many questions Bexley Council declared him
vexatious. A judge overturned that decision and Dimitri set up his own political party. His leaflets
may be seen in the
archive. An extract from the latest appears below.
If you read the whole thing he expands on his complaints. One of his criticisms
is that Bexley Council “simply threw out” a 2,218 signature petition. That is not
strictly accurate as it implies that they heard the petition. It never actually
got that far. The Council called a meeting to decide whether the petition should be
accepted for debate. It wasn’t.
Democracy? Bexley Council doesn’t know what it is!
Bexley Council has been a deeply undemocratic organisation owing their continuation to
constant lying to a gullible public and attacking all critics. Not
every Councillor has been a bad ’un, there are seven sitting Conservatives I
woud be happy to vote for, but their leadership has been ruthless in their quest for power. A change in May may improve things.
Note: The word ‘metaphorically’ was added by Hugh after I was
threatened with arrest for referring to his blog. Pitchforks etc. is a quotation from Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein.