On 21 May I wrote to the District Auditor about the TransEuropa Ferry debt scandal. In that letter I asked some basic questions about how the debt was allowed grow and why the majority of elected Councillors were not informed about this debt and consulted about what to do. The District Auditor took the unusual step of requesting the Council Chief Executive, Dr. Sue McGongical to respond to my questions. He has now sent me a copy of her reply which I have reproduced in full on my blogsite
Sue McGongical's response to my questions provides the most detailed account to date about this major financial scandal. However, it also raises many serious questions about how the Council managed this disaster such as why only a handful of elected councillors were ever told about this deal in the 3 years it was in place. Why the growing debt was never mentioned when elected councillors agreed to set the Council budget over the past 2 years. What due diligence was carried out into TransEuropa Ferries and its alleged Italian investor in order to safeguard the interests of Thanet Council. I will be raising these questions and many more questions about this scandal on my blogsite in the next week or so.
This is the most serious financial scandal to have ever hit Thanet Council and taxpayers will ultimately have to pay the bill!
It is my intention to bring into the public arena as much information as I can so that the people of Thanet can judge for themselves.
Please feel free to post any questions you think might be relevant on my blogsite and please pass on to me in confidence any information you might have about this scandalous issue. Its time for the people of Thanet to bring their Council under some form of democratic control instead of allowing it to secretly gamble taxpayers money on failing companies.
Councillor Ian Driver
Green Party
Well done Ian: it's very concerning Harvey and Sue are refusing to provide the TEF/TDC secret documents to you as an elected councillor. I hope you'll raise a vote of no confidence to have them sacked and call in the police to obtain the documents and witness statements.
ReplyDeletePleasurama and the Port have been destroyed by TDC. The same with Manston and the rigging of the fines and monitors.
Anon 9:12, You raise very sound points but everyone immediately identifies you and switches off when you also refer to Manston, fines and monitors. I am not saying that the other issues are not perfectly legitimate and worthy, but for the sake of the current discussion which are also serious, will you consider leaving Manston etc out of your postings please.
ReplyDeleteWe're agreed these are important points 10:09 whether TEF or Manston monitors etc. Indeed it seems a way of working for TDC to withold information/simply lie. To move things forward we need people to request the information. A ferry going bust is nothing to the repeated pollution of the public by TDC and Infratil?
ReplyDeleteWhy would you not want to discuss that?
Anon, 11.16. You are missing my point. These are all separate matters with equal gravity which require a resolution. By you referring to all of them simultaneously many readers will disregard your comments. I am not having a go at you. just offering a little advice.
ReplyDeleteFair point 11:54 although I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion. If the Manston fines and monitors are so important - as we agree they are - then why the silence from TDC? Unless, as with TEF, the issues are similar in that they have something to hide. But let's discuss them - what are your thoughts on the monitors, pollution etc? At least TEF has simply cost the public money.
ReplyDeleteDriver has proven he can;t be trusted to TDC documents, he only has himself to blame.
ReplyDeleteCllr Driver should of course be entitled to view any council documents. Witholding them undermines democracy and is a crime: Harvey and Mcgonigal are beyond the pale and must go with no payoffs or pensions.I recall Mark Seed trying something similar too? The Independents should withdraw from Hart's regime and collapse it.
ReplyDeleteIf the independents collapse the regime and no new coal;ition can be formed, then there would have to be a new bi-election for the whole council. That would probably result in goodbye Driver, Worrow and Independents and a UKIP landslide. In such circumstances, do you really see the independents cutting their own throats.
DeleteAs for the trust Driver has earned presumably you mean of all the parties he has joined and then deserted.
So your suggestion would be what? Continuing with this farce and whining on the blogs?
DeleteDriver's credibility has disappeared completely having now embarked on his 4th allegence in under a year since getting elected under a flag of convenience. All he's done since is jump on any and all bandwagons possible to try to get elected to anything he possibly can, and clearly having published other "confidential" material, can;t be trusted with such material again.
DeleteRoll on 2015 elections, and the end of Drivers political career, which ever party he is aligned with at the time.
No, 10:35, that is not my suggestion, but I am merely pointing out that the sorry bunch of independents are not going to commit hari-kari and give up their allowances simply to satisfy your call to bring down the present administration. I am afriad that revolution apart, and that ain't gonna happen either, we are stuck with this lot until 2015, though internal squabbles might lead to leadership changes. As for whining on blogs, I bow to your superiority on that score having seen your pointless and repetetive submissions over some years now.
DeleteSo we're agreed 10:53 you have no suggestions except continuing this farce and whining on blogs. And what would be different in 2015 in your opinion? The same faces, barring death or disease, would stand again? And presumably the same civil servants would have continued doing nothing until then?
DeleteTDC has already collapsed.
No we are not agreed on anything, 10:53, but I am a realists whereas you seem to habitate some strange world where councils are sacked or arrested on block. Get real, man, the only way in this country to bring about change is through the ballot box though I would accept that the quality of candidates frequently leaves a lot to be desired. On the other hand though, how many of the whingers like you are prepared to give of their time, stand for office and show us how it should be done. No, you would rather just carrying on with your whining blog comments being the highlight of your miserable and intellectually challenged existence.
DeleteAnyway, as for 2015, surely by then, if you are to be believed, all the present faces and officers will be incarcerated at HM's pleasure. Or are you now saying there is no criminality, the present investigation will reveal nothing and no one else will go to prison?
Eh? A bizarre pot kettle black rant. We were agreed you have no suggestions. And you then go on to prove you have no suggestions. Of course the ballot box is only way to ensure reform. Indeed it's probably not a particularly good way given such low/unrepresentative turnouts and the awful performance of TDC. You're not suggesting TDC would simply carry on for another 2 years while you whine?
DeleteNot all of them will be jailed silly boy. Maybe two or three more that still leaves another 50 councillors doing nothing and 750 civil servants. So you agree there is corruption beyond just Sandy?
While you pondering your next inane points here's the appalling cancer statistics for Medway: http://www.kentonline.co.uk/medway_messenger/news/Kents-cancer-postcode-lottery-1800/
Where and how accurate are Thanet's cancer statistics?
My comment above was reasonable and factual whereas yours is the rant with nothing to add to your usual rubbish. As for agreeing there is corruption beyond Ezekiel, I simply do not know and, unlike you, do not make assumptions before the inquiries are concluded.
DeleteAlso, to correct you yet again, civil servants work in central government service in the various ministries and departments, those employed by councils are local government officers even with a different trade union. You really must brush up on your factual knowledge.
As to Thanet's Cancer Statistics just how do you think I should know if they are accurate. Like you I can only go by the figures published by the NHS, but what I do know is that for certain cancers the Kent & Canterbury has one of the finest units in the country so it is not all bad news.
That said and, since you do not debate but simply seek to demean the rest of us with your silly boy comments, I am ending this exchange. In all honesty you are in sub intellectual league to me and I am bored with your utter nonsense.
Yawn so you don't know if there is any corruption at TDC. Yawn. Then you quibble over job titles. I'll stick with the generic civil servants thanks. Yawn.
ReplyDeleteThen you have no view on cancer in your own backyard. Surely Thanet's cancer rates would be higher than Medway being next to an airport? But we wouldn't know if the monitors were removed would we?
People's rights to see council accounts
ReplyDeleteEvery year councils must open their accounting records for the previous financial year for members of the public to inspect. The public can look at accounts over a set period of time (lasting 20 working days) usually after June, once the accounts have been finalised. People have the right to review the council’s accounts and also ‘all books, deeds, contracts, bills, vouchers and receipts related to them’. This means that people can look at information without having to submit Freedom of Information (FOI) Act requests.
Councils have to make clear on their websites when their accounts can be checked by the public.
Quite bizarre, 17:55, but please explain for a dimwit like me how monitors measure cancer rates?
ReplyDeleteYou might well be a dimwit although you're certainly confused, and confusing two separate points.
ReplyDeleteMonitors measure air quality and pollution. Bad air quality ie pollution causes cancer. Air pollution and cancer (along with asthma, blood diseases etc) spikes around airports as you'd expect from exhaust fumes. Hence Manston requiring monitors.
Your doctor would monitor and measure cancer cells in you in a different way (you can find out and explain that to me) before chemotherapy or cutting tumours out etc.
Do you remember the Gazette recording over 4x EU safe emission levels around Manston?
Perhaps then, Anon, you can explain why cancer rates in Medway and East Kent, extending to Dover and beyond, are higher than in areas surrounding either Heathrow or Gatwick, much busier airports than Manston. If you care to check it out you will find that high cancer rates are much more attributable to social deprivation issues like smoking, obesity and poor diet than polution, but then that would not support your cause would it.
DeleteUnfortunately Farnie we just have your say-so for that. But publish the data here why don't you? I suspect you're talking cobblers. And certainly smoking causes cancer - but also concentrated increases in cancer clusters around airports are proven.
DeleteYou didn't mention the Manston monitors nor the 4x breach in EU air standards?
Check out yourself, Anon, as you are always asking others to do. Just put into your search engine Regional Cancer Rates UK and you will come up ultimately with some maps showing concentrations. Heathrow and Gatwick are considerably lower that East Kent and Meday, but then they are not areas of high level social deprivation.
DeleteI did not mention Manston monitors because you mention them so often that you have bored the whole blogging world to death with them. Perhaps you are a parrot with just a few limited phrases.
Farnie, you must have spent some time confirming the cancer rates around Heathrow etc to make your point so show us. Unless you are talking cobblers.
DeleteLung cancer is the main killer ie air pollution and smoking.
The cancer spike around airports is c.20 miles so I don't know if your set of statistics shows that or a wider average? What's wrong with mentioning Manston monitors? You want to know they're in place and working don't you?
You haven't mentioned the 4x EU safety levels of pollution at Manston.
Anon 1334, you are quite incorrigible. Time and again you have failed to back up your allegations with facts, time and again you tell those that query them to look them up for themselves yet, ask you to do the same thing and it gets thrown back. Until you start treating the rest of us the way you seem to think we should treat you, debate with you is utterly pointless.
DeleteAnon 1334, having successfully bored yet another newcomer to our pages in Farnie, let me at least give you a link where you can have your say about the aquifer under Manston direct to Southern Water without driving the rest of us mad with you harping on about it. Who knows, Southern Water might even take you seriously, at least at first.
DeleteThe link is http://swhaveyoursay.co.uk/wrmp/
Farnie: you dissemble in the absence of any facts. you haven't answered any of the points raised - you could at least advise on the 4x dangerous pollution levels at Manston?
Delete14:05 you haven't been paying attention: Southern Water know fo the pollution of the aquifer. They've asked Infratil to clean it up several times and they've been ignored. What would you do as presumably you're drinking and bathing from it?