Murky has been digging into the ‘state of the nation’ as far as Northumberland County is concerned. It appears to all onlookers including ourselves that the almost complete lack of experienced brains centred in the Council is down to the pathetic jealousy framed by a support web of lies that are legitimised by running reports mainly in the name of the suspended Chief Executive of the Council through the Audit Committee of the Council.
The amount of
top officers, Councillors and companies that have found themselves bullied by
professionals sitting under the cover of the aprons of Morpeth and the shadow
of the Oak Tree of the Conservatives then forced out of their jobs and careers
is enormous and the amount of public money wasted on Gagging Clauses,
Tribunals, Legal Fees along with plain and simple buy out of people’s contracts
is second to none in Local Government Circles.
The trumpeting
calls for independent investigations into the accusations of corruption and
fraud at Northumberland County Council are completely the wrong thing for the
public as they would follow the Wearmouth/Jackson system, designed to
legitimise falsehoods and lies dished out by the Conservative Executive team in
Northumberland.
The System.
1 Identify your
prey
2 Create innuendo surrounding activities of your prey that don’t have to
contain a shred of evidence or a modicum of truth.
3 Have the
person or persons interviewed by your chosen ‘Independent Investigator’ often a
man named Steve Crosland of Crosland Consulting.
4 The interview
is held and only closed questions are asked to ensure a pre-determined outcome
is the final result.
5 A report is
written by the Investigator and rewritten then presented to the Audit Committee
by the Tories Chief Executive of Council to legitimise the allegations within
the report.
6 In many cases
containing officer involvement a deal is struck around severance and
confidentiality clauses if its Councillors its plain and simple bullying in the
public domain and through the local media without recourse to any appeal or
process that is not coloured by the outcomes of the pre-determined report.
How does murky
know this as fact?
Murky has looked at several pieces of evidence sitting in the public domain.
The Czerepok v
NCC Tribunal for wrongful dismissal which cost the Council an enormous sum of
public money in legal fees and a sum almost as large to compensate Mr Czerepok.
The ‘System’
was triggered by the Tories and within the court papers which are a matter of
public record the Council in the shape of Councillors Jackson, Wearmouth, Daley
and Riddle along with their CEX Mrs Lally were well and truly found out.
In the
subsequent case of ARCH where for several months prior to the May 2017 election
the Tories took great pleasure in poisoning its reputation then spewed out a
number of minor business factors including the purchase of a bottle of wine and
spun them through the audit committee into major criminal activity. The
‘system’ produced a report that was completely juxtaposed to the position of
the Police who found ‘No Criminality’ in ARCH which enabled the Tories to not
only attack the Police via their chair of audit but begin the process of change
which built up the cover for them to create the massively loss making Company
Advance who’s mismanagement was challenged by Mrs Lally after the public
falling out among bandits.
Then of course
the counter claims from Councillor Jackson regarding the accusations
surrounding Mrs Lally’s £1.4M wanton spend on travelling around the globe to
make money for Northumbria Healthcare Foundation Trust at the Councils expense
warmed up the scene but as he had stupidly put Mrs Lally on Gardening Leave and
therefore couldn’t trigger ‘the system’. The mess surrounding his attempt to
bully Mrs Lally for breaking the aprons code of honour has led to his fall from
public office, he must have forgot she wasn’t a member.
As Murky has
learned over the last 12 years of the Unitary Councils existence its easy to
say things when they don’t have to be backed up but in this case things have
been said by Councillor Jackson that are easily proven as false and by Mrs
Lally as things that officers should not release into the public domain but
should have been reported to the Police and the external auditor many years
before this major falling out. Both are culpable as are many of the
Conservative Councillors named in the letters circulating around on social
media.
If the new
leader of Council whoever that may turn out to be persists on holding an
‘Independent Investigation’, into what’s gone on in an almost industrial scale
then we already now know it’s a veil of lies and deceit.
As a local
authority in the North East region the Council should be forced by public
demand to use the offices of its regional employers organisation NEREO who have
vast experience in resolving issues like this and would relish the chance to
get some form of decency back into the big picture surrounding Northumberland
County Council in time for it to hold honest elections in May 2021
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