If at first you do quite well, lie.

Well the new copy of Greenwich Time is out and once again Greenwich Council is trying to tell us that all is good and wonderful in Greenwich.

They mention the weather and sing the praises of Greenwich Council's response. All things told I was actually reasonably impressed with how well the Council did. I was out and about very early on the Monday of the snow and Woolwich Road was pretty clear and running well. Considering we'd just had the worst snow in 20 years I think that's a good achievement.

So I'd have been quite content to see Greenwich Time praise the Council for keeping the main routes open and clear.

Except Council Leader Chris Roberts just can't help himself, he's in a position to be positive but then he goes and lies.

Now this isn't the first time I've seen our good leader do this. Back when the O2 opened he told thousands of Greenwich residents at the residents' preview that the tickets for the event had sold out in 2 or 3 hours. Except they hadn't. I got mine 3 days after they went on sale, others around me made similar comments.

Chris Roberts couldn't just accept the glory of getting a special residents night at the O2, oh no, he had to big it up even more and lie to us.

Likewise with the gritting. Rather than stating the challenges and resting on his Council's achievements Chris Roberts has to go and be less than frank with the truth.

He apologises that the Council "weren't able to get to some minor roads and residential streets."

"Some"?

Streets in Greenwich are, as I've said before, broken into three priorities. A few are Priority 1, some are then Priority 2 but the majority are Priority 3.

My street, a Priority 2, didn't see a gritter at all during the week of the snow. So therefore presumably the Council never got down to Priority 3's and a number of other 2's were quite probably also not done.

That's borne out by the people I've spoken to, many of whom could list many of the roads in their area that were never gritted. Being more specific the only road's around Floyd Road that I know were done were Woolwich Road and Charlton Church Lane. Despite being on a hill and being a bus route Charlton Church Lane wasn't done until at least after Wednesday morning.

Yet the leader claims that only "some" weren't done.

I guess you could call "most" "some" but at best that's being disingenuous, at worst that's lying.

Now as said I'm not that displeased with how the Council actually did, these were truly extreme conditions. However don't try to lie to me about it in the local propaganda magazine.

The worst of it is that there's no one to really call him out over it. Only a few people read this, the opposition will keep their heads down and the local press won't be bothered.

Edited to add: Catching on my morning reading I've discovered another local blogger is also a bit annoyed about the Council newsletter's take on the gritting.