30 September (Part 1) - Passing the time
There
is no shortage of blog material right now but stuff put on line on the last day of the
month is destined to be tomorrow’s electronic chip paper, so it is best to sit on it
today and scratch around for fillers.
Bexley’s magazine is out even if it has not hit your door mat yet. Don’t you
think it is a bit thoughtless to put an image of a South London Health Care security
pass on the front cover? Just as well that
SLHC hits the buffers at midnight tonight.
The Bexley magazine occasionally shows signs of becoming a propaganda rag with news given
a political slant but it could be worse. It’s not yet evolved into Greenwich Time.
Teresa O’Neill adorns Page 3 lauding the downgrading of Queen Mary’s Hospital to its
’health campus’ status and “thanks everyone who supported our plan to save Queen
Mary’s”. There are two whole pages devoted to it further on. I have the
impression that in some respects the reorganised hospital is set up to do what I used to
expect a GP to do but now that it is next to impossible to get an appointment within
a reasonable timescale the health service is providing one big and well equipped
doctor’s surgery in the middle of town - except that Sidcup is as close to the edge of
town as it is possible to get. My experience of GP services may not be unique, a number
of councillors were saying similar things at last week’s Health Committee meeting.
Page 4 of the Bexley magazine pictures the Magic Roundabout under the heading “A huge
improvement” and the comment “A number of people have declared themselves impressed by
the changes”. It does of course look better but it may not be as cyclist and pedestrian
friendly as people hoped. Page 14 sings the praises of
the changes made in
Welling which “is being transformed”. Not into a death trap one must hope.
Finally and inevitably the council leader uses the magazine to claim credit for
Little Waitrose coming to Sidcup
which also got a mention in last week’s News Shopper - for poor parking arrangements.
Nicholas Dowling has shown that all that is needed to get your name into a
newspaper is a dud sound recorder and assistance from a headless chicken, for
Nick has been featured in the Bexley Times for six of the last eight issues. In
the current issue his image is alongside a letter from Bexley resident Richard Shone who says…
I
believe the council has made the decision to record and webcast the meetings
professionally for two reasons: to maintain editing rights on the material so that
anything they don’t want council taxpayers to know can be quietly removed; and by
making the proposed recording methods so expensive that objections to the cost
will be raised and they won’t have to allow the recordings at all.
Pedantry compels me to note that Bexley council has not yet made that decision and the
precise recommendations to council will not be revealed until November. Some sort of
double-cross is not impossible and maybe, just this once,
there will not be unanimity in the Conservative ranks. I can only agree with Richard
when he says “the council are very good at wasting taxpayers’ money” and
“members of the public recording the proceedings the cost would be zero”.
Whoever does it, you can be sure the viewing numbers will be very close to zero.