Our transport correspondent, JEREMY CLACKSON, reports on how national publications are wising up to part-time Perry’s hypocrisy and lies
It’s a sign: Piss-poor Perry’s been outed as a liar by the Tories’ in-house newspaper
Tory Jason Perry, Croydon’s £82,000 per year part-time Mayor, has today come under attack from the unlikeliest of sources: the Sunday Torygraph, regarded as the Conservative Party’s in-house newspaper.
The far-right national newspaper has picked up on Perry’s decision, passed by his council cabinet this week, to make six of the borough’s LTNs permanent installations, to the fury of hundreds of motorists who struggle to read or comply with road signs.
As Inside Croydon has already reported, “Having boasted to voters when seeking election that he would roll back some of the poorly implemented LTNs – low-traffic neighbourhoods – that were introduced during the 2020 covid lockdown, at this week’s council cabinet meeting, Croydon’s Mayor approved plans to make permanent six LTNs (now called “healthy neighbourhood” schemes) at Albert Road, Dalmally Road, Elmers Road, Holmesdale Road, Sutherland Road and Parsons Mead.
“For poor old, pro-car Perry… it’s beginning to look a lot like blatant hypocrisy.”
Today’s Torygraph has also picked up on Perry’s U-turn, saying that Croydon’s Mayor has succumbed to the lure of millions of pounds in motoring fines.
Tory attack paper: how the Sunday Torygraph laid in to the Tory Mayor today
The newspaper quotes the official council report, circulated before last Wednesday’s meeting: “The modelling indicates the current six Healthy Neighbourhoods will deliver a £10.7million surplus (over the course of four years) after operating costs, from an initial £1.2 million capital outlay.”
The article, by reporter Steve Bird, continues: “However, in 2021, Mr Perry backed a petition opposed to the schemes, telling a local newspaper: ‘This council is simply fining motorists for mistakenly entering a new restricted zone. It is a money-raising exercise by a bankrupt and desperate council’.”
And it quotes Perry’s often-repeated pledge from 2022, when he was seeking election as Mayor, that he would “remove all the LTNs on the first day” he was in office.
Today is the
654th
day since Tory Jason Perry was elected…
The Tory rag quotes just one Croydon resident, who says that she is furious that she gets fined for breaking road regulations.
How Mayor Perry sold his voters down the river: the council report to cabinet this week that made six LTNs permanent. Rather than 20 pieces of silver, this is worth £10m
“I voted for Councillor Perry because he said he would remove the LTNs. Now I feel betrayed,” Lynn Leathem told the Torygraph.
“The Mayor hasn’t given one good reason for his sudden support for LTNs, which leaves local residents to conclude he’s going ahead to generate the projected £10.7million for the bankrupt council.”
The interviewee goes on to cite national hero Alan Bates and the grossly wronged Post Office sub-post masters, as if there is any kind of equivalence in negligently driving past a well-sign-posted road restriction with what has happened to the victims of the Fujitsu Horizon scandal.
The Torygraph characterises piss-poor Perry’s making the LTNs permanent as a U-turn, although what it actually shows is that Croydon’s Tory Mayor lied to voters when he was seeking election.
They quote Perry as saying, “The decision to introduce LTN schemes was made by the previous administration before I was elected as Mayor.
“The council’s budget is predicated, partially of course, on that decision, and I do not feel that I am in a position to reverse it.”
Awww… it’s always someone else’s fault.
Perry claims that he has listened to residents by giving those living on boundary roads permits to enter LTNs, has installed better signage and removed planters.
It all ends another troublesome week for piss-poor Perry, after he also made it onto the “Rotten Boroughs” page of Private Eye yet again. This time, it highlighted how his council had slapped £195 fines on motorists without first issuing £65 Penalty Charge Notices, as required by law.
Ooo, Eye: piss-poor Perry is becoming a regular feature in the fortnightly satirical magazine
The disconnect between the council’s automated issuing of penalty notices was first reported by Inside Croydon, and it was only after coverage by this website that the Mayor and the council began an investigation to discover what had happened, and then apologised.
According to Croydon Council’s own figures, at least 3,138 motorists have been affected, for driving offences between October and December 2023, due to what Perry’s council called a “computer glitch” (someone else’s fault again).
Refunds are now being issued, with the cash-strapped council set to lose out on at least £150,000.
The Eye, Britain’s best-selling fortnightly satirical magazine, also points out that Perry’s council has recently conducted an opinion poll which discovered that
71%
of Croydon residents have absolutely no idea who he is.
Clearly, Perry is doing his best, with coverage in Private Eye and the Torygraph, to improve on his piss-poor public recognition figures.
Read more: Perry has no plan to improve our borough’s toxic air pollution
Read more: Perry’s back-pedalling furiously on Boris-backed bike scheme
Read more: Tory minister is member of online group that celebrates vandals
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Another betrayal by another politician.
Our Tory Mayor is in really good company:
Stalin “… took care always to say the opposite of what he did, and do the opposite of what he said” ― Boris Souvarine, Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism
Welcome to the LabCon uniparty, doesn’t matter which of the two you vote for you end up with the same in the end and they both blame each other for it.
Plenty of reasons to have a go at the mayor, but him changing his mind on something after seeing the evidence isn’t really one of them.
Have you taken this up with the Editor of the Torygraph? Or the members of the pro-pollution, anti-LTN and anti-ULEZ groups who Perry, through his Facebook groups, has effectively encouraged to damage tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of public property?
No, and I wouldn’t take this as an attack on you. It’s just, as u-turns go, it’s a good one.
His “another boy did it and ran away” excuses are pathetic as usual, but he’s probably very aware that he can’t remove the schemes without good evidence, and he doesn’t have that. If he does he risks future funding. https://www.transportxtra.com/publications/local-transport-today/news/69526/removing-active-travel-schemes-could-cost-councils-funding/
As for the pro-pollution groups, they are of course the reason the roads have cameras rather than planters, given they campaigned for this to happen.
If people are angry because they feel they’ve been unfairly fined, then these campaigners are who they need to be angry at.
This is good news for Croydon. And from an entertainment perspective, it’s even better that it’s been made by the local anti-ULEZ campaigner Jason Perry. His handbrake turn to the left has been a joy to behold.
Had Labour’s Val Shawcross won, she would have been so organised, polite and competent, and with her wonderful smile and elegant wardrobe, she’d have been lovely. Contrast that with scowling puce-faced Piss-Poor, a clown in short-sleeves who fouls up everything he touches. Not a nice Charlie Cairoli clown, more like Mr Jelly out of Psychoville.
I bet Jason is starting to wish he’d lost rather than won that fateful election of May 2022. He’s only got another two years of self-inflicted torture to go before he can, with a modicum of credibility, declare he’s not going to stand again, for family or business reasons
I’d always suspected that this was a money raising exercise, but I hadn’t realised that the budget depended on it such an extent.
Piss-poor Perry cannot balance his budget. This coming year, and the three years after, depend on £38million of capitalisation, another form of borrowing, adding all the time to the extra interest and repayments the council needs to make on its “toxic” debts of £1.4billion.
Take away the £10million from fines payable by motorists too dim or stubborn to follow road signs, and he’d have to find the money from somewhere else, and Katherine Kerswell and the council’s other very well paid execs are rapidly running out of other bits of the family silver to flog off.
Perry might do a Tower Hamlets and flog off our Town Hall for it to be turned into a hotel , wedding venue and conference centre.
After all, now we have a Mayor and consequently a much reduced number of council meetings, the few and far-between get togethers could be held in the disused spaces in Bernard Weatherill House
See the creation of the Democratically Elected Mayor for Croydon has completely changed how Croydon Council does business. So he is bleating that he is powerless to do anything. If he is not in power get out now and do the right thing and save the bankrupt Council some money on this duplication of a Ceremonial Mayor.
perhaps a bit harsh on the ceremonial mayor who does no harm per se?
£35,000 per year on the rates for a ceremonial ribbon cutter? No thanks
Per se? That’s used for things, like pizza, not people!