11 July - Deputy leader says “More pain on the way”
At
yesterday’s Cabinet meeting I found myself isolated well away from the other six
members of the public who were wisely wary of associating with the coughing and
spluttering one. Attending was barely worth the effort, ‘Public Cabinet’ is a
pre-rehearsed self-congratulatory stunt and
without a few ill-chosen words from councillor Peter
Craske it is inevitably more boring than ever.
Everything in Bexley is going wonderfully well it would seem and the council’s
achievements were variously described as “fantastic”, “marvellous” and “exciting”.
Council officer Sheila Murphy summed things up succinctly when she said, "The
targets we set ourselves have been achieved”. Perhaps someone else should be allowed
to set the targets.
Councillor John Fuller told us that our school attendance record is now one of
the best in London while deputy leader Colin Campbell reminded us of the further
£20 million of savings required in 2015. “Pain” he said, “was coming down the
road”. His graph of year on year expenditure savings was probably the most
interesting information coming to light all evening; unless perhaps you
regularly park in Bexley village.
Councillor Gareth Bacon having taken on his umpteenth local authority job and
now in charge of parking in Bexley announced his ‘Strategic Parking Review’
which aims to “improve the quality of life of residents while helping local
businesses flourish”. A brave ambition but Gareth Bacon starts with a huge inbuilt
advantage, he is not Peter Craske. If he were we would be suffering fines for
minor misdemeanours with our rubbish bins and bin men would have CCTV embedded
in their hats. He could not however resist repeating that Bexley has the
cheapest parking in S.E. London - which given the price increases elsewhere is not the lie it
once was - and that Bexley has more car parking spaces than Bromley. Which given
that Bromley is twice as big in area was never likely to be true and isn’t.
The first step towards “improving the quality of life of residents” is to make
the life of Bexley commuters more of a misery. Bexley High Street Car Park is to
become restricted for all day parkers. The precise arrangements are not yet
determined but the proposals are that about half of the 112 spaces will be made
‘short stay’ with a price structure of ‘Up to one hour, 90p’, 2 hours, £1.20,
4 hours, £1.60 and 24 hours, £3.80, which doesn’t seem too unreasonable to me.
But then I absolutely never park a car in Bexley, so who am I to say?
An hour after the meeting started I found myself on the bus home where another
dose of cough mixture and codeine awaited me.