30 December (Part 1) - A rude awakening
It’s a bad habit but I picked up the phone at seven this morning to browse
the news, checked for emails and saw the ninth of @tony’s missives and
my heart sank. Was it another that I should quietly dump? However upon
reflection it is only the examples he uses to make his point with which I do not like to
be associated. Should I ask him to go away and consider returning to Belarus or will
that see me given the Bob Stewart treatment?
Bob Stewart, the MP for Beckenham was
convicted
of racism by a judge devoid of any common sense and Councillor John Davey was accused and rightly exonerated of a
vaguely similar offence. Does anyone seriously think either of them is a rabid racist?
Yes they do. Idiot lefties lurk in every crevice of society. My MP’s right hand man
called me a racist
for correctly saying that more than 80% of her Tweets (in the months immediately following her election) were aimed solely at black people and black
women in particular. Fortunately the lovely Nigerian lady who lives next door to me doesnְ’t agree with him. She
gave me a litre bottle of Bailey’s for Christmas.
Councillor John Davey did not do a good job for me when he was my Councillor but
that doesn’t mean I don’t like him, how could I when he named this blog for me?
More to the point, he had posted a thousand amusing Tweets before
falling foul
of the left wing zealots with one about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Not that their nonsense was entirely
unproductive, it convinced me that my
flirtation with voting Labour at local elections must end.
But enough of this, you know my views on the the idiot elements who infest left
wing politics. Does @tony successfully use his two contrasting examples of alleged racism to prove what we already
know? That Bexley Council is crooked from top to bottom, err
no; close to the top. Probably, it is not exactly difficult is it?
2. For Pete’s Sake
It is a tale of two elderly English gentlemen - both living in Southeast London, both affiliated with the
Conservative Party, both no strangers to controversy, both engulfed by it when they least expected.
One is Bob Stewart, the MP for Beckenham. A retired army colonel who once commanded UN forces in Bosnia,
Bob has enjoyed a thirteen-year-long Parliamentary career, during which he employed his wife, described the
behavior of a Tory MP colleague convicted of three counts of sexual assault as “folly”, failed to declare
directorship of a foreign defence company while sitting on a defence committee, and became friends with the
not-100%-savoury autocratic regimes of Bahrain and Azerbaijan. In 2022, when a Bahraini
human-rights activist
heckled Mr Stewart outside a Bahraini embassy reception, Bob heatedly exclaimed "Go back to Bahrain!" - and
ended up convicted of a racially aggravated public-order offence, and banished from the Tory benches, later
announcing that he would not seek re-election.
The other one is Bexley’s own John Davey, a Tory councillor since 2006. If being a
long-serving school governor,
and an artist whose works were exhibited at Hall Place, were not endearing enough, Cllr Davey has impressive -
relative to his Bexley Tory peers - green credentials, having twice skipped (intentionally, I choose to think) votes
on the destruction of Old Farm, and personally watered street trees during dry weather. You would not believe
that Cllr Davey was also Bexley Conservatives’ fiercest Twitter troll - until a misjudged tweet put him in trouble.
In October 2022, commenting on Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe’s criticism of that week’s Conservative government,
Cllr Davey wrote “Can we ask for a refund? We can send her back as she’s so ungrateful.”
A social-media furore
ensued, and resulted in Cllr Davey facing a Code of of Conduct complaint, being suspended from his beloved
party, and moving to the Independent desk in the Bexley council chamber. (Crayford’s Cllr Di Netimah was still a
Tory back then, so at least John had the desk all to himself). However, unlike Bob Stewart, John Davey was, a
few months later, forgiven and re-attached to the nourishing Bexley Conservatives bosom.
Given the similarity of what was said, why the divergence of outcomes? Crucially, Cllr Davey did not address
Mrs Zaghari-Radcliffe face-to-face
- and did not phrase his suggestion with Colonel Bob’s military directness. It
also helped that his case was considered in the friendly court of Bexley’s Monitoring Officer. Instead of simply
writing up an opinion, the MO appears to have brokered a peace deal between Cllr Davey and whoever
brought the Code of Conduct complaint against him - the individual never stepped forward; if he or she really
was affiliated with Bexley Labour, the damp-squib outcome is par for the course - and closed the case before it
even reached the Code of Conduct committee.
We know about this from the following paragraph published on Bexley’s web site in October 2023:
“The conclusion reached on a review of the initial assessment was that the Twitter post has the potential to
breach the requirements relating to Respect and Disrepute. However, a conclusion can only be reached
following a formal investigation and determination by the Code of Conduct Committee. The Councillor
recognised the inappropriateness of his comments on Twitter and the post was deleted. The sanctions that
may be imposed by the Members’ Code of Conduct Committee had in the main been effected. Therefore, a
formal investigation was not warranted. The Complainant and the Councillor agreed that the complaint could
be resolved informally on the conditions below: The Subject Member to render an apology; an apology had
already been posted on Twitter and the Twitter account has been terminated; A summary of the case and the
outcome to be noted within a report to be referred to the Code of Conduct Committee.”
However, this was not known at the time. At a council meeting in May 2023, Council Leader O’Neill declared
that “the remarks went through a process determined by the Monitoring Officer. The result, as you know, did
not say it was a racist comment. The matter has been resolved and we are moving on from that.”
Sorry, Teresa, I did not know that the “result” said that. May I see that “result” please? In May, I made a FOI
request asking: Can you please share the Monitoring Officer's (full) response to the Code of Conduct complaint recently made
against Cllr Davey, after his “Can we send her back and get our money back?” comment regarding Nazanin
Zaghari-Ratcliffe. (The alleged offence is a matter of public record, so there is presumably no breach of privacy).
The council refused, on privacy grounds: “We neither confirm nor deny that we hold information falling within the
description specified in your request. The duty in Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not
apply, by virtue of section 40(5)(B) of that Act. The Council has applied the exemption for the personal
information under section 40(5)(B) and will neither confirm or deny whether the information requested is held as to do
so would contravene the general data protection principles in the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)
and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Any information held by the Monitoring Officer concerning Councillor complaints is not intended for wider
disclosure. It would only be considered for publication once an investigation had been concluded and findings
made about an allegation by the Council’s Code of Conduct Committee”. I requested “internal review”, pointing out that Cllr Davey’s offence was a
matter of public record, and there was no information, except MO’s assessment, that needed to be disclosed. No
joy - Bexley repeated its refusal, and I complained to the Information Commissioner, writing:
“A local councillor made an allegedly racist public comment, widely reported in the media, and was complained
about to the borough's Monitoring Officer. The MO decided not to refer the councillor to the Code of Conduct
committee. I point out that the circumstance of the case are public knowledge – but the MO’s judgment is a
matter of public interest, especially when there are concerns about the MO “protecting” a councillor from the local ruling party.”
In November, the ICO upheld my complaint, advising Bexley that the council cannot invoke the privacy
exemption, and asking them to release the information, or formally refuse to.
If you read the Bonkers blog,
you know what happened next. On November 30, the council sent to myself and
the ICO a “final” letter reiterating the privacy defence and refusing to supply information. Then on December 1,
in a visibly rushed letter signed by a Deputy Director, I was declared “vexatious” and banned from making
further FOI requests. Both actions are illegal; never mind the little allegedly-vexatious me, but does Bexley’s
Head of Legal - also Bexley’s Monitoring Officer, a remarkable coincidence - really think she can school the
Information Commissioner on data privacy? Why are senior council officers spending their expensive time on
this? Your guess is as good as mine, but I suspect that it is not to protect the long-suffering Cllr Davey.
I know that one of Baroness O’Neill’s closest associates, the longtime Cabinet Member for Places Cllr Craske, is
a fan of 1980’s music. Peter, could you please tell your ermined boss about the Streisand effect?
Bexley’s Code of Counduct policy
Newspaper report
Wikipedia - Streisand effect