The High Cost of Recycling Trash

From time to time we like to catch up on the local government garbage that have drained public resources on Wirral like a gold-plated sewage pipe.

You may have your own favourite receptacle of filthy lucre (Adderley? Norman?  – the list is endless!) You know the type – everyone knew they were rubbish, they failed spectacularly, cashed the Wirral Council cheque and yet they still managed to pick up another gig with a gullible/desperate council elsewhere or if they were really,really bad and/or a particularly good bullshitter they could always go and get a job with the Wirral Chamber of Commerce.

We have kept track of some of the most infamous Wirral Council cases in our occasional ‘Where Are They Know?’ updates. Someone who has featured in a couple of these updates has been Anna ‘Cash Cow’ Klonowski .  Read more here .

Admittedly Klonowski was never directly employed by Wirral Council but nevertheless made a cool quarter of a million for achieving the square root of fuck all when brought in to confirm what everyone knew then and still knows now – that Wirral Council is run by bullying,dishonest incompetents.

Klonowski went on to successfully cash in on the Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) scandal in Rochdale before rocking up at Bristol City Council and lasting about five minutes as their Chief Executive. We now understand from the wonderful ‘The Bristolian’ blog that Bristol City Council Mayor ‘the Reverend’ Marvin Rees knows how things work in concentric council circles :

News is also in, courtesy of the council’s external auditors, that the £100k the Reverend handed to departing Chief Exec Anna “Big Wedge” Klonowski last year was a GENEROUS PERSONAL GIFT with public money from the Reverend and not a legally required pay off for her notice period as he claimed.

Full story here

Perhaps Klonowski picked this little trick up from her time at Wirral Council where they bestowed £100K + GENEROUS PERSONAL GIFTS  which were not legally required to bullying, dishonest incompetents Mike Fowler and Maura Noone, prior to the publication of Klonowski’s “Independent Review ‘ in 2012. Needless to say as you can read here this didn’t adversely their future career prospects – because local authorities have targets when it comes recycling trash and unfortunately we’re the ones that pay…

 

 

 

 

 

The Gravy Train update – with special guests Anna and Bill

A round of applause for old Wirral Leaks favourites Anna Klonowski and Bill Norman as they make yet another guest appearance on our hallowed website.

You have to to hand it to Anna and Bill – never have such transparent blaggers made such a good living off the public purse. Needless to say their paths eventually crossed at Wirral Council –  the ground zero of local government corruption.

Having failed miserably to make a blind bit of difference to the culture of Wirral Council, whilst at the same time significantly enhancing their bank balances, we hold these particular fraudsters in complete contempt.

So what happened subsequently to these shysters? – that’s right they got found out.

Firstly – let’s deal with Anna and we reluctantly have to agree with a belligerent local Tory councillor on this one :

We noted at the time his deliberate typo ( ha! ha!ha!) but in the intervening 5 years this repugnant bulldog has just sniped from the sidelines and made NO DIFFERENCE WHATSOEVER. Neither did Klonowski. She was too busy cashing her £250K cheque and then smugly sitting on the ‘Improvement Board’ and feeding off the blood, sweat and tears of whistleblowers like the local government parasite she is (put that on your LINKED IN profile why dontcha).

We need to thank the magnificent blog The Bristolian for keeping us up to date with Anna’s travels (or should that be be travails ? – either way she doesn’t care as long as she’s getting paid for it).

It seems that Anna picked up a few tips whilst working for the Wirral Council power elite – like paying off people to keep their mouths shut. As you can read here : Klonowski Gag

And not only that she picked up a few bullying tips from Foulkesy , who she strangely supported. Not strangely at all in retrospect – he paid her humongous bills. You can read all about her shameful progress here : Big Wedge’s Bully Shame

What we do admire is The Bristolian’s challenge to this gravy train gobshite and their rider :

NB. Any legal threats in relation to this article to the Bristolian’s email please.

Because as we know Anna is not averse to threatening people with legal action who dare to challenge her. As we’ve reported previously she set Martyn Scott from DLA Piper onto Wirral Council whistleblower Martin Morton, who let’s not forget made her a cool quarter of a million, because her dared question her as to why she didn’t do her job properly and fully expose , among other things , that Wirral Council and Merseyside Police were mixed up with drugs money launderers.

But let’s move on to Billyboy Norman .

And can we say we’re simply astonished that this piece of work has lasted as long as he has . What an inspiration to one and all – that no matter how corrupt,how incompetent, how damn ugly you are you can still trawl the country picking up cheques from people who are more corrupt, more incompetent and more ugly than you are.

Bill Norman – Police Probe

Anna Klonowski is no doubt taking notes and ready for her comeback.

NB. Any legal threats in relation to this article to Wirral Leaks email please.

 

 

Where Are They Now? Part 3 – Anna Klonowski (Update)

It is with great pleasure we bring the news that karma seems to be a fully functioning phenomena as we understand the serial highly paid local government diva La Klonowski – infamous on Wirral for her highly remunerated (if ineffectual) reports has suddenly resigned her Chief Executive post at Bristol City Council .

We reported earlier this year that, staggeringly, Anna was appointed to the above post in January of this year.

Where Are They Now ? – Klonowski

It is no surprise to us that she didn’t last the year out . We’ve been keeping up with our local equivalent in Bristol The Bristolian and it’s clear they held her in the same contempt that we do  #cashcow

The Bristol City Council website declares that Anna Klonowski has resigned in order to focus on her role as primary carer for her parents.

http://news.bristol.gov.uk/chief_executive_resigns_from_bristol_city_council

All very laudable and dare we say unusual for such a serial careerist to put her family first. Might we suggest that her decision was influenced by her experience on Wirral? For would any respectable public servant want their parent’s dying days to be in the hands of drugs money launderers ? 

 

Blotto?

Spot the dot ! :  Blott or not?

After yesterday’s blog post we had a most curious reply sent very early today.

Allegedly it was sent by Joe Blott – Wirral Council’s Managing Director for Delivery aka ‘The Man Who Never Gets Angry’ and read as follows :

Joe Blott on March 9, 2017 at 4:56 am said:

Get the facts right before spouting off about how Wirral does business; you can write all you like on here about past & present employees but take a second to think about how much harm this does to the families of these people and how this may impact them about dis tasteful comments about how people go about making a living. Your blog is a joke and you hide behind your keyboard due to the fact you probably haven’t got a real job and you vent your frustrations out due to being turned down for a role here at Wirral

Reply ↓

• wirralleaks on March 9, 2017 at 9:47 am said:

  Thanks for getting in touch Joe.
  We will provide a more fulsome and considered response in a forthcoming blog post.

So here is that fulsome and considered response. Firstly, can we say that after the Wirral Council’s Head of Communications Kevin MacCallum had a Friday night entanglement with yours truly we’d’ve thought that senior managers from Wirral Council would exercise some caution when contacting us.Communicating with Kev-Continued.

However the curious aspect of the ‘Blotto’ response is that it seems so very out of character. Say what you want about this non-entity but he does know how to play the local government game. So we’re led to conclude that either we’ve really got under his skin or he didn’t send that email.

It is particularly curious as the message was sent from a wirral.gov.uk address.However the address is joe.blott@wirral.gov.uk  and we were led to believe his email address was joeblott@wirral.gov.uk

A dot can make a lot of difference and you have to get up very early to get anything past us and 4.56 am just isn’t early enough!

So we can only conclude that Blotto has  a) acquired a new email address (along with a scrotum) or b) someone is masquerading as him using a wirral.gov.uk address

Curiouser and curiouser!

So let’s break down the response from whoever it is as follows :

Get the facts right before spouting off about how Wirral does business

So tell us the facts ; We understand that ‘facts’ is an abstract concept as far as Wirral Council goes – but give it a go!

you can write all you like on here about past & present employees but take a second to think about how much harm this does to the families of these people and how this may impact them about dis tasteful comments about how people go about making a living

Yes, we can write what we like on here. And Wirral Council hate that don’t they? ,because they have absolutely no control over it . We could write Liptrot – approved puff -pieces but that would make us Wirral View – and ain’t nobody got time for that. Oh ,and when you talk about ‘past employees’ do you mean those currently taking a particular interest in our blog from their holiday home in Portugal? The stats don’t lie!

As for ‘dis tasteful’ – all we can say is that it must be a curse to be burdened with a delicate middle class sensibility! Just be thankful you don’t work for Bristol City Council under the leadership of Anna ‘Big Wedge’ Klonowski . Our equivalent there –‘ The Bristolian’ has a few choice words for your equivalents including the wonderful Anglo -Saxon expression ‘Whiny T**t’ and as for the Mayor of Bristol – let’s not go there!

https://thebristolian.net/2017/03/03/whiny-twat-seeks-private-sector-move/

We’ve got news for you – that deferential nonsense died a horrible death for many us a long time ago. Oh and don’t do that ‘think about the kiddiewinks’ malarkey. We’re totally immune to such manipulative shit , especially when the likes of you are earning a very good living for doing what exactly? We’d be happy to publish a list of your achievements so the people of Wirral know exactly what they’re getting for their £123K pa.

Your blog is a joke 

Which is why you get up at silly o’clock to respond to our joke of a blog when you could just be checking your bank statements and who’s arse you need to kiss today!

you hide behind your keyboard due to the fact you probably haven’t got a real job and you vent your frustrations out due to being turned down for a role here at Wirral

We love the way you kept the best ’til last. Nothing , but nothing would compel us and our increasing number of aggrieved ex-Wirral Council employees to subjugate ourselves like a brain dead wage slave before the likes of you and your ilk for a ‘role here at Wirral’ . Delusional doesn’t come close. Wirral Council is a sick organisation. Keep taking the tablets (or cashing the cheque),whatever works for you (if not for us).

If you feel the need to respond – whoever you are –  you know where we are : wirralleaks@gmail.com  – that’s wirralleaks and not wirral.leaks obviously.

WIRRALGATE! – Protecting the Defectives

This is the last instalment of our deconstruction of Patricia Thynne’s  Code of Conduct investigations.That is not to say that this will be the last you will hear about the Wirralgate scandal as our sources promise to keep spouting leaks.

This particular post concerns itself with the role of councillors. Not the specific councillors implicated in Wirralgate but the role of all councillors in protecting their own regardless of political affiliation.

It is infuriating to recount that in the light of the Independent Review published in 2012 that investigator Anna “BIG WEDGE” * Klonowski was instructed to keep any criticism of councillors out of her investigation and tried to get around this by publishing the cheerily titled ‘Refresh and Renew’ report prior to the publication of the Independent Review . This report told Wirral’s councillors , amongst other tedious procedural matters , that they’d created a ‘corrosive culture’ where the ‘abnormal was normal’.

However as a result Klonowski took her eye of her original brief which was to investigate the whistleblowing allegations of Martin Morton (and various unnamed others) . This meant that many of the issues brought to her attention have up until today neither been reported nor resolved. Consequently Wirral ‘s councillors received a metaphorical gentle slap on the wrist when what they required was a punch in the face.

And so with the abolition of Standards for  England and the introduction of the Localism Act 2011 councils were allowed to police themselves when it came to conduct issues involving elected members.

Wirral Council took full advantage of this void in accountability and almost the first thing they did after the publication of the Independent Review  was to ensure that councillors were protected no matter how many of The Seven Principles of Public Life they violated.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-7-principles-of-public-life/the-7-principles-of-public-life–2

We think it is instructive to examine how Wirral Council’s Code of Conduct complaints procedure works in practice. Cllr Steve Foulkes  and  Cllr George Davies  were originally subject to an investigation following concerns raised as a result of rumours swirling around Wallasey Town Hall and which were ignited by Wirral Leaks . It is significant to recall Cllr Jeff Green , the so-called complainant , chose specifically not to pursue a Code of Conduct complaint. Which surely begs the question as to why not?.

However as we know Thynne’s first deeply flawed investigative report was completed on 20th June 2014 and published the following month by Wirral Council , as it was seemingly a classic  case “no  case to answer” . And that would have been that if it wasn’t for the fact that Foulkesy and Georgie Boy had lied and lied and lied to Thynne. It took an email sent to all 66 councillors in December 2104 from key witness  Martin Morton – the man who had initiated the Independent Review  – to bring the dishonesty and deceit to their attention.

However councillors just chose to simply ignore him and seemingly their own Code of Conduct too and no further investigation took place.

It wasn’t until May 2015 when former council communications czarina Emma Degg , having heard the Wirralgate tape , belatedly came forward for reasons known only to herself and confirmed Morton’s allegations.

Subsequently Thynne was appointed to revisit her original report soon thereafter . Significantly this was at the behest of  council officers and NOT councillors and as we can see Thynne handed in her second report on 6th  December 2015.

Readers may want to ask themselves why it took until 28th June 2015 before a Standards Panel considered Thynne’s findings. The answer is that councillors can delay with impunity. In Foulkesy’s case this included a right of reply (because his rights are so much more important than us mere mortals) and of course having additional time to brief his free legal representation about his misdemeanours (courtesy of the Association of Labour Councillors ).

And after all this flagrant misconduct , what happens?. Nothing much!. An undeserved apology to an opportunistic councillor who hadn’t pursued a Code of Conduct complaint in the first place!. We note ruefully that Cllr  Jeff “Kindred” Green has failed to make that apology public.

We have to ask  whether it can be right that a public servant in the course of public duties publicly violates the principles of public life and yet is allowed to make a PRIVATE apology.

We did manage to squeeze a comment from a local councillor about this abuse of power and they replied :

“The ‘sanctions’ able to be applied are limited to just a few courses of action.”

To which we replied :

“Yes and who decided that? You guys did!. Utterly feeble. Should be with police and you know it. Thankfully we know people much braver and committed to public accountability than you guys and we’ll be supporting them 100%…………” 

It is sickening to reflect that for a local authority that failed to protect vulnerable adults and now has been found to failed to adequately protect vulnerable children finds the wherewithal to protect themselves from any kind of meaningful and appropriate sanction . In this respect Wirral Council are truly Defective By Design.org

 

And that is the most damning indictment of  Wirral Council’s elected members that we could ever make.

*http://thebristolian.net/tag/anna-klonowski/