Twitter ye not: Whitgift Foundation governor Gavin Barwell

With thanks to “Croydon CF”  (not to be confused with Croydon NF, we hope) and Mario Creatura, who dutifully ReTweeted the grandstanding of their Great Hero, Gavin Barwell, after he attempted to take a chunk of the credit for the deal that never was, the Westfield agreement to invest hundreds of  millions in the Whitgift Centre.

“Westfield coming to #Croydon? Number of people have been working hard behind the scenes to make it happen”

By “number of people” and “working hard behind the scenes”, we are assuming the Gavster means one, himself, a governer of the Whitgift Foundation, which struck the putative deal with developers Westfield.

Trouble is, the Whitgift Foundation and Gavin forgot to mention this proposal to the two big finance organisations which own 75 per cent of the leasehold in the Whitgift Centre. Whoops.

UPDATE (see below): For some reason, Gavin’s Twitter timeline no longer includes his “me, me , me” Tweet over this deal. Maybe someone pointed out to him Inside Croydon‘s coverage yesterday.

Those management and employees among Allder’s 1,000-strong full- and part-time staff who live in Barwell’s Croydon Central constituency may also want to ask their MP what he is doing “working behind the scenes” to protect their livelihoods and secure the future of the century-old Croydon department store?

Meanwhile, thanks to Gavin’s loyal Tory footsoldiers’ reTweeting of the MP’s comment, it is preserved on the Twitosphere forever more.

UPDATE Nov 13: The Gavster’s returned to Twitter, maintaining that he had not deleted the original Tweet from his feed. He agreed, however, that there is no dispute that he did use the words as reported here… after Royal London Asset Management and the Allied Irish Bank, owners of 75 per cent of the leasehold at the Whitgift Centre complained about not being consulted and questioning the deal.

In further Tweets later, the Gavster reverted to his passive-aggressive 140-word form when he tried to take to task those who dared to question the planning, logic and economics behind any Westfield deal for the Whitgift Centre. Just at a time when #tweetlikeanMP was trending, too.

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