The Plastic Mayor? Damien Egan's track record under scrutiny

As the Plastic Mayor of Lewisham seeks higher office as the Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Bristol North East, Damien Egan's political claims and actions during his tenure in the borough of Lewisham come under scrutiny. Despite his campaign touting dedication to "the people" and a better way of doing politics, Egan's track record in London paints a less rosy picture—one of overlooking serious allegations and failing to address residents' concerns.  TheBigRetort…

In Lewisham, constituents have begun questioning the consistency between the mayor's public persona and his off-camera inactions. Once the flashbulbs pop and Egan bares his Hollywood smile, there are also some doubts that this candidate will truly fulfil his promises to the people of Bristol. Just like the Wizard of Oz, putting on a grand performance, but hiding behind a curtain of inaction when faced with real challenges, Egan has been the sham in Lewisham.

The promise about protecting green heritage routes appears questionable when one examines the decisions taken under Egan's mayoralty. In Lewisham's Brockley Conservation Area for instance, shameless profiteering by "live-work" developers took precedence over the needs of the established community. Like a group of pretenders on their way to the land of Oz, these developers presented themselves as "creatives" while pursuing a property windfall site in the heritage mews that quickly became residential in all but name. 

"Meanwhile, Egan seemed to play the role of the fourth wise monkey, covering his balls whilst choosing to see no evil and hear no evil when it came to the concerns of constituents."

A brief foray in history... 

Ashby Mews, nestled between heritage housing, used to be a simple backland lane connecting two roads in leafy Brockley. However, under the guise of artists and creatives, a family of "live-work" property developers set their sights on it as a  property windfall site. Their guru, the wizard, presenting himself as a not-so simple sculptor - "internationally renowned" as he liked to spin it - began preventing access to the once-open mews and eroding public rights-of-way through what was a long-held heritage walk. 

The lack of planning enforcement to remove gates erected by the sculptor, coupled with Egan's seemingly distant approach, left residents questioning his commitment to their concerns. This included Lewisham's planning department and some of its officers.  Just like Dorothy questioning the true powers of the mighty Wizard of Oz, Toto quivered, and so did Damian. 

In his Bristol North East campaign, Egan portrays himself as a people-focused politician dedicated to making lasting change. However, residents in Lewisham impacted by his decisions remained unconvinced. Like the rainbow in the sky in that land that a little girl dreamed of, beautiful and promising, but always just out of reach, it wasn't Oz but Ashby Mews.

"Allegations of corruption within Lewisham's planning department have circulated for years, but no full and proper investigation has taken place."

Despite being warned about certain events during his time as mayor and councillor, Egan remained silent and took no decisive action to address these concerns. This lack of transparency and inaction has left some residents seeing him as a "plastic politician," raising doubts about his suitability to also represent the people of Bristol in Parliament.

As an elected mayor in Lewisham, Egan's responsibility was to lead and safeguard residents' interests. Unfortunately, when faced with serious allegations of corruption in the planning department, he failed to take decisive action. This disparity between Egan's inactions in Lewisham and the image he now publicly projects in his Bristol North East campaign raises critical questions about his integrity and commitment to public service.

"Just like Dorothy, they should seek the truth behind the curtain."

While commendable endeavours like turning schools around and leading on climate action are touted, they cannot overshadow the need for accountability and fairness. And yet, residents directly impacted by planning enforcement issues, not just at Ashby Mews, have yet to witness the promised positive changes materialise in Lewisham.

However, Lewisham constituents believe they deserve political representatives who prioritise transparency, accountability, and genuine care for the community. Rather than concealing ego and political ambition behind a plastic façade. The revelations of corruption within Lewisham and Egan's lack of action still demand answers. Bristol North East residents should carefully consider whether his claims align with his actions. 

Will Bristol voices be genuinely heard? Will their communities be represented with integrity and dedication? Will Bristol's current mayor Marvin Rees see off the sham pretender?

The choice is in the hands of the Labour Party in Bristol. Just like Dorothy, they should seek the truth behind that curtain.

Hannah's Ghosts - Unmasked

 

(Photo: Chris Floyd)

TheBigRetort pursues phantoms in the haunted mind of Journalist Hannah Betts, and comes up with a discovery about her ghosts.  

 

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

Make what you will of Hannah Betts, the journalist. She claims that her former family home was haunted throughout much of the family's time there. Hannah has appeared in both print and tv or blog extolling the belief that her former home was regularly visited by these poltergeists, a ghost or other supernatural being supposedly responsible for physical disturbances. 

She writes a haunting tale:  “Teenage fears or a more sinister presence? Make up your own mind as our writer reveals her haunting Hallowe'en story.” The Telegraph headlined in 2013, adding some weight to a very spooky tale indeed.

THREE SPECTRES

Betts claimed that the house, boasted three spectres: a woman, who paced the ground floor, an aged doctor, forever racing up the stairs searching for a dying grandson, and the ghost of a victim of a confrontation that had ‘spilled over into murder’.

Twenty-six years after the first spooky events, Betts described for the reader and the listener that this all took place at an unnamed street in Moseley. When I first heard these tall tales online, Betts had retold the story so many times that it had become very real, to her at least. TheBigRetort takes a little peak through the keyhole... 

THE HOUSE ON SCHOOL ROAD

Surprisingly, the house is not that three-storeys Victorian building seen in the copy produced in certain publications. Betts herself is careful not to provide the actual address. In fact, like the house on haunted hill, TheBigRetort can reveal, it actually sits in School Road, Moseley.  

STREET VIEW ARCHIVES

Street View Archives capture the property down the years as a seemingly much-lived-in Victorian villa. However, during the time the Betts family spent there, if the photos are anything to go by at least, it seems unlikely much improvement was made to it over that time. This adds to the eerie feel of the place. 

Built over a century ago, it seems likely that one or two or more people may have died there. 

HERE BE DEMONS

As the Betts family placed that key in the rusty lock for the first time and pushed back the door on creaky hinges, had the dearly departed that previously died there refused to vacate?

It seems unlikely that the sales particulars ever stated ‘here be demons’. Although Hannah is convinced of them. She wrote on this: “Oh, how we scoffed. And, yet, doors would shut of their own volition, footsteps could be heard. Every night at 4am, someone — something — would tear up the stairs, rattling and then thrusting open the doors in its wake (all of which required proper turning and forcing), until it reached the master bedroom, entering in an all-mighty, door-slamming storm.” Betts informs.

MURDER SHE WROTE

In another other-worldly X-Files incident, Betts claimed that the chimney suddenly caved in, and a newspaper fell down into the fireplace. 

It told of a murder… in that very house.

Other things happened, as they do. A mirror flew (fell?) off the wall and on its back “Victorian” writing read: “Your mother sows socks in hell Karras!”

 No, sorry, that was the 1973 film The Exorcist. One of its fictional characters Father Damien Karras. His mother didn’t sow socks in hell. After which she ‘Regan’ vomits green bile over the priests who attempt to exorcise her demons.

Father Karras : I think it might be helpful if I gave you some background on the different personalities Regan has manifested. So far, I'd say there seem to be three. She's convinced...

Father Merrin : There is only one.

 

THE GHOST TOLD HANNAH TO 'FUCK OFF'

However, like the little girl’s head in the film, Hannah’s head also does a compete 360. This ghost chillingly said: “Get out…” and other rude words.

Hannah elaborates: “We didn’t care. My parents had five children – me, 15-year-old Victoria, 12-year-old George, Flo, nine, and Tim, four – and we needed space; even space that everyone else was too afraid to occupy. Our new home was large, beautiful, surrounded by swaying greenery. However, there was something unsettling about it: a personality, almost, and sense that we were installing ourselves in a place already occupied. It never felt quite empty. Doors would shut of their own accord, footsteps echoed. It felt as if we were being watched, assessed.“

FOLLOWING EARTHLY LEADS

Hannah Betts herself does have an uncanny resemblance to Lucy Westenra, one of Count Dracula’s beautiful chalk-faced victims. "Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?"     

On a dark night, reflected in that old dusty candlelit mirror, Hannah could appear quite ghostly herself. Could Hannah have been playing tricks on her younger siblings?

Be that as it may. Whilst a trawl of old Victorian newspapers uncovered no deaths or even murders in the house, TheBigRetort started to wonder if the answer lies elsewhere. 

A SUSPECT EMERGES 

Following the deaths of her parents, Hannah wrote that she refused to attend both funerals. ‘You’ll regret it,’ everyone warned me. But I never have, and am convinced I never will.” [I Refused To Go To My Parents' Funerals WOMAN - UK| June 26, 2017.]

Fortunately, though her dad’s obituary, available online, may solve the mystery of Hannah’s It relates mostly to a very special, kind man that his kids called “afro” due to his very bushy hair.sts.

 Photo: The Times

Tim Betts obituary reads…

“They lived in Moseley in a house also shared by six cats, five dogs and sundry other animals." 

So, a pretty busy house both day and night..? 

THE FINDINGS

Dad was an eminent “epilepsy” psychiatrist. As a result, he was also seemingly somewhat unsurprisingly overworked. In fact, a few things of relevance stand out. “Betts was a workaholic who often finished at 10pm, fell asleep on the sofa, then rose at 4am before heading back to his patients or students… “

Betts senior, the workaholic...? Who often finished at 10pm...? Who fell asleep on the sofa…?  Then arose… at 4am…?

Hannah's ghost: “Every night at 4am, someone — something — would tear up the stairs, rattling and then thrusting open the doors in its wake (all of which required proper turning and forcing), until it reached the master bedroom, entering in an all-mighty, door-slamming storm.”

Make of Hannah's ghost story what you will. She may simply be a teller of tall tales, a fantasist, or simply mistaken. But she certainly isn’t much of a paranormal investigator.

TheBigRetort

Andrew: the prince who turned into a frog - exclusive - His face WAS running with sweat

Virginia Giuffre, nee Roberts, claimed that she had been sex-trafficked across the Atlantic in 2001, to dance and later sexually pleasure a prince. The teen partied long into the night in a London nightclub with this handsome prince - “sweating profusely all over me”.  Decades later, the handsome prince turned into an ugly frog and denied sweating.  TheBigRetort... uncovers the truth.

In a now infamous interview with Emily Maitlis, Prince Andrew was probed. Did he or didn’t he sweat? 

Andrew retorted: "There’s a slight problem with the sweating, because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don’t sweat or I didn’t sweat at the time and that was…was it…yes, I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at and I simply…it was almost impossible for me to sweat… So, I’m afraid to say that there’s a medical condition that says that I didn’t do it, so therefore…”

The prince left the rest limply hanging. However, in the written reporting that followed this was represented by three dots after the “so therefore”. The ellipsis meant that it’s obvious to those reading (or viewers) what is not being said but could be said in the ensuing silence. 

In other words, therefore… she’s delusional, or lying.  

Sweating then became the rock on which the royal defence rested. 

But the interview left many British subjects doffing caps through niggling doubt. Was the monarch’s son seemingly clinging to sweaty discomfort as a defence against Giuffre’s further claims of wrongdoing? 

And, sweat or not, is it really relevant?

” Andrew was said to look pale and his face was running with sweat.”  

TheBigRetort reveals... the Sunday World is the second most popular newspaper in the Republic of Ireland. In November 2000, reporter Esther McCarthy wrote on page 50 of the World that whilst visiting New York’s trendiest bars, according to other party goers:” Andrew was said to look pale and his face was running with sweat.”  [Emphasis added.] #

The finding that the playboy prince regularly broke out into a sweat was not unearthed in any British newspaper. Make of that what you will. But the revelation revealed here upholds at least one part of Giuffre’s claim. Four months before the 2001 alleged non-sweating incident, Andrew was seen sweating in another nightclub.  

So, a once handsome prince kissed the Blarney Stone and turned into an ugly sweaty frog. And it’s the Blarney Stone that American lawyers may now throw at the former playboy prince during any cross-examination.

 For, as Paddy McGuinness once said: “I think blokes definitely sweat on most things when it comes to being questioned by women.”

UK GOVERNMENT "LOCKGATE" GROOMING SCANDAL

Photo: Mark Harrison

The United Kingdom is in tight lockdown. However, whilst the nation inches towards struggle street, are the Queen's ministers secretly being 'groomed' in the sacred salons of Westminster'? 

 

TheBigRetort...

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Boris Johnson advised against all “non-essential” travel.  The pub, the clubs, and even - God forbid - the hairdresser came under BoJo's it's a no-no 'thingy me bob'. 

A week later the whole country was ordered into a lockdown described as  so ‘hair' tight it even covered hairdressers.  

It seemed to many that hairdressers should not have been placed out of bounds. If the country were to die from a thousand cuts economically... this was a cut too deep. 

Yes there was anger. Confusion even... Why were some among the flock allowed to work and others not?

Nevertheless barbers were on "the list".  And weary citizens, frightened out of their liberties, somewhat greying at the sides, surrendered freedoms and slavishly followed the pied-piping mantra: "STAY HOME" "PROTECT THE NHS" "SAVE LIVES"

Only not everyone did... Rule breakers were hassled by school monitors, in the form of thought police. Whilst others, nuanced in their phrasing, in that public-school way, were... "economical" with the, err, "truth".

TheBigRetort 'razors' concerns.

Why is it - after months of lockdown - that this cabal of the 'heads' of the UK government have a perfect short-back-and-sides? Whilst the PM remains his characteristically shambolic self.

The following list includes those ministers I suspect have been touched by the scissors... during lockdown. 

 

The Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP

23 March 2020: Lockdown begins.

Did the secretary of state's hairdresser use surgical scissors on those sideburns? 

15 May...nearly two months later? Borderline.

The Rt Hon Dominic Raab MP

18 March 2020

 Did the foreign secretary avoid non-essential travel 
to a hair salon'? Note the neat sideburns.

Nearly two months later, 7 May 2020

The Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP

30 March 2020

 Did the minister for housing stay indoors, 
or travel 40 miles... for a haircut?

Recent snap. Or should that be 'snip'?



The Rt Hon Alok Sharma MP

28 March 2020

Did the business secretary trade his honour for that neat cut?

Today

One rule for them, another for us?

"It brings a whole new meaning to 'lock' down. But the 

modelling used is rigorous; and is based on the assumption 

that these may not be quite so 'right honourable' persons after all." [Professor Neil Ferguson.]  

"It may come as a surprise that social distancing may not  hold true for some members of my cabinet - outed by the quite splendid The Big Retort. But whilst I was   hospitalised they  have apparently brazenly Big Brotherhooded the nation - with fear and uncertainty and thinly-disguised glee - into self-imprisonment; into snitching on neighbours, and who appear themselves to have broken the ban.  Leaving the rest of the flock, not only with locks down to their ankles but chained to their homes. It's quite Stasi-like... and seems  less west more 'East' minster." 

[Prime Minister Boris Johnson.]

"I blame China."
[Donald J Trump, President of Trump Towers.]


A WORD OF WARNING FROM THE EDITOR. Whilst some may claim that the above represents proof that ministers have been breaking the law. After all they have regularly presented themselves on television and in the print media without a hair out of place. I'm not so sure. Trump-like, I'm just asking. It 's just a small sample with hair growth over only two months. Perhaps the ministers have been cutting their own hair. Perhaps they married hairdressers - who knows? I'm just asking.

However, if not...?

In a scandal known as "Lockgate"; you the people are invited to point the finger at the Groomed of Westminster: 

Do you know who's been shearing all the prime minister’s sheeple?

Do you know who has been doing the grooming inside the heart of Parliament?

If you do know the Demon Barber of Westminster, or have others to add to the snip list, then please leave a comment... TheBigRetort.