29 September (Part 1) - Monitoring Man
I
went to meet John Watson yesterday evening following his appearance in three
local newspapers due to his involvement with the
petition against excessive salaries
paid to Bexley’s top staff. Will Tuckley the Chief Executive is the 37th highest
paid local government employee in the country (Source: BBC Panorama). While I
was with him his phone rang and it was LBC asking if they
could interview him live on air this morning. Well it seems he was squeezed out
by the proposed closure of Brompton Hospital and the fact that there were only
60 adoptions in the country last year due presumably to a surfeit of red tape.
LBC apologised and said they would try to get John on tomorrow.
The call from LBC wasn't the only media related contact yesterday. Another
broadcaster called in the morning to discuss the possibility of doing a
programme on local government and the rejection by some councils of Eric
Pickles’s advice to them. It’s unwise to count chickens in these matters and it
is clear that a programme such as that suggested would take a long time to come
to fruition. Speaking of which…
The Notomob feature involving Dominic Littlewood is I am told scheduled for
broadcast during the first half of October - subject no doubt to the usual
delays and postponements that afflict these things.