Even the illiterate would know that the Tory administration gets stick when it does wrong and praise when it does right.
It has always ever been thus.
Many of the new breed of young Tory councillors are worthy of praise and praise they shall have when they do good stuff for our residents.
The Grenfell Inquiry is of such importance that these idiotic masked demonstrators demean it and add nothing.
Dear Dame,
Who are those masked Morons standing outside the Grenfell Enquiry & periodically disrupting its hearings? (I thought the point was to strengthen the inquiry not disrupt it ?)
If any of them are Labour Councillors it would be better they devote their energies to more participation in the Council & its committees, where, unlike their street demonstrations, they might actually be listened to.
After all, isn't what we pay them for?
This follows another cringemaking and piss poor performance from Labour at Wednesday’s Council meeting.
Other than to register that they were actually in attendance, most of them said little or nothing.
The only real exceptions being Councillors Lari, Henderson & Bakhtiar who all spoke effectively.
And of course, we got ‘Tumble Dryer’ Mason – doesn’t he have a short spin cycle?
Dent Coad spoke once to promote her recycled report on inequalities & Atkinson gave us an ineffectual knockabout routine seeking to defend the indefensible Mayor Kahn.
But I thought there were 13 Labour Councillors?
So where were the rest of them?
And what are we taxpayers actually getting for our money from the Labour Opposition?
What Hope Can You Offer Dear Dame?
Yours respectfully,
Anonymous Coward
Thank you for the update on the latest Dent Coad stunt.
ReplyDeleteNo surprise that Dent Coad spoke once at a Council meeting to promote her recycled report on inequalities. She's a fully fledged member of the Emma Dent Coad Society.
What do you expect from a former MP who attended meetings of the Marxist Group, Momentum, but did not join the Group for fear that the Kensington electorate would punish her.
Supported by the ever present Momentumite Lari.
DeleteWhy does Lari stay loyal ? He's smart -surely he can see that neither she, nor Momentum , are any longer his ticket to the green benches ?
DeleteAnd is it really true that in his capacity as Kensington CLP Membership Secretary he allowed 3 Labour Councillors who were otherwise at a cabinet scrutiny committee to vote in an NEC nominating meeting ?? Even if they were the 'sharpest knives' in the Labour Councillor's drawer (they aren't)should they really have been allowed to vote in one meeting while being paid to attend another ?
Labour councillors need to start earning their keep. K&C councillors are paid very generous allowances. They get the best councillors' allowances in the Country.
ReplyDeleteNot true.
DeleteIs another Council now spending more money than K&C to pay Councillors their allowances? According to Anonymous Coward, K&C Labour Councillors are not earning their keep and I agree with him because Labour Councillors ignore correspondence from those who pay the Council Tax and who help to pay their very generous bungs.
Delete£11,027 per year is what rank and file Councillors get at RBK&C. And some of the Labour ones cannot be bothered to turn up for a meeting.
DeleteThe only inequality here is the the inequality of the quality of the second hand report. How lazy. Must do better. Back of the class and a note home to Mother, 'must do better'.
ReplyDeleteEmma Dent Coad studied architecture. If she had done PPE at Oxford or studied Social Science in a former Inner London Education Authority polytechnic she would know that her methodological approach to inequalities is far from satisfactory.Architects should stick to architecture and Social Scientists should do research on inequalities.
DeleteEmma is typical of the Upper Class. She has supreme confidence in her abilities.
DeleteShe's arrogant not confident. She's got a nice middle class accent, don't think that makes her "upper class."
DeleteMiddle class- she wouldn't like to be called that. She reckons that she is descended from Catherine de Medici and Christopher Columbus.
DeleteA ludicrous claim. How does she know this is true? She has a superior attitude, methinks.
DeleteLast year she went on TV to discuss her health. The interviewer said something like, I hope you are being well looked after. Instead of paying tribute to the doctors looking after her she said, there are lots of Doctors in my family. As most people do not have lots of doctors in their families she wanted to show that her family is better, and higher calibre, compared to others.
DeleteEmma has got a superiority complex.She freely indulges in superiority with the intention of impressing those whom she wished were her inferiors.
DeleteInteresting 09.46. Is she the sort of person who would say to someone, "You've got a fiver, I've got a fiver but my fiver is worth more than yours it is worth six."
DeleteWell said 09.46.
Deletea tale of two fivers.
DeleteCouncillor Palmer could have done a better report even if he wrote nothing at all.
ReplyDeleteIf that's you Palmer you really could never write a report as comprehensive as Councillor Dent Coad. She told me it was really good and that you are not.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who thinks engaging with the Council and its Committees will achieve anything of any real consequence needs to open their blinkered eyes. The Council has not changed since Grenfell and clearly has no wish to change. It has however engaged in a clearly effective PR campaign to convince people otherwise. Those who have fallen for the PR clearly include many a reader of this blog, many residents living in Council housing (who, it must be said, really have no choice but to wish it so) and the "softer" elements in the Kensington Labour group. All are in for a rude awakening at some point in the not too distant future when the blinkers come off.
ReplyDeleteYou're right. The Council has not changed since Grenfell.
DeleteBut Councillors are paid to participate in meetings that 'normal people' don't have to . If Councillors cannot be bothered to participate they should not take their allowances - or come to think of it, they should give up their council seats to those who do wish to engage.
ReplyDeleteAnd this Council's announcement that they will pay for needy children's meals over school holidays proves just how much this Council has changed since Grenfell.
For Labour to claim that the Council has not changed simply shows that local Labour's thinking is as unthinking and as lazy as it's Councillors !
Paying for needy children's meals is an easy PR win. One the Government has willingly and foolishly handed to all local authorities, whatever their political colours.
DeleteRBK&C would have to be monumentally incompetent not to step up given how many other local authorities already have.
The real question is whether any of the morally dubious exercises RBK&C has engaged with over the years would not happen under the current administration.
Would RBK&C still refuse to pay for the appropriate level of care for an elderly and disabled resident?
Would RBK&C still prosecute a family for the noise nuisance caused by their child playing a musical instrument during the day?
Is RBK&C procurement still being driven by ill thought out measures of "value for money" that will likely cost more on the long run?
Is RBK&C's planning department still far too close to the developers stalking the borough at the cost of residents? And are certain Councillors very much complicit in a clearly crooked planning process?
I suspect the answer in every case is still "yes".
No
Real
Change
Which meetings are the avoiding?
DeleteWould they be the ones where their voices are drowned out by the Tory majority all singing from the same hymn sheet and where it is obvious that achieving any meaningful change is clearly impossible?
I would suggest that any Councillor still attending such meetings merely to justify collecting their allowance is worse than one who refuses to participate in a clearly corrupt process whose sole purpose is to give the Tory administration credibility.
Notably those meetings that might have actually achieved something meaningful, such as those resulting from the Grenfell fire, have effectively been canned. I wonder why?
Good to see this thread being used to raise issues & not just to trade insults. But:
ReplyDeletea) If agreeing to feed Needy Children is such "an easy PR win" how come only 2 other Tory Councils in the entire country have followed suit ? & Why is the RBKC Leadership taking such stick from other Tory authorities if it's so 'easy'?
b) Doesn't the fact that the, rather stale ,examples of Tory malfeasance listed by 10.42 all come from the old council rather than listing more current 'outrages', prove the point that the new council is different from its predecessor ?
c) Nobody has been able to answer the charge that attending meetings but not contributing whilst taking allowances ( especially special responsibility allowances)is both greedy and lazy.
a) Says more about other Tory Councils than it does about RBK&C.
Deleteb) The question is whether they'd still happen. Many suspect they would. Aren't some of the examples given actually still ongoing because RBK&C still don't know when to stop digging?
c) If attending meetings at the Town Hall was all Councillors did then you might have a point. Many Councillors do a lot more than turn up to meetings at the Town Hall. And many don't. Perhaps it's the latter group that attach value to something often of so little practical value to their constituents.
When Committees are clearly incapable of making meaningful decisions in favour of the residents you serve you might as well spend your time doing something more productive. Like case work.
That's assuming you do case work because many RBK&C Councillors clearly don't, never have and have no intention of ever doing so. Perhaps they should be asked to give up their allowances too?
Those Labour Councillors who just don't bother to turn up for meetings or answer residents' correspondence are greedy and bone idle.
ReplyDeleteWe need Keir Starmer type Labour Councillors to replace the old guard in K&C Labour.
I bet it stuck in Labour's craw that the nasty K&C Tories agreed to provide free school meal vouchers during the half term holiday.
ReplyDeleteReasonable Labour Members can easily swallow proof that RBKC ,at last, seem to be rediscovering a degree of independence from the National Conservative Party and the hopeless Johnson administration . Independence that Kensington Councillors last displayed under Nicholas Freeman & Joan Hanham (when they were not afraid to denounce racism in the Metropolitan police nor to denounce Section 28 as damaging to the welfare of young gay constituents.) And it looks like the New Tory Administration are also now going to tell the current Westminster incompetents that they are playing with fire if they mess with the current planning laws. ( Planning laws that Tories should recognise are designed to favour those who currently own property - dummkopfs !! )
ReplyDeleteOf course it would be bad politics & not the role of an opposition for Labour to openly praise a ruling party. But to continue to insist, as they do, that there has been no change at all in RBKC is just infantile & simply shows that the Labour opposition is comfortable in its position of automatically opposing anything that the Tories come up with -irrespective of whether the proposal has merit.( Eg. The current Tory Majority is building & INTENDS TO KEEP BUILDING homes for occupation by local authority tenants. The Labour Group has not worked out that such a programme requires an ongoing income stream . The Tories & Labour Cllr. Press & her associates, understood requires that some properties would need to be sold on the open market to provide that continuous revenue stream . Unfortunately the current Housing Chair (Cllr Ali) still seems to believe that he can find money from the fictional , Local Government, money tree.)
Its such a shame that Labour chose to put political 'children' in charge of the most important scrutiny committees of the Council. But, then again , only children could be counted upon to follow Cllr Dent Coad into irrelevance, when in practice, the way was open for them to continue to exercise real influence.
The problem with RBK&C was never a lack of independence from the national Tory party.
DeleteThe worst examples of poor behaviour from RBK&C were actually the direct result of wilfully ignoring not only national Tory party policy (which, believe or not, was actually good policy) but also the law (often passed by national Tory governments) and behaving in a manner more in keeping with a traditional loony left Labour Council than well run Tory local authorities not a million miles away.
To quote one former Lead Member: "RBK&C is different". We would all be much better served if it wasn't.
It appears that the Labour party has been hijacked...but it has always been that way. Hidden hand controlling both sides of the chess.
ReplyDeleteThe loony left need to vaporise. They are standing by an antisemite.
ReplyDeleteThe left are most careful not to call out the racism amongst their mates.
ReplyDeleteStarmer has not labelled Corbyn an antisemite. He has sent Corbyn to the naughty step, what better punishment for a radical man of the people who never got over adolescent rebellion, for trying to play down the scale of antisemitism in the Labour Party under his leadership.
Corbyn and Dent Coad are very similar. They are both morally superior. They are both self-righteous and narcissistic. Their thoughts are so pure so no one could ever accuse them of racism to a Black political opponent or towards Jewish people.
DeleteDonald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn and Emma Dent-Coad are all narcissistic.
DeleteDear Gracious and Glorious Lady, Dame Hornet,
DeleteWe know that you never get involved in politics. But please good lady, just this once tell us your view about the Left's narcissism for being in denial over Jewish hatred and racism towards people of colour.