AN INSIDER INFORMS THE OLD DAME ABOUT A STRANGE QUIRK OF NATURE

Dear Dame

This meeting seems to serve several purposes. 
Item 2 replacing Paget-Brown as leader; 
item 3 swapping fall-guy Nicholas Holgate for Barry Quirk CBE to run the officers; and various petitions and motions.

The new Leaderene-elect is in some senses a fresh face. But in reality she is tarred by the same brush as all the other cabinet members. 
She had scarcely left the previous cabinet, supposedly on a special 'sabbatical', than she was dragged back when Paget-Brown was forced to resign. 
Any examination of her past record will show she is not up to the job, and her recent public comments merely confirm this.

Holgate was weak and ineffectual, a decent person but easily manipulated by the executive officers and by the elected deities. 

Very quirky

In reality, his crime was to allow the existing rotten culture to continue, and not to confront it. That alone merits removal, the awful Grenfell was the dreadful spotlight which brought all the corruption into plain light.

This meeting gives every impression of the existing regime trying to perpetuate itself. I can't at this stage pass judgment on Quirk, RBKC isn't Lewisham, but I do find his own website a tad weird and self-serving: http://www.barryquirk.com.

Quirke is not economic on the modesty front.....through a third party he analyses himself as....

"an engaging public speaker and an accomplished author on public policy and public leadership. In 2011, his book “Re-imagining Government” was published to critical academic acclaim.   He works to help public leaders discover creative solutions to complex public problems and management challenges.  Barry is always looking to blend what is publicly and politically desirable, with what is both technically feasible and managerially deliverable.

Barry brings clarity of thinking, insight and humour to the serious business of building good government and reforming public services."

Why oh why can't these morons read the Borough's mood correctly? 
6½ years of the Dame and her hornets should count for far more. 
In an essentially multicultural borough it is surprising that it is run by such mediocrity that it takes something like Grenfell to make things happen. 
And Grenfell should never ever have happened. I
t is the result of the conspiracy between the unaccountable housing 'cabinet' and the tenant-hostile TMO. 
Even the dyed-in-the wool borough Tory voters are realising their elected officials are useless.

One is forced to the conclusion that the only way forward is to adopt the suggestion in the petition that every member of the cabinet, including the members immediately prior to the recent reshuffle, must resign. 
Resignation should be immediate and complete, they must all step down from their Wards and cause the necessary by-elections. 
Resignation from the amorphous 'Cabinet' is utterly insufficient, as is awaiting next year's elections. 
There is no way anyone who has been a cabinet functionary can ever expect to regain public confidence. 

The swamp must be drained. Meanwhile Campbell's appointment falls away and Quirk's confirmation must be put on hold until the newcomers are in harness.

Yours truly, dear Dame

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