We move onto 2016 in the history of the journalism of Julian Saunders. There was one particularly momentous event!
You can read the full story at thesandwellskidder.blogspot.com
2016
We have seen that Sandwell Council’s Chief Executive, Jan Britton, totally subverted the independence of the paid service to the Labour dictatorship. One manifestation of this was that senior Councillors had “access all areas” passes and wandered the offices at Oldbury Council House (OCH) at will, despite obvious security risks (especially when there was concern expressed by Ofsted of increasing Child Sexual Exploitation in the Borough). There had been many comments made by staff (and others) that Darren Cooper, the brutish Leader [sic] of the Council, fancied himself as a “Ladies’ Man” and a former (identified) female employee described another problem from Jan Britton’s laissez faire approach: “Darren used to come round all the time and give us hugs but then his hand would always slide down onto your arse if you know what I mean?” I published all this but Britton took no adequate action to limit access to the office areas by Labour Councillors.
We have also seen that Cooper had teamed up with the Twitter troll, Andrew Hipkiss, and, of the attacks on me and my wife continued unabated. The pair also started to spin positive SMBC stories in the “comments” sections of local newspapers. “A Roberts” appeared as did “Mr Mike Wool” (and it should be remembered that one of the most vicious Twitter troll accounts was @Gemmawool15). Comments from “Jaswinder” were so obviously from Darren Cooper and his associates that many of us rechristened the commentator, “Dazwinder”.
When a safety report was published concerning injuries to members of the public at an out of control SMBC bonfire event the previous November (in which Paul Reeves was involved) instant rebuttals of the findings were put up by Hipkiss on Twitter and “Jaswinder” in the newspaper.
By this time Hipkiss was so confident that neither Twitter nor the Police would take any action against him he openly used his own name. The Cooper troll accounts and Hipkiss also tried to smear me and my supposed “associates” by falsely claiming that I was using fake names to post derogatory comments about SMBC. Bizarrely they claimed I was a frequent critic of SMBC who was widely known to be a local "character". They also falsely claimed I was the contributor “Mrs Ivy Trellis”. “Mrs Ivy” contacted me and I was genuinely surprised where from (but that is a story for another day!)
I reported a story that was, for once, in the mainstream media that there were 6,000 on the housing waiting list but was able to add information from two members of the Muslim Community in Smethwick that a “monkey” would usually secure a property there. They also described a standard Borough-wide scam. A couple would move into a council property and the woman would claim that she was being subjected to domestic violence. She would be moved into another property so that, eventually, the family acquired two properties under “right to buy”, thereby diminishing SMBC’s stock of rentable properties.
Employees who steered clear of the corruption had nothing to fear from my blog. And some were brave enough to blow the whistle on misconduct. But I did seek to expose the wrongdoing of the top brass. Despite all that I have written so far Jan Britton had escaped censure. I was told by a number of people, including Councillors, that his “defence” was believed to me that he simply did not know that the land sales and other scandals had gone on. I pointed out that as the Captain of the Ship it was his responsibility to know these things and his alleged ignorance of events was, in itself, a damning indictment of him. From January, 2016 I stated the #Brittonout campaign though had to wait over three years before his ultimate - though spectacular, downfall and disgrace (though he was, incredibly, able to walk straight into another highly-paid local government post!)
At the same time I queried Britton’s tender for what became the pathetic iMPower contract (see above) where Cllrs Cooper and Hussain decided who the winner should be before the process concluded.
SMBC was later forced by me to disclose Jan Britton’s Register of Interests but it was very heavily redacted. At that stage, and not knowing the ropes, I was unable to force the further disclosure of the secret entries.
We saw that the iMPower contact was another expensive Labour fiasco but not before Britton boasted that the employment of consultants has been his own idea and that “what we are doing in children’s services is being looked at by other councils”. It was also a “turning point” for the failing department. But this was delusional and, as the ship hit the iceberg, I was able to exclusively disclose his nasty internal blog when he said the failure was not due to inadequate political leadership or the management but the foot-soldiers needed to “roll their sleeves up”. This was another rare occasion when several employees contacted me on the same issue - all irate. The main Union rep, Jan Britton’s next door neighbour, was also heavily criticised for allegedly not protecting staff from this unwarranted attack.
Given his notoriously thin-skin (see above regarding his complaint to the police and much more to come below) Britton had the audacity to tell one complainant about his vile blog attack that they had "a low sensitivity threshold"!
Even as commissioners were appointed to finally protect the Borough’s suffering children Britton still disputed Ofsted’s findings bizarrely writing that, “the diagnostic paints a rather different picture.” But a very experienced person in this field who is a former Sandwell Councillor wrote, and I reported, “The Leader of the Council and the chief executive, Jan Britton, have nowhere else to run. They should show some integrity and resign immediately." They didn’t.
I exposed the large number of dissolved companies Cllr Bill "Alka Seltzer" Gavan was connected with (see above) and also wrote that he was the local manservant of Tom Watson MP. He was only elected in June, 2014 but in 2015 Cooper appointed him to the highly controversial Land and Asset Management Committee - not just as a member but, to general incredulity, as its chair. My blog exclusively disclosed that this would bring Gavan, as long as he held the post, an extra responsibility payment of £5,526 per annum from May, 2015 on top of his normal allowance but that in the April before a Mr "William Gavan" had donated £5,000 to West Bromwich East Labour Party. This is not the first time taxpayers' money found its way into Labour Party coffers as we saw with the Terry Duffy House scam.
Right from the start of the blog SMBC was making enquiries about me. Initially I was anonymous to protect workers at The Public. A journalist from a specialist national magazine reported that he spoke to a member of SMBC's press office who demanded to know who I was. When the journalist wouldn't say he described the press officer "screaming" down the phone at him (this person actually dropped dead a few weeks later!) A pet member of Jan Britton's staff, Tara Malik, was going about asking questions about me. Although SMBC did not rebut my work and insisted it was "all lies" my blog and social media started being referred to in Council documents. I was only anonymous for a short time but staff at the Council told me I was increasingly subject to unlawful surveillance. However, in early 2015, SMBC stated categorically that they had not used RIPA powers to keep tabs on me. Given what happened later I believe that this was unlikely to be true.
From 2014 onwards I began to appear regularly at Oldbury Council House. I attend some meetings but only when absolutely necessary since the constant self-congratulation makes me want to be sick over myself. But I was out in all weathers before the Labour Group, full Council and some other meetings trying to ask members questions as they arrived (and sometimes also as they left). I was sometimes alone but often in the company of local community activist Darryl Magher. Our politics are poles apart but Darryl has been a doughty anti-corruption campaigner and has notched up some tremendous achievements himself, notably - single-handedly - having the bent Wednesbury Business Improvement District (BID) election overturned.
Meanwhile Cooper was gearing up for a tilt at the new West Midlands Mayoralty. He held an evening meeting at the Church in Smethwick where the Vicar made a valiant attempt to stop me asking a question at the public meeting he had laid on to promote the monster (it turned out that the Labour corruption had seeped into most of the churches, gurdwaras, mosques etc. and this Vicar’s church had a “charitable” network which had received £18,000 from SMBC in the previous financial year). Another outlandish aspect of this meeting was that Jan Britton, who had been promised the top admin job in the putative West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) in the unlikely event Cooper won, again laid on the chauffeur-driven Range Rover - at taxpayers’ expense - for Cooper even though he lived in Smethwick. Dirt-poor Labour Sandwell run a limo and Range Rover with two chauffeurs.
Then the bombshell came and Jan Britton’s “finest hour” - although the squalid "deal" had been done months before but kept quiet. There was constant concern about, at best, a very unhealthy relationship between SMBC and West Midlands Police (WMP). There were also constant rumours that there was actually fraudulent collusion between the two bodies (and some of those concerns persist to this day). We saw the local Sandwell Police superintendent boast on social media, “great day off today with colleague [at] SMBC golf, spa, lunch and … relax…”.
The “word” from the Regional Fraud Team was that they made good progress initially and were confident of at least one charge. But, as above, senior officers started to narrow the extent of the investigation. And then everyone was astonished that they simply stopped the enquiry as SMBC were going to appoint “independent” solicitors to investigate certain matters decided by Jan Britton instead. Of course, the Solicitors had none of the investigative powers of WMP and the fact that “prime suspect”, A2, immediately refused to cooperate was the immediate sign that the whole thing would descend into farce.
Neither the former nor the current Chief Constable of WMP have explained to the public how it is possible for a council to simply buy-off a police investigation, and my own investigation into this scandal continues.
To pile Pelion on Ossa, Jan Britton gave the contact - without tender - to a firm well known to him and Neeraj Sharma, Wragge and Co. This firm changes its name regularly and is now “Gowling WLG” but the report which eventually appeared is commonly known as “The Wragge Report” and I shall use that name and call the firm “Wragges”.
Even though some of the principal “persons of interest” in this investigation were Muslims, Jan Britton appointed Mark Greenburgh (then a partner of Wragges) as the lead lawyer even though he boasted of being a Zionist. The whole thing nearly ended in an even bigger disaster later on when Greenburgh disgracefully opined that A1’s disabled daughter was a natural consequence of “in-breeding” within the Muslim community.
As pressure piled-up on Cooper new troll accounts appeared attacking my wife and Hipkiss joined in with a blog post attacking her. In a new low, they implied that my wife had gone “missing” even adding “#lindamissing” to one tweet. With no shame Andrew Hipkiss, “disabled Dad”, opened a GoFundMe account asking for donations so that he could continue his vicious trolling with a new computer!
The Unite the Union Regional Organiser was still trolling with Cooper and put up fantastical lies that he was visiting places I frequented to obtain information about me. He also claimed to be in Spain when he was still local.
The Albion Foundation story continued with SMBC putting in £75k of taxpayers' money against 0.02% of a multi-million pound turnover from the Football Club. At least that was an improvement on the previous year when the Club donated nothing at all.
Every so often I publish "technical blogs". These are not aimed at the general reader but provide a public service with detailed documentation available so that local people can see some of the "source" material.
I also tried to help the work of an incredible local activist, Ian Carroll, who has campaigned tirelessly on environmental and wildlife issues. At this time Labour were bragging about their "Green Flag Parks" whilst slaughtering the local Canada Geese because Cooper in particular objected to them defecating in these areas. Ian caught out SMBC lying about all this and forced them to stop the cull.
I wrote above about a proposed development affecting Black Patch Park and was now able to show that the mystery developer shared directors with a well-known local Company.
The Blog broke the story of one local resident who had lived in a Sandwell council house since 1997 at least. She bought the property in 2003 and then sold it for £125,000 in 2008. Despite having apparently made a handsome profit, she was immediately rehoused in another Sandwell council house. I exclusively disclosed that "she" was Darren Cooper's sister.
Cooper himself tried to clean-up his "personal" twitter account ahead of his mayoral campaign but, of course, the trolling continued unabated. At the same time Jan Britton refused to allow his own "weekly blog" to be made public insisting that it was the benefit of staff only though he used it to attack critics of SMBC as I was able to show.
We saw above how SMBC forced through full Council a decision to erect giant advertising electroni displays on green belt land. I was able to reveal that SMBC's planning department had been taking "informal advice" from giant signage business, J C Decaux. After all the "urgency" and the grant of planning permission I showed that only now were SMBC putting the operation out to tender. This whole affair remained shrouded in mystery and smacks of SMBC yet again putting the cart before the 'oss.
I am not technically competent enough to understand how this is done but Andrew Hipkiss was cloning his Twitter accounts. As Twitter began to take complaints seriously he knew his accounts would soon be taken down. Rather than just start a new account from scratch he was managing to transfer all his followers straight to a new account. Where, of course, he continued a relentless attack on me, Darryl Magher and others.
The blog wrote about an incident where a Labour Councillor borrowed a phone from SMBC. When he returned it he forgot to delete a video of him masturbating. The story of Labour Councillor Simon Hackett urinating in a bus shelter was also recorded and, as we shall see later, became a massive story because of the attempted cover-up by Jan Britton and others of this squalid incident. Cllr Paul Moore also confirmed that in the incestous world of Sandwell Labour Cllr David Hosell, husband of Cllr Shirley Hosell was having an "affair" with Cllr Caroline "Caz" White (daughter of Cllr Steve Melia). This became an "open" matter with Hosell openly calling Caz his "girlfriend". Cllr Moore was less "open" about his own relationships.
As we see later with the Lion Farm scandal, Jan Britton's paid service were adept at hiding deals in, sort of, plain sight but obfuscating the deals with (a) exclusions of the public from meetings on the grounds of "commercial confidentiality"; (b) removal of key documents into "private" agenda items; (c) the use of deliberately misleading names to describe projects (eg. Lion Farm and see below); and (d) heavy redaction of the limited documentation that was publicly available.
Thus in a suspicious sale of land for housing, Jan Britton's paid service named a key developer in the Committee documents as "Christ Church Limited" which was false as the company was actually "Christchurch Land Limited". I believe that this was all done deliberately and even if I am wrong it is another example of SMBC's spectacular incompetence during the Britton era. Actually, "Christchurch" was a nominee for another developer and a senior Labour Councillor told me specifically that he attended a meeting with those developers where Cooper asked outright for a cash donation for the private statue *see above)!
A matter which was not fully resolved at this time concerned a slightly convoluted set of deals involving a local Charity which had a lease from SMBC. It wanted to acquire adjacent land and have the new parcel leased on a longer lease at a heavily subsidised rate. Despite pleading poverty the Charity was, at the same time, purchasing a freehold property nearby for £125,000 cash. SMBC were also giving large grants to the organisation and so I questioned why a heavily discounted lease was appropriate. Unfortunately I was unable to get any further on that particular matter.
One particularly odd thing happened at this time. I had a regular informant within the Muslim community who seemed to give me very accurate information. During one phone call he mentioned something about a health issue of mine which was being discussed by Cooper and Labour cronies. This information was/is only known to a couple of people and unknown to even very close friends. Such was my concern I reported it to my GP who said there was no obvious hack of my medical records. This also remains a mystery but again seems indicative of more unlawful surveillance.
On my own Twitter account I made the mistake of putting up a photo of myself during a volunteering project wearing a T-shirt of the arts company where my wife was working. The Cooper trolls immediately lifted it and started harassing me. Once again they falsely alleged that I had/have a criminal record and told be to enjoy the voluntary stuff while I could as I would soon be barred when my DBS check showed "the truth". On two tweets they compared me to the paedophile Jimmy Savile eg. this from @Gemmawool15, "Julian reminds me of Jimmy Sav". Cooper himself slipped up at this point by writing to one of his own troll accounts via his own @SandwellLeader account. The would-be Metro Mayor wrote:
"@brumskidder Watch out he's on the pop again. I'll come back to you on the Health and Safety claim. He's also breached his injunction".
Of course there was no "health and safety claim" nor any "injunction".
I should say for the benefit of the Court that I hold well in excess of 1,000 screenshots of this trolling campaign which continues to this day via [A5] and his associates.
During the January or February of 2016 I went to doorstep the Labour Group meeting. It was a bitterly cold night and I stood inside the linkway. People were coming in and some going out for a fag despite the weather. A young, vulnerable, man crept in hoping to get out of the cold. Suddenly Cooper came out for a cigarette and shouted at me, "Out". I stayed put and he then came back in and was shouting at the security staff to, "get that f*cker out!" The one security man was looking between me and the unfortunate young man trying to decide who he meant before politely asking me to leave as Labour Group is a private meeting! At least the young man had a few more minutes in the warm. I went out and Cooper started to abuse me but his face went bright red, his jowls were wobbling and his words were incoherent. I wondered whether he was having a stroke but started talking to Cllr Preece. Cooper then pushed past me, very red in the face, and went inside. A sign of things to come?
On Sunday 27th March, 2016 I was working at Malvern Showground. My then phone had useless coverage there and I was startled when it started ringing at 6.45 am. A key informant told me the momentous news that Cooper had died during a drink and drugs-fuelled binge. The signal went and I had to walk into the middle of a field to phone a well-known local journalist. About half an hour later he confirmed the news.
At the same time as his heart stopped the vicious trolling campaign ceased. At the time of his death I have compelling evidence that he and his associates had used the following multiple Twitter accounts to attack me and my wife:
@ian_crow; @OoOctavius; @brumskidder; @bhamskidder; @gemmawool15 (one of the vilest of the lot);
@kingsnortonlady; @tiviskidder @jason_wicks44; @wmskidder; @mrsskidder; @westbromskidder; @clownjames; @westbromchap
There were a number of other suspicious accounts.
Andrew Hipkiss: @the1nformer; @OdgenW; @Ennabran; @loonyleft_
Given that it was common knowledge that Cooper had a history of domestic violence (and not long before his death he was “warned off” by members of his own family from attending a wedding in Cornwall) I was amazed how this was completely ignored by the Labour Party, fellow Councillors, Sandwell Women’s Aid (where Jess Phillips MP was a big mate of the monster), the Police, trade union reps, local journalists and many others. In death, the eulogies to this vile man were even more fulsome and grotesque.
But Cooper’s death had far reaching consequences. Many Labour Councillors were physically scared of him - and with good reason when they knew those huge hands had rained blows on his first wife. Of course, one could expect that from some of the weak men but it was surprising that strong and feisty women like Cllrs Yvonne Davies, Barbara Price and Maria Crompton paid obeisance to the wife-beating Clown Prince. Other cowardly Councillors knew that if they stood up to him they would get the sort of treatment meted out by him to me and my wife. They had seen him destroy Cllrs Mick Davies and Jayne Wilkinson when he considered they had stepped out of line. They also knew that whilst Tom Watson MP backed him he was totally secure. And there was nothing like election victories to make his cronies ignore their moral scruples.
Addendum 27/02/21 - Cllr Yvonne Davies says that she was NOT aware of the very widespread comments about Cooper's history of domestic violence which, to my personal knowledge, were prevalent in Sandwell from 2013 until his death.
But this was a house built on sand and the heavily disputed election of Cllr Steve Eling as Leader in 2016 tore the Labour Group in two. Bitter civil war has raged between the factions to this day.
The Skidder blog exclusively disclosed that portable buildings belonging to SMBC were on sale via the Facebook account of a well-known Tipton figure and associate of Cllr Derek Rowley. Incredibly WMP yet again refused to investigate this. There was an Audit Committee investigation by SMBC which was shrouded in secrecy and the truth of this extraordinary affair is still not properly in the public domain.
The blog started campaigning for new Leader Eling to scrap the highly suspicious ice rink deal (see above) - which Eling himself had been very much involved with - and for the release of The Wragge Report which had been commissioned a whole year beforehand.
I raised a query why Tom Watson MP was on the electoral register at one of the two homes owned by his employee, Cllr Simon Hackett, as he was not resident there. I also raised questions in respect of the sale of a Westminster property he shared with Ian Wright MP and whether he paid any Capital Gains Tax on any profit. As ever, with Watson he - and his acolytes - flatly refused to answer any queries although he did disappear off the electoral register at Chez Hackett Number One. Watson was - is - a ferocious enemy as I have found out to my considerable cost.
Complaints continued to come in from members of the local Muslim community about what they perceived - in my view rightly - as fraud within SMBC. They generally opined that the worst aspects of graft in Pakistani politics appeared to have been replicated in Sandwell.
Sandwell Labour were very vocal in expressing anti-business views and my blog pointed out how harmful this was in a dirt poor Borough crying out for jobs and inward investment. My argument was that business people were not conducive to dialogue with, mostly unemployed, morons who had never run a whelk stall and who abused and insulted them. My point was well made when London-resident "local" MP, John Spellar wailed that neither nPower nor British Gas had consulted him before announcing large scale redundancies in Sandwell.
There was a febrile atmosphere at the “Mayor-Making” Council meeting in May, 2016. The enthronement of Eling was deeply divisive within his own Party. Incredibly he had made thuggish Cllr David Hosell a Cabinet member (see further below). On departure I asked Hosell which of his two female Cllr “companions” he was off to see and he made the quip, “It could be worse - I could be shagging your wife.”
I asked Derek Rowley why his mate was trying to sell SMBC property via Facebook and he replied, “do you want a smack in the fucking mouth”. There was a small protest outside the meeting concerning the cost of the annual shindig which took place after the formalities. At one point, one or two Labour councillors stole two eggs from the Council House kitchen and hurled them at the protesters from an upper window. Some of the scenes were caught on video which featured in an article by the local Halesowen News: “Scuffles, kerfuffles and a lot more besides as Sandwell cllr’s feathers get ruffled - see video”. I also wrote the events up as “Chaos At The Kremlin”.
My FOI at this time revealed that far from complying with its contractual obligations as part of the corrupt Public deal (see above) to continue with some arts provision at the building and at the so-called “arts cafe” the actual offering from Sandwell College was both minimal and risible. This despite the fact that Jan Britton was also a Governor of the College.
Of course, Cooper was dead and out of the running for the new West Midlands Mayoralty but despite the blindingly obvious failings of Jan Britton at Sandwell he was made the “Chief Operation Officer" of the recently constituted West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA). I leafletted the inaugural meeting saying that WMCA would not succeed with Sandwell “pissing in the well” and with another simple message, “Britton Out!” of both SMBC and the WMCA.
I mentioned above that Cllr Hussain had been Eling’s best man at his wedding but Eling decided to shaft his friend. An email acquired by me later on showed that Eling fully intended that the Wragge Report would never see the light of day. His own position was tenuous politically and he had, of course, been the “money man” and de facto head of the administration. He had been Statutory Deputy Leader throughout all of the above. He decided to throw Cllr Hussain overboard and blame him for everything hoping everyone would forget about his own conduct - either gross negligence in failing to spot the wrongdoing (at the very best) or his actual knowledge of the corruption (much worse). Thus the Wragge Report was published.
The Report itself is badly written - it was almost unreadable - and, as I indicated above, is mostly useless as Wragge’s had no proper investigative powers like WMP. [A2] simply refused to be interviewed. Jan Britton had drawn the terms of reference so narrowly so that scandals like Cllr Rouf ‘s house were not even looked at. We shall return to the subject of Lion Farm later on.
I continued to plead with WMP to interview the following employees under caution - Jan Britton, Neeraj Sharma, David Willetts, Adrian Scarrott and Nick Bubalo at the very least. They refused. I also revealed names of members of the public who should be interviewed and who were likely to have “knowledge” of events. Even though these people had not been interviewed by Wragge’s, WMP again refused to have anything more to do with the matter. (Adrian Scarrott was - and is - in a relationship with a WMP Inspector and WMP also gave Jan Britton’s son a civilian job).
I wrote up a story from a leaked document from within SMBC that Assistant Chief Executive Melanie Dudley had done a deal with Cooper before his death to leave SMBC in February, 2017 with a generous pay-off even though she was going of her own accord! It transpired that she had signed up to a planned leavers scheme intended for more junior staff. As we shall see, this issue will appear later. Suffice to say here that Melanie was (and is) a Labour Party member - becoming the candidate for Dudley North in the 2019 general election. Once again there was more than a smack of Sandwell cronyism about this "deal" funded by the taxpayer.
The blog to comment on SMBC running the limo, Range Rover and two chauffeurs. Meanwhile Britton caused outrage by introducing fees for staff parking. There was some hilarity when Cllr Caz White updated her Register of Interests to include her boyfriend, mysteriously feeling the need to declare: "Councillor Dave Hosell is a close friend"! At the recent full Council meeting I recorded how Derek Rowley has threatened to "kick me in the bollocks".
Another milestone in the history of the blog now occurred. Some Labour Councillors who had never said a word when Cooper was alive suddenly reached the view that his appalling attacks on me and my wife had been beyond the pale. A third party was delegated to speak with me about a truce. A boozy meeting then took place between myself, Cllr Eling and his sidekick, Cabinet member Richard Marshall with the third party present. ("The pub meeting".)
At the time I had written extensively about Cllr Hussain and Cllr Ian Jones. Eling and Marshall wanted me to continue to write about them in my own inimitable style but to lay-off Eling. In return they would feed me inside information right from the top of the Council. As they put it afterwards, there would be "more leaks than Wales". Needless to say I was sceptical about this. I berated Eling for promoting Hosell to the Cabinet. Eling admitted Hosell was not Cabinet material but it was part of a deal at his controversial leadership election to get both the votes of Dave and Shirley Hosell. I also raged about the corrupt ice rink deal where Eling had been a key player. He assured me that the project would be stopped. I said I was writing about Cllrs Hussain and Jones anyway and so there was no problem with me continuing in that vein. I said I would give Eling the benefit of the doubt but if he crossed the line I would write about it. He promised me that he was "draining the swamp" and the pair said I would soon start receiving high-grade disclosures. They wanted me to "put the boot in" on Cllrs Hussain and Jones even though, of course, they were fellow members of the Labour Party.
Shortly afterward they set up a WhatsApp connection with me - operated by Marshall - and some information began to flow. And very quickly I was able to announce that the ice rink project had indeed been scrapped. I have to say that this gave me hope that maybe things were genuinely being done to change for the better. How wrong I was!
It has to be said that I have had some truly weird calls, email etc whilst writing the blog and, sometimes, SMBC and/or Labour Councillors deliberately fed me with false information hoping I would be foolish enough to rush to print. Thus when I received information that SMBC owned "a train" I thought someone was pulling my leg. But, incredibly, it was true - or at least insofar as SMBC had splashed out £20,000 in the 1980's for an ex-British Rail loco. This had seemingly been at the behest of Cllr Roger Horton (father of the lying Cllr Lucy Cashmore - see above) who was a train buff. More cash was spent on renovations and storage and it was sitting in a rail yard miles away at Cranmore in Somerset.
After the pub meeting Cllr Marshall had two meetings at Oldbury Council House with my wife seeking advice on arts provision. Cooper had maliciously tried to destroy "the arts" in Sandwell but Linda told Marshall that two very fine organisations, Multistory and Black Country Touring, had survived the carnage and that he should start by using them as the solid foundations on which to rebuild a cultural offering and he took that on board. He also outsourced the local arts Festival with immediate good results (and I even volunteered at it over two days).
Jan Britton was still not disclosing the Wragge Report but a QC had been involved in the later stages to force the Report into the public domain as Eling wished. I was able to show that a colossal £63,583.33 ex. Vat had been paid just for the QC (who, naturally, had strong Labour Party connections).
In another exclusive, I showed that either as a result of sheer incompetence or fraud certain “faults” had not been remedied by Interserve when they wrecked the interior of The Public. SMBC had “omitted” these from the original contract and so had forked out an additional £507, 377.23p ie. over half a million pounds. This information came out after Jan Britton’s staff said SMBC had only paid less than £12,000 for maintenance and repairs which was clearly a lie. Once again we should remember that Britton was on both sides of this fence being a Governor of the College too.
Although I did not know at this time the “Hackett Saga” had started. Astonishingly, this is still going on this day. Councillor Simon Hackett - an employee of Tom Watson MP - faced allegations of breach of the members’ code of conduct. The hapless Hackett was the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services which, as we have seen, was an absolute disaster with the Government eventually intervening. Hackett found out highly confidential information about a minor child which he then blabbed at Cooper’s weekly “political meeting” where other Labour Councillors were present and even a SMBC employee. This was both a clear breach of Hackett’s duty of confidentiality and a data breach. There were four other allegations - that Hackett urinated in a bus shelter and the incident was covered up; that he had bullied staff; that he had intervened to have a parking ticket to his wife cancelled and that he had been involved in a proposed deal for SMBC to buy-back his mother’s property.
The truth only came out piecemeal but Eling and Marshall wanted me to attack SMBC's Assistant Chief Executive, Melanie Dudley. As above she was on the radar because of the deal done with Cooper at great expense to the taxpayer. For reasons which will become clear, Eling and Britton wanted to get rid of Ms Dudley and, via the WhatsApp feed, I was passed highly confidential information that she was leaving before this was common knowledge. Eling and Marshall asked me to give her “a kicking”. Despite the agreement she would leave in the following February she left - after gardening leave - at the beginning of October, 2016 with a huge pay-off.
Ms Dudley had also been acting as the statutory Monitoring Officer and we now know that Eling forced her out as she had made an adverse finding against Hackett in her standards investigation (though only in respect of the breach of confidentiality/data breach) and the Leader demanded she amend it. She very bravely refused.
The Wednesbury Celebrates story continued and I was also able to disclose - thanks to a leaked document a donation from the “Sandwell Labour Group” of £5,000 to Tom Watson MP which he had not declared in his Parliamentary Register of Interests. I also continued to pick away at inadequacies and errors in the Wragge Report.
At this stage someone leaked some documents to me concerning the Hackett Saga. SMBC immediately threatened me with an injunction. I continued to publish but made certain redactions at this stage. More documents were forthcoming.
It transpired that Melanie Dudley had decided in the standards investigation that Hackett had urinated in a bus shelter and been approached by a SMBC Warden who took his details. It was clear that a number of officers at SMBC tried to make sure this was kept secret. Ms Dudley decided that as the incident happened late at night when Hackett was apparently very drunk he was not acting as a Councillor at that time and so he was not in breach of the code of conduct. A later investigation into the cover-up was hampered when key documents had "gone missing".
A new "temporary" Monitoring Officer was employed and I put up a Tweet from him boasting how he had bought a sports car with the money he made from his previous contract. As we shall a new investigation started into Hackett's breach of confidentiality/data breach on the day after Melanie Dudley left.
I also diclosed that in the incestuous world of Sandwell Cllr Liam Preece had done freelance work for a key figure in the Wednesbury Celebrates scandal. I also picked up a story from Private Eye whereby three Labour Councillors had been sent reminders for payment of Council Tax and one had received a sumnmons - shortly afterwards I was able to exclusively disclose that this was Cllr Richard Marshall (although Jan Britton had tried to keep this secret).
WMP were completely in thrall to Sandwell Labour and I started a series showing them bigging-up Labour Councillors at every opportunity including the likes of Cllr Costigan who was heavily implicated in the Wednesbury Celebrates debacle (which they had refused to investigate).
The alleged cancellation of parking tickets by Labour Councillors featured in the Wragge Report. In her standards investigation Melanie Dudley cleared Hackett of intervention in the cancellation of his wife's ticket. But by a forensic examination of the dates I cast doubt on the excuse put forward to gain exemption from the ticket which Ms Dudley's team had apparently missed.
As all this was going on, Eling and Marshall continued to pass information to me via WhatsApp and the odd email. A leading disclosure by them was also advanced notice (again) of the departure of Adrian Scarrott, another victim of the Wragge Report - following the disastrous Neeraj Sharma out the door.
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