The Hypocrisy & Stupidity of our Elected Councillors
They talk the talk but don’t walk the walk our Cllrs. In the May elections all of the opposition parties Green, Lib Dem and Labour campaigned on a platform of transparency and openness. Yet now we discover that today at 10am the new Otterpool Park Working Group will convene at the Civic Centre
-
Councillors Ray Field (pictured), Gary Fuller, Jim Martin, David Monk (Chairman), Terence Mullard and David Wimble along with Invitees: Councillors Lesley Whybrow, Tim Prater, Connor McConville and Ian Meyers
will meet behind closed doors to discuss the following issues relating to Otterpool Park:
-
a) Land and acquisition
-
b) Planning
-
c) Proposed approach to financial planning
-
d) Current issues
-
6. Delivery vehicle
-
7. Programme and next steps
This hypocrisy by these newly elected opposition Cllrs is quite outstanding and unprecedented. Cllr Jim Martin, Cllr Lesley Whybrow and Cllr John Wing, all Green Cllrs, all wanted more transparency, more openness and more democracy, and yet two of them will hide behind closed doors today at 10am. Those election promises have clearly been broken
On Sept 15th 2019, the Shepwayvox Team informed you 20 Councillors failed to disclose their election expenses. This as we said in the blog post is a criminal offence. We note that after this blog post eleven Cllrs rushed to the Folkestone & Hythe District Council monitoring officer – Amandeep Khroud (who doesn’t monitor) – to change their Register of Interest and declare who paid their election expenses, as is legally required by ALL Cllrs. The Cllrs who did so were:
-
Cllrs Gary Fuller (Lib Dem), Cllr Laura Davison (Lab), Cllr Michelle Dorrell (Lab), Cllr Ray Field (Lab), Cllr Connor McConville (Lab), Cllr Jackie Meade (Lab), Cllr Nicola Keen (Lab), Cllr Jim Martin (Green), Cllr Georgina Treloar (Green), Cllr John Wing (Green), Cllr Peter Gane (Con).
This means the following Councillors continue to sit in the Council Chamber and vote on decisions while committing a criminal offence and the Monitoring Officer – Amandeep Khroud (pictured) does nothing – is she scared of losing her job if she reports them? As a lawyer the law must come first surely Mrs Khroud.
-
Cllr Danny Brook (Con), Cllr Clive Goddard (Con), Cllr David Godfrey, Cllr Tony Hill (Con), Cllr Philip Martin (Con), Cllr David Monk (Con), Cllr Terence Mullard (UKIP), Cllr David Wimble (Ind)
The Shepwayvox Team at their own expense sought legal advice on this matter. We were informed by two senior QC’s of different leading London chambers in Local Government law:
-
“Cllrs named are committing a criminal offence. None of the decisions they may have voted on could be determined as being legal, those decisions would have no legal validity in law.”
Perhaps there should be another article on the stupidity of the voters who actually believe Councillors will work for their benefit. 😁
This simply doesn’t surprise me at all. No more voting Green down here in Hythe for me. Such quick betrayal of their election promises means voting Tory for me. Keep up the good work.
Otheres have published that our Prime Minister is a “Known Liar”, so now I think it would be acceptable to same the same of our recently elected opposition cllrs, in my humble opinion. I wouldn’t trust them with my shopping list.
As a lifelong Labour voter, I have recently come to doubt their good intentions locally. Little if anything have they done locally. All they have done is prove they have the reading ability of a three year old regarding their election expenses. As you rightly say, a lot of hypocrisy by these Cllrs and I won’t be voting Labour again locally.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse.This comments applies to all the Councillors concerned as well as the monitoring officer.
Without Cllr Tim Prater the rest of them would be lost. It is he that understands the constitution, it is he who filled in his election expenses correctly, it is he who does the heavy lifting. From experience I know Cllr Whybrow always leaves that to others, nice but dim one might say imho. But she is not the worst of them, that accolade goes to Cllr Connor McConville who is a real verbal bully and nasty piece of work when he gets pissed on two pints imho.
Can’t see the point in making the distinction between Cllrs, MP’s and their respective parties, imho, in general the only difference is the colour of the party flag, I personally have only ever seen them play the system for their own ends, the ones i have dealt with have made false promises with only one thing in mind, to be elected and feather their own nests.