Broken Barnet's Night of the Long Knives - Part One: "That's discipline for you..."

Councillor Kate Salinger

Councillors Kate and Brian Salinger and a public show of support from Eric Pickles, shortly after the Allowancegate scandal


On Thursday morning, at 10 am, there will be a meeting of Barnet Council's standards' sub-committee.

This meeting will formally consider the findings of a report by an officer appointed to investigate a complaint made by a Conservative councillor, Kate Salinger, member for Coppetts Ward, that her fellow Conservative councillor, Andreas Tambourides, allegedly breached the code of conduct for members of the council, on several grounds, in July last year. She claims that he forwarded an inaccurate news article from an online newspaper, The London Daily News, about the allowance rise voted for by Tory councillors -except Kate Salinger - to all Conservative Councillors on Barnet Council, and to at least one member of the general public.

Councillor Kate Salinger alleges that 'the article was forwarded in its entirety in order to denigrate and ridicule her to other Conservative councillors and anyone else the email may have been forwarded (to) ...'

The official investigator has in his report concluded that in his view there is evidence to support the complaint by Councillor Salinger on two grounds. It will be the responsibility of the committee on Thursday to decide whether to accept these findings: further details to follow in a separate post.

If you are unfamiliar with the long dark history of the Conservative party in Broken Barnet, you may well be wondering what all this is about. In this post, Mrs Angry will explain the background, as it is an incredible tale, well worth revisiting, and says so much about the qualities of the Tory party in Barnet: the machiavellian intrigue, the lack of moral compass, the cowardice of the backbenchers, and an institutionalised regime of intimidation, used to maintain a blind obedience to the will of certain self serving malign forces within the party leadership.

Let us travel back in time to a full council meeting held at the Town Hall on July 13th, 2010.

Mrs Angry was present, along with most of the Barnet bloggers, and she remembers this meeting vividly, as it represented an unforgettable introduction to the truly breathtaking extent of greed, venality, cowardice, moral corruption, and the merciless culture of bullying that exists within the ranks of the Tory councillors of Broken Barnet.

If you think that I am exaggerating, take a look at the minutes of the meeting contained within the report going to committee on Thursday. You can also read the post I wrote about the evening here, if you wish:

http://wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.com/2010/07/animal-farm.html

Item 10 on the agenda was a motion moved in the name of the then leader, Lynne Hillan, which welcomed the new Coalition's emergency budget, and castigated the spending of the previous Labour government, which 'lavished money on bureacracy, put nothing aside for a rainy day, and left the UK with a staggering legacy of debts that will affect generations to come' .... (I say in the name of, as Mrs Angry detects the tell tale sign of Capital Letters in Inappropriate Places, which is the mark of a certain other leading Barnet Tory).

The motion stated, with solemn regret, that although the budget will be tough, it is necessary to put the country back on a sound economic footing. Barnet Cabinet members were accordingly asked to work within the new financial constraints when setting Barnet Council's budget in the coming year, a radical budget which we were told would inevitably include staff losses - and drastic cuts to services for residents.

Shortly following this sternly worded motion was an urgent item.

Item 18: Scheme of Members' Allowances.

This was a bare faced, shamelessly self indulgent attempt by the same Tory councillors, in the middle of lecturing us all on the need for painful economies, redundancies and service cuts, to award themselves a range of whopping pay rises.

Why was it an urgent item? Officially, we were told, by senior Tory councillors barely bothering to try to keep a straight face, that there had been 'IT problems' which meant that this item had had to be slipped quietly onto the agenda late at night, just before the meeting - when they hoped no one was looking.

Unfortunately for the councillors, an eagle eyed blogger had spotted the last minute addition, and uncovered their outrageous plot.

The publicity which we drew to the proposal meant that drastic measures had to be taken by the Tory leadership to force the motion through. Every Conservative councillor was ordered to vote for the pay rise, or face the consequences. With one notable exception, they did as they were told, with barely a whimper.

Let us name and shame the quivering councillors who did as they were told, as recorded in the minutes:

Antony Finn
Lisa Rutter
Maureen Braun
Dean Cohen
Melvin Cohen
Brian Coleman
Alison Cornelius
Richard Cornelius
Tom Davey
Barry Evangeli
Brian Gordon
Eva Greenspan
Andrew Harper
John Hart
Helena Hart
LynneHillan
Suri Khatri
David Longstaff
John Marshall
Graham Old
Bridget Perry
Wendy Prentice
Sachin Rajput
Robert Rams
Hugh Rayner
Joan Scannell
Brian Schama
Daniel Seal
Mark Shooter
Stephen Sowerby
Andrew Strongolou
Andreas Tambourides
Joannna Tambourides
Daniel Thomas
Reuben Thompstone
Rowan Turner
Darryl Yawitch

Only one Tory councillor dared not to support the proposal: Councillor Kate Salinger, who abstained.

In Kate Salinger's interview with the investigating officer who dealt with her complaint to the Standards' Committee (page 38) she explains why she refused to vote with her colleagues:

"This vote increased the sums paid to some members by very large percentages and I found this indefensible, immoral, obscene and unsupportable in the current economic climate."

Kate Salinger was not the only Tory member to realise that such a proposal was totally unacceptable: she was simply the only one to have the courage and integrity to abide by her conscience, and vote accordingly.

What happened next was described to Mrs Angry by a senior council officer who was present throughout the meeting as completely unprecedented, something not seen in many years of service in Barnet, 'a truly shocking display of ruthless, instant revenge, carefully calculated and carried out with nauseating efficiency'.

On the nod from Tory whip and Cabinet member Brian Coleman, group secretary Councillor Joan Scannell 'from the floor' (where the integrity of the Tory group was lying in a pool of blood) moved a series of changes in committee membership, stripping Kate Salinger of all but one of her five positions - the only one that remained being impossible to take way for technical reasons. One by one they were announced, and her Tory colleagues moved in to take her place:

Councillor Wendy Prentice took her seat on the Policy and Performance Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

Councillor Sury Khatri replaced her on the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee

Councillor Maureen Braun replaced her on the Appeals Committee

Councillor Alison Cornelius took her place on Licensing

Councillor Barry Evangeli replaced her in the Chipping Barnet Residents Forum

More punishment was to follow. After this was voted through, the public stoning continued.

Councillor Scannell moved the following changes to external boards:

Kate Salinger's place on a religious advisory committee SACRE was given to - ha - Councillor Brian Gordon

The Friends of Barnet Borough Libraries: step forward, oh dear, Councillor Robert Rams

Friern Park Management Centre: subsitute Councillor Stephen Sowerby

Adoption and Permanency panel: make way for Councillor Wendy Prentice

By this point, Mrs Angry had left the public gallery in utter disgust. She was told that after this public ritual of humiliation by her gutless, shameless Conservative colleagues, Kate Salinger left the chamber in tears.

Who could blame her?

A couple of weeks after the meeting, Mrs Angry went to her local Residents Forum. This was in olden times, when Broken Barnet still had the last vestiges of democracy, and the Tory dictators had not censored the forums so as to prevent awkward questions about their activities being raised by well, you know, residents, local voters, tax payers, and other troublemakers.

http://wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.com/2010/07/funny-thing-happened-on-way-to-forum.html

By this point, the publicity given by bloggers and then the local press to the gobsmacking arrogance and greed of the councillors' self awarded payrise had provoked a massive reaction of outrage amongst residents. In fact the damage caused by the pay rise vote was so great that Hillan and her Cabinet chums were obliged to resort to a graceless u turn, and partially retract the rises, although all committee chairs still received a massive 54% increase, in some cases for a committee which meets only twice a year.

By now, a few Tory councillors were feeling deeply embarrassed at their participation in the vote, as well as - rather belatedly- somewhat ashamed by the exposure of their own spineless behaviour towards colleague Kate Salinger.

At the forum Mrs Angry asked Councillor Graham Old how he felt about the way in which Councillor Salinger had been treated. To her surprise, he blurted out a confession that he thought she was in fact 'a great heroine'. Mrs Angry found it difficult to understand why Councillor Old or any other Tory councillor with any conscience had therefore acted as they did, and betray their colleague in this way, merely for acting in accordance with her principles.

Reading through the report yesterday, however, Mrs Angry noted that Councillor Old had at least supported Kate Salinger in her complaint to the Standards committee by confirming that he had received a copy of the email in question, which he had deleted because he had felt the contents were a slur: you are therefore partially redeemed in Mrs Angry's eyes, Councillor Old, and Mrs Angry would hope that Lessons Have Been Learned, One Barnet style.

Of course there is one Barnet councillor and Cabinet member who is unlikely to have learnt anything at all from this shameful episode. Yes, we are talking about Councillor Brian Coleman. After the infamous council meeting, and even as poor Kate Salinger was stumbling down the stairs of the Town Hall, the Tory whip was telling the local press who had dared to question the vitriolic punishment handed out to her:

"That's discipline for you. It's the democratic process in action."

Councillor Coleman is of course a keen advocate of discipline - for others. Self discipline is another matter.

And this night of the long knives was not the first act of conspiracy and betrayal that has involved the Salingers and the Tory leadership.

Kate Salinger and her councillor husband Brian are both known as decent, liberally minded Conservatives, and well respected by - almost - everyone. Brian, who was absent on the night of the allowance vote, was once leader of the party. In 2006, shortly after delivering electoral victory for the Tories, he was deposed by a coup engineered by a group led by kingmaker and arch meddler Brian Coleman, and Mike Freer, now a local MP, took over as leader. Since then, the predominance of a certain dark element in the Tory party has set it on the course to self destruction it is now following, with fatal dedication.

Coleman was right in one thing, however, in his statement to the press on the night of the allowance vote, and act of remorseless revenge on Kate Salinger: this was the perfect example of democracy in action - at least it is true to say democracy in action as we do it so well, in the ugly, brutal world of Tory politics, here in Broken Barnet.

Mrs Angry Predicts ...

Instead of a Friday joke, let's introduce a new occasional service from Broken Barnet: 'Mrs Angry Predicts' .... This will eventually be part of a subscription only clairvoyant and fortune telling service for the discerning reader,(working title 'Vital Vision'), however, following the mixed success of the Broken Barnet racing tipster column, (Mr Tom Roper has been outsourced until he has raised the cost of covering Mrs Angry's ruinous last bet with William Hill), we feel it only right to run this new venture on a free trial basis first.

Do sit down. Take Mrs Angry's hand, and close your eyes. No peeping. Try to relax, and empty your mind of all thoughts - as if you were say, the deputy chief executive and chief finance officer of a major London borough. Easy, isn't it? Just imagine a space of infinite darkness ... a big black hole ... oops: don't fall in!

Now then. Shhh ... listen ... my spirit guide is whispering in my ear ... yes ... I have a message coming through the ether for someone worried about the future ... is there an outsourcing company in the audience tonight? Someone keen to muscle in on £750 million of business from the London Borough of Barnet? I'm listening ... oh dear. I see. Is it you, dear, over there, with the worried look on your face?

I have a message coming through ... yes, yes, it's from your uncle ... Max, is it, who has passed over to the other side - or nearly, he keeps coming back again, doesn't he? And taking people with him. Very sad. Uncle Max says, oh dear: 'feck off son, you don't stand a chance, I hear you've been stitched up like a kipper' ... does that mean anything to you? .... and something about ... tender fodder ... Uncle Max says don't waste your breath, another company is all lined up to take the contract. A big company with powerful and far reaching influence, and friends in all the right places, going to and fro: busy, busy, busy. Ah: but what is this? Mrs Angry can see Uncle Max moving on in spirit, taking Solace in a new world, newly Impowered, in a recycling of old souls ... how curious ... what can it all mean?

All is still, but in the darkness, suddenly, a bright light shines at the back of the hall, a dazzling golden glow: my eyes, my eyes - citizens, do you see? Oh: Councillor Longstaff, do please pull up your trousers, Mrs Angry is trying to commune with the spirit world.

There is more: Mrs Angry has a vision of a large call centre, mysteriously left with a huge budget deficit that no one wants to talk about, and now with, no this can't be right, several council departments all pushed into one service, with suitable staffing reductions, to makeup for the deficit and make customer services still financially attractive for outsourcing ... Oh dear, look, a pile of redundancy notices being slid under the desk. Back in the call centre, the phones are ringing and ringing ... here is a horrible, rude little man ringing up to complain about his road not being gritted, despite being a grade one priority and next to a church, and the whole world revolving around him and his monstrous ego, while an elderly woman whose husband has dementia and complex needs and wanting someone to talk to who understands her sense of desperation is being kept on hold for an hour and a half and then told by someone reading from a script to ring up a voluntary group to see if they can do anything to help, because the council won't. That can't be right, can it?

Is there anyone else who wants to talk to us, spirit guide? Let them contact us through the medium of pyschic messaging, twitter DM or messaging. Mrs Angry is always happy to receive their guidance.

No need to cross Mrs Angry's palm with silver, senior officers and councillors of Broken Barnet: why not try to salve your heavy consciences and donate to a good cause: Children in Need:

https://www.donate.bt.com/CIN2011/cin/

Behind the scenes at the museum

Councillor Coleman, AM FRSA, has seen too many helmets and wants to shut the Fire Brigade Museum

... but don't worry: he wants to open another museum full of lovely artefacts like these ...


Three years ago, a proposal to shut the London Fire Brigade Museum by yes, you know who, Himself, Brian Coleman, the Chair of the London fire authority, caused widespread protest and was eventually shelved, despite the best efforts of Coleman, who had announced: "having recently visited the fire brigade museum – we shook the cobwebs off the door as we opened it – I have to say that it is not a museum that is fit for purpose or that in my view contributes anything".

He had also commented that once you've seen one helmet, you've seen them all. Clearly, Brian Coleman has seen more helmets than Mrs Angry, who has led a sheltered life - although this is a statement with which even she would not necessarily agree. Anyway, this subject has, well, raised its head once more, however, and oh dear: here we go again - the museum's closure is back on the agenda.

According to an article this week on the London SE1 community website, the threat of closure was discussed once more at a meeting of LFEPA's finance ansd personnel committee on Monday. It is significant perhaps, that as Mrs Angry suggested, shutting the museum just before the May GLA elections might not be such good timing, and at this meeting it would seem our Brian was trying to push for closure, whilst at the same time appear to be almost reluctant to do so, or at least keen to blame the closure on someone else. The big bad wolf had a lot to say, in fact:

"There's a lot of huffing and puffing about the museum," Brian Coleman told the committee.

He explained that the future of the museum would have to be considered in the context of plans to outsource the training of firefighters which is currently carried out at the Southwark Bridge Road site.

"In the medium term Winchester House and the whole Southwark [training centre] site will go," he said. "It will have to be disposed of. When [the site] goes, there's no space for the museum.

"I wish we had money to invest in the museum. I wish we didn't have to make the various cuts ... but I see no proposals from the Labour group on how we can make up this deficit bearing the mind the cuts target we have been set by the Mayor which is part of his political directive to freeze the precept for Londoners."

Cllr Coleman added: "I would be happy to reverse the proposed savings if Cllr Shah could propose other savings or other sources of revenue."

Turning to the proposal for a combined museum of London's emergency services, Cllr Coleman said: "It was actually my idea, worked up with the late Sir Simon Milton, to have a blue light museum, and [the Mayor's culture advisor] Munira Mirza spent £8,000 of taxpayers' money on getting a consultant in to look at it. I'd have done the exercise for 10 per cent of that fee.

"Sadly it's gone nowhere. Cllr Shah: you are more than welcome to ask questions at City Hall as to why it has gone nowhere.

"I understand that the police wouldn't play ball – as ever – because the key attraction for a blue light museum would be the so-called 'black museum' from Scotland Yard.

"They queue round the block for the London Dungeon and I think they'd queue round the block for the contents of the 'black museum'.

The late Sir Simon Milton, poor man, appears to be turning into something of a City Hall Bunbury: someone to blame for awkward decisions for which no one wishes to take responsibility, or to call as a silent witness in the political games they play. If you recall, Sir Simon was blamed for the security clearance wrongly given to Boris Johnsons's spin doctor Lynton Crosby, and now he is being dragged into the museum debacle.

Mueums and policemen are subjects which seem to irritate Brian Coleman: note the reference to 'the police wouldn't play ball - as ever' and his frankly rather weird, scowling resentment that they will not part with the gory artefacts of the Black Museum.

In a Standard article about the Black Museum plan in May 2009, we were told:

"Police have been allowed to see the relics but public decency has prevented their wider access.

However, Boris Johnson is backing a plan to turn some of the contents into a museum to celebrate London's emergency services. Chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority Brian Coleman is working with the Mayor on the plan for the new tourist attraction.

He said: "The police are quite jealous of some of the information they are allowed access to."

Jealous: yes, those lucky policemen, lingering lovingly over all those gruesome objects, tokens of some of the most vile acts that human beings have done to each other - but why should they have all the fun?

Coleman resents anyone who asserts their independence, it seems, and the sight of a uniform seems to trigger a rebellious streak in our outspoken Assembly member. Did he have an unfortunate experience in his childhood, perhaps? Told off by a policeman for being cheeky? Oh no, hold on, that was me.

Mrs Angry has previously referred to Coleman's interest in the ghastly Black Museum idea, an a previous post, :

http://wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.com/2010/04/night-mayor-of-broken-barnet.html

"Coleman's interest in a proposed tourist attraction using exhibits from the Black Museum which he suggested might, in order to 'add spice', display the saucepans Denis Nilson used to dispose of the body parts of his victims. Coleman commented that this would have 'teenage boys queuing around the block'. One would have thought he might realise that any decent person would be revolted by the idea, or that he might just have had some thought for the families of Nilson's victims. Evidently not."

Brian Coleman says he would have done the consultancy work on this hideous scheme for £800. I'll do it for nothing, friend: I'll tell you now that it is a repulsive idea, and says a lot about you that you think it is in anyway appropriate to put such objects on display in a museum, at the same time being quite happy to close down an establishment dedicated to reminding us of the long history of service, dedication and courage of London's firefighters.

Thinking recently about St Paul's, and London burning during the Blitz, and Mrs Angry's father and thousands of firefighters, full time and volunteers, risking their lives to save the lives of fellow Londoners, and protect our city from the firestorm and bombing of the Luftwaffe, one had to wonder what contribution to the common good you would have made, then, Brian? What contribution do you make now, in fact, of any real significance?

Is that why you want to shut the museum down, because it represents a history of real courage, real sacrifice, something admirable, and difficult, and hard won, a legacy you will never have the right to understand? It would be the ultimate act of authority over a service you have have struggled to control over all these years: a denial of their history, and independence: an act of vengeance.

The truth is that the neo brutalist, philistine breed of Tories we produce in Broken Barnet have no sense of history, or heritage, or any real appreciation of culture. Entertainment, for them, is looking at Denis Nilson's saucepans. If something can't be shut down and sold off it is worth nothing: as Barnet leader Richard Cornelius reminded us recently when he declared that the contents of the Church Farmhouse Museum they have closed, and are about to flog to the highest bidder, were of no value.

In all dictatorships, the past is something to be controlled as much as the present: history is rewritten, and heritage abandoned without sentiment. Time starts again at year zero, in Broken Barnet.

Barnet Tories like closing things down and cutting them back, and not just because it brings them lots of easy made cash, from savings or sales. Libraries, children's centres, museums: all fair game. This behaviour, and the culture of bullying which exists even within their own party reinforces their sense of dominance. Just like Jack the Ripper, or any loathsome individual whose relics are kept in the Black Museum, it is the ruthless demonstration of power which makes them feel they are in control, and gives them a sense of identity.

At a council meeting last night, Mr Mustard and Mrs Angry were discussing the amusing thought that by this time next year, Brian Coleman's political career may well effectively be over: after he loses the GLA election, he will only have the outsourced remains of Barnet Council to play with, and if rumours are true, his own colleagues are at last showing signs of wanting to oust him from his cabinet post. Oh dear.

Just imagine: the political demise of Councillor Brian Coleman, AM, FRSA, an event surely to be celebrated, like the gold coffin of Jimmy Savile lying forlornly in a hotel foyer, honoured by the grateful people of Broken Barnet, ah - queueing around the block ... but just to make sure the old b*****d really is dead. Politically speaking, Brian darling, of course. Don't cry.

Look see: Mrs Angry is feeling sorry for you now.

That's a bad sign.