11 December (Part 1) - Another Scrutiny meeting. Some preliminary thoughts
There was a another scrutiny committee meeting last night; Resources, and
whilst not uninteresting is the
least likely of the three to provide eye catching headlines.
I didn’t want to go, it was raining, the Civic Offices’ automatic front door didn’t want
to open. A jobsworth on the front desk would not let me in until 19:29 and made
me sign a register. She insulted my intelligence by saying that in case of fire
the register would inform her who was in the building while councillors and staff were leaving
and entering freely. Without a name badge she wouldn’t be able to match my
signature against my charred body anyway.
Once inside I took my place behind the gap in chairman Steven Hall’s ‘doughnut’
and immediately took the photograph which appears below. (Not everybody had arrived.)
The last time I attended a Resources meeting I had to change seat because I
could see even less than usual. Steven Hall, for perfectly good reasons, had
changed the seating layout to something that made more sense to him, and, for
his purposes, to me as well if I am honest. However it meant it went from something like a horseshoe to the
aforesaid view blocking doughnut.
Last night he had arranged a decent size bite out of the doughnut and the view
was better than at most meetings in that damned awful council chamber. Steven’s
scheme will work for the public so long as almost none turns up. Someone must have
anticipated that last night because only one copy of the Agenda was available for the
public. However there were two of us. Fortunately the other one, John Watson,
uses the occasion to catch up on his correspondence without having to pay for
heating his home and so had no need of an Agenda.
When chairman Hall first introduced his new seating plan and I had to move to get
any sort of view at all, councillor Daniel Francis (Labour, Belvedere) commented on the change in
defence of observers. It was good of him to do so but he could have said the
same at any meeting and the liars who run Bexley Conservative’s website used his
support for open democracy as
an excuse to claim it was his only contribution to the
budget debate. As I said, liars through and through.
The inadequacy of the new council chamber can be traced directly back to council
leader Teresa O’Neill OBE (Overspent Building Extravagance). She was hell bent
on converting an ancient building society headquarters designed to store
millions of paper files before the widespread use of desktop computers into an
edifice for her self-gratification. It was “iconic” she said and its roof could be seen
from miles around.
O’Neill OBE (Other Building Excluder) said it would cost £36 million to convert and wanted nothing to do with a rebuild on the old Broadway site which
council officers recommended at a cost
of less than £30 million.
Just think of how much better off the borough would be now if Teresa O’Neill had
not indulged in her own personal vanity project. Instead of a badly lit dance
floor we could have had a properly designed debating chamber, but that is not all.
Where there is now a bombsite blighting Bexleyheath would stand a modern
building. Tesco would own the Watling Street site and be in the process of
selling it off for housing instead of whatever they have in mind for Broadway.
Chief Executive Paul Moore mumbled something about mixed retail and housing developments on the
Broadway bombsite a few days ago but refused to elaborate. Watling Street will
be increasingly marginalised and divorced from the town centre.
Most importantly of all, the borough would not be in such dire financial straits
as it is now. The conversion bodge job in Watling Street ended up costing £42
million, in the region of £14 million more than a purpose build on Broadway.
Just think what could be done with that amount of money? There might be no talk of selling off 26
parks and open spaces for a start.
Councillors who elected Teresa O’Neill to the top job when her predecessor Ian
Clement went to the GLA where his fraud was not overlooked as was the £2,200
filched in Bexley and who continue to elect her have a lot to answer for.
This is a bit of an early morning rant isn’t it but an occasional reminder of a
major reason for Bexley being in the financial mire should be regurgitated once
in a while. There is no getting away from the fact that Teresa O’Neill has
presided over a general decline of the borough lifted only here and there by TfL money. It is little wonder that she would
like those who revisit the past to be silenced by her police friends.
More formal meeting report later. The Places meeting is not done with yet.