It's all too easy to get negative about the public sector and Lambeth Council is no exception. A few days holiday is a good way of getting a better sense of perspective. So I thought I'd talk about a few of the excellent officers who work for the Council and do the heavy lifting, as opposed to knocking the Comrades who now run the place. But first a cautionary tale.

Over the past 16 years, there have been two successful attempts to gag me from speaking my mind - one is an injunction served in 1991 about the circumstances leading to the resignation of a Labour Councillor. It's never been lifted. The other surrounds the departure of a council officer in more recent times. Sorry, can't say any more in case m'learned friends start knocking on my door.

Reputations are important, of course, so I thought it time to hand out a few verbal bouquets and no damning with faint praise either:

• Our current Chief Executive (N/A): Remember when Mum and Dad bought a new car and Dad said that it was "running in" and he wouldn't exceed 30 m.p.h. for the first 1,000 miles. That's where we are with the new person at the top, but he's made an impressive start. I admire him greatly for his past work with Lord Coe on the Olympic bid and for working as a volunteer in his vacation to help poor people in Mozambique.

• Our Director of Finance (10/10): He's a class act and not just a bean counter. Slough's loss is our gain. Remains to be seen whether the politicos swallow the medicine, especially if it means junking any of their pet projects. Oh dear, there I go again.

• Director of Children's and Young Persons Services (9/10): The darling of the headteachers and 'political to her fingertips' in the best sense of the words. The challenge though is delivery, especially of Building Schools for the Future. There will be winners, but also losers.

• Director of Environmental Services (8/10 with a strong direction of travel): Plenty of private sector know how and excellent contract negotiator. Will he clean away any last vestiges of poor performance in services for the public realm and sort out the future of the Brixton Rec? Watch this blog - big contracts are being re-let in the autumn and winter.

"Then the face of Big Brother faded away again, and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals: 'WAR IS PEACE', 'FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,' and 'IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH'." -- From George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

Here in drought-struck Lambeth our new Socialist masters have tied themselves up in knots over the future of our secondary schools. First 'Brother McGlone', the diminuitive Cabinet member for regeneration, spakes his wisdom and declares that the former Lilian Baylis School will become a 'community trust'. In a frantic round of the print media and radio stations, he utters this mantra, designed to please the local MP for Vauxhall. Only days later, his Cabinet colleague for education - 'cross-the-floor' 'Sister' Sally Prentice - appeases the Brixton Hill parents lobby by telling the Evening Standard that a new school for Brixton Hill could be funded - you've guessed it - by selling off the former Lilian Baylis School site.

A rival blog site operated by a Labour cabinet member who belongs to the Arthur Conan Doyle Society would naturally find this contradiction a "two pipe" problem, although he describes Cabinet meetings as "comradely".

So where do they go to have their rows? Those ace reporters from the South London Press, who have come to us from places as far away as Paignton and Huddersfield, will no doubt be putting away their buckets and spades soon after the August holiday season and getting back on the case. We need to be told the truth or have our new masters found a way to have their cake and eat it?

While we await yet another 'exclusive' from the SLP one of their top wordsmiths is beavering away on a 'story' about political blog sites in its circulation area. Thinking about the South London Press, who are nice people always up for a jar or two, reminds me of that old maxim: 'It's impossible to bribe or twist, Thank God, the British journalist. But, seeing what the man or woman will do, unbribed, there is no reason to.'

Thankfully, our Socialist masters have not as yet abolished the free press, although why bother to kill the patient provided you've got enough spin doctors.

And finally, before taking a short summer break with my bucket and spade, speculation is running rife about the race to succeed veteran Labour MP Keith Hill as the next Labour Parliamentary candidate for Streatham. The smart money is on GLA Assembly Member for Lambeth and Southwark Val Shawcross at 4-1. Leader of Lambeth Council Steve Reed is another contender, but may be ruled out on the basis of being a white male (youthful though) at 8-1. Livingstone's recently slimmed down right-hand man Lee Jasper is another fancied name at 15-1, but the right-wing dominated Labour Executive in Streatham may not like the cut of his political jib. An outsider might be the highly likeable Donatus Anyanwu, who is Cabinet member for adult services and has BME credentials - he's a good each way bet at 33-1.

One thought for the bookies to ponder is the timing of Mr Hill's 'retirement' to the House of Lords, which is likely to be when his master Tony hands over to Gordon. However, if Labour leave this too late the party can, it is said, impose an all-woman short list. One thing you can be sure of - it'll be done in the traditional smoked-filled room and not as a Cameron-style primary where people from all parties can cast a vote.

Our new socialist masters in Lambeth are a fairly motley bunch of consultants, the unemployed, and possibly the unemployable in one or two cases. None is quite so ambiguous as the Green Party member who is both a nurse and a member of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.

For those who haven't had the pleasure of flicking through the Lambeth Labour Councillors declarations of interests forms let us introduce a few of the more exotic of the 'big beasts' of the Lambeth political jungle.

Clearly the most useful councillor in the event of an accident - there'll be plenty of those before May 2010 - is the councillor-doctor who is specialist registrar in A & E at a south London hospital in a neighbouring borough. But, we've also got a handful of m'learned friends in case the writs and judicial reviews start flying. If the council goes bankrupt under Labour control then they've got the services of a credit union worker from a West London borough, a couple of high powered PR people for the spin doctoring, as well as the head of risk and compliance at a City-based foreign bank.

Not that the Comrades need to worry about a lack of spin, having brought their election agent onto the council payroll to head up the Labour office. That's on a cool GB pounds 43,000 a year for us taxpayers to pay for out of our rates. They can also rely on one of their more experienced councillors who is a manager with the Royal Bank of Scotland, a retired civil servant from Essex County Council, and a lecturer at Lambeth College.

It's hard to see to what extent Old Labour is lurking in the Comrades' woodwork, but one member describes himself as belonging to the Labour Party Black Socialist Society, which must surely be an oxymoron. Most entertaining of all is the Cabinet Member for Community Safety, who in his spare time belongs to the Arthur Conan Doyle Society ('Elementary, my dear Chief Executive!') as well as the Arthur Sullivan Society. Remember what Conan Doyle did to his principal charter in the end, although he also went to my old school from which he was expelled for conducting black magic experiments in the swimming pool area.

When it comes to trade union membership the comrades go overwhelmingly for AMICUS - nine of them grace its ranks - while the GMB is second with four members, and a scattering of memberships of the NUJ, T&GWU, and even Equity. Labour boasts one actor in their ranks although she appears to be 'resting' and is not currently employed. She is best remembered by those irreverent press boys and girls at the South London Press for playing the skin flick actor Linda Lovelace in a biopic. As this blog is read by impressionable people, we will say no more about whether it was faked or done for real. Can anyone remind me, what was the nick name of the man who leaked the Watergate scandal to the Washington Post? I was working in Africa at the time.

It's official - the Labour Party are friends of the Rat and we don't mean the children's favourite in Toad of Toad Hall. Since seizing power at Lambeth Town Hall, Labour has cut the pest control budget by more than GB pounds 300,000 in the hottest summer on record. And that came after a Cassandra-like warning from Labour Councillor Dr Neeraj Patil, one of Tony's cronies in the NHS, who thundered in the Council Chamber about the danger of a plague of rats on the Springfield Estate in Stockwell. The good doctor, of course, doesn't live on an estate, but in leafy West Dulwich where he is represented by Conservative councillors. Oddly enough, for all its faults, Lambeth Council is quite good at rat catching, perhaps because its pest control officers have so many furry customers spreading, among other things, Weil's disease.

If cuts are inevitable under Labour then equally we can expect plenty of broken promises as the days slip by. One pledge was about having a fairer parking service with new cuddly parking attendants ready to exercise common sense. How crazy then to hear the tale of a double amputee and distinguished and decorated campaigner for disabled ex servicemen and women. He asked a warden if he could double park for a few minutes to pick up his dry cleaning from a local shopping parade. What happened next? You've guessed it - the warden said OK and when the wheelchair bound old soldier came out of the shop the car was festooned with a parking ticket.

Finally, we smell a whiff of hypocrisy in the ranks of the local Labour Party. Perhaps it's just going to be a story about rats again, only of 'metaphorical rats' thinking of leaving Labour's sinking ship. We're positive this can't be true, but word has reached Tory HQ in Lambeth Town Hall that an administration Councillor is considering making a gift to the Conservative Party through his company and is interested in meeting David Cameron. Surely some mistake, eh? Perhaps he or she collects autographs or is Labour worried about the Tory Party's 40 per cent rating in the opinion polls. It must be the August silly season.

Ratty

Labels: Donations, Parking, Plague, Rats