Ex Chief Exec - Dave Clark

[PeterJ]

http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2010/02/24/council-chief-executive-accepts-tax-free-250000-and-leaves-his-post

 

Shetland Times Reporting that he has left with the 250k - What a joke !!

[carlossimon]

Council have completely lost the plot! But, maybe he'll not 'go'? With £250K he could buy a reasonable property in Shetland! We could be 'bumping' into Mr Clark for some time to come.

[aa]

Don't forget that there is a rally at the Market Cross on Saturday at 12.00 to let our councillors know what we think of them.

[Ghostrider]

^^ Thats fine, as long as there are resignation letters from all 22 wise (wo)men in the mail as well. Otherwise, that 22 have one hell of a lot of explaining to do.

 

He [Cluness] went on: “Whilst there may be calls from constituents for the council and Mr Clark to litigate to resolve this, constituents should understand that that process would be extremely expensive, time-consuming and very high profile. The potential award that could be made to Mr Clark could be consideraby higher than the settlement which has been reached.â€

 

Any constituent that didn't understand that long before now was either asleep,or dead. But, Mr Cluness "would be expensive" is wholly wrong, "could" is the term you want, it only "would" *if* both sides fought to the finish. How far would Clark have taken it through the court, would he have taken it there at all, we'll never know now because you've bottled it.

 

Yes, the potential award "could" have been expensive, but by exactly the same token it "could" also have been modest, or it "could" have been zero. Clark "could" have lost, or he "could" have abandoned the claim. Again, we will never know, and we're £1/4 Million plus costs poorer for not knowing.

 

Some things just are worth the time, expense and high profile publicity, regardless whether its good or bad, to fight to the end. Its called principle, and if there wasn't need to stand on principle concerning Clark and his shenanigans, there never ever will be need to.

 

There's going to be some old humdinger of a celebration going on in certain quarters of St Olafs Street tonight that will probably carry on for days, and anybody thats not invited to it is either going to be cursing the council or laughing at them.

 

Saundy, dirs juist ee thing ta sae ta dee noo, fur goad's sake geen hame, and bide hame afore du does ony mair faut!

[Brian]

Councillors aren't supposed to discuss staffing matters in public. If they do so, especially in intemperate terms, the staff member may fairly argue that his or her case has been mishandled, and that, in extreme cases, s/he has been subject to harassment.

 

That may have a cost. If a result, even an indirect result, of the intemperate comments is an abusive public campaign, the costs may be huge.

[markj]

What can you buy for 1/4 million quid? you could buy Judanes

 

Unbeleivable that Mr Clark got this amount of cash. Well done SIC, Nick Reiter will be disappointed he only got £75,000 for doing absolutely nothing wrong whilst in office in Shetland, whereas Mr Clark has written off 2/3 of Judanes debt for no aparent reason and walked away with a significant wedge of cash.

 

Lets hope the Oil money lasts for a while as payoffs such as this in the future will struggle to be funded by Viking Energy's whirlygigs. [/img]

[tlady]

Unbelievable

 

 

 

 

And if Mr Clark is found guilty of threatening Mr Wills, which would be gross misconduct, and a sack-able offence!! Will he give the money back ??

[Ghostrider]

Councillors aren't supposed to discuss staffing matters in public. If they do so, especially in intemperate terms, the staff member may fairly argue that his or her case has been mishandled, and that, in extreme cases, s/he has been subject to harassment.

 

That may have a cost. If a result, even an indirect result, of the intemperate comments is an abusive public campaign, the costs may be huge.

 

I'd rather have seen Clark walk away with £10 Million in a few years time, us having fought him every inch through the courts, and lost, than see him walk away with £1/2 Million now and we squirm in a corner laek a trashen whalp.

 

If Saundy could throw five or six million or whatever it was at a fanatsy brig across the Nort Mooth, £10 Million just to make sure Clark had to work for every penny of it through the courts would be cheap.

[aa]

Does anybody know whether it is possible for some sort of complaint for maladminsitration to be brought against the council? I don't know what grounds could be used.

[dB]

^^ Thats fine, as long as there are resignation letters from all 22 wise (wo)men in the mail as well. Otherwise, that 22 have one hell of a lot of explaining to do.

 

He [Cluness] went on: “Whilst there may be calls from constituents for the council and Mr Clark to litigate to resolve this, constituents should understand that that process would be extremely expensive, time-consuming and very high profile. The potential award that could be made to Mr Clark could be consideraby higher than the settlement which has been reached.â€

 

Any constituent that didn't understand that long before now was either asleep,or dead. But, Mr Cluness "would be expensive" is wholly wrong, "could" is the term you want, it only "would" *if* both sides fought to the finish. How far would Clark have taken it through the court, would he have taken it there at all, we'll never know now because you've bottled it.

 

Yes, the potential award "could" have been expensive, but by exactly the same token it "could" also have been modest, or it "could" have been zero. Clark "could" have lost, or he "could" have abandoned the claim. Again, we will never know, and we're £1/4 Million plus costs poorer for not knowing.

 

Some things just are worth the time, expense and high profile publicity, regardless whether its good or bad, to fight to the end. Its called principle, and if there wasn't need to stand on principle concerning Clark and his shenanigans, there never ever will be need to.

 

There's going to be some old humdinger of a celebration going on in certain quarters of St Olafs Street tonight that will probably carry on for days, and anybody thats not invited to it is either going to be cursing the council or laughing at them.

 

Saundy, dirs juist ee thing ta sae ta dee noo, fur goad's sake geen hame, and bide hame afore du does ony mair faut!

 

 

Well said.

[Spinner72]

And if Mr Clark is found guilty of threatening Mr Wills, which would be gross misconduct, and a sack-able offence!! Will he give the money back ??

 

Even if that were to happen, that would be a domestic issue and not relevant to his council position. The councils investigation is done and dusted.

 

I'm a bit confused about the attacks on the Convener over this, has everyone forgotten he is just relaying the decisions of the full Council? Sandy is one of the few who has tried to hold things together despite gross ineptitude and misconduct of the electec members he represents.

 

What we need to see now is if the elected members can show some integrity and abide by their own decision to draw a line under the issue. Any who can't should be removed immediately IMO.

[Para Handy]

Rejoice, Rejoice! And good riddance to dave clark just a shame our own councillors don’t have the gonads to take him to court and send him of without his shirt covered in tar and feathers and no bribery money

[carlossimon]

I think the £250K payment is an insult to the people of Shetland, but perhaps if the full story comes out some good may come out of the whole 'affair'?

 

I doubt Mr Clark's work justified such a payment, (or that whatever harassment he alleged justified it either) but at the same time I have to give him some respect for brass necking it to such an extent!

 

If I were Mr Clark, my next move would be to get the lawyers to lean on websites such as Shetlink to stifle any further discussion of the matters. I'm sure the moderators are well aware of the Laurence Godfrey - v - Demon Internet case.

[Infiltrator]

I mentioned before, and I still believe, that the fact that there is a 'sizeable' settlement, and it's been settled quickly, is to bury the facts and to hide the mistakes that occurred on both sides. The mistakes made by the council gave the ex CE the leverage to negotiate a decent package and in return no further details will be made public.

 

Where's Mainlander with all this?

 

Rant away. I'm not that interested in the whole business any more, and as I have already said, I am happy to go along with the legal decision - if Mr Clark gets a large payout (especially if it includes any element of compensation) then he will have been proved in the right. If he only gets a small payout (or none), then his critics will have been proved right.

 

He was after £1.7 million and settled for £250k, I'd suggest the latter applies in this case

[Ghostrider]

The councils investigation is done and dusted.

 

That, as I see it is 90+% of the problem. There is an unresolved official complaint against Clark signed by a number of Councillors outstanding, there is an unresolved offical complaint against Wills signed by the Convenor, senior officials etc, there allegedly is an open and ongoing Police investigation against Clark. Yet all that, at best can be ignored, or as it might seem to some, prejudged and a matter which could be grossly altered by the outcomes of those open issues settled. That's madness.

 

By signing off on Clark and giving him £250,000 and covering expenses, they have in effect stated that the complaint against Clark was "just hot air, we didn't mean it", that the Police investigation will go nowhere, so Wills must be a liar, and that the complaint against Wills will be upheald in full.

 

That must be one doozie of a Crystal Ball they've got hidden somewhere in that Town Hall that can foretell so much.

 

I'm a bit confused about the attacks on the Convener over this, has everyone forgotten he is just relaying the decisions of the full Council? Sandy is one of the few who has tried to hold things together despite gross ineptitude and misconduct of the electec members he represents.

 

The Convenor is the leader of the council, as well as being spokesperson for desicions made, he also has (or at least should have) influence over everyone concerned. Its not just simply a case of being there watching the rest fight among themselves until some sort of majority is reached, then relaying that information, although from all appearances that is what we have with teh present incumbent.

 

Sandy's trademark as Convenor has been "ignore it and hope it will go away, and if that doesn't work, throw money at it until it does", which is exactly what we've seen here again. This settlement has his name written all over it, and IMHO its an obscene settlement which is an insult to Shetland and Shetlanders.

 

Between last summer and now there has been far more than adequate time and countless occasions where Sandy could have taken the initiative and intervened in a more decisive manner, and hopefully prevented things ever going so far as they have. Likewise he could, and should have been far more pro-active in countering the negative PR towards the council each successive "leak" in the press generated in the eye's of the public.

 

Yes, I'm well aware confidentiality is a significant issue, but to keep on repeating "No comment" whenever questions were put to him comes across to most folk as the equivalent of him sticking his fingers in his ears and going "Na na na, I'm not listening to nobody", and the public does not like feeling they're being ignored, any more than any one individual does.

 

Carefully worded responses and timeous Press Releases simply acknowledging that there were issues ongoing, and that he, and the council were fully conversant with them, would have gone quite some way towards negating the level of public outcry that now exists.

 

A hallmark of a competent leader is that they not only take care of the pressing issues, but also recognise where secondary issues may arise, and pre-empt them, or failing that at least negate them as well. How well or otherwise the primary issues were handled we now probably will never know, but the secondary issue of public outcry certainly was neither pre-empted or negated by the Convenor or anyone else, if anything the chosen route of "admit nothing and tell them nothing" has created a significant part of it.