My apologies for the rather thin offering of posts lately but many readers are aware that, amongst many other things, I was preparing for two days of Sandwell Council Tribunals which were held online last week. In the meantime the civil war within the Labour Group in bent Sandwell has burst forth in spectacular form with more Labour suspensions and threatened suspensions as Spellar and Co try to bring the scum back to the surface for more corruption, cronyism and incompetence. More on this very soon!
Tribunals
Over the years I have put in a number of Freedom of Information requests (FOI's) and Jan Britton's bent paid service have frequently failed to comply with the law and respond properly. The range of unlawfulness ranges from GROSS delay to deliberate lying.
There are many problems with the FOI system which a bent council like Sandwell take advantage of. The law is that only documents that are "held" by a Council at the time of the request MAY have to be disclosed. Thus Britton and Co simply ensured that there were NO records kept at all of key meetings including all the main really bent deals - The Public, The Ice Rink, Lion Farm Fields etc! What a way to run a large, supposedly democratic, local authority!
Britton and his close associates were also assiduous in trying to expunge records from the system. The late Smethwick Scumbag, Darren Cooper ,was still in the morgue when his emails were - for obvious reasons - deleted. Members of Britton's staff - including a senior Council Solicitor - lied to the Information Commissioner saying that these emails and others were irrecoverable. Thanks to me pushing six cases to a Tribunal and Britton being booted out Sandwell was forced to admit the truth but then claimed that the computer system was so crap it was difficult - and very expensive - to find the documents. (In the Hackett case below, Britton's bent team also wiped the emails of Melanie Dudley and Pardip Sharma immediately upon their departures. In the latter case Sharma was a qualified solicitor and there are strict regulatory provisions of the Solicitors Regulatory Authority which have certainly been breached by this.)
Even where a council has documents it can plead all sorts of legal "defences" against disclosure. The upshot of all this is that using FOI's is a very poor weapon in exposing fraud and discovering truth.
Hackett - Tribunal
Way back in 2016 The Sandwell Slasher, Cllr Simon Hackett, received some highly confidential information about a child. He immediately, and in breach of confidence, blabbed this to Darren Cooper. Shortly afterwards Cooper held a "political meeting" (though a member of Britton's staff, Jane Perham, was paid by us taxpayers to attend - and there is no explanation given for this and she has not faced any disciplinary action.) The highly confidential information about the minor was then discussed again at this meeting - where Hackett was present - and thus disseminated to even more people who should not have been told. Not satisfied with this the pusillanimous Hackett was told to inform the Chief Whip - then the odious Derek Rowley - and duly did so. It seems that even this dimwit may have realised he had overstepped the mark since he sent this pathetic arse-covering email to Rowley:
Wednesday 17th February, 2016 10.35
Morning Derek,
This is to confirm that last Wednesday xxxxx papers were presented to me xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
I immediately saw that one of the papers I was asked to sign was in relation to xxxxxxx. I therefore spoke to the Leader who said I need to notify the Chief Whip. I therefore rang you last Wednesday.
A standards complaint was made to the corrupt Council about this gross and obvious breach of confidence and data breach. Four other allegations were added and I have written extensively about them elsewhere - not least one about Hackett pissing in a bus shelter.
Melanie Dudley was both Assistant Chief Executive and Acting Monitoring Officer at the time and as a Labour Party crony was fully expected to exonerate The Slasher. She duly did in respect of most of the charges (she did find that Hackett had urinated in a public place but that he was not acting in his capacity as a councillor at the time - he was just pissed out of his head.) But she found he did breach confidence rules about a child - how could she find otherwise? She says she discussed local resolution of the matter with Simple Simon and suggested the "punishment" would be to attend a half-day course on these issues. Meanwhile she would check whether the breach of conficence was also a data breach (again, how could it be otherwise?) She alleges that the snivelling sh*t Hackett agreed to this which should have been an end to the matter.
But Watson, Eling and Co were outraged and Melanie was told to amend the report and exonerate Hackett. She told The Skwawkbox website of Eling threatening her, "Do you want to fall out with me?" But she bravely stuck to her guns and was duly forced out. For the 6 months she had worked that year the Council's accounts show she received nearly half a million pounds of our money. The moment she was out the door and 8 months after the event Eling and Rowley's ever-present companion, Cllr Syeda Khatun, suddenly gave statements contradicting the original evidence and Jane Perham (who should not have been there in the first place and now working for, er, Eling) changed hers. And lo, Simon Hacket was suddenly "innocent".
Since January, 2017 I have been trying to obtain (a) the original report and statements; (b) the later statements of Eling, Khatun and Perham and (c) the amended report "exonerating" The Slasher. But Britton resisted this all the way.
Eling repaid Jane Perham by sh*tting on her and her cabinet secretarial colleagues in the suspension fiasco (posts passim and see legal notice below) but her misplaced loyalty (at best) meant that even then she didn't dub the tyrant in.
But Milko (Eling) and The Parkie (Britton) were by now on thin ice "lol". Soon these turds were flushed away. The new regime looked at the original investigation again and found cause for considerable concern. Thus the Hackett investigation was re-opened last November and, incredibly, is still going on (even noting the Covid crisis this is risible.)
In the meantime, the Information Commissioner agreed (natch) with the irate parent that Hackett's conduct was a data breach. The parent also brought a civil action and SMBC have accepted liability for the data breach (damages remain to be assessed.) But Britton's bent paid service argued that these findings were irrelevant because Hackett had been exonerated by the original inquiry! Of course, this argument became rather hard to maintain when SMBC itself called that whole investigation into question.
Last Tuesday, The Chief Executive, TWO SMBC solicitors and an expensive London Barrister spent the day telling the Tribunal that, because of the NEW investigation still dragging on, it would be unfair to give disclosure as this would impinge on the data protection rights of HACKETT himself!!!! You couldn't make it up. (Of course, Mr Pissy-Pants himself declined to attend the Tribunal.)
I can't say more as the judgment of the Tribunal is awaited but don't hold yout breath.
Meanwhile the sheer cowardice and spitefulness of Hackett has led to huge expenditure by the taxpayer ie the costs of the original investigation, the cost of the 2016 fake "investigation", the costs of the civil case (and any damages awarded), the costs of the new, ongoing, investigation and all the costs of the Tribunal proceedings. Add to this the additional costs of the pay-off to Melanie Dudley (who was due to leave the following February) and we have to be talking well in excess of £100k. What an absolute scandal.
Lion Farm Tribunal
Day 2 saw SMBC put up the same expensive crew for a day to conceal the truth about the bent deal to develop Lion Farm Fields. Once again judgment is still awaited and so there are certain things I cannot say just yet but things were slightly different in this matter as the Information Commissioner had, for once, sided with me in respect of some of the issues and ordered Sandwell to make make certain disclosures. These documents are being placed on a separate blog. This is a work in progress but you can view the effort to date at:
http://savelionfarm.blogspot.com/2020/09/
The arguments, in brief, were (a) with regard to disclosure of documents relating to the extension of the developer's option(s) and (b) whether SMBC had made proper disclosure in respect of the existing order.
Regulars will know that this deal was "so good" for local people that the bent Labour Council concealed it FOR SEVERAL YEARS. They hid the deal under the title "Junction 2 Regeneration". They then gave it a secret codename, "Project Patrick". When Dr Alison Knight appeared to write the infamous "Knight's Sh*te" report on late 2017 it was called "Junction 2 Development Opportunity" (more soon on this.)
Under Jan Britton the searches for documentation of the corrupt deal were done under different names and a mispelling of the developer's name. I say that was deliberate. In any event Sandwell claimed there were NO documents for a multi-million pound deal! Yes you read that correctly - NO documents ie they were not saying there were no disclosable documents (withheld via claimed exemptions) they saying no documents even existed. This was, of course, a lie and I am uging the Information Commissioner to bring criminal prosecutions against 2 named persons and any others caught up in this (but, again, don't hold your breath...)
Once the disgraced Britton was out documents appeared but still not adequately. Now the Council tried to bamboozle me by saying that it had searched totally irrelvant titles like "lion farm" (ie. the estate separate from the Fields) and "land by the M5" and had found 100,000 documents so that it was too expensive under the legislation to trawl through them all. Again I think this wilful obfuscation was deliberate.
Things went VERY badly in the morning but I had referred to certain documents which clearly DID exist but which bent Labour had not disclosed. These were miraculously found over the lunch interval but opened a whole new can of worms since they were written under the title "Land off Newbury Lane, Oldbury" and no searches had ever been made under this new "fake" title - another effort to conceal the main deal.
I have to say that I am not expecting the Tribunal to give me much help here but I can give a rare pat of the back to David Stevens and the SMBC legal department who have VOLUNTARILY agreed - pending any order of the Tribunal - to search for other documents under that title. This is the only known example in 7 years of the paid service doing the right thing in respect of information rights and it is to be applauded. I do so. However... even if documents are found SMBC may still try and claim exemptions against disclosure. But we will cross that bridge if and when we come to it.
Sandwell know they need to be careful here. There is a real chance that this joke development will be the subject of litigation at some point. If there are documents they seek to rely on which they have not disclosed in this process they will be for the high-jump...
And finally...
The rebel army are on the move to get into power jokes like Hackett, Costigan, Zorro and Lachrymose Luke. One of their number is Weirdo Cllr Laura Rollins nee Laura Thickey and, of course, this lot have been spraying the complaints around about the current leadership in an attempt to get them out. They have been claiming antisemitism despite Jedward's twitter feed but panic ensued last week with Rollins frantically deleting her own back catalogue. Happily I had already screenshotted her series of bizarre comments about "rich" Jews. Throwing stones and glasshouses spring s to mind!
I wrote to her about one particular post where she had claimed that she had been Jewish in the past as follows:
Dear Cllr Rollins,
No response - perhaps she was busy celebrating Rosh Hashanah!
THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - COMMUNITY NEWS - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!
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PROUD TO HAVE BEEN TROLLED BY DICKHEAD DARREN COOPER DECEASED!
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