19 July (Part 1) - Full Council Meeting
The County Gate protestors were outside the Civic Centre again
last night complete with banner. They were in
the News Shopper a week ago
because in their six years in control of the borough,
Bexley’s Conservatives have failed
to do anything at all about the intolerable traffic situation in their road. Once inside,
brief greetings were exchanged with several councillors, two more than ever before. I
won’t name any of them because one asked if I was better following
my recent ‘flu’ infection
and an admission of reading Bonkers may put someone in Teresa O’Neill’s black book.
As it happens I am a lot better but still far from being right and because of
that I am going to split this Council Meeting report into two. The first will
deal with the more entertaining and possibly scurrilous aspects of the public
shambles while another, which may come later today, but no guarantees, will deal
with the more serious but possibly equally scurrilous parts of the proceedings.
Whilst a small number of councillors appear to be happy with the briefest of
civilities, Mick Barnbrook of the Bexley Council Monitoring Group (BCMG) is still failing miserably in
his attempt to be acknowledged
by any of the female councillors. Katie Perrior is his ward councillor and for the second week in a
row Mick has tried to open a conversation with her but twice she’s hurried by saying “too busy”. Maybe she shouldn’t
have taken on Peter Craske’s Community
Safety role following his resignation if she now no longer has time for her electorate.
On the personal front it was going to be interesting to see if mayor Downing would be surprisingly good as
chairman, as was Philip Read, or
fulfill expectations, and secondly, to check the shade of purple attained by councillor Peter Craske
when subjected to curious gaze. In the event Craske didn’t show up. He not only
didn’t show up, no apology for absence was received and when the mayor asked if
there were any other absentees no one mentioned Craske. Persona non grata or
what? Is he still a councillor or is he banished? There was no signature in the member’s
attendance register either. However the Agenda for the meeting still recorded
his name on page 5 as Cabinet Member for Public Realm.
Mayor
Alan Downing proved to be everything I could wish for. If I were to be generous I might say his
performance was wooden and gaffe-prone but in truth he is a clown
out of his depth. He was petty in the manner of a Victorian headmaster and he
made an embarrassing number of elementary procedural errors. It seems to me
there is a fundamental problem with our mayoral system. The mayor has to be free
to dress up like Coco the Clown to open things or amuse youngsters who have done
well at something or the other which pretty much dictates someone not in full
time employment. So we tend to finish up with a bumbling buffoon with a less
than complete allocation of marbles in charge of the council’s most important
and complete assembly. Looking around the other potential candidates with time on
their hands I don’t see how this can change any time soon. The best councillors
look like they are holding down a decent 9 to 5 job. What is left is 100% dross.
At the start of the meeting the public consisted of 18 - most being County Gate
protestors - five BCMG members and me. By the end the numbers had dropped to
single figures when I heard one of the County Gate contingent saying that
“Craske has been charged” so naturally I asked what secret I’d been left out of.
Apparently “it was on the internet”, I don’t know where but as far as I
know for sure councillor Craske has resigned for “personal reasons”. Nothing
else. It must be true because during the meeting councillor Teresa O’Neill confirmed it that was the reason. As
everyone knows,
the leader never tells a lie.
Over the coming weekend I plan to change this website’s front page to include a
timetable of all of Bexley’s obscene blog related events. There will be one or
two new things slipped into the mix but Craske may not even get a mention. It is
tempting to indulge in gossip spreading but it is probably more sensible to stick to known facts.