Riots # 3

One of the surprising things about the Nottingham Riots is that I haven't seen a single word of criticism about the way Notts police handled things. In fact everything I have read points to them dealing with matters pretty much as you would hope they would.

Also refreshingly we don't appear to have had any of the ridiculously over the top sentencing for what are often minor offences so far. A judge has thrown himself into the verbal attacks on those before him but you kind of expect that these days.

What a good job therefore that we can rely on fucking idiots like Jon Collins vigourously wanking themselves into a frenzy of frothy revenge fantasy in order to keep up appearances. This is the lying bastard who has done everything possible to protect the crooks who stole Nottingham's council houses as well as looting taxpayers' funds to pay his consultant mates £100,000s with no lawful authority*.

Stinking hypocrite, it's people like that who should be up in front of the beak.

*And Collins, if you're reading this, remember that if you sue me you'll have to produce the evidence that Tinworth was lawfully engaged which your officers have been unable to do so far. And we both know that the last thing you want is a court looking into the housing allocations scandal.

Loxley House Dog Eats the Invoice

The BBC reports that a cleaning firm, Broadbent and Co Ltd are owed about £10,000 by NCC. Tut tut.

"A spokesman for Nottingham City Council said: "We have put a new system in place to reduce the costs of administering payments by £300,000 a year, which largely is proving successful. But we have had some teething problems that have meant some delayed payments. We're fully aware how this can impact on businesses and will always do everything we can to ensure prompt payments."

I wonder how much of those savings can be explained by the new system forgetting to pay people?

So, next time your business falls behind with its business rates tell them you've got a new system in place and you're having 'teething problems'. Then everything will be ok.

I think its time...

...to name and shame.

You may remember that I emailed a bunch of councillors about my continuing bonnet resident bee of Discretionary Housing Payments.

So far only two have replied, JoCo (who simply informed me he was passing it on to the relevant portfolio holder) and David Trimble, who obtained a response from the Housing Benefits service itself.

I was rather hoping for better. I suppose JoCo could claim to be a bit busy and, although DT didn't provide me with a personal response, he actually did the most out of the lot of them which is pretty good considering he's not my local councillor and I'd wrongly presumed that he was still the portfolio holder for the Housing Benefits service.

But three councillors didn't send me any reply at all and to be honest, I'd have thought that these three would be the ones who would have the greatest reason, or even obligation, to. They are;

Andrew Price

Part of my plan was to write to the leaders of all three political groups on the Council. Cllr Price is the leader of the Conservatives.

I would have thought that it would have been the opposition's job to challenge the ruling party over issues of poor service. However Cllr Price doesn't seem interested. Yet in what can only be described as something approaching breathtaking cynicism, Price proposed an amendment to the budget at the Council meeting on 9 March asking for more welfare advisers for all areas by 2009. Since when have the bloody Tories been interested in 'welfare advisers'?

Gary Long

Update; have pulled my criticism of Cllr Long as I have recently heard from him and some significant personal issues have got in the way apparently. He tells me he'll come back to me in a couple of weeks.

Cat Arnold

This is the one that made me most cross. Cllr Arnold is one of the councillors for the ward in which I live. I'd always assumed that she would therefore have something approaching an obligation to respond to a constituent's concern. However, it appears that she doesn't give a shit. Its not clear whether she doesn't give a shit about the views of one of her constituents or whether she doesn't give a shit about the mismanagement of DHPs and the possibility that it has contributed to the considerable rise in evictions. Or maybe both. In my view, that makes her a shit councillor.

If you have a look at the councillors' profiles on the NCC website (links above) you will find this standard paragraph on (I think) all of them-

"As one of your Local Councillors it is my job to take account of your views. I need your feedback to help make informed democratic decisions about issues which affect everyone."

What a lovely thought. Its a pity that, in three case at least, its total bollocks.