From Basrah to Broomstick.

By The Black Balaclava.

‘Elect Mick, he will keep in touch with you all year round’, screams the headline from his Lib Dem election leaflet. Yet try to contact  Councillor Mick Wheatley and all you get is silence. Having sent the Hedge End – St Johns councillor, three emails over a month, called his mobile phone three times, left numerous messages for him to call me back and yet not a word from him has been heard.

So why is this communication shy, people's representative not willing to talk to the people? Why indeed.

I am sure most of you will remember the storm and ongoing Police investigation into Councillor Keith Trenchard’s false claims, made in his election propaganda. Claims that Mr Trenchard denies making and points the finger clearly at Lib Dem agent, Anne Windstandley for producing his leaflets without him proof reading or having any knowledge of.

Well, imagine my shock to find out that further claims on leaflets produced by Cllr Winstandley for Mr Wheatley’s election campaign also seem to be in doubt.!!

Mick states that he has ‘a proud record of service for our country, having served with the army around the world including two six-month tours in Iraq.’ Very impressive Mick, I hear you say. Well not quite.!!

I have spent over a month researching these WAR HERO claims, with the help of both the Royal British Legion and the British Army. Yet despite our best efforts, we can find no record of his two tours of duty in Iraq. Confused, I decided I would email the councillor and ask him to confirm where and when he served with British Forces in Iraq. However, after three emails to his Eastleigh Borough Council email address went unanswered, I contact EBC to get a confirmation that my email had indeed arrived with Mick OK.  ‘Yes, all is well with his email address and he is getting his mail’ came the reply from the council IT insider.

Undeterred by his total lack of communication from an Eastleigh resident, I tried again to contact the councillor using his mobile phone number that is supplied on the Eastleigh Borough Council website. This time however, all I could get was his voice mail to my calls. So, as requested I left a clear message with my phone number and asked for a call back to discuss his heroic actions across the world for queen and country.. 

Finally I did get a very short email reply from the councillor confirming that he had indeed served his country in the REME unit of the British Army, but he would not confirm where he had served and if he had indeed completed two tours of duty in Iraq.

I asked again, via email, if he would confirm his military claims and to clarify if he had served in Iraq as a regular solider or in a part-time role through the Territorial Army.

To date I have still not had a reply to my further enquiries.

Now, I am in no doubt that Mr Wheatley is very popular and a well-known face in Hedge End, with his long service as a local caretaker but I have to question why a man who uses his, so-called war credentials to get elected then goes out of his way to avoid attempts to clarify his army record for serving his country. A question I am sure that Hedge End voters would like an answer for or is this yet another case of, ‘It’s all Councillor Anne Winstandley’s fault, I knew nothing about it’.??