George Moss fails to declare an interest in meeting?

Oh dear it looks like George Moss failed to declare an interest during the planning and development meeting 12th March 2012 when planning application WD/2012/0206/F was discussed.

The application concerned ..

"DEMOLITION OF EXISTING PROPERTY 'CRANSTAL' AND THE ERECTION OF 8 NO. RESIDENTIAL DWELLINGS AND GARAGE/PARKING COMPRISING: 2 NO. 2-BED HOUSES, 1 NO. 3-BED HOUSE AND 5 NO. 5-BED HOUSES, AND FORMATION OF NEW ACCESS ROAD AND CLOSING UP OF EXISTING VEHICULAR ACCESS POINTS."

The minutes clearly show that no interests were declared even though Moss knows the applicant and would be familiar with the address.The property "Cranstal" is none other than the house of  Mr Dudley Hutchings who happens to be the chairman of Mr Moss's Crowborough Partnership organisation that has its address as the town hall address.

Luckily a member of the public objected as did a ESCC councillor and the application was subsequently withdrawn but the fact remains that Moss failed to declare he knew the applicant and Hutchings was as bad in trying to sneak the application through a committee that had his mate and fellow partnership colleague as chairman.

I should make it clear that ex co opted councillor and Crowborough Partnership Member Clive Wilson and his wife who is a local councillor objected to this development which smacks of nimbyism of the highest order given that Clive seems to want to build over all  of Crowborough.

The Crowborough Partnership-The Players.

Having set the scene with the previous post lets shine a bit of light on Crowborough Partnership and see what runs for cover.
CP is difficult to  pin down because there seems to be no recent information on their website at all.There have been Town Council minuted references to CP AGMs being held but there are none published beyond 2009/10 and very little published about its membership or accounts.
The address given for CP is actually the Town Hall address which is  interesting in itself and its known that unelected George Moss is supposedly the leader but actually he is only referred as such in paper articles and press releases.

There are 3 CP groups and a chairman represents each group whilst reporting to the overall leader/chairman of the Partnership.

The 3 groups are The Business Group,Town Enhancement Group,Transport and Tourism Group with 3 Chairmen and an overall Chairman Leading  the Partnership.

I am going to concentrate on the Leaders of the Town Enhancement group,Transport and Toursim Group and the Leader of the Partnership itself.
I am leaving out the Business Group and its Chairman because this organisation has been going for sometime and predates the Crowborough Partnership by a number of years.Also the chairman of the business group is actually a democratically elected councillor (not town council) so I am cutting him some slack.

Chairman of the Town Enhancement group is none other than our friend poor old Clive (Dunn)
Wilson who has been co opted in and out of the Town Council like a fiddlers elbow .
Chairman of the Transport and Tourism group is Mike (Toilet )Tollit who seems to have been or still is the Clerk for Rotherfield Parish Council .

Chairman  of the Partnership  is a  Mr Dudley Hutchings who is  a scouser that supposedly runs his own business (sinister CP phrase) "managing change".

For someone who wields a lot of power within the town and is in effect the shadow leader not a lot is known about Mr Hutchings.

More to come on these three .

The Partnership itself organised the towns healthcheck and the town vision document and is now instrumental in pushing it all through despite objections from the public.A partnership would hint at some sort of input from the public on these documents but there isnt.The public get a rigged   consultation to make it seem like they are having a say but at the end of the day all the schemes in the vision document will be implemented by the Crowborough Partnership regardless. The only role the public has is to pay for the schemes through ever rising council tax bills becoming no more than cattle to be used and abused as required.
The organisations /partners that were consulted on the Healthcheck/Vision are as follows

The Crowborough Town Council 

Crowborough Community Action Group 

The Crowborough Town Enhancement Group  

Crowborough Community Association 

Crowborough Business Group  

Wealden District Council  

East Sussex County Council   

The Sussex Downs and Weald Primary Care Trust 

Youth Development Service 

Beacon Community College  

Uckfield Community Rail Partnership 

High Weald AONB Forum

Churches Together

Wealden Federation of Voluntary Organisations 

Sussex Police  

Safer Wealden Partnership

Eastbourne and District Enterprise Agency Ltd

So no public input there its all common purpose infected quangos and common purpose infected third sector organisations alongside common purpose infected Local Authorities.
The top 5 organisations mentioned are all parts of the Crowborough Partnership so its no suprise that their plans were all adopted for the vision document that they will also be responsible for implementing.None of the healthcheck and vision meetings were open to the public and no one outside these organisations have had their say prior to the vision document being published.As such it is the vision of change for the town by the Partnership and no way is it a vision shared with the actual residents of the town.

Just a couple of points of interest which may be relevant or may not.

Kay Moss ex mayor and wife of George Moss works for ESCC at Beacon School and is a trustee of Clued Up which is run by the ESCC Youth development service.
The new mayor is a member of  Churches together.
Wheels within wheels.

The Crowborough Partnership-Subversion Agent.

It is widely accepted that democracy is largely dead in Crowborough.The Town Council is a sham with only 2 of its members actually voted in yet more and more mad cap projects are rolled out by this unelected cabal with no benefit to the residents at all.The town is bankrupt having borrowed squillions of money for the £3.5 million conmunity centre and for every other looney tune scheme in creation.The unelected council have realised that they are in the financial mire and have recently been trying to land grab and obtain more assets in the form of land and buildings to try and stave off effective bankruptcy.
Not so long ago the Town had a council full of voted councillors that had the interest of the town at heart without selling its soul to the devil.
The hollowing out of the Town Council is not by accident though and serves a very important role of being a shell to portray(a false impression of) stability and democracy to those residents that seem to have no capacity to look beyond the facade of the town council.Prod the bloated dead carcass of the Town Council and the rotting corruption is there for all to see and pretty unpleasant it is too.
This fetid corruption has a name and its name is The Crowborough Partnership.Ask anyone in the town and they will probably have no clue as to what the Crowborough Partnership is and what part it plays in the downfall of local democracy in Crowborough.
Like all shadowy organisations the Crowborough Partnership(which shares its initials with Common Purpose) likes to operate in the dark away from the spotlight of accountability and publicity.Well they had better prepare themselves because I am about to shine a light of biblical proportions on the organisation and the main players to give some sort of insight into what is going on in our town.I should point out that although I am most interested in Crowborough organisations like Crowborough Partnership (CP) operate in most small towns in the South east with the aim of subverting local democracy.There is even a an umbrella group/quango to oversee the process called SEtowns (click here).Organisations like SEtowns themselves operate within what is called the third sector and are invariably infested with Common Purpose Graduates.The aim of SEtowns and similar organisations is to place change agents within Town Councils to subvert local democracy in order to "change society".To those brought up in the 70s this is recognisable as communist subversion but nowdays rather than the USSR being the puppetmaster behind this it is the EU who funds this through their own (unelected  )regional administration.
From now on when a new policy or madcap scheme is announced by the council it must be appreciated that the unelected council has no part in the process other than as a conduit to present them to the public as being produced using the democratic process.If people realised that all town council policy is decided via dodgy deals with shadowy organisations like CP and just funneled through the relevant committee to be presented to and rubber stamped by the council "cabinet" I think they would be outraged.
To spell it out there is no democracy and no accountability in any decisions supposedly coming from the Council.The fact that the council itself is largely unelected is also an outrage because there is no one on the council speaking up for the interests of the residents and electorate.In effect they are all bought men (and women) and just do what they are told and toe the line otherwise they are out.
A perfect illustration of this is the hated shared space being pushed through by George Moss and the Crowborough Partnership despite getting a resounding no from the residents during the "public consultation".

Downfall of shared space.

In view of the news that the council are going ahead with shared space against the wishes of the residents of the town I think its time to show this again.
We may have a new Mayor but as the saying goes-meet the new boss just the same as the old boss.
Enjoy.

Scheme for the High Street 'will move forward .

Earlier today there was an article on the Couriers this is Sussex website that proclaimed "Scheme for the High Street 'will move forward'".It went on to explain that despite the fact that residents rejected the schemes at the public consultation and instead opted for the none of the above option (which was "accidently" removed from the option list)unelected Moss was going to push his plans through regardless.His tool to do this is going to be the Crowborough Partnership which in reality is the Town council ,Wealden and a few hangers on.
I commented to say that this was unnacceptable and if any businesses are going to campaign in favour of this unwanted scheme then they must face the prospect of the local residents deciding not to do business with them .
If they treat the residents of towns wishes with contempt and side with the unelected Council then they will reap what they sow and probably go out of business.
Strangely or predictably depending on your viewpoint the story still appears on the index page but if you click on the link it comes up to say that page doesnt exist.
I will be watching this story closely and publishing those individuals and businesses that are supporting this scheme against the wishes of the residents of the town.Residents can then decide whether they want to do business with them or not.