The Gravy Train

Here’s a rather dated item from 2002 – from a time when deeply corrupt activity had had plenty of time and opportunity to feed its corrosive desires and become well-embedded at our local council.

It’s an insight from a politically engaged employee at the time, me, who had access to the internal network (the Wirral Council Intranet), with its wealth of information on council policies, procedures, meetings, etc.  This was a time when the internet was in relative infancy and such access was freely-granted to all employees, even to trouble makers such as myself.  Not wanting to short change the council tax paying public, I got busy during my lunch breaks.

I’m very sad to report that despite the awards and accolades this council have received since, which followed years of abuse of power, foul abuse of disabled people and a period of self-imposed faux introspection, LGA-controlled investigations, and preposterous declarations that ‘all is now well’… it very much is not, and Wirral Council has sunk even further into the gutter, wedged where it firmly belongs while the usual suspects continue to hold the fort.

On the upside, the fortunes of those involved during the dark and abusive days have changed for the better.

• Far Right former leader Steve Foulkes elevated to Wirral Mayor

• former CEO Steve Maddox granted Freedom of the Borough of Wirral

• former council CEO Don Latham (author of Being Unmistakably Christian at Work and who features prominently below), still on his travels, raking in cash and using religion to improve the lives of the unwary

• former Bishop of Birkenhead David Urquhart (who also features prominently below) also granted Freedom of the Borough of Wirral

Anyway I’ll shut up.  Here it is:

p.s. apologies for the open display of naïveté contained in the statement “FIGHT BACK. JOIN A UNION”

I was still relatively wet behind the ears.  For me, post dispute x 2, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since 2002.  For many, joining a union, rather than being an honest means of defending yours and your fellow members’ hard won rights, is simply a means of personal self-advancement.

Research the career of former Wirral CEO Graham ‘Mistakes’ Burgess for an exemplary case in point.

Compare the above atrocious behaviour in 2002 to the continuing, unaddressed sickening conduct in 2011:

http://www.wirralglobe.co.uk/news/8814439.Objections_over__unfair__cut_to_Wirral_councillors___allowances/