30 September - End of month roundup

When I used to collect BiB statistics it became fairly obvious that comment made on the last day of the month was the least read; presumably because of readers using the Month view rather than the daily alternative. For that reason the tradition has been that nothing too important is published at the end of the month.

Today that tradition is continued.

Louie French’s Superloop petition
At first sight it seems to be a good idea and on balance I think it probably is but if one of Superloop’s objectives is to connect railway stations, is Bexley station worth connecting? Sidcup station is the next SL3 stop and it is on the same railway line as Bexley.

Because of recent road closures the SL3 Express Bus has been diverting via Bexley War Memorial and Louie proposes that change becomes permanent. The official route is Arbuthnot Lane, right into Blendon Road and then Penhill Road which is 1,400 yards shorter than going via the War Memorial. The MP says that it would relieve congestion on Penhill Road but who decided to put a ten minute delay on Penhill Road every morning? I track my regular visitor through it most mornings. Ten minutes is very much the norm. 15 years ago the Penhill/Blendon junction was deliberately re-engineered by Bexley Council with the express intention of slowing the traffic.

If the longer route into Bexley Village requires an extra vehicle and driver to maintain the same frequency it will cost the best part half a million pounds for one of the new electric buses due to be introduced next year.

Not wishing to be unkind to Bexley Village but no one goes there for its shopping facilities do they? Bexley residents already have two bus services through the Village to get them into Bexleyheath within ten minutes. For those not keen on Bexleyheath there are two services going in the opposite direction to Sidcup although only one goes through the village centre.

So why divert the SL3 to Bexley Village? It benefits people who live there but much the same number of people would benefit if it stopped near Penhill Road instead.

Maybe there is scope for some horse trading with Transport for London? They want to shorten the SL3 route by avoiding New Road in Abbey Wood but Bexley Council is adamant that they will not agree to TfL’s request to improve Knee Hill. The Cabinet Member himself told me that there is no way they will countenance a tree coming down.

Maybe that is why Bexley remains unfavoured by Sadiq Khan.

Click image above to see more of what Louie is asking.

Parking again
This car has been parked outside all morning. I haven’t bothered to report it. What’s the point? My last three reports were ignored.

It will probably get a ticket before the day is out but so far not.

At least it is better than Kelly Wilkinson who parked in the same place and blocked the road.

P.S. The car had a PCN when I checked at 1 p.m. How can people be that stupid?

Cap that!
Our lying hypocrite of a Prime Minister said he was given £16,000 to spend on clothes by a friendly Lord and registered it as something else; then under pressure admitted it was £32,000.

How do you spend £32,000 on clothes? I am absolutely sure that I have never spent that much on clothes in my entire life. Maybe it shows!

I know exactly how much I spent this year.

Those who know the Oval cricket ground will be aware that the Pavilion stares into the afternoon sun and I haven’t owned a hat since leaving school. I decided that I would have to buy one to shield my eyes and spent £27 in the Club Shop.

That was with the 10% member’s discount.

What a rip off.

The Royal Mail
It was my birthday ten days ago and two cards which have arrived from old work mates for many years failed to show up. Both senders a fair amount older than me and the only contact for several years has been at birthdays and Christmas. Have they snuffed it, has Royal Mail plumbed new depths of delay or has RM killed the post by doubling the price of a 1st Class stamp inside a year?

A couple of days later a card came demanding £1·50 for under-paid postage. My first thought was “stuff ’em” but then I got to think the missing item might show which sender has fallen by the wayside. I have paid the fee to find out.

The card says that they will Return to Sender after 18 days. That will cost them, one of the missing cards would have come from Glasgow and the other from Brighton. Much cheaper to deliver to Belvedere.

What if there is no Return Address? What if there is no Return Address and the contents are valuable? Is this how foreign owned Royal Mail can afford to pay its Chairman a million a year while he demands an increase to three million?

I have asked Royal Mail these questions and for the legal justification for what one might consider to be theft.

My postman says that until recently he could have checked what the withheld item might be but that is no longer allowed. Extorting money for unknown goods must be one of many reasons why the privatised Royal Mail is going down the drain and I have wondered how I might accelerate their demise. What bright spark privatised it? Oh yes, bloody Cameron

Two or three times a week my postman delivers to me a package from HMV. I buy far too many blu-ray discs. I have deprived Royal Mail of the revenue by switching all my purchases to a weekly collection in the Bexleyheath store. That should cost RM a hundred or two every year.

Not as good as the revenge taken on Amazon at the beginning of the year. That has cost them over £2,000 so far. They are big enough not to care and neither will Royal Mail but as Bexley Council discovered in 2009, I will not take these things lying down.

 

29 September - If at first you don’t succeed… it’s only taxpayers’ money

I have only ever submitted one question to a Full Council meeting and it was way back in 2010 when I asked the cost of enclosing Lesnes Abbey Park in a low scaffold pipe and wood fence the previous year. (Photo 1 alongside.) The answer came back that it was to keep motorcyclists out of the 88 hectares of woods and it cost a little under £75,000. I didn’t really believe it as I had just spent three grand on just one side of my own garden.

The Cabinet Member excused the project by saying it was authorised by the Labour Administration in 2006.

14 years later my fence and the original concrete posts is still standing as good as new whilst Bexley’s ineffective motorbike deterrent had to be increased in height using longer wooden posts and twice as much scaffold pole. Should I ignore the intermediate repainting of the posts?

Since then it has been progressively repaired and replaced again because the posts have rotted.

From my New Road correspondent comes the following comment and pictures…

Here is an example of Bexley’s habit of not getting things right at first (or subsequent) attempts.

This incompetence is obviously a great waste of money. The first picture shows some of the unsuitable wooden posts.

I am sure you can think of many other examples like Welling Corner traffic lights and the ever-changing junction at the Civic Offices in Bexleyheath.

The examples that leap immediately to mind are the roundabouts on Wickham Lane that buses were unable to negotiate and the slightly different situation at the Southern End of North Cray Road which was voted to be among the most stupid bits of road design in the country. (†)

Ruxley Corner again.
Wickham Lane second attempt.

† The website domain name has changed and the content reduced since it was first created but Bexley still merits a page for its too frequent road design idiocy.

 

28 September - A reason to vote Conservative

I spent more than five hours with Elwyn Bryant yesterday; lunch and wine etc. and we talked a lot of politics. Older readers will remember that Elwyn used to be a regular at Council meetings asking awkward questions and reporting them to the Equalities Commission when Councillor Craske refused to switch his microphone - and hence the hearing loop - on and the Mayor illegally supported the Councillor. Too many of Bexley Councillors really were part of a despicable bunch back then intent on fighting any resident who dared to stand up against them.

Thankfully all history now although there may be quite a lot of work still to be done with imbecile managers.

We spent a fair amount of time trying to establish which of us despised Kier Starmer’s dishonest regime most and I am not sure that I won. Elwyn was a union official in the latter years of his working life and his father was a Welsh coal miner: second thoughts, I think it was his grandfather.

It was therefore something of a surprise to me when Elwyn, never a fan of James Brokenshire who refused to help him when Councillor Craske published obscenities about him, told me that Louie French has proved to be a very effective local MP. That’s a quick turnaround, three months ago Elwyn said he was going to vote for the F woman who prefers not to be mentioned here.

So what has Louie done to earn such an accolade from such an unlikely source? Maybe his latest Newsletter offers an explanation. It is difficult to dispute anything he says in it.

Bexley Village does need to be served by the SL3 bus. Currently it goes non-stop from Bexleyheath Library to Sidcup station via any route favoured by the driver. Yesterday I saw it on the A2. Townley Road to Hurst Road is a convenient route passing within a couple of hundred yards of Bexley station. The station itself has been upgraded with Conservative Government money and the loop service to Abbey Wood is coming back in December to which Elwyn added the restoration of Albany Park stopping services.

Additional Car Parking revenue is going into pot holes and Bexley unlike Bromley and Greenwich is not making parking unnecessarily difficult - and expensive for diesel drivers. Bexley is coming down harder on fly tippers.

A new pedestrian crossing has been installed in Hurst Road but Yarnton Way in the North which is a bigger accident black spot remains unloved.

Louie is fighting the unfairness of the Labour regime’s plan to reduce the housing targets for Greenwich and Lewisham while increasing Bexley’s. Soon to overshadow my own front garden is a new 25 storey skyscraper without any improved infrastructure other than a direct route to Abbey Wood station. The notice of the consultation was delivered to affected households only a handful of hours before the deadline.

Unfortunately, unlike Elwyn, I do not have an effective MP.

P.S. I used to subscribe to Louie’s YouTube channel but when he went seven months without posting anything new I opted out. Elwyn mentiond that he had been on GB News recently which is not something I watch live but a search was immediately successful. The YouTube algorithm noticed that I had watched Louie so offered me his channel. Sod’s Law, Louie has posted four more videos in the past ten days so I resubscribed. If Louie ever wonders why his subscribers dropped from 128 down to 127 and back to 128 two weeks later, it was me.

Maybe he will one day invest in a decent camera and microphone. Put it on expenses Louie or ask Lord Alli for an interest free loan!

 

26 September - A reason to vote Liberal Democrat

My copy of the Liberal Democrat’s Belvedere by-election leaflet showed up yesterday, it’s not for me because I am one of Keir Starmer’s far right racist thugs but voters who naturally lean to the left might consider giving David McBride a chance.

I have already opined that anyone who wants to see Belvedere improve should vote Conservative. The fact is that history shows the majority group side-lines all opposition voices so in practice our Labour Councillors don’t achieve a lot except for their own litter picking efforts.

Whilst trying not to confuse national and local politics myself it cannot be totally ignored that Labour’s top brass have been far worse at governing than even I imagined. YouTube, which I spend too much time viewing is overwhelmed with video essays and comment about Labour’s lying control freakery. Proclaiming the need for more state control. Are they mad?

Several red haired young women are impersonating the Deputy Prime Minister with mock speeches which are all too believable. I have never seen anything like it outside of Spitting Image. The Labour Government has plumbed new depths of illiberalism and idiocy and Belvedere residents who are as sick of it as the polls and pub chatter suggest most people are and cannot bring themselves to vote Conservative would do well to consider the alternative offered by David McBride.

He is not a total newcomer to Belvedere as he used to teach in a school here; maybe he has his own fan base locally already. Labour needs to be given a short sharp shock. My Labour Councillor (an MP since July) and my Labour MP voted to make 1,798 Belvedere residents worse off and nationally kill about 4,000 people - their own estimate. Belvedere people owe Labour nothing.

Reform UK announced that it intends to contest Belvedere (PDF) but there has been zero sign of activity. In any case I no longer consider that party to be a viable alternative to the Conservatives (†) following a number of decisions and statements by their leader Nigel Farage. Demanding money with menaces for truthful references to their General Election candidate doesn’t help either.

† I still see nothing in that party nationally to attract me back to them. All four leadership candidates look similarly useless to me. James “your blog is well out of order” Cleverly. A Top Four Tory? It’s a joke!

 

25 September - Unwise to park in Abbey Wood and unwise parking in Abbey Wood

I was invited to an event in Abbey Wood today at which it was said the Mayor’s chauffeur Paul Holloway was due to reminisce about his 40 years in the job but was unsure whether or not to go incase I had at some time made a comment about him that I should not have done. However I decided to hide away at the back and was glad I did because as a speaker and entertainer Paul was nothing short of excellent.

I knew that Mayor Sue Gower MBE is brilliant at everything she does but it seems that Paul in his own way is just the same. I might query a Gold Standard Advanced Driver referring to pulling into the slow lane but more seriously he is a very good speaker.

Maybe a job awaits Paul in the Labour Party as a speech writer; clearly they have no one as capable as him.

If Sue and Paul came to Abbey Wood in the Mayoral limousine I do hope that it was there when they returned to it.

I was a little late to the meeting because yesterday’s commuter returned to the same spot and I had to guide a tradesman’s vehicle through the narrow gap and ended up speaking to him for quite some time.

Parking in front of a dropped kerb is an offence and parking more that 50 centimetres from the kerb is another offence but according to Bexley Council if you break both rules at the same time it is not an offence.

Thank you to the readers who offered their ideas for retribution.

Note: Paul said that the Mace and Chain are insured for a combined £300,000. Sue said she doesn’t always look good in photographs but I am not sure I believe her so I only took the one. Looks OK to me but maybe not as sharp as I would like. Damned mobiles on digital zoom!

N.B. Paul has not previously been mentioned by name on Bonkers.

Tradesman on my drive (Photo 4) because his client’s is inaccessible.
Photographed 25th September 2024.

 

24 September (Part 2) - Another inconsiderate commuter. PF14 HXZ

One might have hoped that there would have been an answer to the Abbey Wood Parking Consultation which ended more than seven weeks ago, by now but so far nothing.

Informal conversations with neighbours suggest that the vote has gone heavily in favour of a Controlled Parking Zone and double yellow lines everywhere except in designated parking bays.

Meanwhile residents are regularly blocked in or out of their drives by selfish goons like the driver of Micra PF14 HXZ.

I can just about get my car out of the gap he has left for me (there is an enormous long Mercedes parked just behind the camera position) but next door, which is currently undergoing renovation with a succession of tradesmen’s vans stands no chance.

The road should never have been planned with such a stupid layout of drives although to be fair the original plans show it to be a No Parking area.

Bexley Council has had 37 years to fix it and been asked several times but insists that blocking the road here is entirely legal, and in terms of dropped kerb restrictions it is.

 

24 September (Part 1) - Perhaps the Lib Dems have a point…

David McBride, the Liberal Democrat candidate in the Belvedere by-election is demanding that Bexley Council empties the bins more often.

I second that.

Photographed 23rd September 2024.

 

23 September - The bin tax. It could be worse

When Bexley Council announced that it would increase the cost of garden waste collection until us suckers showed some sign of resistance I immediately cancelled my subscription.

Using materials salvaged from the nearby fly tip I constructed a crude compost heap and bought a shredder for not much more than twice the cost of an annual waste subscription. The picture shows this summer’s ‘harvest’. Amazing how it reduces in size once chopped up small and the shredder is quite fun to use.

Last week I visited my sister in Hampshire where they also have to pay for a garden waste bin. I mean that literally. Her Council charges £75 to issue a bin and this year jacked the collection price up by 60% to £120 for a fortnightly collection.

The other recyclables are collected at four weekly intervals but maybe that is because there is not much to collect. The only thing allowed into the plastics bin is bottles. Items must be bottle shaped because the machinery is not programmed to pick up anything else.

Glass containers are taken once a month unless they are broken. The Council says that broken glass is far too dangerous.

And as if that is not enough, East Hampshire Council is consulting on closing the local recycling centre where visits are currently rationed.

Maybe there is an opportunity there for Country Style to show Hampshire how to do things.

£120 a year for garden waste collection!

 

22 September - “Send Labour a message”

David McBride is the Liberal Democrat candidate who chased Daniel Francis in the Bexleyheath and Crayford General Election campaign and now he is chasing his ‘ghost’ in Belvedere. His by-election leaflet is beginning to circulate; though not yet to my door.

‘Send Labour a message’ and ’Labour do not deserve to win’ are his slogans which pretty much accords with my own views but his claim to be “not just another vote” will be difficult to fulfill. As a Lib Dem Councillor Bexley Conservatives will simply ignore him as they have the Labour Councillors Belvedere has had for the past 10 years.

His priorities appear to be pretty standard fare; transport, overflowing bins and fly tipping, and a rather strange implication that Lesnes Abbey Park Playground is in danger of being lost and must not be. David McBride was Mayor of Bromley 2011-2012.

Personally I find it strange that David’s General Election webpage shows him both shaved and scruffy. He chooses the latter look for Belvedere.

Despite having a few feelers out, none of my contacts has yet received a Labour Party leaflet. Maybe it is because all of them are pensioners who are no longer considered fertile ground for votes.

 

16 September - Bexley Council’s top management. Filled with rats and wasps

The News Shopper is on a bit of a roll right now exposing the absolute callousness and incompetence of Bexley’s Housing Department which is still dumping people in uninhabitable damp and rat infested properties.

The Shopper reports that Bexley Council refuses to discuss the matter as is their managerial style.

The NS report is a must read for anyone who follows the activities of our disreputable Council.

Link to last week’s Shopper report.

Similar BiB report.

And another one.

 

15 September - Bexley in Westminster

In the 15 years since the first Bonkers blog page was published, (15th September 2009, this is number 7,206) Bexley has had five former Councillors elected to Parliament. Teresa Pearce, Abena Opong-Asare and Daniel Francis for Labour and Gareth Bacon and Louie French for the Conservatives to which one might add Teresa O’Neill placed in the Lords by her good friend Boris Johnson.

Rather more have had jobs in Parliament, among them, Joe Ferreira, Sally Hinkley, Cheryl Bacon, Frazer Brooks, David Leaf, Cameron Smith, Adam Wildman and the most recent recruit, Nicola Taylor.
Nicola Taylor working for suspended Labour MP Apsana Begum looks like a match made in Heaven to me.

Note: 396 blogs are not currently on line but most will be restored in due course.

 

14 September - Not Appy

For several consecutive years I have been given a complimentary ticket to the Battle of Britain Flying Display at Duxford (a friend is an Imperial War Museum Volunteer) but It can be a very long and tiring day spent mainly standing and to be honest I find it to be rather tame; but that’s the schoolboy who went to every SBAC show at Farnborough in the 1950s and several in the 60s and 70s talking.

The days before Heath and Safety took over and jet fighters would exceed the sound barrier above the crowds.

So this year I offered the freebie ticket to a young friend who lives a little way up the M11 on the way to Duxford. Unfortunately he found that car parking could only be booked via a Smart Phone App and he doesn’t own any sort of mobile phone. One wasted ticket.

How can anyone do anything without a mobile phone in 2024?

By pure chance another friend who works for Allianz Insurance offered me a freebie ticket to Twickenham for the England v New Zealand Ladies’ match on the same day.

That was all App based too. Download something to my phone, install it and register the phone number and by some magic that I did not understand a QR code appeared on my phone two days later. Then at a very crowded admission gate everyone had to pass their phone under a scanner.

Apart from the crowd being funnelled into a turnstile it was actually fairly easy but obviously an impossibility for my young friend from Hertfordshire. How many people like him cannot fully participate in life? For unfathomable reasons it is his choice but not everyone has that freedom.

As you can see I had a very good view and it was a very good game. However I came home just as knackered as I would have from Duxford.

 

13 September - Attempted murder is not an urgent matter in Sidcup

Just in case you are wondering if Sidcup Police did anything about the hammer that came flying through @tonyofsidcup’s window and landed on his daughter’s favourite chair, the answer is almost nothing.

Their latest excuse is that their investigation “is on pause while the detective is on multi-week leave”.

So thatְ’s all right then.

Although @tony may not have said so publicly I still think it is likely that the hammer incident has something to do with @tony successfully suing a local builder in the County Court.

But then I am not a highly trained detective.

 

12 September - Prophetic words

It must have been on this day 15 years ago that my then local Councillor and Vice-Chairman of the Transport Sub-Committee told me that road planning in Bexley was “Absolutely Bonkers”. I must confess that memories are fading but I think he told me later that he was specifically referring to the narrowing of Florence Road and not of Abbey Road as I assumed at the time. He later said that those changes were the result of decisions made by the outgoing Labour administration. (More about Florence Road here.)

Whatever the truth of the matter I came home and registered the Bonkers internet domain name.

The website was very popular in its early days and was hitting 50,000 unique visitors a month at one stage but I am no longer sure what good it does now that a thoroughly dishonest Bexley Council has cleaned up its act. Despite that the domain renewal fee was paid today to keep things going for another three years. I want it to be still around when Two Tier Keir gets his just desserts. Three years should be plenty long enough.

Since the opening of the Elizabeth line the Councillor’s words are amply justified twice a day when the artificially narrowed Florence Road brings the area to a standstill and there is no one on Bexley Council bright enough to recognise what needs to be done. Perhaps the new Councillor for Belvedere will look into it?

 

11 September (Part 2) - They are called Liebour for a reason

I first voted Labour in 2014, 50 years after casting my first vote and I consoled myself that it wasn’t really a vote for Labour but support for a young Danny Hackett who had become a friend. I believed he was misguided in his choice of party but he was scrupulously honest which I thought might be his downfall; and I was right on both counts.

In 2018 having embarked upon a slippery socialist path I cast a vote for Labour again, not for Danny because he had gone from Lesnes Abbey to Thamesmead East due to the boundary changes. It was the same in 2022 my principal reason being that I felt that Bexley’s Conservatives needed stronger opposition and I was in no danger of changing the colour of the Council. Lacking a little in confidence I voted two Labour and one Conservative on both occasions and I still found the voting decision a difficult one.

It is a relief to know that following yesterday’s anti-pensioner Parliamentary vote to ensure that several thousands of old folk will die from the cold - and that is Liebour’s estimate not mine - never again will I face such a dilemma.

How could people who I believed were decent human beings do such a thing and their activists continue to support them?

To make things worse the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves compounds their cruelty by falsely claiming that next April’s pension increase will more than cover the loss of the Winter Fuel Allowance (WFA is commonly said to be £300). She says that an increase of £460 (the 4% Triple Lock extra) will cover the shortfall. Oh no it won’t.

As usual it is Labour Lies and their arrogant assumption that the plebs are stupid. Most pensioners will not get a £460 increase, for at least 75% of them it will be only £353. And that must cover two Winters not just one; the Winter that is fast approaching and the next one in 2025.

As if that is not a big enough Liebour fraud, because they are not going to increase the tax thresholds, a minimum of 20% of next April’s increase will disappear in income tax.

The net result is that most people will receive £282 (80% of £353) to cover all the price increases Liebour plans to thrust upon us next year. Council Tax, fuel tax and energy price increases plus general inflation in exchange for the £600 (two years) loss of WFA. How pensioners get through to next April is not explained and very obviously no Liebour politician apart from Jon Trickett MP (Normanton and Hemsworth) cares.

Certainly not anyone local who has proved themselves not to be decent individuals after all. Voting Liebour. I should have known better.

Note: For reasons unknown none of the sums reported in the media and by the Chancellor and quoted above accord with my own personal situation.

 

11 September (Part 1) - Selling up

More of Bexley’s Social Housing stock has gone on sale this week and once again not all of them are marked as Social Housing by the sales agent but they are all confirmed as being ‘Council Houses’ on https://uksocialhousing.com.

Index to similar sales.

Updated list with links.

 

30 Bourne Mead, Bexley
15 Marden Crescent, Bexley
34 Pengarth Road, Bexley
53 Pengarth Road, Bexley
Pengarth Road, Bexley (One bedroom flat)
20 Rye Close, Bexley
44 Stansted Crescent, Bexley
44 Stansted Crescent, Bexley (2nd sale attempt. Price reduced)
33 Oakhouse Road, Bexleyheath
Parkside Avenue, Bexleyheath
80 Pelham Road, Bexleyheath
Crayford Road, Crayford
Dale End, Crayford
60 Heath Road, Crayford
83 Heath Road, Crayford
187 Iron Mill Lane, Crayford
22B Iron Mill Lane, Crayford
235 Iron Mill Lane, Crayford
176 Maiden Lane, Crayford
206 Maiden Lane, Crayford
234 Maiden Lane, Crayford
4 Medway Road, Crayford
Russell Close, Crayford (Not on Street View)
20 Stour Road, Crayford
52 Jenningtree Road, Erith
22 Springhead Road, Erith
26-32 Burnham Road, Sidcup
204 Ellenburgh Road, Sidcup
63 Footscray Road, Sidcup
50 Mallard Walk, Sidcup
23 Maddocks Close, Sidcup
56 Maylands Drive, Sidcup (a flat)
56 Maylands Drive, Sidcup (2nd sale attempt. Price reduced)
Maylands Drive, Sidcup (Semi-detached)
17 Partridge Road, Sidcup
30 St. Andrews Road, Sidcup
19 Berwick Road, Welling
18 Burnell Avenue, Welling
39 Burnell Avenue, Welling
79 Darenth Road, Welling
47 Denton Road, Welling
17 Ridley Road, Welling
Rye Close, Welling
70 Tyrell Avenue, Welling
2 Wycliff Road, Welling

 

10 September - Flip Flopping Frauds

Imagine that you are a new Labour MP, maybe one who has spent 20 years establishing a local reputation for championing the most vulnerable in society and then being called in for the most significant vote of this Parliament.

His Leader, the Downing Street Despot, is compelling him under pain of expulsion from the party, to vote in favour of condemning 4,000 plus people, according to official Labour Party estimates, to death because their billion pound (total) fuel allowance is to be squandered on paying back the unions and funding Net Zero in Africa,

They will never ever live it down will they, just as Mrs. Thatcher is still remembered as the milk snatcher from her time as Education Secretary more than 50 years ago?

By the end of today we will know which Labour MPs are men and women of principle and which are not.

 

9 September - Good progress but more to do

Almost exactly 14 years ago I attended my first Council meeting and met up with five regular attendees who did their best to keep a near criminal Bexley Council in check. It made six of us - John Watson is inexplicably missing from this photograph - who went on to uncover and report many of the Council’s worst excesses.

There are only three of us left now but we meet occasionally to discuss the state of the world.

Last week I picked up Elwyn (on the left in the photo) and John for a lunch date. Both have given up driving, originally because of Khan’s ULEZ fraud although maybe other reasons have arisen since.

They suddenly made me choke on my chips when they began to praise the Leadership of Baroness Teresa O’Neill. Their theory was that over the past dozen years she has gradually got rid of all the Councillors who were either there only to supplement their pensions but contributed nothing and the businessmen who were in it only for themselves. All but a dozen of the original 52 are gone and in most cases Good Riddance.

Teresa has also got rid of the entire senior management team who were simply incompetent to the extent of twice effectively killing residents and in various ways abusing their positions. Even their own internal auditor said so.

I muttered something about Peter Craske who manages to hang on but in other respects Elwyn and John are correct. There has been a total transformation but Teresa’s work is not yet done. Too many of the middle ranking managers are simply appalling.

There was a whole Council meeting devoted to it last March when it was admitted that management bullied staff and didn’t listen to their concerns. They thought they could fix the problem by awarding Stars as if they were kids who had attended Sunday School for three months without a break.

Pathetic and since then Kevin Taylor has kindly confirmed just how stupid they can be.

Probably he is not the only one. An appalling story showed up on The News Shopper’s website this morning. A Barnehurst family complained that their Council provided house was full of mould and their GP confirmed it was affecting their health. After initially denying there was a problem, Bexley Council offered them new accommodation in Sittingbourne 30 miles away.

At 10:30 in the morning they told her she must accept it unseen by 12:30 the same day and when she was unable to get to Sittingbourne within two hours was told she had made herself deliberately homeless and would be evicted by the end of this month.

There is a bit more to it than that but that is the essence of the story. The only thing missed by the Shopper’s reporter is the name of the Council official.

Currently Bexley Council does not have a Director of Adult Social Care but I am not even sure if that is the responsible department. I will have to ask around.

 

8 September - The Belvedere By-election. Some questions for Labour

While putting the finishing touches to yesterday’s blog the doorbell rang and by the time I had opened the door Councillors Richard Diment and John Davey were preparing to leave. They should give old men more time to run down the stairs! Not far away was Councillor Seymour and the unsuccessful Bexleyheath and Crayford General election candidate Mark Brooks. (And others I took little notice of.)

They were out campaigning for former Conservative Councillor Christine Bishop who is trying to take Daniel Francis’s place now that he a Labour MP.

Both Richard and John are decent enough chaps despite what I may have said about John 15 years ago and after a brief despairing discussion of the events of the last two months they asked who I would be voting for on October 17th.

Before the election I opined that Keir Starmer would be lucky to last 18 months and somewhat flippantly that every generation needs to learn that Labour governments are a very bad idea. Now that most people know that voting Labour is madness and especially so in Bexley for the reasons offered yesterday, Conservative is the only sensible choice here. London as a whole has become a ****hole under Labour and the country is set on a similar course but Bexley despite its faults and the poor quality of some of its management, remains a better place to be than most other boroughs in London. Largely free of the politics of spite directed at residents.

Having just blogged to say that I would be voting Conservative Richard and John got the answer they were hoping for but I do wonder how useful such promises are given that even I did not know if Reform UK would put up a candidate here until an hour or so later when they made an announcement on X.

Some people may change their mind in Reform’s favour but not me. I will not support a local party (Reform Bexley) that harbours a candidate who makes financial demands of anyone who mentions their name as one did to me. An attempted extortion of £4,800 or a threatened appearance in the High Court for making a veiled reference to a dubious past.

My decision to vote for Christine Bishop is based entirely on local politics; the Conservatives in Bexley are a relatively safe pair of hands in contrast to what we now know beyond any doubt that Labour under a Starmer government might do.

Nationally I wouldn’t give tuppence for any of the prospective Conservative leaders but they don’t directly control our local environment.

I have my doubts that Labour will waste their time at my door and I feel for young Jeremy Fosten who could never have dreamed that he would be finding widespread hatred for his party’s leadership.

Being increasingly forgetful I have been noting all the dubious and damn fool decisions taken by the Labour regime in their first two months and if any of their supporters knocked on my door I would pick a couple at random and ask to hear Mr. Fosten’s views on them.

Maybe readers will wish to pick a favourite or two and ask Jeremy if he thinks they are good moves or not. If you donְ’t know you will be voting blind for some random left winger with a beard. (I much prefer him without it! See Facebook etc.)

• Appointing David Lammy who thinks a man can grow a cervix if given the right hormones, to be Foreign Secretary. The whole world laughs.
• Appointing Sir Patrick Vallance the architect of the disastrous Covid lock-downs as Science Minister.
• Abandoning all disincentives to illegal immigration.
• Appointing former failed Home Secretary Jaqui Smith famed for paying for porn on expenses to a Ministerial job in the Education Department.
• Anneliese Dodds who was unable to define a woman is Appointed Minister for Women.
• Countryside to be covered with unreliable wind farms.
• 40,000 convicts including members of Asian grooming gangs to be released into the community.
• No more new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.
• In a further move towards the unachievable Net Zero, Ed Miliband has authorised three more solar and battery farms on arable land. Net Zero food?
• Banning the mining of coking coal for steel production.
• Requirement that employers regulate the number of immigrant workers is abandoned.
• Imposing 20% VAT on school fees confirmed.
• Giving Africa £84 million in the hope that it will persuade their people that it is better to stay at home.
• Send HAMAS £21 million via their support agency UNWRA.
• Abandoning the Libby Stockholm barge in favour of housing illegal immigrants in 3 and 4 star hotels.
• Eliminating illegal immigration by renaming it irregular immigration.
• £11 billion provided to foreign countries to help them achieve Net Zero.
• Laws in favour of free speech abandoned.
• Labour announces that it is in favour of an International Arrest Warrant against the Prime Minister of a key ally, Israel.
• Following a violent altercation at Manchester Airport involving armed police and the hospitalisation of three officers, one a female whose nose was broken, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper decided to speak up for the foreign named thugs and say nothing in defence of the police who were desperately trying to stop them from getting hold of their weapons. In any other country the attackers would have been shot dead but in Britain we have another useless Home Secretary.
• Major Road projects abandoned.
• Reopening of closed railway lines abandoned.
• Hospital building programme deferred and subject to review.
• Lifetime Social care cap of £86,000 cancelled. No limit now.
• New educational standards ditched.
• The Investment Opportunity Fund scrapped.
• 20% VAT on education to commence in January 2025.
• Public service employees to get massive above inflation pay increases. Teachers and nurses 5·5%. Armed Forces 6%. Prison Service workers 5%. Doctors and Dentists 6%. NHS Managers 5%. Police 4·75%. Junior Doctors 22%. The Chancellor admits there is not enough money to pay for the increases. See below.
• 10·1 million pensioners to pay for the pay increases by forfeiting their Winter Fuel Payments. Immediately before the election there were “No Plans” to change the arrangements. Under Labour, Heat or Eat.
• Threshold for ‘importing’ foreign spouses relaxed.
• Angela Rayner drops the requirement for new builds to be “beautiful” thereby paving the way for Soviet style blocks.
• PM says he will ensure all Muslims are protected - but nothing about Christians and Jews who are no longer safe on our streets.
• PM says he will use facial recognition technology across the country to restrict freedom of movement.
• PM has cancelled a £1 billion investment in Britain’s next Supercomputer. Additional £500 million allocated to Artificial Intelligence research withheld.
• Government abandons plan to reduce Civil Service numbers by 66,000.
• Compensation for those wrongly imprisoned for long periods to be reduced.
• Angela Rayner (Deputy Prime Minister) scraps plan to limit social housing applications to long-term British residents thereby putting immigrants on an equal footing to war veterans. Currently 20% of social housing is occupied by immigrants..
• Angela Rayner adds that terrorists are no longer banned from applying for social housing.
• Ed Miliband drops height restriction on wind turbines.
• Train drivers offered a 14% pay rise without having to give up any of their restrictive practices. A decent payback for the £100,000 donated by ASLEF to Labour just before the election.
• Home Secretary says misogyny will be regarded as terrorism offence. Please do not strap your wife into a suicide vest.
• The Transport Secretary was given £24,829 by donors over five years.
• Law to be changed such that Unions will be able to call a strike without a majority of the Membership being in agreement.
• Employers to be banned from contacting workers outside working hours.
• Minimum Service Level requirement during strikes abandoned.
• Councils encouraged to introduce more Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and 20 m.p.h. zones despite the negative effects on the local and national economies.
• Proposed Free Speech Law in universities abandoned to appease the Chinese Government.
• Recording of Non-Crime Hate Incidents reinstated.
• Prime Minister confirms that he will ban smoking in various public and private spaces.
• Foreign Secretary David Lammy announces support for the Hamas terrorist organisation by restricting arms sales to Israel..
• Starmer’s regime announces the end of the £2 bus fare cap.
• After making a £48,000 personal profit on selling her former Council House, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner announces that the ‘Right To Buy’ scheme will be ended.
• Ed Miliband, Energy Secretary, decides that the UK does not need nuclear energy.
• Starmer regime prepares to abandon the Chagos Islands, home of the American base on Diego Garcia. Gibraltar next?

Decisions listed in approximate chronological sequence.

 

7 September - The cost of democracy

Apologies for the absence, there have been things going on but I really should have commented on this earlier. Our old friend @tonyofsidcup provocatively asked outgoing Belvedere Councillor Daniel Francis what he had actually achieved during his long years of public service and for not getting a satisfactory answer and voicing his discontent about the lack of response he was eventually blocked by @BexleyLabour.

Some of the exchange and Daniel’s resignation statement is reproduced below.

Tony’s question may well have been mischievous but it made me think. What has Daniel given in return for the £200,000 he has been paid for being a Councillor? I think the reason that @tony never got an answer to his question is because the answer is unfortunately “nothing”.

Don’t get me wrong, Daniel may well be the most hard working and effective Labour Councillor in the Council Chamber, certainly in the top two, and has probably helped thousands of residents with routine and maybe not so routine enquiries but when it comes to borough-wide or even ward-wide issues I don’t see many successes.

The Splash Park closed despite his valiant efforts. The incinerator went ahead and has been growing by stealth ever since. All the green spaces he tried to preserve have been concreted over. Ye Olde Leather Bottle public house is still a rat infested mess although if memory serves correctly the similar Harrow Inn site was fenced off immediately after Labour won in Belvedere back in 2014. The Abbey Wood Post Office shut despite the protests.

The life of an opposition Councillor in Bexley is not often a happy one though presumably backing SEND parents who successfully took Bexley to the LGO was a rare exception.-

Unlike any neighbouring borough the opposition in Bexley is not allowed to call in Cabinet Member decisions. As has been repeatedly stated here, Labour Motions are either defeated or taken over by the Conservatives and no budgetary amendment has ever been accepted.

Former Bexley Labour Councillor Danny Hackett got it right when addressing the long gone Abbey Wood Traders’ Association when he said that he could pass their requirements on but held out little hope of success because the borough was Tory controlled and the northern wards were not. His successor Sally Hinkley was more of an optimist and helped where she could, form filling etc.

But the fact remains that the opposition party is virtually powerless in Bexley and if Belvedere residents want to get anything done they will have to vote Conservative on 17th October. (The by-election date.)

Not that I have anything against the Labour candidate Jeremy Fosten apart from the fact he presumably supports a tyrannical Kier Starmer which has to be a pretty big “no way!” for many of us.

Jeremy has featured on these pages in years gone by although his name wasn’t published. It was him who objected to the ugly fences that Councillor Craske placed around Shoulder of Mutton Green and organised a petition against it.

So Jeremy has been a Labour activist since he was a young teenager. Who does that remind you of? Another Bexleyite who became a Councillor when he was barely old enough but switched to being Conservative supporter (and Reform UK!) when he became a little wiser. Hi Danny; long time no see.

 

2 September - Idiots work for Cabinet Member Richard Diment. Does he know?

It is always nice to get confirmation that Bexleyְ’s parking enforcement team is stupid as well as useless.

Reports on the two vehicles pictured within the past two weeks were both ignored despite the first of them being reported twice. Once on-line and again directly to the CEO who I happened to see working in the next road. Both relatively trivial compared to Bexley’s idiocy as revealed by Mr. Mustard on his parking blog.

Someone with a foot injury - not that that is especially relevant - had parked outside a Post Office in order to drop off a 22 pound parcel. He was on a single yellow but there were no loading restrictions so he was within his rights to do so.

Bexley Council disagreed and rejected the PCN Appeal 54 days after it was submitted. Twelve years ago a retired policeman proved beyond all reasonable doubt that it was Bexley Council’s policy to reject all Appeals without giving them any consideration at all. One might have hoped that those days, when parking was administered by the disreputable Cabinet Member Craske, had gone now that Councillor Richard Diment is in charge; but you would be wrong.

In the former policeman’s case, Bexley Council was so wrong and so intransigent that the Director of Customer and Corporate Services sent their victim a personal cheque to pay the fine, but it was declined.

Bexley Council’s line with the parcel poster was that he could have parked down the road and carried his 22 pound parcel which may well have been true - foot injury permitting - but it does not make unloading on a single yellow illegal.

They declined to withdraw the penalty and the case went to the Adjudicator thereby costing Bexley taxpayers £30. They lost; well, more accurately the Council withdrew at the last minute.

There are more details on Mr. Mustard’s blog linked in paragraph 2.

 

1 September - It is an Express Bus after all

With no Council news to report I was expecting to repost the Kevin Taylor excuses today but two other bloggers have come to my rescue.

I used to walk to New Road for a bus to Bexleyheath but for several months past I have taken a different and only slightly longer route to Abbey Wood station which gives the choice of B11, 301 or SL3. I rarely see the ultra-slow B11 but the 301s are reasonably frequent and take a more direct route than the SL3.

Nevertheless I simply take whichever comes first and gradually formed the impression that the SL3 is too big for Bexley’s narrowed roads - there is far too much kerb mounting going on - and parking issues in Pickford Lane can seriously impede progress.

I was on a Thamesmead bound SL3 last Thursday afternoon and the driver gave up on trying to stop near the Bexleyheath station stop while another SL3 was trying to get by in the opposite direction. A car driver thought that hazard lights excused parking at the bus stop.

TfL has written to Bexley Council requesting that they do something about it.

Overall I have formed the opinion that the SL3 should not be regarded as an Express Service, but not for the first time I am wrong.

A Freedom of Information response reported by The Diamond Geezer on his blog reveals that the SL3 is the fastest Superloop service. An average of 14·8 m.p.h. It must be down to the very limited stops (i.e. none!) between Bexleyheath and Sidcup and Bromley’s far more sensible road planning,

Photo stolen From The Murky Depths. He too mentions the kerb mounting and the congestion.