Thursday, April 12, 2007

Local Elections 2007

It has been nearly three years since I started the campaign to keep the Coatham enclosure free of houses and to have it kept solely for leisure purposes.In these last three years the movement of people supporting this campaign has grown to massive proportions,not only as people have been made aware of the abuses and the lies and the secrecy and the wasting of public money that the council,mostly the officers, have been guilty of under delegated powers,but as they have seen the officers and existing coalition councillors cover each others backs everytime one of them breaks the rules.

Look at this site.Read the things that are true and factual,backed up with all the documents,most of them from the council, which prove all the things that we have said.See how the officers are out of control making decisions under delegated powers given to them by the coalition cabinet like awarding themselves an extra 8 days holiday which to the chief exec is worth well over three grand,being awarded huge pay increases by the cabinet whilst ordinary council workers are handed redundancy and pay cuts,deliberately not telling the truth to tribunals,bullying,intimidating,concealing information,wasting public money,it just goes on and on.The coalition have handed the running of this council over to the officers,they refuse to act when the officers overstep the mark and the officers have been doing the same for the coalition cabinet members who do the same.

I have seen all these things as this campaign has gone on year after year and I cannot stand it anymore.I cannot stand and watch my home town,the town I was born and bred in,the town I have lived in all my life,be ruined by these people who see their position in the council as a way to keep themselves on a cushy little number.Our town has been relegated to one of pound shops,charity shops,kebab shops and shops that are closed down.They tell us that building more houses is the key to regeneration and having all the leisure facilities that we want.But this town has seen a massive building programme take place and our high street is dead.And if houses brings leisure then with all the houses that have been built why are we still without any real leisure facilities?

You only have to think back and remember what we were before to know that their claims are rubbish.As a child I remember this town being nowhere near the size it is now yet there was allsorts to do and our town centre and shops were booming.We were individual.We had character.WE WERE REDCAR.A proud sea side town that everyone was proud of.

I have been threatened by this council,received hate mail from someone in this council,been intimidated by this council,been smeared by this council,and been lied about by this council and why? Because I 'dared' to stand up and tell the truth! Even at the planning committee meeting last Tuesday,in front of other people, John hannon LibDem candidate for Zetland threatened me with violence and I am not going to tolerate it any longer.

So I, and my better half Rachel,are standing as Independents in the Newcommen ward.I was born on Troutbeck Road there.All my childhood was spent there,I went to school there,I know the people.The same with Rach who grew up on Easson Rd.Its about time we had a change.Its about time that somebody from the area,born and bred took over.Its about time that people had a real voice.Its about time that people were heard.Rach and I will work as hard as we can if elected to give you those things.More than this we will give you 100% truth all of the time.

Vote for us on May 3rd and lets all make a difference together and lets all try to make our town great again.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Who's having a laugh on April Fool's Day

Click on image to enlarge






Just have a look at this.This document shows that on the 23rd of November last year,senior officers of this council,using the delegated powers that the coalition allows them to,awarding themselves an extra eight days a year PAID holiday.In the case of Mr Moore the chief executive,who is on approximately £150,000 per year,this means he's getting,approximately THREE THOUSAND POUNDS to have an extra week off.Delegated powers for the officers are not supposed to go this far.They are supposed to be for run of the mill things.Any use of delegated powers should be brought to the attention of the council at the earliest possible opportunity after they have been used.However,what is the case here?

This delegated decision was made on the 23rd of November 2006.When was it brought to the attention of the councils cabinet? Yesterday! Over four months after the delegated decision had been made,on the day of the biggest planning issue that this borough has ever seen,at a time when the council is in PURDAH so cannot do anything about it,and cannot take the holidays back because the eight days holiday had to be used up by the 1st of April TWO DAYS BEFORE THEY TOLD THE CABINET!!!

The whole lot is a disgrace.This coalition have and are allowing these overpaid parasites to do as they please.How many other everyday council employees would be allowed to get away with this? Read this document and get angry.Get very angry.Tell your family and friends.Tell the normal council workforce.Tell them about this blog.Get angry and then at election time keep this abuse in your mind and get even and kick the whole stinking lot out.

April 1st was Aprils Fools day.How these officers are making fools of us all.Why are the coalition allowing it.

What an absolute disgrace

The thing I noticed most about the whole planning meeting was just how little the councillors knew about the scheme.The councillor sat next to Steve Kay piped up at the end "I cant understand why the protestors moan about the houses being built because of the issue of flooding but they arent moaning about the building of the leisure facilities".Perhaps this woman should,as a member of the planning committee,read the report from the Environment Agency that stated because the area is a category three high flood risk area that leisure facilities can be built but there are to be no buildings to be built there that include sleeping accomodation (HOUSES).

The ignorance of them was just simply staggering. One LibDem councillor,councillor Goodwill,voted for the scheme because he said that the objectors had basically had a go at the officers! Since when had that ever been a planning consideration? In truth we highlighted the truth about the officers who were present, and the chief executive.Penny Furniss didnt present the full facts when giving her presentation.She said the statutory bodies had withdrawn their objections but she didnt state that there were many conditions that had to be adhered to before they were lifted.She didnt once tell the committee that a 9600 signature petition had been presented to the council,so I did present it to the committee.She failed to tell them that the plan now no longer included a visitors centre,infact she still tried to tout it as happening. Adrian Smith still referred to the visitors centre as if it was still going ahead when he had been in the court room where Alan Logan admitted under oath that it wouldnt be happening and that the land where it was going to go was going to be left as open space.I asked him how he could sit there and lie so blatantly? We stated that the barristers opinion had been seen by none of the committee so how could they make a judgement because they hadnt seen all of the facts and how could they just accept the word of the chief executive when he had already been found on more than one occasion to have not told the truth to tribunals and keep the truth from the public regarding them leaving TVR?

We presented the FACTS about this councils officers and were accused of having a go at them? Are we just supposed to sit there and let these abuses and this deceit go on unchecked? Its obviously ok for the coalition to do that but Im sorry,its not alright for the people of this borough. The whole lot was an absolute disgrace.A one sided,loaded meeting that should have never been held in the first place.It was chaired as I said yesterday,brilliantly,but was controlled by officers Furniss and Frankland who basically fed the committee their version of things and made sure that despite the councils constitution being broken several times,it still went ahead.

The councils constitution clearly states that no member of the cabinet can be part of the planning committee.Frankland dismissed this by saying that a precedent had been set already by the ex labour leader being part of the committee.However,when David Walsh was part of it the council was not a cabinet system and the constitution was totally different to what it is now.He stated that the issue of PURDAH only stopped things in terms of publicity.When confronted with the facts that councillor Findley had been denied the right to ask questions about Coatham at a meeting last week because it was PURDAH, he wormed his way round it and came back to the issue of publicity.It was shown that the LibDem party had recently put out biased political literature about the Coatham Development and as such they would obviously show that same bias in this meeting.But Frankland dismissed this by saying that the Labout group had done the same.In truth they havent.Ive never seen anything from them saying anything about Coatham. Most shocking of all was the fact that Frankland dismissed the letter sent to the coalition members of the committee lobbying them and telling them to push this scheme through at all costs for the sake of the coalition,as a spoof! If it was only a spoof and regarded as such then why did not one of those coalition councillors on that committee declare willingly that they had received it? Why did it take Cllr Lanigan, who stated that shed been to the standards board and government office about it asking two or three times just how many had received it,before they reluctantly admitted to it.And if it had been so worthless as they then tried to make out why didnt they say that in the first place.Surely if you have nothing to hide and everything is innocent its the first thing you would do especially as the labour group had put a press release about the lobbying letter?

The whole lot was a sham.A drama that most of the committee seemed not to be bothered about at all.When the objectors gave their evidence they looked totally disinterested,some even appeared to be nodding off.Its just an absolute disgrace.However,far from being deterred we are taking this all the way.The council run by these officers will not have this undemocratic,one sided meeting go unchallenged.As I stated in the meeting three weeks ago I went to London and handed in a 15 page dossier on this council and its behaviour over Coatham to the serious Fraud Office,along with relative documents.I will be letting them know about yesterdays meeting,because this is all part of a bigger picture.

I will also state now what I have known for about two weeks that senior council officers Peter Ellis,Bob Barnes and the assistant chief executive Nick Matthews have all suddenly left the council.In the case of Peter Ellis I believe that he made the decision to go one day and two days later was gone! Just watch for others leaving. I will keep you posted.We will not let them get away with what they tried to get away with yesterday along with their preffered developer, whos regional director didnt answer Cllr Lanigans question "WHEN DID YOU GET INVOLVED WITH THE PCT". When you take into consideration that the Chief Executives wife is on the board of the PCT and Colin Moore along with Persimmon homes are pushing the scheme for all they are worth,perhaps its not so difficult to understand why he did not want to answer Councillor Lanigans question?

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