13 March - Bexley’s budget meeting goes from shambles, through trickery to outright farce
After deputy leader Gareth Bacon had devoted the whole of his concluding
speech to insulting Labour members
and the vote to approve a 1·9% council tax increase was taken (inaudible on the webcast by the way)
another vote was taken to approve some of the detail.
There were 33 such points of detail and no time was given for any discussion.
Without anyone giving the details any thought whatsoever the usual block voting
pattern followed. Cabinet member Gareth Bacon stood up immediately afterwards to
gloat that hidden among the 33 detailed proposals was one to increase the
discount on Business Rates Retail Relief to £1,500. An obvious bit of stage
management and the Labour group had fallen into the Tory trap and unknowingly voted against it.
It’s their own fault but few councillors read agendas in advance. If they did
there might be fewer damn fool questions at scrutiny meetings.
It has to be said that the Labour group always falls into Tory traps and
one must assume that they are just not deviously dishonest enough to ever run a corrupt and
sometimes criminal organisation like Bexley council - which reminds me. Plumstead police are to defer the submission of Cheryl Bacon and Will Tuckley’s
case to the CPS on possible Misconduct charges because another witness has come forward.
In the weeks to come Bexley Conservatives will make mischief over the fact that
Labour voted against Business Rates Relief and they will be technically correct
in doing so. What they won’t be saying is that the vote was the result of another
well planned and expertly executed Conservative dirty trick.
By contrast to the decision to allow no time to look through those 33 points
before voting on them, the chairman, as if to prove it was all a stunt, allowed
five minutes for the next set of details to be studied. It has to be said that
most councillors spent the time fooling around or going to the toilet.
When the budget was finally laid to rest the Labour party put forward an amendment
the effect of which was to ensure Belvedere’s Splash Park was not instantly
bulldozed if the money to save it was not forthcoming dead on time. The meeting
descended from shambles to farce. Chairman mayor Howard Marriner appeared
to relish the opportunity to prove his incompetence.
Councillor Daniel Francis spoke first. £120,000 was available from a local business and
councillor Sawyer had said [at a protest meeting] it would be spent at the Belvedere site. Councillor Sawyer begged to
differ; the money had not been received and it did not have to be spent in Belvedere,
although he would be happy if it was.
As the time approached 11 p.m. when council meetings must end, the legal officer
and the mayor began fevered discussions but £108k. Bacon stood to interject that
the Conservative group would be voting against the amendment, thereby proving,
because no Tory had up until then spoken on the amendment, that Tories attend
meetings only in a whip fodder capacity.
The woolly headed councillor John Davey (Conservative, failed in Lesnes Abbey
ward, now failing in Crayford) stood to say that he was unhappy with the
amendment because it was “woolly”. Councillor Francis came to the aid of Davey’s lack of comprehension.
Councillor Bacon attempted to speak again but the mayor
wouldn’t let him, the mayor decided to go for an immediate vote, the result of
which had already been directed by deputy leader Bacon. However after much
dithering a vote was sought on closing the meeting on time instead. Things were
getting dreadfully confusing.
Chairman Marriner had difficulty adding the figures but eventually announced
that the closure vote was carried.
While Conservative councillors could be seen rolling around with mirth the
muddling mayor then decided to proceed with the meeting . I don’t think anyone
understood what was happening. Councillor Francis was allowed to request that
the meeting be continued beyond 11 p.m. on the grounds that the amendment had
been proposed but not seconded but all the Conservatives objected.
Councillor Francis objected again that an amendment was tabled at 10:56 but it
was the mayor who had impeded the seconding by spending five minutes in a huddle
with his legal advisor. The useless mayor looked to the deputy leader for an answer.
Gareth Bacon said “tough, it was all Labour’s fault” and an amendment designed
to resuscitate a dying Splash Park was finally buried. The meeting was over.
Despite
that the mayor took another vote to approve all outstanding items.
I asked Anna Firth (Tory contender, Erith & Thamesmead) a day or two later how Bexley’s
meetings compared with Sevenoak’s but she declined to answer on the grounds that it was a ‘when did you
stop beating your wife’ style question.
If the BBC is looking for a comedy to replace Top Gear on Sunday they could do a
lot worse than take the last 20 minutes of Bexley council’s webcast. A car crash of a meeting if ever there was one.
If you strip out all the insults, the idiocies, the pure nastiness of the
average Tory councillor, I have to accept they got the better of the financial
arguments. I had less sympathy for their constant jibing that Labour had not come
up with an alternative budget. The Tories didn’t really come up with that budget
at all. It was the Finance Director and her deputy on a combined £205,000 a year
who came up with all the ideas to balance the books and by all accounts they
(and Ms. Griffin’s able predecessor) have been working on it since the Conservatives
successfully fooled the electorate with their low council tax claims in May 2014. No
opposition party can compete with that, the Conservatives didn’t in 2002-2005
either. But elections are won on empty promises and slogans, and in Bexley
council’s case, outright lies.