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News and Comment October 2014

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29 October (Part 1) - Selling Bexley by the pound

TweetIf Bexley council gets its way it will strip away every bit of spending on anything that is not a statutory requirement. If you switch your brain off for a moment it may sound like an attractive ambition but only if you want to see the borough reduced to a sterile environment devoid of anything interesting to see or do. The idiots even considered selling off all the car parks.

Bexley council reminds me of someone from my distant past who every winter would burn his wooden front door to keep warm (the council would replace it eventually) and repeat the following year. The mentality is not very different. Cash everything in and sacrifice your future wellbeing.

Bexley’s mentality is anything but conservative. They wrecked the William Morris fountain and did their best to dispose of the council’s historical records to save a pittance. If you visit the web page linked from the Tweet above (click the image) you will see a report on the withdrawal of funds from Danson House and Hall Place. This is what the Cabinet said about it at their last meeting.
Cabinet report
The council’s figures on visitor numbers are not easy to reconcile with the web page. 15,000 visitors according to Bexley, 107,000 say the Wildlife group. Something can’t be right.

The Wildlife web page says that the council is to withdraw all funding and the Cabinet papers confirm that it will be progressively taken away until by 2018 it will be all gone. Historical monuments rarely survive without public support but Bexley is not only going to withdraw support it is going to kick the Heritage Trust up the backside by whacking up the parking charges at both sites.

Sell offIf you explore the Bexley Wildlife website further you may stumble upon their page about the council’s sale of 27 pockets of land. The sale of Erith’s Playhouse has been mentioned before, but the Wildlife people are naturally more concerned with Bexley council’s Philistinism’s effect on the natural environment. They are not happy with the council withdrawing the list of 27 sites they plan to sell from its website and refusing to give then a copy, so it’s a good job I nicked a copy isn’t it?

Next Spring we will have to endure council leader Teresa O’Neill lumbering to her feet to tell us yet again that as she was elected she knows best and because 99·9% (literally) of the population said not a word about her slash and burn policies, then she has a mandate to carry on regardless. The council’s current budget consultation web page is here.

 

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