1 March (Part 2) - The end of Public Cabinet
After the Council Leader had finished condemning the Attention Seeking Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford for voting in favour of Bexley’s reduced Government Grant…
“What he said in the Chamber of the House of Commons was wrong, what he
said about my colleague Councillor Diment was incorrect and because he said it
in the House of Commons he thinks he can get away with it but the reality is
that when we hold him to account and question and challenge it, he runs scared
and complains about the fact we are issuing statements correcting the
misinformation that he has given and as I mentioned earluer, the fact that he
couldn’t even be bothered to thank our Officers and Operatives for the work they
do just says it all, that it was nothing more than an Attention Seeking Stunt
Made by a Desperate Member of Parliament craving attention and to camouflage the
fact that a couple of weeks ago he voted to cut funding for Bexley.”
“It is disappointing that we cannot rely on the Labour Party in Bexley to champion our
cause with the Labour Government.”
…there were
exactly 30 minutes of the meeting left to run. It was spent discussing the
Bexley Economic Growth Strategy and the Culture Strategy. The former will be
formally launched on 23rd March. There were several minutes of waffle about
stakeholders from the Council Officer but not a single item which will interest
the ordinary resident. Consultation responses included the lowering of Business
Rates but Leader David Leaf said that was unfortunately the responsibility of
“our tax grabbing, business bashing, job destroying Government but the Strategy
sets us up for going against those headwinds and saying Bexley is open for business”.
I’m not sure why it was relevant to the discussion but readers may wish to note
that Cabinet Member Melvin Seymour said that “I haven’t got a problem with
diversity, it actually makes us stronger and isn’t anything to be afraid of.
Some national parties would have you think different but they are a one trick
pony with a one man band and they are going to be found out. I know colleagues on
both sides of the chamber believe that”.
It was puzzling that this was immediately followed by “we have done a lot to try
reach out to our harder to reach cultures but we have to be honest, they do not
want to reach out to us for whatever reason and many of those cultures do not
value womenhood in the way that they should, so we need to do more. Sometimes I
knock on a young woman’s door [campaigning for votes] and she will say to me,
come back and ask my husband.”
Labour Leader Stefano Borella said about the two strategies, “there are a lot of
things we would agree with” but there may be changes after the May elections. He
too wanted to see “more emphasis on celebrating diversity”.
Councillor Nicola Taylor (Labour, Erith) linked culture to parks and asked why
the Council had chosen
to build over the West Street park and every one of the
flats built by BexleyCo are still empty and unsold. “Do you value our Green spaces?”
“Since you outsourced public real rentals to
Event Umbrella communities have
found it a barrier to booking cultural events and we stand to lose key events
because of that bureaucracy. I am sad to see that there is no report [in the
Strategy] of Erith Playhouse in my ward which has been going since 1947 and
every year has sell out shows.”
Cabinet Members variously said that Councillor Taylor was “in favour of
nationalising everything, ideological, dogmatic, controlling, Dickensian,
horrible speech”.
Councillor Chris Ball (Labour, Erith) said he couldn’t care less if things were
“externalised” or not so long “as the quality is there” but {Event
Umbrella] is making things difficult. “There are clearly experiences which are
not positive. We need to look at that.”
100 pubs and three theatres.