WALKER'S WAY
Death, Threats & Lies: A Labour Corruption Scandal in Peaky Blinders Land
West Midlands police and prosecutors are facing a massive bill for damages after charges were dropped against a whistleblower who raised the alarm about corruption, cronyism and mismanagement in the second biggest fire brigade in England and Wales.
The long-running case, covered extensively by The Upsetter, has all the hallmarks of one of those corrupt Labour strongholds in a Peter Flannery script where mediocrity, incompetence and self serving conduct is no impediment to passing the baton of power between officials, politicians, fire chiefs and senior cops.
The voters of West Midlands have a police force not long out of special measures, a basket case fire service and politicians acting like nodding dogs or worse in the back seat of a fiasco that has endangered front line staff and public safety.
Two men - a former firefighter and a retired Royal Marine colonel - tried to blow the whistle: The former from the outside, the other on the inside. But the establishment didn’t welcome their efforts and abused the power of the state and its sparse coffers to try and silence them.
They picked on the wrong men.
Now, a little over one year later, the battlefield from Birmingham to London via Oxford is strewn with casualties who’ve fallen at the feet of the two whistleblowers while others scurry for dark corners to avoid the disinfectant of dawn.
A fire chief is dead by his own hand; two other senior figures in the fire service exposed as liars, the emergency service and its watchdog are under investigation and police and prosecutors face a huge bill for trying to put the wrong man in prison.
This is modern Britain, not a script from Peaky Blinders. And for the inside story, unavailable anywhere else, in the words of Run DMC … Walk this way.
