White sniffs of Dover: Mayor in drugs video shame refuses to quit
A MAYOR caught on camera snorting white powder was refusing to resign last night – despite being accused of bringing his town into disrepute.
Dover Mayor Neil Rix, 54, was filmed using a rolled-up £20 note to sniff the substance off a toilet cistern.
During a 67-second clip posted online, he can be heard saying: ‘Don’t let anyone come... shut that door’, adding: ‘Don’t want anyone seeing councillor Rix doing this.’ An unnamed man in the video then says: ‘You do the big one,’ to which Mr Rix says: ‘Are you sure?’
The councillor claimed the footage, uploaded to YouTube, was part of a blackmail plot against him and was shot long before he became mayor in May.
Speaking after the video was shared thousands of times, Mr Rix said: ‘I have never done it before. I was drunk. What happened happened.
‘I don’t know what it was I was putting up my nose. It could have been sherbet for all I know.’
He added: ‘I’m not standing down. I just feel I have let down my family but I will get over it. I have had a lot of support from friends and family, people that know me.’
Dover Town Council initially said it stood by the mayor, but a later statement added: ‘We are taking this matter very seriously and have asked the Kent Association of Local Councils for advice.
‘The mayor has agreed to selfrefer to the district council’s monitoring officer for a possible breach of the code of conduct. There may be a criminal investigation, but this is a matter for the police.’
However, other councillors branded Mr Rix’s position ‘untenable’ and accused him of putting the town on the map for all the wrong reasons. Labour member Kevin Mills said: ‘I’ve seen people trying to get people to resign from positions for far less than that.
‘How can you represent the people in Dover if that’s what you do? I don’t see how you can say, “I don’t intend to go”, when you have done something wrong.
‘I’d be gobsmacked if the aver- age person will perceive snorting Charlie as anything other than wrong. I think he’s stepped on the line.’
He added: ‘ Now Dover isn’t remembered for all the right things – now it’s remembered as the place where the mayor’s taking cocaine.’
Mr Rix, who runs a scaffolding firm, was elected after serving as an independent councillor. At the time he pledged to ‘make Dover a better place’, adding: ‘ This is a huge honour and I am determined to work my hardest and do my very best for the town.’
He told Kent Online: ‘It did not happen recently. I was set up, pushed into it and coerced. Someone had put drugs into my beer and I did not know I was being filmed.’
Kent Police said: ‘Officers will be making inquiries to establish the circumstances of the footage.’
‘I did not know I was being filmed’