I know that some employees have written, emailed or phoned and then been surprised when their valuable info has not appeared in print. But, like any journalist, I have to be very careful and check things out with my team very carefully (even then things can go badly wrong and I stand on the verge of bankruptcy thanks to a clever QC!!!!) Sometimes it is easy to spot the con. Sometimes allegations are supported by documents or other verification. But in the grey area in-between I have to try and back the story up by patient investigation.
And don't forget that the sleazy Labour Council itself has a track record of simply lying to me and, for example, refusing to hand-over documentation via Freedom of Information requests etc in an attempt to bury bad news.
Readers of this blog will recall the Head of Legal finally being forced to hand-over video evidence without telling me that a small section had been edited out. There were episodes such as me being urged to contact a gravedigger who had worked for our old friend Paul Reeves's private company and it being a set up so that my call was recorded and then passed by a union rep to one of the Council's most notorious solicitors!
Addendum 19/06/20: The plot thickens as a Mr Alisdair Morrison was involved in this affair which is very mysterious as he works for STAY at bent Sandwell Council?
Addendum 19/06/20: The plot thickens as a Mr Alisdair Morrison was involved in this affair which is very mysterious as he works for STAY at bent Sandwell Council?
Recently an anonymous source alleged that an employee of interest (who had been named as being allegedly involved in the stolen tractor affair) had slapped a female employee's arse in the office. Curiously someone backed this up and another source had hearsay evidence of the "incident". I am now assured by David Stevens, the Council's replacement for Britton who refuses to confirm or deny his alleged business interests, that this was all totally untrue. (This was a fairly sophisticated attempt to set me up since a story was "put about" so that it was not just the tale of the original mischievous informant.)
Some of you good folk also (wrongly) think I conceal stories because of affiliations with certain persons. I recently received a letter (always a good safe way of getting in contact - address below) alleging that I had not written about the Dave Haywood affair due to my purported closeness to, wait for it, Cllr Liam Preece! Firstly, I did mention Dave's curious and seemingly unwarranted departure in this blog but was met by a wall of silence. "Red" Yvonne Davies, the current Labour Leader of bent Sandwell, will tell you that Cooper and Eling gagged all departing employees with confidentiality agreements which she and her comrades very willing allowed to happen. I did attempt to speak with Mr Haywood without success. And I was aware of the seeming lack of activity by his union when management were doing their worst! Secondly, I was unaware of the identity of some of the key players in the saga and some of the intricacies of the saga. Further info very welcome! Thirdly, I do not have a close or any other sort of relationship with Cllr Preece (whose weakness and grovelling to the likes of Twatson have greatly disappointed me.)
Information occasionally comes to me very late. This is often because some folk are so scared of the bullying by a Labour Council that they wait until they have left before spilling the beans. Alas, this does tend to make it harder for me to investigate matters....
One interesting story came to me belatedly from various employees - some of whom even gave their names. Unfortunately their employers say they too were lying, presumably in an effort to cause me trouble. I was told that Britton's bent paid service wanted to highlight the problem of fly-tipping and so they themselves dumped rubbish in the Wellman Building car park (opposite the Kremlin) which was duly photographed.
Further, the Sandwell Council van depositing the rubbish hit the metal height barrier going into the car park and sustained damage. Informants alleged that this too was covered up with a manager saying the van had been damaged by "yobboes" whilst parked-up overnight.
Where employees have been too scared - with good reason - to use the whistleblowing procedure themselves I have anonymised their complaints and made them for them. I did so here and now Neil Cox, an employee flying-up the greasy pole entirely on merit and not due to his close association with Messrs Stevens and Lackenby (actually I have heard good things about him which is rare in matters Sandwell), has investigated.
It seems the incident happened way back on 6th January, 2015 at 8.30pm. (The time is given even though SMBC say there was no CCTV of the incident.) The investigation states:
"It is clear that an incident took place involving a fridge being left on the car park of the Wellman building by the Facilities Management Team which also resulted in damage to a Sandwell MBC vehicle.
On the following day the Manager of the Facilities Management Team, on becoming aware of the incident, issued instructions to remove the fridge immediately and made the Officer involved that their actions were not acceptable and reminded them [sic] of the expectations around their future conduct."
But it is denied that there was any lying about how the vehicle damage occurred and it is said that the vehicle collision report (which has not been supplied to me) confirms that the vehicle was damaged entering the car park.
The "Governance Team" of SMBC stuck two fingers-up to me effectively saying that that my informants are liars: "on the basis of the details outlined above it appears the information you have been provided with in relation to this matter are inaccurate."
But hang on a minute. Apart from the business about the cause of the vehicle damage there are some more questions to answer here! Various people named Richard Amos as the boss of Facilities Management involved in this and he describes himself as "Facilities Management Premise [sic] Lead" since April, 2014. But whoever the "Manager" referred to above is, he or she seems very lenient! Is it normal for staff to unload fridges overnight into the Council car park and to damage a Council vehicle costing taxpayers money for repair and simply get a ticking off? Given the vicious bullying of the Britton regime this seems unlikely to say the least.
And Cox's investigation does not say WHY one or two members of staff dumped a fridge in the car park at 8.30pm? Cox appears to be saying employees are lying about this being a scam to highlight fly-tipping. The only other likely scenario would be for the one of two members of staff who did this wanting to use the van for illicit personal activities overnight but surely having damaged the vehicle they would have tried to recover the fridge before fessing up to management? Who was the dickhead driver (and mate?) who crashed into the barrier?
The wording of the Cox report is ambiguous as it refers to the "Officer" (singular) who dumped the fridge getting a slap on the wrist but also refers to "them". My informants say there were two in the van. I am sure if there was only one Amos or whoever it was gave him/her suitable manual-handling training "lol"!
Red Yvonne's team don't say why any of this happened and don't say how much the damage cost to repair. She has recently been on Twitter saying that anyone caight fly-tipping in Sadders will be fined up to £400 but staff can apparently act like this with impunity? Is Red saying it was the employees own fridge being dumped or someone else's?
I sat in a room with her and Stevens when she said there would not be a return to the disastrous behaviour of the Britton era but added the caveat that I would get "anything I was entitled to". Which is sh*t like the Cox "investigation" above shows (plus she is spending thousands on fighting Freedom of Information Tribunal cases.) She is carrying on exactly where Cooper and The Squealer left off....
College's Labour Party Con
Recently I wrote again about the bent deal whereby the sleazy Sandwell College agreed to rent space from the Labour Party as part of the fraudulent deal to gift them The Public building rent-free. This week they have served a planning notice for change of use to make the building an "education centre" in addition to The College opposite AND the huge Public building! This looks like Labour being skint after the Corbyn catastrophe last December and trying to raise dosh but how can it be right that the taxpayer is funding a political party? Why aren't the new Tory MP's all over this?
All Hands On Deck!
Red Yvonne's team have delayed a response to a FOI request about some of her bizarre claims during the current crisis which also included my question about the anecdotal claim of significant abstenteeism by staff during the Covid crisis (on full pay, of course.) I'll let you know the response when it eventually comes. Yet news reaches me of all the stops being pulled out to rush through the sale of a council house under "right to buy" to a local resident aged in her nineties.
Clearly an urgent priority - especially as I am told the resident is the mother of a Labour Councillor..... Anyone got a name and anymore on this please?
P*ss-Take
This guy got imprisoned for taking a leak (when public bogs are closed.) Compare and contrast the thousands of pounds of OUR money bent Labour have spent covering-up Cllr Simon "The Sandwell Slasher" Hackett's p*ss in a bus-shelter!
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