26th February 2014

More information here, including dates of departure for pastures new.

14th June 2013

Former Director of Wirral Highways, David Green, the senior officer who….

• brought bogus “bullying” charges against me in 2003, but with no comeback;
• forced my resignation, but with no comeback;
• appeared to be deeply-involved in high-level contract impropriety;
• was himself suspended in March 2012;
• had his post removed by the council in December 2012;
• was kept out of work until after Christmas;
• was whitewashed and cleared by an “independent investigator”;
• was invited back to a non-existent job – until May 2013;
• was apparently wrapped in cotton wool;
• was presumably paid a top salary all the while….

……has just been paid again, in the massive sum of £103,234.60 of our money.

All this has been kept under wraps by his now ex-employer, Wirral Council… until today, shortly before a Dispatches programme is to report on the matter – but too late to update the contents.  Shame.

I haven’t done the maths yet on exactly how much public dosh he’s raked in since being sent home in March 2012, and as it’s been 14 months, I’m not sure I want to.  This does however strike me as extremely lax stewardship of our precious public funds, and yet another failure which needs to be placed at the door of Wirral Council’s leader.

Accompanying David Green out of the door is another David – Mr Taylor-Smith, former deputy finance director, suspended last spring, and very much a man of mystery, who never really made it into the press, and managed throughout to keep a very low profile.  And it’s pretty much the same story.  He was also cleared with “no case to answer” and eventually had his post ‘deleted’ as part of a convenient ‘restructure’ which occurred last month (May 2013).  He was paid off a very generous £68,660.39.

I don’t know whether these two were gagged inside compromise agreements.  Presumably not, because the CEO, Mr Burgess promised not to resort to that didn’t he? And he is a man of his word isn’t he?

There were a further four staff ‘lost’ to this restructure.  I wonder if they were paid off and gagged within a compromise agreement?

It’s time to place another FoI request.  Here it is.  But I wonder if my request will be branded ‘vexatious’…

….if it is, that’ll be the 4th time in the last few months…. and every time by Wirral Council.  None of my other 400+ requests have met with this response…  but 3 times from the same council…  interesting.

While these two lucky individuals are enjoying their windfalls at our expense, read this recent article from the Wirral Globe.  It concerns people who have not been so fortunate in the lottery of life.

These vulnerable individuals had £700,000+ taken from their bank accounts by senior colleagues of Green and Taylor Smith at Wirral Council.  But while the two Social Services abusers responsible happily had their silence bought in exchange for an equal share of £220,000, the learning disabled people affected are still waiting for their stolen money to be returned – after three years.

What’s the reason for the delay?  The council are ‘concerned’ that should the money be returned too quickly, the DWP will treat the reimbursements as windfalls, and dock their benefits accordingly.  How sick is that?  You get thieved from and then the thieves hold on to your cash because they’re ‘worried’ about your welfare.  They want to ‘protect’ you from those nasty ingrates at the DWP.  An obvious question which comes to mind is:

When the abusers were deliberately plundering vulnerable people’s bank accounts over a nine year period, and ignoring / bullying / mobbing the whistleblower Martin Morton, who tried to tell them what they were doing was illegal……. did this eventuality occur to them back then?  That if they got caught, the  vulnerable people who they’d attacked would suffer a cruel double whammy?  Or did they just go ahead, whip the money and make off with it regardless?

I think I know the answer.

Footnote: here’s what the UK courts decided to do about Wirral Council’s two senior learning disabled abusers, Mike Fowler and Maura Noone, who were deeply involved in plundering all that cash.  WARNING: This makes for very upsetting reading.  Three judges unanimously decided that the “data privacy” of two cruel abusers (identities protected) trumped the welfare of any number of vulnerable, disabled people.

Much of my submitted evidence has been struck from the public record by an obedient, faceless, salaried court drone.