• Lancashire Politicians; Highwaymen; Footpads; Torias, and just plain pension and expenses muggers;

• A continuing analyses of the LEP and its foolish dalliance with the Tories;

• The ‘promotion’ by the LEP of another Conservative lame duck No:2, CC O’Toole;

• Lame duck No:1, CC Driver rants on;

• Why Labour and LibDems have little to crow about;

• Why the political landscape will change in West Lancs;

• O’Toole – the Police & Bugler investigation of his fraudulent activities resumes.

Time once again to look into the foggy bottoms of Lancashire’s sleepy hollow inhabited by political dwarfs, petty thieving pixies, and general layabout elves riding the taxpayers gravy train whilst perusing their ‘comic cuts’ otherwise known as the Lancashire Evening Post(LEP).

You may recall prior to the recent local government elections the Bugler wrote at length on the LEP and its disastrous dalliance with the Lancashire Tories which continues unabated whilst chasing the haemorrhaging readership downhill in an exercise of futility.

A readership which repeatedly complains to the LEP that it is politically biased. Well of course they have perfect right to be and they have also a perfect right to become bankrupt, such is democracy.

It is a pity their Editor does not take the trouble to read her reader responses though.

A readership which is now routinely pointing out to the Editor, aside from the usual crass reporting; misspelling; pixilated pictures; and melodramatic headlines which have little to do with reality, just how politically biased a newspaper the LEP really is.

This Editor still has not got the message that Lancastrians do have considerable political nous in spite of appearances and if  she had any commercial sense, which clearly she does not, then all the column centimetres she is losing by not impartially reporting the local political news would at least improve her balance sheet and might underpin her own future employment.

It has been interesting to note the trend this week to literally promote, to its readership, the benign face of Conservatism with an illustration of the newly rehabilitated ‘Al’ O’Toole after his Police investigation, under the caption ‘Ridiculous’.

Just how ridiculous is ambiguity personified.

All of this LEP posturing was of course predicted by the Bugler their Editor having had a searing lesson in local politics over the preceding year.

Now having decided in its subtlety(which it assumes once more the moronic Lancashire electorate cannot spot) it has decided to constrain the press activities of  the Leader of the local Nazty Party none other than the Tory gravy train engine ‘Driver’.

It has now reached the point of hilarity in the LEP readers columns that when another disastrous Conservative story breaks, is censored, and ‘whiffed’ onto its back pages that the ‘proleish yokels’ cry goes up, where is ‘Realmanworld’?

And although Driver has been trying a few other noms-de -plume of late, including ‘ClassAct’, none was as successful as ‘Girlinfinance’, were they sweetie? 

These commentators-many of them local politicians who lack the courage to identify themselves-simply enjoy his political self-flagellation(maybe he does too?) or as one put it, his rants.

Of course-sotto voce-no one really knows who this contributor ‘Realmanworld’ is?

We should all remember the Greek Euripides who said… ‘those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad’…though more favoured quotes by Bacchæ and Bugs Bunny might well be more appropriate… ‘Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish’… and… what a maroon!

Recently, much to the delight of his political opponents, he survived a vote of no confidence by one vote, or as he put it in his usual arrogance-that is all he(and they) needed-clearly a spent local political force the Tories still have time to panic and change their leader before the next General Election.

At times it looks as though where Driver is there are more sharks than water, or if you prefer more ‘et tu Brute’s’.

Of course Labour and the LibDems(who?) have little to congratulate themselves about either as they wrestle with Driver’s legacy of corruption.

However it is clear that Labour are wisely  allowing CC Borrow to take the lead using his experience at Westminster to thwart the opposition but clearing out Tory corruption, which the electorate expects in any event, is hardly a vote winner when little constructive or progressive ideas for the governance of Lancashire’s are published or advanced by either Party Leader.

It is time to get their skates on if they want the votes.

In spite of sending regular communications, in their preceding year of office, to both the Labour and the LibDems Leaders neither Coalition Party has yet had the political courage to grasp the nettle when it comes to dealing with the local retired disabled Fire Service Veteran pension issue, which is now in its scandalous 7^th year and will simply not go away.

If Lancashire thought it had money troubles wait until it discovers that the pension underpayment mistakes made by all administrations will have to be paid back out of LCC contingencies rather than by the DCLG(the government) because Pickles will claim it was all their fault and error and that they have to stump up rather than him.

By the time this Coalition gets around to addressing this major problem, for which they will receive no thanks in

timing at Party HQ, when it will be a headline issue just before the next General Election under the Tory banner headline…

‘Labour and LibDems defraud their disabled Fire Service Veterans’.

One wonders how that will go down with the electorate?

Labour’s anointed Chair at the Combined Fire Authority CC De Molfetta(is this the year of political lame ducks?) in whom the disabled FSVs have not the slightest confidence, appears in his recent decisions to favour the ethos of the corrupt practices of O’Toole’s former regime.

Either that, or as the Bugler has regularly pointed out to his County leader, he is that politically naïve at the LFRS where his political ignorance is regularly and glaringly manipulated by his ‘officers’ that he should have stuck to driving buses, or at least wakened up by now to be his own man.

But as we shall see De Molfetta is quite incapable of understanding any pension issue, fire or otherwise, given his time on the LCC Pensions Sub-Committee when he and others were quite happy to see pensions paid to the dead which the Audit Commission reminded him was hardly a good vote winner!

Recently in another National Fraud Initiative report the Audit Commission reminded him yet again to get a grip on LFRS pension ‘anomalies’ which started at roughly 167+/- in 2007 and have over 7 years fallen to 81. One wonders if that was  how this ‘success’ was put to De Molfetta by his ‘officer’ Warren who mirthfully and remorselessly manipulates him?

So indeed Labour and the LibDems have little to congratulate themselves about either but the clock ticks down to next May and disabled or not retired Fire Service Veteran are still voters who can influence their disgruntled families and how they will vote also…

Next we must turn back to look at O’Toole’s antics last week when he described the issue of the payment, or not, of transport for special needs children as ‘Ridiculous’. What exactly was ‘Ridiculous’? Or was this simply more poor reporting by the LEP who were too busy trying to promote O’Toole’s new image?

Did the LEP in ambiguity mean O’Toole was politically ridiculous; that his views were ridiculous; or O’Toole’s notion that the taxpayers might spend money to help disadvantaged children was ridiculous?

Knowing him, the voters will probably concluded  the latter, and LEP, if O’Toole must grumble/mumble please get the quote right in context.

O’Toole of course knows all about the LCC paying expenses for transport, his expenses, and because the criminal implications are so serious from a public fraud and political standpoint these are issues which the Bugler will report in absolute detail so that the electorate, particularly in West Lancs, can make up its own mind about O’Toole’s future, if he has one.

Presently, after the recent local government elections West Lancs is a ‘hung’ authority with 27 votes on either side of the Tory/Labour divide.

In the event O’Toole loses his seat because of his fraudulent activities then the entire political landscape of the West Lancs will landslide from ‘time immemorial blue’ to red…that is what political lame ducks do for a Party.

Accordingly, the Bugler which lacks confidence in the judicial process, will in a separate comprehensive document present hard evidence including the publishing of O’Toole’s LCC actual expense claim forms and publish all the facts relating to the continuing Police and other authorities investigations into O’Toole’s affairs.

The only question is who will get there first in their sleuthing? The Police; Lancashires’s Police Commissioner; the IPCC; the Serious Fraud Office; or the Taxman?

It is intriguing that the LFRS still refuse to release O’Toole’s expenses claims from SHQ. One hardly wonders what it is he is hiding the question now is simply to what extent he has been fiddling his daily double dipping into the taxpayers’ till at both the LCC and the LFRS whilst exploiting the age old deceit that it is best to keep the left hand from knowing what the right hand is doing when it is in two tills.

No one is persuaded, in spite of Driver’s rant, that the original enquiry was a money and time wasting exercise by the Police and as far as the FSVs are concerned this exposing of a cover up is far from concluded, indeed it is only just beginning…

Two years ago after regularly calling disabled Fire Service Veterans fraudsters these honest men decided that it was time to invoke the ‘what is good for the goose’ principle by examining O’Toole’s expenses claims.

A brief glance at these forms exposes the truth, which is as plain as a pikestaff, that it is in fact O’Toole who is the accomplished fraudster but first we must lay out the hard evidence for the Taxpayers to judge for themselves where their money went…