20 Questions at the Kremlin!
It was reported by a Kremlin source that an unprecedented twenty public questions have been tabled for today’s full council meeting.
It is good to see that people are exercising their democratic right to get involved by submitting questions which must be no more than 50 words, but the real killer has always been the supplementary question allowed on the day.
Given the potency of some previous supplementary questions it is not surprising that moves are afoot to rein in the surprise element by insisting that they are also pre-submitted in writing, which will remove the element of surprise.
We are sure that following the demonstration at the last full council meeting in July, things will never be quite the same again for those used to trading on the apathy that is rapidly evaporating in favour of a new militancy, from the increasing number of campaigners who have simply had enough of Kremlin shenanigans.
Sadly, and following this morning’s public questions session at Cornwall Council, we can report that Cllr Bob Egerton spent much time reading pre-prepared written responses from officers to rate payers, with little variance from the previous flawed doctrine used to justify huge borrowings, speculative development, lack of infrastructure, the central government blame game, the fallacy of “affordable” homes, the in-migration falsehoods and the partnerships with ethically challenged “developers”, e.g. Inox.
We can also report that despite Cllr Egerton reporting in July that we were possibly hours away from starting to build the Stadium for Cornwall (a misnomer for 95% of the Cornish) and successfully securing all the land deals, we’re not really any further forward re. that part of the new western urban mess, and in fact, have probably gone backwards given Inox’ failed bully initiatives with some residents whose land is necessary for the project. Threatening elderly residents obviously doesn’t work for everyone; perhaps Marcel Venn, John Betty and Ian Saltmarsh could provide more reliable data on this than Cllr Egerton?!
Still no update on the unauthorised £53m spend by John Betty’s office, who apparently had given up his circa £200k (pro rata) job; perhaps he found the council’s generous - but unauthorised - bonus scheme reward enough??
Well never know as he seems to have gone awol...
Separately:
THIS SONG IS ABOUT A VERY BIG CHEESE!
A man gone wrong!
But even on our own macro scale in here in Kernow we seem to have more than our own share of ''lesser cheeses gone wrong''.
They pretend to serve us while in reality actually serving others and themselves.
The following are hopefully matters of interest to all who pay council tax. Figures are taken from the Cornwall Council’s annual accounts for 2018/19.
The Council’s long term and short term debt is £728,209,000. (page 21)
Interest paid was £101,716,000, which works out as £1.94 million a week. (page 63)
Senior employees, strategic officers, (civil servants) salaries and pension contributions amounted to £1.5 million a year. (page 89)
There are a total of 201 employees, (civil servants), on salaries of between £50,000 and £100,000 a year, 5 on between £100,000 and £150,000 a year and 6 on between £150,000 and £179,999 a year. (page 90)
Redundancies cost £3,869,000. (page 91)
Elected Members Allowances amounted to £2.2 million. (page 88)
Our waste contracts, collection and disposal, cost £56,500,000, £1.08 million a week.
As a matter of interest the so called leadership team, apart from the chief executive, now includes 23 people labelled as directors, this is nearly three times as many as Winston Churchill had in his WW2 very successful war cabinet.
The latest crazy idea to emerge from the Kremlin of members logging on remotely to meetings is a recipe that has potential for hubris and double dealing on a large scale, how can meetings be podcast if members are not actually present in the chamber?
Every vote on every issue should be formally recorded and the members should be fully accountable for decisions they make, based on their votes as formally recorded in every instance.
Meanwhile some information has come to light from a trusted supporter relating to a long standing Conservative Councillor and their property dealings, that is too hot, even for us, to handle for the time being.
In the meantime enjoy the song while we keep digging away