29 October (Part 1) - Selling Bexley by the pound
If
Bexley council gets its way it will strip away every bit of spending on anything that is not a
statutory requirement. If you switch your brain off for a moment it may sound like an attractive
ambition but only if you want to see the borough reduced to a sterile environment devoid of
anything interesting to see or do. The idiots even considered selling off all the car parks.
Bexley council reminds me of someone from my distant past who every
winter would burn his wooden front door to keep warm (the council would replace it
eventually) and repeat the following year. The mentality is not very different.
Cash everything in and sacrifice your future wellbeing.
Bexley’s mentality is anything but conservative. They wrecked the William Morris
fountain and did their best to dispose of the council’s historical records
to save a pittance. If you visit the web page linked from the Tweet above (click the image) you
will see a report on the withdrawal of funds from Danson House and Hall Place.
This is what the Cabinet said about it at their last meeting.
The council’s figures on visitor numbers are not easy to reconcile with the web page. 15,000
visitors according to Bexley, 107,000 say the Wildlife group. Something can’t be right.
The Wildlife web page says that the council is to withdraw all funding and the Cabinet
papers confirm that it will be progressively taken away until by 2018 it will be
all gone. Historical monuments rarely survive without public support but Bexley
is not only going to withdraw support it is going to kick the Heritage Trust up the backside by
whacking up the parking charges at both sites.
If you explore the Bexley Wildlife website further you may stumble upon their
page about the council’s sale of 27 pockets of land.
The sale of Erith’s Playhouse
has been mentioned before, but the Wildlife people are naturally more
concerned with Bexley council’s Philistinism’s effect on the natural
environment. They are not happy with the council withdrawing the list of 27
sites they plan to sell from its website and refusing to give then a copy, so it’s a good job
I nicked a copy isn’t it?
Next Spring we will have to endure council leader Teresa O’Neill lumbering to
her feet to tell us yet again that as she was elected she knows best and because 99·9% (literally)
of the population said not a word about her slash and burn policies, then she
has a mandate to carry on regardless. The council’s current
budget consultation web page is here.