Did Brian Coleman lie to his local newspaper?

Here’s the story from the Not The Barnet Times blog:

Yesterday, Not The Barnet Times broke the story that Mike Freer was wasting £10,000 of taxpayers money providing legal services for a councillor being investigated by the Standards Committee. The real scandal of this story was that the council’s insurers were willing to provide a lawyer at no cost to the taxpayer, but the councillor in question wanted one of the biggest London firms to act for him instead.

Our friends at The Barnet Times followed this up with an article of their own in which they named the councillor under investigation as Brian Coleman…

Cue Coleman on the phone giving the journalist an ear bashing, denying that he was the councillor in question and threatening legal action. The only problem for Barnet’s Most Pompous Councillor is that his leader, Mike Freer, had already confirmed that Coleman was indeed the councillor under investigation.

Mike Freer told the paper: “…the standards board had already started their enquires and Councillor Coleman was being asked for statements and to attend interviews before the issue with the insurers had been resolved.”

Ouch. If controversial Brian Coleman isn’t the councillor being investigated, it should be pretty easy for him to clear up the matter.

We’ll see what happens…