A Surprising Event Happened

After the Labour Party showed its contempt for collaborative politics and accountability at the full council meeting this week the Post reports on the an example of opposition councillors showing how it should be done.

As well as Cllr Sutton's motion asking that NCC calls on the IPCC to investigate Notts Police's failure to do its job by not taking any action over the housing allocations scandal, Cllr Chapman also submitted a motion condemning the cuts to funding as 'unfair'.

With the Lib Dems currently on secondment to the Tory government you'd expect them to vote against but in fact they backed it. Admittedly it may well have been electoral suicide for them not to but at least they have set an example that not all votes need to be along party lines. Maybe Labour might learn something. Unlikely I know but we can live in hope.

Talking of Cllr Chapman, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has tried to humiliate him by 'hilariously' calling him 'a very naughty boy' because he shares his name with the Monty Python member who, as I'm sure you know, played Brian in 'The Life of...'.

I mean for fuck's sake. JoCo is right about one thing, that man is a buffoon and that's being polite.

News Round Up

Couple of stories in the media that are of interest.

Firstly, an excellent analysis of NCC's Supporting People cuts in the Guardian yesterday. There's a bit of a ding-dong going on between Housing Minister Grant Schapps and JoCo over whose fault the cuts to SP are and, as is so often the case there's no straight answer.

Have a look at the article but my take on it is that it is mainly the government's fault beause the level of cuts imposed on NCC's formula grant is shocking. However, NCC could do more to alleviate the effect on vulnerable people. For example there are no cuts to the Community Protection Officer budget and I can see no reason why this service should be immune as it's largely a waste of oxygen and second hand police uniforms, why can't some of their funds be moved across to SP?.

The second thing is the news that Cllr Tony Sutton has written to the IPCC to ask that they look into Notts Police's lack of an investigation into the housing allocations scandal. Obviously an IPCC investigation isn't the most terrifying thing to happen to a police force and I doubt it will go anywhere but at least someone's having a go.

Update - Cllr Sutton has submitted a motion to the full council meeting on 7 Feb requesting the council to back his call for the IPCC to look into the issue.

Full Council Meeting

Now if I was a proper journo, or even a half dedicated blogger, I would probably by now have set up a regular system of writing about full council meetings when they happen. However, as I'm neither of these things (I tend to rate myself as being somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 dedicated) I do it when I get round to it.

So I had a brief look at the minutes of the 12 October meeting to see if there was anything to point and stare at and there were one or two little gems.

I recently wrote about the District Auditor again having to have a quiet word about communications straying into the political and Lib Dem Cllr Sutton decided to ask the Deputy Leader about that. His reply warrants some attention -

"...the District Auditor is happy again that the communications initiative that has been the subject of challenge was lawful. Lawful is lawful, you can’t have half lawful or quarter lawful, it is lawful..."

Well, I suppose you can't have 'half lawful' but you can certainly have 'borderline' lawful which is what the District Auditor said so I'm really not sure how Cllr Chapman can equate that with being 'happy'. Broken bulshitometers all round I suspect.

He went on to add -

"...the Chief Executive has discussed this matter with the Director of Communications and Marketing, with whom final responsibility for sign-off and compliance with the Law and Code on publicity remains.

He will ensure, whenever similar initiatives are run in the future, that more time is allowed for responding to the comments of the Director of Legal Services and any other Director..."

That'll be that Stephen Barker then who has already been hauled up once before for dodgy marketing.

Talking of SB he seems to have pretty much disappeared from the old internet social networking, wonder if that's anything to do with his former habit of posting up videos of his staff on the web? Perhaps the Chief Exec had a word with him about that too mind you it's pretty clear he's another of the 'untouchables'.

Local elections are still a while off in Nottingham but I think we saw an example of something that will become more and more common the nearer we get to them. Here's a question from Cllr Newton that he no doubt thought up all by himself -

"Would the portfolio holder agree that given the cost pressures on local government, how realistic is it at this stage to be promising 0% council tax increases as many Conservative controlled local authorities are doing?"

NCCLols translation service came up with -

"For gawd's sake look at what that loon Kay Cutts is doing south of the river, we might be dodgy as hell but at least we're not the Tories, please vote for us, pleeeeeEEEEAAASE!"

I predict that we'll see more of this pointing at local Tories to inspire terror among the electorate and to be fair they've got a point. By 2011 Cutts and her minions should just about have grown their own devil horns and, the way they are going, are just about the best bunch of next door bogeymen a Labour Councillor could wish to have.