WirralPC

That seems like progress. But I refer you to the main points I made in the now removed thread: o The council itself was found to be bullying o Mr Hughes' letters are selective, aimed at repairing the council's embattled reputation & are thoroughly disingenuous o The 'bullying of disabled employees thread' contains 12+ pages, and holds all the information you need to inform yourselves and thereby avoid making damn-fool observations such as: "Mr Smart is wasting public funds" o The council is wasting public funds on a grand scale o The council is in cahoots with persons (Unison's and its own employees) who are "mis-selling" the very concept of what unions exist to do

No, they're not bullies per se. Neither is smartieno1, on the evidence of what he posts up here. But smartieno1's posts flushed out almost precisely the same characters, with similar ill-informed, out of proportion comments, on a previous post I remember; hence the reference to a posse.

Not everybody in the council is crooked and it's very wrong of you to suggest that I've EVER said they all were, on here or anywhere else. Relax. I won't play the 'libellous' card as that's for overgrown schoolboys. It is safe to suggest however that the required number of senior officers and their Unison friends ARE crooked enough... ...to keep the whole charade stumbling from one disaster to the next.

Not good to see anybody being ganged up on by a posse who appear strangely oblivious to very real council bullying. All very unsavoury. Yes, it was a good call to remove it.

Wirral Council are dipping into the pension fund money to send officers on jaunts to Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, et al. Check out the John Brace website. As for being noble, the money will probably be snatched out of your hand and squandered on a new drawbridge for the County HQ fortress.

From where I'm sitting, the bullying referred to throughout this thread continues... but with renewed vigour. Here are the reasons: o councillors gone AWOL o all sense of a duty of care for junior employees, out the window o since revelations in Private Eye, a battening down of the hatches o no accountability seen for previous bullies, so no deterrent, and current incumbents and offenders feel emboldened to continue their collusion and harassment o managers' eyes firmly on the prize of a fat pay off and a clean bill of health to take to a new unwitting employer if they get 'caught' o no union to speak of, just hollow shells of human beings, caught acting out a worthless charade o endorsement granted to the vile bullies through the complete absence of public oversight

You're right Bob - on the point of the council's capacity to resolve issues or 'learn lessons'. All the information on the council's systems belongs to the body corporate, or whatever you want to call it, even your emailed request to your mate asking him to put a tenner on AP McCoy in the 3:30 at Cheltenham. But on the point of covert recordings, the employer may consider it to be not admissible, but what about Employment Tribunal judges? A set of accurate records will serve to protect you against potential foul play. When you're in a conflict situation, if any prior request to managers to provide dual tape recording / verbatim notes / minutes of meetings is turned down, and you suspect manipulation or malpractice, or even if you haven't made a prior request and have initially been fool enough to trust the swine, it may also be possible for the penny to drop, for you to 'see the light' and start covertly recording, without informing the other participant(s) beforehand. More on ‘covert recordings’ here – Daniel Barnett Employment Law Newsletter (10th March 2014). The same case is covered in greater detail here at www.thelawyer.com within this article… admissibility of covert recordings The Honourable Mr Justice Underhill refused to accept a large amount (39 hours) of covertly recorded material without the material itself, and a transcript. Had this been provided on application to the court, the outcome may have been very different: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2013/0534_12_0102.html The law is catching up very slowly (after all, it's expenses fiddling Lords and MPs that write and debate it). One day, the pendulum will swing back the other way and there'll be no hiding place for Herefordshire's, Wirral's (and the wider UK's) crooked, empire building, 4 day a week working, honorarium grabbing, reputation managing public servants.

Alarming news reaches me in the form of a statement re: Herefordshire Council, which originates from a very reliable source: "It is rumoured Unison officials coerced one of their own reps at the council to withdraw a live complaint against a senior manager in Geoff Hughes' directorate. The rep was called into an office by a Unison Area Manager and told that a Unison official had been advised that senior managers were going to dig up information to threaten the complainant's job if they did not withdraw the complaint against the senior manager. Unison later went on to deny this, stating that the rep had misunderstood what was actually said. However, the rep in question, sensing collusion, had recorded the meeting, and the senior Unison official is clearly heard to state, 'I will insist they withdraw the threat against you, I will not have a Unison rep being threatened'. Not sure there is any ambiguity there? If a Unison senior official was told by senior managers at Herefordshire Council to warn the rep to back down and went along with it, surely that would indicate a conspiracy between Unison senior officials and senior managers at Herefordshire Council. If someone has a complaint against a senior manager, then they should be able to follow the grievance procedure and Unison should assist them in doing that. That's why members pay their subscriptions. The Unison rep was also refused representation by a senior unison officer because the complaint was against a senior manager - also a member of Unison. The rep complained to Unison Head Office and a haphazard investigation followed, which was aggressive and intimidating towards the rep, possibly in response to them daring to complain about high ranking officials. The investigation was conducted by another senior Unison official without speaking to the rep or requesting any evidence of the complaint. The official found no case to answer. The rep launched a tribunal claim, but the senior officials are refusing to witness what they were apparently told and had passed onto the rep. Unison appear to be choosing to demonise the rep in favour of their senior officials - but the transcripts of the tapes will reveal an entirely different story. The essential issue here is: did senior officials of Herefordshire Council threaten an employee or did Unison senior officials make it all up, or were they all in it together? The question I would be asking myself is 'are employees of Herefordshire Council getting their money's worth from those monthly subscription fees or would they be better going it alone?' The other issue here is, the employee is disabled..."

Update: http://www.wirralglobe.co.uk/news/11856801.Birkenhead_MP_Frank_Field_rushed_to_hospital_after_collapsing_at_public_meeting/

I certainly was. And today's news from the Local Government Chronicle certainly did the trick... http://www.wirralglobe.co.uk/news/11851526.From__abnormal_to_inspirational____Wirral_wins_Most_Improved_Council_award/

(delusions !)

https://wirralleaks.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/election-special-uncle-franks-hunger-games/ “The one thing that does not abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience†– Harper Lee As the momentum grows towards the May elections we thought we’d start our series of Election Specials with a profile of the leading political figure on Wirral…or should we say the Master Puppeteer himself – Frank Field. Field’s anti-poverty, anti-slavery,anti- global warming stance makes him sound like an ideal candidate for the Green Party – but as you will read further on he works to an entirely different agenda.Frank likes to be where the power is and preferably to be the one with the power and is anti-anyone who disagrees with him. The Right Honourable Mr.Field has been MP for Birkenhead since 1979 and has one of the largest majorities in the country. However considering that he is a leading advocate for people taking responsibility he seems particularly averse to taking any responsibility for the poor quality of life in Birkenhead – preferring to run the town down rather than getting his mates at Wirral Council to run the place properly. We are therefore asking you to take some time out and read this learned study of Field by our academic correspondent Professor G and give the motivations of our most prominent MP some further consideration.

John, are you telling us that the names of the more junior Wirral Council officers involved are not known to Wirral Council? "...the rest are known only to the company that wrote the report..." Bill Norman never justified his refusal to disclose in these terms i.e. the council didn't know the names.

"Good God"... as the great Allan Beswick used to mutter under his breath, before he put the phone down and moved onto the next caller.

With elderly, poor, disabled people, foreigners and persons of differing religion coming under renewed threat in 21st Century UK, Europe and the west in general, we need to be constantly reminded about the past, no matter how unsettling it is to do this. Banning the insignia and symbolism or being lily-livered in the face of it would only serve to condone those seeking to attack us under another banner. Lest we forget... Also, I agree, the site could do with a makeover.. However, there are some good links to a few worthy topics.

If the people behind the website were or appeared to be promoting Nazism or Zionism then it would be distasteful. However, did you read any of the contents Pete?

Here's the Andy Couldrick, CEO of Wokingham BC Twitter account, where all looks remarkably normal: https://twitter.com/WBC_ChiefExec

Thanks Megilleland (and thanks to UK Column and brave Mr Norridge). Names are information. Information is power.

Keep watching. It's getting more interesting and revealing by the day.................................

And Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne has just sold off Eurostar for a short term boost of a few hundred million - while placing a vital transport link into the hands of a profiteering business, with no scruples, propped up by greedy shareholders, on and on into the future. To continue the wartime theme introduced so brilliantly by Bobby... Osborne, if thrust onto a battleground - where you have to dig deep into your reserves of courage and kill or be killed - would be the type of individual who shoots his oppo in the back and rifles his pockets before deserting to the enemy waving a cheque made out to "to whom it concerns". It's written all over the hopeless, pathetic toff's face in that famous Bullingdon Club photo.

"Detected by England's Councils". Oh dear.

The Audit Commission did a whitewash when Martin Morton reported his concerns about money being stolen from disabled people's bank accounts. Mike Thomas, the then district auditor was long regarded by those in the know as having been 'got at'. I suspect to get a true figure on council fraud, we'd need to add a nought or two to declared estimates.

Which is how I read it Flam. Bill Norman saw it differently, and somebody - I don't know WHO to this day (but most likely Anna Klonowski) - instead of acting on the EHRC's clear findings of disability discrimination, decided to appoint DLA Piper, instruct them to ignore Mike Smith, look again at the issue and... Hey Presto! They came up with the opposite conclusion. At the time, Bill Norman used 'Right of Reply' as the reasoning for not disclosing the names of senior officers involved within the Anna Klonowski report. It's now 2015 and most of the names are still concealed.

This was just part of an elaborate cover up after £736,756.97 was stolen from learning disabled people's bank accounts over an 8 / 9 year period: https://wirralinittogether.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/dla-piper-llp-came-to-the-aid-of-abusive-wirral-council-in-their-hour-of-need/ As far as disability discrimination goes, the only people to be stolen from were disabled people. If you were an able-bodied tenant, the searchlight moved on until it found a disabled one.

Would this sort of sketch qualify? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1IskdPCQAA8oQ7.jpg