Our socialist masters are once again reviewing the Lambeth Library Service. Famously, in 1999 when they were last in power the libraries were described by the then Chair of Environmental Services Councillor Torren Smith, in a moment of rare frankness, as "the worst library service in Britain." He's still on the council but these days operates in the relative backwater of town planning - a tautology if ever there was one.

Oddly, enough the planning service has a problem with libraries where they are supposed to lodge copies of new planning applications. The only problem is that at times when people are actually at home such as between Christmas and the New Year the highly paid administraton at Lambeth Town Hall "forgot" to send the plans out on the van before disappearing for turkey and mince pies at their non denominational Winterval celebrations.

Getting back to the serious issue, the radical 1999 "Frank Quigg Plan" named after a past director long gone away to become an artist was aimed at cutting the libraries to five and re-opening them as "super libraries" with round the clock opening hours. It has to be wondered how the gallant librarians would have kept the dossers and drug dealers out of the libraries in the wee small hours of the night. In the end, a couple of smaller libraries closed, but Labour lost office before it could implement the ground breaking 24/7 philosophy of libraries. Chance would have been a fine thing given the Stalinist attitudes of some of the service providers. Did you know that some libraries in London still close at lunchtime because as in Lambeth they are producer rather than consumer oriented.

This time the 'review' has distinguished outsiders included in the panel, but no opposition councillors are seated at the table. The service will have to explain to our residents why our libraries consume GB pounds 5.3 million of public money a year, of which GB pounds 1.1 million is spent on 'head office' costs. So I thought when given these figures by finance officers, only to be told yesterday by other officers that there were other figures that are different. It is no good holding your breath about figures from Lambeth Council because there is little transparency or accountability under New Labour. It's not as bad as Mayor Livingstone though whose share of your council tax is up 147 per cent since he won power. Londoners living in average family houses will be paying GB pounds 304 for his services in the next financial year.

Labels: Council tax, Ken Livingstone, Labour Lambeth, Libraries, Planning

Our citizens curious for knowledge about what our Labour masters and mistresses have in store for them will now have to flock to the Town Hall in the afternoons to hear words of wisdom from their leaders. Cabinet meetings for the next three months will start at 2.30 p.m. to enable Labour bosses to 'nod through' the business without the unnecessary presence of our citizens most of whom will be at work or caring for relatives or children. Our highly paid officers will be able to have the evening off watching soccer or getting to know their families.

Not since the dark days of the Blitz has the Cabinet, or its previous incarnation, met in the daytime. Any elected Opposition member, or citizen for that matter, who works in a school or in a job with fixed daytime hours is disenfranchised. Clearly, we won't be seeing mobs of sinister tee-shirted children marshalled by aggressive stewards jeering at the Cabinet as used to be the case when Labour were in opposition. Remember when they dressed children in bin liners to shout abuse at H.M. The Queen much to the anger of one of our head teachers who silently wrote down the names of the children from his school who he recognised on TV?

Sadly, the past is also no guide to our future. With budget making fast approaching and stealth taxes on the horizon it seemed a good moment to review what our masters proposed just 12 months ago. Lo! They advocated the demise of Lambeth Life, our monthly information bulletin from the Town Hall, whose newsprint is so costly you can't even light a fire with it. The elimination of jobs in the press office was another cut proposed by Labour's veteran finance guru who works for The Times business pages and vast reductions in agency staff as well as IT projects being put on hold plus job cuts in policy and performance.

When May 5th dawned, of course, all these initiatives were forgotten in the grab for power. The Times business journalist had returned to his role of writing about capitalism. Lambeth Life still comes through some of our letter boxes with pictures of our new leaders adorning every page. Curiously, the same department who publishes it used to say no pictures could appear of politicians. New posts have been created in the miscommunications department and that temp somewhere in the town hall who came from an agency to do the photocopying last summer was still here at Christmas. New figures show that it costs more than GB pounds 2,000 a year to pay for every paper pusher working in the town hall - and that doesn't count the new offices refurbished over Christmas at vast expense to the tax payer.

Our tax payers are in for a hard time with Labour extracting the maximum council tax increase permitted by their government of 4.99 per cent with an extra two per cent to cover Mayor Livingstone's foreign policy initiatives in Venezuela. In the meantime waste and excess is tolerated. The cost of borrowing a library book in Lambeth, if you can find one in any of the libraries, is GB pounds 10.29 compared to GB pounds 3.64 in neighbouring Wandsworth where it is rumoured there are books. The figures, courtesy of CIPFA, were published last week although data from the most efficient library at Upper Norwood was not included, despite the authority spending GB pounds 1.1 million a year on headquarters library mandarins.

Labels: Cabinet, Council tax, Democracy, Libraries

Our new masters are experiencing a 'Chucklehead month' as their 'Brave New World' begins to unravel in Lambeth and beyond our boundaries at the House of Commons. To parody Lord Reith - "they know what Lambeth people want and they're damn well not going to get it."

Our good citizens were treated to two days of free entertainment at the Lambeth Country Show where many queued for hours to buy huge quantities of Chucklehead cider in the exotic foods tent. That may be the only source of council-organised goodies for a while.

Meanwhile, in the Mayor's tent Labour bosses quaffed cases of wine and other beverages paid for by their cleaning contractor Cleanaway, whose contract is up for renewal in the autumn. While the party went on into the dusk, our library users were waking up to the fact that the new books fund had been reduced by GB pounds 160,000.

What interested New Labour bosses gathered in the Mayor's tent, however, is the triple prospect of a contest to succeed the MP for Streatham at the next election as well as possible challenges to the other two Lambeth MPs who include the Camden-based Cabinet Culture Secretary and the maverick pro-hunting MP for Vauxhall. The latter congratulates herself on having a good relationship with her local party, because she votes against the government so often. Last word on that story was the quote from Vauxhall Conservative Association Chairman Stuart Barr - "if Labour won't have her, we certainly will."

In the meantime, citizens of West Norwood have been punished by Labour's first 'big porkie'. When the Environment Cabinet Member responded in Full Council to our Councillors' questions about when a play area would open for the summer, she replied with real brass neck, "next week". After the week had expired with no play area, our Councillors were told: "I share the frustration and disappointment that the games are will not be ready for the summer holiday as promised."

August is traditionally the time when our Council officers take their holidays in Umbria or Portugal, while our citizens face the same old unacceptable levels of service. Our new Chief Executive has, since arriving in March, uncovered some good examples of poor service (as well as islands of good service) especially at our sports halls. Another contract is up for renewal there in the autumn and we await with interest what our new masters will do.

One or two of our well-paid officers enjoy nothing more than starting a legal action for unfair dismissal when they have left for better paid jobs or after being invited to fall on their swords. The common denominator is that all these actions stem from employees working for failing services where our citizens rightly complain about poor practice.

Privatisation is very much on Labour's agenda, especially for our 33,000 tenants who are to be exported to an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO). Out of sight - out of mind is the Labour priority while they prepare our citizens for their next big project - upping their members' allowances at the next Council meeting in November. The initial document on the proposed changes show the Leader potentially going up from GB pounds 25k to GB pounds 51k.

It was indeed a Chucklehead month, but our citizens are unlikely to have the last laugh as services stagnate and dissatisfaction rises about Labour's broken promises. They are hoping to combat this by bringing in highly paid spin doctors to take over the press office - watch this blog for the details.

Cassandra

Labels: ALMO, Kate Hoey, Keith Hill, Labour Lambeth, Lambeth Country Show, Libraries, Porkies, Tessa Jowell

Just eight weeks into Labour's return to power at Lambeth Town Hall an all too familiar pattern is emerging from the sham of their election manifesto promises. First they shut down the Redfearn Centre at Lilian Baylis School for young adults with learning difficulties that opened in a blaze of publicity from government as part of a successful PFI. Next it's a children's playground heading for the chop. And finally, in an act of stealth almost invisible to other elected councillors, the GB pounds 500,000 annual libraries' book fund is cut by a third and a moratorium imposed on buying any new books.

If that were not bad enough none of this has happened in line with any strategy or published set of priorities from our new socialist masters. True, the Leader of the Council wrote a letter to the Chief Executive on May 11th full of New Labour babble urging him to carry out various urgent reviews of services and promising a highly visible tour of Town Hall staff in June and July. When questioned about whether there was a reply, a great deal of shuffling took place on the Mayor's rostrum and the next morning your Conservative Leader submitted a Freedom of Information request to see it. We're not holding our breath.

With both the Leader and his deputy taking a fortnight's holiday each in June/July the scope for a victory walkabout is much reduced. In an indication of what really is a priority the Leader phoned in from his holiday EasyJet to The Sun with an account of substance abuse in an airliner toilet by the lead singer of Babyshambles. Clearly, this media exposure was more important that setting the direction of travel for a GB pounds 1 billion local authority.

Not that this New Labour Group has had a particularly good start on the ethics front. One of its key people still owes GB pounds 120 for legendary Arsenal and England goalkeeper David Seaman's gloves won in a charity auction held in memory of the late Mayor Tim Sergeant on May 7th. Given the performance of the England soccer team those gloves might come in useful in the post Sven era. Labour and the footie are, of course, as much a duo as Marx and Engels so the July Council meeting was delayed by 24 hours in case Sven's men overcame Portugal in the quarter finals.

Having scrambled through June without making any policy statements, our beloved leaders are facing judgement day over the re-siting of the dustcart fleet to make way for the Shakespeare Road Academy promoted by New Labour scion and former Southwark Council Leader Jeremy Fraser. What a surprise that some of the recycling fleet is being sent to Gipsy Hill Ward - no doubt as a collective punishment for the residents who voted the wrong way on May 4th according to Labour bosses.

And finally, local Conservatives were treated to a barnstorming performance by former Chancellor of the Exchequer Ken Clarke when he spoke to the annual dinner of the Dulwich and West Norwood Conservative Association. Clarke, who was once described as a man who crosses the street to pick a fight, wasn't there to talk about hugging hoodies. What he did say was hugely supportive of the Cameron leadership, middle of the road on Europe, and very much the contribution of a man who is prepared to put his weight behind winning the next general election.

Labels: Dustcarts, Ken Clarke, Labour Lambeth, Libraries, Lilian Baylis School, Shakespeare Road City Academy