Adur District Council and their treatment of their tenants.

I have been without heating and hot water since Sunday 23rd December, despite my tenants rights making it clear that this is a job that needs to be completed in 24hrs.

I spent Xmas Eve dealing with fuckwitts at the council, and their contractor BSW, who appear to specialise in the BS part of their name more than anything else.

As a social tenant, I am treated like shit and have been told all sorts of lies and justification why although my contract of tenancy states that they should repair this within 24hrs and if their contractor fails, then they should get a second contractor to do it, means fuck all.

They are money hungry fuckers and if rent isn't paid then they take action soon enough but when it comes to their responsibilities as landlords, they don't give a flying fuck.

These flats are no better than squats and the council couldn't give a shit about the people living in them.

This is what 20 years of Tory rule has done to our local Council. The leaders of the council are only interested in snaffling as much cash for themselves as they can and the staff are all overpaid arseholes who have no idea what their responsibilities are and little care to learn about them.

We see the local Tory Cllrs and their total cunt of an MP turn up for photo ops, claiming to support charities that wouldn't need to exist if they hadn't asset stripped the area for every last fucking penny.

Fuck you Adur Council, fuck you local Tory Party and fuck you BSW, you can all go and crawl back into the fucking holes you came out of and as complete mother fuckers this should be no different to your normal day.

We're back.

Yes, after a break of two and a half years, we are back up and running.


Many things have happened in that period, and a full rundown of these events will be posted in the coming days and weeks.


It has been a difficult couple of years since the very physical attack on my freedom of speech, the surgical scars have healed and hopefully as I use 'blog therapy', the mental scars will eventually heal too.


Since I've been away we've seen our local Adur Councillors award themselves up to 46% pay rises, and since the onset of 'austerity' in 2010, our Council Leader's salary is approaching double what he was receiving then.


More local assets have been sold off to the highest (or lowest with the right contacts) bidder, and most senior council exec posts are in the hands of a small group of consultants, most with business links to the Chief Exec, who himself received a 20% pay rise last year whilst the rest of the staff saw their workloads double and their salaries capped at 1%, a real time pay cut.


We have seen a number of six-figure 'golden goodbyes' handed to departing executives, a huge pay out to the former exec that they sacked around the time of the NCP debacle, and they still haven't managed to sell the Civic Centre so it's sitting derelict and abandoned. 


Yes, there is a lot to talk about.


Will be back with a proper update very soon.


ICBM

Apologies for the recent lack of entries.

Yes, it has been a while since I updated the blog.


This is because there is a storm brewing, a storm that will hopefully redress the balance, after several years of uneven and extremely invasive attacks on myself and my family, controlled from the camps of certain individuals, who are not afraid to exploit their positions in order to paint themselves to be the victims when in reality they are the aggressors.


Whilst this war is fought, it has been recommended to me that I refrain from distributing information that could allow other parties to predict my next move. This will make the coming storm, even more levelling, and far more effective.


I will update with the full story, as and when I am able, but rest assured, I may be maintaining radio silence, but I am definitely not ready to give up the fight.


Given time, I will publish the concluding paragraphs to this matter, and then slip happily back into obscurity, where I am at my happiest.


K

More Tory propaganda from the Harald.

Well, as usual  the Harald has decided to demonstrate it's political allegiance to the local Tory party following last week's local elections with THIS STORY.

Yes, apparently Grand Moff Parkin and his mates aren't worried about losing five seats on Adur Council to the UKIPpers, because they only took the "easy seats".

One question springs to mind though, if these seats are so easy to win, why didn't the Parkin gang win them? Oh, because they didn't want them anyway, just like the spoilt kid who can't have any sweeties.

One thing that is a little misleading, is the claim that "in most wards, the conservative vote actually went up compared to last year", as last year it was County elections rather than District, and so the wards are different, this is like comparing apples with oranges. Admittedly their number of votes did increase from 2012s District elections, but that's only because the turnout was up by around 8% this year, so everyone's vote was up, in reality their percentage of votes, (rather than vote count) is actually down.

What is amusing, is the statement that none of the Tories wanted to stand because they didn't want to lose. What an arrogant approach to democracy, it smacks of "I'm going home, and taking my ball with me", and just shows the mettle of the average Adur Tory, who's only interested in a fight if they're guaranteed to win without putting in any effort, after all once elected they do nothing until it's election time again.

I'm a little confused about the claim that they "couldn't even find anyone for Mash Barn", because they clearly did...

.... and they got trounced by UKIP and the Lib Dems. This is just typical of the Parkin gang, reinventing the truth to fit a propaganda story, they seem to have taken advice from that politician and propaganda minister from the middle of the last century who stated that, "if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will eventually believe it yourself", this appears to be local Tories' mantra, as the amount of porkies that they bandy about in the press when they are clearly untrue cannot possibly be an accident.

This claim is also rather misleading too.

So, when the Tories went head to head with UKIP they won, What like in Mash Barn? There's also Widewater ward, which the Tories have held for the last 15 years at least, where despite a Tory candidate standing, knocking doors and delivering leaflets, they were beaten by UKIP as well.

Now, I should point out that I am far from a supporter of UKIP, in my opinion and experience they are pretty much the same as the local Tories, after all, they all drink together at the conservative club, but it is really funny watching the two factions arguing over immigration issues, when the only immigration we have here in Adur, is people moving over from Brighton, and the two parties are simply fighting for votes on the issue that they have placed in people's minds, rather than any issues of real importance, but I guess that takes us right back to that German minister's methods.

Just in case you were wondering, in Adur we have a less than 1% immigrant population, which hasn't changed in many years, and the majority of those "laws from Europe" were made up by the Daily Mail and don't actually exist. And while we're at it, ADC does not give any council housing to "asylum seekers" or "illegal immigrants", this is dealt with by the immigration services, controlled by central government and the only people making money from the housing of refugees are private landlords, so if they are claiming housing benefit, this cost could be drastically reduced by introducing rent caps, which ironically neither UKIP or the Tories happen to support on any level.

As for shooting foxes, we all know that our local Tories would much rather hunt them with dogs than shoot them:

From "They work for you"

The fox analogy may work well as a sound bite for a local rag, however in reality it's just another local Tory jumping on the back of a tired metaphor which was meaningless propaganda in the first place.


They shoot horses, don't they?

I CBM

This week's local elections.

Well, we had some elections this week, and as usual it was a Tory fest as usual, even if some tories are now wearing purple ribbons and ditching their transparent façade of acceptance of other lifestyles, cultures, sexuality and ethnicity.

In the run up to the election we were submitted to the usual rhetoric of "what have these people ever done", and "it's about the person, not the party", whilst neglecting to mention that before election nobody knew, or cared who they were, and their political achievements were non existent, not that any of them actually do anything now, because they are controlled by the cabinet system in which they are unable to even discuss something unless their fellow Tory Party members agree.

If the Tories are so keen that we should vote for a person rather than a party, then why don't they stand as independents and not exploit the cash given to the local party from the public purse via Loughton's expenses to rent a desk in their office, to the tune of £700 a month? 

So, what dodgy actions did we witness this time?

Well, first off we had this...

Yes, some large banners stuck in the centre of town, within the local "conservation area", without any form of planning permission, which would clearly be required to install any signage within this protected area, even temporary signage.

There was obviously no planning permission sought by the owners of this protected building (The Toll House), and even if there was, there would be a bit of a problem as pretty much all of the planning committee are fellow Tories and so would have to declare an interest and decline to vote on this issue.

These banners were also an unfair advantage in a free and fair democracy, as all of the other candidates were not offered equal signage within the protected conservation area that makes up a large majority of the electoral ward.

The other thing that should be noted is the lack of an "Imprint" on this banner as required by the electoral commission.

This is the law, and needs to be adhered to in order to ensure that an election is fair and transparent, and any breach of this is a criminal act. As you can clearly see from the banner, there is no "imprint" identifying the promoter and printer, and so we have anther breach of the law in order to attain an unfair advantage in a supposedly free and fair election process.

By rights, Mendoza should have been arrested and charged with this offence, and excluded from the election as a result of breaching electoral law. So in effect Mendoza is not truly the elected Councillor for St Mary's ward, and should be stripped of this title immediately, either awarding the post to the second place candidate, or re-running the election for this ward.

But ADC don't bother with little details like this and so he will remain in post for another four years of his homophobia, racism and misogyny in the form of shit "jokes" straight form he 1970s.

Who else got elected? Oh yes, Emma Evans.

So, Evans doesn't have "donors", instead she invites people to her home who give her money to run her election campaign. I think that the word normally used for these people is "donors", as they "donate" money to a prospective councillor, in order to fund a campaign to secure election.

In my opinion, (and to some degree the law states that) these donors should be fully disclosed on a register of interests in order to ensure that the councillor, whose election campaign they assisted in funding, is not involved in any matters concerning them or any business in which they have a direct interest.

Yes, if we don't know who's funding her via her "coffee mornings", we cannot be sure that they are not buying and applying undue influence over our elected representatives. This is a basic cornerstone of democracy, one which ADC seem to discard along with other basic tenets of democracy, like keeping an up to date register of members pecuniary interests.

It's always good to end on a humorous note, so I'll throw in Evans' rant published in the Harald.

Yes, after banging on about people not voting for a party but an individual, she has a pop at people who voted for someone from a different party to her own, no mention on whether the individual concerned had and local policies, or whether she even attempted to look for any, not that if they did have some, that they would be able to do anything under the cabinet system in place, where only Tory party members can speak or have any input into decisions.

So, after winning by a safe majority, she throws her toys out of the pram claiming that her opponent was an "extremist", despite it being her own party who is trying to sell off the NHS and is responsible for the bedroom tax and freezing and starving poor people all over the country, that's pretty "extremist" if you ask me, and this whole rant simply reeks of a spoilt bitch whose majority is diminishing and she doesn't like competition.

Anyway, if it's about "local policies", then where the hell have our local council gone (Worthing), and what's happening to our local hospital, (sold to housing developers by the Tories). These people might care about dog shit and parking on the pavement, but couldn't give a damn about things that actually matter. Oh well, they get their money all the same, s why should they care?

Can't wait for the tantrums at the first council meeting after the loss of five Tory seats though.

Don't believe the lies, & don't trust the liars.

I CBM

Adur & Worthing's new recycling policy.

This week's Harald has surpassed itself with it's choice to blindly promote the local council in whatever pathetic venture they try to promote, and as usual the only thing they are promoting is themselves.

Story here

Yes, it appears that the council's recycling policy now includes the recycling of shit 70s jokes instead of consigning them to landfill where they truly deserve to be.

The only thing funny about this pair's "act" is that they believe it's funny. Now if this was a character comedy about a couple of old farts who think they're funny when in fact they are just living in a past that never was, that might work, but sadly these two are the real life "Smashie and Nicey" or "Crème Brulee" of the comedy world.

What is funny, is that they seem to think that they are similar to "Morecambe and Wise", well, there are two of them......... No, sorry can't spot any other similarities I'm afraid. These two are more like the embarrassing drunk relative at a family wedding, who seems to believe that the awkward laughter they receive is somehow a sign of their "obvious" comedy genius, when in fact they are still telling the same "jokes" that you never found funny in 1978.

Talking of 1978, I did actually laugh when reading this story, as when it claims that Mendo is using "material...gleamed from constituents' letters", I assume that he hopped in a time machine back to 1978 and plagiarised material from someone like Jasper Carrot (possibly, I think that he did these originally along with the "real" insurance claims) who wrote these jokes the first time around.

Suggesting that people may have heard these "jokes" before is an understatement, as a quick Google search suggests.

Yes, at least 16,400 people have "heard it before", I wonder if they're recycling the one about the man next door's "unsightly erection" or the one about the kid next door who's constantly "banging his balls against the wall"? They were part of the original script if I recall correctly.

The idea of a stand up comedy duo who don't actually write any material and rely on thinking that they are funny, rather tan actually being funny, is a nightmare, and I suggest that anyone booking them make sure to search the audience for tomatoes before they go on, although if Mendoza's history of violence and abuse is anything to go by, I expect that they may well make front page news when a heckler is punched or racially abused.

All that said, there is still room for comedy in politics, I spoke to Dennis Skinner the other week, and the man is a comedy genius (as well as a very well respected politician), check out some of his quotes, you won't be disappointed, and it's all original material too, shot straight from the hip.

TTFO
I CBM

Saint Tim's expenses.

The recent letter to the Harald from our local MP has raised a few questions about expenses, while I'm not making any claims either way as to their legality, there are some serious moral issues in play here.

This is what Loughton claimed in his letter,

so it's a "fact" that the house in Burgess Hill is his "family home" and so one would assume his main home, the one where he lives with his family. So, when he was claiming expenses on this home and signing this declaration, there needs to be some answers forthcoming.

This is the declaration signed repeatedly whilst claiming rather substantial expenses on this house as can be seen HERE , yes, since the big furore about MPs expenses Loughton has claimed to be whiter than white, but if we look back a few years we can see that he was lined up at the trough with the best of them.

 

What is questionable though (although again I am making no statement on legality) is that Timmy's expenses which are "away from (his) only or main home" are in the form of bills in the name of Mrs Elizabeth Loughton, including up to and over £800 a month for heating oil for his Wellhouse Lane pad, along with nearly 200 quid to service and repair his Aga.

There are also some interesting "food" receipts HERE which include about half a dozen toothbrushes and a load of Cheese Strings, among other supposedly necessary items enabling him to carry out important Parliamentary business.

 

Looks like December 2008 was a particularly expensive month for the taxpayer though, as Timmy and his family got a new bathroom fitted, along with a load of other electrical work including fitting of lights n the kitchen.

 

In case you were wondering about the "accompanying note", here it is...

Yes, apparently this new bathroom was as a result of the boiler "packing up", which makes me wonder why we're paying nearly 70quid a month on insurance to cover such eventualities and not claiming on it when we are absolutely forced to rip out our shower and fit a new one. Again I make no allegation of impropriety under law, merely raising simple questions, relating to documents that are freely available under the transparency laws that Timmy has always abstained from voting on.

 

Oh, and in case you were wondering, an essential part of any MPs work, is being able to watch the TV in the kitchen, I assume that this is so you don't miss Eastenders when you nip to the fridge to grab a Cheese String....

 

I know that this is all a few years old now, but as Timmy seems to want to repeatedly claim to be practically perfect in every way, I felt the need to draw attention to the vast amount of public cash he has snaffled over recent years.

 

If you, like me, think that Timmy is taking the piss, then think again, he even claimed £116 for someone to do that for him as well.....

 

 

 

 

This was just one year at random, there are plenty more available online, it is your right as a voter to hold your representatives to account for their actions, and what better time to show this than during an election.

 

You employ them to work for you, you have more power than they do, it may not appear that this is the case sometimes, but it is the truth. Say no to trough snaffling Tories in Adur, vote for anyone but them, but remember to vote, people died for your right to that.

 

I CBM

 

Loughton, liar or lawbreaker?

Interesting letter this week in the Harald, from our MP Timmy (The Lought) Loughton. He is again trying to justify his existence and the cash he is snaffling from the trough. He also tells some whopping fibs but that's a matter to be addressed another day.

Here's the interesting part of his epistle to the local rag.

Blurriness due to crap printing at the Harald.

Anyway, there are a few things that stand out in this paragraph, he uses the generic "Sussex" rather than specifying East or West, which are two different counties, so he may as well claim that we are all Hampshire after all.

It's interesting that he claims that the home in Burgess Hill is, and has been his "family home" since before he became an MP. If this is the case, then why, when he became an MP did this become his "Second Home" in order to claim mortgage payments of around £24k a year and about £400 a month in heating oil among other quite excessive expenses payments. Surely if he claims that this is definitely his family home and not his second residence, then he shouldn't have been claiming expenses on it for all the years that he did.

Now the main point of this post is really to address the fact that he claims that his home is "all of 12 minutes" from Shoreham, now let's look at that in detail.

Here's the shortest route between Lought's House and the Civic Centre in Shoreham.

Ok, so we have to accept that Loughton doesn't travel by helicopter, because he claims expenses for his car in order to travel to work in Shoreham, so that would be a journey of 14.635 miles.

So, using a simple time, speed and distance calculation that we all learned in O' Level maths, but needn't have because there's an app for that these days.

In order to make that journey in 12 minutes, as claimed in Timmy's letter, he would have to achieve an average speed of around 73mph, and as this journey goes through Ditchling this average would require some serious "making of time" on the A27. There is the possibility that Timmy prefers a different route to the one pictured (the shortest route), however this would increase the distance therefore increasing the average speed required to complete the journey in 12 minutes as claimed.

As the lowest average speed required to complete this journey is more than the legal speed limit on British roads, in order to average this speed one would have to hit more than 80mph at least once during this journey, and considering that the majority of the journey would be on single carriageway roads where 60mph would be the very maximum speed permitted, Timmy is telling us that every time he visits Shoreham he breaks the law.

There is always the possibility that his claim of "12 minutes" is just as fanciful as all of his other claims and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

You can decide, did he just admit to breaking the law, or did he just lie in a published letter? It has to be one or the other.

I CBM

MISSING, Tory Councillors go walkabout.

With all the furore surrounding the flouncing out of the entire Tory contingent of Sompting Parish Council, you could have almost missed the fact that another three Tories have disappeared from Lancing Parish Council as well.

If you live in one of the relevant wards that is no longer represented, you have the right to call for a by-election to replace these councillors before the local Tories replace them with their own mates.

Details HERE.

Looks like this raises a few other questions as well, Here are the minutes from the March 5th meeting of LPC.

Obviously if Cllr Hamblin is having health issues then that is her business, however the other two are also Adur District Councillors. Not that you'd notice as they appear to have only attended two council meetings in the last 18months, (just enough to ensure the continuation of their allowance payments).

So, the bloke who looks a bit like Dara O'Briain and his overtly equine wife appear to have done a bunk, yet the ADC website still lists them as councillors for Mash Barn and Manor wards respectively.

Although the minutes announcing their departure was made only a couple of weeks ago, it is written in the past tense and as they haven't attended a LPC meeting since Nov 13, or an ADC meeting since Oct 13, they could have been gone for months.

Surely it is the responsibility of Adur council and the local Tory party to inform residents when they are no longer represented, they were kind enough to let me know after all, when they decided that their job only involved representing people that weren't me.

Yes, your local council can't even be bothered to inform you when their councillors and fellow party members leave you in the lurch and it demonstrates their clear arrogance when these councillors could do a bunk without so much as a "It's been lovely taking your money and doing sod all to earn it representing you, but we're sodding off to Essex" letter.

What concerns me is, are they still being paid their allowances? Surely the day they left they ceased to be councillors and payments should have stopped immediately, and by failing to inform ADC of their departure and if they received payments after this date it amounts to fraud, and this should be immediately reported to the police for a full and transparent investigation.

What is more important is, if you live in Manor or Mash Barn wards you are a councillor short now, (although Mrs Horsie was up for election in May anyway so you may want to wait) and have the right to call a by election to replace the deserters. Give the Electoral Services Dept. a call to find out how to do this.

You never know, they may even not know about the missing councillors and may need a little encouragement to see if these people are still taking our money and someone needs to have a word with Mr Plod.

ATAB
I CBM

Sompting wicked this way comes.

Sorry for the obscure film reference there, and it is more a case that the freakshow has left Sompting rather than arrived, but hey, it is just a blog post title.

I know that Sompting is the other side of the river from me, but we're all part of Adur, and so I should be inclusive even if our local Tories seem to have a problem with lovely little leafy Sompting.

This week saw the "resignation" of three councillors from Sompting Parish Council, along with a selection of Loughton based digs about it being like "Dibley Parish Council", (which although fictional, was Tory controlled).

Here's the "resignation" letter, (explanation for quotes to come). Find it here.

Well, obviously when the entire Tory contingent of any organisation ceases to be active, this is a cause for celebration, but just like everything else Tory, this is not quite as simple as it first appears (or as they wish it to appear).

You see, just like when Loughton claimed to have "sacked" me as a constituent, even though he had no ability to do so, these councillors are essentially doing the same thing, except rather than resigning, one of them had already been de selected by the council (for not bothering to ever turn up) and the other two were in the process of the same, so one of them resigned after he was sacked and the other two resigned because they were about to be sacked. They didn't tell you that did they?

The whole thing stinks of the standard Tory spin machine, (the only thing about the Tories that is truly transparent), but people of Sompting should really think about what actually happened here.

Three councillors have, after not bothering to attend meetings for a period of more than six months, deserted their posts and their constituents, be that by their choice or the electoral commissions rules.

These three, are as far as I am aware, standing in the May elections despite clearly only being interested in being councillors in an environment which is controlled by their fellow party members, as Sompting is the only council within Adur that is not controlled by a Tory majority and also the only one not chaired by a Tory. Draw from that what you will, I don't do spin, just honesty and allowing people to judge for themselves after being given all of the facts.

Like everything else spread by the local Tories, they are only giving you half of the story, like the claimed "above inflation" increase in SPCs precept, yes, this may be above inflation but as it is such a tiny percentage of the overall council tax bill, this increase will equate to pennies over the year in real terms. They forget to tell you that these councillors also sit on Lancing Parish Council, the council that Loughton claimed in Parliament a couple of months back, had increased their precept by 28% last year. This increase was approved by these same councillors, who are now attempting to lambast another council for a smaller increase than the one they had instigated 12 months previous. But they wouldn't tell you that either.

I think they must enjoy giving us a laugh, because after complaining that they don't like other councillors taking the rise out of the fact that they're barely out of short trousers, and likening the meetings to children's birthday parties, they counter these problems by taking their ball and running off home to tell Timmy all about how mean the bigger kids are being to them. I think they proved their point well, don't you?

Remember the names though, because if they are successful in their attempts to make Adur District Council, how can you be sure that they won't have another hissy fit and desert the role of district councillor with as little care as they have deserted the role of parish councillor, they obviously are only there to further their own interests and not ours.

TTFO
I CBM