The Dame demands that Cllr Ali deny/admit that he has met or worked for the President of Somalia-a man standing accused of a whole variety of human rights abuses.
Time to step up to the plate, Councillor, and put out a statement that you have never met or worked for this despicable man.
We are waiting! The Dame is sitting on some well-authenticated sources that she will be deploying.
With many years of senior experience in investment banking, she was suited perfectly to the job.
In his wisdom, Sunak dumped her and replaced her with a joker called James Cartlidge.
A quick look at Cartlidge's background is worrying: he has bugger all financial experience and is lacklustre in comparison to Buchan.
There is far too much of this shuffling the pack and coming up with jokers like Cartlidge and the appalling Gavin Williamson.
Buchan should have been kept in a job that suited her skills perfectly.
When the Dame was young all senior policemen looked like Watson...the sort of face that instantly made the bad nervous. Now, police leadership looks as if it had been recruited from a failing provincial 'uni'...all spouting pseudo-sociological nonsense.
Watson is a very different breed...a natural-born leader who, in short order, took GMC out of Special Measures. He had this to say about past failings..
"Our route into 'special measures' has been thoroughly analysed and much discussed. There are several reasons as to how we came to bear our recent travails, a failure of leadership principle amongst them. As I have stated repeatedly, however, the fundamental failing was simply that we stopped doing the basics well, we stopped being the police and we stopped doing many of the things that our public have every right to expect."
This is what the Manchester Evening News has to say about how Watson has achieved what seemed impossible READ HERE
We need a Watson here in London NOW!
Dear Dame,
As a former member of the Labour Party, I thought I'd share the first result of the Kensington Parliamentary candidate selection results.
Instead of making a positive break from divisions and local infighting and picking a candidate with no "past form", members of the South Branch of the CLP instead obediently followed the orders of Emma Dent Coad and her whip Sina Lari (who pulls the strings in South Branch) and voted for Kasim Ali instead.
Perhaps some of them could have done with reading your blog?
Clearly, the fact that the Party Leadership prefers a Conservative turncoat of a weather vane politician who goes whichever way he feels the wind is blowing to anyone else shows that they lack any real positive vision towards both the future of the local Party as well as what is truly in the best interests of our electorate.
It's not as if they didn't have other and better options. Look at the candidate list:
Kasim Ali 19 19 19 20 21 * ELECTED *
Joe Powell 10 10 12 12 16
Mete Coban 8 8 8 11 (Eliminated)
Salman Sheik 4 4 4 (Eliminated)
Steve Cowan 2 2 (Eliminated)
Rita Begum 0 (Eliminated)
Perhaps a candidate who might offer a strong vision and voice both locally, nationally and internationally was too much for some people?
This isn't the end of the votes, the votes from North West and North East branch are yet to come next week. No doubt the few principled Labour members left can "look forward" to being harassed by "Emma's Barmy Army" into voting for Cllr Ali too
And where will this leave the Labour Group on the Council?
It would be interesting to know what Cllr Ali's plans are soon? When Emma Dent Coad was elected as MP she refused to leave RBKC and stayed on at Golborne, leaving the poorest ward on the council one councillor short with Pat Mason to do all the ward casework. Pat has left now, as have most of their experienced councillors, so residents cannot expect too much in the way of opposition or local representation nowadays and the situation is set to get worse.
Cllr Ali is not a bad councillor but his principles are questionable (as your blog has shown) and it is also questionable how much of a national voice for the constituency he will be.
Since EDC, Lari, Kear and the rest of the "Barmy Army" took charge, the CLP membership is at an all-time low, as several members either quit or have decided to not renew their membership after being disgusted by the top-down leadership, the bullying and the exclusionary way that these people are running and ruining the party.
So what does that bode for Kensington in General Election? As Labour can be guaranteed to have no campaign, to continually lose members and to fail to do anything more than hold onto safe wards, it will be doubtful that Felicity Buchan will do a chicken run to a safer seat if she sees that the conduct of the Labour Party keeps ensuring that the Conservatives will beat the electoral odds and hold on comfortably again just like they did in the Locals.
Yours in sadness
xxx
This is a bad start. Sunak has sufficient reserves of goodwill not to need to reward incompetents.
Having this ex-porcelain salesman in government sends out a message that fourth raters will be 'looked after' .....as long as they back the right horse.
When Dame was a foolish young thing she was forced to work for the ogre, Maxwell. When Maxwell fired a director for being grossly incompetent he lauded him.
The Dame queried the praise heaped on the man but Maxwell replied, "that's the way you British do it"
It seems Mr. Sunak has fallen into the same trap: it is not a good look....
London Lites tried to inflict a hideous, overbearing 24/7 LED advertising board on Portobello Market.
Good sense prevailed and the planner kicked it out....a victory for good taste and commonsense!
It also establishes a useful planning decision precedent.
"The proposed advertisement, by reason of its excessive size, scale, height, width, as well as form, visual mass, method of illumination, and siting in a prominent location, would appear unduly prominent and dominant along Portobello Road. Consequently, the advertisement would cause visual intrusion to the street scene, divert attention from the high-quality townscape of the surrounding area and adversely harm the visual amenity of the streetscape and neighbouring occupiers, contrary to policies CL1, CL2, CR4 and CL11 of the Local Plan 2019 and would be contrary to the National Planning Policy Framework."
Baroness Goldie is an unknown bore from Scotland and an Elder of the Church of Scotland.
The foolish woman has managed to wangle a job as a defence minister.
In the course of her job she had this to say about the barbaric Iran regime-one which takes pleasure in brutalising its citizens and funding international terrorism.
Goldie said she thinks Iran would be appalled to see the devastation caused by the kamikaze drones supplied to Iran
Even more idiotically the Scottish 'has-been' told the Lords that Iran was a country of 'honourable traditions'. Like stoning women to death and suspending gays from cranes, Goldie?
Once questioned as to why a party donor was paid off with a peerage the dimwitted one said," There are many people who go into the House of Lords – I’m one of them and people might well ask the question: what’s she doing there? “I don’t think it’s for any of us to speculate on why people are there."
Presumably, she meant that speculation might lead to some unpleasant answers... and what are you doing there, dear?
Fire the idiot, someone.
Some might say her continuing loyalty to the worst Prime Minister in living/nonliving memory defines the strength of her character.
Not for her the cynical dictum of 'there are times to lie low.....'
Felicity still doesn't get it!
Backing Truss was an error of massive magnitude.
She must have been aware of the salacious tales doing the rounds of Westminister concerning some of Truss's waywardness yet still backed her over a safe pair of hands like Sunak: a man the Dame consistently backed.
Felicity is a relative newcomer to politics however to glide over the fallout from her backing of Truss is either naive or arrogant.
Her constituency is populated by sophisticated types.
To bamboozle them with this from The Update is a serious misjudgment.
"It has been another eventful week in Westminster. The Prime Minister has offered her resignation as Conservative Party leader, and a new leader will be elected within the next week. The country needs stability as we navigate choppy economic waters. Whoever is selected will have my support in that"
Felicity had two choices:
Dear Dame,
I often read the evidence that your best Hornets dig up about the Council of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea; and about other local authorities in London.
I think today's Chief Executives in Local Government could learn from the dedication, drive, and commitment of some of the "Great" Local Government Chief Executives of a bygone era. One such person is Heather Rabbatts.
Heather Rabbatts used to be the Director of Personnel at Hammersmith and Fulham Council in the nineteen eighties; where I first became acquainted with her. She became Deputy Chief Executive at Merton Council. She was eventually headhunted to sort out the London Borough of Lambeth in the mid nineteen-nineties. She brought two men from Merton with her to Lambeth to help her. Her salary was £80,000 and I can tell you that it should have been much more than that with all the excreta she had to contend with.
When Heather Rabbatts arrived at Lambeth, she quickly established that there had been a “litany of fraud.”
Rabbatts, a qualified Barrister, found that in the Directorate of Administration and Legal Services only four staff members out of a total of sixty were professionally qualified lawyers!
No wonder things were so bad at the Council!
She competency tested the staff in every Department throughout the Council to establish if they were capable of doing the jobs for which they were being paid.
She found that a large number of them with good jobs and good salaries could not read or write.
The Union suggested that she should arrange literacy training in one fly on the wall television documentary that I watched. I am pleased to say that she was having none of it. People got the sack if they were no good!
The Evening Standard reported that Heather Rabbatts discovered, after she had been at the Council for about nine months, that Ted Knight (Red Ted, the former ultra left-wing Council Leader) had a licensed bar in the basement of the Town Hall. She described him as “a malevolent force.”
She applied to the magistrates for the licence to be revoked. I remember back in 1988, a Senior Officer of the Council telling me that Knight was in that Town Hall more often since his surcharge and disqualification from public office than when he was an elected member of the Council; and that was true.
Heather Rabbatts’s contract for two years was renewed for a further two years; making four years in total. I think she must have been burnt out when she left. She eventually became a Governor of the BBC. I heard that Hackney Council tried to interest her in going there but I cannot remember what happened.
When the Millennium Celebrations at the Dome came around, Tony Blair wanted Heather Rabbatts there. (I am certain that she was a Labour Supporter.) Her teenage son refused to accompany his mother to the Dome. He had barely seen his mother during her time at Lambeth Council, because she arrived at the Town Hall at 9am every weekday and did not leave until 11pm. She kept her weekends free for family; quite right.
Heather Rabbatts was also a Non-Executive Director of British Gas at that time. Every time that British Gas dug up a road in Lambeth, the Union complained that the Council suffered a loss because the road was not restored to its original condition. They claimed that there was a conflict of interests between British Gas and the Council because the Council's Chief Executive was on the Board of British Gas. She gave the payments she received from British Gas to the Council.
Heather assiduously acquainted herself with the work and operations of every Directorate in the Council in order to diagnose what was wrong so that she could provide a policy prescription and effective operational practices. She sat on counters interviewing the public and interviewed tenants in Housing Offices. She was often vilified for any changes that she introduced but remained resolute, steadfast, in her determination to pull that haywire Council round.
Can you imagine anyone like this in Local Government today?
Name and address supplied.
It seems fraud hit Hackney Council does not expect councillors to declare interests..at least, that is what it seems. When looking at super corrupt Hackney Council's website there seems no facility for listing interests.
Being a council with many issues of corruption and fraud the chief executive should insist all councillors declare what they have 'on the side' so we know they are not 'on the take'
No to this blot on King's Rd
DP9- an aggressive, no holds barred planning consultancy, is behind many controversial and unwanted developments in the Royal Borough.
It is now combining with controversial architects, Pillbrow, to get through an unwanted and hideous redevelopment of the much-loved Marks and Spencer store in Kings Road.
Their client? .....ruthless multi-billion dollar Saudi developer, HALJ Group.
HALJ-greedy for profit has instructed DP9 to build as high as possible so residents can expect to be overlooked by yet more international buyers looking to park their dodgy money....enough is enough!
King's Road is a shadow of its once attractive self and this development, if approved, will finally seal its fate.
We are supposed to live in a democracy.
Councillors need to listen to those who vote them in and halt this overdevelopment.
Having to drag in a third rater like Hunt to sort it out is a real slap in the face.
It's as if Truss was working for the Labour Party.
The whole business smacks of incompetence of the highest degree. The Dame was so right when she claimed Truss was unfit for purpose.
So why does Felicity Buchan still offer this abject failure support?
We deserve an answer....
This is how The Times reported yesterday's Truss meeting with the One Nation Group
NSL Limited is a monopoly supplier of parking enforcement services. It is a secretive organisation that embraces ruthless debt collection services through its subsidiary company, Marston.
It also controls all RBK&C Parking services. There was a time when RBK&C efficiently ran its own
It claims that its Marston offshoot operates within an 'ethical framework' headed by an advisory group run by Sam Younger CBE. Who's he? Astonishingly, he is the chairman of consumer organisation Which?
NSL is owned by yet another company, Marston (Holdings) Limited, which in turn is owned by another company, and so on and so on, through an amazing ten layers of companies until you get to the top of the tree, which is Free Flow Topco Limited.
It has contracts with local councils and government agencies that include enforcing warrants, issuing warning notices, clamping, impounding, and disposing of vehicles. And last year its turnover was £255million.
No, you have not misread this. Which? – the organisation that provides page after page of website advice about how to fight parking tickets – is headed by a man who works for a company that makes millions out of issuing parking tickets.
So, I contacted Which? and invited a comment from Sam Younger. Did he believe the confusing layout of Marston's pay and display tickets met ethical standards? And does he believe it is fair that the time taken to consider an appeal would mean the penalty would double?
Well, the consumer champion refused to answer. His spokesperson told me to ask for a comment from Marston, the very company that issued the ticket in the first place.
She added: 'Any other positions held by Sam Younger outside of Which? are independent from and not linked to his role at the Consumers' Association.'
The Dame always questioned Truss's credentials for leading our country.
How right the old thing was. What a BALLS UP
Rishi Sunak has the sort of brain required to lead this country out of its mess.
How anyone could ever think Kwarteng was on a par with Sunak beats the old Dame.
Felicity Buchan was forever telling us what a bright star Truss is.
Perhaps she would now admit her judgment of this poseur was flawed.
Mete Coban is the latest to throw his hat into the Kensington seat battle. Order-Order has funny stuff HERE about good old Labour infighting.
To con us into believing he is different from all those other horrid politicians he has produced(probably with Hackney Council Propaganda Unit) a moody, slow-motion film with the voters looking upon him as if he was some sort of saint.
Maybe The old Dame is a cynic but she is never taken in by these sorts of film shows.
Be sickened HERE
Coban is a senior Hackney Council councillor.
For those who know nothing it's a council run by Labour for years
with a horrifying reputation for multi-level corruption so don't start preaching to us about political morality, Mister!
The Dame having met Kwarteng years ago understood the dangers of appointing an academic to look after the country's purse strings. What a disastrous 38 days it has been. The Dame knew KK of old and that is why she was horrified by his appointment. Truss cannot be trusted to make any serious appointment.
This is what the Dame wrote about Kwarteng a decade ago
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| NEEDS A PROPER JOB |
If Cowan is successful in getting nominated as Labour candidate then the Dent Coad clique will be in for a hard time.
Cowan has the reputation for being a merciless but effective bully skilled in political infighting. He is the sort of Labour leader Starmer feels comfortable with.
A point in Cowan's favour is gleaned from this report of a Tribunal meeting when he was accused of calling all the senior Council directors overpaid!
Well, we all agree he is right about that.
"The tribunal heard that the politicians were ‘extremely managerial’ and council leader, Cllr Stephen Cowan, was the ‘fulcrum of the toxic culture’.
Michael Hainge, who was the council’s commercial director, described one meeting where Cllr Cowan called in all of the directors, including chief executive Kim Smith.
‘He was berating us, implying that we were all overpaid,’ Mr Hainge recalled.
‘It was a profoundly unpleasant experience.
'When you’ve got the leader of the council doing that it sets an atmosphere that truly was toxic.
'It’s extremely difficult for that not to effect everybody?'
The ludicrous Cllr Kasim Ali is pitching himself as the next Labour MP for Kensington.
Ali has form for going missing in action so if successful constituents might find he has 'gone missing' when they need him....AVOID!
Read what the Dame had to say about this man and his claims HERE
Emma Dent Coad is also on the interview list.
How will she get on with a leader she was described as "TOXIC"?
He is someone of high academic intelligence, charm and humour. The sort of chap you want to sit next to at a dinner party.
But the big question is this...is he the man to hold a high office of state?
Ken Clarke was one of the best chancellors this country has had.
By background, he was a rather run-of-the-mill criminal barrister practicing in Brum and the Midlands. With none of the academic distinctions of Kwarteng, it begs the question as to whether academics are the right people to run an economy?
Clarke would never have put his political foot in it the way this chancellor has.
Clarke was talking about Johnson here but it would apply, in part, to Kwarteng.
"He’s delightful company, very entertaining with a big personality, and he is highly intelligent, but he has a temperament that makes him unsuitable for political office."
Dear Neighbours,
As many of you know I have been working with members of the RBKC’s Flood Risk Management Group over the past year. Below is an email asking for help from RBKC residents to gather evidence about the effect of the flood on your life and what sort of flood alleviation measures you have installed yourself or would like to see. I know from your emails and our conversations that for many of us this is a really traumatic subject but it is really important that we gather this material so I hope that you can take part. The Consultation closes 4th November
With best wishes
Fiona Fleming-Brown
From: Scrutiny: CP-PPU: RBKC <Scrutiny@rbkc.gov.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, 5 October 2022, 09:50
Subject: Call for Evidence - Flood Risk Management Working Group
Please find information, below, about the call for evidence which has been launched by the Flood Risk Management Working Group, which is chaired by Cllr Adourian.
You may wish to share this information about the call for evidence with residents in your ward.
Call for Evidence: Flooding Risk Management Working Group
Do you have experience of flooding or flood risk management in the borough? If so, you can submit a written submission to the Flooding Risk Management Working Group.
The purpose of the call for evidence is to allow members of the working group to have a greater in-depth understanding of how residents are being affected by flooding and flooding risk. Ideally, your submission should focus on:
• how flooding or flooding risk has affected your home or household
• how flooding or flooding risk has affected your quality of life
• what you have done, or would like to do, to manage flooding risk.
Members of the working group will consider the responses, which will be anonymised, as part of their evidence-gathering and in the development of their final report and recommendations.
The call for evidence opens on Friday 30 September and closes on Friday 4 November.
Please email your submission to scrutiny@rbkc.gov.uk and write ‘Flooding Scrutiny Submission’ in the subject line. If you are unable to email, post your responses to: Scrutiny Team, Kensington Town Hall, Hornton Street, London, W8 7NX.
Please do not provide unnecessary personal details or identify other individuals. Please note that the call for evidence isn’t part of the Council’s complaints processes and can’t be used for complaints and information about other organisations. We may contact you about your submission, which should be no more than 2 sides of A4 or 1,000 words.
Kind regards,
Callum Southern
Governance Officer
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea | Kensington Town Hall | Hornton Street | London W8 7NX
(E) callum.southern@rbkc.gov.uk (M) 07903152490
Our Values - Putting Communities First | Respect | Integrity |
Working Together
Dear Dame (Fount of All Knowledge),
Can you tell us what has happened to Cllr. Mo Bakhtiar?
