Sterling Reaches Parity With Another Currency

by Paul Scully | Jan 5, 2009 | News | 1 comment

I looked at the money that my daughter received for a Christmas present and wondered how long it would be before my pay packet looked the same.

Gordon Brown’s announcement that he is to create 100,000 new jobs looks suspiciously like another measure to be seen to be doing something rather than one that will have any meaningful or lasting effect.

2009 is going to be a tough year for the economy. Locally, we need to work closely with Sutton businesses and large employers to see what more we can do as an authority rather than just wringing our hands. Pushing through measures that help large national companies who provide many of the Council’s services won’t help local businesses. We need to ensure that we are fully aware of what local residents and local businesses want from us before acting. Giving them a greater voice to speak to councillors and question exisiting policies will be a good start.

Communications Contract

by Paul Scully | Dec 31, 2008 | News | 4 comments

We called in to debate at Full Council, the decision to increase spending on communications by another 50% hidden away in the small print of the new contract for Westminster Council to provide our service. Because this is now a shared service between two local authorities, normal rules for tendering do not apply.

Westminster are acknowledged as the best at what they do. We know that it is vital for any Council to inform residents and to hear back from them. However, this does not mean that contracts can be given out, unchecked by politicians. This was due to be agreed by a mechanism called a Delegated Decision Notice (DDN) which is usually reserved for smaller decisions that have to be made in a hurry. THe DDN is circulated to councillors and if no-one calls it in, an officer can give the go-ahead.

£600,000 per year is not an amount that we believe should be just waved through. Cllr Brett Young, the lead councillor for communication showed disdain and irritation for having to come before the Council to explain what he has been doing over the last year, explaining that he was puzzled why we would possibly want to discuss this.

Parents who are going to be affected by the restrictions on school transport for SEN children had left by this point, so they did not see how eager the lead councillor was to crow about where this extra money was going. He is also the lead councillor for Children, Young People and Learning Services who pushed through the cuts for children with learning difficulties earlier in the evening.

It never ceases to amaze me how this administration is visibly running out of steam. Once the public gallery empties, they resort to cheap points scoring without addressing the specific points that are up for discussion. I can handle a bit of political argy-bargy but find it extraordinary that they appear hurt and personally wounded when their policies are criticised, but think nothing of finding novel ways of blaming Maggie Thatcher, Boris Johnson for their woes and wondering why the opposition are not implementing any of their own policies, forgetting that we are not in power. Oh well, politically it suits me if they carry on in this vacuous way. As a resident who gets the bill once a year, I’m not so chuffed.

Update: Background music removed from video by popular request.

Voice for Business

by Paul Scully | Dec 28, 2008 | News | 1 comment

As I catch up with some posting after the festivities, I’ve completed the first video reporting back from the last full Council meeting of the year. Cllr Tim Crowley proposed a motion that would make the formal changes necessary to allow business owners the right to ask questions at full council meetings and attend Local Committee meetings as special advisers. These are available to residents but not to people who may have a business in the area, maybe employ Sutton residents, certainly pay business rates, but don’t necessarily live in the borough themselves. I had thought we had learned our lesson about taxation without representation some years ago when all of that tea went to waste.

The Lib Dems did not seem to understand the premise of the motion, instead taking it as a lead to have a debate about every aspect of business and the economy except the one matter that we raised. This was until close to the end of an interminable 56 minute session when the Lead Councillor for Resources accused us of being bureaucratic for wanting to amend the Constitution.

It was only last summer that the same councillor attempted to ride roughshod over the Council rules when defending his colleague over the Garden Waste fiasco. Now only six months later, he failed to understand that it was the Council’s Constitution that was denying business owners a voice and that there was a convoluted process in place to avoid any individuals doing what they liked without any checks or balances. He also expressed concern that councillors should consider the risks and impact of any policies that they might introduce. Since he is the lead councillor responsible for the increases in Council Tax for the last three years, I can understand why he might be blissfully unaware of the need for such consideration, but I would have hoped that there would be one member of the majority party that might pull him back from the brink after a year where the Council has impacted quite spectacularly on residents.

The Council meeting overall was quite extraordinary. It was apparent to those in attendance that the administration has run out of steam. They opposed for opposition’s sake. The fact that it is the Conservatives in Opposition seemed to pass them by; they still blamed Boris, Thatcher and David Cameron for things that weren’t even up for discussion.

The end result of this motion was a watered-down amendment. We agreed with this because we genuinely wanted something to be done. I’m not convinced that we will see anything before the election as it was written off through the explanation that they needed to speak to businesses first. I’ve ranted on more than most about communication, but this is a consultation to tread water if ever I’ve seen one. There is no need to speak to anyone else. If businesses aren’t interested in asking questions, they don’t need to. They can just carry on as they are.

However, as it stands, if they do, they need to petition the Economic Development Taskforce to ask the Community Leadership Advisory Group (CLAG)to consider the matter and commission a report from the legal department which can then be considered by CLAG, recommended to the Executive and then ratified at a full Council meeting where constitutional changes tend to get pushed through once a year. The shortest time period this could happen is within the next three months. As someone who was self-employed for sixteen years, three months for a decision is no decision at all.

Merry Christmas

by Paul Scully | Dec 24, 2008 | News | 0 comments

Plenty of stories that I haven’t got around to posting due to my last few days of work at Westminster, last minute Christmas shopping, tidying up before and during the family arriving and the inevitable bout of man-flu which will go down in dispatches as something akin to SARS whereas in reality it was tamed by overdosing on Lemsip.

I’ll catch up in between the festivities, but in the meantime, have a fantastic Christmas