Editorial 029 – 27th May 2017 |
This Editorial at a Glance: • The Gang of Four(or more); • The LFRS Firefighters Pension Debacle; • Driver’s Fire Service Pension Antics ; • The Lancashire Evening Post; • BT & LCC Partnership in Privatisation; • The Former LCC CEO Mr. P Halsall; • Remedial Action? – Too Little too Late • The Lancashire Constabulary Investigation; • The Defence? Bluster, Huff Puff & more Thuggery; • The Chief Constable & CPS Chief Prosecutor; • Councillors Responsibility and Consequences; • The FSVs Pension Question still Remains the Same. |
The Gang of Four(or More) |
The LFRS Firefighters Pension Debacle |
Driver’s Fire Service Pension Antics |
Meantime Driver, who as the Conservative Party leader in opposition at County Hall, was eager to grab power once more in the May 2009 local elections. He listened carefully to the Bugler’s briefing on the developing LFRS pension debacle and gave personal assurances that he would investigate the matter and then unsolicited he declared that he was not a Freemason nor was he a member of any other organisation which held secrets from the Public’s purview. This declaration was of course a blatant falsehood for no one is likely to be awarded a CBE unless they were in a position that automatically brings this buggins award and/or they were also a Freemason. Though to waggishly cover the extremely odd exception to the ‘rule’ of these establishment ‘conditions’ the CBE has been (printably) referred to as the ‘Complete Blithering Eejit’ award… needless to say Driver has been so recognised… One wonders when all this grinds to a gory conclusion on the floor is he going to give it back? In the Election event it being buggins turn Driver and his Party were finally returned to power in 2009 determined to follow the Thatcherite dictats of their Party. In 2009, post-election, the Bugler and disabled FSV-RB subsequently had a meeting with Driver in the ‘Leaders’ suite at County Hall. During this meeting Driver made endless promises of which, needless to say, he never fulfilled a single one. As a ‘professional’ politician his modus operandii seems always to be his egocentric assumption that political power brings with it natural intelligence and whilst it clearly brings cunning, this is hardly the same philosophical ‘quality’, is it? Driver’s ‘activities’ on the pension front have already been well documented on the MB, most particularly, in the Journey of Truth Chapters 4 & 7 and in Current Affairs 2014 in Volumes 1 & 4. Indeed at one early point after taking over County Hall Driver instructed O’Toole the Tory Party Whip and thief taker of expenses and, by now, the new incumbent Chairman of the CFA that he wanted this pension debacle rapidly ‘sorted out’ but later the Bugler was informed from a reliable inside source that Driver ‘made promises that he knew he never could deliver’. It is noteworthy in a 2009 secret email, also published in the MB, from clerk Warren to CFO Holland (of rather Goonish Wandering Sid Rupole fame) intended for O’Toole/Driver in which Warren discusses the provision of a document which O’Toole would ‘help’ find its way to Driver and no doubt in turn ‘help’ Driver to find his way from the darkness. |
clerk Warren states… “I undertook to provide a synopsis for any future meeting that is arranged of the contradictions and alterations in Burns position (with a view to the document or a separate document finding its way to cc Driver to show the lies that have been presented to help CC O’Toole’s position- I did not say so to David) . I am mindful that this is tricky territory but an agreed Service/CFA position might be useful to then follow up with Thompsons/ FBU /Individuals. A document in which he undoubtedly, not only denigrates the Bugler and his ‘associates’, but underpins his own position in which he says that as the person responsible in law for the Lancashire Firefighters Pension Scheme he inherited this massive pension management debacle, which he further stated, occurred fortuitously before his time(lie), and of which, he was completely innocent of responsibility(further lie), but he was doing his level best to rectify this horrifying situation(true), because this was to save his own neck. For the full document of pure corruption. Go Here. As we have seen recently clerk Warren is ever keen to volunteer his secret services, for example to the foolish Durton the current CEO of the LCC, but for purely self-preservation career reasons rather than acting with the solicitude of a decent local authority civil servant. History records that Driver swallowed the ‘document’, hook, line, and sinker, thus confirming his lack of political acumen and the illuminatingly poor level of his personal nous and was later, via one of his many nomes-des-plumes in the Lancashire Evening Post, in a typically snide triumphant remark stated for the Bugler’s benefit, that the Bugler got a ‘final solution’ to the pension debacle, but it was not necessarily the one he desired. Unfortunately for Driver this publicly revealing remark simply confirmed his pre-knowledge of a Court result to come which also confirmed his complicity in matters judicial amounting to yet more lawlessness when he clearly colluded with Judge ‘Nelson’ Butler in their joint and embarrassing ‘final solution’ to the pension issue which blatantly ignored the Statutory pension law; the Limitations Act; and the laws governing Contempt of Court by misuse of electronic devices; and suborning of a Witness under Oath. Butler will no doubt agree it was and will be the sorriest of days he ever allowed himself to get caught up with self evident criminals operating in his own Court. The Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice are unlikely to look kindly on such Judicary damaging lack of poor judgement to say the least of these escapades. As we shall see in an exposé in the not too distant future they and their associates will all commence trudging down their own ‘hardship route’…the arrest of Driver et al sets the tone of serious matters to come… |
The Lancashire Evening Post |
On the 1st February 2014 the Bugler wrote an extensive analysis of the Lancashire Evening Post(LEP) and its craven adherence to its ‘golden’ boy Driver. In May 2017 a particularly apt sentence jumps off the page… “Blatant partiality, manipulation, gagging, and censorship is simply a one way ticket to bankruptcy as thoughtful readers(the ones who usually buy a daily rag) depart seeking a more balanced view or opinions with which they can engage or discuss. Nothing has changed since that time and the LEP continues its dance with the corrupt into commercial oblivion. The LEP, this politically partial rag, which lacks any form of corporate integrity, or street credibility, confirmed by the closing of their printing press, the downsizing of its Preston office, allied with their ever diminishing sales figures, has for years been allowing an easily identifiable Driver and his political chums to exercise their ‘political grooming thoughts’ via the LEP comments columns under a plethora of laughable nomes-des-plumes commencing with the truly hilariously transparent ‘Girl-in-Finance’. The Editor Gill Parkinson(now Editorial Director North West) simply cannot deny her knowledge of her involvement in, and approval of these political misrepresentations, nor the associated politically ‘grooming’ capers which are , as history confirms, very simple democracy corrupting steps on the pathway from democracy, to autocracy, to right wing extremism, to thuggish brown shirts, to the finality of fascizm, because Parkinson knowingly authorises and controls the use of the nomes-des-plumes by these mostly illiterate sinister clowns. Lately the LEP was driven against its demonstrable editorial policy in favour of Driver and his criminal cronies to have to report his and their arrests. |
My how that must have hurt though cynically it seems that in the end income won the day against Lamplighter loyalty, but this is only the beginning of the end of Driver who will in ultimate defeat drag down all those he has corruptly contaminated … The Public of Lancashire cannot rely on a partial LEP reporting this story in full, or in truthful detail either now or in the future, and should save their penny subscription to an LEP which will plead sub-judice to the point of boredom. But the Public can always rely on the free press MB presenting the firm evidence of political corruption as the tide of it swills down the steps of County Hall on its way to the sewage farm of politics. It should always be borne in mind that in the County Hall of the Oppressed and Coerced, a gloomy workplace, those individual decent employees of courage are still to be found because they find such brass necked corruption by the likes of Driver and his ilk an affront to their natural values and beliefs in the support of the rule of law and a democracy in which they live and profoundly believe… Within the last 24 hours even a politically cowed and controlled LEP was driven, in the briefest of terms, to register its horror at the ultimate perversion as the Lancashire Tory Party’s re-appointed ‘Leader’ Driver as they assume office at a time when their ‘Leader’ is under arrest just 3 days ago for perverting the course of justice and intimidating witnesses to his criminality. It was not for nothing that PM May was driven to describe her own party as the Nazty party. The question is as ever very simple why would ‘Leader’ Driver, axiomatic for ‘Fuhrer’, find it necessary to pervert the course of justice, or intimidate anyone as the CPS states, and least of all witnesses to his activities at County Hall, if he is perfectly innocent? |
BT & LCC Partnership in Privatisation |
The Former LCC CEO Mr.P.Halsall |
Remedial Action? -Too Little Too Late |
The Lancashire Constabulary Investigation |
The Defence? Bluster, Huff Puff & more Thuggery |
The Chief Constable & CPS Chief Prosecutor |
The current charges the ‘Gang of Four’ are held under are of course simply holding charges. The ‘perverting the course of justice’ charge can be interpreted to mean that Driver et al thinks it is rather clever (this is hardly boys caught scrumping in an orchard) to maintain their collective camaraderie of silence under repeated Police interviews, but they should know in the real world it does not work like this. There is in all likelihood already an ironic element of intimidation between the Four and it can be imagined where principally the impetus for this comes from? This is a new world for the accused with which they will become more acquainted as time advances because they have already brought great humiliation on their innocent families and what remains of their discredited good names. To visit such ignominy on their homes is the epitome of greed driven selfishness a world in which they will also have confirmed to them that there is still no honour among thieves as the Bugler learned in his years on the Board of HMP Wymott and the Parole Board. One of the accused under family pressure, usually a conceited deep cynical self-preservation thinker lacking any kind of fibre, inevitably break ranks. The prospect of prison after existing in the privileged well heeled society that they have existed in until now, with its attendant neighbourhood shame is simply too horrific to contemplate. It is just a question of time. The puerile notion that in maintaining their collective silence by reflecting on the age old tactic that it is better to hang together than to hang alone went out with Ned Kelly. Either way they will still metaphorically hang … Ned Kelly ruminating on the scaffold stated … “that’s life is it?”…indeed it is. It is also clear that the Driver gang have been flexing their muscles to intimidate into silence those potential witnesses who will in the right protected circumstances sing like canaries and the Police warning and bail conditions of Driver and his cronies reflect this and should be clear to them. It is most unusual in this type of case, it is hardly the Krays is it, for such a charge as … “witness intimidation” to be applied in effect as a bail condition speaking volumes, as it does, of the Police concern in this respect. It is a warning to the accused not to go there; that this is not a game; and should they choose to step out of line in this respect they will be immediately re-arrested even though on bail without the slightest prospect of further bail in the future. Perhaps Driver and his chums do not understand what all |
this means in pragmatic terms because they are not yet ‘old lags’ who know the score. Indeed the unnatural development whereby a re-elected Driver now has unrestrained access to County Hall with its potential pool of witnesses should provide food for thought and further action at the CPS. Driver and his cohorts ought to be re-called from bail and re-bailed with additional conditions which prevent Driver in particular having any physical access to, or contact with County Hall, its occupants or employees. Driver had the civilised opportunity by his choice to stand down on Thursday 25th May until this investigation is completed but significantly he chose not to do so and even more significantly his ruling Party did not do it for him. Clearly Conservative councillors are unwisely supporting Driver’s thuggish challenge not only to the CPS, the PCC, and the Chief Constable but unilaterally to the general rule of law and civilised behaviour in Lancashire. It is a startlingly stupid strategy 12 days from a General Election and at the commencement of a new term of office which may well contribute substantially to the Conservatives losing more ground locally, or indeed the entire General Election. Driver clearly has a proven propensity for violence and clearly poses an above average threat to witnesses especially when, as now, he is cornered and like many another rat he can behave viciously, erratically, and unpredictably. This is situation best avoided for the sake and safety of all… All of this predetermined action by the PCC, the Chief Constable, and the CPS will allow them time in conjunction to flex their collective evidential gathering muscles with the hope that it will impress upon these four accused the extreme gravity of their deteriorating situation. Three of the four of the accused hold, or held, positions of Public trust in respect of substantial Public funds directly under their control and responsibility. The Judiciary have an established and rather fearsome reputation for severely punishing such breaches of public trust usually with jail terms. The stark line is that they all face imprisonment. These four will have to quickly convince themselves, in their previously narcissistic world, that right now as mere mortals they are just the same as all the rest of us which requires them to comply with the spirit and practice of Statute law which we set up and which we require Parliament to enact for us and which the various Constabularies enforce on all our behalf. |
Councillors Responsibilities & Consequences |
One hopes that the consequences of all this are not lost on the responsibilities that every councillor just signed up to this month on his/her induction as a councillor though already it seems to be lost on LCC Conservative councillors. Responsibilities which carry with them respect for and implementation of the Statute law. An ethos which they must implement and an example which they must set and police right down to the merest clerks at the LCC and the LFRS and for whom they have ultimate political and personal responsibility in law, and when evidence of wrongdoing is presented to them they have a Statutory duty to both investigate and, if appropriate, promptly report the results to the Police . If, as individual and corporately, councillors fail to so act after clear evidence of wrong doing is presented to them then in complicity they are not only condoning such criminality but they are quite wilfully engaging in fraudulence and corrupt malpractice in Public Office themselves. |
The FSVs Pension Question still Remains the Same |
In spite of all this self evident lawlessness and in stepping back for a reflective moment the LFRS pension issue still remains unchanging for the affected disabled FSVs , their Widows, and Beneficiaries. For 10 years the LFRS have refused to examine the Statutory Fire Service Pension Law or to even have it independently examined by an independent Queens Counsel specialising in Fire Service pension law. The question remains both quite simple and unequivocal. Why does the LFRS insist in paying disabled FSVs a Rule B1 Ordinary( time served) pension when this very Statutory Rule states and expressly prohibits the payment of such an Ordinary pension if a disabled FSV has been compulsorily discharged by the decision of a Fire Authority under Rule B3 which provides an enhanced ill-health/Rule B4 Injury pension, expressly for that purpose? Finally, this is how all this is meant to work under the rule of law in a democracy… |