Corruption in Local Government? by Les May

ASKED recently on the BBC News Channel programme ‘Dateline London’ what she thought too little attention was paid to, Bronwen Maddox, director of the Institute for Government, replied ‘Corruption in Local Government’.

I have previously described the difficulties I have had in getting answers from my local council to Freedom of Information (FOI) questions regarding the ‘declarable interests’ of Councillor Faisal Rana. My conclusion was that Rochdale Borough Council is ‘Institutionally Corrupt’.

It is surely extraordinary that only after the intervention of my local MP, Chris Clarkson, have I been able to get a response to questions I first submitted in April.

Corruption isn’t only about money in brown envelopes and influencing planning decisions it’s also about a commitment to openness by council officers in the dealings with the public.

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Welcome To Mushroom Town. by Les May

A FEW weeks ago I noticed that for one of our local councillors a link to the register of members’ interests was replaced by the words 'Not shown on website'. Why not I wondered; what’s the big secret?

Naïvely on 21 April 2021 I sent off an e-mail to the Chief Executive of Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council (RMBC) to find out more. It read; I note that Section 7 Securities: contains the words 'Not shown on website'. Could you please clarify whether this conforms to what is commonly known as 'Best Practice' which is usually taken to mean a standard way of complying with legal or ethical requirements? I assume that in the interests of open government RMBC would normally wish to be seen as implementing 'Best Practice'. If there is a reason for 'Best Practice' not being followed in this case could you please inform me of the reason?

No response was forthcoming and on 5 May I sent a reminder and repeated my queries. Still no response, so on 20 May I sent a second reminder which once more repeated my queries, but this time I included the words ‘Am I to conclude from this delay that some officers of Rochdale Council have become corrupted and no longer act in a non-political manner?’

And with the speed of Zeus there came a reply! ‘The entries not shown on the website are due to the items being considered as sensitive by the previous Monitoring Officer of the Council. Any requests for such information should be submitted via the freedom of information process.’

Now my understanding is that any request for information should be treated as a request for information governed by the FOI Act even if that term is not expressly used by the requestor, so perhaps the second sentence in the reply is not quite true. Perhaps it is even intended to act as a further obstruction to enquiring minds?

I had dealings with the previous Monitoring Officer of the Council in late 2018 and early 2019 after I submitted a query about why a newly elected councillor had failed to comply with the requirement that pecuniary and other interests be registered within a set time period. Shall we just say that I found him monumentally evasive when pressed?

But what, you may ask, could possibly be so ‘sensitive’ about a councillor’s entries in the register of interests that a council officer thought it necessary to put an obstruction in the path of anyone wanting to know what they are? Was it the councillor that thought up this wheeze to avoid scrutiny or did the Monitoring Officer dream it up all by himself? Or, perish the thought, perhaps they conspired to keep this councillor’s business activities away from the gaze of prying eyes of the electorate? We shall never know! After all, this is Rochdale!

One might have hoped that a councillor from one of the other two parties would have noticed this and queried it, seemingly not. Perhaps they are hoping that they too can avoid scrutiny when the need arises courtesy of a similarly compliant Monitoring Officer?

Sadly that’s how things are in my home town. If Rochdale isn’t a town where council related matters seem to be a bit dodgy at times, it’s certainly giving a good imitation of one. The motto seems to be ‘Let them vote every few years to give a semblance of democratic accountability and between times don’t let them know too much about what their councillors are getting up to’. You know what they say about mushrooms, keep them in the dark and at regular intervals cover them with … So Mushroom Town it is from now on!

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Rochdale Councillor's Dependency Culture?

El  Gordo  Creosote

by ANDREW WASTLING
What is being a Street Beggar compared to standing for Town Council?

(In a letter in the Rochdale Observer yesterday, Richard Farnell the Leader of Rochdale Council, wrote complaining about the goal of the human rights charity Liberty for challenging his council for, as he puts it:  'clamping down on swearing and other anti-social behaviour in Rochdale town centre'.  Councillor Farnell forcefully pleads his case:  

'We are tackling a small minority of ne'er do wells who drunkenly shout and swear and harangue shoppers in our town centre.  I make no apologies for trying to make Rochdale a more welcoming place for people to enjoy... because it's difficult enough to make a living nowadays without a few yobs turning shopper away.'

 Below Andrew Wastling asks whether a little 'propaganda by example' might be in order from Richrd Farnell and his colleagues:  as Bertolt Friedrich Brecht once said 'What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?' Editor)

UNDERSTANDABLY, 'aggressive begging' has been in the local news lately.  It appears to be a growing problem in Rochdale.  Especially many of us have noticed in & around the locality of Rochdale Town Hall, which appears to have become a magnet for the worst type of anti-social behaviour.  This is particularly prevalent between the hours of 6PM & 9.30PM or whenever an expenses cheque form is proffered or a single tuna mayonnaise sandwich sliced. Something must be done to clampdown.
The worst case of aggressive begging I have personally witnessed recently was inside Rochdale Town Hall where an loud & intimidating group (possibly drug & alcohol fuelled), accompanied by a bullying air of entitlement & arrogant self justification that was tangible, beneath the wiff of expensive cologne & Eau de Toilette awarded themselves unprecedented 34% to 51 % pay rise.

So just who exactly are these rare & elusive individuals who's sense of self entitlement is such that they think that they are divinely deserving of a 34% pay rise whilst those less deserving public sector workers such as mere nurses, fire men, ambulance drivers and the like are restricted to a miserly 1% pay freeze because their work is of far less importance to Society?

After all must all be truly blessed to have such a superb cohort of councillors in our midst representing us.  At a whopping 34%/51% pay rise must be worth every penny piece they have awarded themselves & our local government be a centre of excellence for efficiency & local democratic accountability!

Its not often these highly paid 'alpha- councillors' are sighted in the heart of the local metropolis , one might think they are scared of being recognised by the occasional educated prole ,even rarer for them acknowledge the existence of, let alone to speak to us epsilon minors  of the  lumpen proletariat, yet they can, bless them , be spotted in diverse graceful abundance, far from their local watering holes , in their natural habitat the Town Hall Buffet Room or even more rarely glumly plodding the streets whenever the Ballot Box looms every few years and they need to remind their constituents that they actually exist ?

One ' alpha-councillor' would have us believe on the council's Twitter feed 

(@RochdaleCouncil) that she: 'works 30-40 hours per week, is on 19 committees and receives the equivalent of no more than £4/hour'! 

Appalling is it not, that such self sacrifice should go entirely unrewarded.  A scandal such as this should , one would have thought,  have been brought to the attention of the local media for discussion long before the Budget Setting Meeting nights  meeting to 'rubber stamp' councillors expense  - we can only assume they were simply far too busy attending meetings & reluctantly claiming the expenses from these 19 committees to raise it previously & not simply trying to elicit sympathy when their avarice was held under the magnifying glass?

Such selfless dedication to the voting masses is highly commendable.  How many other councillors share this councillors evident zeal and attend nineteen committees, I wonder?

Nineteen whole committees councillor!  Really, where are your comrades in the struggle; they must be queuing up to sit on a Committee instead of you to relieve you of the cross you carry with such evident style ?

What does this say about the total inability of other councillors to share this massively unfair workload of one of their over worked colleagues ?

Or what does it say about the quality or the governance of councillors who would surely be in breach of the Working Time Directive were they gainfully 'employed' elsewhere? 

About 'work life balance' or about the possible unwieldy Expenses cheques courtesy of the local tax payer for such a large number of committee attendances?

The sack cloth and ashes was evident in abundance.  Barley warming our councillors from the evening chill outside the Town Hall as they scuttled in, some via the back door again, to rubber stamp their own pay rise last night,  'under duress' because , so we are told, they collectively lacked the mental capacity to make a choice one way or the other of their own volition?

Whilst another, in the role of Judas Iscariot  , washed their  hands of fellow public service workers  facing a 1 % pay freeze saying :  'Is that my fault?' as they rushed inside to avail themselves of the £9.95 per councillor tax payer subsidised free nosh up on the rates.

It was an unedifying and shoddy spectacle of our local political elite, the intellectual glitterati & those who have risen from obscurity to non-entity without so much a single scribble to mark their presence  on the official record of Town Hall proceedings throughout their dedicated  public role as councillor. Some of them are so keen to hide their good works & so modest of accepting praise that it is indeed difficult to find a single recorded example of them having actually done anything at all whilst a councillor - but we the voters are not that stupid, we know in order to merit a 34%/51% pay rise or councillors must keep their noses to the grind stone 24/7, but that they are simply particularly adept at hiding their light under a bushel.  Some indeed are so personally dedicated to their roles of helping their constituents that they hardly escape from the grind of their weekly Council Ward Surgeries, so much so it's doubtful they'd  be recognised in public on the streets & avenues they represent without a preliminary pre-election street leafleting were they ever to visit from their actual homes at the other side of the Borough to meet some real people for a change. 

This dear reader is the ugly mask slipping of our self proclaimed political  'elite'  when under pressure & challenged to justify the indefensible.  Many appear to  have little or no respect for anyone but themselves and their evident contempt for the voters will without a doubt cost many of them their seats to independents in the next local elections.  They are aware that its possible twenty councillors will be axed and that also many of them are waiting to stand down and retire in any case.  For many drinking in the last chance salon this vote was the last chance to quaff down all they can even if it nearly chokes them in the process.

This shocking incident of gross self interest & greed from a 'mindless minority' was also witnessed by a number of decent law abiding citizens accompanied by their children causing great public distress & alarm for those going about their lawful activity in the town centre.In fact it was tantamount to daylight robbery.  Such 'loutish behaviour' is in danger of breeding a local dependency culture where handout dependent councillors are being forced by extreme poverty & circumstances beyond their control into 'soliciting for money in the street' for their daily living expenses. This local hardship is a  distressing sight to witness.  Some of them appear totally unable to feed themselves without regular tax payer funded food parcels at the end of each town hall gathering.
This preferential 'food queue jumping' by some councillors  breeds considerable ill will & festering resentment amongst the majority of the tax paying public who have themselves to resort to the mercy of the local food banks or Church run soup kitchens when they are similarly destitute - councillors don't even require a voucher like the majority of us.
I have reported this shocking incident to the relevant  authorities in the hope this unacceptable 'anti-social behaviour' will  be investigated?
I am hoping the town centre wrecking spree these councillors' seem intent on wreaking on local public services can be averted by them being subjected to a collective ASBO or a 'blanket-ban or curfew' preventing all councillors entering the Rochdale Metropolitan Borough area on a 24/7, such a Dispersal Order should be utilised against the majority of councillors three hundred & sixty five days a year to prevent further damage to our community.
Could we perhaps get the worst of this anti-social element electronically tagged - or at least rehabilitated back into respectable society in some well run, humane, local institution were their evident special needs could be catered for?
It's about time the anti social behaviour of this  bunch of 'ne’er do well' under achievers was clamped down on for the public good.  Since the delinquent behaviour of a selfish element is damming  the minority of  decent, hard working, dedicated councillors by public association.
I just wonder when we can all expect mass arrests and fines to be made with respect to our councillors since gangs of them have been spotted 'loitering around the public purse', with their 'socially destructive' conduct breaching socially acceptable norms of behaviour in the town centre for a number of years now and appear unable to curtail their behaviour without interventions being made to moderate these embedded selfish behavioural traits?
We need to be cruel to be kind to our struggling councillors & act with some urgency lest we get second, or third generation councillor dependency culture developing. We are already seeing repeat patterns of inter-generational dependency developing amongst spouses and families.  With anecdotal evidence amongst locals that some particularly dependent councillors are totally deskilled and entirely unable to independently support themselves at all in the real world.
Could we not for their own health & well being simply ban them from the Town Hall & No.1 Riverside in perpetuity with judicious use of a Public Space Protection Orders to prevent them causing more misery to themselves or our town any more damage?

Rochdale Novelist Responds to Historian

Brian ~ the writer (Felipe Fernández-Armesto) argues that sexual misdeeeds are piffling in comparison with bribery and corruption and other matters of financial skullduggery and that Danczuk's sins are fairly minor. But the writer seems unaware that Danczuk has also been involved (and it's ongoing as we speak) in dubious financial practices too, in that he claimed nearly ten grand in expenses from the Commons to host accommodation in London for two of his children ~ who never stayed with him. So our Simon seems to operate on all fronts with equal aplomb.

 

Trevor (Hoyle): Rochdale novelist and author

Corruption on a grand scale!

YESTERDAY, an editorial in the New York Times stated:
'The first reaction to the leaked documents dubbed the Panama Papers is simply awe at the scope of the trove and the ingenuity of the anonymous source who provided the press with 11.5 million documents - 2.6 terabytes of data - revealing in extraordinary detail how offshore bank accounts and tax havens are used by the world's rich and powerful to conceal their wealth or avoid taxes.'
Then we have the questions:
'After these revelations, will anything change?  Many formal denials and pledges of official investigations have been made.  But to what degree do the law and public shaming still have dominion over this global elite?'
Today, the Daily Mail reports:
'David Cameron is facing demands for his resignation after finally being forced to admit he had a £30,000 stake in his late father's offshore fund.  After days of failing to kill off questions, the Prime Minister dramatically declared last night that he had profited from shares in the Bahamas-based company.  He also conceded that some of the £300,000 left to him by Ian Cameron may have come from funds kept offshore.'
Opposition MPs are now insisting Mr Cameron should consider his position, accusing him of being 'less than honest' and 'speaking out of both sides of his mouth'.

In a TV interview last night, Mr Cameron said he and his wife Samantha had jointly held a stake in his father’s investment fund, Blairmore, which was registered in Panama and operated out of the Bahamas. 

He said they had sold the shares in January 2010 – four months before he became Prime Minister – for £31,500, pocketing a tax-free profit of just over £19,000 on the deal.  He also pledged to release his personal tax return in an attempt to limit the damage from his revelation.

It is hard to how an inquiry will resolve these damaging revelations or prevent corrupt politicians from hiding their assets from public view.  The only answer is, as one pundit said is that those caught should be 'roasted alive'!

Europeans Lose Faith in Government

IN today's International Herald Tribune Melisa Eddy reports:  'Fewer than 10% of people surveyed in the European countries hardest hit by the region's debt crisis say that their leaders are doing a good job at fighting corruption, a survey by the anti-corruption group Transperancy International has found.'

This survey, released yesterday, shows a 'deep chasm between elected leaders and the people they govern,' says Ms. Eddy.  Something like half of the 114,000 people surveyed viewed political parties as the most corrupt institutions, and over half thought that their government was run by special interest groups.

It seems that even in the more better-off European countries the glum mood has taken hold.  Only 11% of British people surveyed and only 13% of Germans saw their governments as effective in fighting corruption, both of these fell well below the global average of 22%.

Across the world, 51% of people surveyed saw political parties in their countries as the most corrupt institutions, folloew closely by the police and judiciary.

The media, it seems, did not do as badly, but interestingly it was seen as most corrupt in Austrialia and Britain.  About 69% said it was the most corrupt institution in Britain, up from 39% three years ago.  The Leveson inquiry can't have helped here.

Nick Clegg, Nick Heath, SWP: Crisis Cover-ups!

The Strange Death of the English Liberal-Left

THE news of the travails of Nick Clegg, as he tries to explain how got into mess of 'knowing', but not being 'aware of specific complaints' of inappropriate behaviour by a senior Liberal Democrat, Lord Rennard, towards a number of women dating back to 2008, comes on the back of the other problems and allegations regarding the late Liberal MP for Rochdale, Sir Cyril Smith.  The scandals of a sexual nature have tended to attach themselves to the Liberals and Tories over the years (one thinks of the Profumo Affair in 1963), while it has been pointed out that the Labour Party has more in the way of financial scandals.

Now the Metropolitan police are to interview Lib Dem officials to talk about if a crime has been committed in connection with the claims of sexual harassment against the ex-party chief executive Lord Rennard.  The Daily Telegraph has reported that one of the accusers of Lord Rennard, Helen Jardine-Brown, a former boss of fund raising in the party, who made an complaint 4-years ago, was paid a £50,000 settlement by her employers accompanied with a gagging clause conditional on her silence.  Recently, Lib Dem peer Baroness Hussein-Ece told the Daily Mail, that there were similarities to the Jimmy Savile situation. 'There aren't sufficient checks and balances in place,' she said.

In The Guardian, 27th, Feb. 2013, Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, who first raised concerns in parliament in November about Cyril Smith's activities, said that there is a pattern whenever allegations of sexual abuse emerge inside the Lib Dems.   He added:  'They bury their heads in the sand and claim to know nothing,' he said.  'For the sake of Rochdale victims, Clegg has to stop stonewalling and now come clean on what his party knew about the sexual abuse carried out by Cyril Smith.'   Now there is further evidence from the police files that Cyril Smith tried to meddle with the police probe according to Simon Danczuk.
 
In January, another left of centre party, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), was engulfed in allegations of rape and sought to resolve the matter through what some of their media critics have described as a 'socialist sharia court' cover-up to investigate rape accusations against a senior member instead of reporting them to the police.  The reasoning of the SWP leadership, outline by a member, was that as they had 'no faith in the bourgeois court system to deliver justice' they would engage in a bit of do-it-yourself proceedings in the spirit of the quasi-judicial.  The result seems to have been a bit of a judicial circus in the forensic investigation of the facts of the case. 

Andy Newman, a Swindon-based Labour Party member described the SWP's conduct thus: 
'It's quite clear reading their account of what's going on that they sort of see themselves as an alternative group in society that is not part of mainstream society... they think someone couldn't or shouldn't go to the police because it would damage the party.' 
Mr. Newman, it seems, likens the SWP's disciplinary hearing to an extrajudicial 'Sharia' system or the much criticised investigations by the Roman Catholic Church into clerical abuse that by-passed reporting allegations to the authorities. 

The minutes of the SWP's disciplinary committee show that allegations were put against a 'Comrade Delta', a senior member on the party's central committee.  These accusations were made by an unnamed female member of the party, who says she was assaulted over a 6-month period between 2008 and 2009.  The minutes show that she did not want to go to the police.  The disciplinary committee cleared 'Comrade Delta', with six out of seven members of the committee supporting his story of what happened.  But when the case was later put to party members, the disciplinary committee's decision was only accepted by 231 votes to 209 votes. 

In his resignation letter, the SWP journalist Tim Walker wrote: 
'I thought that they took the case seriously, this was not a jury of his peers, but a jury of his mates.' 
A friend of the female complainant, who was not allowed to attend the disciplinary hearing, said that she felt betrayed by the party, and another said that the woman thought, naively, that 'if she put in a complaint to the party it would be dealt with in line with the party's politics and our proud tradition on women's liberation... sadly her experiences were quite the opposite.'

The Independent newspaper has contacted the SWP's head office for a comment on the allegations but got no reply.  The SWP was formed in 1977 out of the International Socialists, it considers itself a 'revolutionary party' in the tradition of the Russian politician Leon Trotsky.

Beyond the realms of the Lib Dems and the SWP, another left-wing tendency is now dealing with a dilemma of a more political nature.  On the anarchist left censorship and restraints of freedom of expression are considered an even greater sin than sexual deviation.  Recently a major row has brewed up among anarchists and their fellow-travellers about attempts to censor the northern anarchists in the Northern Anarchist Network and to put the publication Northern Voices out of business.  Bookshop managers who stock Northern Voices have been approached  menacingly, book-stalls at Bookfairs have been overturned, and the printers of Northern Voices have been telephoned, and on one occasion a couple of years ago threatened with a solicitor.  The leftist group that is now embroiled in this embarrassing political dilemma is the British Anarchist Federation (AF), some of whose members have been involved in political bullying, blacklisting and feeble-minded violence aimed at the censorship and control of the publication Northern Voices, that culminated last December in Barry Woodling being herded out of a Manchester bookfair and forced to climb down a fire-escape. In the 20th Century, the two social movements that harassed shopkeepers to distraction were the mafia in the USA and the German national socialists, but now the perverse anarchists of the AF seem to have taken a leaf out of their book.

Interestingly, Rudolf Rocker and Noam Chomsky, both distinguish libertarian/ anarchist social thinkers, have defined the intellectual origins of anarchism as lying in the two strands of progressive thinking coming out of the Enlightenment: a socialist strand on the one hand and a liberal strand on the other. The historian David Goodway in his book 'Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow' (First published 2006 and now revised & expanded by PM Press in paperback in 2012 and to be reviewed by Derek Pattison in the forthcoming issue of Northern Voices) argued:
'A fruitful approach to understanding anarchism is to recognize its thoroughly socialist critique of capitalism, while emphasizing that this has been combined with a liberal critique of socialism, anarchists being united with liberals in their advocacy of autonomous associations and the freedom of the individual and even exceeding them in their opposition to statism.' 
This split personality of anarchism allows in certain shallow personalities who operate a form of secretive and conspiratorial politics; it is hard for example to decide if the political body that describes itself as the Anarchist Federation has an authentic voice or face. The only AF individual I'm aware of connected with it for sure, is one of its founders Nick Heath, a retired London librarian, who now works in the bookshop of Freedom Press on Wednesday afternoons and successful got the bookshop manager to take NV13 off the shelf last August.  It was Heath, who like Cyril Smith with the police, successfully sought to bully the independent anarchist publication Freedom not to publish material about the attacks involving his AF organisation on Northern Voices and others.  Others in AF are most often known only by their first-names or pseudo-names such 'Sally', 'Andy of London AF', 'Claire of Nottingham AF' and 'Alex the National Secretary of AF', there are also a number of strange miscellaneous AF groupies such as the shy one who calls himself 'Spikymike' and another called Ron Marsden from Didsbury. But no-one from the Anarchist Federation has yet made any official statement or justification for the crazy conduct of their members: indeed one must doubt the existence of the AF as a serious political entity.

The silliness with which these AF people and  the way this rag-tag-and-bobtail 'anarchist' army have performed, has been such that some respectable anarchists have sought to try to pretend that nothing has happened. But to ignore these acts, or just to dismiss these people as 'fools', or to play the Pontius Pilate is to risk falling into the trap that the Liberal Nick Clegg and the socialist SWP is now facing.  All these cases suggest is that the 'left' in British politics, whether Liberal, Socialist or anarchist, is suffering from a deep-seated corruption and lack of serious purpose; Simon Danczuk from Rochdale with his Cyril Smith revelations, Andy Newman from Swindon in highlighting the SWP's misdemeanours, and Barry Woodling in affirming the rights of a free press, are all fighting on the side of political decency.  As Simon Danczuk says of the Lib Dems  and Cyril Smith; burying 'their heads in the sand' may be a pattern but it is certainly not a solution.
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There are still a few copies of the printed version of NORTHERN VOICES No.13, available for sale it can be obtained as follows:

Postal subscription: £5 for the next two issues (post included). Cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' at c/o 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH. 

Tel.: 0161 793 5122.

email: northernvoices@hotmail.com

Afore the House falls in

COUNCIL BOSS BOB BIBBY GETS JUSTICE: BINMAN STEWARD DIDN'T!

'THERE is always a warning crack,' says the Spanish Bawd in the novel by Rojas, 'before the house falls in!' Is this what's now happening at Bury MBC, following last Tuesday's dawn raids by police on former Bury Council boss, Councillor Bob Bibby, and his colleague, Councillor Jim Taylor? The police told the Bury Times that the two Conservative councillors 'had accepted bribes in relation to a planning application in Radcliffe'. Three other men were also arrested suspected of submitting the application. In an interview with the Bury Times, last Wednesday, Bibby denied the allegations saying sternly: 'Bribery hasn't been part of local government for 30 years - those days are long gone'. He added: 'I turn 70 this year ... I have had 13 years in local politics and have been around long enough to know that such corruption is not only impossible to hide, but undesirable given the negative attention it is bound to bring to those involved. I have nothing to hide and can speak for Jim as well. These allegations are unfounded.'


It seems that the allegations relate to a planning application tabled in February 2011 by a property company, and that the application was for 200 homes and and a warehouse to be built on land at York Street and Bury Road in Radcliffe. Councillor Bibby admitted the application was 'problematic' because the houses would be near a flood plain. Bibby claimed police had told him they had seen text messages suggesting he would take a £10,000 payment for help with the application. Councillor Bibby strongly denies sending or receiving any such message.

In April 2011, members of Bury planning committee granted permission; now there's a coincidence! Defending himself, Bibby who was then the Council leader, declared to the Bury Times:
'I am in no position to influence planning at all. As council leader, you generally encourage investment in your town and you want companies to come in and clean up grotspots and provide businesses that create jobs and homes for families. But when it comes to the details of particular applications, that is not for the council leader.' Furthermore, he said: 'To allege that someone would pay £10,000 to one individual in relation to an application is very strange.' Councillor Bibby, a Conservative Councillor from Church Ward who became council leader in May 2007, was replaced as leader last May, when the Tories lost overall control to Labour.

Last Tuesday, detectives and uniformed police seized computers and paperwork from Bury Town Hall and from business premises in Moston. Premises in the more middle-class areas of Didsbury and Altrincham were also searched. All five men, aged between 45 and 69, were released on bail until April. Police say the arrests came after an intelligence-led operation conducted in June 2011. Superintendent Rush said: 'This has been a complex investigation and these arrests are a result of a lot of hard work ... I recognise this operation will cause some disruption at the council ... However, the council is co-operating with the investigation and we intend to keep disruption to a minimum.'

A council spokesman, last week said: '... it would inappropriate to comment.'

Joe Cleary, former Bury binman and UNITE shop steward at Bradley Fold sacked in dodgy circumstances contacted Northern Voices last week to say: 'Have you seen the news about Bury councillors allegedly using their positions for pecuniary gain? I can't believe that somebody from Bury Council could be corrupt; this must be a mistake, these people are whiter than white, they don't do anything wrong. Do you think we should offer them our support? Maybe have a collection or maybe picket the police station until the "Bury Saints" are exonerated? I've just bought Bob Bibby a card, on the front it says: "Thinking of you at this sad time." I'm off to post it now!'

Now then; Joe Cleary was a bloke and trade union activist who was sacked a few years ago as a binman in Bury for allegedly allowing himself to be tempted and swayed in his duties by a bottle of 'Strawberry Volvic', unlike Councillor Bobby Bibby now, he was never given the chance to clear himself in an English Court: rather he was condemned and tried by Bury MBC councillors of the likes of Bobby Bibby sitting in a pompous tribunal in Bury Town Hall. Councillor Bibby the politician, is going to get a form of justice that was denied to the binman, Joe Cleary and his colleagues. As our own great bard Shakespeare had one of his character's say: 'Jockey of Norfolk be not too bold, for Dicken thy Master is bought and sold.' Yet, Joe Cleary, a former UNITE shop steward, is typically English in his charitable instincts, whereas a Frenchman may have called for the Guillotine, Joe is recommending a whip-round!