I'm currently pursuing a story on Bournemouth Council Leader Cllr Stephen McLoughlin, who was found to have used his Council laptop to access "top shelf adult material". He has had a slap on the wrist from his friends at the Council and largely seems to have gotten away with little or no punishment, which is hugely hypocritical given that 20 Council staff were severely reprimanded for emailing an 'inappropriate' joke to one another.
According to the Taxpayer's Alliance, Cllr McLoughlin awarded himself a 34% pay increase last year whilst creating a £2.4 million over spend. With Councils due to be forced to publish their executive pay by the end of the year, it will certainly be interesting to see just how much Cllr McLoughlin can afford to spend on "top shelf adult material".
Last year he was mooted as a potential candidate for Bournemouth West. People in the Borough of Bournemouth are rightly angry at this flagrant display of abuse - not just of Council property and rules through the misuse of the laptop, but more importantly through the twisted justice that sees him avoid referral to the Standards Board Committee.
He conveniently seems to have gone off on holiday - apparently booked "months ago" according to Democratic Services at Bournemouth Borough Council. Well he was most certainly at home when we went round to see him at his house, and his wife informed us that they were leaving the next day.
Leads are still being pursued, and we intend to conduct interviews this week. If you have any information on this, or are just angry, then get in touch, as we'll be making a short documentary on this. If we scrutinise these politicians more closely now, then perhaps we might avoid letting them think they can get away with things like the expenses scandal.
1 comments:
the real one to look at hear is councillor beasley
he is head of planning and loives a bung.
His best mate runs a planning consultancy and always wins planning where all else has failed
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