Very shortly after this generous donation to party funds Bill went onto the asset management committee but not just as any old member - he immediately became the chair of this important body with the extra loot that goes with that!!!! Despite having no obvious talents Bill was fast-tracked to a Cabinet position.
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| The man who was going to save Lion Farm until he, er, wasn't! |
The figures on the SMBC website show that in addition to the normal allowance Bill was paid an extra £5,256.96 in municipal year 2017/2018 and a lovely £8,091.14 extra in 2018/2019. The latest figures are awaited but, as above, Billy has been in the Cabinet and will have been on another good screw.
William Thomas Gavan has persistently refused to tell The Skidder whether he is one and the same person as the generous Labour donor, William Gavan! Make of that what you will!
Carrying on our stroll down memory lane this blog also questioned why disgraced Cabinet member and legendary lothario Richard Marshall was intervening directly with SMBC staff to swing "lol" fairground pitches for Kayes Funfairs (I have physically seen internal SMBC emails). Mrs Dayna Kayes was also a Facebook friend of "Dicky". But the family is also known to William Thomas Gavan. Indeed he was dropped off at a meeting with the Kayes in Cradley Heath but, once again, he has refused to tell The Skidder what his relationship is with them.
The sudden favouritism of Kayes Funfairs meant others were losing out. The "trade body" for this industry, The Showmen's Guild (no gender-neutral nomenclature there), were suddenly and mysteriously "not involved" in negotiations regarding certain sites in Sadders. This was a mystery and I duly wrote to the Guild in 25th October, 2017 to try and find out what was going on. They declined to respond (addendum 10/05/2019 - I understand that, for reasons unknown, The Guild have no trace of receiving my email). By happy coincidence Bill and his partner had been enjoying their hospitality just a few months beforehand! So we ask again Billy - what is your relationship with the Kayes and why were they given special treatment by Jan Britton's bent paid service?
IMPORTANT UPDATE 10/05/19 based on new information received:
1 The Kayes family have increased their coverage of events in Sandwell (and they are based in Cradley) but via normal competitive processes and always through officers of the Council and NOT councillors;
2 The Kayes family only know Richard Marshall via his involvement with the Friends of Lightwoods Park and had no direct dealing with him when he ran the leisure portfolio.
3 There is no explanation why Marshall involved himself with members of Sandwell Council staff in respect of the allocation of fairs etc. We know what he was like and how he conducted himself. We know that he intervened in matters which were none of his business. Perhaps he would like to explain what he was doing? We also know from the WhatsApp feed that he and Eling did attempt to link a competitor firm to the Kayes family with Ian Jones and "Sandwell Tories". Perhaps he was just attempting to damage that other firm as part of his and Eling's vendetta against the Jones family?
4 The Kayes family have known Bill Gavan for a very long time but have had no communication with him regarding fairground matters on behalf of themselves. No doubt Billy will make full declarations if he ever becomes involved in fairground matters although, hopefully, his cabinet days are now numbered.
5 The Kayes family pay competitive rates for all Sandwell events and seek to offer good-value entertainment for local folk. Long may that continue!
6 A number of councillors and other politicians have also attended Showmen's Guild lunches.
Returning to the original post:
In another blog I set out the 13 (yes, thirteen) companies Gavan ran which were dissolved - earning him the soubriquet "Alka Seltzer". Another person he claims to have had dealings with was involved in at least one dissolved company and the person living in his house has been involved with, at least, another 4!
In many normal councils, councillors attend events. Like him or loathe him, the likes of Albert Bore in Birmingham was assiduous in banging the drum for that City and trying to win inward investment, business and jobs. But Sandwell Labour keep mouthing Corbynist anti-business claptrap and so, generally, no-one wants to deal with them (some charlatans do in the knowledge that the Council is riddled with corruption). The last annual statutory meeting to discuss business rates did not attract a single business person but then which wealth creators would turn up to be harangued and harassed by moronic capitalism-hating lefties?
Unbelievably, despite the incredible number of failed businesses he was involved with the late Smethwick wife-beater, Darren Cooper, made Billy a "business ambassador"! (Squealing Eling went one better if the press is to be believed (!) since Mo Rouf has also claimed that title!)
If I may digress a little before the punchline, bent Sandwell Labour fell in love with the ruinously expensive Private Finance Initiative (PFI). This was a very, very, expensive way to fund new schools and housing (eg Riverside) in Sadders. Basically eg a school was built (with the builder being backed by big City institutions) and then run by the builder (or someone who bought the ongoing contract off them) for the next 30 years. You will have read all the horror stories in the press where these rapacious bastards have been charging taxpayers £90 to change a light-bulb etc.
Sandwell Labour loved this idea of having your cake now and being able to show off new buildings whilst shafting the thick scum in Sandwell and their obese children for the next three decades. They originally did a deal for school-building with Vinci Construction and its financial partners but the comrades (including the alleged "left-wingers" like Jedward and Piper) have had a longstanding love affair with the ultra-capitalist Interserve Plc of Reading. Thus for reasons unknown they ditched Vinci for school PFI's in favour of their new mates. Leaving aside other deals they did with Interserve (including the bent Public deal where they gave them a £6 million contract without putting it out to tender) you taxpayers are on the hook for years to come even though Interserve recently went spectacularly bust. The disastrous contracts live on....
One might imagine that even dimwitted Labour would realise the error of their ways but no. As soon as another white elephant trumpeted its presence Eling (before his demise) and his cronies were committing local morons to more huge debts ie via the new Commonwealth [sic] Games paddling pool. This blog pointed out that it was an obsession with Labour to have a new leisure centre in Smethwick. If, and I repeat "if", such a facility was genuinely required you imagine that a normal council would do due diligence and work out where the best location for it would be. But time was of the essence for the comrades if they were to join in this farce and "deliver" some swimming and diving events in 2022. Thus Jan Britton's dimwitted in-house experts looked at 9 sites across Smethwick whilst deliberately excluding brownfield sites elsewhere like The Junction at Oldbury. Instead of any sort of genuine attempt to match the alleged need for a centre to where it was most needed Sandwell looked at nine sites right across Sh*tty Smethwick. They actually tried to buy one off a third party - the GKN Sports Ground - which suggests that was the most sensible [sic] location.That fell through and so they looked at eight other sites - all greenfield and all Council-owned. The sole concern was forcing a site through planning. How could the new centre possibly have been put where it was allegedly most needed when the comrades were looking at sites as geographically-distant as Londonderry (the eventual choice) and Warley Woods? This is, of course, all b*llocks, and the only thought that has gone into it is the alleged "kudos" of having the post-Imperial Games somewhere - ANYWHERE - in Smethwick! This is yet another reason why the whole thing will be a financial disaster.
In not so olden times Sandwell should have put such deals out to tender (though they didn't always do so which suggests the possibility of financial irregularity in the process). I am not a procurement expert but, if I understand matters correctly, certain "Frameworks" can be set up by, eg councils, for the provision of certain services. Thus, if a supplier, is on the Framework list it can sometimes be used without going through the whole rigmarole of tendering (which, as we are still in the EU means advertising for contractors across Europe). It seems that middlemen/women have stepped in and effectively set up standard "frameworks" which they say are EU compliant and which councils and the like can go to as a "one-stop" shop. Step forward "Scape Group Limited" which says it is a "public sector organisation". It is, in fact a profit-making company owned by some local councils and distributing profits to them. In the last accounts it made an operating profit of over £3m on a turnover of £12m.
It looks like Sandwell may have used Scape as they are in such a terrible rush to get things done and one imagines they have paid handsomely for the privilege. If this sort of thing is to be repeated then will Jan Britton be SAVING us all some money "lol" by making staff redundant at SMBC who are being paid by us taxpayers to do the job Scape have been given here?
Scape claim to work for a number of big contracting firms and so the question arises as to how Sandwell chose Wates Construction, via Scape, to build the paddling pool and not any of the others. The two Councillors - both Tom Watson puppets - forcing this crap project through are Paul "The Cipher" Moore and Alka Seltzer himself. Surely the choice of Wates was not influenced by this 2015 event:
I think it would cost serious dosh for me to spend an evening with that boring pair. It looks like Wates may have had to, er, wait but that their £250 wining and dining our boys was well-spent and has yielded a multi-million pound reward!
It is said that Alka is in the crosshairs of a number of comrades who want this ludicrous blowhard off the Cabinet under the new regime. We shall see if Watson can do a better job of saving him than he did with The Squealer "lol"! We shall Wates and see what happens....
[Ps thanks for the anonymous letter from Wednesbury today. I am onto it!]
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