Touching a Nerve!

This is a master class from Sandwell Council on how to take the piss out of the Freedom of Information (FoI) provisions AND protect the dimwitted Labour "leader", Darren Cooper.

Here is a very simple question I asked Jan Britton's* collapsing circus via a FoI request on 24th September, 2015:

"1. Please state an estimated total of man/woman hours spent by SMBC staff in preparation of the so-called "Leader's Blog" in the 12 months immediately preceding the date of this request;

2. Please state the estimated total number of man/woman hours spent recently by SMBC staff on the preparation of the Leader's speech [sic] on the occasion of the appalling terrorist murder of an SMBC employee in Tunisia."

Of course, we all know that even though the unemployed Cooper has time on his hands he is, in fact, incapable of even stringing 140 letters into a meaningful sequence in a tweet, let alone actually writing a blog or a speech. All his stuff is written by drones in SMBC's press office for whose dubious output the taxpayer - you and I - shell out over HALF A MILLION POUNDS a year!

The Smethwick Simpleton Strikes Again!

Cooper recently basked in the coverage he obtained following the horrific crime in Tunisia and press office are still milking this for all it is worth. Of course, on the night of the atrocity Cooper was out with vicious Brittan-baiter Tom Watson and unavailable for comment so that SMBC put up, er, Mahboob Hussain as it's official spokesperson despite the fact that he has voluntarily suspended himself from the Cabinet and the Labour Party to "clear his name" following unspecified allegations of "irregularities".

And Cooper still makes the untruthful claim that "The Leader's Blog" is "his" which is, of course, b*llocks. But Jan Britton is happy to perpetuate this lie for his master and advertise the effort on the home page of the SMBC website. Here it is today:

Now here's a funny thing. In the Pyongyang-style "Secret State of Sadwell", the Cult of Cooper must be maintained at all cost and so my request was mysteriously removed from the normal FoI procedure and,well within the normal timescale for reply, I received a response from no less a person than the Assistant Chief Executive - Melanie Dudley - on 2nd October. Cooper and Watson groupie Dudley informed me that the staff in the HALF A MILLION POUNDS + a year press office are not obliged to account for how they spend their time despite this huge cost to the taxpayer. Unlike most well-run organisations Jan Britton's cowboy/girl outfit can do as they please and so they keep no records of how long they spend tweeting about dog-sh*t and producing the other excrement that Cooper claims as his own etc. [Now see addendum below]

This, of course, is also a great way of avoiding having to reply to FoI requests! A publicly funded and - allegedly - democratic council can simply fail to keep records at all and this will defeat the Act.

I duly applied for an internal review on 6th October and, once again, the normal procedure was bucked and on 14th October I received an unusually prompt reply with a "restricted" security rating (!) from the charmless Director of Governance [sic] Neeraj Sharma. She confirmed Dudley's comments that press office didn't bother to keep any records of how they spend their time. In my original, very simple, request (above) I had also requested an estimate of time spent if no record was available. Sharma has quoted the law (and appears to be correct) in saying that even though it would be a very simple thing to do, preparing an estimate would constitute "creating a new document" and there is no obligation in law for SMBC to do this.

Of course, in a full Council meeting  not so long ago the clownish Cooper laughably heralded a new era of "openness" in the sordid affairs of SMBC just as a pig flew over Freeth Street. Yet although it would take just minutes to find the information requested - ie Dudley or Sharma could just ask the real authors to estimate the time they spent on this stuff at taxpayers' expense - they will not do so. 

Of course, a lot of this stuff has the benefit of being overt propaganda for The Labour Party and yet is being prepared at public expense..... But we will never know the details.

Here are just eight (of many more) examples of Cooper's blatant lying (one from yesterday) which SMBC have brought out the big guns to attempt to cover-up (check the last one!):

Wouldn't it be great, eh readers, if he would "write" a blog on where he got the £30k from for his house extension?

Still, someone has to hide the truth about dimwitted Daz's deficiencies although the egomaniacal fantasist himself thinks he is clever and likes to take the mickey out of the thick people in Sandwell who vote Labour. In my blog of 21st June, 2015, "Cooper - 'Conman Communicator?'" (currently part-redacted due to attempted censorship by West Midlands Police to protect the Chair of the West Midlands Police and Crime Panel - matter ongoing) I pointed out that Cooper is urinating on Sandwell folk by pretending that he is capable of reading the daily newspapers each day and producing a digest of left-wing-biased "news". In the post (herewith):

http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/cooper-conman-communicator.html

I exposed the fact that the class dunce was not, in FACT, doing this at all but "borrowing" a digest prepared by local MP and ex-public schoolboy, John Spellar. Cooper has, for a considerable period of time, flagrantly passed this stuff off as his own. He continues to do so to this day and in his usual gormless-style has mocked local folk about it:

Only Wolverhampton is worse than Sandwell as a place to live in the whole of Britain according to a new survey this week but, apart from a small band of insurgents, the people of the Borough like their politicians to be like tomato juice - "red" and thick. How else can one explain why an admittedly small percentage of them keep voting for people like Carol Goult (a debtor subject to an IVA), Tony "Fudgy" Meehan (so thick he forgot he owned his house) and the ex-bankrupt, Joanne Hadley?

In the latter case there is a mysterious Twitter account which purports to be that of "the gob" Hadley herself but whose style bears an uncanny resemblance to those operated by the boneheaded "leader" and his Unite the Union sidekick, Brian Rickers. The troll Hipkiss whom Cooper describes as his "guru" regularly featured via his now suspended account. Much traffic on the account involves these parties plus Cllr Paul Sandars and, now, Hipkiss's latest abusive account.

This is the sort of stuff being put out - allegedly in the gobby ex-bankrupt's name:

1 One of the stunts of Cooper's troll network is to heap praise on the Great Helmsman himself thus this from "Joanne":

2  The illiteracy of the Sage of Smethwick is "extreamly" contagious. Here "she" is on one of Cooper's favourite themes and also twice copying in Hipkiss's latest troll account:

3  Here "she" is playing the game of "follow my leader" enjoyed by all the venal voting fodder in the Sandwell Labour ranks. This was Cooper praising Hipkiss via his previous troll account just before Twitter finallys suspended it and repeated by "her":

4   As above, the populace of Sandwell seem to like their politicians as rough as a badger's tool but if this unfeminine outburst addressed to Unite's lying** local rep in the style of the "leader" himself is really the work of the ex-bankrupt Trustee of multi-million pound guzzling Sandwell Leisure Trust, then the political class [sic] of the Borough really has hit a new low.....

It probably doesn't matter about Sandwell anymore as, politically, it seems to be a lost cause but the rest of the region need to know just how appalling Cooper really is before the, er, "historical" day dawns..... Quite why areas like Solihull should wish to be dragged down by this lot into their cesspit is incomprehensible!

What a t*****!

And finally, hot off the press, one from this very evening addressed also to his troll. All I can say is, "well quite":

Addendum - 01/11/15 - a correspondent this morning has pointed out that two of the very top people at SMBC say there is no time management or other assessment of the bloated press office and so how can Britton show that his shambolic outfit is getting "best value" from them as required by the Local Government Act 1999? SMBC's failure to have press office keep records appears to be a clear breach of its duty to "secure continuous improvement in the way its functions are exercised, having regard to a combination of economy, efficiency and effectiveness". Perhaps Britton should outsource this alleged "service" and see if the taxpayer can get a better deal elsewhere?

* Jan Britton purports to be SMBC's "Chief Executive".

** For just some examples, please see:

http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/labour-leader-unite-officer-harass-arts.html

Remember that you can still speak to the Regional Fraud team if you have evidence of possible wrongdoing by Sandwell Council. Phone DS Wayne Haynes and his team in confidence on 0121 251 2175.

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