Coatham Protest

Since posting this in March, the stories are no longer on the local newspapers links and so here is a link to another site which highlights what is going on...

http://www.fraudcentral.org.uk/alerts.php?alertsearch=View+Alerts&catid=32&sortby=livedate+desc

http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/content/eveningstar/news/story.aspx?brand=ESTOnline&category=News&tBrand=ESTOnline&tCategory=xDefault&itemid=IPED13%20Mar%202009%2014%3A52%3A11%3A210

http://www.eadt.co.uk/content/eadt/news/story.aspx?brand=EADOnline&category=news&tBrand=eadonline&tCategory=News&itemid=IPED11%20Mar%202009%2022%3A10%3A48%3A627

Oh Dear, I've just searched on google and found that Persimmon featured in the same kind of fraud story that is featured in the links above, two years ago, only this time it was in London and not Ipswich! Selling their houses or apartments at deeply discounted prices to companies who then attempted to obtain mortgages for far more than the price that they were bought for. Can lightening really strike twice?

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article2283035.ece

I must say, it's not that often that I find myself agreeing with the leader of the Liberal Democrats Cllr Chris Abbott. I find his rather nasty style of politics difficult to swallow especially as he started an untrue smear campaign that I was a member of the BNP way back in 2004 with his coalition partner Cllr Dave Fitzpatrick. Are councillors supposed to deliberately, untruthfully smear members of the public? It was something that I took them to the Standards Board for.

However, my heart lept for joy when I saw this headline on the Gazette live page today. http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/2009/03/27/demand-for-probe-in-council-cash-scandal-84229-23246909/2/

I couldn't agree with Mr Abbott more, that an independent inquiry should begin immediately into not just the calamitous findings of the Audit Commission yesterday, namely that this council had acted negligently in investing money in icelandic banks that they had been warned not to, but into every last rotten aspect of this officer led and driven council.

Mr Abbott, for all of his good intentions today, really ought to remember that it was the Lib/Dem-Tory-East Cleveland Independent coalition who were 'supposed' to be in power when the Audit Commission found that the council was only a two star authority that was failing financially and not the four star authority that the coalition constantly kept telling people. He should remember that this final audit financial report that showed this, was surpressed by senior officers of the council and replaced with another final report which then miraculously showed that the council were a four star authority whilst his Lib/Dem-Tory-East Cleveland Independent coalition were in power?
Mr Abbott should remember that it was the coalitions performance whilst in power, which resulted among other things, in this council actually being downgraded to a two star authority by the Audit Commission last September and he should remember that it was the coalition that was in power when a whole raft of dodgy and dubious decisions were made by these same senior officers and who featured so terribly in tribunal decision after tribunal decision for having lied, decieved, acted illegally, concealed and brought the council down into disrepute.

I believe that Mr Abbott is well aware of all of these things and it is for that reason that I believe his call for an independent inquiry is nothing more than his attempt at playing party politics in order to score points against the Labour group in the run up to the Dormanstown by election next week and nothing more than a bit of puff and blow, which he is well capable of.

As a seasoned politician he knows that an independent inquiry isn't going to happen, every bit as much as George Dunning knew that both of his calls publicly to have Colin Moore investigated for his terrible behaviour whilst George was leader of the opposition, were never going to happen. Perhaps this is why George when he became leader of the council in 2007, then somehow 'forgot' both of his calls to have Moore investigated and then gave Moore a glowing reference in the Gazette along with 104 weeks enhanced pay deal and a massive pension that the tax payers of Redcar and Cleveland are still paying for?

Mr Abbott wants an independent inquiry even less than the Labour group, given that the old coalition were responsible for letting that clutch of officers get away with so much wrong doing themselves. If an independent investigation was ever to happen, he knows what a can of worms would be opened and he, along with everyone else within the political system within this borough and that includes the MP's, doesn't want that to happen. Strange? I don't remember Mr Abbott speaking out so loudly when Ms Baird stopped the independent investigation from taking place, to then call for an internal investigation instead, at the end of 2007?

Perhaps that's because most of the things that were being exposed showed massive failings in his beloved coalition and so he was pleased to have Vera's intervention and her call for an internal investigation, so keeping everything well and truly covered up?

Vera Baird has already stopped an independent investigation from taking place and called for an internal investigation instead. Smiling Peter Scott is saying that an internal audit regarding the matter of the invested money, has showed everything to be okay.

Does anyone remember when Sharon Shoesmith stood on the steps of Haringey council and said that their internal investigation into the Baby P scandal had shown the council had acted properly? Anyone starting to see any similarities between Harringey and Redcar yet? And we all know what had really happened in Harringey don't we? Despite the Labour Parties' and Harringey councils assurances that everything was okay.

All of the so called 'guardians of local democracy' in this area, are scurrying around making this statement or calling for this and that, desperate to try and distance themselves from all of the wrong doing that has taken place within this council and desperate to try and cover it all up.

The problem that they all have from Labour to the Liberals to the Conservatives to The Independents to both MP's, is that there is so much wrong doing that has taken place, things that they have all been aware of it but done absolutely nothing to stop, that they are all implicated and no matter how hard they try, none of them will be able to cover up, whitewash or distance themselves for much longer.

They have all been such fools for trusting these officers. They have no-one to blame but themselves.

You know, after todays news about this councils negligence and financial mis-management, I've been looking at the last posting I have made, back through this blog and through countless other documents that I have been preparing and I have come to the conclusion that this councils terrible behaviour, coupled with its arrogance and the air that they exude that says we are invincible, will quite literally, be their downfall. It is only a matter of time I believe, before the whole, rotten empire comes crashing to the ground.

Today on the BBC news it was reported that seven local authorities were found to have been negligent by the Audit Commission, through investing money in Icelandic banks even though they had been warned not to and guess what? That's right, Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council are among "The maginificent seven"..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7963986.stm

After having already been downgraded to a two star authority by the Audit Commission last year, after all the tribunal reports that show exactly how the senior officers who were running this council but who have now left, lied, bullied, intimidated, acted illegally, concealed the truth, were guilty of sharp practise and who dragged this council down into disrepute, after surpressing a final financial audit report that showed that we were never a four star authority in the first place, it is now time, more than ever, to have this whole shoddy authority independently investigated. I remember one time in about 2006, Chris Abbott and the Liberal Democrats putting out a news letter saying how the protestors were wrong to attack the "hard working officers of this council".

After all these things are now offically in the public domain, things that we continually brought out into the public domain and faced much criticism from those involved in all of this for, I think that everyone should now be asking why the likes of Abbott, Dunning, Moody, Nightingale and every other councillor who has defended and aided this pack of gangsters masquerading as officers who were running this authority, actually did so and why they allowed them to get away with so much in the first place?

To all the weak councillors who allowed and are still allowing officers of this council to do what they want unhindered and unpunished, Your blind faith in these less than credible officers now needs to be justified and the time has come to face the music and answer questions. Questions like "Mr Nightingale, Mr Abbott, Mrs Moody, Mr Kay, knowing how Moore and Richardson behaved despicably in tribunal after tribunal, why did you reward them with a pay rise instead of the sack? And Mr Dunning, when you called for Moores investigation twice as opposition leader, why did you give him a glowing reference in the papers when he announced his retirement along with a massive 104 week enhanced pay deal and a massive pension.

Its about time they answered the questions or face being damned along with them.

This extends to our forty faced MP Vera Baird too. Why, when she knew exactly what was going on within the Council in her constituency did she stop a neighbouring MP from calling for an independent investigation by wrongly threatening him into silence, to then call for the council to hold an internal investigation into all of the things that they stood accused of to be headed by Ray Richardson, a man involved in a lot of the skulduggery, intimidation and deceit reported in so many tribunal reports?

Did she really expect to have anything investigated properly by having an internal investigation? Of course she didn't, it's probably why she called for an internal investigation? This condemantion extends to Ashok Kumar too, this borough has two MP's remember. I went to see him in 2005. He asked me straight out if we thought that the council was corrupt? in front of his secretary and ex-leader of the council David Walsh. I told him that we did think that and that was based on the information that we had in our possesion then and at least eighteen months before any of the tribunal reports, or any of the other damning information that has since come to light, was made available to us. Mr Walsh tried frantically to persuade him otherwise. Well I wonder if Mr Walsh, four years down the line, thinks that a council...

Being downgraded to a two star authority
Being found guilty of negligence by the Audit Commission
Being found to have acted unlawfully in a high court
Being found guilty twice of maladministration
Being found to have acted illegally
Being found to have concealed the truth
Being found to lied under the FOI act
Being found to have had officers lying under oath, bullying, intimidating, changing evidence, collusion, sharp practise, bringing the council into disrepute, altering and changing minutes, awarding themselves massive payrises that aren't taken to council for anything up to eighteen months, exceeding their spending limits under delegated authority by tens of thousands of pounds, etc etc,
Being found to have surpressed a final financial audit report which showed that this council weren't a four star authority
Being found to have signed a development agreement two days before a local election and two weeks!!! before G.O.N.E had decided whether or not to call it in...

If he thinks that all of these documented facts show a council that is open, honest, fair, democratic, or above board in its behaviour and affairs then he is as much to blame as successive administrations which have allowed officers of this council to do these things. After all, lets be plain, It was he, as leader of the council, who appointed the ex-CEO in the first place. This may explain Mr Walshes need to defend him and the council he was in charge of ,way back in that meeting with Ashok Kumar in 2005?

Both of our MP's have known what has been happening within this most rotten council all along and yet neither have done a thing? This is particularly surprising when you take into consideration that Baird is the Solicitor General? Vera Baird stopped an independent investigation from being called for and then called for an internal investigation to be held by the council itself. The very fact that that didn't even take place, just about says it all.

Had to chuckle to myself when I saw this Guardain article on Government minister Ed Millibands comments that opposition to wind farms should be socially taboo

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/24/wind-farms-opposition-ed-miliband

Somebody really ought to tell him about the opposition our MP Vera Baird has, along with her Labour council, to the wind farm in Coatham. It would appear that Vera has completely forgotten that wind farms are supported by this Government. It makes me wonder when you read this posting on her blog,whos sea views will these turbines spoil?


Vera Baird on windfarm

30th July 2008: Wind turbines

Redcar MP Vera Baird QC today made the following statement on Redcar and Cleveland council's appeal over the planning decision on the planned wind turbines near Redcar.

"It is important to see the judgment and not just know the outcome of a case like this one, questioning the Minister's decision on the wind farm. Now we have seen it we are concerned that the court has taken insufficient notice of the impact on the sea views to be caused by 30 massive wind turbines less than a mile offshore from the town centre.

"It seems that nobody will take up the invitation to visit our town to see from themselves what a huge impact these unsightly turbines will have. I would have preferred it if the judge had done that. He approved the use of the energy company's photo-montages, but they seriously understated the size of the turbines and did not give either him or the Secretary of State, who was acting in an impartial, quasi-judicial role, any kind of impression of how significant their impact on the town and the view will be.

"It is very important that we do all in our power to make clear the negative impact these plans will have for Redcar, and that the small, intermittent amount of electricity generated is not either in climate change or business terms worth that

http://www.labouronline.org/wibs/166155/news?PageId=c8df01b9-9f8a-db94-6dfd-b7b1a3bf5920

I mean, apart from the dunes and the beach, theres nout there! So whos views? The seagulls views? The crabs views? The views of the odd sealion that may swim by on his way to Paddys Hole? Nah, none of these so whos views could she be talking about? I laughed out loud when I read in the Gazette some time ago George Dunnings comments that the turbines would spoil the views of the people using the leisure centre? I know, its as pathetic as it is ridiculous after all, you can't even see the turbines from the leisure centre not only because of the place the leisure centre is situated in, but also because it has no windows! Hang on, just give me another five minutes whilst I recover from my fits of hysterical laughter!!!

That's better, No, the only peoples views that our buffoon of a council leader and our hypocrite of an MP are bothered about are the views of people who aren't even living there in the Persimmon luxury flats that haven't even been built. Only they haven't, either of them, got the stomach or the the face, to admit it.

What is most ironic of all is that when people down High Street West have complained to the pair of them about the prospect of losing their sea views because of Persimmons' houses being built right up to the backs of their properties, they have both responded by saying "well I know and I sympathise with you, but when you buy a house you dont buy the view unfortunately" and even more ironic than that is that they make a fuss about a petition totalling some five thousand signatures approximately against the wind turbines, yet make no mention of all of a ten thousand signature petition against the Persimmon housing development?

Forty faced hypocrites the pair of them but then again, I'm probably telling you things that you already know? I mean, how can these two listen to the complaints of people who were outraged about street lights being erected along the stray and so had them taken down within a few days of them being put up, at the cost of many thousands of pounds, but not listen to the complaints of people down high street west, about fences barricading them into their own properties? A fence that Baird manchu herself has described as "giving it a Guantanamo feel".

Ah I know why they acted in the instance of the lights, because they were near to Baird Manchus house and the ward of Zetland is the marginal of marginals with a Labour majority of about 9 I think? Somebody ought to remind Baird and her cronies that if it wasn't for two good independent candidates standing in the ward at the last local election, who took approximately over six hundred votes between them, they wouldn't have had a Labour councillor in there at all.

I'll let you all know what Mr Milliband says when I write to him and tell him that these two took this issue to JR when the issue of supporting and encouraging wind farms had already become Government policy and that the only reason they dont want them there is because they will interfere with the views of houses that aren't even built yet and that if they ever are, will be built on a zone 3 high flood risk area, that has to be protected by a multi million pound sea defence that was Persimmons' sole responsibility but now, for some reason, is the responsibility of the council and the tax payers of this borough?

I was wondering if anyone out there could help me? When a Labour MP "persuades" people to stand in an election for anything other than the Labour party, against Labour party candidates, then what does that mean?

I have been told, by members of the Labour party and by a man at Walworth Road in London, that this means expulsion from the Labour Party.

Can anyone throw anymore light on this please?

Today it has been announced on the Councils website that nearly five million pounds worth of big lottery funding has been secured for the youth media and arts centre that the council said they were applying for at the back end of last year. This is great news and lets hope that this centre will be of great use to the youth of our town and the wider area.

However, for the council, despite their gushing statements in their own press release, it is very bad news. Councillor Jeffries says in the release...

"we believe it could be a complementary feature of the Coatham development."

How on earth can it be complimentary to the Coatham Development when as Councillor Mark Hannon, cabinet member for economic development, has already told me in an email, that this youth centre is going to occupy the site within the Coatham Enclosure that was going to their visitor centre with its iconic tower, indoor and outdoor performing arts centre blah de blah de blah, the feature that was going to make the Coatham development a visitor destination of regional importance?

It's not complimentary to the Coatham Development at all, it's replacing the most important part of it. As Mark Hannon admitted in his email to me and you can scroll down and see his answers for yourself, the visitor centre was only ever an aspiration? Thats not what the council have been making out in every press release they have put out, until recently, during the course of our campaign is it? It's all so confusing.

They told us from the start that we were going to get a visitor centre.Even when one of their disingenuous officers told me in court that the visitors centre wasn't going to feature anymore, which we all now know that it isn't, they still told High Courts and High courts of appeal, that it was going to go ahead?
Even when our hypocrite of an MP, Vera Baird, told the whole town in at least three public statements that there was going to be no visitor centre, the council still maintained that there was?

At first a council officer told ex Labour Councillor Charles Davis, that this new youth facility was going to be sited on what is known in the Coatham plan as D2 leisure. This site was, they told us, going to be a bowling alley which Colin Moore and Vera Moody stated publicly, they had all the funding for? I know, how can they put a new youth facility on the site of a leisure facility that they have already said, back in 2007, they have all the funding for? We made this glaring contradiction public and not so surprisingly, suddenly things change.

Putting it bluntly, now that Mr Hannon has let the cat out of the bag in writing, which Alan Logan did verbally way back in 2007 in court, that the visitor centre isn't going to happen and that this youth centre is going to occupy the site of that visiotrs centre, we know three things. Firstly that there's going to be no bowling alley because that's where they were going to situate this new facility until we made their glaring contradictions public. Secondly there's going to be no visitors centre because they're going to build this new youth centre and drugs counselling centre on that site and thirdly we know that the council have been telling lies, to the people of this area, all along. The reason for them lying so desperately is that without that visitors centre, the Coatham scheme is just a housing estate with a baths and leisure facility that is being paid for with at the last count over FOURTEEN MILLION POUNDS OF PRUDENTIAL BORROWING THAT THE PUBLIC WILL PAY BACK THROUGH THEIR COUNCIL TAX. This figure has risen from the figure of £10,500,000 which it was back in 2007.

Without that Visitors centre, as the man from English Partnerships told me some time ago and only recently aswell, they would not provide any funding for something that is basically a housing estate and thats why the council have lied so desperately about this mythical facility.

They have lied and lied and lied again. All the times they have mentioned the visitors centre in their press releases, they have lied. They have twisted and turned and tried to do everything that they possibly could to keep people believing their lies. But when their preferred developer has a loss of, over £780,000,000 as was reported yesterday and their "Disastrous" to quote our own MP, scheme lays floating face down in a sea of underhanded deals, controversy, conflicting statements, lack of funding and downright lies, they are now desperately trying to save their own shameless, arrogant faces.

By quietly trying to replace the key ingredients of their "failed", "disastrous" scheme to quote Vera Baird once again, with 'new facilities' that they are maintaining are only complimentary to the facilities that they just daren't admit publicly that we aren't now going to get, they are deliberately trying to con people in order to try and save their own, already tainted reputations. They are an absolute disgrace.

They daren't even admit to the public that this new youth facility will also be home to a drugs counselling centre. In their release they refer to it as "an integrated advice service for young people covering information and guidance on personal development and health issues". Once again, they daren't admit to this and call it what it is as imagine not only the feelings of apprehension in the local residents already living there, but the feelings of dismay in the people of Redcar who certainly wouldn't see a drugs counselling centre as being in keeping with the councils many press releases and public statements of the Coatham Enclosure being a leisure development and visitor destination of regional importance.

They are absolutely beneath contempt. This failed, tainted, disastrous scheme has been orchestrated and pushed by a select bunch of council officers, most who have hurriedly flown the nest in order to avoid being uncovered, who have been found in open tribunals to have lied, changed evidence, bullied, threatened, intimidated, acted illegally, concealed the truth and brought the council down into disrepute.

These officers have been aided and abetted and at every turn by elected councillors from all parties, who have for some reason, helped these officers by going weakly and blindly along with all that they have suggested even when they have been provided with the truth and the facts and they have been assisted by an MP who rather than have the public inquiry into this whole mess that she herself said publicly should happen, stopped a neighbouring MP from calling for an independent investigation into the whole lot, by threatening him with the Speaker of the House when the speaker had no power to intervene and then completed the whitewash by calling for an internal investigation to be held by the council themselves that she knew wouldn't have found anything at fault as Haringey councils internal investigation didn't because the man that Vera Baird asked to head this internal investigation was the now ex-finance officer and ex-acting CEO Ray Richardson, who had been involved in the surpression of a final financial audit report and countless other acts as were printed on three occasions in Private Eye.

As it was not even an internal investigation took place.

It's about time that this whole grubby mess was independently investigated. I have no doubt in my mind that it will be.

http://www.redcar-cleveland.gov.uk/PressRel.nsf/PublishedM/CFD3E182369713CE8025756F0028C474?OpenDocument