Link to a few historical tweets:

We’ve been going back over our extensive records to a time when abuse most foul had proliferated and spread unchecked like a malignant cancer through the body corporate of Wirral Council.

Metaphorically speaking, that stubborn disease, originally diagnosed in the early part of the century is still there, raging out of control, fully embedded and going nowhere, because the cowardly patient decided it didn’t fancy facing chemotherapy, radiotherapy or emergency invasive surgery, and got up from its hospital bed and fled.

Because the miserable bastard only ever looked out for its damned self, it was too craven and petrified to even ponder the idea of submitting to dangerous, debilitating, life-threatening, career-damaging, pocket-emptying procedures.

So it went for the much easier option: alternative medicine.  Thinking it was being smart, it called up the services of a quack.  This was a homeopathic practitioner known as the Local Government Association.

They forced the repulsive twat down, knelt on its chest and the treatment commenced in earnest.  They…

• gave it a quick once over
• fed it some magic potions in tiny amounts
• took its temperature
• searched for a pulse
• gave up
• told it it didn’t have cancer anymore
• told it everything was gonna be all right
• told it it was “most improved[TM]”
• told it the public’s fears had been seriously misplaced

They then deducted their whopping consultancy fees from our council tax payments and buggered off into the night.

Well, what a load of shite that was readers.  We said as much at the time.  But our view was reinforced later when the penny dropped and Wirral Children’s Services fell over.

Countless kids were suddenly put at heightened risk of abuse, and here was the Wirral basket case rearing its ugly head once again as it plunged, flailing back down into the gutter.

Fast forward to 25th October 2018, and we’ve now had a small number of longstanding occupants of that stinking gutter – including the leader – clambering out, peg on nose, dusting themselves down, pretending to innocence, fleeing the nest and while they do it, being careful to lay a trail of lies, distraction and feigned victimhood across any newspaper that’s up for indulging in a bit of juicy “trial by media”………(The usual suspects: Liverpool Echo, Wirral Globe, The Guardian, etc.)

These sensationalist newspaper articles tend to be lacking something.  And it’s very easy to locate what that something is.  They omit to mention anything about the factual, historical record of:

corporate bullying

intimidation

• Successive scandals
• alleged racism of senior councillors and their wives
• toe-curling abuses of power
• accreditation of gangster care organisations
• nine long years of calculated theft from disabled people’s bank accounts

(not exhaustive)

The above sordid behaviour has been the cashflow or stock in trade of the same long-serving, departing councillors who are now being painted as saints.  And all this from the same newspapers that brought us the scandals… i.e. the very people who should know better.  These hard right councillors’ hands are irrevocably soiled, they’ve dodged all accountability and have never been brought to justice after being heavily complicit and up to their necks for years in a cesspit of slime.

They believe our memories are as short as theirs are selective, you see readers.  But luckily, we community bloggers and activists are a resourceful lot, we’re here to stay, and we’re also here to remind them in some detail about the abuses they’ve carefully chosen to ‘forget’.  We do hope they tune in to these bulletins, follow our words closely and take the opportunity to refresh their memories.

So here we return to the title of our post…

#DisabilityDiscrimination – what do we know that’s different?

Seven years ago there was a meeting of Moira McLaughlin’s alleged Health and Wellbeing Overview and “SCRUTINY” committee, which she chaired.

A Conservative councillor at the time – Simon Mountney – had attempted to present copies of this Equality and Human Rights Commission letter which found that Wirral Council’s Social Services Department, led by senior member Councillor Moira McLaughlin, had engaged in disability discrimination.

Councillor Mountney handed out copies of the letter to the attending councillors for their consideration and scrutiny when it sat on 18th January 2011. 

However this was questioned forcefully and quickly blocked by the chair, Moira McLaughlin for the reason that she hadn’t been advised about it before the start of the meeting.  Upon taking advice from a solicitor seated next to her, and reading the contents of the letter, she was heard to say to the room in general, “You don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers  do you?”  This was a reference to the following news article, which had appeared in The Wirral Globe that same week:

http://www.wirralglobe.co.uk/news/8788691.Watchdog_accuses_Wirral_Council_of_discrimination_against_disabled_people/

What we witnessed that day was a deeply abusive council department’s version of “scrutiny”.

And what an ironic statement for the Matron to make in Februry 2011, particularly when we examine it again now in October 2018 through far wiser, far more jaundiced eyes.

But to address her question 8 years later… no Matron, we certainly don’t believe everything we read in the papers.  And particularly not your pile of warmed over bollocks which appeared today in the Liverpool Echo, in a far-fetched story packed with #FakeNews, which tried and failed miserably to invoke the ghost of Militant here on Merseyside.

You’re going to have to do far, far better than that Moira, and if this is you throwing down the gauntlet as an independent councillor, it’s no more than a timely swan song and even though the people of Rock Ferry will now have to suffer another four years of your snout in the public trough… your days are numbered.