Yesterday's blog was hugely popular, for some reason, particularly with gentlemen readers of a certain age, obviously very keen to participate in the debate about a suitable model for local government, (Model X, Mr Harper?) oh, and ladies' underwear. Sorry, boys, though, here is a bucket of cold water - back to politics now.
A couple of things to catch up with:
In all the excitement over the MetPro scandal, Mrs Angry has not had a chance to publish the eventual, partial, responses to the following expenses in the last quarters of 2010, as noted in the online council expenditure over £500. Let's take a look then. Remember, these questions were made to a residents' forum, which proved too embarrassing for Barnet, along with the one about MetPro, and was, in an admirably creative time delaying strategy, turned into an FOI request.
The expenses I questioned were:
a) The payments made to Todd Worsnip, also known as ‘DJ Snips’, amounting to more than £2,000 in July and August by Childrens’ Services.
b) The two payments made to 'a named individual' , apparently a ‘hip hop’ artist, of £1,269 each, in August, by Adult Social Services (name later ‘redacted, although originally published’).
c) A payment of £550 to the RAF Museum in November by Adult Social Services for ‘staff training’.
d) Payments of £3,150 by Children’s Services and £900 by the Corporate Governance Directorate to ‘Higgins Cartoons’ in November.
e) A payment of £1,162 to Digby Trout Restaurants Ltd by Adult Social Services for ‘staff training’ on 9/12/2010.
f) Payments of more than £15,000 to the four star luxury Sandbanks Hotel in Poole for conference facilities in November.
g) Payments, by the Deputy Chief Executive and other departments, of more than £15,000 in the last quarter alone to Voice!Business Associates, a company that specialises in ‘voice training’. How many officers have been trained by this company?
So: on the last possible day Mrs Angry received a reply, of sorts, from Barnet. And how very enlightening. No wonder they were so shy about publishing the details. In fact: excuse me while I slip into the appropriate One Barnet hiphop style:
Yo, Walkley - Mrs Angry's on your case:
She thinks these expenses are a f*cking disgrace ...
Yes, Mr Todd Worsnip, aka hiphop producer and DJ Snips, has been paid for two music workshops, a marvellous opportunity for vulnerable young people in need of a mentor, and perhaps wishing to emulate his sound political views - (read what he has to say about David Cameron on the Salute website, Tory councillors of Broken Barnet ... ) Sadly, the entry over another apparent hiphop artiste must remain forever shrouded in mystery, having been redacted, and Mrs Angry being given a refusal to comply under some third party personal data clause. Now, you may feel that any individual being paid for services should not be eligible for anonymity under this excuse: but what do you expect, in our borough?
So: on to point c), money paid to the RAF museum, for 'staff training': another disappointment, I fear. This was not as I had hoped, in order that deputy CE Andrew Travers might learn how to pilot a Spitfire (hence his elocution lessons in received English, to sound more like Douglas Bader when radioing back to base at NLBP). No, this £550 was actually the cost of venue hire for an Adult Social Services staff awards ceremony at the museum. Oh, and point e), a payment of £1,160 to Digby Trout Restaurants Ltd was for the catering. So more than £2,000 for a party & doling out some awards to staff members. A perfectly reasonable use of tax payers' money, I'd say, wouldn't you, citizens? Rewarding staff for doing their feckin jobs with awards and catered functions, in the same month their colleagues in other departments are being made redundant? Nice touch.
Now then: the £15,000 plus spent on a conference at a luxury hotel in Poole? It was for a headteachers' residential conference. Ha: I'll bet there was some running about the corridors late at night, and a few discreet taps on the door at one in the morning, with that lot, don't you? But don't worry: Mrs Angry is told that the costs were paid for in full by the individual schools. Who get their funding from, er ... us?
Higgins Cartoons: oh yes. The first payment of £900 was for 'promotional material' for the 2010 election awareness campaign. What? Can anyone remember what that might be? Caricatures of our beloved councillors, to discourage young voters from visiting the polling station or ever thinking there is any point to taking part in the democratic process?
The second payment of a whopping £3,150 was for promotional material 'for a recycling campaign', (incorrectly coded, we are told, and really incurred by Environment & Operations, ie the responsibility of our beloved councillor, Brian Coleman.) So: in order to promote recycling and the conservation of energy and finite resources, we spent thousands of pounds on er what: wasting finite resources and energy printing leaflets that probably no one read? Hope they got recycled, anyway.
Ah: the £15,000 plus spent in payments for glorified elocution lessons to Voice!Business Associates, mostly from the Deputy CE's department, but also Env & Ops and Planning, Housing & Regeneration. Here is a partial breakdown of the deputy CE expenditure alone:
£4371.80
Half-day session for 2 officers
Day session for 12 officers
Day session for 12 officers
Half-day session for 1 officer
£2851.80
Half-day session for 1 officer
Day session for 3 officers
Short day session for 2 officers
£2,209.70
Day session for 3 officers
Half-day session for 2 officers
Half-day session for 1 officer
Again, money well spent, I am sure all residents will agree. It's vital to the success of One Barnet that senior officers feel confident when spouting a load of shite in meetings about the necessity of a relentless drive for efficiency: an efficiency which allows such extravagance in expenditure for the priviliged few.
Just a sample, then, of the type of things which Barnet Council wastes our money on, while handing out redundancy notices to staff members, and making devastating cuts in vital services like childrens' centres, and in grants to local voluntary bodies.
A couple of weeks ago, I was at an event at the Arts Depot: a dance festival performed by children from Barnet schools. I was invited to attend because the evening was held in memory of a family friend, a beautiful young woman named Nadine Mehta, a former PE and dance teacher, and pupil, from my old school St Michael's, who lost her life in tragic circumstances, just before Christmas. It was a very emotional event for many reasons, but notably because of the excitement and pride of the children taking part, young children of many different abilities and cultural backgrounds, many from schools in some of the less affluent areas of our borough, and most touchingly, perhaps, including a class of children from a school for special needs. It was impossible to watch that particular performance without being moved to tears, because it was so joyful, and they obviously gained so much from the experience - and indeed were reluctant to leave the stage.
At the end of the evening the organiser made a speech, and mentioned, regretfully, that he did not think such an event would be held again. I was sitting near the Mayor, as it happened, and watched him while this remark was made. He looked away, and suddenly felt the need to busy himself with his handkerchief. As well he might. Because, as we know, the budget cuts made by our philistine Tory councillors include a massive reduction to the Arts Depot.
The Tories want us to believe that such cuts were unavoidable: looking at their accounts, and seeing where they throw money with such reckless abandon suggests to me that this is absolute rubbish. They choose to waste their budgets on themselves and the whims of senior officers, whilst local bodies, and venues like the Arts Depot, must do without the level of funding that sustains all the fantastic community based projects that bring so much pleasure, and so much benefit, to the less advantaged residents of our borough. There is something badly wrong here, isn't there?
Finally: warm congratulations today to Andrew Dismore on securing the Labour candidacy for the forthcoming GLA elections in this constituency. He is the man who will deliver us from Brian Coleman, and what a happy day that will be for us all, here in Broken Barnet.Today is the day, ctizens, where we start to loosen the grip of the Tory stranglehold on this borough, and move towards a more positive future.
Showing posts with label rubbish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rubbish. Show all posts
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Saturday, 6 November 2010
The death of Brian Coleman/Pond Life
Breaking news: a tragic loss has just been discovered.
Just to explain: there are two small ponds in the Angry family's garden. One pond is occupied by frogs, and the other by newts. The frogs are a bunch of fat, lazy, slimy cannibalistic bullies,who sit around all year round doing nothing very much, other than eat their own offspring, whereas the newts are charming, subtle and elusive creatures, oh and pretty adept at eating the unhatched frogspawn. Luckily, by a process of hard won consensus, they have agreed to disagree and keep to their own territories.
Anyway. The Angry cat, although an alarmingly large ginger and white tom, known to have fully grown policemen quaking in their boots at the very sight of him, ( I refer you back to the beginning of this blog if you are wondering why we spent so much time in the past year and more helping the police with their enquiries) is actually pretty dopey, and utterly hopeless at catching birds, luckily, or fighting other cats, spending most of his time outdoors skulking in the bushes, hiding from his arch enemy, a horrible grey and white tom called Derek. Part of his daily routine, apart from sauntering down the garden, poking his head insolently through the fence and winding up the equally dopey dogs next door, is his dedicated monitoring of activity in the ponds. He spends hours on guard, watching and trying to catch frogs, always without success. Until recently.
There is - oh dear, was - a particularly big and ugly frog with distinctive markings who squats in the frog pond and lords it over the others. In the absence of any toads - except for a dead one we spotted round the corner,near the park, squashed in the gutter, ironically in a road whose speed humps had been removed by You Know Who - Mrs Angry's daughter amusingly decided this frog should be named Brian Coleman.
A couple of weeks ago, Mrs Angry's daughter was alerted to a most peculiar noise coming from the garden. She noticed that our cat was running around with something in his mouth. Uh oh. You may not know that frogs emit a horrible high pitched scream if in peril: and here was a frog in peril - Brian Coleman, no less, in a state of terror, his head and legs poking out of the mouth of the Angry cat, who was looking very pleased with himself, and in no mood to let go.
After being chased around the garden, and then bribed with left over chicken, we managed to persuade the cat to open his mouth, and Brian Coleman fell gratefully on to the lawn, playing dead (although it's difficult to tell with frogs, isn't it? And Tory councillors.)
Ever since then, Brian Coleman has been hopping around the garden with a limp, and something of a persecution complex.
Until this morning, I am afraid to say, when our cat arrived at the back door looking very smug, and dropped a present at my feet. Brian. Dead, and not playing.
Brian is now in the wheelie bin with the rest of the rubbish.
I do hope this isn't an omen, don't you?
Just to explain: there are two small ponds in the Angry family's garden. One pond is occupied by frogs, and the other by newts. The frogs are a bunch of fat, lazy, slimy cannibalistic bullies,who sit around all year round doing nothing very much, other than eat their own offspring, whereas the newts are charming, subtle and elusive creatures, oh and pretty adept at eating the unhatched frogspawn. Luckily, by a process of hard won consensus, they have agreed to disagree and keep to their own territories.
Anyway. The Angry cat, although an alarmingly large ginger and white tom, known to have fully grown policemen quaking in their boots at the very sight of him, ( I refer you back to the beginning of this blog if you are wondering why we spent so much time in the past year and more helping the police with their enquiries) is actually pretty dopey, and utterly hopeless at catching birds, luckily, or fighting other cats, spending most of his time outdoors skulking in the bushes, hiding from his arch enemy, a horrible grey and white tom called Derek. Part of his daily routine, apart from sauntering down the garden, poking his head insolently through the fence and winding up the equally dopey dogs next door, is his dedicated monitoring of activity in the ponds. He spends hours on guard, watching and trying to catch frogs, always without success. Until recently.
There is - oh dear, was - a particularly big and ugly frog with distinctive markings who squats in the frog pond and lords it over the others. In the absence of any toads - except for a dead one we spotted round the corner,near the park, squashed in the gutter, ironically in a road whose speed humps had been removed by You Know Who - Mrs Angry's daughter amusingly decided this frog should be named Brian Coleman.
A couple of weeks ago, Mrs Angry's daughter was alerted to a most peculiar noise coming from the garden. She noticed that our cat was running around with something in his mouth. Uh oh. You may not know that frogs emit a horrible high pitched scream if in peril: and here was a frog in peril - Brian Coleman, no less, in a state of terror, his head and legs poking out of the mouth of the Angry cat, who was looking very pleased with himself, and in no mood to let go.
After being chased around the garden, and then bribed with left over chicken, we managed to persuade the cat to open his mouth, and Brian Coleman fell gratefully on to the lawn, playing dead (although it's difficult to tell with frogs, isn't it? And Tory councillors.)
Ever since then, Brian Coleman has been hopping around the garden with a limp, and something of a persecution complex.
Until this morning, I am afraid to say, when our cat arrived at the back door looking very smug, and dropped a present at my feet. Brian. Dead, and not playing.
Brian is now in the wheelie bin with the rest of the rubbish.
I do hope this isn't an omen, don't you?
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Sweet Smell of Success No 2
Guess what.
I never watch horror films because I hate that stuff at the end when the thing you think is dead comes back to life again.
Tuesday night we were assured that the Smiths were gone: we had watched them move all their stuff, with the help of some of their yob mates, who must have found the experience of a hard afternoon's work something of a novel experience.
The local police wandered past and offered their 'congratulations' on the move, which Tracey Smith was obviously touched by (and no, I am not being sarcastic) and cackled 'Oh yeah, and fanks for all yer help!' as they left, as Mrs Angry clenched her fist from behind her window. Mrs Smith sees her move to a new apartment - to an estate in the borough which grown policemen fear to enter without someone holding their hand - as an exciting prospect, apparently. No doubt in their belated haste in trying to move the Smiths Barnet have pushed them in front of some poor family's place on the years' long housing list and rewarded their disgusting behaviour with a nicely refurbished flat. Well, her sons and their pals will have easier access to drugs and will find life generally more to their taste. Their new neighbours may have different views on their arrival.
That night we cracked open the champagne.
The next morning, as I had promised my daughter, we stuck up some bunting in the window as a signal to our friends that we had been liberated at last. Can you blame us, after the last sixteen months?
To my horror, the Smiths returned to the house. Not once, but several times. I hid in the back of the house, my heart thumping. In the early evening we heard the sound of digging. Mr Angry and I looked out and noticed one of the yobs who helped them over their furniture furtively digging at the soil and looking on the ground for something. Odd, we thought.
In the middle of the night, around one o'clock, I woke up suddenly. I could hear the sound of somone quietly letting themselves in next door, and moving in the house. This was alarming as the Smiths were allegedly safely installed in their new flat, and anyway, in all the time they has lived next door they had never once entered or exited the property quietly. I went to the bathroom and noticed a light was on. I lay in bed wondering if one of the yobs who were associates the house had a copy of the key, or was nicking stuff (they all seemed to be prone from stealing from each other) or worse, was about to put a firework through our letter box. Nothing much further seemed to happen, and eventually I fell asleep.
This morning we got up, Mr Angry and the kids went to leave for work and school, and on opening the front door found someone had emptied a bucket load of dirt all over our door step. Dirt, soil, dozens of cigarette butts, bits of rubbish. I can't tell you how that feels, after all the crap we have had to put up with: maybe it seems unimportant but somehow it just underlines to us how these low life shits just get away with everything.
Well, of course we rang the police - you reading this Big Ears? They said oh. Was it a lot of stuff? How much would you say? I had to go out in my night attire, stand on the doorstep, and assess the amount scientifically: was it a skip's worth? No. Was it more than two teaspoons? Yes. Does that count as harrassment then? Can't come to see it today. OK: I'll keep it for you. Can you at least speak to the Smiths? Yes. Good because otherwise I will be pouring this through the letterbox of next door. Sound of policeman about to say I wouldn't do that if I were you Madam, but not quite daring.
I can see the scene. Policeman arrives at the Smiths new place. Hello, Mrs Smith, just come to see if you are settling in okay. Oh, that's nice! Yeah, s'lovely, thanks. Look, Travis, the nice policeman has come to see you are being a good boy. Say hello! Aahh ... no, Travis, don't spit out of the window ... Policemans asks: now then, did you by any chance lose a bucket of soil and a few fag ends in the middle of the night? Tracey Smith will shake her head in wide eyed innocence: ooh, no officer. That's alright then, I'll leave you to unpack. Yeah, ok, then, - and thanks for all your help!
Give me strength.
I never watch horror films because I hate that stuff at the end when the thing you think is dead comes back to life again.
Tuesday night we were assured that the Smiths were gone: we had watched them move all their stuff, with the help of some of their yob mates, who must have found the experience of a hard afternoon's work something of a novel experience.
The local police wandered past and offered their 'congratulations' on the move, which Tracey Smith was obviously touched by (and no, I am not being sarcastic) and cackled 'Oh yeah, and fanks for all yer help!' as they left, as Mrs Angry clenched her fist from behind her window. Mrs Smith sees her move to a new apartment - to an estate in the borough which grown policemen fear to enter without someone holding their hand - as an exciting prospect, apparently. No doubt in their belated haste in trying to move the Smiths Barnet have pushed them in front of some poor family's place on the years' long housing list and rewarded their disgusting behaviour with a nicely refurbished flat. Well, her sons and their pals will have easier access to drugs and will find life generally more to their taste. Their new neighbours may have different views on their arrival.
That night we cracked open the champagne.
The next morning, as I had promised my daughter, we stuck up some bunting in the window as a signal to our friends that we had been liberated at last. Can you blame us, after the last sixteen months?
To my horror, the Smiths returned to the house. Not once, but several times. I hid in the back of the house, my heart thumping. In the early evening we heard the sound of digging. Mr Angry and I looked out and noticed one of the yobs who helped them over their furniture furtively digging at the soil and looking on the ground for something. Odd, we thought.
In the middle of the night, around one o'clock, I woke up suddenly. I could hear the sound of somone quietly letting themselves in next door, and moving in the house. This was alarming as the Smiths were allegedly safely installed in their new flat, and anyway, in all the time they has lived next door they had never once entered or exited the property quietly. I went to the bathroom and noticed a light was on. I lay in bed wondering if one of the yobs who were associates the house had a copy of the key, or was nicking stuff (they all seemed to be prone from stealing from each other) or worse, was about to put a firework through our letter box. Nothing much further seemed to happen, and eventually I fell asleep.
This morning we got up, Mr Angry and the kids went to leave for work and school, and on opening the front door found someone had emptied a bucket load of dirt all over our door step. Dirt, soil, dozens of cigarette butts, bits of rubbish. I can't tell you how that feels, after all the crap we have had to put up with: maybe it seems unimportant but somehow it just underlines to us how these low life shits just get away with everything.
Well, of course we rang the police - you reading this Big Ears? They said oh. Was it a lot of stuff? How much would you say? I had to go out in my night attire, stand on the doorstep, and assess the amount scientifically: was it a skip's worth? No. Was it more than two teaspoons? Yes. Does that count as harrassment then? Can't come to see it today. OK: I'll keep it for you. Can you at least speak to the Smiths? Yes. Good because otherwise I will be pouring this through the letterbox of next door. Sound of policeman about to say I wouldn't do that if I were you Madam, but not quite daring.
I can see the scene. Policeman arrives at the Smiths new place. Hello, Mrs Smith, just come to see if you are settling in okay. Oh, that's nice! Yeah, s'lovely, thanks. Look, Travis, the nice policeman has come to see you are being a good boy. Say hello! Aahh ... no, Travis, don't spit out of the window ... Policemans asks: now then, did you by any chance lose a bucket of soil and a few fag ends in the middle of the night? Tracey Smith will shake her head in wide eyed innocence: ooh, no officer. That's alright then, I'll leave you to unpack. Yeah, ok, then, - and thanks for all your help!
Give me strength.
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