What has been happening with East Devon and Tesco

Apologies for a long silence.  

Quite a lot has been going on - none of it good - and it always seemed sensible to wait for the next development before reporting back to you.  Now we seem to have reached a dead stop, so I can lay out the whole sorry story.

Briefly to recap.  The EDDC Development Management Committee agreed on 21 September to stop the Tesco pipeline operating between 11pm and 7am, and this decision was witnessed by several solid citizens, myself amongst them.  

However, this time restriction was removed from the record by EDDC officers after meeting with Tesco.  I complained about this to all the officers and elected members involved - without result. They neither deny nor admit it, but refuse to do anything about it.

My last post (below) reported the result of a freedom of information request for the actual notes of the4 meeting.  EDDC spun this out to the last moment, and then said there was nothing to show. I then identified and wrote directly to the clerk to the committee who took the notes and wrote the first draft of the minutes.  

He explained that his notes were only retained until the official minutes produced from them were approved at the next committee meeting.  The notes were then securely destroyed.  This complies with the mandatory data protection regulations, although good practice would be to keep them for 6 years to resolve any possible disputes - like this one.

I have also written to a variety of public law officers, but they all refuse to get involved.  The Serious Fraud Office suggested going to the local police if we suspect corruption - but, of course, we have no proof of that. EDDC are quite capable of using illegal data manipulation against the public interest without getting paid for it - other than by the long-suffering tax-payers.

Since none of us has the funding for judicial review, we shall just have to let them cheat us and lie to us as much as they like: we can do nothing to stop them.  But there are two lessons for us all:

1. When the elections come around next in 2011, use your vote to expel the miscreants.  If your local candidate is amongst the members of the Development Management Committee, then vote for someone else.  These people have demonstrated that they care nothing for their constituents, for democracy or for the rule of law.  You can find their names by clicking HERE

2.  Tescowatch is futile.  We set it up to watch over Tesco and tell EDDC about any transgressions, expecting them to jump to defend the public interest. How naive can you get ?  EDDC are active collaborators in making things as easy as possible for Tesco, whatever the cost to the public whose interests they exist to defend.  Since no-one will listen to us, there is no point in complaining about anything - however monstrous.

So, unless someone comes up with evidence we can take to the police, this will be my last post. 

Goodbye and good luck.  . 

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