Who remembers this? 

The ugly, alleged #racism of Councillor Steve Foulkes’ wife, allegedly carried out in Sorrento, when she may have thought nobody back home was watching.

#Racism

The above gem appeared in Private Eye around autumn two years ago and the incident it briefly refers to received much more detailed coverage on Wirral Leaks, but strangely never made it into the national media. There was also a very curious radio silence locally.

Wirral Council appears to have a penchant for falling silent and busily covering up its #racism. Labour councillors and their family members – for their part – seem to find #racism is attracted to them, like flies homing in on a freshly dropped, steaming turd.

Whilst at the same time, they’re ready to drop everything, gather as one and brandish “Show Racism the Red Card” placards for any cameras that might turn up unannounced.

We discovered a while ago that criminal, former Wirral Councillor and Chair of the Audit and Risk Management Committee Jim Crabtree was a supporter of far-right group “Britain First”.

After giving this fool accelerated advancement up through the ranks, and despite knowing Crabtree’s Facebook site was plastered with homages to far-right idols, the Labour council leader, liar, liar, liar, Phil liar Davies, a liar, suddenly showed a clean pair of heels and ran screaming from it.

#Wirralgate 

Researching #Wirralgate tells us that the then Deputy Leader of the Council, Labour Councillor George Davies – Frank Field MP’s former election agent – had allegedly referred to the then Monitoring Officer Surjit Tour as a “bloody useless chink”.

However, the official council position on this serious matter was never anywhere to be found in public. Why? 

The only reason the public discovered this was it emerged that the remark had been covertly recorded with malice aforethought by a group of complainants (three of whom are now council employees restored to their posts, and one of whom is dead).

These felt they’d been wronged when the Highway Services Department had been farmed out to COLAS way back when, amid a blaze of controversy around “fraudulent tenders and contracts”, with EU rules being broken left, right and centre. 

We won’t analyse this stinking pile of shit all over again, save to say the alleged #racism is now defused, forgotten, done and dusted. Highways are now safey back in house, i.e. the group of mercenaries got what they’d always wanted, didn’t need to be paid off £48,000 each (originally demanded with menaces by Frank Field and stoutly refused by two successive CEOs – Graham Burgess and Eric Robinson), and both George Davies and Frank Field MP have emerged from the deepest of sewers smelling of roses.

Thanks were due, offered, gratefully accepted, and all plaudits received with good grace by those who’ve been up to their eyes in, er, smoothing over this hideous affair. 

e.g. Step forward Robin Hopkins, journeyman data and information barrister, who answered the call, rose to the challenge, assisted Wirral Council’s naive officials, held their hands, whispered sweet nothings, eased them carefully out from beneath the dark clouds of their most corrupt and abusive period… then trousered his cheque.

And sod the accusations of #racism. There’s nothing that a very, very well-paid lawyer – sans conscience – can’t achieve.

All paid for by us.

Fast forward to the here and now, and it’s yet another worrying case of déjà vu as the “most improved”, award-winning council finds itself once again shutting up shop and receding into the shadows nursing an all too familiar, thorny #racism problem.

One of its councillors – this time a Tory – got all hot under the collar, couldn’t help himself and tweeted this offensive message to David Lammy MP in July 2019:

To puncture the wall of silence with a BANG, we fired off the following tweet today:

We lodged a Standards Complaint and it is now being officially and independently investigated…

…amidst the gathering silence.

Shall we see what – if anything – emerges from the bunker this coming week?!