The nail tax that is.
Having spent rather
too much time trainspotting in recent days, my investigation
into the origins of the nail tax has been over-reliant on others, but a message
yesterday sparked a vague recollection of something that happened last March.
Whilst it is normal for the Agenda for a Full Council meeting to refer to a
report by the Licensing Committee and accept it without debate, indeed the
meeting of 2nd March was no exception…
Extract from Agenda of main Full Council meeting, 2nd March 2016.
…the nail tax proposal was pulled out and included in an Extraordinary Council
Meeting held on the same day. Very unusual and no doubt it was through force of habit
that the item appeared on the main meeting Agenda too.
The Extraordinary Meeting was necessary because a new Chief Executive was to be appointed
but why the Licencing issue was swapped to that meeting I have no idea. Well I have, closing down
debate would have been a priority.
It looks to be a blatant attempt to hide the new tax by ‘debating’ it at an
obscure extra meeting called for something else entirely.
Not that there was any debate as you can hear in this recording I made of it.
The recording does not reveal the vote but you may be sure that all Tories voted for additional taxation.
No wonder no one knew what was going on. No one I know of attends Licensing
Committee meetings and there was no debate in Council. I imagine some of the usual suspects
will be attending Licensing Committee meetings in future.
That Extraordinary meeting was a very secretive affair, its main purpose was to
formally appoint Gill Steward as the Bexley’s new Chief Executive. The public
was not allowed to know anything about her. A vote approved the throwing out of
the public if anything was said about her.
Fortunately that doesn’t matter.
Everything you need to know about Gill Steward is here.