6 December - Big chain. Small brain
The
lasting memory of the council
meeting on 17th November is always likely
to be councillor Craske’s amazing verbal assault on an elderly resident in the
public gallery. That is already the subject of an official complaint but
hopefully Craske’s outburst will be a one-off - well one can hope!
What is perhaps far more worrying is that the Mayor who chaired the meeting did
absolutely nothing about it and was flagrantly against the Labour opposition
and tolerated long, sometimes irrelevant, speeches by her Conservative cohorts.
Councillor Val Clark appeared to be blissfully unaware that she was in the Chair
and not the cheer-leader for a Tory rabble.
I wrote to Mrs. Clark
to express my concern at her complete abdication of the Chairman’s role and just
over two weeks later I have heard absolutely nothing in reply.
It appears that others who felt that Mrs. Clark’s chairmanship was abysmal
suggested she should undergo some training in the art. This suggestion was
ignored by Kevin Fox, Head of Committee Services and Scrutiny at Bexley council
when he replied. Neither was there any comment on Craske’s outburst. Naturally
Fox’s failure to answer the questions was promptly brought to his attention. His
reply was just as ignorant as you might expect from a council official, “I have
nothing further to add as I feel I have addressed the points I am able to”. Is
this code for ‘I can’t answer your points, more than my job’s worth’ or is this
representative of the Listening Council not wanting to listen? As my
correspondent said in his reply, “Thank you for taking the time to completely
ignore my email. I think it admirably reinforces the points I was making.”
In case anyone should think I am constantly bringing the poor quality of our
councillors to attention because of political animosity towards this useless shower,
perhaps it is time I owned up and said that the only political party of which I
was ever a member is the local Conservatives.