Labour's First Big Test - We Can't Wait
Our citizens are waiting with nervous anticipation for Labour's big test at the autumn council meeting this week. If the Comrades succeed in their aim of denying our tenants a ballot over the Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO), bonfires will be lit for the ritual burning of their election manifesto, which is silent on this contentious matter. None other than Comrade Kate Hoey, the feisty Ulster-born Labour MP for Vauxhall, thunders in her latest newsletter that tenants must have a democratic say in the future ownership of their homes through a proper ballot. How will the Houdinis of the Labour front bench wriggle out of this one?
Labour hates Council meetings and Area Committees where our citizens can vent their spleen on their rulers. Whereas in their wildnerness years they brought delegations to the meetings now they are less keen on hearing the voice of our people. That is why the ALMO meeting was rolled into the regular council meeting to cut down the time for debate. In an almost incomprehensible document attached to Wednesday's agenda the popular Area Committees are to be scrapped: the smart money is a return to a 'local governors' system in Lambeth favoured by Labour in 1998-2002 and not dissimilar to how the Blair government runs southern Iraq.
This extract from Scottish civil servant Rory Stewart's account of a year as a governor of a province in Iraq post Saddam is instructive: "It was vital that WE selected the right councillors, for they would have to guide the province through the first few months of independence [for this read Labour rule in Lambeth] with very little support from the centre."
It would also be worth our people taking comfort by reflecting on Machiavelli's warning in The Prince Chapter 19 'What will make [the ruler] despised is being considered inconstant, frivolous, effeminate, pusillanimous: a ruler must avoid contempt as if it were a reef.'
Another piece of stealth attached to the back of the council agenda is the huge pay hike Labour councillors are proposing to award to their leaders with the Leader himself drawing GB pounds 38k plus GB pounds 10k in ordinary allowances. It is unlikely, in my opinion, to be debated but nodded through at the end of the meeting. While some of the 'payroll vote' within the administration are jobless a few are being tempted to combine well-paid part-time jobs in the real world with these new allowances. Rumours, no doubt untrue, reach me that up to a dozen Labour members have reservations about the size of some of the new allowances. What is sure is that the doubters will not have the strength of mind to vote against this sleight of hand.
Labour hates Council meetings and Area Committees where our citizens can vent their spleen on their rulers. Whereas in their wildnerness years they brought delegations to the meetings now they are less keen on hearing the voice of our people. That is why the ALMO meeting was rolled into the regular council meeting to cut down the time for debate. In an almost incomprehensible document attached to Wednesday's agenda the popular Area Committees are to be scrapped: the smart money is a return to a 'local governors' system in Lambeth favoured by Labour in 1998-2002 and not dissimilar to how the Blair government runs southern Iraq.
This extract from Scottish civil servant Rory Stewart's account of a year as a governor of a province in Iraq post Saddam is instructive: "It was vital that WE selected the right councillors, for they would have to guide the province through the first few months of independence [for this read Labour rule in Lambeth] with very little support from the centre."
It would also be worth our people taking comfort by reflecting on Machiavelli's warning in The Prince Chapter 19 'What will make [the ruler] despised is being considered inconstant, frivolous, effeminate, pusillanimous: a ruler must avoid contempt as if it were a reef.'
Another piece of stealth attached to the back of the council agenda is the huge pay hike Labour councillors are proposing to award to their leaders with the Leader himself drawing GB pounds 38k plus GB pounds 10k in ordinary allowances. It is unlikely, in my opinion, to be debated but nodded through at the end of the meeting. While some of the 'payroll vote' within the administration are jobless a few are being tempted to combine well-paid part-time jobs in the real world with these new allowances. Rumours, no doubt untrue, reach me that up to a dozen Labour members have reservations about the size of some of the new allowances. What is sure is that the doubters will not have the strength of mind to vote against this sleight of hand.
Labels: Allowances, ALMO, Area Committees
posted by Cllr John Whelan on Monday, November 20, 2006
1 Comments:
Is this Steve Reed bloke - current leader of the council - the same Steve Reed who campaigned so hard for a sort of costly census so that no one was missed off the electoral register last May? If so, why has he become so shy of comprehensive ballots all of a sudden?
Must be ANOTHER Steve Reed....
By
Anonymous on Monday, 20 November, 2006
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