31 July - How to waste public funds
I
returned from a little social event yesterday and turned on the TV a few minutes
after eight o’clock. It presented me with a YouTube video filmed yesterday in
Bexley Heath (sic). Shortly afterwards an email alerted me to the same video and
provided the link which my TV does not.
I have no idea how YouTube managed to offer me a locally based video when I have
not looked at anything else remotely like it. Google knows too much about us. I
blocked YouTube on my router once as a protest against their censorious
attitudes but found it was impossible to get along without it. Too many news outlets rely upon it.
The video is three hours long and portrays a protest against Bexley Council thinking that getting
a bloke in a
frock to read stories to toddlers is a good use of taxpayers’ money.
The bits I sampled show a small group outside
both Crayford and Bexleyheath libraries who occasionally use a megaphone to say
not a lot. They are outnumbered by police who stand around doing nothing. The
largest number I saw in any one sampled shot was twelve. How much did that cost
and how many bikes were pinched while they were so occupied?
Members of the public who can occasionally be heard talking appeared to be
predominately against the wisdom of influencing young minds but not all of them.
Is it any wonder that the public is so against the way this country is being
governed? At the aforesaid social event I only knew one person in my group and ages ranged up to 92.
It was universally agreed that the Conservatives had thrown away their 80 seat
majority and achieved nothing of which one could be proud. There was also
universal agreement that no one could vote for Kier Starmer as he had no
policies and would likely make things worse.
What an awful state we are in now that woke Lefties have infiltrated every
aspect of society. Absolutely hopeless.
95A Woolwich Road
Yesterday Bexley Council refused Mr. Singh’s application to double the size of
his property in Woolwich Road. It is “overdevelopment” and “will detract from
the character of the surrounding built environment”. (22/01325/FUL)
So with any luck he will give up and concentrate on wrecking old pubs.
A couple of miles to the west the same developer is having more success. See below.
The Plume of Feathers
Greenwich Council has given Dhadda Estates permission to demolish a listed air
raid shelter and build nine dwellings in the grounds of The Feathers in Plumstead
High Street. (Click
for the planning documentation.)
The pub will be retained albeit in a different refurbished form.
It comes as no surprise to learn that there will be no car parking facilities but never fear, the
nine houses will be provided with 20 bike racks. The pub gets eight.
The Socialist war on cars continues.
Bad Doctors
It was confirmed last week that three out of four doctors (GPs) are part timers on
three days a week or less. I was pleased to see that my opinion of mine was confirmed in an NHS
conducted nationwide survey of GP satisfaction. Bexley Group
Practice scored only 51% patients satisfied and comes only two steps from the bottom of the list in Bexley.
The Ingleton Avenue surgery comes top with 94% satisfaction.
Drug raid in Erith
The
police announced a major success against drug dealers in Erith last Monday.
I read their report and moved on but on Thursday the penny dropped. This must be
the same address about which I have had several reports throughout the year.
I checked with one of the reporters who confirmed it was.
Little can be added to what the police have said except that the situation was
reported to Bexley Council more than once over several months past without
response and the local Councillors knew something, at least, about what was going on.
The story could not be reported here because doing so might have put the informant’s safety
in jeopardy.
Smart meters
Mine broke due to a
faulty software update after 41 days of use
and Octopus Energy told me that it would be several months before they could
even consider what could be done about it. Their customer service people are
pretty good but I was not at all happy about the response that it didn’t matter all that much
because they could still read my meter remotely.
I considered that depriving me of easy access to my own energy consumption data broke the
implied contract between us and retaliated with a Faraday cage. As a result,
until yesterday, my meter had not been read since May 9th.
Further negotiations led to me removing the cage a a week ago and Octopus
attempted to remotely fix the software to enable my Home Display Unit to work
again. The attempt failed but last Wednesday they admitted that they could not
any longer read the meter remotely.
On 26th August they are coming out to fit a new set of meters. Bloody mindedness sometimes pays dividends.
For the record my electricity bill for the period 9th May to 28th July is
£124·99 which in the present circumstances is probably not too bad. The solar
panels are paying off big time but Winter will be the rude awakening.
If a true Conservative is elected in September and if they are to stand any
chance of retaining power in 2024, they must abolish VAT on all energy bills.
Petrol included. Every inflationary price rise is caused or exacerbated by high
and rising energy prices.
29 July (Part 2) - Worthless promises
Bexley
Council exerted a great deal of effort before the May election to try
to
convince residents that they had fulfilled every Manifesto promise and Sidcup resident Dimitri Shvorob easily
debunked the
claim with a series of Freedom of Information requests.
Not one of
the promises made for the past four years has come to pass without some degree of failure and some were not met at all.
One of the promises was that all of Bexley’s schools would be OFSTED rated as good or better - and they weren’t.
OFSTED has now stuck the knife into Bexley’s lying heart again with a withering
report on the former Erith Grammar School and all the gory details
may be found on the MyLondon website.
29 July (Part 1) - The bin man strikes again
You will have heard by now that the bin strike has been suspended but
it will be two weeks before the gardens waste service is restored. Meanwhile my
green bin was emptied on schedule this morning and CountryStyle has made their
usual mess with the big bins opposite.
They
couldn’t be bothered to push the plastics bin against the wall or lock it so the
local vandals can drop anything they like into it. And they will.
As usual the paper bin is back to front and unlocked because CountryStyle
encouraged someone to wreck the lid hinge.
Although it is currently almost empty there is so much heavy junk on top of it
that it takes considerable effort to lift the lid to post the occasional cornflake box.
CountryStyle thereby encourage further rubbish dumping.
CountryStyle is slowly but surely demonstrating that they cannot control
their
staff’s numerous failures to take just a little bit of pride in their jobs.
28 July - Education, but not as we know it
I went to a boys only school. In the whole of the time I was there we had
just one sex education lesson and all I remember about it is that the face of
Rodney Farrow sitting opposite me went bright red and stayed that way. Most of
us left school not really knowing what a girl was and I stepped straight into an
office job shared with three young women who were probably about five years
older than me. Valerie, Veronica and Vera and those five years made them so much
more sophisticated than a 17 year old schoolboy who didn’t know how to react to their teasing.
Another thing I never knew was the word homosexual although I later realised
that the music teacher must have been one. Obviously the old days left something to be
desired in terms of a wider education.
How different things are now but have they gone too far in the opposite direction?
Not
having a TV licence my viewing includes quite a lot of YouTube videos. There are
hundreds which are nothing but a camera ‘walking’ through city streets. They are
strangely addictive and streets I used to walk along in the early evening almost
alone are now full of people drinking outside pubs even around midnight.
While I would have been in my office suit today anything goes. Last month the camera
briefly caught a Pride event in which one man was wearing nothing but a single
strategically placed sock while children stared and police in rainbow coloured
cars were as unusual not pursuing burglars and bicycle thieves.
I have no idea why such things have to be paraded in public. It was wrong that
Hampshire Education Authority did not provide sex education for
teenagers in the 1950s, if it had done I can think of life events that may have
taken a different course. Whether it is appropriate for four year olds is for individual parents to decide but
Bexley
Council has decided they should get into the scene that has provoked protests elsewhere.
I hope taxpayers are not having to foot the bill for this ‘education’ and Bexley
Council can explain how Story Hour is improved by the reader being a bloke in a frock.
Bexley is employing the same bloke in a frock who has provoked protests in
various other towns. He must be laughing all the way to his bank. And you are paying.
Daily Telegraph report.
Maybe it has something to do with Bexley libraries being run by someone we know to have a vivid sexual imagination and was arrested for it.
27 July (Part 2) - We won’t tell you
I thought it might be just me but apparently it isn’t. Bexley Council’s
planning portal is running as slowly as the traffic on its roads but worse, no
matter which application one searches for, it tells you that no documents are available.
I wonder how long it will take them to fix that.
27 July (Part 1) - Protest and sign it now
Bexley Council has submitted
its formal response to the Mayor’s consultation on his plans to penalise the
poorer members of society who need a vehicle to go about their lives and their business.
It is as you might expect a comprehensive argument against Khan’s latest plan to
tax London’s economy into submission.
At a time when transport is rapidly becoming greener there is little need to
accelerate it and spending £200 million of taxpayers’ money on the required
infrastructure makes no sense unless his real plan is to use the cameras to enforce a London wide congestion zone.
Public transport is not a complete answer and cycling certainly isn’t. When
I
returned from Petts Wood last week the roads were busy in part because of just
one cyclist who I first encountered near Queen Mary’s Hospital and didn’t lose until I got to Crook Log.
He was a a teenager on a very ordinary bike wobbling along at a reasonable speed and I think
I passed him and vice-versa four times. Each time having to wait behind until it was safe to give him a wide berth and get by.
Using the statistics I get from my safety expert son I would guess
that the hit on the economy caused by that one lad on a bike will be well into four
figures. A socialist mayor will have no concept of economics and slowly but
surely he is wrecking London. While his voter base exists I suspect the only
respite is for sensible people to get out of London. That is certainly my
long term plan, if someone of 1943 vintage can have a long term plan.
There is still time to sign
Louie French's ULEZ petition. I broke the habit of a life time and actually
added my name to it. Never done that before but Khan has to be stopped.
24 July - Maybe the old ways were best
It
didn’t seem worth reporting at the time but Councillor Mabel Ogundayo (Labour, Thamesmead East) regretted the fact that paper food bin liners were no
longer available from Bexley Council.
She was told By Cabinet Member Craske that the decision had been taken to
discontinue them “as things had just moved on” and he finds that to be “all fine,
and the issue is about encouraging people who don’t recycle to do so and find new ways to promote it”.
“Moved on” didn’t seem to be much of an excuse. You can be pretty sure it was just another Council cut.
The Chairman agreed that things have moved on and recyclable bags are commonly
found around magazines and the like. (How many people buy magazines these days?
I bought a railway magazine in May solely because of its Crossrail supplement, but
that was the first in many years.)
If BiB’s overnight postbag is anything to go by, no free bags is a big mistake. No
bags equals no recycling according to several. I am not sure how that works. Is
mucky stuff in the green bin a better proposition than a fairly easily washed food caddy?
Perhaps it is just a rebellious reaction to Bexley Council’s constant cuts and
not wanting to help residents when they could. They do little for us, why should I cooperate with them etc.
23 July - Use your food waste bin or be fined
While the borough struggles with a much reduced waste collection service right now as
the Unite Union once more throws its weight around, the Places Scrutiny
Committee discussed food waste and floated ideas for a wider range of services.
On food waste Councillor June Slaughter (Conservative, Sidcup) said
that last year’s strike pushed things “backwards very considerably and it will be
difficult to get back to where we were before”.
She said the Council is failing to get across to residents the implications of
not separating food waste and significant numbers of them are putting it in the general
waste bin which has both “ecological and financial costs”.
She spoke regretfully about the government not allowing residents to be fined
for transgressions and if people are not putting food waste bins out “we must do something about that”.
I had not until now put Councillor Slaughter down as a petty dictator
and maybe she should take a step back and think it out again.
My food waste bin is in pristine condition having never been used and not so much as an apple core has ever
gone into the green bin. My green bin is very often empty too. But apparently I am one of Mrs. Slaughter’s undesirables.
On she went. “We must get tougher about people who do not use their food waste bins.”.
She recommended street surveys to identify those who are not putting their food
bins out. Me thinks the self confessed bee in June’s bonnet has grown too big for its own jack boots, if I may mix two metaphors.
Cabinet Member Sue Gower had obviously given more thought to food waste than
the member for Sidcup. Linking food waste to the obesity crisis she said many
households live off fast food and the only thing left to throw away is the
packaging. She said the Council should “better understand what goes on in different areas”.
(Dear Sue, I have never in my life ordered a takeaway. Boring, that’s me.)
Cabinet Member Peter Craske said he was not in favour of penalties and the
borough’s recycling success owes everything to education and encouragement. He
even gave credit to the former Labour Leader Chris Ball for starting the present system.
The Agenda referred to many other aspects of waste collection.
The Council will trial the kerbside collection of unwanted small electrical items including batteries.
Similarly textiles. There have been recycling workshops in Blackfen library as
part of the educate the public initiative.
The Council is encouraging the re-use and repair of items and encouraging the use of “Real Nappies”.
Only one Councillor showed any interest in these new initiatives. Mabel Ogundayo
(Labour, Thamesmead East) wanted to know how the “Library of Things” would work in practice.
Borrowing tools etc. instead of buying them. The responsible Council Officer unfortunately
didn’t have a clue. You can be pretty sure that is one idea which will never see the light of day.
When
I saw Councillor Bacon restored to chairing the Places Scrutiny Committee on 6th
July I had an instant flashback to 2012 when she was doing the same job and
closed a meeting to every member of the public present. All because just one
of them was carrying an ancient Dictaphone to record her words.
The following day Bexley Council realised that what they had done was illegal
and instead of offering a simple apology they embarked upon the most massive
lying cover-up operation ever recorded in these pages
which ultimately led to Cheryl and three members of staff being named in a
police file which was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Ironically the Dictaphone was not in working order and could not be used as
evidence of the lying but nine witnesses convinced the police that there was
evidence of Misconduct in a Public Office.
For the record I don’t believe that the episode was wholly Cheryl’s fault, she
was ill-advised but unlike some other Councillors, Conservative too, was not
prepared to break ranks and speak the truth.
But it was all ten years ago and most of those responsible for Bexley Council’s chequered history have gone.
What was her meeting about this time? Not an awful lot as it happens.
Councillor John Davey (Conservative, West Heath) asked if anyone knew what local businesses thought about Sadiq
Khan’s proposed ULEZ extension. Cabinet Member for Growth, Cafer Munur, said he
had spoken to many and it was of “great, great concern to them” not just directly
but because of employees who commute in from places like Chatham.
Councillor Davey said it impacted not just on residents who cannot afford to
replace cars, but also on the local economy as a whole. Maybe he was under the illusion that
the local economy would be of the slightest interest to a Labour Mayor who
attacks prosperity on so many levels. Unjustified bus lanes, 20 m.p.h. zones. Low
Traffic Neighbourhoods, little used cycle lanes etc.
Councillor Sally Hinkley (Labour, Belvedere) said the Local Plan recorded
an issue with air quality. If there is no ULEZ what is Bexley Council going to
do about the pollutants? There was no immediate answer.
Councillor Frazer Brooks (Conservative, Falconwood & Welling) said that ULEZ was regressive. Those who can afford to
update their vehicles had already done so and it directly impacts the poorest.
Overnight carers, both family and professional, would be hit hard and twice within 24 hours in some cases.
Councillor Mabel Ogundayo (Labour, Thamesmead East) trod the well worn socialist path of public transport
being the answer and claimed it was cheaper. However it is frequently impractical. I
drove to Petts Wood and back yesterday to fix a problem that had arisen there.
The roads were busy, Sidcup was gridlocked and the total driving time was an
hour and fifty minutes for exactly 20 miles. Three buses each way would have been close to five hours
and lacking the car’s air conditioning which I enjoyed at no cost. (All my motoring
has used solar energy for the past three months at least which maybe confirms
Frazer’s point about regressive taxation.)
Councillor June Slaughter (Conservative, Sidcup) thought it was pretty silly
that perfectly good cars will have to be scrapped. Councillor Nigel Betts
reminded his colleagues that residents were already affected as our local hospital is within
the existing ULEZ and sick people cannot always jump on a bus. Councillor Davey
said he was an enthusiast for electric buses and that the Mayor had not provided any on borough routes, indeed
the plans for them have been cut. (A small number of the 180s from Abbey Wood to Erith are now electric.)
Cabinet Member Craske said that air pollution in Bexley had not exceeded
permitted levels in the past few years. “It hasn’t happened.” He went on to say
that with the transfer to electric vehicles there will be millions of pounds of
cameras with nothing to enforce. A totally naive view. They cannot be justified
on monetary grounds now, they are being put in to enforce London pay per mile charging, a point which Councillor Craske later acknowledged.
He spoke of the possibility of fines for those who leave engines running when
parked, particularly outside schools. Another plus for electric cars; both
heating and air conditioning will run when the engine is turned off.
Cabinet Member Munur said that electric cars “leave a foot print too” but I
suspect he speaks from a position of ignorance. He can run his hand over my
brake discs any time he likes and he will find his palm clean afterwards because
the brakes are so rarely used. I will concede that tyre life is heading towards
about 75% of what I used to achieve in a petrol car.
Note: What happened to the file that went to the CPS? Basically it was lost. The
investigating police officer had retired in the year following the submission
but he came to see me afterwards in a private capacity and provided a few
details. He said he had never seen the like of it before but left
me convinced that the Crown Prosecution Service is bent and that he thought so
too. Nothing more was
ever heard about their involvement in Bexley Council’s cover-up.
21 July - The Full Council meeting that wasn’t
Bexley Council failed to webcast last night’s Council meeting unless you
count a still picture every five seconds accompanied by a snippet of audio as a
webcast. And I failed to heave my backside from the comfort of my sofa to one of Bexley’s hard plastic chairs.
The broken file has been placed into the webcast archive presumably by someone
with the same mindset as the one who placed a homeless family into a house with no roof.
Looking
on the bright side, I can comment in this report with little fear of contradiction
and I will never know if new Mayor Nick O’Hare made a bigger or lesser mess of
the Chairmanship than expected. Usually new Mayors start their year
reasonably well and deteriorate as they increasingly exploit and possibly abuse their power.
Sidcup resident Dimitri Shvorob asked Richard Diment, Cabinet Member for
Education, why Bexley’s ‘Good’ OFSTED ratings are between two and three times
less than both Bromley and Greenwich but thanks to the technical gremlins we did
not hear the excuses. I hope Dimitri’s follow up question was how the 2022 Conservative
manifesto claimed that all schools were ‘Good’ or better when the claim was a blatant lie.
He then asked Disc Jockey Craske what the claimed “successful Crayford superfast
broadband” was all about when there was no obvious sign of it.
Another resident, Stuart Mackenzie, asked how much Bexley is paying towards the
administration of the Crematorium Committee which is a joint Dartford, Greenwich,
Bexley affair and why the Committee cannot be run more efficiently by just one authority on a rota system.
If Cabinet Member Leaf did not filibuster away the allocated 15 minutes the
Council may have been questioned about what it is doing to protect residents
from the noise created by London City Airport for which they have plans for more.
Councillor Howard Jackson stooped to asking a creepy question about the newly
opened Barnehurst Golf Course and Councillor John Davey banged the
anti-ULEZ drum.
Moving to Motions, new Councillor Chris Ball (Labour, Erith) put forward an arguably pointless
one congratulating Her Majesty on her Jubilee. Hasn’t Bexley Council done that already?
Labour Leader Stefano Borella took a more practical line pushing for the
endorsement of Money Saving Expert, Martin Lewis’s opinion that people will have
to “choose between eating and heating”. The Conservative Government is utterly
stupid for dong nothing about, and even exacerbating, the inevitable disaster
which will envelope them in just a few months’ time. The price of Sainsbury’s own brand blackberry jam
has leapt up by 92% this week. The Conservatives will deserve everything they get.
Did Bexley Tories bury their heads in the sand too? Probably. Loyalty to the party is always the priority.
Labour Councillors put forward five more Motions and the Conservatives five in total. More
than enough to keep us bored stiff for the next four years. Food banks, fly
tipping, LGBT, BAME, and anti-ULEZ. All the usual claptrap, or not, depending on your point of view.
And then there was the Leader’s report which is always much shorter than the
formal version recorded in the Agenda. Whether she chose to speak about
Crossrail, CountryStyle, Children’s Services or Ukranian refugees is anyone’s
guess but it is more than likely that everything was “fantastic”.
20 July - Financial Services Report (Part 2)
The Finance and Corporate Services Scrutiny Committee moved from
Inflationary Risks
to Racial Inequalities the subject having been moved from the former Communities
Scrutiny Committee.
The Sub-Committee’s report
on Equalities took up 70 pages of the Agenda and Cabinet Member
David Leaf was the first to comment on it but mainly to acknowledge it was “very important”.
He planned to send the finished report to the police.
Councillors Chris Taylor (Conservative) and Stefano Borella (Labour) both spoke
favourably about the report and the importance of the Council responding to
the concerns of the BAME and other minority communities.
The term BAME was used several times by Councillors and repeated here but the
report itself asked that its use be avoided.
Councillor Leaf spoke briefly -
very briefly by his standards - but all we learnt was that
the Medium Term Financial Strategy had been updated and all would be revealed at
the Cabinet Meeting.
Undeterred by his reticence, Labour Leader Stefano Borella, asked what was being done about reducing the
level of complaints and late payment of invoices. No one had the Cabinet Agenda
to hand which had flagged these issues Red but Stefano was promised an answer at
the forthcoming Cabinet meeting. The Finance Director said that the Payments’
Service is a Capita responsibility and there had been some challenges and issues which
had been addressed.
There were brief references to the possibility of Capita staff being moved into the Civic Offices
and a review of the situation is being conducted and expected to be concluded within the
next couple of months. It has already revealed that the number of
in-person
enquiries at the Civic Offices are not about housing as might have been guessed,
but Council Tax.
19 July - All as bad as each other?
As we get older various faculties begin to decline, different things for different people.
As such I help out a friend living in Bromley who is approaching 90 years of age.
Usually it is with modern technology although some of that is a mystery to me too
but occasionally it is simply dealing with officialdom.
On Monday of last week the owner of the terrace house next door to him began to knock
out the whole of his back wall and demolish chimney breasts. I say the owner but
he has in fact buggered off leaving the job in the hands of a couple of men who
are friendly enough but have inevitably made a horrendous amount of noise and
dust plus a heap of rubble in which rats have swiftly taken up residence.
There was not a word of warning from the neighbour.
I checked Bromley’s planning portal and drew a blank. Their advice on Building
Regulations was very clear and work of this magnitude
must be advised to the Council.
I wrote to them asking if they knew of the development and if so were they
keeping an eye on it and what was their view on the shared drainage being built over.
The reply came very quickly. They know nothing because all Building Regulation
matters are outsourced to a contractor. Stroma Building Control Ltd. Bromley
Council doesn’t want to be involved.
I have written to the local Councillor to tell him that that is totally
unacceptable and when Bromley Council is asked a question on a matter over which
they have statutory control they are expected to respond and not shrug and run away.
Is Bexley just as bad?
18 July - Financial Services Report (Part 1)
Covid was not something that I would particularly want to repeat but it was not
nearly as bad as the flu which I had for seven weeks at the beginning of 2020.
It has however left me with a persistent cough but more relevant is the fact that it
took 18 days for the ‘brain fog’ to lift. Perhaps that is why I failed to notice that the renamed
Finance and Corporate Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee had gone unreported.
Over the years Scrutiny Committee names and responsibilities have been
gradually refined - for the better - and for this one the Leader has even appointed a capable Chairman. Maybe
Councillor Dourmoush has served sufficient penance after
indicating that
Bexley’s Good News audit was not particularly good.
My view is that the auditor was asked to come out with that comment because it made a good
electioneering headline, but perhaps I am biased by the recollection of Bexley Council once being
renowned for its dishonesty and dirty tricks.
Maybe things are a bit better now. Probably they are.
The Chairman noted that no members of the public were present which pretty much
confirms the statistics I see after posting these reports. No one cares about
the state of Bexley’s finances when moaning about the soaring rates of
Council Tax is so much easier.
Like every one of us bar, perhaps, Rishi Sunak, the Council is at risk from the
runaway inflation inflicted by the aforesaid billionaire and it has produced a
report on the risks posed. Cabinet Member Leaf was asked to speak about the
Household Support Grant and he sarcastically promised one of his “always brief answers”.
He said that the Chancellor had promised a third support grant at the end of May
but the Council was still waiting the allocation and the Terms & Conditions
relating to how the grant is to be spent. Councillor Leaf believes the total
amount may be £1·5 million if it is in line with previous grant allocations. His report was commendably brief.
Deputy Chairman Steven Hall asked what the Council had done to counter ULEZ and
one must therefore wonder where he has been over the past two or three
months. If extended again next year it will impact greatly on Bexley residents.
There is of course the consultation and Cabinet Member Leaf referred to the
official ULEZ data which makes it very clear that the poorest members of society will suffer most.
Councillor Hall asked if there were any £150 energy cheques still awaiting distribution.
31,000 cheques went out to residents who for various reasons could not be paid
by BACS. Strangely only 23,000 of the cheques have been cashed. (It is not easy to pay in a cheque these days.) Councillor Leaf failed to say
how many cheques, if any, had not gone out at all. The implication was that it might be none.
Labour Leader Borella said that ULEZ was not the only financial pressure placed
on Bexley residents. The Council Tax had gone up by 21% in only four years and
there was nothing in the Council’s report about the tax burden overall being at
a 70 year high. His implication was that the report was making political points
and that is an accusation difficult to refute. Councillor Leaf’s response could
be summarised as “no one taxes higher than Labour”.
Councillor Larry Ferguson (Labour, Thamesmead East) said he understood that the £150 energy rebate money had
to be spent by September and what will happen to any of it not used by then.
Councillor Leaf said uncashed cheques would be cancelled and the money placed as
a credit on Council Tax accounts which I imagine might have been a simple and
acceptable option for many residents from the outset except that those exempt from
paying Council Tax would present another problem. Later comment by Councillor
Leaf indicated that the Government had forbidden such a course of action.
Councillor Bishop asked what could be done to help people facing increased
rents. Councillor Leaf had a number of suggestions including Citizens Advice and
the recent two page spread in the Bexley Magazine.
Summer Magazine 2022. Pages 20 and 21.
Under Councillor Dourmoush’s direction this was a particularly good natured meeting
(†) largely devoid of political point scoring. Among other things it showed that
Cabinet Member Leaf can come across as knowledgeable and generally on top of his
brief when he curbs his tongue, both its length and its sharpness.
† With the proviso that the report is not yet completely finished!
17 July - Peter the Pop. Frying (tomorrow) night
At last week’s Cabinet meeting, one of Peter Craske’s throwaway lines was that his favourite band was Wham! He has said similar things
over the years but I have never considered them worth reporting. I gave up
listening to popular music circa 1994 so it is not a subject I know anything about.
Peter, it would appear, has taken things to a different level altogether and
good luck to him. He has got himself a second job as a DJ on Maritime Radio 96·5 FM.
Note: My internet went down at 15:45 on Monday afternoon and
the FM signal is not the best via my inadequate aerial. It turned out that Openreach had
not fully inserted the fibre unit’s power plug.
So I missed the start of Peter the Pop’s Programme. Actually I didn’t, he had taken the day off
and Maritime Radio were fielding a substitute.
16 July - Cabinet Report (Part 2)
The
revised Adult Care Charging Policy was approved after the Government Ombudsman
criticised the previous scheme and Bexley Council accepted that it was “unfair”.
After “extensive consultation” (twelve weeks) the Council has come up with “a more sophisticated and fair system”.
Councillor Nicola Taylor (Labour, Erith) reminded the Cabinet that it had not
been a Listening Council when it ignored complaints about the original policy and it was only when one
resident went to the Ombudsman who upheld the complaint did anyone take any notice.
The Director accepted that the criticism was largely justified. They knew the
policy was unfair but there was no appeal process. The reference to the LGO was therefore inevitable.
Twitter
is obviously a quick and easy way for the police to give their low level
work a bit of publicity but I couldn’t help but think that this effort was
scraping the barrel somewhat, as indeed is this comment.
But the hammer they found alongside the railway line is exactly the same as I
have seen Network Rail workers use to bash in those spring clips that keep the rails in place.
It is most unlikely to be in any way connected to crime and rather than destroy
it - how? - they would be better off returning it to the railway authorities or
even letting a charity shop raise a pound or two.
Unless of course they think that shops should not sell hammers, in which case
stand by for a raid on B&Q and Wickes or my garage any day now.
14 July - Cabinet Report (Part 1)
Another
Finance related Cabinet meeting which was preceded by a statement by Chief
Executive Jacky Belton on the latest Bexley Bin strike.
She said absolutely nothing that was not known already and confirmed that only
the food waste and the green lid (residual waste) bins would be collected.
Recycling is effectively on hold while Unite rejects an 8% pay increase if it
means working their full contracted hours.
Finance Director Paul Thorogood was asked to summarise the borough’s 2021/22 financial performance which will
eventually go forward for audit later in the year. Despite listening to his
short address twice I cannot find a single word relating to finance within it.
In an unprecedented move, Cabinet Member David Leaf (Resources) declined his invitation to
add a few words of his own. Cabinet Member Munir (Growth) managed to find a mistake in
the official Annual Performance Review document which related to placements
on an employment scheme. The target was met and not missed as reported.
Going off on a bit of a tangent Councillor Munir said it was getting to be very
difficult to recruit planning staff. In the past two years applications had
increased by more than 40%. Staff are being tempted away by “an awful lot more
pay than Bexley currently gives”. Despite that all major applications have been
dealt with on time. There have been 991 decisions of a more minor nature since
last January and 848 were delivered on time, well above the Government target.
Councillor Craske (Bins & Places) added that Bexley was “The Greatest Borough. Every service across
the borough is delivered at a high level constantly”.
Labour Leader Stefano Borella had noticed that all the performance indicators
relating to the speed of paying invoices and collecting debts were poor and
flagged Red. “It is not the right way to be interacting with residents and
clients.” Levels of complaints were similarly flagged Red. Systems changes were
blamed and the latest figures are said to be much better.
Councillor June Slaughter (Conservative, Sidcup) reverted to one of her
favourite themes. Separating waste collections effectively. Food waste in
particular is not going into the correct bin and the cost of contamination is
very high. The Leader said that was a consideration when deciding to continue
with food and residual waste only during the strike.
It gave Cabinet Member Craske an excuse to almost tell the truth about Bexley’s
recycling achievements and reiterate his claim that separating food waste
“saves a lot of money and generates income.” (Note; When the garden and food
waste collections were separated it was said that the move would
allow
them to be sold on for an extra £440,000. Then they made residents unnecessarily pay for
garden waste collection in what must surely be Bexley Council’s biggest ever rip off.)
Councillor Nicola Taylor (Labour, Erith) said the Council should be supporting
the bin strikers as it was them who had pushed Bexley to the top of the
recycling tree. Cabinet Member Craske said that Unite is currently
refusing their attempts at reconciliation and will not meet with ACAS claiming to be “unavailable”
over the coming days.
Nicola went on to say that 642 families had been disappeared
from the temporary housing register and no one knows where they are. The Leader
said the figures fluctuate rapidly and many had dispersed to housing associations.
Labour Councillor Mabel Ogundayo (Thamesmead) said that thanks to Peabody there
has been a new library building in Cygnet Square ready but empty for a long
time. “Can we get a date?”
Councillor Craske was unable to give an opening date but did mention “after the Summer”.
After 45 minutes the meeting moved on to the new Adult Social Care charging policy.
13 July (Part 2) - Penny for them
I was accused of favouring Liz Truss for PM because
yesterday’s summary of
her attributes included nothing negative; but one could have said the same about Kemi
Badenoch or Suella Braverman.
Since then I have scoured YouTube in the hope of discovering who would get my vote if I had one.
The essential thing is not what one might think of a candidate and his or her
plans, but the likelihood of them winning the next election. Without doing that
they are pretty much wasting their time with the potential for laying the country to waste.
No candidate is perfect; for example every candidate showed off their
inner-Adolph
during the pandemic and Penny has said some silly things in the past, but in
general I could just about accept any of the women as PM and wouldn’t touch any of the blokes with a bargepole.
Of the females, and based on what they have said in the past 24 hours, I found
Kemi Badenoch and Penny Mordaunt closest to my own views and I suppose that in a
run off of two candidates one must accept that the more experienced Penny is
more likely to be elected PM. I might take a punt on Kemi but the stakes for 2024 are scarily high.
If Rishi pulls some stunt via vote lending such that only he and a non-starter
survive the knock out rounds then the Conservatives will deserve to be rendered unelectable for the rest of time.
Most of us, certainly not me, are not allowed to choose the next
Prime Minister. Come to think of it, even party members are not given true freedom of choice.
13 July (Part 1) - Summer of Stink Round 2
I suppose the second bin strike will be an excuse for some political
squabbling just as it was a year ago. I am more than happy to accept that Bexley
Council will have screwed CountryStyle into a tight financial corner and that
CountryStyle were willing victims anxious to take on their first municipal
collection service but it difficult to find the evidence that CountryStyle
secured their contract at the expense of their workers.
In September the Unite Union was cock-a-hoop at having secured among the best
pay rates in London and CountryStyle staff were a given a further pay increase in April.
The average is 19%
above last year’s Serco pay rate and more has been promised for next April.
In return the workers have been asked to be more flexible before bunking off work early.
They object to flexibility and prefer the Old Spanish Customs.
I thought I had heard the last of that phrase circa 1982.
The Bexley Labour Group has responded as follows…
Click image for Labour Group statement in full.
Except (well just possibly)…
Kemi Badenoch
Pro-Brexit. Rebuffed woke and rebellious Civil Servants
when fighting for uni-sex lavatories. Backed by Michael Gove. (Kiss of death?)
(I watched Kemi’s presentation via YouTube and saw her enthusiastically
applauded by supporter and former Bexley Councillor Gareth Bacon alongside his wife Cheryl.)
Suella Braverman
Strongly pro-Brexit former Chairman of the European Research Group.
Will ditch Net Zero. (Eliminated 14th July.)
Rehman Chishti
Who? (MP for Gillingham and Rainham.) (Withdrew 18:00 12th July.)
Jeremy Hunt
God help us. (Eliminated 13th July.)
Sajid Javid
Favoured vaccine passports and compulsory vaccination of employees.
Yet another son of a bus driver. (Think Sadiq Khan.)
(Withdrew 18:00 12th July.)
Penny Mordaunt
Reluctant to say what a real woman is. Her brother suggested via Twitter
he can influence her further in that direction. (The last thing we need is another Carrie.)
Wrote one book with a foreword by Bill Gates and another in which she condemned
quintessentially pro-British films such as Lawrence of Arabia and The Dambusters.
Old British sit-coms are “a full house of casual
racism, homophobia, white privilege, colonialism, transphobia, bullying,
misogyny and sexual harassment”.
Grant Shapps
Funded Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and favours getting rid of motorway hard shoulders.
(11:30 12th July, dropped out in favour of Rubbishi Rishi.)
Liz Truss
Converted to being pro-Brexit after campaigning against it.
Pro fracking and concerned about Net Zero.
Tom Tugendhat
Committed to Net Zero. More connections to France than the UK. Remainer who allegedly changed his mind.
Nadim Zahawi
The short term Chancellor who is under investigation by HM Revenue & Customs.
Pro-Brexit. Luke warm about Net Zero. (Eliminated 13th July.)
With the exception of the MP for Gillingham and Rainham the above faces are those of a Government
that have brought the country to its present dire state. A country where come
next winter the average householder will be spending more than a third of the
state pension on electricity.
Having decided that I could no longer be a member of the Conservative Party when
Lady Thatcher left office I am not in a position to influence who might steer
the ship of state away from the rocks. Most of the above have shown themselves not to be
Conservative at all but maybe a couple of the ladies are up to the job. The
men have to varying extents been useless.
I sometimes ask myself which of their attitudes would have to change to allow a Conservative MP to
defect to the Labour Party and fail to think of anything mainstream.
Under Labour the Union would soon be lost and along with it Gibraltar and the
Falkland Islands but economically things could not really get any worse. The
attack on motorists would get worse.
Choosing the wrong replacement for Boris Johnson would be catastrophic and
within the last few minutes I have heard Rishi Sunak proudly ignoring the cost
of living crisis. (Milk up by another 5·5% this morning compared to last week, that’s 36%
in the past six months.)
We must hope that Conservative Members have more sense than our MPs.
Louie French backs Sunak, i.e. the highest taxes since Clement Attlee.
4 July - The opposing point of view
Following the Unite Union’s threat of further bin strikes in Bexley,
CountryStyle has set out what they see as the facts behind the situation. Among
them is that bin men received an increased holiday allowance and their (Serco)
pay demands met in full when the new contractor took over last October and a
further 8% increase was offered in April 2022 with another 5% for 2023.
CountryStyle’s claim is that staff are currently being paid on average
19% more than they were less than a year ago,
So
what is Unite’s gripe this time? That in exchange for extra pay they will no longer bunk off home early
before all their work is done. However the crews do not think it is fair to help out
with rounds that have in some way fallen behind. Specifically collecting bins missed by
their colleagues working similar rounds.
No one is being asked to work longer without payment.
CountryStyle statement in full.
Councillor
Caroline Newton’s Children’s Services and Education Overview and Scrutiny Committee may have been a less tedious listen than
Chris Taylor’s Adults’
Services meeting held a day earlier, but if so it was a close run thing.
Apart from the formalities there was only one item on the Agenda and
Mr. Stephen Kitchman (Director of Children’s Services) and his team illustrated their report with slide presentations which
may be seen here and
Part 2 here.
There were no particular highlights to report, Bexley Council claimed to have
better practices than other boroughs and emphasised the importance of nurturing
and retaining good staff with Covid inevitably blamed for its negative impact on some children in care.
Currently only 80% of Bexley Social Workers are on the permanent payroll which
is less good than has been the case in the recent past.
Some isolated statistics relating to education were 83 schools in Bexley (59
Primary, eleven Secondary plus four Grammar, one “All-Through”, seven “Specials” and
one Pupil Referral Unit) with a total of 44,000 pupils. They employ 4,931 professional staff and 200 child minders.
51 pupils are permanently excluded from Bexley schools which is a figure that is slowly reducing.
By
last Thursday my flu-like symptoms had gone away leaving me only with a nasty
cough. Yesterday things were much the same and
the Covid test no longer had an obvious
second line after the prescribed 15 minutes so I went out, all masked up as a
precaution against unwanted coughing fits, but feeling reasonably well.
This morning I made plans to complete a DIY job and waste a couple of hours
listening for a second time to the Children’s Scrutiny Committee meeting and
turning it into a brief report on the possibly false assumption that someone
somewhere might be interested in it.
Alas it was not to be as I was overcome with total exhaustion and I spent a
great deal of the day asleep woken up occasionally by telephone calls that told
me that loads of other people were suffering the same.
I wouldn’t wish to make light of it, Covid was not particularly nice but it was
far less severe than the last dose of flu I had which lasted seven weeks and
not a mere seven days.
Maybe I will feel a little more energetic tomorrow.
