"Oh what a tangled web we weave

... when we are not only malicious, lying toerags but incompetent malicious, lying toerags."


The Standards Board are investigating the three cllrs who set up the forged "charge sheet" against me - Eddie Clark (Labour) Peter McCaull (Ind) & Brigadier Peter Jones (Tory). But ten others voted to pass the forgery off as genuine so here's a complaint against the lot of them.

(Hmm: two Tories, two Independents, three Greens, three Labour. No LibDems! And I've always thought the LibDems were the really greasy, corrupt local cllrs. I am ashamed of myself.)

Now: will I start to get lonely being the only Town Councillor not being investigated for rank corruption?

Masonic lodge hodgepodge

Looks like the question of whether an elected representative has to declare that they are a Freemason is a complete dog's dinner.
Below is the reply from the guy who runs electoral services for Herefordshire; it's clear even he doesn't really understand the score.

Interesting to follow his Standards link & see in passing that the last Labour govt changed the rules so that judges & magistrates no longer have to reveal that they are Masons.
Blighty's just getting more & more democratic by the day, ain't it?

·         FW: - Freemasons‏

From:	Jones, John (@herefordshire.gov.uk)
Sent:	30 August 2011 12:32:46
To:	Jim Miller (leominsterindependent@live.co.uk)

Mr Miller

Thank you for your recent e-mail.

As usual it is not entirely clear cut, in general the rule seems to be as follows:

Elected Members must Register and Declare an interest as a Freemason if
their membership includes membership of the charitable arm of what would
otherwise be a non-charitable association, i.e. the Grand Charity, unless
they have opted out of such membership.

I have obtained the link below to Standards for England guidance regarding the Code of Conduct which gives further guidance.

It is for each Member individually to make the decision as to if they should declare an interest.

I hope this helps

John Jones

Head of Governance

http://www.standardsforengland.gov.uk/Guidance/TheCodeofConduct/Guidance/Quickguides/FreemasonsandtheCodeofConduct/

Herefordshire politics: a bit bipolar??

The leader of Herefordshire Green Party (confusingly she's also a county cllr for 'It's Our County' the supposed new clean-up-politics crew) doesn't know whether she wants to join my campaign to clean out the sewer round here or have me knee-capped by some local eco unit of the SAS.


It's doing my head in so thought I'd clear the air with some choice illustrations of recent Green Party pro-democracy activism in the Shire.


WARNING: this document contains lamentable punch-pulling (I'm too big a softie for this politics lark, really...)

I.O.C. stands for

It's Our Can of Worms.

Last year, in between looking at MP Bill Wiggin’s expenses claims and the inflated allowances of Herefordshire councillors, I tried to inspect the accounts of my local Town council in Leominster, as is my right as an elector.

The Town Clerk and Deputy Town Clerk refused to let me see them on the instruction, I was told, of the ‘Old Guard’ cllrs who run everything round here. So I decided to stand for Town Council to start opening some books.

As soon as I was elected in May the Clerk & Deputy Clerk, aided by Old Guardsmen Peter McCaull, Mayor Eddie Clark & Brigadier Peter Jones, filed a complaint that I was harassing them in my position of Town Councillor. The complaint went in one day after I was elected. Yes, that’s how confident they were that their pals on Herefordshire Standards Board would find me guilty of any jumped-up, ludicrous charge they put in front of them.

They had to get Leo Town council to approve their “report” before it went to the Standards Board. They presented it at a secret trial of me held on July 7^th: no press, no public and no me, as they knew I was on holiday in Scotland that week.

Unfortunately – and unknown to them – cllr Benson Ferrari also went on holiday that week, and his signature had to be on the report otherwise it was not a legal council report. Oops!  Rather than wait for Ferrari to return (when I also would have returned, ready to defend myself from the ludicrous nonsense) Mayor Clark simply signed Ferrari’s signature & he, McCaull and the Brigadier presented the report to the Town Council as a bona fide council document. You can see here a genuine signature by Ferrari, then the signature on the “Recommendations” presented on July 7^th.

When I returned I was anonymously told about the forgery, and Ferrari confirmed he had not authorised it.

I then  emailed all Town Councillors calling for Clark, McCaull & the Brigadier to resign for the good name of the town.

Instead, another secret meeting was held on July 18^th. After Eddie Clark admitted he was the forger Labour’s Philippa Roberts proposed that the Town Council nonetheless vote to accept the forgery as an official council document and send it to Herefordshire Standards Board. This was voted for by the Tory and Labour councillors, and by Felicity Norman who sits in the main opposition group on Herefordshire Council ‘It’s Our County’ - slogan “Bringing a new kind of politics to Herefordshire” - and also leads the county’s Green Party.

When Herefordshire Standards Committee – an untrustworthy body controlled by local grandees and career politicians – received the ludicrous complaint against me and then saw the proof that Ferrari’s signature had been forged, even they couldn’t swallow it and passed the whole matter to the national Standards Board for England.

On 19^th August the leader of the ‘It’s Our County’ party, Mark Hubbard, issued a public statement that signing another cllr’s name on an official govt document is not really forgery so long as you persuade that person to give their consent after the event.

Let's get our priorities straight

As the capital burns, Tory whips - my MP Bill Wiggin is one of them - explain to their MPs what is really important in this situation. This letter was circulated to all of them today.

An Inspector Calls My Bluff

Some interesting correspondence may be developing between me and the police Inspector who sends his officers round to intimidate my family on behalf of disgraced Tory MP Bill Wiggin.

The Inspector's logic seems to be "If I pretend I don't really know what the Freedom of Information Act is, perhaps it won't really apply to me?".

Try again, Inspector. If you intimidate my missus I'm going to find out precisely why...

(This URL added in response to a comment on this Blog entry:
 http://www.westmercia.police.uk/freedom-of-information.html)