29th September First full day of the Conservative party conference. A really good chance for us to get together and compare notes, catch up with old friends and see many of the parties key people.
But at the same time the economy was tightening up, in Yorkshire we were seeing the HBOS impact at Halifax, and the Bradford and Bingley and closer to home that one of the Castleford's employers Pioneer has announced its own plant closure in 2009.
There is clearly trouble ahead...
Jump forward 50 days. The British economy is facing huge challenges, left unprepared by our Labour Government who missed opportunities over ten years to fix our leaky economy, with its record borrowing and strange approaches to lending that have put many would be home owners into negative equity.
Clearly we are facing global tremors that have wiped away a number of major financial names. Whole countries have effectively faced bankruptcy and Iceland has gone beyond that into unknown territory.
Enter the Chancellor with his pre-budget statement. Well Andrew Allison sums things up nicely here.
And Tony Sharp quotes Derek Simpson, General Secretary of Union UNITE here.
The sad thing is that Alastair Darling seems to be setting things up for a flash election in Spring 2009 and a stream of new taxes in 2010.
Tuesday 30 September 2008
Monday 22 September 2008
You couldn't make it up part 1
Holidays over, life returns to normal August was a busy month for many including the Leader of the Council.
The Channel Four programme on the Castleford project was to run. The councils financial officers advised the cabinet that there was an apparent £1.6 million pound shortfall developing in the budget. Heavy rains had come back to our part of Yorkshire in July and a number of properties had been flooded for the second time in eighteen months. The council owned up to an aspirational target of cleaning and emptying gutters every twelve months which they do not seem to be meeting as they do not have sufficient vehicles/funds and there are ten times the amount of future jobs than funds. Royal Mail announced a further cluster of local Post Office closures across the district. Consultants returned an adverse report on his plan to build a community stadium in a local park and he wasted tens of thousands of pounds of tax payers money in the process.
Clearly he would need to do something.
So he went off on one in the Council chamber. Managed to get away without talking about any of those matters but using his monthly soapbox made fragmental quotes from a council colleagues blog and threatened to to remove him as a councillor and teacher. Then used his pet "answer the question challenge" which is always good for a laugh as the other person challenged gets shouted down or censured for trying to speak out of turn. Then threatened to put this on the front page of his in-house newspaper, using ratepayers money and to bring this issue back to every council meeting in future.
In doing so, suspended the council constitution,cut across an enquiry by the standards officer to see if said colleague had a case to answer. Used his group block vote to predispose and therefore disqualify the members of the Local Standards committee and in the process set up his own version of a kangaroo court and in turn proved himself to be an absolute disgrace.
Said leader walked up to me after a council meeting in my first year having gone of on one at me, he has previous as our friends in law enforcement say. "Geoff you should not take things so seriously its only politics....."
A colleague commented that if this person did this sort of thing in any other environment he would be disciplined so fast his feet would not touch. But it seems that because he has a block vote behind him he is Teflon coated or at least in the Council Chamber.
Well that block vote has shrunk every year thanks to an unforgiving electorate and it will be an absolute pleasure to see how he copes when roles are reversed. People keep telling me that they want to see the back of this lot and we need to work that through.
It will be interesting to see how he copes when he is no longer controlling group leader.
I am pleased to be back.
The Channel Four programme on the Castleford project was to run. The councils financial officers advised the cabinet that there was an apparent £1.6 million pound shortfall developing in the budget. Heavy rains had come back to our part of Yorkshire in July and a number of properties had been flooded for the second time in eighteen months. The council owned up to an aspirational target of cleaning and emptying gutters every twelve months which they do not seem to be meeting as they do not have sufficient vehicles/funds and there are ten times the amount of future jobs than funds. Royal Mail announced a further cluster of local Post Office closures across the district. Consultants returned an adverse report on his plan to build a community stadium in a local park and he wasted tens of thousands of pounds of tax payers money in the process.
Clearly he would need to do something.
So he went off on one in the Council chamber. Managed to get away without talking about any of those matters but using his monthly soapbox made fragmental quotes from a council colleagues blog and threatened to to remove him as a councillor and teacher. Then used his pet "answer the question challenge" which is always good for a laugh as the other person challenged gets shouted down or censured for trying to speak out of turn. Then threatened to put this on the front page of his in-house newspaper, using ratepayers money and to bring this issue back to every council meeting in future.
In doing so, suspended the council constitution,cut across an enquiry by the standards officer to see if said colleague had a case to answer. Used his group block vote to predispose and therefore disqualify the members of the Local Standards committee and in the process set up his own version of a kangaroo court and in turn proved himself to be an absolute disgrace.
Said leader walked up to me after a council meeting in my first year having gone of on one at me, he has previous as our friends in law enforcement say. "Geoff you should not take things so seriously its only politics....."
A colleague commented that if this person did this sort of thing in any other environment he would be disciplined so fast his feet would not touch. But it seems that because he has a block vote behind him he is Teflon coated or at least in the Council Chamber.
Well that block vote has shrunk every year thanks to an unforgiving electorate and it will be an absolute pleasure to see how he copes when roles are reversed. People keep telling me that they want to see the back of this lot and we need to work that through.
It will be interesting to see how he copes when he is no longer controlling group leader.
I am pleased to be back.
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