Darren Cooper and the M6 Toll

It is common knowledge that the leader [sic] of the Sandwell Dictatorship, Darren Cooper, was at the back of the queue when the brains were dished out and, once again, his intellectual deficit and chronic naiviety were on display for all to see on Midlands Today (MT) yesterday.

Cooper has ditched his bouncer-chic look again and appeared clean-shaven in an interview outside Birmingham (not "Sadwell") Council House. This blog once exposed that his office had deliberately ordered that his Labour Council's contract and procurement rules should be overridden so that us taxpayers could pay £10,800 to ex- Birmingham Labour Councillor "Super" - as Cooper calls him - Steve Bedser. This was alleged to be for "mission impossible" ie to improve Cooper's communication skills and body language by means of £450 a time executive coaching "sessions". This charade finished when I exposed it and clearly the money was wasted since Cooper remains an inarticulate speaker with a propensity to finish most sentences or points with "yeah?". (One crept into the MT interview despite editing).

(Of course, Cooper cannot write his own blogs and speeches and taxpayers fork out over half a million pounds per annum for the Sadwell Council "press office" to, inter alia, wipe his arse for him. He has tried to clean up his notorious Twitter account - associating with trolls who do all the nasty stuff - but his seemingly erudite tweets are also a con having been lifted from a daily newsletter prepared by local MP, John Spellar).

The above is the actual authorisation direct from Cooper's office to pay his Labour mate £10,800 of OUR money - Bedser is a "bespoke supplier" who was "directly engaged via leader's office". Of course, Jan Britton, the Chief Executive lets Darren do as he pleases and so this was all signed off by SMBC staff Lindsey Rogers and N. Aldridge without question.

The local political establishment has deemed that we should be forced to have an extra tier of expensive governance imposed upon us - the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA). Technically this body is not even in existence yet but Cooper has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for it as he sees it as a vehicle to further his political career now that even Corbyn's Labour can't stomach him as an MP. Despite his manifest personal shortcomings and his close association with vicious social media troll accounts he is, incredibly, the deputy chair of the "shadow" WMCA and was put up yesterday to speak to the media.

We have been led to believe by the establishment that the new WMCA will simply be a body coordinating the transport and economic interests of all the wildly disparate members (from the leafy and affluent avenues of Solihull to the dog-sh*t strewn streets of "Sadwell"). Oh no, the politicians say, this won't be like the old West Midlands County Council frittering away public money on grandiose but hare-brained schemes. Yet before it even exists, Cooper was up yesterday saying they are looking at buying the M6 Toll Road!

The M6 Toll is privately run and global financial giants UBS are apparently considering a two BILLION pound bid. Cooper says that WMCA want to join with some "partners" to buy it and then the idea is to make it FREE to use ie not generating ANY income to actually pay back the 2 billion investment! Quite why any serious investor would want to become involved in such a ludicrous scheme is not explained by The Sage of Smethwick.

The new Corbynista who runs Birmingham City Council, hard-left John Clancy (who has the top job despite despite never having run a tap before) has been muttering about raiding local authority pension funds for "investment"  money and, lo, Cooper mentioned yesterday that "some of the pension funds that have been talked about" may wish to "invest" in this crazy idea. (The Trustees of pension funds have a legal duty to maximise returns for their members and not to give multi-million sums to the likes of Clancy and Cooper).

But to cap it all, Cooper's pathetic naiviety on commercial realities (coloured by his political "views" and the wisdom of his pet troll "#guru", the purportedly mentally-ill Andrew Hipkiss) were there for all to see in his absurd and meaningless peroration which MT put up even though it doesn't actually make sense:

"This is an awful lot of money YEAH that has gone to banks. Maybe the banks owe us a favour on this one?"

This errant nonsense was not questioned by the MT "reporter", Bob Hockenhall, but Cooper has many friends at the BBC in Birmingham and perhaps the editors are responsible for this apparently slack effort?

What is "this" money that has gone into "the banks". What is he talking about? Which banks and what has this got to do with the M6 Toll road?

Does Darren Cooper seriously think the WMCA will survive thanks to "favours" from unspecified banks? What planet is he on? Which banks does he think will ignore the interests of their shareholders to finance yet another Labour vanity project? Come on Cooper - let's have some answers!

No doubt there is plenty more of this horse sh*t to come. YEAH, watch this space.......

The new Metro-Mayor?

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - COMMUNITY NEWS - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!

(PROUD TO BE TROLLED BY DARREN COOPER AND ANDREW HIPKISS!)

email  thesandwellskidder@gmail.com                 facebook   Julian Saunders

Confidential phone no: 07599 983737

WHY NOT JOIN "THE SANDWELL SKIDDER READERS' GROUP" ON FACEBOOK?

Black Deeds at Black Patch?

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post questioning why Labour Sandwell (aka "Sadwell") Council were trying to stitch up yet another private deal without opening it up to any sort of competition AND to destroy parts of the historic Black Patch community open space to boot:

http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/kitchener-streetblack-patch-park-bent.html

News reaches me that someone called "Nick" from SMBC has been proactively involved in trying to sort out a "deal" for "Smart Waste Company Limited" to build on the Park plus some ancillary property deals. It seems no other party has been allowed into this process. (Judicial Review anyone?)

Of course, if "Nick" is our old friend from so many of the recent Sadwell Labour scandals, Nick Bubalo (£108,219.00 per annum), and he is able to swing a deal that will obviously be very helpful when he takes his "regeneration" hat off and puts his "head of planning" hat on to decide on the, er, same application! (Of course, Bubalo recently made an application on behalf of his own Labour Council to place giant advertising signs on the greenbelt at Ray Hall Lane which, you will not be surprised to know, the cunning comrades waved through in record time!)

Two directors of Smart Waste are Kuldip Singh Wouhra and Paul Deep Wouhra - both also directors of East End Foods. I am told that East End have, mysteriously, been involved in some meetings about the deal which is all very odd!

Are "Nick" and East End about to put one up our rear end? All info welcome please!

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - COMMUNITY NEWS - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!

email   thesandwellskidder@gmail.com             facebook  Julian Saunders

confidential phone no: 07599 983737                  

WHY NOT JOIN THE FACEBOOK "SANDWELL SKIDDER READERS' GROUP"?

What The College Tried to Hide - Technical Blog

This is a technical blog for those who understand College funding. I am going to need some help from Skidder readers here as I am not sure what it is in the following minutes of the sleazy "Sadwell" College's Board of Governors which they were so anxious to keep secret. If I am missing something significant, please let me know!

Perhaps I should also say that the College only produced these minutes via the Freedom of Information Act after I had been forced to go through the request and internal review stages and then appealed to the Office of the Information Commissioner. Recently these tosspots were then moaning about the cost of replying to FOI requests. There is a simple answer - just comply with the Act in the first place and stop trying to keep stuff secret for fallacious reasons!

What follows relates to another so-called "partnership" with the basket-case Labour Council which, of course, forced the College to take the person purporting to be SMBC's "Chief Executive", Jan Britton, onto its Board as part of the bent Public deal. You will see from the second minute set out below that even though Britton was riding two horses (and this was nothing to do with his size) the College Board discounted any conflict of interest in letting him take part in discussions on a contract involving a party he runs [sic]. There's "arm's-length negotiation" for you!

It seems there is some scam afoot to try and screw some more money out of the Skills Funding Agency which is now the remit of Tory Business Secretary, Sajid Javid. Happily, his top cop brother, Basit, is also on the College's Board........

First minute - "special meeting" of 16th April, 2015:

And here is the follow up at the meeting on 11th May, 2015:

###################################

If you are on facebook why not join the Sandwell Skidder Readers' Group?

Please email or FB message to join!

###################################

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - COMMUNITY NEWS - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!

(PROUD TO BE TROLLED BY DARREN COOPER & ANDREW HIPKISS)

email  thesandwellskidder@gmail.com                  facebook  Julian Saunders

Confidential phone no: 07599 983737                    censored by twitter

What is Jan Trying to Hide?

TOYS OUT OF THE PRAM!!!!!

Not long ago, someone leaked Jan Britton's blog attack on social workers to the Halesowen News and to The Skidder. Britton is, of course, the man who purports to be "Sadwell" Council's highly-paid "Chief Executive". (Happily the brilliant Private Eye Magazine also picked up on the story)

A former Councillor pointed out to me that the blog was seemingly prepared on "work's time" and possibly with the assistance of other members of SMBC staff. It was then disseminated via the publicly-funded SMBC computer system. Ergo, the blog was "public" and susceptible to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, 2000. I duly made a request under the Act for copies of all Britton's blogs since April, 2015 - something that could be very easily supplied with the press of a couple of buttons. I can do no better than to disclose in full the extraordinary reply I have just received. What  do you think readers?

I have applied for an internal review and also set that out below but would ask you to kindly  read the following short note first.

##########################################

Note to Skidder Readers

Darren Cooper and his troll, Andrew Hipkiss, have managed to get my political Twitter account permanently suspended. You will know that Cooper has been trying to silence this blog from "day one". The letter that forms part of this post seems to be part of the same tactic. (Plenty of sh*t, Sherlock!)

Bringing Sadwell into further disrepute......

Some folk are putting the blog up on Twitter and please feel free to do the same but until I can resolve issues with Twitter I cannot post it myself. I am, however, appointing a public relations firm to assist with the dissemination of this community news service and so please await further announcements!

In the meantime you can read the blog via "Julian Saunders" on Facebook and also join "The Sandwell Skidder Readers' Group" - a secret group on Facebook - but please note that the Cooper troll network are likely to try to infiltrate that Group at some point and so your identity may NOT be secure.

The Skidder (and Skidder team) will not be silenced! 

###########################################

Here is SMBC's FOI Reply and attack on me:

And here is my reply of 9th February, 2016:

"I am patently not a vexatious applicant as my earlier FoI's have shown. Important information - which you have attempted to shield from public view - has been flushed out.

As of today, my well-respected blog relating to the Council has had nearly 340,000 views and it is an important means of letting the people of Sandwell see what is really going on.

The fact that you do not like the style or content of my blog is irrelevant to the operation of Freedom of Information Act 2000.

For the record, I have not made applications via a variety of persona. I previously used What Do They Know to make requests in my own name and then started making applications via this gmail account all signed "Julian Saunders". 

If anything is "vexatious" it is your personal attack on me.

In the circumstances, please take this mail as a FORMAL request for an internal review pursuant to the Act.

Julian Saunders"

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - COMMUNITY NEWS - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!

(AS TROLLED BY DARREN COOPER & ANDREW HIPKISS)

email  thesandwellskidder@gmail.com           facebook  Julian Saunders

Confidential phone no:  07599 983737             Censored by Twitter

Why not join "The Sandwell Skidder Readers' Group" on Facebook?

West "Bastards" Albion

I am happy to announce a tiny slither of good news now that the Albion Foundation has filed its accounts with the Charities Commission for the financial year ended 30th June, 2015. But blink and you will miss it!

A tiny number of WBA fans have had a go at me for writing about The Albion Foundation - a registered charity intimately linked to a rich Premier League Football Club (and one that should be even richer with the new TV deal around the corner  - assuming, of course, that we can manage to stay in the top flight). But people are misinterpreting the point I am trying to make (deliberately or otherwise). It is quite clear that The Foundation do some fantastic work and that is to be encouraged. But the Club is a private business yet gets enormous kudos and favourable coverage from involvement with the charity. That sort of "positive marketing" would not come cheap if the Club had to pay its own marketing teams or consultants for it and yet it puts a pitiful amount of actual cash into the Foundation. The situation becomes worse because it has shifted part of the burden for part-financing its own charity to us taxpayers via the w*nkers who run the Labour basket-case local, "Sadwell", Council.

Before I go on, may I just mention that of the miniscule number of folk who have had a pop at me, not one admitted to having actually paid a single penny to the charity by way of a donation! If you are going to have a go may I suggest £5 a shot to The Foundation! Please read on below the following appeal for help.....

#########################

Help Please

Does anyone have any screenshots or other copies of entries made on WBA fan sites by "Coops" - in particular the infamous "cancer" jibe?

#########################

If you look at the Foundation's website (which I would encourage you to do as you may want to get involved and help in some way) it is all in blue and white and just in case you still don't get the positive marketing message for the rich football Club the Foundation's logo spells this out:

Link to website:

http://thealbionfoundation.co.uk/

There are some cynical souls who also believe that the Club are "using" the charity to bolster its own youth development programmes (a mere £629k of the charity's money was spent on, er, "football development" last year) and that some of the Foundation's foreign trips, eg to Africa, are glorified scouting missions. Whatever the position is The Foundation, unbelievably. states that one of its main strategic principles as a charity is:

"to add value to West Bromwich Albion Football Club....."

What the f*ck.....?????? If you don't believe me take a look at page 5 of the accounts:

http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends48/0001081948_AC_20150630_E_C.pdf

And the accounts also acknowledge that the foreign trips "enabled us to expand the reach of the Foundation and the Football Club." Well they do say charity begins at home.....

The Foundation have actually managed to get some "corporate sponsors", an American (!) motor parts firm, Borg Warner, bhp design and Bache Group. You would have thought hard-nosed business folk might well have cavilled at being asked for cash when wealthy WBA were putting in sod all but there we are and, perhaps, there are signs that people are beginning to wise up as the accounts show that "sponsorship" has dropped alarmingly from £66,127 (2014) to £37,095 (2015).

Happily, the finances are rosy (no thanks to the vast majority of Baggies fans) and this is notably thanks to the likes of the Premier League and the FA who have been very generous.

Enter stage left the lunatic "leader" of Sadwell Council, Darren Cooper, who is very anxious to involve himself in anything WBA but to use OUR taxpayers' money rather than his own (see also the big shaft of taxpayers going on over the Three Degrees statue - more on this blog anon).

Despite 40 years of failing the local area, the Labour Dictatorship in Oldbury still spend our cash like inebriated matelots on "pet" projects and nothing is dearer to the heart of the egomaniacal Cooper than "The Baggies" boing, boing. Recently, the comrades were castigated yet again for the appalling state of their Children's Services Department and the Government has had to step in to try and clear up the appalling mess and to protect the most vulnerable kids in the grim Borough (kids at HIGH RISK of physical and/or sexual abuse). The Council Cabinet [sic] member currently responsible for this abortion is homelessness expert, Labour Cllr Simon "Two Homes" Hackett, and, happily, he also sits on the Board of Trustees of, er "The Albion Foundation"! Despite Labour's horrendous f*ck up with Children's Services the Express and Star reported in August, 2015 that Cooper and pals were CUTTING the budget for these poor kids by £7m!!!!

(From the Charity's website).

In December, 2015 The Foundation were happy to "give something back" to the local community by organising a disabled sports day in Oldbury with Sadwell "Adult Social Care". But they neglected to say how much they were getting from the taxpayer via the Dictatorship. And what of Labour's "Adult Social Care" - well that is failing dismally too and the E&S reported that "significant" work needed to be done to get the Council "up to scratch" in this area. In particular, the health of local Sadwell communities was much worse than the national average.

Of course, despite Labour's Stalinist grip on Sandwell for 40 years, Darren Cooper claims all this sh*t is nothing to do with Labour and all because of "Tory cuts" but he still keeps piling our money into The Foundation allegedly on projects connected to, er, Children's Service and Adult Social Care where he is simultaneously axing their funding. 

It is slightly risky just pulling figures from accounts as The Foundation's year end is 30th June (the same as the Football Club) and so the accounts are a "snapshot" of things as they stand on that date. Accordingly, a charity or company may have money in the bank on that day that is already earmarked for expenditure. Charities also prudently maintain a reserve for any "rainy day" and the accounts show that the charity always likes to hold £150,000. But as at 30th June, 2015 the actual bank balance was a stonking £452,639. With the above caveat, why are taxpayers shovelling money into an organisation with nearly half a million quid sitting in the bank?

Cooper and his comrades are specifically said in the accounts to have diverted taxpayers' cash of £74,775 to the charity as at 30th June, 2015. No wonder the charity agreed to the so-called "give back day"!

Even more incredibly, in the financial year in question, Cooper's clowns also made a payment of our hard-earned on 1st January, 2015 DIRECT to WBAFC of £7,906.40p.

Although The Foundation's accounts to 30th June, 2015 are now available those for the Football Club are not and do not have to be filed at Companies House until 31st March. Accordingly, the last accounts for The Baggies are for year ended 30th June, 2014. At present, the Club are charging £25 for an adult ticket in the BRE and, in a "sale", a mere £34.99 for an adult sleeveless shirt. In 2014 the Club had a turnover of £86,760,000 and made a clear profit AFTER TAX of £10,761,000. So did they splash the cash with "their" in-house charity and "give back" to the community. Well the good news is YES! They paid the charity a mighty £17,779.00. That is for the WHOLE YEAR.

If the 2015 accounts show roughly the same position, then the rich Club donated 0.02% of turnover to the Charity or, using the profit figure, just 0.16% of post tax profit! That is generosity alright! If you deduct the money we taxpayers gave to the Club (as above) then the net donation goes down to £9,872.60 or just 0.09% of post tax profit.

And you will see that, leaving aside the direct payment to the Club, Cooper & cronies put over four times more into a Premier League Club's own Charity than the Club itself did! No wonder Labour have brought Sadwell into the relegation zone in almost any league table going.

My message to the Chairman is clear if the Club has indeed made another healthy profit. The poor and vulnerable of Sandwell need the £74,775 Cooper has given away and so please give it back. Please also put some proper money into the Charity so that taxpayers's money is used to provide statutory services - as it should be. (If you will allow a bucket collection at a home game I will also be more than happy to give up an afternoon to help out and I am sure many others will too.)

At almost exactly the same time that the accounts were made up in June, 2015, the Birmingham Mail were reporting that WBAFC was looking at a possible £10m deal for Demba Ba plus wages of £60,000 to £70,000 A WEEK. Of course, the Club has to compete in the mad mad world of top league football but these figures do rather put the donation of £17,779 over a whole year into perspective. But, happily, this is a considerable improvement on the year before where the tightwads on the WBAFC Board gave "FA" to the Charity. That is not "Football Association" but, er, "F*CK ALL"!

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

(PROUD TO BE TROLLED BY DARREN COOPER & ANDREW HIPKISS)

email   thesandwellskidder@gmail.com                  facebook  Julian Saunders

Confidential Phone No: 07599 983737                     twitter X (censored by "free speech" Twitter)

Twitter Love Trolls #6

Last night, Twitter suspended my @bcrover account. They have given me no reason whatsoever as yet but it will be very surprising if one of the complainants is not Darren Cooper. Brian Rickers or Andrew Hipkiss given their intimate involvement with the troll network that has been harassing both Mr and Mrs Skidder for OVER TWO YEARS! I am appealing the suspension and will keep you informed.

In the meantime, West Mercia Police are now actively involved in investigating all this and it is to be hoped that they will be more diligent than their neighbours at West Midlands Police!

Twitter have already rejected a complaint against the new troll account @BrummyS1 and allowed it to continue. I have pointed out that the profile picture has been lifted from a Russian dating site!

This troll has been attacking my wife in the terms so enjoyed by the troll accounts linked to Cooper and Rickers but except when attacking me or my wife the tweets are far too articulate to have been written by dimwits like Cooper and Rickers.

A trick of the trolls is to appear to be a "normal" account. Thus the troll tries to farm followers. The people behind this troll account tried to use World Cancer Day to garner more support - retweeting dozens of tweets on the subject and adding what purported to be "her" own thoughts. How sick is that? But it's worse, the troll has been actually just been lifting Tweets from other users and "cutting and pasting" them as "her" own (there are more of these):

Cooper and Rickers cannot manage 140 characters in a tweet without f*cking-up and rarely display humour. Yet the troll who was exposing their favourite attacks put up this amusing effort:

But it turns out that this soccer-crazy Russian lovely also follows the BBC Sport site:

And on the subject of tax - Miss Moscow apparently pays UK tax. Oh no, its another cut and paste job:

The clever Californians at Twitter can't see through all this and so here is yet another example:

And look who was one of the first to gloat about the suspension of my twitter account:

Twitter can't understand this but I bet Skidder readers can!

And on the subject of trolls, how about this one that has reappeared (note spelling on the profile):

There are only four followers on this threatening account. I bet you can guess who one of the four is....

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - COMMUNITY NEWS - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!

email   the sandwellskidder@gmail.com               facebook   Julian Saunders

Confidential phone no: 07599 983737                   twitter: currently suspended.

Unite's Regional Fantasist

Trade Unions employ some weirdos but is there a stranger pairing than Unite and its West Midlands Regional Organiser, Brian Rickers?

We all know that Unite is a sick joke where the top echelons strut the political stage whilst the lumpenproletariat fork out their hard-earned dues month-in, month-out. But are those at the bottom of the heap getting a square deal? And when they need the Union, are the staff up to snuff?

If you need to turn to a Regional Organiser for help would you want him/her to be a liar and fantasist? Well that's yer man in the West Midlands.

Of course, Unite has its own "dirty tricks" department and it is just possible that some of what follows has been covertly authorised by the Union. There is also the question whether Rickers is using Unite-funded phone/equipment for his dubious activities and that they are turning a blind eye.

Let us look at some of the facts:

1  Even though Unite have lost large numbers of members at Sandwell Council through redundancy they "rule the roost" with the local Labour Party. Rickers and the Council Leader, Darren Cooper, have an extremely close relationship which must have helped when Rickers "negotiated" the transfer of the Unite workforce in refuse services to Serco. This pair incessantly put on Twitter that they are having Sunday lunch together but they are close alright. If you are in Unite & work for SMBC then "good luck" is all I can say.

2  Rickers used Twitter to imply that I had been at an event "photographing" his kids which would have been a bit difficult as I could prove that I was at work 20 miles away at the time!

3  Rickers and Cooper started to harass an arts charity in Birmingham. Rickers claimed that he knew people who work there but he does not. This was a lie - pure and simple. When I blogged about this nasty smear campaign it all stopped in their names but the attacks intensified dramatically against the charity via a series of troll accounts and other methods:

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

4  With Darren Cooper, Rickers directly associated himself with numerous troll accounts and then openly interacted with them to spread their poison. This is now part of a police investigation.

5  The really bad troll attacks started at the beginning of December, 2014 and are ongoing (though to a lesser extent at present). Cooper and Rickers were directly interacting with the accounts which made what they knew to be grossly defamatory comments about me and my wife. The trolls threatened to ruin our Christmas and just in case I didn't get the message one of them sent me this:

6  The trolling was intense but Rickers was claiming on his Twitter account to be abroad. I employed a private investigator and can confirm that he was, in fact, safely ensconced in the warm bosom of, er, Dudley. Another lie, I'm afraid.

7   Eventually a classic sting operation completely fooled the imbecilic Cooper. False information about me was fed to him which he either passed on to the trolls (assuming he was not actually one or more of them himself) - thus proving he was in direct contact with them - or even more recklessly - used himself. Myself and a third party fed Cooper, inter alia, the line that I had been barred from a bar in Brum for touching up the female staff. Cooper immediately started tweeting about it and his Unite mate joined in. This is an illiterate Tweet he sent to Cooper claiming he had visited the bar - which he had not. I know this from other methods but note that he is claiming to have "just left" the bar at 8.43 am when it was, er, closed. Oh dear, oh dear  - yet another blatant lie!

Is this filling you with confidence, Unite members of the West Midlands? Let's look at some other stuff. Your RO seems to be living in some sort of fantasy work. He has now changed his Twitter profile, for example, to show that he is based in Leicester when he is not! What is that all about?

About the only thing that Rickers has got right - and I suppose the infinite monkey theorem could apply here - is his assessment of Unite favourite, Tom Watson MP who also gets funding from the monies of the worker ants. In a rare moment of insight, Rickers came up with a most appropriate name for the joint laziest MP 2010-2015:

(Note these two tweets were copied to Cooper and to Cooper's (allegedly mentally-ill) social media spokesperson, Andrew Hipkiss.)

I sent an email to Rickers yesterday but have had no response. People have been telling me that he has been off sick from his onerous Unite duties but other people were telling me he has been spotted on a number of occasions recently going in and out of SMBC premises which doesn't seem to match up (and he doesn't live in "Sadwell" and so can't have been doing personal business).

But he claims the Spanish holidays keep on coming though. On the weekend of 12th/13th December, 2015 he claimed to be in southern Spain with SMBC "comrades":

Just 10 days later he was alleging he was back there! This is just two of a number of Tweets where he claimed to have gone on 22nd December, 2015 for 36 hours but then claimed to be flying back 8 days later on 30th December:

But wait for it - there is even more! Here is again on 30th January claiming to be enjoying la dolce vita:

Scenario 1 - Unite really do pay Rickers well enough to indulge in all this whilst the dimwitted drones who pay their dues struggle to make ends meet. Or maybe he in on sick pay and this is part of his recuperation (!) But, as above, he does have form for pretending to be away when he is not.....

Scenario 2 - He is just some sad, pathetic, man who regularly wakes up and thinks, "I know! I'll pretend to the whole world that I'm in Spain today." No doubt this fantasist is just the sort of chap Unite need in a responsible senior position! ROFLMAO.

I believe that Unite used to have a rule about taking action against members who brought the Union into disrepute. Does it also apply to employees if they still have it, I wonder?

Oh, and by the way, if Rickers WAS in work today I hope he was giving matters his full attention as he was still up tweeting bollocks at 3.08am.......

Addendum 03/02/16 a correspondent has sent me evidence that many of this peculiar man's Spanish photos are off the site of a Spanish estate agent via a site called "TinEye". Have checked and this is correct. How very odd!

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - COMMUNITY NEWS - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!

(PROUD TO BE TROLLED BY ANDREW HIPKISS)

email  thesandwellskidder@gmail.com                facebook  Julian Saunders

Confidential phone no: 07599 983737                   twitter  @bcrover (Vernon Grant)