THIS JUST IN!! An archaeological team digging in a remote part of our parish has uncovered 10,000 year old bones and fossil remains of what is believed to be the first Epping Forest District Council Official. "I don't think it is right to get money from the taxpayer for what you nominate as a second home and then to sell it and not pay capital gains tax," said Mr Cameron. "I put a stop to that immediately, even before the House of Commons, with my MPs." From The Daily Telegraph 30th May 2009 MPs expenses: Eleanor Laing didn't pay capital gains tax on second home Eleanor Laing, a Conservative front bencher, has admitted that she did not pay capital gains tax when she made £1 million profit on a second home bought with the help of taxpayers’ money. By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter Last Updated: 9:15AM BST 30 May 2009 Eleanor Laing Mrs Laing, the shadow junior justice minister, claimed more than £80,000 from the public purse towards mortgage interest and service payments on two adjacent flats she bought in Westminster, even though her constituency home is less than an hour’s journey away by Tube. She was able to claim parliamentary expenses on the flats because she nominated them as her second home, and she reiterated last night that she had “always regarded” the flats as her second home. When she sold the flats last year for £1.8 million, she made at least £1 million profit, which would have left her with a £180,000 capital gains tax bill if she had declared the flats as her second home to HM Revenue & Customs. However, after consulting solicitors, Mrs Laing – who has denied any wrongdoing – was told that for tax purposes she could nominate the flats as her “primary residence”, meaning she paid nothing. That enabled her to use the profit from the sale to buy outright another flat in the same block for £900,000. It is the biggest case of non-payment of capital gains tax so far uncovered in The Daily Telegraph’s 23-day investigation into MPs’ expenses and the first to involve a member of David Cameron’s front bench team. Yesterday, a leading tax expert said Mrs Laing’s decision not to pay capital gains tax on the London flats was “inconsistent” with her claim to the parliamentary fees office that the properties, which she converted into one home, were her second home. Mrs Laing, 51, and her then husband Alan, a millionaire businessman, bought the first of the two flats in a complex in Westminster in 1993, four years before she was elected as the MP for Epping Forest in Essex. Land registry documents do not disclose how much she and Mr Laing paid, but other flats in the same building were sold for around £300,000 at the same time. In July 2002 – when the couple had their first child – they bought the flat next door for £465,000, and made them into one large property. In 2003, Mrs Laing divorced her husband for adultery after discovering he was having an affair. She was given the flats as part of her settlement. She also has a cottage in the village of Theydon Bois in her Epping Forest constituency, 35 miles from Parliament. Mrs Laing’s expenses details show that between 2004 and 2008 she claimed a total of £87,725 in second home allowances on the flats in Westminster. In two of those years she claimed the maximum permissible amount, and in 2007-08 she claimed exactly £1 less than the maximum. The claims comprised mortgage interest payments on both flats and invoices for service charges on both flats, which were treated as two separate properties by the company which owns the freehold on the building. Mrs Laing sold the flats in August 2008 and bought another flat in the same building, without the need for a mortgage. Land registry records show that she also owns her cottage in Essex outright. She told The Daily Telegraph: “When I sold the flat I took advice from my solicitors on whether capital gains tax was due. I also consulted the HMRC publication which is issued to all MPs. I realised, on investigating the rules, that it would be wrong... to pay CGT on the flat because, although I had always regarded the flat as my second home, my main home being in my constituency, the definition of principal private residence for CGT purposes is not a matter of choice but a matter of fact. “As a matter of fact, under HMRC rules, the flat was my principal private residence. I will, of course, be liable to pay CGT when I eventually sell my house in Theydon Bois as, under HMRC rules, it is defined as my second home.” Mrs Laing would not disclose exactly how much profit she had made on the flats, but said she “did not dispute” that it was at least £1million. Several Labour ministers have come under intense pressure in the past three weeks after they used a similar interpretation of the tax laws to avoid paying capital gains tax on profits from the sale of second homes. Eleanor Laing Job: Shadow junior justice minister and Conservative MP for Epping Forest Salary: £64,766 Total second home claims: 2004/5: £20,902 2005/6: £21,631 2006/7: £22,110 2007/8: £23,082 Epping Forest District Council Are OAPs are being replaced by layabouts? Letter to our local Housing Officer Mrs M Manning Housing Officer Civic Offices Epping CM16 4BZ 03.07.08 Dear Mrs Manning, Yesterday, whilst mowing the part of the communal lawn immediately behind our flat, I became aware that I would be unable to perform this task much longer having some months ago been diagnosed with a physical problem that forbids such exercise. Naturally the job will have to be undertaken in future by the council gardeners as previously, before your friend, our next door neighbour at No 12, Mr Mark Leggett, took it upon himself some years ago to build a fence dividing the communal area in two, prohibiting access to half of the lawn. I use the word 'friend' advisably since you have gone to such enormous lengths to cover up this tenant’s abuses of council amenities. Your department was informed shortly after he built it by at least one of the residents in the block and I referred to it in subsequent correspondence with the council. This is a picture of the fence, taken only yesterday, to remind you how this tenant broke the terms of his tenancy agreement on that occasion and how you chose to ignore the violation. (unable to upload to pc - Ed) Only the previous day I watched this self-styled invalid move that shed from one end of the lawn to the other in two minutes flat, while council employees, replacing a ‘gossip fence’ between flat numbers 11 & 12, were forced to pass their necessary materials over the main perimeter wall. Whilst on the subject of council facilities, allow me to refer you to the small gardens fronting this block of warden-assisted flats for the elderly. This is a picture of the front of No 12 taken just over two years ago. (see above - Ed) I'm sure you recall the occasion in June 2006 when our neighbour took it upon himself to demolish, without permission, the heavy-duty wheelchair ramp at No 12, a construction that had taken two bricklayers more than a week to build at the cost of thousand of pounds, reducing it to rubble in the space of one weekend and depriving us of our dividing fence that council contractors had removed when building the ramp. The debris filled the best part of two skips being used, coincidentally, by the very contractors engaged in building a new ramp for the council three doors away at No 15. You may also remember how I told you about the verbal abuse my wife and I had suffered over the years culminating in a physical assault by Mr Leggett (a man just over half my age) after I remonstrated with him over his costly act of mindless vandalism. This was after all a designated invalid flat with the bathroom converted to a wet room. You may also recall how, in common with our two local councillors, you ignored our plea for help over the incident for such a long period of time that our only recourse was to visit you at the Civic Offices in Epping. There you and your superior officer Judith Roberts, far from offering sympathy over our experiences, preached to us about the lack of demand for pensioners’ accommodation and the necessity to bring in younger tenants. The experience of that one-sided interview left us speechless and feeling utterly humiliated. To our astonishment we were told that Mr Leggett was perfectly entitled to smash up the ramp, the vandalism being excused as ‘home improvements.’ Your decision has created a dangerous precedent, in my opinion, that could escalate writing off thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money. Following the meeting my wife, still in shock from the confrontation with our neighbour, lapsed into a state of deep depression, which has lasted on and off to this day, as I sought in vain to find someone in authority willing to listen to our point of view. Had you considered our comments, or indeed those of any tenant in the block, you would have been aware that ‘home improvement’ is the last thing on Mr Leggett’s mind. Your letter of 2nd February 2007 informs us that you had visited No 11 and the garden was ‘in a fair state.’ Here is a photograph taken in June 2008 from our front door exactly two years after the event showing where weeds have grown over most of the uneven foundations, which remain exactly as they were in 2006. It is in fact, as we predicted it would become, a derelict wasteland. You will note that although Mr Leggett can build fences where not permitted to, he is unable to do so when asked to, even by a benefit scrounger’s advocate such as yourself. (unable to upload pic but almost identical to the picture above - just add two years growth of weeds - Ed) You will also see that we have replaced the dividing fence between 11 & 12 at our own expense and my second reason for writing is to tell you that if this is damaged in any way by Mr Leggett, indeed if he repeats his acts of aggression towards either of us, we will be holding you personally responsible for failing to take appropriate action against Mr Leggett when he violated his tenancy agreement two years ago. Since 2006 your department has sanctioned special bathroom facilities for an infirm gentleman living upstairs, and given tenancy of the only remaining flat in the block with wheelchair facilities to a young couple who don’t appear to require them, while Mr Leggett moans that he needs the wet room at No 12 converted back to a bathroom. At least two elderly tenants upstairs have chronic mobility problems and struggle to negotiate the stairs. In warden-assisted flats for the elderly surely it is not too much to expect ground floor flats to be reserved for tenants who are old and infirm? Last February, due to changes to our bank account, there was a delay in payment of our direct debits and standing orders. While other creditors, including the council tax office, simply asked for revised bank details, you sent us a heavy-handed form letter about arrears followed by a six page print out of our rent accounts, in spite of the fact that over many years we have never knowingly been in arrears with our rent or council tax accounts. Contrast this with your over-the-top generosity shown towards work-shy Mr Leggett. Not too long ago and in spite of the fact he was on benefits, he was allowed to rack up rent arrears amounting to thousands of pounds (source: his partner, Mrs R.Yates), yet another gross breach of his tenancy agreement. Shortly afterwards he was allocated a garage for his car. You were informed of his presence at No 12, well over a year after he started squatting there (recalled because he tried to track down the informant) – but then Lord Lucan could well have passed his declining years on Ninefiels Estate, council officials being rarely, if ever, sighted here. For this illegal act you decided to give Mr Leggett a joint tenancy of the property. Officials hid behind the Data Protection Act when I asked them whether his account was backdated to his arrival here or if he had declared the considerable inheritance his mentally subnormal partner had recently received. The clues were there, part time worker (when working), car, Sky TV, annual holidays… in fact a lifestyle most pensioners could only dream about. Both the council and the DWP refused to investigate evidence of his abuse of the NHS and the ambulance service where paramedics were called out to deal with fake illnesses. The taxpayer should be aware that institutional neglect of duty on the part of bureaucrats renders any initiative such as the DWP ‘Report a Cheat’ farce totally worthless. This letter is not solely about our neighbour, nor is about the woeful and costly property management decisions described. The Mr Leggetts of this world will reap what they sow; what goes round will surely come round. For an official to enlist the help of so many colleagues to cover-up bad decisions is not remarkable, only to the extent that older people with long working lives behind them are being treated with contempt while picking up the bill for pampered layabouts. It’s not that benefit scroungers are particularly bright, simply that council officials and the DWP seem policy-driven to let them off the hook rather than investigate and prosecute. This man is surely one of many who milk the system with impunity while OAPs like us subsidise their lethargy. I believe something far more sinister is going on here. Either our council has totally lost the plot where elderly tenants are concerned or they are cynically using traditional warden-assisted, Careline flats to reduce their long waiting list for social housing, thereby massaging the figures. If what has been happening at this block of sixteen flats is replicated throughout the district then old people are being deprived of their designated accommodation on a very large scale at a time when we are living on average ten years longer than sixty years ago. Somehow Shirley Porter, late of Westminster Council and her breathtakingly corrupt 'Building Stable Communities' policy in the late eighties springs to mind. On the way to the shops most mornings I speak to Rene, an elderly lady who told me she was moved from her flat in nearby Caneland Court when constant rowdyism on the part of an unruly neighbour led to regular attendance by members of the police force. Now unhappily placed in an old folks home, her health has deteriorated markedly and she craves to be returned to a council flat. She has been told that the only way this will happen is if she buys a flat. We step over the pothole by the bridge that caused an elderly lady to fracture her leg a few years back. The Council paid compensation but didn’t remove the hazard. Nearby is the communal TV ariel which hasn’t been modernised for many years ensuring the pensioners who got Freeview gifts to suppliment their terrestial channels have been unable to use them. My wife and I now realise that we are powerless to confront the system after many months of corresponding with arrogant and heavily biased bureaucrats. I have a thick file of patronising, deceitful, evasive, even mildly threatening letters. Only one person, a representative of Victim Support, had the decency to visit us during that time, which of course should have told us all we needed to know about our ‘best practice,’ ‘Chartermark’ council. Now in our seventies, my wife and I are mentally exhausted from the trauma of being browbeaten by people who would be a luxury a genuine property letting company could ill afford if they intended to stay in business. I don’t expect a reply, nor do I expect my letter to change a single thing. I will however use this opportunity to share our experiences with others by sending copies of this letter to individuals mentioned in this letter and others who either are or should be interested in the welfare of old people. Yours sincerely, E. Bruce – Retired Worker Quotes and comments Mrs M Manning – Housing Officer 2nd February 2007 referring to frontage at No 12 “At present the garden is in a fair state..” For a bombsite? N Taylor – Area Housing Manager (North) 15th August 2006 referring to the destruction of the ramp “The tenant has sought and gained permission for the removal of this ramp..” 12th September 2006 “I would advise you that whilst Mr Leggett did not seek permission to carry out work to the front of his property, once he was approached on this matter such permission was given retrospectively.” No comment Jenny Filby – Complaints Officer 27th September 2006 regarding fraud allegations, having used the Data Protection Act to avoid a straight answers to most questions. “I am entirely satisfied that no such offence has been committed. I must emphasise that this conclusion is a matter of fact not opinion. I have therefore not needed to forward copies of your letters on to our Benefits Fraud section.” From the same letter “In light of my conclusions I would therefore strongly advise you not to continue to make such allegations otherwise you may give Mr Leggett grounds for considering formal action against you.” Mike Bieber – Local Government Ombudsman Investigator 29th January 2007 From the last of several evasive letters received. “It would be useful to bear in mind that the Ombudsman’s task is to investigate complaints about a Council’s administrative actions. He has no power to question the merit of decisions which have been properly taken even though you may disagree with them.” From the same letter “The council says that it is intending to remind your neighbours of the need to deal with their garden, and has agreed to keep you in the picture. This appears to be a satisfactory way to settle this aspect of the complaint in the circumstances, and as I still see no evidence of administrative fault in the way that the Council dealt with your neighbour’s demolition of the ramp, I do not intend to pursue this aspect further.” Sir Geoffrey Chipperfield recommended abolition of the LGO because they were an unnecessary institution whose work could best be carried out by other bodies. His report was subverted by the interference of the then LGO and its allies. Since then the LGO has demonstrably failed to improve the system, and continues to exclude the public interest from their remit. Irrefutable evidence of its dishonesty and bias has been gathered by LGOWatch since 2003. The LGO is counter-productive to effective management in local government and a blight on the human rights of citizens looking to this publicly funded institution to act in good faith. On the rare occasions when it is found, the intervention of the LGO tends to entrench maladministration rather than put a stop to it. The continuance of this office is not in the public interest. More information about this pointless waste of public money at http://www.ombudsmanwatch.org/ Councillor David Stallan – Housing Portfolio Holder 13th March 2007 “To answer the other point in your first paragraph, I can assure you that if any tenant were to destroy designated fixtures the Council would take the matter very seriously. It is normal practice in such circumstances to recharge tenants for any damage that they may cause to their accommodation…. I can confirm that formal permission was given by Housing Services for the removal of the ramp.” After it was destroyed? How does that work? Councillor Jimmy Demetriou Totally ignored two letters seeking help. Audit Commission No reply to our detailed letter Department of Works and Pensions Evidence of fraud supplied on their Report a Cheat website form on at least five occasions – ignored. Letters to their Correspondence unit –ignored. Eleanor Laing MP Clearly not interested. Local Police Took seven hours to arrive after I reported assault. Victim Support Most helpful, even sent a representative to visit us, which is more than any of the others, did. There are others who either didn’t reply or sent form letters with the usual meaningless platitudes. ................................................................................................................... This is the letter we received from Mr N. Taylor, Area Housing Manager on 14.07.08 Dear Mr & Mrs Bruce Having seen your letter addressed to Mrs Manning, dated 3 July 2008, I felt I should respond to at least some of the points that you raised with her. 1. It is a fact that the Health Service and Social Care providers have changed the way they deliver services to their clients in a way which encourages them to remain in the existing homes. As a direct result of these changes, this Council, along with many others, have faced a situation where the number of elderly people wishing to move from their existing home into designated flats, has reduced to almost nil. This Council has had to respond to these changes by de-designating many of its flat blocks across the District, which then allows younger persons to move into them. If we did not carry out this policy change, then it is inevitable that many of these properties would remain empty. All councils are receiving a greater number of younger residents seeking accommodation and it is simply not equitable to have on the one hand properties standing empty, whilst on the other many people waiting for accommodation. These changes have taken place following consultation with our Tenants Federation and Resident Associations. We cannot therefore be accused of carrying out any such changes in a sinister manner. 2. The accusations you make against your neighbour and the way this Council, the DWP and the Ombudsman Service dealt with them are I am afraid completely misplaced. Unfortunately, the Data Protection Act does not allow me to tell you why these organisations were not prepared to consider your accusations, but had there been any substance to them, I can assure you that they would have. 3. I can advise you that this Council does have a program to carry out works to upgrade the communal TV system throughout the district and priority is being given to the Ninefields estate. This will ensure that residents will be able to receive a digital system when the Government's directive to turn off the analogue system takes place in 2011. Yours sincerely, N Taylor Area Housing Manager (North) ..................................................................................................................... To which I replied on 23.07.08 - Dear Mr Taylor In reply to your letter of 14th July 2008, I find your statement that the number of elderly people wishing to move to designated flats has reduced to almost nil quite incredible. The accusations we made towards our neighbour are true and would have been quite easily checked out and confirmed at the time they were reported to the DWP and EFDC had the appropriate measures been taken, such as taking the trouble to interview those reporting the scam. If such action is not standard practice then it’s quite pointless pretending to have a system that investigates fraud. No matter how many times the Data Protection Act is quoted that truth will remain. So you have a programme to carry out works to upgrade the communal TV in 2011. I’m sure this news will be a huge comfort to elderly tenants who cannot afford to watch other than terrestrial channels on their analogue sets. More money could be made available to this project if your department were to simply use designated flats for the frail and elderly instead of allowing mindless vandals to destroy designated facilities while building similar fixtures nearby. This cavalier attitude to taxpayers’ money is bizarre to say the least. Yours sincerely E. Bruce ****************************************************************** The Kitchen Conversion Con Our kitchen measures about 8’ x 8’. We decorated it ourselves just a few years back but I’d been thinking for some time that the walls needed wiping down and repainting. Then, out of the blue in May this year we heard from a senior council housing officer that our kitchen had been identified as requiring refurbishment (it was actually a well-fitted kitchen that just needed a touch of paint). The work would be carried out up to September 2007 by a company called Makers UK Limited. For two arthritic oldies it was manna from heaven, enough to have you believing in miracles. As we waited to discover how they planned to go about it, employees of a firm called Elecheck spent an afternoon examining our electrical system installation and reported that it was in sound condition. Meanwhile I checked out the contractor’s web site and found this – Partnering is at the heart of many Makers projects. Through forging effective partnership relationships with local authorities, housing associations, arms length management organisations (ALMOs) and other registered social landlords (RSLs), we can deliver projects efficiently and effectively. Partnering enables the sharing and combining of expertise, as well as skills and experience with other parties to achieve a combined goal of delivering Best Value and the highest quality. Partnering encourages shared trust and openness and benefits all parties involved. By entering into these often long-term agreements WE ARE ABLE TO PROVIDE EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES AND APPRENTICESHIP SCHEMES WHICH BENEFIT THE LOCAL ECONOMY AND DELIVER REGENERATION FOR THE COMMUNITY. Wow! Such a caring company, helping the community by recruiting local labour and providing apprenticeship schemes – doesn’t it give you a warm glow? Very soon we had a visit from Makers local management team who let us choose our favoured cupboard door, worktop and flooring colours. We were also given a large and impressive coloured brochure with photos of the two resident liaison officers, the contracts manager and the site manager along with an explanation of the work involved. The visit put me in mind of TV investigative programmes where dodgy salesmen are exposed in the process of selling overpriced stair lifts and such to elderly residents. All we wanted was a paint job for goodness sake but instead our kitchen would be completely refurbished. AND AT NO EXPENSE TO OURSELVES, as they pointed out continually, omitting to mention the obvious that the bill will inevitably paid for by tenants and taxpayers. We were told that 300 similar jobs had been carried out for the council without one dissatisfied customer. The brochure also assured us that Makers would confirm appointments three times before commencement. The sales pitch was captivating. But, of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch! We were soon visited by one of the liaison officers informing us, without prior warning, that work would commence the following Monday, the job would take up to 4 weeks to complete and ANY ACCESS PROBLEMS WILL BE REPORTED TO THE COUNCIL. He dropped off some boxes so that we could empty our kitchen cupboards and stack the contents in the living room and told us he would call back regularly to ensure everything was OK. We also had to relocate our fridge-freezer, kettle and microwave oven so that we could at least have a snack at midday. That was the last we saw of the mobile liaison officer for some considerable time – it appears he’d gone on holiday. Nobody had previously mentioned that it would take four weeks to refurbish our 8’ x 8’ kitchen but we decided to commit ourselves to staying at home every weekday for a month to get the job done. In the event IT TOOK MAKERS ELEVEN WEEKS to complete the work by which time we were stir crazy and losing the will to live. How many summers can we afford to write off at our age? They relocated our cooker for no obvious reason, effectively ruling out replacement of the large eye-level cupboard by the cooker that once served us so well. In their perceived wisdom they also left a 4/5” gap between the cooker and the worktop enabling us to spill food on the floor at either side. Almost all the top cupboards are now inconveniently placed on the opposite wall. So much for the “EFFICIENTLY AND EFFECTIVELY” promise. When we mentioned these snags amongst others to the site manager, instead of apologising for the disgraceful delay he asked us when we last had to pay for a kitchen! Since he refused to say how much this job had cost the council his question was totally irrelevant but indicative of the man’s attitude. The council surveyor who accompanied him on his mission to extract satisfaction signatures from tenants only reiterated the Makers mantra about 300 satisfied customers, while also declining to state the price. When informed about the three dissatisfied tenants we knew about he resorted to the same disrespectful language used by his companion. I’m still trying to discover what that figure might be but the secret appears to be well protected. The fact that this council official claimed to be unaware of tenants’ ongoing discomfort reflects the contempt our landlords show towards the rent and tax paying members of this community. We obviously don’t have access to the 300 satisfied customers but I can say the three people we do know of who had similar work carried out are far from satisfied. One lives just two doors away and we held her front door key for workmen’s access because she was away from home most weekdays. Her first shock was the discovery that Makers’ sub contractors had lost her key causing her to fret about the possibility of a break in. Later she discovered that her washing machine had irretrievably broken down after having been moved by workmen. On another evening she started to prepare an evening meal only to discover that, following a visit from a Makers’ sub contractor, her cooker didn’t function properly. Her gas company spent most of the evening rectifying the fault. For some time she refused to let anyone connected with Makers near her flat, particularly in her absence. In another property being refurbished the tenant went out for a short spell leaving the washing machine on. When he returned the kitchen and living room were submerged in water with the flooring ruined because a tradesman had forgotten to plumb in the machine after moving it. Another unhappy tenant found her ceiling light hanging loosely from its fittings. 300 happy customers – I don’t think so! So who are Makers, I wondered, and why do the council need them? For a start the name is grossly misleading since they don’t appear to actually make anything other than arrangements with suppliers and sub contractors, numerous mistakes, an endless excuses for interminable delays... and, no doubt, loads of money. As I mentioned to the council official, their own direct labour squads could have decorated every room in every flat in the entire block in about a quarter of the time Makers take to fit kitchens and bathrooms – and, it goes without saying, at a fraction of the cost. Ah, but I almost forgot, Makers “PROVIDE EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES AND APPRENTICESHIP SCHEMES WHICH BENEFIT THE LOCAL ECONOMY AND DELIVER SUSTAINABLE REGENERATION FOR THE COMMUNITY” Really? In their dreams perhaps. In their comprehensive brochure we read that Makers can provide an interpreter to explain important issues because “for some residents, English is not their first language.” Well, they nearly got that right, the difference here being that where tenants are concerned an interpreter would have been handy if only to communicate tenants wishes to Makers’ Eastern European ‘subbies’ whose grasp of English seemed to be limited to ‘tea’ or ‘coffee.’ This is not a slight on their workmanship; like the entire workforce they were driven by impossible deadlines. Makers, we were told later, had taken on double the amount of units they normally do in a month in order to maximise their earnings before the council’s deadline. In other words they knew from the outset that the work would take at least twice as long as usual without an increased workforce yet made no effort to explain this to tenants already in shock from their original four weeks estimate. Obviously, if we’d known we had to put our everyday lives on hold for up to eleven weeks in return for a magnolia paint job and badly positioned cupboards we would have double-locked our front door. Our perfectly good cupboards were scrapped for no logical reason in this costly charade of over-the-top refurbishment. Besides the many Eastern European workers we had electricians from Cambridge, a gas fitter from Canterbury and a plumber from another part of Kent. Not one of the tradesmen we spoke to came from this district – not even this county! How, I wonder, does this arrangement “PROVIDE EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES AND APPRENTICESHIP SCHEMES WHICH BENEFIT THE LOCAL ECONOMY AND DELIVER SUSTAINABLE REGENERATION FOR THE COMMUNITY”? I intended to pen this piece in a light-hearted way reflecting the farcical nature of the operation. However I increasingly find that honest accounts of real happenings are painful to write; going over actual events only rekindles the anger and helplessness felt at the time: I no longer have the stomach for it. As with the previous articles I was determined to finish this account, not because I believe it will achieve change or move anyone in authority to take action, but to show how rent-paying tenants and taxpayers are let down by their council and elected councillors who deliberately avoid doing the work they’re elected to do. IT WOULD BE INTERESTING TO KNOW WHETHER THE COUNCIL'S DIRECT LABOUR SQUAD ARE REPRESENTED BY A TRADE UNION AND, IF SO, WHY DO THEY TOLERATE A SYSTEM THAT DISCRIMINATES AGAINST THE LOCAL WORKFORCE. Quote from Mr C Stone, Senior Housing Officer (Contracts/Assets), 06.12.07, when I asked how much the work cost per unit "I do not have the information you have requested at this time and unfortunately WHEN THE INFORMAION COMES TO ME, I WILL NOT BE AT LIBERTY TO DISCLOSE COUNCIL ACCOUNTS AND FUNDING OF CONTRACTS TO YOU." So much for local democracy! The same gentleman accompanied Makers' site manager on two vain attempts to compel us to sign a 'job satisfaction' form - no apology, just a display of mind-boggling arrogance. This company must be the nearest thing to a gilt edge investment imaginable. If you had the cash wouldn't you love to buy some shares? You already have done? ......em.......right. E Bruce © 2007 ******************************************************************