18 June - Gorging themselves at your expense
Yesterday’s Daily Express carried the headline “Councils owe you a 450 pound rebate”.
Further down the page it said, “Town halls are failing to shop around to get
the best price for basic goods and services”. The headline is based on a
report by the research company Opera Solutions and you can
read their report by clicking here. The weakness of it is that it based on only three
councils and confined itself to provision of mobile phone, energy and legal
services. But waste and profligacy is what councils are famed for as perusal of
Bexley’s ‘Expenditure over £500 list’ or a stroll down any but the most
minor of roads in the
borough will remind you. Few new road layouts are not a
disaster. No one seems capable of
designing a roundabout and why can’t they
leave well alone anyway? Ah, I remember, it’s to keep themselves in lucrative employment.
An example of excessive and unnecessary expenditure came to light when
the new mayor was
enthroned on 18th May. What would you do if you had just been appointed to a
new job? Have a quiet celebration with your family? Buy your friends a beer?
Possibly. But I suggest you would not expect your employer to throw a party
on your behalf. But that is what Bexley council did for the new mayor. While the
formalities were proceeding in the council chamber, family and friends were able to celebrate the event in a back room. The cost of
sandwiches, tea and cakes was £1,350 taken straight out of public funds.
(The alcohol was not free.) At least
the money went to a local company,
Broadway Catering and not to some
luxury hotel on the south coast.
On the
Conservative Home website,
Bexley council leader Teresa O’Neill has returned to her theme of Bexley council being so much
better than Labour councils. Having
no public toilets
is good apparently and we are keeping
all our libraries open. You’d think nothing was changing. No mention of the
Bexley Times and
News Shopper
reports of every Bexley library employee being made redundant and only half being
re-employed
nor of the mobile service being considered for the chop. She also claims that £10,000 has been saved by
vandalising the William Morris fountain and filling it with dirt. Councillors pluck these
numbers from the air. Councillor Craske is on record as saying the closure will save
£20,000 and the Expenditure over £500 list shows that more than £200 has been
spent on the ‘fountain’ already this year.
I don’t take issue with sensible expenditure cuts across the board and libraries cannot be
exempt but when will councillors bear some of the pain themselves? If we are so hard up that
it is vital to save one hundredth of the cost of councillors’ allowances by wrecking the fountain
how can we possibly justify spending £1,350 on a party for the mayor’s friends and family?
£1,350! that’s one hell of a lot of sandwiches, what was in them? Caviar?
I have had several reports of Bexley’s expenditure on cake. Can it really be
true that employees are given a free doughnut on their birthdays?