Lazy Git for Labour Deputy Leader?

Together with Roger Godsiff (Labour), Tom Watson MP had the worst voting record in Parliament from 2010 to 2015 at just 49.2%* - thus missing as much as one in every two votes - and yet a moronic 29.6%** of the voting population of run-down West Bromwich East re-elected The Rutting Walrus for another five year term!

Quite what this 29.6% think Ten Bellies has done for the benighted constituency is something of a mystery. He was, of course, caught up in the MP's expenses scandal and perhaps this was viewed as a good thing by the lumpen proletariat of West Brom - so far away from the Watson household in, er, trendy Bermondsey, London. Unfortunately, Watson's girlfriend failed to get elected and so he was not quite laughing all the way to the bank on election night.

Appalling voting record

Yet the "Part-Time Parliamentarian" was so confident of these thickos turning out he hardly bothered to campaign in his own constituency at all - although his very active campaigning anywhere but West Brom hardly did the national party much good! (Incidentally, Ten Bellies was often campaigning with "coke and hookers" Steve Coogan following Red(-faced) Ed Miliband's decision to "weaponise the NHS" and under a "Save the NHS" banner. I am still waiting for an answer to my question whether Steve Coogan enjoys NHS treatment or usually goes "private" eg when he had his drug rehabilitation treatment.)

But notwithstanding his dire voting record The Walrus has felt able to blog recently about changes he thinks should be made in the governance of the House of Commons he so infrequently attends (or at least votes in) - what a guy!

When Watson has actually felt able to get off his substantial arse and waddle through the division lobby at Westminster his actual voting record makes rather interesting reading for this great "Tribune of the Left". Here are a few extracts from the website "TheyWorkForYou" (or not, as the case may be...)

Voted moderately for laws to promote equality and human rights (although he was also happy to address a gender-segregated meeting to win tawdry Labour a few more votes):

Voted moderately for replacing Trident with a new nuclear weapons system
Voted very strongly for the Iraq war
Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war
Voted moderately for more EU integration
Voted strongly against raising the threshold at which people start to pay income tax
Has never voted on an annual tax on the value of expensive homes (popularly known as a mansion tax)
Voted moderately against measures to reduce tax avoidance

Voted very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals (another Labour NHS triumph!):

Voted strongly against fewer MPs in the House of Commons (turkey/Christmas)
Voted strongly against a transparent Parliament

Voted a mixture of for and against greater autonomy for schools
Voted a mixture of for and against academy schools

Voted moderately against local councils keeping money raised from taxes on business premises in their areas
Voted a mixture of for and against a more proportional system for electing MPs
Voted a mixture of for and against a wholly elected House of Lords
Voted a mixture of for and against transferring more powers to the Scottish Parliament (not good news for his chances in what is left of the Labour Party north of the border)
Voted strongly for a stricter asylum system
Voted very strongly for introducing ID cards

Voted moderately against a statutory register of lobbyists (perhaps no surprise here as Ten Bellies is still refusing to confirm whether the man who made cash donations to his constituency party is multi-millionaire gambler & campaigner/lobbyist Derek Webb) 

Voted moderately against limits on success fees paid to lawyers in no-win no fee cases
Voted a mixture of for and against higher taxes on alcoholic drinks (couldn't organise a p*ss-up in a brewery!)

And on the last subject we must not forget that this buffoon actually voted the wrong way in a division on one of his own campaigns!

Of course, this strutting egomaniac (who is claiming that he single-handedly closed down the News of the Screws) is now standing for the post of Deputy Leader of the failed Labour Party despite his appalling voting record!!!!! At the end of the day he is the mighty Unite the Union's man but has gone on a Californian website to raise cash for his campaign from stupid suckers who don't realise this instead. He says that he will declare the loot these prats give him in the Parliamentary Register of Interests which will be interesting as some of the crazed donors meddling in Labour internal politics may be foreigners and some are claiming anonymity! (Lest we forget Unite's hard-pressed members already fund him and paid thousands for his jolly to the United States on one of his anti-Murdoch flounces). I expect that the Californian company pays a nice round figure of UK corporation tax on its business - er, zero - and I feel sure that the good folk of deprived Sandwell and beyond will all wish to give generously to this intellectual titan of the left!

PS The mystery why someone very close to The Walrus has been briefing that he did not get a degree from Hull Uni remains unresolved.

* http://www.sunnation.co.uk/exposed-the-24-mps-with-the-worst-attendance-records/

** Electorate 63,637; Morons who voted "Watson" 18,817.

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Labour Help a Business Grow!

PLEASE NOTE THAT DUE TO OTHER COMMITMENTS THE SKIDDER WILL BE OFF AIR FOR A FEW DAYS. NORMAL SERVICE WILL RESUME SHORTLY!

Now here is another oddity from the stinking cesspool of Sandwell Labour. The first question is  - when is a business start-up a "business start-up"? Do the comrades view this as someone who has never started a business before opening a new business or do they mean someone who has had, or still has, a business but is also going to try their hand in a different enterprise? It would seem to be the latter as far as the usually anti-business Sandwell Labour Council are concerned....

Back in the day, one Sayeda Amirun Nessa of Tipton applied for a business start-up grant to open the Moonlight  Restaurant and Takeaway, at existing restaurant premises leased out by the freeholder at 71 Great Bridge, Tipton. A "panel" at Sandwell Council decided that the application was in accordance with the grant scheme. I have done a Freedom of Information Act request about all this but, as yet, SMBC have not disclosed the grant application, the identity of the "panel" who decided the issue and any other relevant documentation.

I have pointed out many times that the hard-left loonies hate business and vast numbers of the Labour councillors are unemployed and have no business experience nor acumen. Maybe this explains why the shifty "socialists" duly awarded Syeda her grant - £2,000 on 21st January, 2011 - even though she had, at that stage, already been involved in a failed business called Regal Housing Limited operating from her home address in Bevan Road, Tipton. Indeed an application to strike off the company from the register at Companies House - signed by Sayeda herself on 10th January, 2011 - was made just 4 days before Labour handed her two grand. No doubt she declared all this in her grant application - that's the one I haven't been able to see yet.

Of course, any sane person might have questioned the wisdom of making a "business start-up" loan to a person with a failed business behind her but they're a crazy bunch those Sandwell Labour Councillors! But then they are not dishing out their own money are they? They are squandering ours!

And so, we ask, how did the balti business do under Sayeda's control? Well at this stage I can't say but I will hazard a guess that if she was actually involved in the business at all it wasn't for very long. Why do I say this? Remember that the restaurant owner - Sayeda in this case - was a tenant of the owner of the property. Remember too that she was getting her "business start-up grants" in January, 2011. And yet when PC Plod came a knocking at the Moonlight on 26th November, 2012 she had, so it would seem, already gone. Unfortunately, what had not gone from the premises were 629 cannabis plants! A Judge later found that the Moonlight  "farm" was only part of a much larger operation involving two Vietnamese gents who were duly caged. But the press reported at the time that the "tenant" of the Moonlight was not Sayeda but one Jahodur Rohman who, for permitting the use of the premises for drug production, received a 20-week sentence suspended for two years.

Well at least laughable Labour did see some business "growth" at the premises!

Indeed, Sayeda was moving onwards and upwards. Despite her involvement with a building company and a restaurant she obviously also has an extensive knowledge of health issues since in May, 2012 (17 months after her grant and six months before the cannabis farm was found) she became a trustee of the Bangladeshi Women's Association and also Company Secretary and Director of Bangladeshi Women's Association Limited where she is described on official documents as a "Health Development Officer". It is not clear whether she "gave up" her business and is employed in this role elsewhere or actually by the BWA itself.

Of course, the BWA receive substantial funds from Sandwell Labour and a leading light there is none other that Labour Councillor Sayeda Khatun MBE.

Oh, by the way, did I forget to mention the identity of Sayeda's Landlord at the Moonlight? He is Syed Raja Miah* - perhaps better known as the husband of, er, Labour Cllr Sayeda Khatun MBE. He was, no doubt, delighted in 2011 when Sandwell Labour decided to help his tenant out with the rent!

If you have information about possible corruption at Sandwell Council please speak in confidence to thepPolice Regional Fraud Team - DS Wayne Haynes & Team - 0121 251 2175.

*When I checked the electoral register just yesterday this gent was not registered at Cllr Khatun's home address but she declares his interest in the Great Bridge property on her Register of Interests.

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

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Watch in Horror!

Darren Cooper hates Birmingham. The woman-bullying "friend of the trolls" has a pathetically parochial view of a world that is rounded by the boundaries of Sandwell in general and Smethwick in particular. His jealousy of Birmingham knows no bounds and he never misses a chance to have a dig - witness the feeble-minded gloating on his vitriolic Twitter feed about the Library of Birmingham debacle. (Of course, the Labour hierarchy have warned him off Twitter pre-election and he is engaging with numerous troll accounts to vent his spleen instead).

Cooper became the tragi-comic "leader" of Labour Sandwell Council , of course, by using every dirty trick in the book - the secret briefings, the spreading of lies, the good old-fashioned knife in the back etc etc and then the real power at Sandwell Council, Cllr Mahboob Hussain, took the opportunity to support him for the top-job as his malleable stooge. Unhappily for Cooper, Hussain is - temporarily at least - hors de combat due to a bit of "local difficulty" and Cooper has rapidly become increasingly isolated with even the Labour Group tiring of his vituperative antics. He has had to seek solace from another bully-boy, Unite the Union's Regional Organiser, though even the latter has gone quiet of late. Last week this "been nowhere, done nothing outside Smethwick" leader [sic] was reduced to having twitter conversations with a troll account!

The strings have been temporarily cut!

But Cooper is an egomaniac and suddenly had the crazed idea that live webcasting of Sandwell Council meetings would be good for his self-promotion "because Birmingham were doing it". Cooper is as thick as two-short planks but claims to write a blog which is given much prominence on the Sandwell Council website. It is not, of course, written by him at all but by the highly over-staffed "Communications Unit" which costs the taxpayer over half a million pounds a year to put up endless tweets about dog sh*t. And he also disseminates "information" via what he says is his "personal" twitter account modestly named "sandwellleader". And so we have the following "conversation" on a "private" Twitter account about Sandwell Council business (and nowhere does it mention that the other party is actually a grovelling Sandwell Council employee):

(Cooper is obsessed with canine and avian excrement earning himself the soubriquet "The Turdmeister". He has glorified the former in Labour's grotesque poster campaign and when he and his comrades became upset about Canada Geese defecating in his nice "Green Flag" parks they hit on a simple "final solution" and just started killing off the geese!)

The cognescenti of this blog and Private Eye magazine will know that Sandwell Council meetings are a farce and an affront to democracy. In respect of most committee meetings Labour produce long lists each month of what they intend to discuss in private. Everything is pre-agreed and the meetings (even those with long agendas) generally last just a few minutes - and the public are thrown out of these after a couple of minutes so that the rest of the business can be dealt with in secret. I use the word "secret" deliberately since the minutes of the decisions are usually then heavily redacted when eventually released. (Take a look at the proposed bent ice rink deal as a classic example).

The full Council meetings are also a joke. The Labour dictatorship hold 70 of the 72 seats in Sandwell and can do exactly as they please (although the High Court has put a stop to their unlawful decision-making TWICE in very recent times). And so Labour hold a meeting the night before of the "Labour Group" when everything is decided. The actual meeting then consists of a long diatribe from the Mayor (particularly if a wind-bag like Rowley is presiding) about important stuff like what he has been doing, how much was raised in this or that raffle etc. The business - as the brilliant Private Eye "Rotten Boroughs" column pointed out - is then dealt with in a few minutes. Sometimes there is a set-piece "debate" where one posing onanist from the ranks puts up a motion about some "leftie" issue eg not so long back they put up a motion on one of "Ten Bellies" Tom Watson's hobby-horses - Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (incidentally it now seems that the multi-millionaire behind this campaign has been making cash donations to the local Labour Party!) Needless to say the sheep then all vote in support of the motion and off they all toddle for an early night (generally unnecessary as so many of them are unemployed and don't actually have to get up in the morning).

Usually, Council meetings only last beyond a few minutes if Labour's talking corpse (more anon), Steve Eling, has anything to say. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

In one particularly egregious case a committee got through a full agenda in 2 (TWO) minutes! Happily Labour ensure that virtually all the sheep get "special responsibility" payments on top of their normal allowances for turning up at these charades.

It is now SEVEN months after Cooper's great announcement and still no live webcasts. Clearly someone with more brain than Cooper (which does widen the field somewhat) has realised what I have just set out above. Labour have been able to take the p*ss for years as no-one has bothered to question this appalling behaviour. But once they "go live", le tout Sandwell will be able to see The Turdmeister tweeting during Council meetings, listen (if the folk of Abbey are stupid enough to re-elect him) to "Mr Rotherham", Eling, droning on and on etc all watched by the serried ranks of the po-faced "socialists" in their sub-Primark garb.

What joys folk will have when the show finally starts but if you simply can't wait, how about tuning into the webcasting that IS on offer from the conning comrades. Yes, your friendly local Labour Council has some of the most expensive burial and cremation fees in the whole region but for just £36 you can, er, enjoy a webcast of a funeral down Newton Road Crem or for £68 you can have the full monty and enjoy live webcast PLUS visual recording of the service. Thus Sandwell are still not permitting you to watch democracy in action [sic] but you can get a live webcast of the incineration of your loved one!

Still, until the "Labour Group" meetings are broadcast the unfortunate folk of Sandwell will still be none the wiser as to what is really going-on and we will be deprived of seeing a fire of a different kind - the bonfire of Cooper's vanities (and inanities) when the widely-predicted post-election coup is sprung (allegedly with the blessing of Ten Bellies himself).

Regional Fraud Team investigation Sandwell Council - 0121 251 2175 - DS Wayne Haynes.

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Due to work commitments The Skidder will be off air for a brief interval from Friday 8th May.

How Sandwell Labour P*ss On You!

It is difficult to imagine what goes on inside the thick head of Sandwell Labour's "leader", Cllr (!) Darren Cooper - "The Turdmeister" - but for some peculiar reason he has an obsession with having an ice rink in the socialist paradise of Sandwell. When he is not actively engaging with numerous troll accounts on Twitter he is lying about this scheme, which most of us had thought was dead and buried. (My earlier blogs on this subject are set out at the bottom of this page).

Why does Cooper want to do this bent deal?
(Seen here with the SMBC chauffeur-driven Range Rover)

A quick reminder. Cllrs Hussain, Crompton and Eling had a report before them in December, 2013 to knock down the huge Queen Square Multi-Storey Car Park in West Bromwich at the taxpayers' expense and then to lease the land at a purely nominal sum to a private ice rink company run my Mr Mike Petrouis who would build the facility on "free" land and then make profit from it. There was a problem, however, in that the Council officers "score" projects - though how this bent deal was even scored in the first place is a mystery - and the "score" for this nonsense was a ridiculously low 54%. On that basis it should not have been allowed to proceed at all but the three wise Labour Councillors (one of whom has recently retired from the Cabinet to "clear his name") passed it with one important change. The taxpayer would still pay for the car park to be demolished but Labour would then SELL the cleared site to the private company. Labour would "work out" an appropriate price!

Labour themselves admit that in gifting this land to Mr Petrouis they will also lose much need revenue from the car park!!!!

The law says that Council's must get the best possible price when selling land but it then transpired that - just as with the bent Public deal - Labour were lying about the deal anyway. Official Council documents in the Public case said that the College approached Labour to acquire the Public but this was a lie and Cooper and Hussain had actually approached them in their plan to destroy that facility. Here it is even more bizarre, since Cooper claims that he dreamt up the whole ice rink plan and then approached "a couple of ice rink companies" about the deal. But this is refuted in the official legal records which explicitly state that the private company - presumably via Mr Petrouis - approached Labour. This is a very bad start.

Sandwell Labour Council then publicly admit that THEY then searched numerous sites in the Borough on behalf of the private company and at taxpayers' expense before hitting on the idea of knocking down the car park! Whilst it would be appropriate to assist possible incoming investors in finding commercial sites this proactive approach using public money absolutely stinks.

I do not believe for one minute that any other "ice rink company" let alone any other commercial enterprise has been approached and this is another bent deal. The fact that this massive site (right next to Tesco) has not been advertised for any other purpose and the Council are allegedly negotiating with a single commercial party smacks of gross incompetence at best and corruption at worst.

As Labour are deliberately seeking to lock out every other commercial company in the whole world to deal with a single private enterprise/individual any financial assistance they supply (eg by paying to clear the site) is likely to be what is called unlawful state aid.

Labour will also need planning permission to both demolish the car park and for the new ice rink but with Labour running the planning committee they obviously think they can force this through without any difficulty. (They might get a surprise with this)

The ice rink developer seems to have a chequered record. Just take a look at "Planet Ice" on the Companies House website and see the huge number of "Planet Ice" companies and the large number that have been dissolved for whatever reason. The Company recently closed the Birmingham ice rink (although this may have been partly  due to regeneration plans for the area) and there was controversy on the Isle of Wight where the Council had given the company a 125 lease with the proviso that the ice rink be run for just 15 years! The ice rink company and Mr Petrouis were trying to get out of even that short deal early. This was just 3 months ago. And yet Sandwell Labour want to sell them a potentially very valuable site right next to Tesco with no external marketing or competition whatsoever!

Planet Ice had a tiff with the taxman in 2012 but it is not clear if Mr Petrouis was involved in the company at this time. Certainly Telford Ice Rink was in trouble as were seven others:

http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2012/01/21/ice-rink-firm-is-now-in-financial-trouble/

A Company called the Arena Group was also, it seems, involved in the financial turmoil. It appears that Mr Petrouis somehow divested himself of Planet Ice/Arena Group before it got into trouble and then came to its "rescue" again. Whether this involved any of the creditors being shafted  is unclear......

Mike Petrouis has many other company interests and describes himself as an "entrepreneur" (see planetpetrouis.com). But they are all private businesses and there is very little public information on his doings.

Planet Ice are now running a facility in Cardiff but this had initially run into difficulties with Cardiff Council in 2011:

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/cardiffs-new-ice-arena-plans-1820446

We need more information on this man and his companies and as Labour are keeping it secret we need to know why Cooper only wants to do a deal with him, with everyone else cut out. What the hell is going on?

The ludicrous Cooper was boasting at the Tesco opening party back in July, 2013 that the ice rink was on its way - again, I ask how Labour can try to do a huge deal with a single party behind closed doors.

Way back in 2013 Cooper started directly engaging with a twitter troll account that started to attack me. Here is one tweet:

Ian Crow ‏@crow_ian  31 Oct 2013

@l_trumpeter Hello is there an ice rink coming somewhere round here

Of course, Sandwell Labour have not consulted with anyone - and I mean anyone - in the Borough about this project and most of the Council documents are heavily redacted. In fact, Labour have ignored a petition to keep the Queen's Square multi-storey open. But The Turdmeister has said time and time again that because Labour are an elected dictatorship in Sandwell they can do as they please.

Thus although there has been no consultation, lies have been told and Labour are keeping everything about the "deal" secret Cooper can use his allegedly personal twitter account to say:

"Having an ice rink popular with people in Sandwell".

Everything had gone quiet and most people assumed that with the Labour Council mired in scandal and alleging being skint, this bent deal was dead in the water but on 17th March up pops Mike Petrouis in The Express and Star to say that it is still very much on and that the whole thing will be agreed "in a couple of months" - code for immediately after the election!

The Express and Star are the official organ of Sandwell Labour and so the timing of this article is not coincidental. Even in the unlikely event that Labour lose all 24 contested seats on Thursday, and an effective opposition to the Politburo is finally achieved, Labour will still have at least two-thirds of the Council. Cooper and Co will then p*ss on Sandwell, as they always do, by claiming that they have a "mandate" for the ice rink project from the voters who know absolutely sod all about it. Then they will try to force the bent deal through.

The people of West Bromwich and Sandwell OWN this valuable car park site. It cannot be gifted to a private developer in a secret deal locking everyone else out. Sandwell - start asking Labour questions - and quickly!

The police Regional Fraud Team still want to hear from you if you have evidence of possible corruption at Sandwell Council. Speak in confidence to DS Wayne Haynes and Team on 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

Ice Stink Saga:

This stink first  wafted out in a blog about The Public dated 18th December, 2013:

STOP PRESS 2. Anyone wishing to see The Kremlin's modus operandi should have a look at the agenda for tonight's Asset Management Committee meeting. In a heavily redacted report, apparently cash-rich SMBC intends to facilitate a private developer to build an ice rink in West Brom. Two of three reports are completely secret and the third is heavily redacted. This is the first paragraph of the "public" (sic) version:

        "The Council has been approached by the company xxxxx xxxx, who wish to develop an ice rink within West Bromwich. Officers have had preliminary meetings with company representatives and a mechanism for the delivery has been agreed in principle."

And so it appears any old "developer" can gain easy access to Council officers. The plan is to demolish the Queen Square car park (which even SMBC admit will lead to loss of revenue (!)) and to grant a lease to the developer (no competition, of course). The demolition job will not go out to tender but the Council's "demolition partner" has helpfully provided a secret quote. And finally......cash-rich SMBC are going to PAY for the demolition to help the development proceed! Cuts? What cuts?

Further posts followed:

http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/another-sandwell-scandal-spot-difference.html

http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/cooper-skating-on-thin-ice-ice-rink.html

http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/ice-rink-sandwell-council-lie-and-i-can.html

Home with the Hortons!

I need to make a public apology in respect of the Cashmore story. I know I checked something a while ago without getting a result but on re-checking, I find I have missed something very interesting indeed!

Labour Councillors Roger and Linda Horton have made no public comments whatsoever in the last year about their lying daughter, er, Labour Cllr Lucy Cashmore. Roger, who is up for re-election on Thursday, is blind but you would think he would have noticed if Lucy had been living in his Smethwick house for a considerable amount of time in the last four years rather than with her husband (a Sandwell Council employee) and two children in South Birmingham. But, of course, the local Labour Party - of which Roger is a very senior and prominent member - conspired to select The Liar as a candidate even though she was ineligible (though Roger, no doubt, did not influence the, still anonymous, selection panel in any way).

It is getting a bit full down at 47 Hall Road. Having been registered at the electoral roll at her Birmingham address for several years, The Liar has now registered on the electoral roll at BOTH her Birmingham address and at the Hortons' in Smethwick. This is legal if she is spending roughly equal amounts of time at each address. Curiously, many Councillors in Sandwell have a complete lack of judgement and have apparently given the woman-bullying "leader" of Sandwell Council, Darren Cooper, authority to speak out on their behalf. Mind you, in this case, he is a very close personal friend of the Hortons and though he won't publicly admit it, he must have been fully aware of her ineligibility as a candidate in the first place. But when questions were raised, Cooper started putting it about that Lying Lucy was having "marital difficulties" - hence her sojourns on the dog-sh*t smeared streets of Smethwick. Why Cashmore and her Council employee husband (who have two kids) gave him authority to say this is a mystery and, in past blogs, I pointed out that The Liar's own Facebook pages seem to show a very different story anyway (or did before she erased them).

And now Roger has another grown-up daughter under his feet too! The new electoral roll - prepared using individual voter registration - shows that daughter Charlotte has also completed a legal declaration saying she too is spending at least half the year in 47 Hall Road which is odd as she was recently living at Wilson Drive, Tividale. Indeed her move back home must be a selfless act to look after Roger as Land Registry records today show that Charlotte is actually the co-owner of xx Wilson Drive!

Funnily enough, Charlotte used to work for Jobsworth Recruitment Solutions as did her lying sister. Indeed, Lucy Cashmore was a Company Director there for a short time and told Companies House in legal declarations that she was living at her real address in South Birmingham, not in Smethwick.

Then Charlotte worked for two other companies where The Liar also worked, Prime Time Recruitment and First Personnel. 

Now when I first spoke to the Police about Cashmore, I pointed out that Sandwell Council is dishing out hundreds of thousands of pounds per annum to recruitment agencies to employ staff at grossly inflated wages and the commission-hungry agencies are taking massive cuts or percentages (as I pointed out from leaked documents a while ago Labour were paying an agency - owned as part of his empire by a Dragon's Den bloke - £3,045.84 a 37-hour WEEK for the services of one E. Redding and I am told there are even higher figures than that!) The staff at recruitment agencies rely on commission for much of their income. 

There could be a very good reason if a Councillor lied about her employment if her company (which also employs her sister) were getting business from the Council. Now I must have been p*ssed when I first looked at this since I could find no possible connection and, of course, all this may be entirely coincidental but The Liar Cashmore says she worked for First Personnel from February, 2013. But by May, 2013 at the latest Sandwell Labour had started giving work to, er, First Personnel!

Again by pure coincidence, the Sandwell Council payments over £500 list show NO payments to First Personnel at all in the financial year ending 30th March, 2013 but then we have this:

June, 2013 £2,579.07 (3 deals); July, 2013 £7,271.63 (5); August £7,333.93 (3); September £12,982.60 (4), October £14,945.33 (5); November £2,435.99 (1); December £6,664.21 (2); January, 2014 £16,024.69 (9); February, 2014 £15,607.86 (6); March, 2014 £10,646.50 (4).

April, 2014 £8,0121.94 (4); May, 2014 £nil; June, 2014 £13,781.77 (10); July, 2014 £5,051.39 (3); August, 2014 £890.10 (1).

And so whilst Cashmore was claiming in the Register of Interests to be unemployed, by total coincidence, her actual employers - during her time with SMBC - secured contracts worth around £124,237.

MY SINCERE APOLOGIES FOR MISSING THIS EARLIER!

Incidentally, all the payments came from the Strategic Resources Department. People tell me the ex-boss, Stuart Kellas, was massive mates with, er, Roger Horton but even if this is true, I am quite sure that nothing was untoward in any way. It seems that it is quite common in Sandwell for employees to socialise with Labour councillors.

I have done a short Freedom of Information Request which is set out below and I am inviting the Police to look at all this again to make sure that all is "above board".

Let us now all give thanks that in addition to her pay and commission, the Liar has also received thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money by way of Council allowances. Glory Be!

Now I pointed out recently that the Labour propaganda machine, the Wolverhampton c*ck-suckers (aka "The Express and Star"), did a massive puff piece on Cashers alleging that The Liar has only stepped down from the Council because some unpleasant people have been using social media to "troll her" although they do not mention whom these alleged "trolls" might be. They also forgot to mention that the Express and Star Group not only employ The Liar Cashmore but have even promoted her!

YOU CAN'T TRUST "THE STAR"!

Lying Lucy joined the recruitment arm of the cock-suckers, Star Employment Services, in July, 2014 and was allegedly promoted in February, 2015 to "Operations Director". In the newspaper article, "The Star" quoted Cashmore as saying that her health had been affected by the non-existent "trolling" and yet they knew all along she was working for them and can't have been too concerned about her health if they say fit to promote her! Clearly being a massive fibber is not a bar to employment in the recruitment industry.

And "The Star" also failed to mention that since September, 2014 they have also been employing the Liar's sister, the aforementioned Charlotte Horton! She herself mentions working with The Liar on LinkedIn (though she also forgets to mention to potential clients and employers that "Lucy Cashmore" is also her sister):

Sandwell Labour have well and truly rogered the Borough but if you live in Soho and Vic and are very stupid you can "roger yourself" this Thursday! Of course, most of us mortals just have one vote but, because of her lying, Cashmore has one vote in the General Election but can vote Labour twice in the local authority elections - once in Brandwood, Birmingham where she really lives and once for her dear Daddy! Now that's what I call fair.

Of course, Labour also p*ssed on Bristnall four years ago by conspiring to break the law and foist an ineligible candidate on the benighted populace but have they taken care in selecting a replacement? No, they have not. If you live in Bristnall and are even thicker than people in Soho and Vic you can elect Carol Goult for Labour on Thursday. This new joke Labour candidate has entered an Individual Voluntary Agreement to avoid being made personally bankrupt! This means she nearly went bust but her creditors accepted a reduction in the debt payable by instalments instead. Although she has been unable to manage her own finances Carol "The Debtor" wants to have a say in running (or ruining) the lives of good Sandwell folk. Bristnall - it is pay back time but this one is down to you!

You couldn't make it up. And I haven't.

If you have evidence of possible corruption at SMBC phone the police Regional Fraud Team on 0121 251 2175 - DS Wayne Haynes & Team.

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

thesandwellskidder@gmail.com

FOI REQUEST 04/05/15:

It is apparent that Sandwell Council started contracting with First Personnel in or around February/March 2013. 

1. Please disclose the internal documentation relating to First Personnel's approval as a supplier to SMBC;

2. Please supply copies of First Personnel's invoices to SMBC from 1st February, 2013 to 30th August, 2014;

3. Please confirm - with full details if applicable - any direct contact between SMBC staff and Lucy Cashmore and/or Charlotte Horton of First Personnel from 1st February, 2013 to 30th August, 2014.

I will meet reasonable photocopying charges - if pre-agreed - for the copy invoices.

Keeping Up with the Joneses!

DUE TO AN ONGOING LEGAL DISPUTE, AN OBVIOUSLY COMEDIC REFERENCE TO JAN BRITTON HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY REDACTED. 

Sandwell's Labour dictatorship has been good and bad to the Joneses of Wednesbury - Cllrs Ian, Olwen and Stephen. But mostly good.....

Before we look at this grim bunch it is worth noting again the way the malignant cancer of Labour control has spread through the Borough so that they have a Stasi-like grip on all that goes on. There are bodies that undoubtedly do good work in the Borough for the best of reasons and yet prostitute themselves to the "Party" for ridiculously small amounts of money. Nowhere is this better seen than in the pathetic individuals queuing up to tug the forelock and receive their "Christmas Dinner" money from their "socialist" masters.

Every organisation which takes the Labour shilling is expected to toe the line once they have opened their legs or else they are likely to lose the pathetic sums  they have sold themselves for. And Labour are always willing to get the cheque book out to buy ever increasing influence to maintain the North Korean-modelled regime.

With the larger organisations, Labour force recipients of the taxpayers' largesse to accept a representative on their boards so that they can exercise yet further control. Thus, the Council's "Chief Executive" (lol) Jan Britton - "xxx xxxxx xxxxxxx" - has been placed on the Board of Sandwell College as part of the bent Public deal; Cllr Simon Hackett - "Two Homes" - is supposed to be in charge of the disastrous Labour Children's Services but sits on the Board of The Albion Foundation who get sod all from WBAFC but shed loads of money from the taxpayer and even a small registered charity like BUDS - in receipt of grants from Labour - now has TWO Councillors (Piper and Gavan) on a Board of just seven.

Another worrying feature of Sandwell life - of which more anon - are the number of bodies who call themselves "not for profit community organisations" who then seem to receive public money without any accountability whatsoever and without producing any accounts for ordinary people like us to see. Some of these bodies also take money direct from the public claiming it is for "charitable" purposes and yet do not say where the money actually went. Regular readers will be well aware of my posts about "Postman Prat" - Cllr Tony Meehan - and "The Friends of Fudgestock". Take a look at the letter I send Fudgy by recorded delivery on 30th July, 2014. I am still awaiting a reply!

http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/fudgestock-letter-to-fudgy.html

Fudgy's alleged organisation received taxpayers money from his Labour comrades and held "bucket" collections etc raising cash at events but he refuses point blank to account for the cash. I wrote three times to the New Cross Hospital who were supposed to have been one of the beneficiaries but they were unable to confirm receipt of any donation. Perhaps it was made under a different name but the public deserves to me told. Incidentally, Postman Prat - who lied about owning his own house on his original SMBC Register of Interests - used to call himself a "trustee" of "The Friends of Fudgestock" but has now downgraded himself to "volunteer". Where did the money go? Councillor - where ARE the accounts?

Of course, the most egregious example of this sort of thing is the Three Degrees Statue Fund which is actually meant to be a PRIVATE project. See blogs passim and to come (Labour have delayed my further Freedom of Information request on this from early March which is now overdue. Do you think they might be waiting until the election is over? I have written to Jan Britton requesting the reasons for the delay).

If you look at the social media of sundry Labour Councillors in Wednesbury you will see that they are constantly promoting "Wednesbury Celebrates" ("WC" - !) and by constant reference to Wednesbury Town Hall the lay person may assume that this is actually a Labour Council-run project. But, again, WC describes itself as a "community association". If you go to its website - wednesburycelebrates.org.uk - you will find various pictures of councillors but nothing whatsoever about the legal constitution of the association, who runs it or, most importantly, the accounts. It seems to have become the sole booking agency for events at the Town Hall and takes cash for tickets direct from the public. In the financial year just gone it also received £5,500 from us taxpayers via Sandwell Labour. I think the folk of Wednesbury are entitled to full information about this body as public money is going in, eh readers?

Happily. we do know where some of the public money is going back out from WC as Labour Cllrs Ian and Olwen Jones state that their "son's partner is employed as sports co-ordinator there"! Lets us hope that the salary is a reasonable one!

The website also features references to something called the "5 Star Performance Academy" which appears to be connected to yet another mysterious "community association" the "5 Star Community Association". Happily Cllrs Ian and OIwen Jones declare that their son, Robert, is "Principal" of the former (is it a private enterprise?) and "secretary" of the latter. No doubt all the booking arrangements are conducted "at arm's length".

You would think from all this that Wednesbury Celebrates is a quasi-charitable organisation desperate in these austere time to raise as much cash as possible on top of the enforced £5,500 "donation" from us taxpayers. And yet Cllr Olwen Jones wants to use the organisations funds to raise monies for the ridiculous PRIVATE statue project in West Bromwich and not Wednesbury! Is this allowable under the constitution? Do the anonymous "trustees" authorise giving their funds out of the town to Jim Cadman's dodgy scheme? Here is what Olwen said on Facebook. Ask her about it in the last days of canvassing:

 I like the way she refers to "OUR" raffle money! And who the f*ck is "Cecil Regis"?????

(Just in passing, WC also hire out 2 caravans at Borth and Clarach Bay. Not sure whether Olwen had been on the vin rouge herself when she took to Facebook the other night but she referred to the latter as "claret" bay!)

Cllr Olwen was, of course, employed by Sandwell Council back in the 1990's but their unreasonable conduct caused her mental illness (!) and she successfully sued them. The case went to appeal and the Council lost so that she was awarded £157,541. How strange then that she should become a Councillor herself in a Labour Council where bullying and harassment continue to this day. Perhaps she has chatted with her Councillor husband about the harassment of my wife? Perhaps she has talked to some of the employees who phone me to tell me that morale is at rock bottom and that they are scared to speak out as it would inevitably lead to dire consequences (and, of course, to phone The Skidder using a SMBC phone is a "capital" offence).

Olwen's son Stephen is also standing for the Council this week in Princes End. I was standing a few feet away from him last year in the Council chamber when this childish prat made a gross display of disrespect during the one-minute silence following the death of Councillor Docker - making comic gestures of wiping away tears etc. Nice man!

Fortunately, Cllr Ian Jones is not up for election this time round which is fortunate as he would not be able to stand anyway as he placed himself (with Cllr Hussain) in voluntary administrative suspension with the Labour Party. He cannot stand for election until this is rescinded nor attend "Labour Group". He (like Hussain again) has stood down from Labour's joke "Cabinet" to "clear his name" although it is still a mystery what the allegations against him actually are? It is said by the press that it was something to do with the Bog-gate Scandal (a Skidder exclusive story). But what?

Certainly other Labour Councillors like Costigan and his own wife, Olwen, previously sought to involve themselves in the use of the former bogs at the aptly-named Shambles:

Olwen fully recovered from her 1990's agoraphobia?

but the only publicly-known involvement of Ian was when he went on BBC local radio and lied to Adrian Goldberg about the valuation report on the three blogs involved. He crazily lied that the valuation had been done AFTER the secret sales of the three sites which was errant nonsense. I went on to prove this was a lie via a Freedom of Information request but when I personally confronted Jones with this he still didn't have the b*lls to admit it. He gallantly blamed hard-working SMBC staff instead who he alleged had supplied an "inaccurate briefing paper". (Even this shows he is prepared to parrot whatever he is told to say no matter how ludicrous it might be!)

So come on Ian, Olwen and Stephen - tell us - and your potential voters - exactly what has been going on?

I don't know how much of Olwen's compo money is left with all three of this lot claiming to be unemployed. The last available Labour Council figures (March 2014) show that excluding any pension payments Ian scored £26,386.08 from the taxpayer by way of allowances whilst Olwen had to make do with just £15,876. Idiot Boy scored slightly more - £19,371.

And so, excluding pension payments the taxpayer paid this little Wednesbury version of the "Three Degrees" just £61,633.08 in one year alone.

Of course, Ian's mystery resignation from the Cabinet will hit him in the pocket (cue Stephenesque dabbing away of crocodile tears....)

Just to finish off this "Wednesbury Round-Up", Postman Prat is working as is Cllr Bob Lloyd although the latter works for an organisation providing housing services to - yes, you guessed it - Labour Sandwell Council. The Joneses are all unemployed as are another husband and wife team of Councillors - the Hughes's.

Sandwell Labour keep piling money into sport at any cost and Peter Hughes is a trustee of Wednesbury Rugby Club which leases its ground from, er, Sandwell Council and also received a small £500 grant which Labour were bribing small clubs with last year.

Costigan is also up for re-election. She is another who uses social media to pump WC as much as possible and she is yet another of the labour army of unemployed councillors (no wonder they can't encourage business into the Borough!) One strange think about Elaine is that her apostrophe-free twitter profile used to contain a hymn of praise to the woman-bullying Labour "leader" Darren Cooper - "The Turdmeister" himself! "Hes [sic] a really great guy", she used to say but this has mysteriously disappeared! Has she joined Team Hackett for his forthcoming leadership challenge, I wonder?

And finally, in the incestuous world of Wednesbury, Labour are making great play of yet another new leisure centre being built whilst totally failing to say that the skint Council are having to BORROW the money to pay for it. Like much else they have spent on - they have mortgaged your kids - & maybe the generation after that to the hilt. It is also interesting that they thought their own Leisure Trust (where one of Labour's nominated trustees in ex-bankrupt Cllr Joanne Hadley) was unfit to run the new West Bromwich Centre (which was farmed out by the socialists to a private, profit-making company instead) but it was given the Wednesbury Centre without question as a reward for not opposing the bent Public deal.

Funny old world up Wednesbury way.....

If you have evidence of possible corruption at Sandwell Council please speak in confidence to DS Wayne Haynes and his Team on 0121 251 2175 - police Regional Fraud Team.

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

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

Confidential phone no:  07599 983737