Remember how he lobbied on behalf of profit-hungry private developers who wanted to demolish Purley town centre’s multi-storey public car park to make way for more than 200 lucrative retirement homes? In that video nasty, Brew seriously suggested that people wanting to visit Purley town centre could readily leave their cars at a railway station car park more than a mile away.
Brew, it seems, will say any old shit on behalf of his Tory mates, or shadowy businesses registered in the British Virgin Islands, notorious as a haven for money-launderers.
Video nasty: Simon Brew’s previous campaign films have not always been entirely reliable
Video star Brew’s most famous bit part, though, was from late 2021, when he recorded himself visiting the closed and neglected Purley Pool and made the wild (and untrue) claim that he and the Tory Mayoral candidate Jason Perry had a brilliant wheeze that could get the place re-opened and back in use for next-to-no money. Ha! How we laughed!
Purley’s residents’ associations (or at least those not under the thumb of Conservative councillors who weasled their way on to the committees of these supposedly “non-political” organisations), made their displeasure clear, saying that they are fed up of “misleading statements by our politicians”.
Goodness knows what the good people of Purley might make, then, of Brew’s latest delusional rant on video, posted to social media yesterday.
Remind you of anyone?
Poor old Simon Brew. Odd how he never made a peep of protest when the previous Conservative government imposed its non-improvement improvement panel, which has cost Croydon Council Tax-payers more than £1million in fees for their “expertise” over the last four years.
It was a report from that Tory-appointed improvement panel which prompted the current government to announce that it had lost patience, and faith, in Croydon’s less-than-dynamic duo of Mayor Perry and his hapless chief exec, Katherine “Borrow More!” Kerswell. The improvement panel described Tory Perry and Kerswell’s plans for additional borrowing as “impossible”, saying that it would lead to Croydon Council’s complete “collapse”.
What the real “Mr Angry of Purley” forgot to mention in his video rant was that government minister Jim McMahon described Croydon as “one of the most financially distressed councils in the country”, mentioning its debts of £1.4billion and his concern that Mayor Perry and Kerswell were seriously planning to increase that borrowing to around £2billion by 2029.
How odd that “Mr Angry” Brew failed to mention that in his video rant.
Totting up all the Emergency Financial Support given to Croydon since March 2021 at £553million, McMahon said: “This is simply not sustainable.”
Although Simon Brew, “Mr Angry of Purley”, seems to think it is absolutely fine to burden future generations of Croydon residents with even more debt.
Cheers, untrue Brew!
Read more: GLA rejects Polaska Purley Pool plan as ‘wholly unacceptable’
Read more: Tories warn residents: don’t dare complain about Purley pool
Read more: Panicked Perry admitted to Rayner: I can’t balance the budget
Read more: Kerswell’s ‘Stabilisation Plan’ has failed before it is approved
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