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News and Comment September 2011

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8 September (Part 1) - The obscene blog - who dunnit?

No idea! I could guess but I would probably be putting two and two together and making five. Whoever it was has friends in high places, the police in Bexleyheath are going to inordinate lengths to hide his (I don’t believe it is a her) identity.

First the police wouldn’t talk about it until leaned on by MPs and Ministers. Then Borough Commander Stringer sent a letter of reassurance that things were progressing, maybe slowly, but it was all being taken very seriously and everyone involved would be kept informed. The government Minister received similar assurances. Then two weeks later came a couldn’t care less sort of automated response (no signature, wrong reference number) saying nothing could be done. The police refused to talk about it on the phone as they had marked the file ‘RESTRICTED’ to keep it hush-hush and the promise for someone to call back didn’t materialise.

It was decided I should write to the Borough Commander while Elwyn Bryant (also a subject of the Bexley council inspired obscenity) should probe via a Freedom of Information request. For technical reasons the FOI went off under my name. My letter to Commander Stringer made reference to it. He would have received it by Tuesday morning of this week and by mid-afternoon the FOI had been rejected for daring to seek personal information. It’s not subtle is it? Whoever heard of an FOI getting dealt with within a couple of days? They were in so much of a hurry they addressed me as Mrs.

The FOI did not seek personal information, it asked for dates, but any excuse will do when indulging in a frantic cover up. Obviously the complaints procedure was an essential first resort before going to the Information Commissioner yet again. The letter to the Police FOI Complaints Unit went off this morning.

Bexley council are busy trying to dodge the issue too. They came up with their excuse of a response to my Subject Access Request a mere two months late. It tells me one thing and one thing only, that Will Tuckley got the police to send the harassment letter. Exactly the same response as given to a four month overdue Freedom of Information request. You would think their obscene blog never happened; a blatant attempt to dodge their responsibilities under The Data Protection Act. A complaint was called for. The email read…


Dear Mr. Grosvenor,
You appear to have confused my Subject Access Request with Mr. Barnbrook’s Freedom of Information Request. The response is close to identical but SARs and FOIs are not the same thing.
I accept that I gave permission to exclude mundane areas of little interest such as council tax payments or failure to empty refuse bins but you appear to have excluded everything except for Mr. Tuckley’s ill-judged trip to Bexleyheath police station.
At the very minimum I require to see copies of all the correspondence by staff and councillors relating to me and my website. For example I know that the IT department blocked access from council computers in mid-April 2011 because a councillor wrote to someone about it and the mail found its way to me. I know that the IT department later blocked access to my website from libraries because numerous people have tried and failed to get it from a library. All this must have been in response to written instructions.
It is also well known that by arrangement with Mr. Chris Loynes I visited the council’s offices on 20 May 2011 which must have been logged by him and within a couple of (working) hours of that visit it had been recorded in scurrilous terms on the website http://malcolmknight.blogspot.com in contravention of Google’s terms and conditions on impersonation. If Mr. Loynes did not do it himself he must have told someone else who did. There will be correspondence. Similarly there will be correspondence on the day Mr. Tuckley received my complaint about my arrangement with Mr. Chris Loynes being made public.
Within the period in question I have received email from a fairly senior council official and a councillor both from a bexley.gov email address. Unless you find at least the councillor’s correspondence I will know you have not looked for any.
Do you wish me to give you a little more time or would you prefer I report the latest failure to the Information Commissioner without further delay?

Yours sincerely,


So who is this Chris Loynes? Head of Democratic Services is the official title, he runs around after the needs of councillors and as events have shown, looks after the register of members’ interests. It is that register which was examined on 20th May. Anyone can do that by appointment, in a more open and transparent council it would be available on-line. So it is Mr. Loynes responsibility to look after councillors’ interests and unless he went blabbing about my visit he was the only person who would know about it. But I don’t know who set up the obscene blog, I expect Mr. Loynes foolishly blabbed.

I didn’t see Mr. Loynes at the last two council meetings I attended, a council mole tells me that that is because he has been off sick. I still don’t know who is adept with Google’s blogspot facility and I’m sure everyone will wish Mr. Loynes a speedy recovery.

 

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