Into each life, a little Raine must fall

Sad news: it has been announced that it has been necessary to cancel the fundraising luncheon for the GLA campaign of our beloved Assembly Member Brian Coleman. This thrilling event was to have been graced by a very special guest: Raine, Countess of Spencer, former stepmother of Diana, Princess of Wales, and daughter of the late novelist Barbara Cartland.

Unfortunately, even when the name of Brian Coleman was removed from the publicity material for this lunch, sales of tickets were er so minimal (single figures, it is runoured) that the decision was made to call the whole thing off.

Obviously Mrs Angry and her escort are devastated, aren't we Andrew? The tiara and ball gown are going back into storage, and Mrs Angry's outfit is being returned too.

We hear that Brian is inconsolable: and of course he is now beginning to feel the first intimations that perhaps not all is well with his campaign prospects. Cheer up Brian: Mrs Angry brings you a message of love and hope, through the language of romance, Barbara Cartland style ....

The Secret Fear: is it all going horribly wrong?



What will the result be, at the end of polling day? Oh dear. Never mind. Some light relief, if not romance, might be in order ...









Love is the answer: pure love




Mrs Angry would like to set you a good example (hold on, what is going on in this picture? Roped to the bed ... and is that a bong, Barbara?)





(Can't beat a man in lederhosen, can you, ladies? Oh - you can, apparently ... )

Cheer up Brian.


With pure and untouched love, from naughty angel Mrs Angry x

Brian, Adrian and Rowan: fans of Thatcher's, but Banner Snatchers?

The Strange Tale of a Tory councillor



Another Tory councillor


A Tory vicar,


And a police investigation that never happened:

I wol nat tellen eek how that they goon

Hoom til Atthenes, whan the pley is doon,
But shortly to the point thanne wol I wende,
And maken of my longe tale an ende.

Chaucer: the Knight's Tale


Hmm. Well today is Mrs Angry's birthday, (you didn't send a card, did you?) and despite the gloom of contemplating her advanced age and failing faculties - sight, hearing, sanity - she is feeling full of the milk of human kindness, and some champagne, and some cake, so she is inclined not to write about anything horrible, or mean, or shameful.

She will not, therefore, make any reference whatsoever to, say, oh, let's see - the outrageous story of the stolen banner of the Barnet Alliance against the cuts residents' group. Such a mean act would be best forgotten, would it not?

Let's not go over the whole shabby tale again.

Don't say anything about the unholy trinity of Councillor Brian Coleman, his partner in shame, the Reverend Adrian Benjamin, and their obsequious sidekick, Councillor Rowan Turner.

Don't mention the fact that at what is supposed to be a local summer show for the community, these bullying nobodies 'confiscated' the banner of a perfectly well behaved harmless community group, led by a senior citizen acting to the dictates of something they appear not to have, that is to say a social conscience, and now they refuse to return it, asserting alternatively either that one of the others has it, or that that they do not know where it is. Why did they take the banner? Because it was dangerous. It was expressing thoughts deviating from the political bias of the Tory trio monitoring the activities of residents in the park. Deviant thoughts are not allowed in Broken Barnet, and must be rolled up, carried away and hidden under the bed, where, Mrs Angry imagines, in the circumstances, no one is likely to stick a curious head over the edge and spot them.

We will gloss over the fact, too, that when the owners of the banner complained to the local police no action was taken. You might think this is rather unfortunate: Mrs Angry certainly does.

And let us not speculate upon the consequences of the following scenario: if Mrs Angry was walking through Friary Park, one sunny day and perhaps spotted the Reverend Benjamin sitting on a park bench, reading the Daily Mail, and if she marched over to him, objected to his reading material, snatched it off him, and ran off with it - well what would happen, do you suppose? If he went to the police and complained that some deranged woman had stolen his newspaper, would they not at least visit Mrs Angry and ask her about the incident?

Mrs Angry is very tempted to try something similar, in fact - and here is a message to our friends in the local police, please don't think she wouldn't: you know she probably would. In fact, Mrs Angry happens to know that quite a few rozzers read this blog on the sly, and she would hope that they might like to reconsider the rights and wrongs of this incident, and be seen to do something about it. It may not be the crime of the century, but it is an important point of principle, in defence of free speech, and democracy, and equal access to the processes of the law, no matter how trivial it might seem.

Another aspect which we will not discuss is the interesting information that has come to light from an inspection of earlier copies of the accounts of the Friern Show. Mrs Angry cannot tell you, therefore, that in fact the generous loan from the Reverend Benjamin's All Saints Arts Centre goes back some years, and was apparently deemed necessary because of cash flow problems, caused of course not by any failure in management by Chairman Coleman, but because of er, 'inclement weather' affecting the income.

Ah. Don't know why, there's no sun up in the sky ... stormy weather ... What a shame that no one thought to insure against the effects of poor weather on takings. And unfortunately, the costs of managing Friern show included, in the year ending 2008, such payments of £5,279 for 'admin/staff' and, oh hello: £870 for er ... 'security'. (Can anyone suggest a local company which might have been used for security? Nah, surely not ... ) Oh, and the accounts for one year, 2007, include mention of an uncashed cheque to the London Borough of Barnet for £542.85, for 'waste management and stage'. Someone was a bit careless weren't they, not following that up? Mrs Angry's accountant tried to find payments for the hire of the park, but they appear not to be listed. There may well be an perfectly acceptable reason for this, of course.

Which brings Mrs Angry to the last point she will definitely not bring to your attention.

The Chairman of directors of the Friern Barnet Summer Show is a Councillor Brian Coleman.

The charges for the use of local parks have been set by the Cabinet member for the Environment, who is a Councillor Brian Coleman.

Is there a potential conflict of interest in this position, bearing in mind the popularly held belief that discretion is used over the decision to charge for the use of local parks, and the scale of charge? No. Mrs Angry is confident that any interest by any party was declared wherever appropriate, and that Friern Barnet Summer Show has always paid the full extent of the charge, and has similarly paid the full amount this year, as Finchley Carnival was expected to, before being obliged to cancel the show, which is why there is really no need to mention the matter now.

PS: the missing banner is now tweeting from its place of incarceration: @TheLostBanner - please give it your support and help to bring him safely home ...

Broken Barnet: End of Life?

One Barnet, end of life, but we have an action plan


They say, don't they, that in London you are never more than a few feet away from a rat?

Yes, more vermin news from Mrs Angry: rats in Tescos, rats in the Town Hall, and now, citizens, rats gnawing at the One Barnet corpse, hidden for an indeterminate length of time in the cellar of the offices of the London Borough of Broken Barnet.

One Barnet has been sick for some time, as we know.

Sadly, we must announce that, at some time in the past few months, surrounded by Tory councillors, CEO Nick Walkley, Andrew 'Black Hole' Travers and other grieving members of the One Barnet corporate family, the life of the former model for local government was ended, assisted, it is rumoured, by an official MetPro emergency response pillow held over the face - and a sequence of embarrassing revelations by local bloggers.

Mad scientist Professor Richard Cornelius has been seen attaching electrodes to the corpse of One Barnet, and waving a lightening conductor out of the window of his laboratory, shaking his fist at the infinityof blue sky thinking still hanging over the stark desolation of the corporate landscape, and praying for stormy weather.

Mrs Angry advises Prof Cornelius to wear some rubber soled shoes.

Mrs Angry was hit by lightening once, has she mentioned it? And it was her choice of footwear which saved her from becoming toast, although, as has been remarked in certain quarters, her brain appears to have been rewired, and she has never been quite the same since.

But where were we? Do stop trying to be funny, Mrs Angry, no one is laughing, and let's face it, you're not really in the mood, are you?

So: desolation, corpses, rats: oh yes - and more rats. Mrs Angry must in fact thank the London Borough of Broken Barnet - and their misuse of the the Freedom of Information system - for enabling her to continue with the suitable motif of rodent infestation this weekend. It's been fun.

Let us return to the evening of the MetPro audit committee meeting. You may recall that the response of the senior management team to the catalogue of financial incompetence unveiled by the report was that a. it was terrible but nothing to do with them and b. all ills would be miraculously cured by a wave of Mr Walkley's magic wand, and An Action Plan.

Yes, CEO Mr Walkley has a magic wand, on contract from Agilysis, agreed by contract - no, sorry, in an arrangement, of a knock down price of what? How much? Really? But the cost is value for money because of the enormous savings it brings to the One Barnet programme. Oh: will bring to the One Barnet programme, at some unknown point in the future. Maybe.

In June, the Barnet Eye blog asked the council about the Procurement Action Plan referred to at the audit meeting. This question was made fairly casually, in a low key email, but: hey presto, the magic wand was waved, and this enquiry was transformed into a Freedom of Information request. Black magic like this has been used by the wizards of Broken Barnet before: you might remember the awkward MetPro questions Mrs Angry submitted to a Residents Forum which were similarly transformed. This is a brilliant spell for those in need of an official twenty working day delay in responding to embarrassing questions, you see.

Time's up, now, though, and now, at a suitably quiet time of the year when most people are away, and the danger of embarrassment is minimised, we have the responses. And the information contained in these responses is truly staggering: far, far worse than anything that could have been predicted. There are further details on the Barnet Eye blog, and Mr Reasonable has cast his own forensic eye over the newly revealed information, barely able to contain his appalled reaction.

The most telling document is the Information Systems "Action Plan". Note that they have put Action Plan in inverted commas, as well they might. Where to start? This report is yet another devastating indictment of incompetence. Some choice excerpts:

On the IT infrastructure:

The lack of an Infrastructure Manager has left the service with no direction and poor management of the 2e2 managed services contract.2e2 contract was put in place to transfer the operational management and risk of core infrastructure to a private provider. 2e2 no longer feel responsible for this and have passed all risks back to the council, on the basis that all equipment has reached EOL.

(EOL: End of life: corporate death - the last taboo in Broken Barnet.)

In which case, as Mr Reasonable has pointed out, why on earth did the Cabinet Resources rubber stamping committee renew the contract with 2e2?

Telephony upgrade:

Front and Back office telephony infrastructure has come to the EOL and will be unsupportable by CISCO from May 2011, unless Barnet make a commitment to the upgrade.

Ah: good - we are being told there is an urgent need to start a tender process for a telephony upgrade (anyone got any ideas - a vital vision, even - as to who might be able to provide this? Off the top of your head?) but we are not told how we have come to this point of urgent need without any prior warning.

Applications support:

Two Team Managers supporting SAP and other business applications, creating confusion in the business and the team around who is responsible for what. Staff and Team Leaders involved in a huge amount of projects with the business not none (sic) of them really know what there (sic) role is on any of these projects.

This report is shockingly badly written: the new One Barnet house style, presumably. 'Not none of them knowing what there role is' must apparently be blamed on 'Lack of ownership of the Logica Contract.' amongst other things. Ah lack of ownership. Hmm.

Then we have the grossly overbudget multi million SAP IT system, which is useless: why is it useless? Many reasons but here are more:

Team have been working on SAP optimisation, but neither of the managers are clear on who is the Business Owner for SAP, the sponsor for SAP Optimisation or the Project Manager. No structured project documentation exists for this programme.

Ah, ownership problems again. Ownership: being responsible for, being accountable, showing a sense of strategic direction. All qualities missing from the corporate ethos of Broken Barnet.

Information and data management:

Numerous Reports highlight weaknesses in information and data management and IT security. Business Continuity is virtually non‐existent.

How many more breaches of data security will it take before the ICO step in and take further action to sanction this borough for its continued refusal to address its failings in this area?

One Barnet:

No one in the IS team believe they are the lead for the service specification in IT and as such, nothing has started.

Another example of lack of leadership from the senior management of the authority.

Project management:

No formal Project Management in IS exists. The lack of project management means that no one is aware of their role and responsibility on any project. Staff in IT deliver projects as a secondary function, resulting in a lack of understanding by the business on who the IT lead is on their business project. Staff themselves are not aware that they are the assigned PM for some projects and do not follow any methodology to manage delivery.

Again: another failure of senior leadership.

Finally, we find:

Organisation:

Through the report produced by Agilyis and an assessment of how the team is currently working, reported through the ‘Red Book’, it is clear that the IT structure is not fit for purpose.

Not fit for purpose: four little words that should be written in big letters and hung over the gates of North London Business Park.

Here is a question: why is the political administration of Broken Barnet apparently so tolerant of the cuture of incompetence amongst the senior management team it employs, at such a generous rate of reward? As a Tory councillor told Mrs Angry recently, the truth is that it is the senior officers who run this council, and not the politicians. The outsourcing agenda: was that really a politically driven policy, originally, or was it promoted by the senior officers who came to Barnet, primed with the same philosophy of so many others who are now in place in the highest positions in authorities all around the country?

And here is another question, which the Tory leadership of Broken Barnet needs urgently to address: are they here to do the bidding of their officers, and help them to ease the business opportunities for the private sector that One Barnet's outsourcing frenzy will provide, or have they a rather more important duty of care to their electorate, who have been told that the driving principle of One Barnet is to provide 'better services for less money'.

By now even the dopiest of Tory councillors must see that the only part of One Barnet that is being delivered as promised is the commitment to the mass externalisation of services, and already we are forging an intimate relationship with the big companies who feed off public sector business. At the same time we know that no savings have been made, the financial organisation and now, it seems, almost every other aspect of the authority's administration, is not fit for purpose, and yet we are still throwing more money we are told we do not have on the One Barnet programme. Why? The message from central government is clear - that it wants local authorities to pull back from large scale externalisation, because the evidence now of the risks of failure are incontrovertibly damning.

The big contracts with the big companies will soon be set up, and the senior officers who have pushed the outsourcing agenda will then move on, no doubt into fabulous jobs in the private sector, leaving Broken Barnet to its fate. The services outsourced will be terrible, and there will be no savings to residents and taxpayers. Eventually, the majority of externalised functions will have to be brought back in house as we all learn the hard way, because some of us did not, would not, listen to all the warnings, that no one can or should make profit out of public services.

Oh, and briefly returning to the first item of IT Infrastructure: here is an admission to make you gasp:

The Data Centre and Comms Rooms are at significant risk as the A\C is not working correctly, the sprinkler system has been turned off due to a water leak and cables are at risk of being eaten into by Rats.

Those pesky rats again: what did Mrs Angry tell you?

Funnily enough, both the risk and action points have been redacted, no not with with Mr Walkley's magic wand, but by his One Barnet pencil. I cannot imagine why.

To be fair, though, I don't think we need to worry about the rodent problem. Rats leave a sinking ship, and I think it is clear, is it not, citizens, that the One Barnet ship is going down fast, with all hands on board?

One other naval tradition which is being maintained is the duty of the Captain to go down with the ship: the senior management team is standing on deck saluting as the vessel lists and slips into the ocean. Saluting, and refusing to 'take ownership' of the fact that their shameless incompetence is sending the ship and all its passengers to the bottom of the sea. Until the very last seconds, of course, when they will all nip over the side, to a waiting life boat, and bugger off back to dry land, leaving us all to drown.

Still, never mind, citizens: my heart will go on, will yours?

MetPro Audit: Part Four: An Orange Sky

A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape.

And look: Andrew Travers' black hole from the London Development Agency had followed him all the way to Broken Barnet, to the Town Hall, and up the stairs and along the corridor to Committee Room One, to the MetPro Audit meeting, where it sat on the table all evening, holding us all in its gravitational pull, powerless to resist, and unable to leave the room.

It was time for the man from Grant Thornton to speak. He stopped manically flipping his pen from finger to finger, smiled tightly and told us that in his opinion, the audit report 'raises some quite significant issues in relation to MetPro ...' No shit. Mrs Angry made a note of this startling conclusion, and agreed that the role of the external auditor was indeed a vital part of the process of scrutiny and visibly worth the £373,000 plus annual fee paid to them by the by tax payers of our beloved borough.

Of course it was the bloggers of Broken Barnet, working as 'armchair auditors', on behalf of their fellow citizens, who undertook the all the hard work which exposed the MetPro affair, and the truly scandalous state of the borough's financial administration, and please note, Grant Thornton, they did your work for you free of charge. Perhaps you should pay us a retrospective consultancy fee? Invoice on its way, but payment will be accepted, no questions asked, before receipt of same, Broken Barnet style.

The auditor welcomed the 'robust' internal report. They would be having monthly meetings, and action plans, oh and a three month period of steadying the One Barnet ship might be a good idea. Yes, trouble is that Captain Pugwash and his hapless crew of Tory privateers are insisting on taking the listing vessel out onto the high seas of massive outsourcing of public services in the meanwhile, seaworthy or not ...

Lord Palmer again raised the question of potential fraud. This was neatly deflected by Jeff Lustig, Director of Corporate Governance, by a mention of the corporate fraud team. Will we ever hear any more, I wonder?

Labour's Councillor Brodkin had some questions: officers had assumed a contract with Metpro was in place: how then was the company monitored in the absence of any contract? Ah. Well, Andrew Travers agreed that 'weaknesses' had clearly been identified ... Other questions: who was giving authority for specific use for example at Barbara Langstone House hostel? Where is any evidence of member oversight (the aspect of political responsibility appears to have been conveniently overlooked) and finally, has the One Barnet programme distracted the council from its ordinary functional processes?

Answers were in short supply, but CE Walkley stepped in with a suitably vague response: there was a tendency to blame issues such as the cuts, or One Barnet, but these problems happened five years ago, since when there have been three new leaders, and nine new directors. Well, they have continued since then, Mr W, but it's no good trying to kick the blame that far back. He thought the problem, guess what, 'says something profound about the culture'. Yes, Mr Walkley: it speaks of a culture of decadence and failure, incompetence and corruption.

Palmer now raised the wider implications of the MetPro issue: the future of One Barnet. Spotting Tory councillor Daniel Thomas in the audience, he invited him to come and speak to the committee. Councillor Thomas did not look altogether happy at this prospect, but did as he was told.

Will One Barnet continue? Lord Palmer asked.

Oh yes, retorted Thomas, brimming with confidence, It will ...

Everything would be just fine, working with their partners Agilysis. No problem at all. (thanks for reading and rereading yesterday's posts, by the way, friends and admirers at Agilysis, Grant Thornton, the Audit Commission, Capita etc ...)

Oh, what rubbish, yelled Mrs Angry, who has no time for Tory councillors like Thomas, not long out of sixth form, with no life experience, but adhering to such remarkably blinkered, right wing political positions. Last year, in an amusing one to one budget consultation on the phone with Mrs Angry, Councillor Thomas had assured her that if he and his colleagues did not within a short time receive satisfactory evidence that the One Barnet programme was financially sound they would abandon it. Well, here we are, Councillor Thomas, with all the devastating conclusions of the audit report, and there you are, resolutely looking the other way ...

Labour's Councillor Cooke said there should be no thought whatsoever of increasing outsourcing until there was evidence that it coud go forward, it would be reckless to do so. In regard to the issue of screening the security staff working with children and Barbara Langstone House, this would be a very different sort of inquiry if evidence of abuse had to be presented, wouldn't it?

Lord Palmer moved to the recommendations, repeating his view that the report made 'devastating reading ... horrendous '. He hoped the committee would agree to all the recommendations and commented that he hoped in future 'we don't have to wait for the public, for the bloggers, to tell us before another report like this had to be presented.

The situation, he reflected, was reminiscent of a hospital that would run perfectly well if only there were no patients. And not run by a team of incompetent doctors, thought Mrs Angry.

He wanted the recommendations to reflect his view that there was a need to identify how outsourcing helps, or does not help, the council in 'acheiving control'. For One Barnet to proceed and before there is any further externalisaion of services.there must be confirmation that adequate safeguards are in place.

The next item on the agenda was the larger internal audit: again, Mary Ellen Salter referred us to the incredible number of limited assurances and wrily commented in a masterful understatement that the audit demonstrated the council's position was 'not a good place to be in' ...

The Chief Executive accepted in full the findings and made a lot of promises to be good from now on. This will include the novel practice, apparently, of 'finishing what we started, and tying loose ends'. Marvellous. Give that man a pay rise.

Tory councillor Schama thought the audit report was 'dreadful' - 72% of internal reports rated limited or no assurances? Walkley agreed this was completely unacceptable. And?

Schama later asked the deputy CE and Chief Finance Officer Andrew Travers to estimate the number of contracts other than MetPro that should exist, but do not. Incredibly, Mr Travers did not know, and could not provide even a guestimate. I can think of a couple, muttered Mrs Angry, always keen to assist. Some wag asked if Grant Thornton had a contract. They do, of course, watertight, every last detail carefully agreed: no loose ends.

The last items dealt briefly with other account matters. No one cared very much. By this time, there was an oppressive atmosphere both inside and outside the Town Hall, as a storm had moved overhead, large raindrops splattering against the windows, the sky turning a lurid easycouncil coloured shade of orange.

Everyone packed up and drifted away. The senior officers quietly slipped out, and the councillors went home, shaking their heads.

This is the way One Barnet ends, perhaps: not with a bang, but a whimper. Because something tells me that life is never going to be quite the same, here, post MetPro, in the twilight world of Broken Barnet.

There is reason for optimism in some quarters, however: yesterday Mrs Angry was checking her blog visitors and found one of her MetPro supporting admirers had left a message - or rather a plea:

'Mr Cornlius, (sic) please bring back metpro in Barnet ...'

Not completely impossible, is it, citizens?