Coatham Protest

Today this story appeared in the Northern Echo with a copy of the poster to advertise the film.
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/4328764.House_of_Commons_viewing_for_town_campaigners____film/

It was practically the same as the one that appeared in The Sunday Sun a few days earlier only this time the council spokesman had suddenly become Mark Hannon? This massive story about an MP intervening in another MP's local authority was found towards the back of the paper which I found astonishing, but at least they have covered it. But what I find even more astonishing is that this areas main newspaper, this areas main source of information, haven't even made any mention of an MP from another constituency intervening in Redcar and Cleveland AT ALL?

For me this is similar to when the council were found to have acted unlawfully in the High Court in December 07 and apart from an inch long snippet on the front page of the Gazette, you had to go all the way to the back to find another two small columns that told the massive news?
For me the Gazette not running this story in any way at all yet, five days after the story broke on Radio Tees and approximately ten days after senior employees of the Gazette were invited to the House of Commons for the screening, is akin to the time when despite having a reporter there in the magistrates court in March 07, listening to Alan Logan stating that there wasn't going to be a visitor centre and there wasn't going to be an extreme sports centre and that the beach was going to be restricted use if the development went ahead, the Gazette didn't print a word, preferring to print the councils tired, lame and downright untrue line about all the leisure facilities that this scheme was going to bring.

It would appear now that over a period of five years, the Gazette have nailed their colours well and truly to the councils mast. Perhaps if we had a press officer who had worked for them for twenty years and we gave them lots of money in advertising, then we wouldn't have as much difficulty in getting such massive stories printed, on time and on a page in keeping with the magnitude of the story?

Sadly though, we don't. We can only hope that they are wanting to run the story nearer the time? But you would think as the most read local newspaper in this area, that they would have wanted to have been the first wouldn't you?

On Sunday 26th, The Sunday Sun Newspaper without us issuing a press release, ran a story about the screening of the film in the house of commons and the independent investigation being called for.

Here is the link...
http://www.sundaysun.co.uk/news/north-east-news/2009/04/26/chris-mcglade-to-show-redcar-film-in-parliament-79310-23472352/

When you read it you will see that even at this stage, the council still cannot tell the truth. They state that they are not aware of any allegations that have been made. They know exactly what the allegations are. All they have to do is ask the District Auditor or the Serious Fraud Office.

The Auditor downgraded the council to a two star authority when we made them to her and the SFO stated that they pertained to corruption and said that they should be investigated by the police possibly assisited by the CPS!

Still...they have to say something don't they?

I've just listened to BBC Radio Tees. The story of us going to the House of Commons to show our film on May 5th has broken. The reporter said that MP for Scarborough and Whitby was helping people in Redcar and Cleveland over the issue of the Coatham development because they "had been let down by their own MP Vera Baird".

How right he is.

I would say to everyone within Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, who is tired of having our council and our area dragged down into the dirt by the actions of a handful of individuals within the council, who are privvy to the way that these people have been behaving, to come forward and to speak out now and lets seize this opportunity to cut the rotten core out of our council. Join with us in calling for the independent investigation into our council and into why our MP's, especially Vera Baird, have done absolutely nothing to stop what has been and is, going on.

In Autumn 2007, my girlfriend and I approached her MP, Conservative MP for Scarborough and Whitby Mr Robert Goodwill, with the facts and the information that we had about the behaviour of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council. The information that we provided him with appertained not only to how the council had behaved under the leadership of the LibDem/Conservative/East Cleveland Independent administration, but under the new Labour administration too.

So concerned was Mr Goodwill about the things that we gave him documented evidence of, he decided to show our film, "Coatham a Common Concern", in the House of Commons, he also agreed to call for an independent investigation into our council because he said that if he did not, then he would be neglecting his duty. By the very fact that an MP from an outside constituency was prepared to do this, it shows the severity of what was happening within OUR council.

We had originally approached Vera Bairds office to show the film in the Commons, but all to no avail. However, when she found out that the film was going to be shown in the House of Commons, she then, through underhanded means, found out which MP was going to show it and promplty threatened him with the speaker of the House Of Commons and stopped both the film from being shown in the House and the independent investigation from being called for.

Not only did Vera Baird threaten Mr Goodwill with the Speaker of the House, she told him that the information and the facts that we had provided him with were not based in reality. When she had stopped everything from coming anywhere near to beginning to be investigated properly, she then called for the council to hold an internal investigation that was to be headed by the now ex-finance officer and at the time, acting Chief Executive, Ray Richardson.

The chances of any such internal investigation taking any serious action about the things that we had exposed and brought to Mr Goodwills attention were non-existant, especially when you take into consideration that members of our group had already called for the council to investigate Colin Moore amongst other things, without investigation, that George Dunning had called for Moores investigation twice without any action being taken and when you consider that Ray Richardson himself had been involved in the wrong doing that had been brought to light and had been featured three times in Private Eye for doing so.

I believe Vera Bairds call for an internal investigation was nothing more than a whitewash, an attempt to aide the council in covering up the actions that they all preferred were not brought into the wider public domain?
Shortly after this whitewash was complete, our Judicial Review was successful in the High Court. An action that was based upon most of the same facts that we had presented to Mr Goodwill with, facts that Vera Baird had told Mr Goodwill were not based in reality? Obviously they were.

In the eighteen months since then Rachel, who is Mr Goodwills constituent aswell as being a business owner of 22 years in Redcar and aswell as being a part of The friends of Coatham Common, and myself and other members of our group, have continued to provide Mr Goodwill with all of the facts about the behaviour of our council including the downgrading of the council after we provided the Audit Commission with the same facts that we provided him with, you know, the ones that Baird said weren't based in reality and including the fact that the council were recently found to have been negligent by the Audit Commission for investing money in Icelandic banks after the warnings had been issued.

Presumably because of these things, because the speaker of the House of Commons told me in a letter that he has no jurisdiction outside the chamber of the House, because Rachel is his constituent and therefore has a right to be represented by her MP, Mr Goodwill is now showing Craig Hornby and the Friends of Coatham Commons' film in the House of Commons on the 5th of May. The first cut of this film was shown in the Coatham Bowl in October 2007. But there have been so many other things that have happened and come to light that the final cut of the film, which is absolute dynamite, is now finally complete.

Something else that has happened is that in the time since the first cut of the film was shown, the Government have passed a bill in parliament which basically encourages communities at grass roots level becoming involved with democratic processes that affect us all.In showing our film in the mother of all parliaments, the seat of democracy in this country, to an invited audience that took us so months to compile, we are taking the Government up on their invitation for communities to get involved and we intend to hold our local authority, who are at best incompetent and our MP who has been made aware of all what has been going on here but done absolutely nothing about, to account.

We will show our film, we will have a voice and we will call for the independent investigation that should have taken place so long ago.When the film has been shown in the commons on the 5th of May and the independent investigation called for, it will then be shown in Coatham Church on the 6th, 7th and 8th of May. We then intend to be take it round venues in the Borough.

The powers that be in Redcar and Cleveland have arrogantly dismissed the public. They have not listened to the thousands of voices who are against this disastrous scheme ( to quote Vera Bairds radio interview ) they have not told the truth to the public. Instead, they have wrongly smeared and castigated people campaigning against this housing scheme in the press and in their own literature and branded them 'liars', 'bullies', 'intimidating', a 'rabble', 'armchair anarchists', 'threatening' and even started an untrue smear campaign that I was a member of the BNP.

They have not listened and they have carried on behaving in the same, terrible, illegal, undemocratic way and in a way that begs more questions than it answers. They have assumed that they are above the law and that all of their actions would go uninvestigated.

I've got news for 'em all.

They were wrong.

On the 10th of January 2009, I drafted a posting for this site but never submitted it to the site. After months of unsuccessfully trying to get the answers to questions that I was asking from both Mark Hannon and Senior Officer Ian Wardle, I am now taking them both to the councils standards committee for failing to answer my questions and for deliberately failing to tell the truth. I am now submitting the posting that I made on the 10th of January. Please look at the January 09 archive and see how Mark hannon responded.

http://coathamprotest.blogspot.com/2009/01/now-let-me-see.html

Yesterday and today have been quite busy days on the old campaining front!

Yesterday I was informed by a resident of the terrace opposite the boating lake, that they had discovered, after talking to someone who had been working on the site, that the work was going to stop and that they weren't continuing, because the council had run out of money.

But even more interesting is that today, I have been informed by a very 'informed' source within the council, that the PCT have pulled out of putting a 5 GP surgery in the leisure centre in the Coatham plans. If this is true, then could it not be the case, that after our group exposing all of the underhanded dealings that have taken place surrounding the inclusion of this 'medical village' from absolutely nowhere, set against the backdrop of the ex-chief executive pushing this surgery from within the council whilst his wife was pushing it as a board member of the PCT, only to resign her position when we made this public, that the PCT have decided that things are a little too hot to handle?

Whilst this information is unconfirmed at the moment, we are doing all that we can to confirm both pieces of info.

If they are both correct then it seems that the Coatham disaster, to quote our own MP, is offering less and less.

I had a phone call off a friend of mine. His brother lives in Dormanstown. During the bi-election in Dormanstown recently, who should knock on his brothers door? Liberal Democrat general election candidate Ian Swales. Ian apparantly stood there spinning all the guff that Councillor Chris Abbott had included in the LibDem election literature. The Labour group were to blame for this, the Labour group were to blame for that, the Labour group were to blame for the council being downgraded to a two star authority...

At that point, my friends brother stopped Mr Swales in mid flow. "No they weren't" he said, "the old coalition were responsible. It was their actions and the actions of the officers under their supposed control that were responsible". Then he dropped the bomb. "It was the LibDem led coalition who were in control when senior officers of the council surpressed an audit report which showed that this council weren't a four star authority at all" he said. Obviously he'd been reading Private Eye which featured this story and this blog.

At that, Mr Swales apparantly turned on his heels fuming and refused to either engage in any more conversation with my friends brother or answer any of the questions that he was now asking. What an absolute farce. The LibDems are okay when they are trying to dupe the public, wrongly blaming all and a sundry for their actions, but they just cannot stand it when they are confronted by the real facts by members of the public who actually know what the real truth is.

What a situation we have in our council!!! The Libdems are hoping that they can put the blame on the Labour group for the downgrading of the council but they can't because it was because of our groups action of presenting a dossier to the District Auditor concerning the behaviour of the council under the old coalition, which led the council to being downgraded to a two star authority and we aren't going to forget. The Labour group on the other hand, are just too afraid to defend themselves against the untrue statements that are being levelled at them, preferring to say nout in the hope that it's all just going to go away and the whole can of worms as a result, will stay well and truly un-opened.

What an absolute shambles.

In Autumn 2007, my girlfriend and I approached her MP, Conservative MP for Scarborough and Whitby Mr Robert Goodwill, with the facts and the information that we had about the behaviour of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council. The information that we provided him with appertained not only to how the council had behaved under the leadership of the LibDem/Conservative/East Cleveland Independent administration, but under the new Labour administration too.


So concerned was Mr Goodwill about the things that we gave him documented evidence of, he decided to show our film, "Coatham a Common Concern", in the House of Commons, he also agreed to call for an independent investigation into our council because he said that if he did not, then he would be neglecting his duty. By the very fact that an MP from an outside constituency was prepared to do this, it shows the severity of what was happening within OUR council.


We had originally approached Vera Bairds office to show the film in the Commons, but all to no avail. However, when she found out that the film was going to be shown in the House of Commons, she then, through underhanded means, found out which MP was going to show it and promplty threatened him with the speaker of the House Of Commons and stopped both the film from being shown in the House and the independent investigation from being called for.


Not only did Vera Baird threaten Mr Goodwill with the Speaker of the House, she told him that the information and the facts that we had provided him with were not based in reality. When she had stopped everything from coming anywhere near to beginning to be investigated properly, she then called for the council to hold an internal investigation that was to be headed by the now ex-finance officer and at the time, acting Chief Executive, Ray Richardson.


The chances of any such internal investigation taking any serious action about the things that we had exposed and brought to Mr Goodwills attention were non-existant, especially when you take into consideration that members of our group had already called for the council to investigate Colin Moore amongst other things, without investigation, that George Dunning had called for Moores investigation twice without any action being taken and when you consider that Ray Richardson himself had been involved in the wrong doing that had been brought to light and had been featured three times in Private Eye for doing so.


I believe Vera Bairds call for an internal investigation was nothing more than a whitewash, an attempt to aide the council in covering up the actions that they all preferred were not brought into the wider public domain?


Shortly after this whitewash was complete, our Judicial Review was successful in the High Court. An action that was based upon most of the same facts that we had presented to Mr Goodwill with, facts that Vera Baird had told Mr Goodwill were not based in reality? Obviusly they were.


In the eighteen months since then Rachel, who is Mr Goodwills constituent aswell as being a business owner of 22 years in Redcar and aswell as being a part of The friends of Coatham Common, and myself and other members of our group, have continued to provide Mr Goodwill with all of the facts about the behaviour of our council including the downgrading of the council after we provided them with the same facts that we provided him with, you know, the ones that Baird said weren't based in reality and including the fact that the council were recently found to have been negligent by the Audit Commission for investing money in Icelandic banks after the warnings had been issued.


Because of these things, because the speaker of the House of Commons told me in a letter that he has no jurisdiction outside the chamber of the House, because Rachel is his constituent and therefore has a right to be represented by her MP, Mr Goodwill is now showing Craig Hornby and the Friends of Coatham Commons' film in the House of Commons on the 5th of May.


The first cut of this film was shown in the Coatham Bowl in October 2007. But there have been so many other things that have happened and come to light that the final cut of the film, which is absolute dynamite, is now finally complete. Something else that has happened is that in the time since the first cut of the film was shown, the Government have passed a bill in parliament which basically encourages communities at grass roots level becoming involved with democratic processes that affect us all.


In showing our film in the mother of all parliaments, the seat of democracy in this country, to an invited audience that took us so months to compile, we are taking the Government up on their invitation for communities to get involved and we intend to hold our local authority, who are at best incompetent and our MP who has been made aware of all what has been going on here but done absolutely nothing about, to account. We will show our film, we will have a voice and we will call for the independent investigation that should have taken place so long ago.


When the film has been shown in the commons on the 5th of May and the independent investigation called for, it will then be shown in Coatham Church on the 6th, 7th and 8th of May and it will then be taken round venues in the Borough before finally being shown in the Cineworld cinema along with other films that Craig has made about communities in Middlesbrough fighting to keep Longridge wood in Marton form being bulldozed when there is no need and from the lake in Middlesbrough centre from being built upon. This will all come under the banner " Bulldozing democracy".


The powers that be in Redcar and Cleveland have arrogantly dismissed the public. They have not listened to the thousands of voices who are against this disastrous scheme ( to quote Vera Bairds radio interview ) they have not told the truth to the public. Instead, they have wrongly smeared and castigated people campaigning against this housing scheme in the press and in their own literature and branded them 'liars', 'bullies', 'intimidating', a 'rabble', 'armchair anarchists', 'threatening' and even started an untrue smear campaign that I was a member of the BNP. They have not listened and they have carried on behaving in the same, terrible, illegal, undemocratic way and in a way that begs more questions than it answers. They have assumed that they are above the law and that all of their actions would go uninvestigated.


I've got news for 'em all.


They were wrong.

I saw this today, altogether now "what a shame"...

http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3138360&origin=bldgbreakin

So what does it actually mean when a Labour MP ''persuades'' people to stand in election for a party or group other than the Labour Party against Labour party candidates? An independent councillor from Middlesbrough told me two months ago that if that has happened, then that Labour MP by rights, should be thrown out of the Labour Party.

Does anyone know for sure if this is true?

Perhaps I will contact Walworth Road to see if I can find out more?

Well well.....here it is, over a week after I submitted a comment in response to Councillor Abbotts attacks on the Labour group on his blog site for being responsible for the council being downgraded to a two star authority, and still he refuses to post it?

It is absolutely amazing that this man castigated the Labour group by accusing them of this and that and tried to play silly political games in order to score silly political points, yet he hasn't got the courage to admit to the public of this area that it was his Lib/Dem led coalition and their behaviour and the behaviour of the officers under their control, who were responsible for our council being downgraded to a two star authority by the Audit Commission, not the Labour group.

How can I be so sure?

Because it was members of our group who had a two and a half hour meeting with the corporate assesor who was doing an assesment of the council last May time and it was us who then presented the District Auditor herself, Mrs Lynne Snowball, with a dossier that ran into many hundreds of pages, that saw the council being downgraded soon after. A dossier that contained all of the documented facts about the illegal way that this council had been behaving under the old Lib/Dem led coalition, including the supression of an audit report by the now ex-chief executive and finance officer among others, who the old coalition for some reason took no action against?

A dossier that contained letters from the Serious Fraud Office that stated that our councils actions "pertained to corruption" and that they "should be investigated by the police possibly assisted by the CPS". It was us who then had a five and a half hour meeting with the District Auditor and two of her colleagues at the Audit commissions offices in Wynyard last June, to go through all of the paper work. Shortly after that meeting the council were downgraded. We were even mentioned in the Audit commissions report which downgraded the council!

This is the real truth. Mr Abbotts and even Councillor Valerie Haltons 'version' of it in the press and on their blogs, lacks so much credibility that it is quite simply a joke.

My mum always said "Tell the truth son and shame the devil". The truth has been told and the Audit Commission listened, they had no choice because individuals within the Audit commission, had colluded with those senior officers who surpressed that Audit report, to then replace it with another 'final version' that miraculously showed that the council were a four start authority?

The truth has been told and those in authority have been forced to act and yet still, elements of this council are trying to twist that truth to suit their own selfish purposes and hide the fact that they were responsible.

Shame on them all!

P.S, to the source from within the council who provided us with details of the corporate assesment last year and most importantly the name of the Corporate Assesor, which led to the events that followed, THANKYOU for helping the causes of truth and democracy in Redcar and Cleveland and long may your help continue.

Last night, I sent all councillors and some officers too, the email below.



Hello there,

To all elected members of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, I think that you should all take a reality check and face up to the facts. http://coathamprotest.blogspot.com/

Peace to you all,

Chris Mcglade.



Today I got this reply from Liberal Democrat Councillor Mrs Mary Ovens.



"Please do not send me any further e-mails."



Thats all I got. So I sent this reply...


Dear Mrs Ovens,

I cannot believe that as a publicly elected, publicly paid member of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, you actually believe that you can be as dicourteous as you have been in your reply to me, a council tax paying resident of Redcar and Cleveland and think that you are perfectly justified and that your response is perfectly acceptible? No dear Mr Mcglade, no yours sincerely, you din't even have the courtesy to put your name to your reply and so it really could have come from anybody?

If truth be known Mrs Ovens, the truth really hurts. And what hurts you and no doubt your council colleagues the most, is that I, along with other members of the public, have held you and the coalition that you belonged to and some senior, unscrupulous officers aswell to account and as a result, the Audit Commission had no choice but to downgrade our council, the publics council, to a two star authority. It must really sit badly with you that people who have been wrongly smeared by the old coalition and officers alike, people who have wrongly been branded liars and bullies and members of the BNP, have actually been exhonerated and justified because of the Audit Commissions downgrading of our council last September.

What a pity it is that members of our council, rather than choosing to do anything about the terrible situation within Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, prefer to act as though everything, both in the past and at present, is perfectly fine when according to the Serious Fraud Office and the Audit Commission, quite simply they aren't.

Peace,

Chris Mcglade.

A week or so ago Liberal Democrat Councillor Chris Abbott, called publicly for an independent inquiry into the council acting negligently through investing millions of pounds of public money into Icelandic banks after the warnings were issued. He called, I believe, for openness and transparency.

Mr Abbott, since the Bi-election victory in Dormanstown on Thursday, has stated publicly that the Labour group had misinformed the public smeared the opposition and not told the truth in their election literature. I must say that I found that a tad hypocritical of him bearing in mind that he started an untruthful smear campaign against me in 2004 stating that I was a member of the BNP when I wasn't nor ever have been, something that I took him to the Standards board for, bearing in mind that one of the Liberal Democrat ward councillors for Coatham Josie Crawford, made still unsubstantiated claims in her newsletter of October 2006 and bearing in mind that in the recent Lib/Dem election literature, he claimed that it was the fault of the Labour group that the council had been downgraded to a two star authority when in truth, the Audit Commission downgraded the council because of it's performance under the old Lib/Dem-Conservative-East Cleveland Independent coalition.

Today I posted the following comment onto his blog site http://chrisandglynisabbott.blogspot.com/ It will be interesting to see if he publishes the real truth. here is my comment...

Talking about distortions Mr Abbott, it's a pity that you didn't tell the electorate in Dormanstown the truth yourself.

Namely that the Audit Commission downgraded the council to a two star authority not because of the incompetence of the Labour group, although I will agree with you that they are incompetent, no the Audit Commission downgraded the council to a two star authority because of the incompetence of the old Liberal Democrat/ Conservative/East Cleveland Independent coalition and because of the shocking behaviour of senior council officers who, under the old coalition administration, were found in employment tribunal after employment tribunal from Scanlon to Williams and others, from Tait to Whittaker, to have been deliberately disingenuous, acting illegally, concealing the truth, guilty of sharp practise and bringing the council down into disrepute.

Please Mr Abbott, dont try and insult the intelligence of all of the electorate in the borough of Redcar and Cleveland and don't just take for granted that just because the majority of people take little notice of what is really happening within local government, that that means all people take little notice, because we do.

It was our hard work and research in compiling a dossier that ran into many hundreds of pages that included two letters from the Serious Fraud Office stating that the way the council had behaved and I quote "pertained to corruption" and that the council "should be investigated by the police possibly assisted by the CPS" along with a five and a half hour meeting that we had with the District Auditor in June last year, which resulted in the District Auditor downgrading the council.

Really Mr Abbott, those people living in glass houses, shouldn't throw stones.
I hope in the interests of openness, transparency and truth, you post this comment on your blog. I'm certainly going to post it onto mine.

Peace,

Chris Mcglade.

Last night a friend of my girlfriends' called her to tell her that she believed that her son had been defamed on a local internet forum, because someone had taken photographs of him on his bike at the boating lake and suggested that he was some sort of hoodied criminal.
I haven't seen the photographs and I don't know what the inns and outs of this issue are. All I know is that because of the comments that were made about Rachels friends' son on this site, his mum thought that he had been defamed and in some way, he had his rights violated. As a consequence of this, this young lads mum phoned the police to complain about A. photographs being taken of her son and put onto this site without his or her permission and B. that he had been wrongly defamed and castigated on this site.

However, the police man who this woman spoke to made, for me, a very peculiar statement and this is what I was interested in most. Because when confronted with these facts the policeman informed the young lads mum that there was nothing that he could do because people can say what they like about other people on such forums and that the police can't do anything about it. To this, the young mans mother said "So I could call you what I wanted to on a public forum and there's nothing that you could do?" and he replied "no because it is a civil matter and no criminal offence has been committed".

And that's what bothered me most because two years or so ago now, shortly after I made a posting on this blogsite after I received a letter and cctv video telling me about and showing me a councillor, swinging a chain around outside his pub in a confrontational manner towards a gang of youths, whilst people from his pub broke up bits of an advertising signs to presumably use as weapons, the police spent SIX MONTHS TRYING TO FIT A CRIME TO ME POSTING THIS INFORMATION ON MY BLOGSITE, ON BEHALF OF ACOUNCILLOR, WHEN NO CRIME CRIMINALLY OR CIVILLY FOR THAT MATTER, HAD BEEN COMMITTED. THE CLEVELAND POLICE FORCE SPENT SIX MONTHS OF POLICE MANPOWER AND PUBLIC MONEY REPRESENTING A COUNCILLOR WITHIN THIS COUNCIL OVER A CIVIL ISSUE? What is more incredible is that although Cleveland police told me that hate mail that I, Cllr Mary Lanigan and Cllr Mike Findley all received had come from within the council, no action or investigation of any sort ever took place?

Perhaps if this womans son had been a councillor within RCBC, or the ex-chief executive officer who made sure that two young men were investigated by the police, at great expense, for the terrible crime of fly posting posters that accused the ex-CEO amongst others of being corrupt, only to then let the two men off without charge reccomending that they had a meeting with the ex-CEO for basically what amounted to a ticking off, then this woman may have been afforded the same amount of police time and public money, as that councillor and the ex-CEO?
Perhaps if she had been a legal officer within the council, she could have demanded, as one of the councils legal officers has done in the past, the IP addresses of people who she claimed had made untruthful and libellous statements about individuals within the council?

Alas though, Rachels friend is just a mere member of the public who must spend her own money, time and effort in pursuing this civil matter further. Just what is at the heart of the cosy relationship that exists between elements of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council and the Cleveland Police force?

I received a phone call from a friend of mine this morning telling me about the election newsletters that he had received from both the Labour group and the Lib/Dems as the bi-election for Dormanstown hots up. He told me that he had called the man who was promoting the Labour candidate in Dormanstown, Ray Goddard, to air his opinion and I must say, that after collecting a copy of the Labour election letter, he was quite right to do so.

It was peppered with half truths and cherry picked facts that totally misled the reader and painted a picture that is quite different from the full truth. What a shame it is headed "Marian Fairley...A woman who cares for Dormanstown" because after reading the rubbish that the letter contained, the Labour group can't really care that much about Marian Fairley. If they did, they wouldn't put out such misleading tripe in her name, so leaving her open to so much ridicule and criticism.

In a box headed £4.5 MILLION FOR ARTS/MEDIA CENTRE, it goes onto say " Children from across the Borough worked with council officers to bid for an arts, performance and media centre for young people. They chose to have it in the new COATHAM LINKS development in REDCAR and their bid was successful. It will be a great asset for Dormanstown children"

Where do you begin to pull this misleading rubbish apart? Firstly, lets appalaud our young people for doing something that the overpaid officers of RCBC haven't been able to do, ATTRACT FUNDING for something that they set out to. But if you look at the description of this facility now, compared to how it was being described last November when the story first made the news, you cannot believe that they are the same facility. Lets remind ourselves of that story from last November, just four months ago.

http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/local-teesside-news/cleveland-news/2008/11/06/5m-bid-to-give-teens-a-place-84229-22196078/

See how it is described accurately as a youth centre with arts and media equipment as opposed to the description now of a youth and arts and media and performance centre for young people? How can it metamorphosis into some amazing facility that contains more wonderful elements now than when the story was first printed, when the amount of funding has not increased? Where has the performance centre part suddenly come from?

Well...it's not so difficult to work out when you learn, as regular readers of this site will know already, that this new youth centre is to be built on the site of the visitor centre which isn't now happening but which was, according to the councils spin doctors, set to include a dance floor, iconic tower, performance centre blah de blah de blah.
After Mark Hannons email to me showed that this youth centre is to be built on the site of the visitors centre because the visitors centre had only ever been and I quote "an aspiration" ( not what they've been telling people for five years is it? ) and we made this fact public, it is obvious that the council are now desperately trying to con the public by trying to include as many elements of the visitors centre into the description of this youth centre, so as to give the impression that the visitors centre and all of its ingredients are still happening.

I believe that they are also doing this in order to try and deceive funding bodies that they have approached, into believing that the visitor centre which was to be the main feature of the Coatham leisure scheme and the thing that was to make the Coatham scheme " a visitor destination of regional importance" their words not mine, is still happening because without it, the Coatham scheme is just a housing estate with a baths that is being provided with borrowed money that the public will pay back through council tax and that isn't something that the funding bodies that the council have gone to, will back financially.

But there are also two other amazing issues to address in the Labour election letter. First is that it says that young people chose to have this centre as part of the Coatham Links development, but this centre isn't part of the Coatham plan or scheme and wasn't agreed at the Coatham Planning meeting? There has also been no consultation whatsoever which you think there would be especially when the new youth centre is to contain a DRUGS COUNSELLING CENTRE, something that is mentioned in the original story but somehow fails to make the Labour election leaflet?

I wonder how the people living in the surrounding area would feel if they actually knew that this drugs counselling centre was going to be sited so close to them?

I wonder what the funding bodies would think if they knew?

I mean a drugs counselling centre is a hardly going to make the Coatham scheme a visitor destination of regional importance is it? You can almost hear the mums and dads in Scarborough and Newcastle calling their kids to the car, " Come on kids, we're all going to Coatham in Redcar to look at 359 houses, and have a swim in the pool".
"Oh but daaad, can't we just go to Wet and wild or the Sands centre?
"No we can't, we can go to Redcar's normal 25m pool surrounded by all of them houses! Look, if you're good you can have a go in the drugs counselling centre when we come out!"
"Can't we go on the beach instead?"
"No you can't because the council sold the family silver in order to let Persimmon build those bloody houses and the beach is restricted use on a seasonal and spacial basis!"

But to add insult to injury further down the 'informative election leaflet', there's a heading that states LAST HURDLE FOR REDCAR SWIMMING POOL?? It then goes onto say "The protestors have applied to the House of Lords to appeal the High Court decision to reject their village green application- If this is refused the new Redcar Leisure Centre could be on its way by the Summer"

Notice how once again the word 'could' is used? But more than this once again, statements have been made that are as misleading as they are cherry picked. Because not only do they have to overcome the legal hurdle of going to the House of Lords, they have to overcome 47 planning conditions not least the construction of a multi million pound sea defence which has to be built as part of the Coatham scheme. This hasn't even been agreed to by Persimmon yet, let alone had work started on it! But then again, they did only say 'could'.

But what they aren't telling anyone is that the amount of borrowing that the council want to undertake in order to provide the leisure centre and pool, has now I believe, risen to FOURTEEN MILLION POUNDS!!! And what they aren't telling people is that borrowing this money to build the pool and leisure centre isn't dependant on Persimmon building houses. It never has been and as such, it shows that not only have the council lied about having to have the houses to have a pool, it shows that this pool should have been built way before now, not used to dangle some carrot to the people of Dormanstown and the rest of the town!

Cherry picked half truths and misleading statements...

Which brings me onto the Lib/dems who try and attach, in their election letter, all the woes of the council to the Labour group, but who conveniently omit to tell people that this council were DOWNGRADED TO A TWO STAR AUTHORITY BY THE AUDIT COMMISSION LAST SEPTEMBER BECAUSE OF THE WAY THAT THE OLD LIB/DEM LED COALITION HAD BEHAVED AND HAD ALLOWED THE OFFICERS TO BEHAVE, WHILST THEY WERE IN CONTROL. LET ME REMIND CLLR CHRIS ABBOTT AND CLLR GLYNN NIGHTINGALE IT WAS THE LIB/DEM LED COALITION WHO WERE IN CONTROL OF THE COUNCIL WHEN SENIOR OFFICERS OF THE COUNCIL SURPRESSED AN AUDIT REPORT WHICH SHOWED THAT THE COUNCIL WERE NEVER A FOUR STAR AUTHORITY IN THE FIRST PLACE AND COLLUDED INDIVIDUALS WITHIN WITH THE AUDIT COMMISSION TO REPLACE IT WITH ANOTHER REPORT WHICH THEN SHOWED THAT THEY WERE!

Cllr Abbott and co. may have hoped that these facts would just go away, but I can assure them that they won't.