Cooper Caught Again!

DUE TO AN ONGOING LEGAL DISPUTE, TWO FACTUALLY ACCURATE DESCRIPTIONS OF DARREN COOPER HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY REMOVED.

There have been a host of complaints to SMBC about the use of Twitter by the xxxxx-xxxxxxxx xxxx [factually accurate description temporarily removed] who “leads” the Council, Darren Cooper, but these are batted away by the "Chief Executive", Jan Britton, and the Chief Legal Officer/Monitoring Officer Neeraj Sharma (and even by the joke “Standards Committee”) on the basis that the xxxxx [factually accurate description of Cooper temporarily redacted] is purely tweeting “in a personal capacity” and that this his account, er, @sandwellleader is nothing to do with the Council. This blog has repeatedly pointed out that Cooper advertises his account on his taxpayer-funded business cards, the Council itself actively promotes the stream of gibberish via its website and that Dickhead Daz has regularly used Council-owned equipment to disseminate abusive content.

Back in the day Cooper used covertly obtained film footage of a private individual, Darryl Magher, which he obtained from a Mr Andrew Hipkiss (see also in respect of a current troll account). This was used in an attempt to bully and harass Mr Magher who is a community activist. Cooper has a long history of harassment of Mr Magher and of being abusive on Twitter to him. Despite his appalling conduct, which they have ignored on many other occasions, the film footage was too much even for Twitter and they suspended Cooper's account. The curious thing is that Twitter re-instated the abusive account within a day which is a remarkably short time given how slow the Californians normally are with such matters. I suspected that Cooper had received help with his appeal to them and duly made a Freedom of Information request to SMBC. Here is the reply from one Maria Price which also included my original request:

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Maria Price <Maria_Price@sandwell.gov.uk>

Date: Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 4:56 PM

Subject: Re: FOI REQUEST - 1-703784623

To: "thesandwellskidder@gmail.com" <thesandwellskidder@gmail.com>

Dear Mr Saunders

Thank you for your freedom of information request as detailed below,

Can you please state whether:

1. ANY Sandwell Council officer/employee made any contact by any means with

Twitter - either Twitter UK or Twitter in California or the Twitter Press

Office concerning the recent suspension of Cllr Cooper's Twitter account

@sandwellleader If yes please provide full details including the section of

SMBC which made the contact and the name of the officer/employee who

authorised such contact.

2. ANY Sandwell Council officer/employee made any contact within the last

28 days by any means with Twitter - either Twitter UK or Twitter in

California or the Twitter Press Office requesting the suspension of any of

my Twitter accounts or those of others. If yes, please provide full details

including the section of SMBC which made the contact and the name of the

officer/employee who authorised such contact.

I have made reasonable enquiries and I can confirm that I have found no officers or employees have made contact with twitter as detailed in your queries above.

(Etc etc......)

Yours Sincerely

Maria Price

Is this a lie in an official FoI Reply? Cooper himself seems to have contacted Twitter via his SMBC secretary, Jane Perham. Given how thick he is, one has to be suspicious that he has apparently written a long letter (with some long words) on his own without the usual catalogue of gaffes and errors. Her name mysteriously appears on the header. But even if she is sending a later copy to Maria or someone else it is absolutely clear that Cooper has used his official SMBC titles etc and also his official SMBC e-mail address to reinstate his allegedly personal account:

There are items which I have redacted next as they are grossly defamatory to third parties who may wish to take legal action against Cllr Cooper and/or SMBC. The letter ends with Cooper again confirming his position as SMBC Leader [sic]: Note also that Cooper and Andrew Hipkiss were communicating with each other back in February!

(What an arrogant pr*ck he is by the way - see the first line - as if Twitter are going to know he was "leader" of a basket-case Labour Council in the arse-end of the Midlands - “lol”).

Regular readers of this blog will know that in the bog-gate affair Sandwell council deliberately lied to me in a Freedom of Information Request.

Clearly Jan Britton needs to investigate forthwith whether Jane Perham or any other member of staff was involved in the sending of the e-mail or not.

And as for Cooper - when are people going to finally see through this dimwit? Britton and Sharma now need to re-open all the complaints they have rejected thus far on the basis that the account was nothing to do with SMBC (and also consider their own positions in this apparent cover-up). Cooper is most definitely NOT tweeting as a private individual as the above clearly proves and this may now have serious legal repercussions for SMBC. Perhaps someone senior in the local party like Spellar should also ensure that the Cooper disaster is ended as quickly as possible.

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