The unusual site banners are to bring attention to the fact that Labour activists in Bexley are manipulating Facebook Groups with fictional posters. They deny it, threaten police action for ‘harassing’ a fictitious character and then demonstrate their willingness to impersonate by creating a false Administrator account in my name. The banner on display is chosen randomly from a selection of three, with a fourth bearing the familiar Bexley Council is Bonkers logo.
23 November (Part 2) - The final budgetary word?
The argument about
Bexley Council flirting with bankruptcy or not rumbles on so with the aid of someone who knows more about accounting than I do, I took
another look at the figures.
It seems to be fairly simple. Bexley Council is looking for up to £15 million and Covid19 has made a relatively small contribution to that.
Only £3·5 million. Not good but not enough to have tipped the budget irretrievably over the edge.
The bulk of the requirement is due to non-Covid factors causing the reserves to
be halved.
Whistleblowing finance staff have been forecasting the problem all this year
and the
Auditor confirmed the Council was in trouble last March. Surely the Chief
Executive and Council Leader must check and sign off all the figures?
What I find really odd is that at a Cabinet meeting at the end of January this
year the Finance Director forecast that
this year
there would be a manageable £2 million shortfall. Did he totally fail to see
the [non-Covid] problem that was about to hit him head on?