Tag Archives: Register of interests

WATCHING THE WATCHMAN

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O'Gara
City Council legal eagle Tim O’Gara in action

Has Bristol City Council’s posh clown Monitoring Officer, “Li’l” Tim O’Gara, broken the law? A recent meeting of the council’s optimistically named Value and Ethics Committee revealed that Bristol has not upheld a complaint against a politician in over six years. Not impressing residents who’ve made complaints.

One complaint was about Asher “The Slasher” Craig’s private company receiving payments from Bristol City Council that personally involved “Li’l” Tim. Another revealed that “Li’l” Tim kept two separate registers of interest for the mayor. One public, one private with different entries!

Oversight of “Li’ll” Tim’s handling of complaints, so far, has been from a so-called “independent person”, appointed by ‘Li’l’ Tim whose identity is a secret.

When grilled by residents why the “independent person” wasn’t appointed in public at Full Council as required by the Localism Act, “Li’l” Tim explained, “it would be a complete misreading of the legislation to think that the appointment would need to be made by Full Council.”

Such a “misreading”, in fact, that at Full Council on 14 November an “independent person” was set to be hurriedly appointed by councillors as the law asks!

Has “Li’l” Tim been caught red-handed breaking the law?

SPIN WATCH WITH MATT BAKER #1

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mattbakerA semi-regular series on the ‘chequered history’ of the mayor’s new spin doctor, MATT “PAGE 3” BAKER, former bag-carrier and sleaze slinger for Labour’s hugely entertaining MP for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk.

Apparently needing to top-up his paltry MPs salary of £67,060 plus generous expenses, Baker’s former  boss, Simon Danczuk, bagged himself a lucrative NON-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR gig back in 2013 when Shine Bid Services paid him £1,000 for a couple of days work a month over about 6 months. This salary works out at a very tasty £125k a year pro rata, considerably more than the majority of his Rochdale constituents could expect to earn.

Shine Bid Services help unnamed clients secure funding – usually from government agencies – and they make a big deal of the fact their name NEVER appears on any bid. “We are the back stage assistants,” gushes their website, “shying away from the spotlight to ensure you are always the star of the show.”

Which is all very convenient for an MP keen to sell their influence but keep any of the gory details away from prying eyes. Because, while Danczuk declared  in his Parliamentary Register of Interests that he worked for Shine Bid Services, he DID NOT MENTION any clients he represented or helped get government contracts or funding for.

Of more interest to us in Bristol, where the Baker’s pitched up, is the fact that, Danczuk had two staff registered with the House of Commons authorities with Parliamentary passes and access in 2013. One of them was Matt Baker (based in the North West not Westminster) who on his own Register of Interests made a NIL RETURN.

This is rather odd as Baker’s partner Margaret Quinn works for, er, Shine Bid Services!

So it was all very cosy in Rochdale wasn’t it? Let’s just hope Baker hasn’t brought these bad habits to Bristol then.