Edinburgh Sucks! | “It wisnae me, honest guv” says experienced politician Bunty

Elizabeth Maginnis

“It wisnae me, honest guv” says experienced politician Bunty

By The Basa ⋅ September 25, 2007 ⋅

A couple of interesting posts on Elizabeth Maginnis’ blog today. In the first one she tries to clear up our previous information about when she became chair of Waterfront Edinburgh and when the project she manages got money from the company where she enjoyed the position of Chair.

Also, the Evening News phoned to check again, on the details of PEP’s lease of garage facilities with PEP. The conspiracy theorists are obviously still cranking it up. For the avoidance of doubt, PEP holds the original lease agreed on 22 January 2003 signed by the Transport Organiser and a WEL representative. This was updated on 31 March 2004 for insurance purposes - again by the Transport Organiser and a WEL representative. The original lease was agreed before I was a Board member at WEL or before Steve Izatt was in post. I presume it went before WEL Board members at the time for an ‘in principle’ approval. The updated lease would not go before the Board since it was simply an operational matter but if it had, I would have declared an conflict of interest and withdrawn from the meeting.

This contradicts the Evening News story where it was stated:

The documents show that Waterfront Edinburgh paid £1750 a year towards PEP’s insurance for their minibus in 2005 and 2006. The payment was also sanctioned for this year, but was then cancelled after May’s elections when the new board came in.

Now where we have the difficulty getting things to tie up is:

The difference between Bunty’s date of 22 January 2003 when she says the deal was signed (and ratified again on 31st March 2004.
The Evening News makes no mention of payments until 2005 and 2006 and a stopped payment in 2007. Is this because they have their facts wrong and there was indeed previous payments and the deal was done some time before this. Would WEL make a decision to award a charity a small annual sum two years before that sum was required? Methinks not.
Could the Evening News’ leak who we presume, from reading between the lines to be the ever so experienced Councillor Cardownie have it all wrong and they payments have been going since 2003? If so, then we may have an apology to make to Bunty and the Evening News should be joining us.
What about the email from WEL themselves which states that “No reference can be found in the Minutes of WEL which indicates Board approval to award funding to the Pilton Elderly Project.”?
Why did Bunty not give the information she now puts on her blog after the fact, to the Evening News reporter when he called. This would have totally cleared her name and the story wouldn’t even have appeared.

There are still questions to be answered and the Evening News will have to do some of that digging themselves. Were they lied to or did they just not have all the information and ran with the story.

The killer quote from Bunty’s blog which now calls into question all PPP/PFI and Arms-Length company deals that HER council started is:

there is, of course, another side to the story… of how a chief executive reared in the private sector managed to run rings round a Board full of experienced public servants….and that story will be told in due course.

What in fact we believe Bunty is trying to say here is that the Chief Executive of Waterfront Edinburgh Limited, Stephen Izatt has totally pulled the wool over the poor councillors eyes and ran wide and loose with all the money. So if it is happening at WEL is it also happening at TIE? Is it also happening at EDI? Is it also happening in the PFI/PPP deals that she and her colleagues struck. Do all these deals now have to be looked at again because the councillors and other public servants who were supposed to be looking after the interests of us citizens were in fact “having rings run round” them (and kilts and shawls).

If true, then why were these “experienced public servants” appointed to positions where their experience was obviously lacking and finally, if we never had any public servants who had the correct experience, why the hell did we get into these deals anyway.

It seems to us in EdSucks towers that Bunty Backhander is digging the hole deeper and deeper. We as the electorate must now question all the abovementioned deals for value for money for the taxpayer.

The council through it’s Chief Executive must, because of Councillor Maginnis’ statement above, instigate an immediate investigation into whether a single person employed by this board “full of experienced public servants” managed to totally savage the reputation of a company, which was supposed to be a company for the benefit of the citizens of Edinburgh. His investigation must also look at all the other arms-length companies to find out if the same thing is happening there. The investigation should also take into account that the majority of the stories that have been covered about WEL in recent weeks have been covered by EdinburghSucks.com since the beginning of last year and the Chief Executive must look into why that board full of experienced public servants did not look into how their company was being run by the Chief Executive when that same board were reading EdinburghSucks.com. Finally the investigation must ask why if this board knew what was going on (the new board seem to find out quite quickly) the Chief Executive wasn’t fired and a full report made to the council and the public who are supposed to be benefitting from WEL.

It also seems like fellow board member, experienced public servant and former Chair of EDI, Councillor Ian “The Runner” Perry is keeping extremely schtum on the whole affair. He doesn’t seem to be running to Bunty’s aid at all. The Evening News should be chasing him to find out what he knew.

All in all - it is really a bit of a mess. It now needs to be cleared up and the current council must seriously look at the management of all PFI/PPP/Arms Length arrangements and find out if the taxpayers are protected.

As more and more information comes out, it now seems like an everyday occurrence for the previous council administration of which Councillor Cardownie for the huge percentage of the time was also a member. It also begs the question, if it was in his ward as a labour councillor why didn’t he ask the same questions when he was a Labour councillor that he is now doing as an SNP councillor?

So remind us, why don’t the public trust politicians?