21 April - How do you solve a problem like Dimitri?
Bexley Council has renewed its vendetta against Mr. Dimitri
Shrovob. An opinionated piece about it might lose the few Council friends I may have; so what follows is strictly factual with comments restricted.
Mr. S. is one of the very few people remaining who tries to hold Bexley Council to account
and without someone to watch over them they might wholly revert to their old ways.
Dishonest, Vindictive and occasionally Criminal.
For his pains Mr. S.
has been declared vexatious and banned from submitting Freedom of Information requests. The law is that
a question may be deemed vexatious but not an
individual. A complaint is currently with the Information Commissioner but like all quangos they cannot be relied upon to act impartially. When Bexley Council
refused to answer a question from Michael Barnbrook about whether or not a Council employee had the qualifications
demanded by his contract of employment, Bexley Council told the ICO that Michael
was a well known racist. The employee was black. This despite Michael spending a lot of money on a
young black boy who might otherwise have drifted towards Council care and having chosen to
accept the position of police mentor to Stephen Lawrence. (I have wondered why a black teenager needed a police mentor
but that is different can of worms.)
Last November Council Leader
Teresa O’Neill devoted several minutes of a Full Council meeting to an
attack on Mr. Shrovob for trying to get a straight answer to his question about
the Petition Scheme. He was acutely aware that the only other petition held in
recent years was kicked into the long grass with a last minute rule change and a
big lie thrown in for good measure. He was concerned that if he ran another
petition it would suffer the same fate. The Leader said that Mr. S’s questions
were costing the Council too much money and exaggerated the quoted numbers to
‘prove’ her point. A follow up letter said that answering FOIs causes staff unnecessary stress.
Subsequently all of Mr. Shvorob’s FOIs were rejected immediately after submission. The initial excuse note said that he had made a total of
115 FOI requests in 18 months. More than 100 had been answered without
complaint but the final dozen brought down the shutters.
Having illegally banned Mr. S. from submitting FOIs, Bexley Council has taken
what might be considered the logical next step. They have rejected his questions to Full Council. Mr. S.
thinks this is unprecedented
but
it is not. Dimitri should count himself lucky not to have been
banned from being on Council premises because that is a weapon in their armoury too.
If I may interject a comment into this hopefully factual report it is that Mr. Shvorob
does not know when he is beaten by a dishonest system. To my mind there
comes a point when you have to accept that Bexley Council is crooked to its very
core and move on to finding the next set of facts to prove that very thing. The
trivial should not be pursued to the ends of the earth.
The questions submitted to Full Council were…
Can you please explain the mysterious demise of the council’s ULEZ Task and
Finish Group, which was supposed to come up with ways to soften the ULEZ
expansion’s impact on Bexley residents?
and
Do you have any information about why in 2021, a two-year-old, and
soon-liquidated single-employee company owned by a Lucy Beckwith was selected to
bid for a £40,000 unadvertised catering contract for Bexley’s Volunteer Event?
I would not have asked either of those questions. In the case of the former I
phoned the Chairman of the ULEZ Task and Finish Group and he was more than happy
to tell me what happened. As I have said before, the Council Leader took over
the job of fighting against Khan’s air tax and the Group was effectively
side-lined and
overtaken by events and I do not imply any criticism of what the Baroness decided to do.
The Lucy Beckwith question is ancient history but rooted in a suspicion that
there is a family connection with former (Brian and Aileen, deceased)
Councillors of the same name. I was assured at the time that there was not and
more recently that a Lucy was not in evidence at Brian’s funeral. Maybe I am too
forgiving but I’m not sure it matters very much if Lucy Beckwith was dragged in
at the last minute to help out when Bexley Council was in danger of falling into
a hole of its own making.
Apart perhaps from an element of sarcasm which found its way into the final
question rejection email I don’t see it as being out of order. A question that
has been accepted for next week’s meeting, however, may be.
You may perhaps deduce that Mr. S’s questions were veering towards the petty but
anything he can do Bexley Council can do better. They have found a loyal
supporter to attempt to blacken Dimitri’s name by broadcasting his alleged sins
via the medium of the webcast and subsequently their website.
Mr. Chapman’s name is not among the nearly two thousand Bexley residents who
have contacted BiB over the years nor is he an X follower so how did he get to
know of Mr. Shvorob’s activities? It will be hat eating time if this is not a
contrived inside job to malign a Council critic. It stinks of Teresa O’Neill’s leadership.
Nevermind, it is probably better than reporting critics to the police or making
false allegations which result in criminal charges and a Councillor committing
perjury in both a Magistrate’s and a Crown Court. I remain hopeful that such
depths of Council depravity are truly consigned to history.
Probably I have not entirely succeeded in my attempt to fall out with no one to
which I can only say “tough, I am not going to write it out again”.