Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party…

Or maybe not?  Maybe now is the time for all hard right enablers of disability discrimination – who’ve outstayed their welcome – to bail out, betray their constituents and go independent?

Somehow we don’t think hard right Moira McLaughlin – the councillor resigning this time around – will have consulted her voters, the people who put her there, before doing the dirty on them.  She’s obviously seen the writing on the wall, and put herself and her own fortunes first.  In the same way hard right Frank Field did, and in the same way hard right Mike Sullivan did, when he threw his toys out of the pram in a very public manner, aided with stringing the sentences together by his (outgoing) hard right leader and by a man who recently appeared on a British Transport Police “WANTED” poster, hard right Martin Liptrot.

And yes, in a very premeditated and managed way, she’s also publicly filed to the slavish, captured mainstream media – this time the Liverpool Echo – with her poison pen bleatings.  But let’s face it, the Echo have been carving out a reputation for this sort of thing.  They’re well-accustomed to engaging in trial by media.

Look what the Echo and the Guardian did for local MP hard right Angela Eagle a couple of years ago when she invented ‘bullying, homophobia and intimidation’ allegations against innocent members of her own Wallasey CLP, which got them suspended for 18 months

– allegations which collapsed very quietly and very curiously.  And then, when the deceit was exposed and the CLP were reinstated, the Echo suddenly shrank back, and didn’t want to get involved in making the news public and explaining where they’d got it so badly wrong. 

Anyway, onwards and downwards.

Cast your minds back to 2010 if you can readers.  Back then was a terrible time for vulnerable, disabled people on Wirral who’d wrongly assumed the Matron had their backs.

It was revealed they were being stolen from by Wirral Council, and when we say ‘stolen from’ we don’t mean some brief pilfering or misappropriation of a few pennies.

We mean a whole NINE YEARS of ongoing, week in, week out, calculated theft from disabled people’s bank accounts!

A grand total of £736,756.97 disappeared from the accounts of a number of Wirral Council’s disabled tenants of supported living accommodation in Angela Eagle’s constituency – in three locations in Moreton to be precise.

This was just a small part of the wide-ranging Martin Morton whistleblow.  Moira McLauglin, who had actually been involved in providing council accreditation to care organisations run by gangsters, was the Member for Adult Social Services whom, along with the Council Leader Steve Foulkes, tried and failed to have this all covered up!

And despite her po-faced chairing of ‘Health and Wellbeing’ meetings, she also had a long standing, undeclared personal friendship with the previous Director of Adult Social Services, Kevin Miller, who had been in post when the grand theft commenced.

Can you see how this kind of abuse multiplies, festers and digs itself in yet, readers?  And once it’s there, how it proliferates and feeds on its host body like a cancer, one that can’t be surgically cut out and removed?

And tragically, this Matron was not there to tend for her disabled patients.

A lot more money was stolen from residents of Balls Road Supported Living in Birkenhead, but never investigated by Anna Klonowski, who told us she ‘didn’t have time’ and who also failed to interview the Matron presiding over the abuse and her 65 failing colleagues.

If it wasn’t for social services whistleblower Martin Morton (who was forced out of his job by Foulkes, the Matron and friends), the amount stolen by now would be way over £2 million! And Moira McLaughlin wants us to believe she serves the public and she’s clean and honourable??!! 

Here’s a link to the FOI request which exposed the exact amount of the sum stolen.  Note:  The review was never “independent” because Anna Klonowski Associates failed to declare their previous ties to Wirral Council as governance trainers for councillors and senior officers.  The period of the theft was nine years, not four years:

Stolen money link

In 2010, we complained via our MP Angela Eagle – who had to be dragged kicking and screaming – to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.  We alleged there had been clear instances of disability discrimination on the part of the council, who had a statutory duty to protect vulnerable, disabled people under their remit.  This obligation obviously debarred stealing from their bank accounts even though they were easy targets, sitting ducks and disabled, but that was precisely what occurred.

Here is the letter we got back from @MikeDGSmith, the then Chair of the Disabilities Committee of the EHRC, endorsing our allegations of disability discrimination:

And another one from Eagle, TWO YEARS AFTER OUR INITIAL COMPLAINT, updating Mike Smith and chasing up Wirral Council and the Matron, who’d been refuting the allegations:

So in the end, not being courageous enough to follow up Mike Smith’s guidance, root out the true extent of the abuse and face up to investigating Wirral Council properly, Anna Klonowski instead used the public money assigned to her investigation to have our allegations and Mike Smith’s findings debunked by her own solicitors, DLA Piper.

How DLA Piper came to the aid of abusive Wirral Council in their hour of need

So she purposefully went against Mike’s advice, and instead of investigating, set about destroying all evidence of discrimination.  Mike Smith ended up losing his job as  one of the Chairmen at the EHRC not long after our complaint was lodged. 

It’s a very, very nasty world that Councillor Moira McLaughlin (Independent) still occupies, one where people trying to do the right thing get persecuted, and one that Klonowski departed recently “to go and care for her parents”.

This task will have been made a lot easier after she controversially trouser-suited £377,000 from Wirral Council and a hotly-disputed £90,000 in public cash from Bristol City Council. 

Now it’s up to us to stay strong, hold out for the interests of voters, the public and our vulnerable people and clear out what remains of these right wing, money-grubbing abusers.

Why?  Because not only are these highly-paid senior officers doing the dirty on the public, but the councillors we voted for in good faith – people like then Tory leader Jeff Green – instead of mucking the filthy stables out, appointed a conflicted investigator known to the council – Anna Klonowski.  She failed to declare an existing interest, failed to take any minutes or verbatim recordings of her interviews, failed to interview members whom it is alleged had links to gangsters, did what was required, left escape hatches for all of the senior abusers to clamber out of…

…and served up a £six-figure cover-up and a whitewash…!

Toodle Pip!