Good cash return for the absent councillors

Poor attendance means that some councillors are raking in more than £1,600 for every council meeting they attend. Some have only been to six meetings since last May. When that is divided by their annual £9,810 allowance, it works out at £1,635 a time.

The situation has got so bad that the council's Remuneration Panel is looking at steps to recoup part of the allowance from persistent absentees. The panel has asked officers to look at the legality of imposing a 'claw-back' system during the 2009/10 council year.

Figures obtained by the Post show that the worst non-attendee was Jamie Jarvis, BNP member for Village ward. Of 27 meetings he was required to attend he showed up for just seven - a ratio of 26 per cent, and a payout of £1,401 per meeting. Cllr Jarvis was not available for comment when the Post tried to contact him.

BNP members, Ronald Doncaster and Darren Tuffs, both Parsloes Ward, and Tracey Lansdown, Goresbrook, all attended only six meetings over the year.

Cllr Tuffs told the Post: "A lot of the reason is that I run my own business, and don't always know what I'm going to be doing during the day. I would have to apologise to my constituents. I do try and get to the meetings, but various circumstances stop me. I go to my surgeries every month; I never miss one of those. And when I get queries I sort them out."

Cllr Lansdown said she had been unable to attend meetings because of a serious illness to a close family member.

There are eight councillors who attended less than 50 per cent of their meetings. But this includes Valence Ward Labour councillor, Don Hemmett, who was hospitalised for nine weeks after suffering a severe stroke.

Sandra Doncaster, BNP for Valence, attended eight meetings, a ratio of 44 per cent; while the BNP's candidate for Mayor, Christine Knight, Mayesbrook, went to 13, a ratio of 45 per cent. Jeffrey Steed, BNP for Eastbury, attended 21 meetings, which works out at 44 per cent.

He said: "It's down to work commitments. I work on the railways, and I'm on nights at the moment. It's not stopped me from doing the work that needs to be done in the community."

Bob Little, Labour for Eastbrook and member of the Executive, attended 20 meetings, a ratio of 49 per cent. He said: "I've got a very big executive portfolio, and I'm also chairman of the Broadway Theatre. I do a minimum of three meetings a week, which do not show up on the figures."

Cllr Richard Barnbrook, leader of the BNP group, told last week's annual Assembly that he accepted responsibility for his councillors who failed to make the 50 per cent target:

"I appreciate that my own councillors don't have great attendance" he said.

Barking and Dagenham Post

BNP demo at Dagenham Town Show a complete washout!

The Stormfront nazi forum is awash with recrimination this weekend after a national demonstration was called at the Dagenham Town Show by pornmeister Richard Barnbrook, the leader of the BNP's contingent on Barking and Dagenham Council, then cancelled at the last minute leaving supporters from as far afield as Kent and Oxford with nowhere to go to cheerlead for Nick Griffin and his band of not so Merry Men.

The demo was called for 10am on Saturday but we're told that only a dozen arrived (including the two supporters from outside London).

Barnbrook, rapidly gaining more notoriety for his alleged drink problems than for either his mismanagement of the BNP's Barking and Dagenham contingent or his gay-porn film, is said to have cancelled the demonstration on the morning it was due after seeing the large police contingent that had mustered in the belief that the BNP would at least manage a small crowd of demonstrators.

Though cancelling early in the day, Barnbrook didn't think to let the BNP office know, nor even to update the Barking and Dagenham BNP website with the news, leaving those arriving to wander aimlessly around enjoying the festivities, which they probably enjoyed rather more than hanging around with Barnbrook and his chums.

One angry supporter posted this on Stormfront;

'it was a complete disaster for the bnp.b+d is the bnp stronghold in london and the southeast and red ken and the reds have just marched in and run the bnp out of town.not only have they turned a family community event into a multicultural anti racist gig but the bnp the so called party of the people,defenders of the white community and culture have put up the white flag and run.what wonderful encouragement to the next lot of reds who want to disrupt a bnp event.how can the bnp expect the people of b+d to vote for them again?i have met barnbrook a few times and he seems pretty committed so maybe the order came from higher up.all in all a thuroughly pathetic turn of events...'

Difficult to see how anyone 'disrupted' any BNP event here but there you go.

Barnbrook's career seems to be in a rapidly descending spiral. Even though chosen - in a moment of apparent insanity - as the BNP's candidate for Mayor of London, he seems to be incapable of maintaining any kind of political momentum. The revelations about the porn film, his claimed relationship with Tilda Swinton (denied by her), his alleged use of an escort agency to find a partner to take to a council function, his ludicrous prancing around dressed up as St George, his laughable attempt to look like Martin Bell in his rather silly white suit, his complete inability to stop his group fragmenting in all directions and his apparent inability to string more than four words together to form a coherent sentence have all combined to make him something of a laughing stock - and this is just inside the BNP.

Despite all this, Nick Griffin, to universal amazement, chose Barnbrook to be the councillor representative on the BNP's Advisory Council last year where, it appears, he has failed again. A post on the Britain Forward (anti-Griffin but apparently pro-BNP) has this to say;

'Many party members were surprised when Cllr Richard Barnbrook was appointed as the representative of all councillors on the Advisory Council in November 2006, with his murky past and his inability, despite the largest BNP council group in the country, to achieve anything positive for local residents or for our party. He cannot even keep his own councillors in order. Only last month Cllr Jamie Jarvis embarrassed our party by getting caught up in a police drugs raid at a local pub that the local BNP group regularly uses for meetings. He should have been at a council meeting representing his ward and our party. The national representative job was obviously beyond a man who cannot even sort out his own back yard, so it was only a matter of time before someone else was appointed as the party’s “councillor liaison officer”. Nick Eriksen, our London organiser, says diplomatically that he will work “in addition to, not replacing, Richard Barnbrook”, but everyone knows he is there to make sure the job actually gets done...Most people in the party know that the choice of Richard Barnbrook to take on Red Ken in the London Mayoral election next year is a disaster in the offing but Nick Griffin doesn’t seem to care...'

The frustration and anger inside and around the BNP at the party's continuing councillor-related cock-ups, its financial disasters, its demo's that never happen and its lacklustre performance at the polls is encapsulated neatly in this final sentence to an article on yet another anti-Griffin 'nationalist' site;

'It's no wonder the media now rather like us a bit! We are run by crass incompetents!'

They are indeed.