26 April - Creeps, crawlers and charlatans
As noted last week, Cabinet Meetings
are theatre but so too are some parts of Full Council meetings. This sort of thing happens every time.
You get an ignorant Councillor asking a question to which the answer is already widely
known but designed to pamper the backside of a grandstanding Cabinet Member.
The licker this time is Janice Ward-Wilson who has never before been mentioned
in these pages having in her first year contributed nothing but is now anxious to
display the qualities which inspired the blog title.
Did she not read the Bexley Magazine, see its cover photo, read the Leader’s
Welcome or follow her Cabinet Member hero on Twitter?
As
Councillor Read said on 24th March, Bexley Children’s Service has been turned around completely since
it was condemned ten years ago
(see image below) and he took charge. The big fish does not need his ego to be massaged by the unknown minnow from Crook Log.
OFSTED is not very big on Children’s Service inspections. Bexley last had one
in 2018 and most London boroughs are still
measured by old inspections. This allows Camden, Islington, Kensington & Chelsea,
Kingston, Merton, Redbridge and Westminster to make similar claims to Bexley’s.
Bexley is in the top quartile of London boroughs and that is a great achievement
which it trumpeted widely at the time. But Councillor Janice Ward-Wilson cannot
think of anything original to ask and instead tramps the well worn path of the junior school creep.
The claim and the truth.
Note: The forgoing is inspired by correspondence with that tireless Mayor supporting truth seeker @tonyofsidcup who sent a similar but much longer message to the Councillor so that she might educate herself more successfully before future Council meetings.