On Monday, thirteen councillors were thwarted by 20 votes to 10 from holding the ruling Residents for Uttlesford (R4U) Party to account for their mishandling of airport planning and for allowing alleged criminality, bullying and dishonesty to continue to damage the reputation of the council.

The big issue is R4U’s disastrous mishandling of Stansted Airport’s planning application to expand. It’s like The Play That Goes Wrong, EXCEPT IT’S REAL!

Three members of the R4U cabinet, Council Leader John Lodge, Deputy Leader Petrina Lees and Planning Guru John Evans tried to shift the blame for their £multi-million fiasco THEY have dropped on local taxpayers. Real residents will have to foot a massive bill for R4U’s incompetence and mendacity.

As I have written before, opportunists never take responsibility for their own mistakes. Like Donald Trump, they scrabble around for scapegoats to blame for their own failures.

And so it was. On Monday, Councillors Evans and Lees pointed their fingers at the Council’s own professional officers – the people whose job it is to carry out the instructions of the Residents for Uttlesford twenty-six. But they did it in a roundabout way. They attacked those councillors who had called the meeting to challenge R4U over their incompetence. The Cabinet Members alleged that the Opposition councillors – five Conservatives, five Liberal Democrats, two Greens and one Independent – were wrong to criticise R4U, because that meant they were really attacking the Council’s professional officers. That is utter nonsense. Opposition Members told R4U time and time again last autumn that the process was flawed. R4U could have called a Full Council Meeting to address the criticisms. Did they? They certainly did not. Now they are desperate to find scapegoats for their own head-in-the-sand neglect.

That is disreputable behaviour by R4U. “Not me, guv! We’re not in charge of this place when things go wrong.” That is pathetic. That is dishonest.

THAT IS WHY IT’S THE RESIDENTS FOR UTTLESFORD RULING PARTY THAT HAS GONE WRONG!

My speech from Monday’s farcical and tragic performance can be read HERE (in presentation format).

Now watch the whole performance on YouTube! R4U wanted most of the meeting behind closed doors. The press, including the BBC, was thrown out. On Tuesday the uncensored section was released on YouTube. By the end of Tuesday, ALL the meeting’s proceedings were released! Such is Uttlesford under the ‘ever-so-transparent’ R4U regime. Watch it HERE!