7 March (Part 1) - Taking the pee
I arrived home yesterday just in time to catch the Council Leader half way
through her initial speech seeking to justify yet another highest possible
Council Tax increase. It proved to be an interesting meeting with some good
contributions from Councillors on both sides of the chamber. It was two and a
half hours before residents’ pockets were formally hammered with a vote for another 5% CT increase.
Along the way I muttered ‘idiot’ twice and ‘liar’ once which is a very low
score for Bexley Council. The L word would however have soared past the 20 mark
if I counted the ‘Making Bexley Even Betterְ’ nonsense. I found myself thinking that Bexley Council is akin to a cyclist who didn’t bother to maintain
his bike when he bought it second hand 18 years ago and now after ignoring the Steep
Hill sign finds himself half way down the decline when the front wheel falls off.
However to everyone’s surprise he is reasonably adept at rear wheelies as he heads ever
faster towards innumerable pot holes. Will he be able steer towards the soft
grass verge or hit a concrete bollard head on?
In a year’s time we will be facing the biggest funding gap ever.
How more than 40 speeches can be summarised here I
currently have no idea; normally the
feeble ones are simply discarded but few fell into that category this time. I
will get ahead of myself and break the chronology by picking on Labour Councillor Nicola Taylor
(Erith) first.
(Nothing wrong with her speech, so don’t jump to conclusions.)
She said that care workers are “on minimum wage and struggling to feed their families”. Referring to the
massive overspend on care services we heard, “should we be paying it to private
companies who exist to make a profit, private providers who demand more and
taking a bigger slice from local authorities? You say outsourcing works and I
blame your government.”
This struck a chord with me because earlier in the day I had been with my
daughter who churns out a weekly politically focused radio programme and the
occasional one for TV. With the minimum of £4,000 a week for a single child
residential placement in mind I asked if she had ever looked into the cost of
residential child care. She had and before I had time to mention £4k. immediately came out with £10,000 a week being a
commonly found figure.
How can that possibly be justified I asked and was given an idea of how violent
some of the children can be but, using language that her mother must have taught
her, said of care providers “because they are rip off merchants who can get away with it and they
are taking the piss” and local government management is too weak to tackle
it head on. OK, the final words are mine not hers, but how can up to
£16,000 a week for just one child ever be justified?