FOI Reply discloses yet more Sandwell Labour Lies!

This blog may not deal with weighty issues such as undervalued land sales etc but it does encapsulate everything that is rotten in the "socialist" State of Sandwell.

For many years, Mr Lee Judge (ably assisted by a band of dedicated helpers) has put on music events around Sandwell under the "Judgestock" banner. It is not as if the young folk have much entertainment provided within the Borough but Judgestock not only became a popular event but raised lots of money for charity to boot.

Judgestock moved to The Public. It steadily grew year-on-year and in 2012 had an incredibly successful event attended by some 2,000 local music-lovers. Obviously, Sandwell Labour could not allow that to continue....

The general reader will probably not understand the level of hatred towards The Public at the top of the Council. Obviously "Disastrous" Darren Cooper and Mahboob "Keep it in the Family" Hussain were determined to shaft it at all costs and there were a number of time-servers and arse-lickers within SMBC happy to do their bidding (most of them still there despite mass sackings). Accordingly, Sandwell Labour decided that it would be very happy to expand Judgestock into a three-day "festival" in Sandwell Valley to run at the same time as the popular and much-loved Sandwell Show. What could possibly go wrong.....

(It might be entirely coincidental that wealthy West Brom MP, Tom "Anywhere but Sandwell" Watson, was, at this time, constantly tweeting his "knowledge" of the youth music scene. His many tweets when he took a break from his expenses forms to attend Glastonbury were legendary).

With Sandwell Show on at the same time - August Bank Holiday 2013 - there was the facility to spread "infrastructure" costs across the two events and a great marketing opportunity - particularly as Judgestock was intended as a "charity" event. One of the main "press officers" at SMBC at the time was ex-Express and Star and those arse-lickers were happy to give free publicity to their friends. The Sandwell Council twitter feed - presumably intended to provide the public with easy access to information on council services - instead went into overdrive attempting to flog the tickets.

Unfortunately, anything Sandwell Council tries to promote is unlikely to be "cool". In this case things rapidly started to go "stone-cold" as ticket sales were disappointing. Desperation began to set in and Sandwell Council started to tweet "offers". As early as 9th August the comrades were offering BOGOF on a 3-day pass ie two £30 tickets for the price of one. The kiss of death was probably when the "Trolling Turd" -@sandwellleader - joined in the big promotional push and promised it's "gonna be great". As the Bank Holiday neared, the Council was frantically tweeting that tickets were available "on the gate".

Accordingly, it came as some surprise to my small team after the Bank Holiday when the Council and their mates at the Express and Star started hailing the event as a great success although it was quite clear even then that the "spin" had started. There was some "fudging" of the facts and the number of attendees was being "lost" by being included in the crowds that attended the Sandwell Show. Nevertheless, the Wolverhampton arse-lickers happily printed, "a total of 10,000 tickets were sold priced between £12 and £30". I know that the public can no longer trust "The Star" but I don't suppose they made this up (particularly as the full-price adult tickets were, in fact, £12 and £30 when not heavily discounted) and so this could only have come from Sandwell Council. As we will shortly see, this was a downright LIE. Just hold in your mind that even allowing for some "under-18" tickets - but balanced with those tickets sold at over £12 - the ticket sales alleged amounted to an absolute MINIMUM of £120,000.

Let me say here that all reports are that the music event itself was very good and much-enjoyed. Lee Judge mustered an incredible team of 80 (yes, eighty) volunteers to successfully deliver the event (and it is just as well since their considerable work and achievement saved the taxpayer considerable further costs). I understand that a number of acts also performed on a voluntary basis. Unfortunately, the charitable object of the festival got somewhat lost as the Pyongyang-style Council took over all control.

There were grave doubts immediately about the truthfulness of Sandwell Council's statements and Mr Brian Crockett put in a Freedom of Information request about the costs. It should have been immediately apparent that something was wrong when Sandwell Labour refused to answer the simple question by saying that the breakdown would only be disclosed at the end of the Council's financial year when the accounts for the whole Council are published. Quite reasonably, Mr Crockett assumed that the sleazy "socialists" were telling the truth about this and let things lie (if that is not an unfortunate choice of phrase!)

I was suspicious since the full Council accounts NEVER go down into this sort of fine detail and, sure enough, the financial year ended and when the accounts were finally published - NOTHING! I put in a new Freedom of Information request dated 11th August, 2014. Bearing in mind that the comrades had already lied to Mr Crockett by saying that all the figures would be prepared for the year-end accounts (31st March, 2014) it took them over two months to actually respond - the reply finally coming through yesterday, 17th October, 2014. But then Sandwell Labour have utter contempt for the Freedom of Information Act (brought in by, er, Labour) and this is from the "top" down. The idiotic "leader", Cooper, regularly trolls people who make such requests via his allegedly "personal" twitter account which is headed "Cllr Darren Cooper" and uses the handle "@sandwellleader". Cllr Ian Jones, a member of Labour's joke "cabinet" lost no time in attacking me for making FoI requests on BBC WM radio recently when discussing Bog-gate - unhappily another example where Labour have lied in a FoI reply!!! (This was also the same interview where Jones himself lied on live radio about the Bog-gate valuation!)

And finally, the truth is out some 14 months after the event. Rather than the absolute MINIMUM of ticket sales claimed by lying Labour of £120,000 the actual ticket sales were £43,945.00p (36.6% of the absolute MINIMUM figure). Maybe these liars don't like FoI requests because they get caught out telling massive porkies to voters and taxpayers?

(I am assuming the figure given is exclusive of Vat and the large commission to the ticket agents, Ticketmaster, or the position is far, far worse....)

Strangely, the figures published include allege parking income of £9,301 but this seems very odd and I wonder whether there is some "overlap" here with the Sandwell Show?

The very low ticket sales - despite massive hype (itself done at taxpayers' expenses) - meant that even with the dubious parking income Labour cost the taxpayer £52,283,50p at a time when they are blaming everyone but themselves for massive cuts and job losses. Had the ticket sales claimed by the crafty comrades actually been achieved the event would have just about broken even - but only thanks to all the work of the brilliant volunteers.

Of course, the thick "leader" of the Labour Council, Cooper, was happy to attack me publicly via twitter for alleging waste here with the statement, "That I'm afraid is only in your tiny mind".

The only glimmer of hope from this sorry tale is that Judgestock battles on with its dedicated volunteer team and I hope they can find a decent "home" for the event in future years. Please try and support them if you get the chance.

I have said that the Sandwell Labour liars shouldn't be allowed to run a whelk stall. One thing's for sure - they shouldn't be allowed to run a music festival!

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