WirralPC

Just to clarify councillor expenses  we get just over £7,000 a year it is not given to a councillor to spend it as they wish it is for your councillor work, letters, postage, phone calls, computer equipment, and travel expenses to get to meetings. When you claim expenses you have to have to give receipts otherwise you cannot claim it.

What about your allowance Glenda?  As distinct from your expenses?

As mentioned previously, we have a plates-of-Nephi-bashing Mormon councillor (with a thoroughly dodgy and irreligious business and private life) up for election and not declaring his tithe to the electorate here on Wirral.

It may not strictly be deception, but in my book, failing to declare to prospective voters a drain on recycled council cash, whilst seeking their mandate for your own ends is deceiving / cheating them.  I mean, what's his prime motivation? Representing those voters to the best of his ability, or advancing his political / religious career; getting on as many paying committees as he can in order to ingratiate himself with the aptly named 'President' and swelling the coffers of a crowd of people who believe Jesus appeared in America at the time of the resurrection?

If his intentions are honourable, why not declare it?

And what some of us are privy to regarding this bloke and his current behaviour....

https://www.facebook.com/MormonNewsroom/posts/132024843600428Rt

...might even tempt JC down to Birkenhead for a reprise of his 'kicking the tables over in the temple' session.

I needed to hear that Bob. Truth is still in short supply decades later. Especially at this point in the 5 year electoral cycle.

Pledges abound... promises like piecrust ... are made to be broken.

A Libdem leaflet dropped onto my doormat yesterday. The contents indicated the most severe case of selective amnesia on the part of the writer.

As if the poor sap picking the leaflet up had lived through five years of Tory inflicted savagery which had had nothing to do with any of the candidates marching our streets now, sporting cheesy grins and yellow rosettes, wearing out their shoe leather, in the hope that our own ability to recall beyond last week was equally fu.ck.ed.

Wrong.

We know what you did last summer. And last winter. And the four winter/summer combinations preceding that. You set about us with an axe; then laughed in our faces and gave yourself a double figure pay rise.

And it's now payback time.

Mormons are being used as an example Roger.  It's not real.

Wrong.  Amounts of expenses vary.

He didn't tell Roger that 10 per cent of his allowance would regularly and unavoidably be sent abroad to fund religious zealots, and that he would have to do this or find himself at risk of being viewed in a poor light by the Mormon Church.  So, not the kind of information that would usually enhance or promote a person's electoral chances with the non-Mormon UK public e.g. Roger ...or perhaps I'm wrong in your view?

If he won with a majority of say six, and he'd failed to tell at least seven constituents about this fact, he's cheated Roger and at least six others - and gained by not mentioning it.

He may not be breaking any statutory law, but it's deceitfulness by specific omission, or cheating.

In this way, Roger has been cheated.

Not worth a response.  But cheers.

It was very enlightening regardless.

I'll spell it out for you Roger if you'll bear with me 

• Prospective councillor knocks on Roger's door, wanting his vote on May 7th.

• Roger, being a nice chap, patiently listens to the spiel right through to the end.  The Mormon Church, including candidate's membership / existing financial arrangements are carefully omitted from the spiel.

• Roger votes for the councillor.

• Councillor is duly elected.

• Roger, not being a Mormon, feels cheated because the lovely councillor didn't mention that 10 per cent of his expenses / allowance was going overseas to prop up religious nuts.

• Roger thinks: "If only I'd asked a few questions, I could have exposed this nasty little truth.  I could have voted for somebody else, who was not voluntarily handing recycled council tax money over to far flung whackoes AND who chances are is not chained to a hidden (for the purposes of getting elected) religious calling and may be more honest, open and transparent in his separate day-to-day dealings re: representation of my interests locally."

I didn't think Councillors got a salary as such .... Just expenses or similar. Strange point I think! 

Expenses / allowance then. 10 per cent of expenses / allowance.

On Wirral, we have a Labour Councillor who's a member of the Mormon Church, Salt Lake City, Utah.

As a condition of membership, a portion of salary (can't remember how much, but might be 10 per cent) has to be paid across to the church.

I'm not sure that this drain on public money is declared to his electorate when he's out leafleting around this time, but I doubt it very much !

After all, who'd vote for that?

Kris Hopkins made a statement in Parliament towards the end of last month which promises much...

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/local-government-update--2

Although he's waffling on about 'disciplinary allegations against Chief Execs' I believe the anonymous council he's referring to which cost £420,000 to adjudicate using a DIP (not stick) may be one that's not unadjacent to where I live.

The officers involved in this farce were:

David Green (Tried and failed to sack me for 'bullying and harassment' in 2003) - £103,000 (wife Sue received £205,000 from a Wirral Hospital Trust)

David Taylor Smith (Man of mystery, with a sideline in saving endangered species - until he became one himself) - £68,660

Ian Coleman (Finance boss who seemed uncomfortably close to 'independent' investigator Anna Klonowski Associates) - £86,000

Bill Norman (Least said the better) - £151,000

Richard Penn (A man who defends senior council officers in trouble - but on this occasion, was called in to "investigate" senior council officers in trouble - natch) - £47,000

Total = £455,660

Yes, Mr Hopkins.  Looks like you knocked off the £5,000 that we paid for Bill Norman's legal expenses.  You were referring to Wirral weren't you?  It's just that you're 30 grand short for some reason.

Anyway, let's hope next time Mr Norman gets found out like he was on Torbay / Wirral and has to move on, he will be getting grilled, turned over, and grilled again by the 'finest' and 'best' councillors that Herefordshire County Council can muster.

And here's hoping this means he won't be getting presented with a silver salver loaded down with recycled council tax dosh belonging to Hereford's embattled and embittered Joe Public.

https://twitter.com/Wirral_In_It/status/590522144733429760

My advice to you Mr Edwards, from afar, is to redress the balance.  Take a leaf from the book of the most successful Hereford politicians.

Bake a few hundred chocolate muffins and book a slot at the entrance to your local Asda.

A true Bobby appraisal!

 

I'd love you to do all of the annual professional development appraisal...... not a detail slips past your beady eye!

Hey, I spotted the 'semi' also. Fell off my chair when Bobby confirmed it.

This kind of evasiveness / heavy handed response is breaking out periodically in corrupted official gatherings that have gotten far too big for their little boots.

It's going on up and down the country.

Their arrogance may indicate undeclared or freemasonic friendships with senior bent coppers which they believe will protect them from pesky, nuisances and 'upstarts' who won't bend or concede to the irregular / unlawful way they prefer to do council business.

Please vote them out.

He won't be flushed with success this election.

Hi Cambo

 

Every Parliamentary and council candidate, parish and Unitary, will have to declare to the ERO the amount spent on their election. This includes all leaflet,posters and hireling of rooms for meetings. It includes offices hired especially for organising the campaign and includes, but this can come under miscellaneous, postage phone calls and petrol.

 

The names of all those who gave the candidate in part or whole lily money or property, be it a building or a car for example, has to be declared. Receipts have to go in with the electoral return by Friday 12th June. They are open for public challenge a few weeks later when ERO has scrutinized and remain open for the life time of Council. All Councillors will need in their declaration of interest before they can take their seat, all their sponsors etc.

...sums spent on baking, sprinkling with sugar, ferrying, delivering chocolate muffins?

An important omission shurely?

Hi guys. Sorry about:

o ignoring council bullying

o wanting to spend billions replacing Trident

o taking an axe to welfare benefits

o preventing young poor people from educating themselves

o wanting to restrict campaigning by third parties during elections (ironic chuckles all round)

...here's some chocolate cake.

Here's the Andy Couldrick, CEO of Wokingham BC Twitter account, where all looks remarkably normal:

 

https://twitter.com/WBC_ChiefExec

CEO Andy Couldrick has now changed his settings and protected himself on Twitter: https://twitter.com/WBC_ChiefExec

Whatever device was used...... I'm looking forward to reading the transcription!

Audio recordings; verbatim transcriptions, to court standard; a healthy and justified disdain for corrupted, power abusing officials; throw in a dash of courage and your destiny moves back under your control.

Which is where it belongs.

What's young prospective Tory councillor Seb's take on this?

Vendetta? Misguided? Vexatious? Bullying? Timewaster? Obsessive? No serious purpose or value?

Or is it the old, trusted "bee in the bonnet"?

This is getting to sound like Watergate...

Intriguing.  I wonder who's the Mark Felt on the inside?

 

I suggest that a good line for a hearing aid company would be Hello, Hello.

It's a very serious subject Megilleland and thanks for your post, but following on from your 'Hello, Hello', this is priceless...

Haha.  Flam, you're so right.  I fell down badly.

I'm so happy to accept this slap on the wrist from such an esteemed contributor to these pages.

Dippy, that's really strange. I was playing and singing this today. It's a brilliant piece of work from Lennon. The tune only has three chords and a hammer on the A minor chord. Like all Lennon's work, this song is so apt to today.

Keep you doped with religion, sex and TV,

And you think your so clever and classless and free,

But you still fu.ck.in peasants as far as I can see.

 

A working class hero is something to be.

We put that song on the jukebox in a Gibraltar pub back in 1980.

An engineering officer off our ship sitting across the way scowled and told us we'd be in trouble.

So we put it on again and again and again ...... and again.

He got up and walked out.

Best 35p we'd ever spent.

Well if that's their election blurb, I'd say it sounds pretty good.

 

Yes Green Knight...... one full turn of the wheel.

 

Where will that get us........???

 

(Bobby - in full protest song mode - with tanglewood guitar, up on a table in front of a rapturous audience...... is truly a sight to behold...... so I'm led to believe, anyway!)

There was a party election broadcast on behalf of TUSC (Trade Union and Socialist Coalition) tonight that was similar. All very laudable and the most truth that has emerged from my TV screen in m a n y years.

Their time is not now, but their time will arrive one day if Greece's and Spain's emerging parties are anything to go by. Perhaps some younger figureheads need promoting.

All-consuming capitalism, propped up by the old school tie and the violent history that got us here is a doomed concept, with its days numbered. The abject unfairness causes suffering for far too many millions - an exponentially growing number.

Seb's "bee in the bonnet" nonsense is a crafty hint at my 'vexatiousness'. Which is just plain silly and ill-advised. Follow this link pal...

https://wirralinittogether.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/my-third-vexatious-rebuttal-from-wirral-council-can-it-also-be-overturned/

...as you can see, the third one was overturned too. I scored a hat-trick.

I prefer to stand up to embedded, unaddressed institutional abuse in my own particular way, rather than be fobbed off by liars and cheats e.g. elected councillors who you see once every few years; and like to tell you they "have it in hand".

You're unwittingly marching down a well travelled cul-de-sac here and if elected, at some point, will become one of two things:

1. Disappointed and disillusioned

2. Complicit and wealthier