Saturday 21 November 2009

The wheels fall off Mike Freer's bus of trust

The blog I just submitted on truth is one I've been working on for weeks. I had planned for it to be the only blog I posted this weekend. I wanted to give it a bit of exposure. Then Don't Call Me Dave emailed me drawing my attention to shenanigans at the Barnet Times website. Stories have been going up and down more regularly than a pair of whores drawers. It seems the problem is that Mike Freer has been putting his foot in it left right and centre and he doesn't like the press alerting us to the fact. In my previous blog, I talked about trust and how important it is to be open to ideas which challenge you. Most importantly, I talked about how damaging it is, when the truth is hidden.

Mike Freer would be wise to consider this. DCMD kindly emailed me with a screenshot of a story written by Sarah Cosgrove, which was posted at  3.45pm. Here are a couple of key extracts from Ms Cosgrove's story

So the elected head of Barnet Council thinks that the bloke he picked to run the council, Nick Walkley and who we the taxpayer pay the best part of £200,000 per annum, is clumsy and cackhanded? Not only does he think this, he told a journalist. Sarah goes on to quote Mr Freer in her article


So lets get this right. Mike Freer thinks that the bloke running the council is too clumsy and cack handed to be trusted to speak publicly about the councils bin collections?  Now having said such a thing, imagine Mike Freer's horror when the Times published his comments. The story was taken down shortly after. Why? Doesn't Mike want us to know what he said? Doesn't he want us to know what he thinks of his CEO?

The sad truth is that Mike Freer has run Barnet into the ground. All of the trust is gone. He can't trust his CEO to speak about his plans, he can't even trust himself. At the scrutiny meeting in the week, his Tory colleagues asked no questions at all. Why? Because they all know that the whole thing is a farce and the only way they can get away with it is by pleading the fifth and saying nothing.

I spoke to Jack Cohen yesterday about the scrutiny meeting. He said that both he and Alison Moore submitted questions weeks ago. He had an email to prove it. Freer said he only got the questions a couple of days before, so couldn't answer them properly.

What is going on? The wheels have well and truly fallen off Mike Freer's bus of trust. If anyone is interested, email me BY CLICKING HERE and I'll forward you the full screenshots of the stories which have been pulled or altered. Thanks to Not The Barnet Times for alerting me to this sorry shambles.

1 comment:

Don't Call Me Dave said...

So in the world according to Freer, the chief executive is cack-handed and bloggers are one handed.

As Jack Cohen says in his Barnet Times blog today, the cat is now out of the bag.

You do have to wonder whether Mike Freer has the right temperament to be a politician.