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[bold]LEGAL NOTICE: I write the notes below in my private capacity as a local resident only. Whilst reference is made to public office I may hold, the notes below do not represent council business.[/bold] ---------------------- Wiltshire Times published a letter from me in their following issue, which can be seen at the following address: http://archive.wiltshiretimes.co.uk/2006/10/27/285434.html Here is the text of the letter: [bold]A clarification[/bold] [italic]From the Wiltshire Times, first published Friday 27th Oct 2006.[/italic] "THE story in your article "Police warning after 'tiger' jibe" (October 20) deserves clarification. The notification I received from the police warned me about allegations by Cllr Bill Braid and said that if the alleged harassment continues a prosecution might occur. I deny harassment. There is a fine line between applying pressure in a legitimate dispute and illegal harassment. The police agree with me that this is a civil dispute and not a criminal matter. Matters took a serious turn last year when Cllr Braid made allegations to the Standards Board for England that I had breached the code of conduct. The Board rejected every allegation outright and explained its reasons in detail. I stand by everything I have written and welcome the new investigation by the Standards Board. I now have an opportunity to show that that everything alleged is either unfounded or not a breach of the code anyway. RUSSELL HAWKER Westbury Town and District Councillor, Westbury" In fact, the above-mentioned investigation is on-going. Due to the reams of paper produced by Bill Braid and due to all the muddles he has made with the detail in those papers, the whole process is very slow for the poor investigator who has had to work out what the allegations actually are to start with. Another problem is that the invetigator, perhaps understandably, gets muddled between different events at different times. [bold]STANDARDS GRAVY TRAIN ROLLS ON[/bold] I am in no doubt that the investigator is paid by the hour, so he is bound to come up with a preliminary view (ie. an unproven view - because his finding in the final report must be proven at any hearing) of a breach of the code based on some peculiar muddled interpretation of the code he has come across. We will see ...... I am in no doubt that the Standards Committee at WWDC is made up on sensible people who will see straight through the muddles and any weird legal arguments which have no proper caselaw to back them up in a hearing. I expect to be fully cleared. As any hearing will be well after the elections in May, I might not even be a councillor then anyway. I might not even run anyway in the elections. I will definitely attend a standards committee hearing in any event to clear my name of the really silly and muddled allegations and to expose the smear campaign waged by Bill Braid which involves an abuse of the Standards Board complaints procedure. I can tell you with 100% confidence that the "Tiger" comments (a private conversation when I was not acting in any council capacity anyway) do not represent a breach of the code at all. The High Court case between the Adjudication Panel for England and the Mayor of London (Ken Livingstone) last October confirmed what I knew all along anyway - that when a local authority member is off duty (ie. not acting in any official capacity), the code of conduct DOES NOT APPLY. The Standards Board has been issuing the wrong guidance to everyone all along on this point. Unfortunately for me, investigators are obliged to follow Standards Board guidance - whether it is obviously rubbish or not ... ho hum ....

LEGAL NOTICE: I write the notes below in my private capacity as a local resident only. Whilst reference may be made to public office I may hold, the notes below do not represent council business. ---------------------- Another point I've just remembered: [bold]There is no such thing as a warning notice under the "Protection from Harassment Act 1997"[/bold] (to use the correct name of the Act). The Act has absolutely no Warning Notice procedure within it at all. The Act deals with civil and criminal aspects of harassment. [bold]The Police have powers anyway to issue "warnings" to anyone that they think might need advice to make sure they stay the right side of the law.[/bold] If the Police had evidence of a criminal act, I'm sure they would proceed to investigate towards a possible prosecution. The idea of a "Warning" is to warn people that if they proceed with an envisaged course of action, that the Police may then treat that as criminal behaviour and may act accordingly with a possible prosecution. The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 makes it a criminal offence to undertake a course of action which harasses someone. A criminal prosecution would require the Police to show that the accused person was aware that the alleged behaviour was causing distress etc to the alleged victim. Therefore, the Police have invented a new warning procedure which involves issuing a piece of paper which is called a "Notice under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997" which explains what criminal harassment is and sets out the behaviour that the Police do not want to see happen. The issue of such a "warning" or "notice" does not go on anyone's Police Record. It is 100% below the radar (in Police terminology). It simply makes the life of the Police easier in that if anyone who has been warned then commits the acts set out in the warning, the Police will have evidence that the person was aware of the consequences .... and the Police would be able to secure a conviction. ie. the warning notice that the Police are using simply helps them to later get a conviction IF they can show that the alleged behaviour really happened. It is important to appreciate that the warning notice itself is proof of nothing else apart from that the person has been warned that the Police regard the described behaviour as potentially criminal. It does not mean that the behaviour has happened. It can mean that someone else (eg. the alleged victim) has made unproven allegations. So, it is quite common for someone who is perfectly innocent to be issued with this sort of Police warning. As far as the Police are concerned, they are just doing their job in defusing arguments and are they do not seem too concerned (in my opinion) whether the allegations made by the alleged victim are true or not. If someone presses the Police to issue a warning, then Police probably will - even if they know that the evidence is almost non-existent. The Police have told me that the most common use for the warning procedure is when couple are arguing with each other after a split. The Police issue the warning to help defuse the situation before it might escalate to real criminal harassment. It seems to me that someone who is **** bent on using the system to smear someone else can keep making claims to the Police to get a warning issued to their opponent and then go to the newspapers with a story about a warning notice being issued by the Police .... Of course, this is exactly what happened in this case - see story above ....

I can tell you with 100% confidence that the "Tiger" comments (a private conversation when I was not acting in any council capacity anyway)Russell Hawker You are supposed to behave appropriately at all times if you will insist on representing our town. I am glad you have been found out this time

As the parent of a Downs Syndrome child I find Cllr Hawkers remarks deeply offensive however he meant it. This man puts his foot in his mouth more than even Prince Philip himself!

All this only goes to confirm what everybody already knows that have had any dealings with Russell. He takes great pride in trying to belittle people that do not agree with his politics by using insulting threatening abuse and then runs for cover like the coward he really is.

LEGAL NOTICE: I write the notes below in my private capacity as a local resident only. Whilst reference may be made to public office I may hold, the notes below do not represent council business. ---------------------- I see that Bill Braid supporters are spitting their poison here now. Let me answer a few points made above and elsewhere recently: 1. Councillors are entitled to a private life and the code of conduct does NOT apply when Off-Duty. This is fact, whether you agree or not. A High Court case confirmed this last year. My comment about Bill Braid was in a private email whilst off-duty. It does not take Einstein to work out which person has tried to make a public issue out of a private discussion. 2. The Downs Syndrome comment was about a TIGER, not a human. It is incorrect to say that I was referring to any Downs Syndrome people. The whole point was to make a [bold]simile[/bold] (albeit not a good one) about Bill Braid who had behaved very badly in making false allegations about me behind my back. 3. I do not make a habit of insulting abuse. There are a very small number of trouble-makers who are trying to smear me with a legitimate comments I have made in private. It is the making of private comments public which is improper. 4. I never run for cover. I have a clear record of putting my head above the parapet and standing on my principles. 5. I was not forced to make any apology at all. I issued an apology of my own accord in private to people who had received the original email, which made clear that I was apologising in case anyone took offence (even though there was no real reason to take offence) - but not to Bill Braid. Russell Hawker

3. Russell 'doesn't make a habit of insulting people'? I've heard it all now! 4. Trying standing on your head, it might feed some blood to your brain and get it to function. 5. You were given a police warning over your disgusting and bullyish behaviour that is why you DID grovellingly apologise. You were FORCED to!

Ben Richmond said: [italic] "You were given a police warning over your disgusting and bullyish behaviour that is why you DID grovellingly apologise. You were FORCED to!"[/italic] This is simply codswallop! The private email apologising to a few people was dated August 2006. The totally irrelevant Police warning, that Bill Braid had made unproven allegations, came over a month later. You can't believe the drivel that malign people want to say - even less the drivel in scandal-led newspapers which twist stories and headlines beyond reality.

LEGAL NOTICE: I write the notes below in my private capacity as a local resident only. Whilst reference may be made to public office I may hold, the notes below do not represent council business. ---------------------- Having re-read the drivel in recent comments posted here, I have another point to emphasise: [bold]I have actually done NOTHING wrong at all. I completely deny all the silly allegations made by Bill Braid, who is a SERIAL FALSE ACCUSER. The Police warning means nothing at all about me except that Bill Braid has made UNPROVEN ALLEGATIONS and the Police want to make clear that if they are true they don't want any more of it to happen. The evil-doer in this matter is Bill Braid. My silly comment about a TIGER was part of a serious attempt to deal with BILL BRAID's BAD BEHAVIOUR. I later apologised for my comment, but not because anyone asked for an apology - just because I was tidying up loose ends in PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE.[/bold]

Bill Braid, in my opinion, who is a pensioner by the way, is always the perfect gentleman, and deserves much respect.

LEGAL NOTICE: I write the notes below in my private capacity as a local resident only. Whilst reference may be made to public office I may hold, the notes below do not represent council business. ---------------------- Bill Braid's age and income arrangements are irrelevant to this matter. As a councillor and election candidate (again), he is accountable publicly for his public actions. HE has chosen to go public with private matters in the first place - not me!! Remember, it was not me who sent copies of private correspondence to the newspapers. I have never has to deal closely with such a despicable, self-serving, bungling, ruthlessly ambitious, BACK-STABBING person before in my life. I have all the documentary evidence I need to support all my statements ....

LEGAL NOTICE: I am commenting in this thread solely in my private capacity as a local resident only. --------------------------------- On Thursday I topped the Westbury town council poll and retained a district council seat with a wide margin ahead of the candidate behind me. In the same district council poll, [bold]"Backstabber Braid"[/bold] came 6th overall and last of the three (unelected) Conservative candidates.

The final report of the investigator has now been presented to the Monitoring Officer at WWDC and Bill Braid (and others). The absurd nonsense in the report relates to unproven views (so-called findings) by an investigator about unproven allegations. These unproven views will now proceed to a hearing of West Wiltshire District Council's "Standards Committee", which is a lay committee with little or no experience of complex legal argument. This is where minor conduct issues are decided. An appeal to the Adjudication Panel for England, a judicial tribunal capable of dealing with complex legal argument, will be available. At the Standards Committee hearing, the investigator will have to try to demonstrate why his views add up. This will be despite the lack of proper legal analysis in his report to substantiate his views. In fact, some of his findings are just plainly wrong because he has misunderstood elementary principles of the code of conduct. I will demonstrate that the investigator's views are based on an inaccurate interpretation of the code of conduct or upon faulty analysis of the so-called evidence which accompanied the many allegations. The allegations were principally made by Bill Braid, a serial false-accuser who has been running a smear campaign against me for over three years. Last Summer, he colluded with Derek Avenell. Between them they have made over 40 allegations, most of which the investigator dropped at an early stage because they either obviously do not represent a breach of the code or are entirely unsubstantiated anyway. Indeed, the evidence submitted by Cllr Braid contains a stream of false claims which will form the basis of my complaint about him when the current matter is cleared up.

One of the findings of the investigation report is that [bold]the comment I made about Bill Braid being a "Tiger etc" was NOT a breach of the code of conduct[/bold] as it was a private matter (ie. I was not acting in any official capacity in connection with being a councillor).

[quote][bold]Russell Hawker[/bold] wrote: LEGAL NOTICE: I am commenting in this thread solely in my private capacity as a local resident only. --------------------------------- On Thursday I topped the Westbury town council poll and retained a district council seat with a wide margin ahead of the candidate behind me. In the same district council poll, [bold]"Backstabber Braid"[/bold] came 6th overall and last of the three (unelected) Conservative candidates. [/quote] LEGAL NOTICE: The comments I made in my post dated 7:27am Sat 5 May 07 are purely political in the context of one election candidate talking about another AND where I made the back-stabbing behaviour of Mr Braid an issue in my campaign and where he had previously behaved as a backstabber [bold]for purely political reasons.[/bold] I mention this to highlight the fact that this matter is entirely a political dispute between politicians, and Mr Braid has tried almost every dirty trick in the book to smear me with his claims based on ever increasing muddles based on his own misunderstandings.

I would like to offer my sincere apologies to all Tigers for any offence caused to them by being likened to you know who. Sorry.

[quote][bold]Russell Hawker[/bold] wrote: I would like to offer my sincere apologies to all Tigers for any offence caused to them by being likened to you know who. Sorry.[/quote] Please remove my comment as I now withdraw this comment altogether. Sorry about this. Russell Hawker

As I pressed the wrong button above (I meant to report the quoted post, not create a new post) and as the newspaper refuses to remove the comment anyway, I'll stand by my comments instead. So I'll repeat what I said: [bold]I would like to offer my sincere apologies to all Tigers for any offence caused to them by being likened to you know who. Sorry.[/bold]

[bold]SERIAL FALSE ACCUSER BILL BRAID STRIKES AGAIN !!![/bold] Some people may wonder whether I have real evidence that Bill Braid is a serial false accuser. Yesterday, I received absolute proof of the fact that Bill Braid is a serial false accuser (on top of the existing pile of documentary evidence I already have). The new documentary evidence makes the task of explaining this much easier now, as follows: [bold]Summer 2005[/bold] Bill Braid made a long series of false allegations about me (that I breached the code of conduct) to the Standards Board for England (SBE). The SBE rejected everything outright as entirely unfounded (and made comments about some aspects also being insignificant - which Bill Braid later [bold]mis[/bold]described as "not serious enough"). [bold]Summer 2006[/bold] Bill Braid colludes with Derek Avenell to put in over 40 allegations between them to the SBE. Over 500 pages of allegations and evidence were submitted. The recent investigator's final report wittled down the relevant evidence to 9 pages only and discarded the vast bulk of the allegations. A hearing at the district council will deal with the outstanding 9 allegations shortly. [bold]Summer 2007[/bold] Bill Braid makes another long list of new allegations to the SBE about me. This time the SBE rejects most of them outright but decides to investigate 2 of the allegations in a brand new investigation. [bold]I state here and now that the new allegations are all either totally false or are a combination of both muddled and malicious nonsense.[/bold] Bill Braid is clearly obsessed with trying to accuse me of all sorts of nonsense in a desperate effort to make something stick. I now believe that the clear evidence of his own track record in making such a series of false allegations speaks for itself - regardless of whether any allegations actually manage to stick or not (especially as those which have any chance of sticking would only be inadvertent, minor breaches of the code anyway eg. where I forgot what to do at any specific moment).

[bold]INVESTIGATION INTO BILL BRAID'S BAD BEHAVIOUR FINDS NO BREACH OF THE CODE OF CONDUCT[/bold] A copy of the final investigation report, published by the WWDC Monitoring Officer on 15/6/07, has now come into my possession. A Melksham councillor had reported Bill Braid to the SBE for lobbying for the district council to buy his land at Hawkeridge Mill whilst he was acting as a town councillor at a meeting at the district council. I have never reported Bill Braid for any of his activities to the SBE, so I found it interesting to see what exactly Bill had been accused of by someone else. My thoughts about Bill's ludicrous stunt, in offering his land to WWDC at a price about three times what the land is actually worth in a blaze of publicicty whilst claiming he was doing the community a favour, are clearly explained in several letters which were printed in local newspapers at the time. I did not accuse Bill of breaching any code, though. I was just saying that his behaviour was ludicrous, which it definitely was (but the investigation does not address this point as acting in a ludicrous manner is not a matter for any code of conduct). The investigator's conclusion is that Bill Braid did not breach the code of conduct. This finding is arrived at because the evidence of what Bill said at the relevant meeting at the district council is inconsistent. Basically, different people seem to remember Bill saying different things or don't remember anything anyway. Personally, I see this as a case of an obviously weak investigation where the investigator only bothered to ask a handful of selected people (ie. district council officers) about what happened rather than asked "sufficient" people who were at the meeting about what happened. I am told that numerous people were at the meeting and specifically remembered what happened, but they were not asked to give evidence.

[quote][bold]Russell Hawker[/bold] wrote: Ben Richmond said: [italic] "You were given a police warning over your disgusting and bullyish behaviour that is why you DID grovellingly apologise. You were FORCED to!"[/italic] This is simply codswallop! The private email apologising to a few people was dated August 2006. The totally irrelevant Police warning, that Bill Braid had made unproven allegations, came over a month later. You can't believe the drivel that malign people want to say - even less the drivel in scandal-led newspapers which twist stories and headlines beyond reality.[/quote] [italic][bold] ... CORRECTION ...[/bold][/italic] For the first time since last year, I have now looked closely again at my emails on the above-quoted subject to check the dates of certain events. I now realise that I have made a small error in what I said in my post dated 10:18pm Thu 19 Apr 07. In fact, I sent the email apologising for the Tiger comments on Fri 11 August 2006. The Police gave me the notice about Bill's allegations about a WEEK later on 16 August 2006. I had received no contact from the Police about this matter prior to 16 August 2006 - contrary to claims made by Bill Braid in writing during the previous 2 months.

According to my most reliable sources on what Bill Braid is up to lately .... he's already working on the next batch of allegations he wants to make about me. Apparently, this time he is sniffing around the details of my recently declared election expenses, particularly whether I was correct to declare that I paid for everything myself. Hmmmmm. This matter definitely has scope for someone to make lots of false assumptions. This could get really interesting (in terms of seeing how any muddle arose), especially if he starts to make claims about my personal finances and whether I have any undeclared election expenses or undeclared sponsors etc.

[bold]LEGAL NOTICE: I write all notes in this thread in my private capacity as a local resident only. Whilst reference is made to public office I may hold, the notes are not in themselves council business.[/bold]

In Bill Braid's latest set of silly allegations, he has accused me of saying in a town council meeting that: [bold]Bill Braid is "a liar and buffoon"[/bold] You might think that I do think this anyway. I could not possibly comment. In fact, I did say to him: [italic]"You should stop telling these lies and stop this sort of buffoonery"[/italic] This was in response to a blatant lie he had said about me earlier in the meeting whilst I was out of the room. It would have been just as accurate for me to call him a [bold]BACKSTABBER[/bold], but I did not call him a [bold]backstabber[/bold] as thiw would have been a breach of the code of conduct as it is an attack on his personality (albeit that it would have been true). Saying that he was telling lies and that his behaviour was buffonery was a legitimate response to his [bold]BAD BEHAVIOUR[/bold]. The code of conduct accepts criticism of behaviour and actions as OK.

Another example of [bold]BILL BRAID's BAD BEHAVIOUR[/bold] is as follows: His latest set of allegations to the SBE included the claim that I did not declare any interest at the Extraordinary meeting of Westbury Town Council on 12 March 2007 (to consider the Westbury Bypass planning application only) in relation to my membership of the Town Centre Viability Group which is promoting town centre improvements and despite the fact that a relative of mine is a director of a shop in Westbury High Street which would financially benefit from such town centre improvements. When I first read this, I thought I must have been daft to forget to declare any relevant interests and I started to wonder how I could have forgotten such an interest. Then I remembered several things: 1. The Town Centre Viability Group is a working group of the town council (ie. it is part of the council). My membership of part of the council does not need to be declared at all. 2. The planning application was about the bypass itself (ie. the proposed new road around Westbury - not anything in Westbury town centre). The proposed road improvements in Westbury as part of the bypass town centre improvements package were not involved in the planning application. They will be the subject of a later planning application. 3. The proposed town centre improvements advocated by the Town Centre Viability Group are not connected to the bypass anyway. For example, the Market Place Regeneration Project will be the subject of a totally separate planning application. I don't think this can possibly have any connection to trade in the High Street anyway. Also, the proposal to reverse the flow of traffic in part of the High Street is definitely not part of the bypass town centre roads improvement package either. So .... yet another false allegation to add to [bold]Bill Braid's long list of false and silly allegations.[/bold]

Update on my last post: The proposed town centre roaf changes (whether connected to the bypass funding package or not) will not need a planning application as such. I should have said that they will need Traffic Regulation Orders. A Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) is a legal order, which allows the Highways Authority (the county council) to regulate the speed, movement and parking of vehicles and regulate pedestrian movement, which are enforceable by law. The act governing Traffic Regulation Order's is the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. There is a similar consultation process, which includes consulting the town council, to a planning application process.

I'd just like to record the following observation for future reference: The standards hearing coming up soon arose from complaints made by both Bill Braid and Derek Avenell made last Summer. In contrast to the continuing despicable, disgusting bad behaviour of Bill Braid over the last year (especially the additionaL false allegations he has made in a desperate attempt to smear me further), Derek Avenell seems to have behaved perfectly. I have even heard that Mr Avenell does not intend to attend the hearing. I have also heard that Bill Braid intends to attend and to intervene himself, as if he can do better than the Investigator himself. I know Bill Braid well .... this is going to be very interesting ... regardless of whether he tries to use a QC or not to have a go at trying to intervene. If so, I hope the QC is costing him thousands a day ... (to get nowhere at all ... ).

[bold]SERIAL FALSE ACCUSER BILL BRAID HAS ALL HIS SILLY ALLEGATIONS THROWN OUT AT WWDC STANDARDS COMMITTEE[/bold] [bold]At today's hearing, I was exonerated. All allegations against me, by both Derek Avenell and Bill Braid, were thrown out by the hearing panel. I gave the hearing panel my blessing for them to release a press statement shortly explaining their decision and also dealing with issues of concern they have about the way the whole investigation was conducted. I was the victim in this matter, and I have now been exonerated.[/bold]

For clarity: [bold]When the Chairman of the Hearing Panel yesterday announced the "Finding of Facts", he said: [italic]"The Finding of facts is that there are no facts."[/italic] [/bold]

Here is a copy of my press release today: [bold]SERIAL FALSE ACCUSER BILL BRAID HAS ALL HIS SILLY ALLEGATIONS THROWN OUT AT WWDC STANDARDS COMMITTEE HEARING. At yesterday's hearing, I was exonerated. All allegations against me, by both Derek Avenell and Bill Braid, were thrown out by the hearing panel. I gave the hearing panel my blessing for them to release a press statement shortly explaining their decision and also dealing with issues of concern they have about the way the whole investigation was conducted. I was the victim in this matter, and I have now been exonerated. The background to this matter is the fact that Bill Braid, supported by John Clegg and helped by Derek Avenell, has waged a disgraceful smear campaign against me over several years with a series of false allegations that I had breached the code of conduct for councillors. He abused the Standards Board for England complaints process by making more and more allegations. Many of his allegations included false statements ie. blatant lies, though this aspect was not examined by the recent investigation nor at the hearing yesterday because the complainants were not themselves on trial. Bill Braid is a serial false accuser. John Clegg holds the record for the most proven breaches of the [West Wiltshire DC] code of conduct, as established at his judicial tribunal last Summer (see: http://www.adjudicat ionpanel.co.uk/index .php?page=Decisionpa ge&APERef=0356&APEID =669 ). Derek Avenell is a Westbury Leigh Primary School Governor who was using the Standards Board complaints procedure, in collusion with Bill Braid, to pursue his local political agenda which involves the Governors at Westbury Leigh School and Leigh Park Community Association. My record is still clean, with no proven breaches of the code of conduct. I have only been to one hearing, the one yesterday, and all allegations (dozens of them), were thrown out as being without any foundation. The Standards Committee intends to strongly criticise the way the whole investigation was handled (which was a disgrace in itself) in due course by issuing recommendations to the council. As far as I am concerned, the legal advice I had was that the whole so-called "investigation" was flawed from beginning to end with an obvious serious lack of understanding of the Law demonstrated by the Monitoring Officer and Investigator, including a totally disgraceful and illegal refusal to comply with a proper request for Disclosure.[/bold]

NB. I meant that John Clegg hold the record for most proven breaches of the [bold]West Wiltshire DC[/bold] code of conduct.

[bold]The Code of Conduct for councillors is nothing more than a despicable charter for malign troublemakers to take potshots at councillors[/bold] , who then find themselves without any legal or financial suppport to defend themselves against a vicious, disgusting, nasty and unethical system where so-called lawyers (mostly third and fourth rate ones) devise all sorts of ways to stitch up councillors and bring them into disrepute. The code of conduct is bringing thousands of innocent councillors into disrepute up and down the council because, in most cases, the councillors are simply unable to defend themselves against the hugely complex legal system which enable incompetent and/ or devious lawyers to hide their own mistakes and dishonest practices. [bold] The Standards Board for England is a despicable, unethical, incompetent and vicious disgrace to democracy[/bold] , not least because it get much of its advice about the meaning of the code of conduct wrong. I don't mean slightly wrong - I mean very wrong - as proven by a series of High Court cases. In fact, the Standards Board is nothing more than an evil Kangeroo Court in the sense that its own so-called Ethical Standards Officers ("ESO") make their own investigations and can issue totally flawed opinions without even going to a hearing. Even when they arrive at a finding of "no action required", these disgusting individuals publish reports with their opinion that the code of conduct has been breached whilst at the same time closing the case and so preventing the poor councillor from any hearing where he can defend and clear himself. They are utterly shameless. This is nothing short of a disgrace, as everyone is entitled to a fair hearing before any attempt should be made to purport to make a decision. One unethical ESO left the SBE last year under a cloud as a result of being found out by a judicial tribunal to be conducting deliberate stitch ups against councillors. Both the LibDem and Conservative have policy commmitments to close the Standards Board and get rid of this evil system as soon as either become the Government. John Prescott set up this barking mad system, which claims to be establishing more ethics in Local Government, but is in fact doing the total opposite. It is bringing councillors into disrepute on the most despicable false allegations. Also, the Standards Board itself is so incompetent that it is itself in disrepute and is regarded by most councillors as evil and discredited.

The only honourable part of the despicable Standards system for councillors, is the local Standards Committee (not to be confused with the utterly despicable, incompetent, discredited Standards Board for England). The West Wiltshire District Council Standards Committee is made up of honourable people as follows: 4 district councillors 1 town councillor from the district 1 parish councillor from th district 3 external independent members The hearing panel (actually a Standards Sub-committee) of four people who heard my case was comprised of: Bruce Epsley - Sub-committee Chairman Tony Frost Gerry Robson Ernie Clerk (a district councillor) The first three are people I do not know, but I understand that they are familiar with correct legal procedures through their own professional experience, which includes attending tribunals and writing investigation reports. Obviously, I have come across Ernie (a councillor in Hilperton) from time to time as we have both been district councillors for the last 4 years. I am speculating here, but I believe that the panel of four at my hearing decided to cut short the hearing when they lost their faith in the legal advice the council was giving to them on top of realising that the investigation report they were asked to consider riddled with foolish basic legal mistakes about procedure along with outrageous and silly mistakes about the meaning of the code of conduct. I was looking forward to exposing these mistakes in the hearing ...

I have said little about how pleased I am that the hearing exonerated me. This is because I am still a bit shocked at the sudden way the hearing ended with the panel returning from a recess to consider very preliminary matters and jumping straight to a Finding of Facts of "there are no facts" and then jumping to a Final Finding of No breach of the code in respect of all allegations. In fact, my legal adviser had done a huge ampunt of research and preparation work ready to take this whole matter to Appeal at the Adjudication Panel for England (and possible beyond to the High Court). We had been careful to document all our requests for Disclosure and for the Monitoring Officer to recuse himself from the whole process due a clear "appearance of bias". A number of other legal technicalities were laid down carefully in the pre-hearing correspondence and during the first three hours of the hearing by my legal adviser. This was to ensure that when our expected wrong result occurred (as we had expected the panel to believe the nonsense coming from the Investigator and the bad legal advice given by the council) we would easily win at Appeal simply by rehearsing the previous events. Indeed, we were confident that the behaviour of the Monitoring Officer and Investigator was so wrong, that at any Appeal a complete re-hearing would be legally necessary. The point I am making is that a huge amount of work went in to preparing for a long haul with an expected result of demolishing the case against me and humiliating the whole awful Stitch-up Board's processes. Dozens of Human Rights cases were researched (Articicle 10 - Freedom of Expression) and hundreds of APE decisions were analysed to see where the whole system was going wrong. I hoped that my case at Appeal would set an important precedent which would pave the way for the closure of the whole Standards system and its unethical Stitch-up Board. Although I am pleased to be exonerated already, I am a bit disappointed that we have not gone to Appeal and achived a landmark APE decision. Ho hum .... now I'm just an ordinary victim of false allegations by a nasty serial false accuser ... rather than a famous councillor who took on and beat the awful system and helped to bring about its badly needed demise.

[bold]LEGAL NOTICE:[/bold] I am commenting in this thread solely in my private capacity as a local resident only.

Wow. The new investigator appointed to "investigate" the latest allegations against me made by Bill Braid is none other than the highly respected solicitor Maria Memoli. Ms Memoli is the top legal guru at Kennet District Council and is also their Monitoring Officer. She holds several senior positions on outside legal bodies, such as: Chair of the Law Society's Member's Conduct Committee Member of the Law Society's Council There are several others relating to the role of Monitoring Officers who group together to pool their limited knowledge in Wiltshire. I have seen Ms Memoli speak on several occasions at seminars about the Code of Conduct for councillors. She is the only person who I managed to agree with on the real meaning of the code. This lady knows her onions.

I moved house last week, so I've been a bit slower than normal in posting the latest points. Here are the relevant parts (the parts actually dealing with the decision) of the [bold]Decision Notice issued by the WWDC Standards Sub-Committee on 31 July 2007[/bold] (following my hearing on 26 July 2007): "[bold]A summary of evidence considered and representations made[/bold] The Investigating Officer produced his report that contained his explanation of his investigation. The report attached numerous copy emails. [bold]The Member's Representative for Councillor Hawker made the following comments on the report[/bold] * His client had not received full disclosure of documents relied upon or received by the Investigating Officer; * That the emails contained in the report were only a snapshot in time of correspondence starting before the emails attached and continuing after the emails attached; * The attachment of the emails without any witness statements, in itself was not evidence. Nor were the comments of the Investigating Officer in the report able to count as evidence; * The Investigating Officer had failed to collect any evidence other than that presented by the complainants. [bold]Findings of Fact[/bold] The Sub-Committee came to the view that the report did not produce sufficient evidence of the allegations. There was no independent corroboration of the matters in it, nor were there any witness statements producing evidence. The Committee was therefore unable to make a finding of fact in regard to matters in the report. The Sub-Committee decided that there was insufficient evidence to prove the allegations made. [bold]Whether there was a breach of the Code of Conduct[/bold] The Sub Committee having decided that there was insufficient evidence that could be relied on to prove the facts of the allegations, decided that as a consequence no breach of the code of conduct adopted by West Wiltshire District Council could be found. [bold]Penalties[/bold] No penalties Signed [Signature of Bruce Epsley] Chair of the Sub-Committee 31 July 2007"

Cool! Wiltshire Times has published an article on-line yesterday, which reads as follows: [bold]"Councillor in clear after email probe"[/bold] [bold][italic]"A COUNCILLOR accused of sending abusive emails and letters and failing to comply with the councillors' code of conduct has been cleared. A panel looking into allegations made against Westbury Town Councillor Russell Hawker concluded "there was insufficient evidence to prove the allegations made". The accusations came to light in May following a dispute between Cllr Hawker and former councillor Bill Braid and Derek Avenell, a member of the Leigh Park Community Association. In a summary of the allegations the panel looked at claims Cllr Hawker "had harassed and intimidated the complainants" as well as used his position to "disadvantage the complainants". In an email sent to Mr Braid and copied to other councillors and MP Andrew Murrison, he addressed it to "Dear Silly Billy" and said: "If Westbury had a buffoon of the decade medal, you certainly deserve to receive such an award." However, as the email was sent in a private capacity, it was not deemed to be in breach of the code. The investigation, conducted by the sub-committee of the Standards Committee at the district council, found there was insufficient evidence to take proceedings further."[/italic][/bold] The article can be found on the archives section at: http://archive.wilts hiretimes.co.uk/2007 /8/8/333201.html I assume this article will be published to the main news section of the website and in the paper tonight also.

Good! The article mentioned above was printed in the newspaper on page 4 last Friday. An interesting question has been asked by several people as follows: [bold]Does it really mean that someone was "cleared" if there was just "insufficient evidence"?[/bold] My answer is as follows: When allegations are made, it is for the complainant or [so-called impartial investigator turned prosecutor] to prove guilt - not for the accused to prove innocence. The legal process boils down to whether there is evidence to prove the allegations. If there is no evidence or if all the evidence is rejected (as happened with me - 500 pages of it overall), then no alleged facts are established. If there is no finding of facts (which occurred in my recent hearing), then there is no case to answer anyway. Where facts are found, the hearing then moves to establish the meaning of the facts and whether they add up to a breach of some Law or rule etc. This is the stage that involves legal argument about the meaning of the facts and Law etc. [bold]In my case, all the evidence was thrown out as uncorroborated or irrelevant or out of context etc, so no alleged facts were found at all- hence no case to answer - hence cleared on all allegations (ie. exonerated). [/bold] In any event, I and my legal adviser had prepared a very robust defence case to show that any possible accepted evidence represented no breach of any Law or Code - and was in fact entirely proper in the circumstances at the time. I have since found out that the members of the hearing panel were well clued up on legal procedures and knew what they were doing very well indeed ... because they have been involved in tribunals and writing investigation reports in their own right in their own careers before. It is very important to appreciate that the allegations were based on very TRIVIAL matters which were anyway in response to some really bad behaviour undertaken by Bill Braid over several years (ie. my behaviour was justified – and was largely in private as well). The overall context of all the alleged comments by me (the subject of the allegations) is extremely relevant. I was responding to years of Bill Braid's abuse of various hats he wore to make silly and false allegations about me. [bold]One of the reasons the "evidence" was thrown out was it was not in context.[/bold] When someone says anything, you must appreciate the whole context to understand the whole meaning and to start to analyse whether it was justified. Bill Braid, and then the investigator also had ignored this fundamental point, by just focussing on little snippets of correspondence when I had allegedly made critical remarks in response to bad behaviour by other people. ------------- [bold]LEGAL NOTICE:[/bold] All these comments in this thread are made in my private capacity as a local resident only.

Oops - My sentence above which reads: [italic]"When allegations are made, it is for the complainant or to prove guilt - not for the accused to prove innocence."[/italic] should actually have read as follows: [bold]When allegations are made, it is for the complainant or the so-called impartial investigator (who has actually turned into the prosecuter) to prove guilt - not for the accused to prove innocence.[/bold]

Apparently, the intention of the new investigator dealing with Bill Braid's latest allegations is to finish her report by the end of September. As I have heard nothing from her so far, this intended schedule may be difficult. Maybe .... just maybe .... she wants to undertake her investigation without contacting me at all and missing out the usual part about asking me for my views?? Why not? Afterall, the last investigator never bothered to interview me before issuing his report with all his mistakes in? He did interview the two complainants (according to an email I've now seen from Mr Avenell). The first thing I will be looking for from the new investigator will be EVIDENCE for me to comment on. I am not going to allow any fishing trip or provide information other than comments about any material points that are put to me. I've had enough of the nonsense caused by the existence of the unethical Standards Board. If they don't have evidence, they should not have accepted any allegations for an investigation in the first place - otherwise the whole complaints system mainly exists just to attract complaints to keep the system busy with little care for evidence for the allegations.

Aha! Ms Memoli has made contact with me ... by email and without giving any postal address. I've explained the need for her to provide evidence to demonstrate a case to answer before I will consider attending any interview. I will probably not post any further comment on this current matter until an investigator's final report is published. We wouldn't want any gaffes or muddles made by the Unethical Stitchup Board and its servants becoming public knowledge whilst their work is done to smear a councillor with claims made by a serial false accuser ... would we?

I've made it quite plain that I have every intention of continuing to treat the disgusting false allegations from Serial False Accuser Bill Braid (SFABB) and the continuing despicable behaviour of the Unethical Stitchup Board (USB) with the contempt they deserve. Golly .... with any luck I'll get accused of disrespect for SFABB and the USB. Then we'll get into a real opportunity to discuss the real meaning of the code of conduct and its relationship with the Human Rights Act (especially Freedom of Speech for politicians in political matters). This is definitely a political matter. Anyone who thinks that SFABB's and the USB's disgusting behaviour is not politcal is insane!