UPDATE: Mendip, SWT, SSDC, Sedgemoor plus County Councils Must ALL Be Abolished!

 

Lib Dems or Fib Dems?

UPDATE (14/4/21): We will be speaking at all four district councils over today and tomorrow to ask them to adopt the idea that we proposed last September - a Modern Committee System (MCS). There is a Referendum on this in Sheffield happening right now, and our article on it from September has been updated.

UPDATE (15/4/21): We now believe that all four districts should be abolished, and the county too. But whatever happens must be voted upon, with a "no change" option for residents to vote for.

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(11/4/21): In just a few weeks, and as reported by us, the Mendip Liberal Democrats have:

• lost a councillor on Mendip District Council
• lost control of Mendip District Council
• bungled the paperwork of their chosen candidate
• have no candidate in the by-election for Wells
  

And as there are no other elections for Mendip, because they are done in "all out" elections every four years, they have no way of getting control of the Council back!

Leader of Somerset Independents, Andrew Pope, says:

Andrew Pope
Leader of
Somerset Independents

"Somerset Independents has proved that Mendip Lib Dems are not fit to run Mendip Council. 

They are just as bad as the Tories before them, despite all the Lib Dems' fake promises before the 2019 council elections, and all the untrue claims and rhetoric spoken since then by the Leader of the Council, Lib Dem Councillor Ros Wyke.

Mendip Lib Dems are amateur. They are ignorant. They are incompetent. They do deals behind closed doors.

We have proved it with our formal challenge to their accounts. Their property deals on the Asset Management Group and Phoenix Sponsorship Board, were done without proper scrutiny and without any openness or transparency. The minutes of the meetings did not even meet the law. They showed nothing, in fact, about the content of the business of the meeting.

The External Auditor Ernst and Young has now agreed with our Formal Objection and told them to change their ways.

Mendip is so bad that they even allowed a councillor to be elected as Chair of the Council's Scrutiny committee, and to preside over his own election. After our challenge, that has had to be done properly now. Meanwhile, the Scrutiny Committee did not properly scrutinise the Budget of the Council and our council tax has gone up!

I know of gardening clubs that are run more professionally than Mendip Council. Mendip Lib Dems could not even run a gardening club.

In fact, residents have commented to us that (Vicar of) Dibley Parish Council seems more professional than Mendip!

They couldn't run a bath, let alone a council that is in charge of millions of pounds of public money.

If they can't even get the paperwork right for their Wells candidate, how can they pretend that they can preside over millions of pounds of public money, and tell us all to pay our council tax?

The Lib Dems have no credibility left. The Council has no credibility left.

The residents of the Mendip area live in a great place, but Mendip Council is a disaster and must be abolished. 

There is widespread knowledge by residents of the corruption and incompetence at Mendip. Former clerks of parish and town councils, and serving councillors, have made such comments to me about Mendip.

Even Private Eye agrees, and the local media reports of Mendip Council are embarrassing, such as the November 2020 Scrutiny Board meeting where the Chair resigned due a lack of scrutiny.

The former Chair, Tory Councillor Philip Ham, is a local land owner who we now know from official documents that we have obtained, used his position as a councillor, and his contacts, to get planning permission through for a development near Sandys Hill Lane in Frome! Then when the new Chair was elected, Councillor Chris Inchley (a former Labour member but fake "Independent") presided over his own election.

How can this be allowed to happen? Why didn't the councillors and officers stop it from happening?

It can't. It shouldn't. It won't. Somerset Independents won't allow it to continue.

Somerset Independents is appalled that it has had to expose Mendip District Council. We are volunteers and residents that care about the direction of Somerset.

What comes after Mendip District Council is abolished must be decided by residents in a Referendum, with the option of no change on the ballot paper. 

I am pleased that finally, after ignoring us for months, district councillors now agree with the Somerset Independents campaign for a Referendum.

But even now, they don't really want to listen. Because they want to restrict residents in the vote to One Somerset or Stronger Somerset, with no other options.

There must be a "no change"/"not now" option on the ballot paper.

This cannot go on."