An invitation to Councillor John Thomas from the Famous Five

The Famous Five Barnet Bloggers have Plenty of Fun with the democratic processes of consultation and community engagement

Barnet bloggers look forward to meeting Cllr Thomas to discuss Barnet council’s priorities

Dear Councillor Thomas,

We, bloggers of Barnet, are most pleased that in your recent YouTube broadcast* you express yourself keen to engage with local residents and discuss ways to improve Barnet.

As you are no doubt aware, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles recently commended the bloggers of Barnet for their great work exposing the MetPro scandal. The subsequent investigation has highlighted all manner of problems with Barnet Council's procurement procedures which we are promised will now be rectified.

Since we are all motivated by the desire to help you improve Barnet still further, we are pleased to invite you for a live, televised discussion, to be broadcast on www.GotSeeN.com, at a time to suit you.

We are sure that there are many subjects about which we could have an interesting and informative discussion.

As public spirited citizens we are willing to meet all the costs of staging this event and broadcasting it live on the internet. We also guarantee to afford it maximum publicity and coverage through our blogs.

We are happy to discuss any topic and suggest that if you let us know in advance the topics you want to cover, we will do our homework so as to ensure a fruitful discussion.

We would be happy to broadcast either from the Barnet Council offices at North London Business Park or a venue chosen by us.

Subjects we think you might be interested to discuss are: One Barnet, Cabinet Members’ allowances, executive pay, waste within the council, the number of highly paid contractors working for Barnet, cost overruns on projects such as Aerodrome Road, CPZ charges, Icelandic investments, overdevelopment and the strain it puts on infrastructure.

We look forward to hearing your response.

Best wishes,

Derek Dishman

John Dix

Vicki Morris

Theresa Musgrove

Roger Tichborne

Alternative Residents Forum, Cypriot Centre, Britannia Road, N12, 7pm Tues

Footage of Residents barred from Town Hall

Breaking news: we are now able to show you some footage of elderly residents at the Town Hall being denied access to the infamous full council meeting by security employees, and a police officer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ3CsC7wrNg

I cannot tell you which company the security employees work for, as I cannot see any easily visible identification.

You will not that the police officer first states his 'guvnor' has made the decision to bar residents, then quickly corrects himself to say 'the management'.

Since the film was first shown it has been claimed that one of the excluded men is actually a former Barnet councillor, and I think I also recognise the 84 year old chair of a local pensioners' rights organisation: fairly obviously not a pair of dangerous anarchists, intent on violent affray and subverting the democratic process.

Mrs Angry spoke yesterday to a very helpful gentleman at the SIA, the Home Office body which regulates the use of private security companies. He gave her some very interesting information, and it was made very clear that all private security employees must be licensed by the SIA, and must display their licence/ID at all times.

These residents, elderly, impeccably well behaved oh, and deeply 'respectable', even by the stringent standards of propriety defined by Tory leader Lynne Hillan, were being denied their lawful right to attend this meeting - and on a totally false premise. There was no public disorder, and there was space in the public gallery.

You should note that this clip gives no idea of the seething discontent going on upstairs.

Mrs Angry has written to senior council officers about this issue, and has received no reply.

It is time now for a full and open enquiry into the the council's use of private security companies, and an immediate assurance from the Leader and the Chief Executive of Barnet that they have confirmed that any such employees are all registered with the SIA, compliant with all regulations, and correctly displaying the appropriate identification at all times.