Is Jon Collins a Shameless Liar?

So the blog awakes from its slumber for 2015. Will it last? Who knows...

But back to the matter in hand. JoCo appeared in local music mag 'Leftlion' for an interview back in October. It wasn't exactly challenging, more 'Left Love-In' than Leftlion if you ask me but he was asked about why 'no action' was taken over the Housing Allocations scandal. I will quote his answer in full -

"We did take action, it was just largely unreported by local media who were very quick to report the early facts, but less interested in covering the action points after that. A number of people were prosecuted and lost their jobs, others had formal warnings and several of the houses in question were re-allocated. The issue illustrates why we don’t want to work on projects like reconfiguring city boundaries and why it’s better to do our core jobs to the best of our ability, as transparently as possible."

The first thing you'll notice is that the last sentence is just gobbledegook, it makes no sense whatsoever. But in addition he states as fact the following -

- 'a number' of people were prosecuted and lost their jobs
- 'others' (note the plural) had formal warnings
- 'several' houses were re-allocated.

Compare this to the only public statement ever made by NCC at the Executive Board meeting in December 2010. You can read it for yourself to check but as far as I can tell the sum total of action taken is as follows -

- NO tenancies repossessed, although one case is said to be 'under review' (paras 1.3-1.5).
- One 'right to buy' application being 'contested' and another right to buy discount being recovered via the courts (para 1.6)
- NO fraud cases brought (para 1.7)

None of this could really be said to be 'several houses re-allocated' and at best it could only be said that two people were prosecuted, more likely only one. Technically speaking 'two' is of course 'a number' but that's not how most people would interpret it in conversation. So far we have clear falsehood and obfuscation from JoCo there.

- ONE agency worker had their 'service terminated'. There's no information as to whether this extended as far as being sacked from their agency but we'll count it up as a 'person losing their job'.
- two workers investigated but no disciplinary action pursued
- one worker who received a final written warning

So one worker lost their job (possibly) and one received a written warning. Not 'a number' or 'others' plural at all. JoCo's account to Leftlion is demonstrably false.

For completeness I would suggest that there is absolutely no possibility that JoCo would not have been kept fully informed of all action taken, in considerately more detail than that given publicly too. He was at the Executive Board meeting where the report was presented and, even though he left early, he would have received a copy of the report.

So in conclusion, JoCo expressed false statements, along with some obfuscation, and he must have known them to be false. The word for a person who does that is 'liar'.

TBC in part 2