The Curse of The Pink Elephant - Victim 1!

Beware the Curse ye Arse-Lickers!

There were plenty of brown-nosers in Sandwell Council prepared to do the bidding of Labour's Cooper and Hussain and shaft The Public. There were others trying to empire-build at Sandwell College who were equally happy to screw the taxpayer and steal a major public building for their use even though they had only just moved into a brand-new publicly-funded building.

For those of us who believe in justice we have, after a long wait, finally seen the Pink Elephant trample its first victim and a good one to boot - Stuart Kellas, Director of Strategic Resources, the "Finance Director" of SMBC and "yes-man" extraordinaire. Please permit me a small gloat!

The story of the demise of this "character" is an interesting one as something has clearly gone disastrously wrong (yet again) at the top of the clown Cooper's Council. The idea was to take the four top posts beneath Chief Exec and Pavarotti look-a-like, Jan Britton, and create three new ones instead. The three new jobs would be ring-fenced for the existing four to apply - one of them facing the "you're fired" finger. All this was set out in the so-called "cabinet" agenda of 10th September, 2014 as follows:

"2.3 approve the changes to the establishment of the senior management
structure,..... by:

(a) the deletion of the current posts of Deputy Chief Executive, Director
– Improvement and Efficiency, Director – Strategic Resources and
Director –Legal and Governance with effect from a date to be
determined by the Chief Executive in consultation with the Leader of
the Council;

(b) the establishment of three new posts of Assistant Chief Executive,
Director – Human Resources & Finance and Director – Governance
& Risk at salaries in accordance with the salary scale for chief
officers and otherwise on the terms and conditions of employment of
chief officers of the Council, with effect from a date to be determined
by the Chief Executive in consultation with the Leader of the
Council;

2.4 place the current holders of the deleted posts at risk of redundancy and
ring-fence the appointment to the new posts, to these employees"

The four employees were Melanie Dudley (who has been placed by Sandwell Labour on the board of three Interserve companies and who was a major player in the multi-million pound BT contract disaster); John Garrett (not without his critics but generally liked); the aforementioned parrott, Kellas, (yes, Darren! yes, Mahboob!) and our old friend and Cooper apologist Neeraj Sharma, Head of Legal (whose role as Monitoring Officer has recently been so spectacularly successful).

In true Sandwell Labour style this was always likely to be a stitch-up and over two weeks before the "interviews" on 3rd December, The Skidder was able to break the news on twitter that Garrett was a dead man walking following information received from the heart of The Kremlin. Here's my tweet which also confirmed that Melanie Dudley would get the top job. (See my blog of 1st December, 2014 "How to Succeed at Sandwell Council - A Guide" and see if you can guess the mystery twitterer!):

Vernon Grant ‏@bcrover  Nov 17

Strong steer from #smbc that it is John Garrett being culled. Incredibly @melanie_dudley getting extra responsibilities in corporate dep't!

But the big surprise is that Kellas was culled too. Clearly this was not planned back in September and so what has happened is still a mystery. Information welcome although I suspect that Cooper will try the usual trick of paying them both over the odds with our, taxpayers', money in return for confidentiality agreements (which will have no effect in respect of the ongoing criminal investigations).

A major problem at SMBC, as I discovered via a Freedom of Information request, is that Dudley is the Director of three Interserve companies but there are NO firewalls in place at The Kremlin to ensure that she is isolated from any discussions where Interserve may land lucrative contracts - as she clearly should be. Sandwell Labour claim that all their officers comply with a "code of conduct" to prevent any wrongdoing - so that's alright then!

I am not suggesting, at this stage, that Dudley has been guilty of ANY impropriety but without firewalls there is a danger of sensitive information being leaked - even if inadvertently. Of course, with the bent Public deal members of Mel's team were involved right from the very first meeting with The College but Labour have asked us naive fools to believe that she was not "involved" in the project - which is fortunate as Labour then gifted a multi-million contract to, er, Interserve without putting it out to tender! Of course, Mel's lack of involvement is a Labour lie in any event as she was one of the signatories of the farcical "Fundamental Review" document when Labour "agreed" to axe The Public (having announced this all to the media six months previously!) Labour say that, instead, all "project" information was chanelled through Mr Stuart Kellas.

Curiously the motormouth moron who "runs" the Council, Darren "The Trolling Turdmeister" Cooper, has been strangely and unusually quiet on the events of 3rd December. As I write, it is the evening of 11th December and still the SMBC website does not show the minutes of the Committee meeting of EIGHT days ago. It doesn't even state which councillors were present at the meeting (Hussain?). There has been no public announcement from Labour although Dudley has rushed to change her LinkedIn profile to show her new position as second-in-command! All very professional noting that a recent FoI request (not one of mine) showed that in these austere times Labour employ an incredible 13 (yes, thirteen) people in the spin-doctoring department! (Undoubtedly a "frontline" service!)

Kellas also held the statutory "s.151 role" finance role which has to be held by a qualified accountant. What are Labour doing about filling that position?

And so we say, to John Garrett - not sure if you were any good but you never stood a chance mate! And to Kellas we must endorse Cooper's clever decision and say a hearty, "Farewell scumbag and good riddance!"

Who will be the next to succumb to The Pink 'Un's dreaded curse.... Watch this space!

Police fraud team direct line - DS Wayne Haynes - 0121 251 2175

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - A COMMUNITY BLOG - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!

E-mail thesandwellskidder@gmail.com Twitter @bcrover (Vernon Grant)

Confidential phone no: 07599 983737