Skidder Shorts No. 15 - Trouble in (Socialist) Paradise?

Here is a fascinating Freedom of Information Request from a Mr Robert Fellows. I do not know the gentleman but hope he will get in touch.

We all know that there was no proper consultation regarding closure of The Public. The moronic Sandwell Council Labour "leader", Cooper, binned a massive petition, ignored letters and many other representations and tried to suggest that his press office reading Twitter somehow constituted proper consultation (when in any event the social media comment was overwhelmingly pro-Public). (I will be blogging soon about the serious kicking Sandwell Council got in the High Court last week - particularly as the BBC &  the Wolverhampton C-S's seem to have "overlooked" it - when you will see that a total lack of consultation was evident in that matter too).

As ever motormouth MP Wealthy Tom Watson was absolutely useless. He finally announced that he would make The Public his "priority" & less than 6 hours later Sandwell Council sent the e-mail axing it. With friends like him, who needs enemies......!

Mind you, expenses-guzzler Watson is standing for re-election soon and this looks like a classic "arse-covering" manoeuvre to deflect any flak away from himself. It is also noteworthy that as Watson heaves his said arse onto every single "leftie" bandwagon that passes, he feels the need to have assistants/ researchers and two of them are actually Labour "councillors" at Sandwell - Frazer and the cipher Moore (who is also a "commode" member)! Should be some interesting discussions going on between that trio!

Watters also makes great play of being an anti-secrecy campaigner but has not chosen to intervene in the cover-up by Sandwell Council and Sandwell College of details of the scandalous financial "deal" stitched up between the two of them at the taxpayers' expense. The Council and College then awarded the multi-million pound contract to Interserve without putting it out to tender. They have fought tooth and nail to keep the facts secret even though they are both publicly-funded bodies and they have refused to answer Freedom of Information requests. Thanks to the good offices of Mr Darryl Magher this has now been taken all the way to The Information Commissioner, but still the grasping College and Pyongyang-style Council are refusing to provide the facts. Ask yourselves why? Ask Watters, the great champion of freedom (not), what he has to say about it?

Wealthy Watson famously wrote a blog entitled "Tommy'll Fix It". I think it is far more likely that "Tommy'll F*ck It Up".

Here is the FoI request:

Dear Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council,

I would like to see the responses to the 2013 questionnaire
distributed by Tom Watson to the businesses and community groups at
The Public, based on the contact list provided by its then managing
director Linda Saunders.

As this is my second request for this information, will you please
deal with it more carefully that my first request 1-671778179/ILO,
which produced the following reply:

'The Council is not aware of any report compiled by Tom Watson with
information relating to companies based at The Public and as a
consequence does not hold this information.'

According to a letter sent to me by Tom Watson dated 1st July 2014
'All consultation responses were forwarded in hard copy to Sandwell
Council. The responses yielded, in my personal view, rich data and
information pertaining to the organisations that used The Public.'

On request I am happy to provide you with a full copy of this
letter. My own MP Adrian Bailey also has a copy.

May I request that you forward (in whatever format) the data and
information that Tom Watson is referring to.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Fellows

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - A COMMUNITY BLOG

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