19 July - Magic money found by “Smart arses”
Councillor Philip Read’s lying may have been the highlight of last week’s Cabinet meeting
but it wasn’t the end of it.
Councillor John Fuller, Cabinet Member for Education, was next to speak and he is by comparison boringly professional.
He’s absolutely useless when it comes to lying, exaggeration or slagging off the opposition parties.
Why Council Leader O’Neill tolerates his quiet efficiency I have no idea.
He told us that he is ready for a baby boom which is about to hit secondary schools. Classrooms that had
been closed have been reopened and 85% of pupils have been given their first choice of school.
Special Educational Needs (SEN) pupils are a priority and there are more each year,
“more than any other local borough” and a new school “will expand on what we
already have”. Using abbreviations and jargon which only an educationalist would
understand, Councillor Fuller said he was selling Bexley’s schools expertise to other boroughs.
Informative and concise; could Cabinet Member for Adult Services Brad Smith compete?
Not really,
he read from a long script and even he seemed to be bored by it so
let’s move on to Regeneration and Cabinet Member Linda Bailey.
She said that she thought “the medium term financial strategy looks a lot better
than I envisaged a few years ago” and it was due “to our prudent management”.
Referring to the consultation on growth and “the many roadshows” she
said “it has cross party support and will bring many benefits” but she “was saddened
about a community group that had now gone out into the community with
pretty
nasty stuff and frightening residents. I know of a person I heard of at the
weekend who is absolutely petrified and was told the house would be taken from
them in a couple of months time. This has got to be stamped on because it is
just ridiculous. I know Chinese whispers but we really have got to do something
about that. The growth will be happening over many years, not straight away and
it won’t happen without the proper infrastructure, transport, health provision,
consultation and the proper planning procedure”.
“The New Homes Bonus [provides for] the possibility the government will be withholding
payments to Councils if they are not planning effectively with planning
applications for delivering growth. If this comes into being we will have to be
very careful the way forward we go on this.” (That appears to be the government
holding a pistol the the Planning Committee’s head.)
Councillor Bailey wanted to be sure that planning applications were of high
quality so that there was no reason to reject them.
Council Leader Teresa O’Neill thanked Councillor Bailey for “bringing to
attention the scaremongering that is happening in Slade Green” and offered her
“proven track record” as reassurance that she’d deliver “the right results
because the alternative is more scary”.
Councillor Stefano Borella (Labour, North End) asked Councillor Craske for more
details of “his pre-election wish list” and Councillor Fuller about the £796,000
overspend on SEN transport and complained that schools had no idea of what their
future funding might be. There was more, his questions took five and a half
minutes to pose and the Council Leader decided to answer the school’s questions
herself. “Councillor Fuller is on top of all of those issues.” Everyone had
forgotten the question to Councillor Craske, not a word was said about it by anyone.
Councillor Alan Deadman (Labour, North End) welcomed the partial restoration of
previous service cuts but said that residents on their doorsteps believed that
the brown bin tax was “blackmail” because with gardens to maintain and maybe no
car to go to the dump, they had no option but to stump up the money.
Councillors Craske and
Don Massey giggled their contempt and Massey dismissed the residents’ views as “rubbish”.
Councillor Deadman briefly complained about the late provision of a growth road show in Slade Green.
Once again Teresa O’Neill chose to answer the questions herself. “The take up
for garden waste is the best in London and people had voted with their feet”
which was no answer at all. The Leader said that “additional roadshows were
always expected”. Does that sound likely?
Councillor
Sybil Camsey (Conservative, Brampton) said she was pleased that SEN children were no
longer being “taken outside the borough at high cost” and providing for them
locally was “one of the best things we ever did”. She is “delighted” and there
will be a new SEN secondary school. She thought “we should be commended for
what we have done with SEN”. There’s nothing quite like blowing your own trumpet.
Councillor John Davey (Conservative, Crayford for the time being) said “the opposition should be saying what a wonderful job we
are doing in keeping control of the finances instead of nit-picking” and he “was
concerned somewhat about the fake information circulating in Slade Green but
like it or not we have got to get growth. People who come up with ridiculous
things do our residents a great disservice”.
Councillor Francis (Labour, Belvedere) had noticed the failure to answer questions directed at
Councillor Craske. He wanted to know how the wish list would be funded. The
Leader jumped in again, it was “funded by last year’s underspend”. (Yeah, so you keep saying.)
Whilst praising the various initiatives to make the borough better Councillor Francis also
wanted to speak of “the realities”. SEN children “are being told there is no
school for you because you have SEN and that is causing real real problems. My
child is one of those children who have been told there is no place for you.
They are being told to stay in nursery a year.”
“What we have seen locally and nationally, what we have seen over the past
seven years, is failing and what we have seen tonight is a number of budget cuts
being reversed, not permanently, by an underspend. It’s amazing because four
working days ago the Cabinet Member for Finance when asked what was going to
happen to that underspend said he had no plans for it but somehow in four days
he has magicked up Councillor Craske’s plans. We have allowed the house to get
into disrepair but we are going to have a last minute clean up ten months before
the Council elections. Can you imagine a Labour Council admitting we have still
got to find £5·1 million for the budget and then announcing a list of
expenditure? I have no problem with that but if we had done that you can imagine
the accusations of financial mismanagement. Your policies have failed the people of this borough.”
The Leader, mistress of the non-answer, said ”if that was the case we wouldn’t
be writing back budget lines, it’s a result of the work we have put in that has
put us into this place.”
Cabinet Member Massey at his most condescending said that “Councillor Francis, I
know you are not financially illiterate so I put that down to politicking and
getting election fever”. He said he “joined the Council from finance in 2006 and
felt there was a lot of things the public sector could learn, OK? Bexley
Council’s finances were in a mess, no doubt about it and we had to restore. You
do it by transformation. You can make your glib comments about cutting but it is not about that.”
Excusing his comments four days earlier he said he planned to
put the underspend into the transformational reserve and he would. It was the
transformational reserve that Councillor Craske was going to spend, not the underspend itself.
Wafting across from the UKIP benches came the unmistakable words, “Smart arse”
and as Councillor Massey droned on in similar vein (“our accounting is
excellent”) one could not but wholeheartedly agree.
Councillor Leaf said that “Labour would fail residents and fail to adapt”.
He said that nationally and locally the Conservatives had delivered “seven years
of success”. What the opposition say “has no substance and no credibility”. The
Leader was very pleased with her little protégé and said “Well done Councillor Leaf”.
Councillor Massey moved adoption of the financial plans, Councillor Craske seconded and up went every greasy palm.