As scandal after scandal envelops Cornwall Council, its CEO, teflon-armoured Kalamity Kate Kennally, avoids another P45 - following her disastrous tenure as London Barnet's financial controller - as calamity after disaster follow her around Cornwall Council.
''CORMACGATE''
The plot thickens as councillor Julian German moves to save his own skin.
These paragraphs from Cornwall Reports say it all.
Cornwall Council warned local journalists, unofficially, that they would be taking a risk if they reported the story.
Today, only the publicly-funded BBC still appears reluctant to cover Cormac-gate – a timidity which could not survive once the issue appears on the agenda for a County Hall debate.
Also, council elections are now only six months away. The injured Cormac worker enjoys considerable local support, he lives at Tregony – which, because of boundary changes, moves into the council division represented by Mr German.
In 2017 Mr German enjoyed a comfortable majority, but the new-look council division could be a very different proposition.
A while back, several Cornwall residents were threatened with defamation proceedings for alleging that Cormac was not all it seemed to be, but when challenged to ''bring it on'', the council backed off knowing full well what might come out.
But they did manage to nail Laurence Reed forcing him to issue a grovelling apology when the BBC backed off.
Cormac appears to be delinquent and out-of-control, if reports circulating have any substance.
“I trusted him implicitly seeing him as Cornwall's best hope... Subsequent events and outcomes have betrayed that trust and no one does that twice to me... I consider that Julian German has been totally absorbed into the Kremlin system and is now the CEO's glove puppet... I respect your loyalty but fear in the harsh light of ongoing events that it is seriously misplaced.”
“… it is the same with Dick Cole a perfectly nice man who is a hopeless leader because he lacks bite, surrounds himself with other toothless tigers and fails to tackle Cornwall's problems head on... Slithering quietly around the Kremlin corridors without making any waves is not the way to win hearts and minds outside in the community where it matters in the voting booths... 60 years of MK failure fails to inspire voters making MK a total irrelevance... Harsh words I know but they need saying.”
An evil bit of satire! What do we know about Cornwall? We only live here!
Well, well, our aspiring mayor certainly walked right into this particularly lethal elephant trap.
Maybe the next bill will be for specialist contractors to remove the egg from his face.
A salutary lesson in why not to ignore public opinion especially in Cornwall... Cornwall Council... BBC Radio Cornwall
You can just imagine how the letter read...
Dear Thinkingspace,
Thanks so much for coming down to Cornwall with your consultancy team. Lancashire is a long way away, but we thought it wise to ask you, from the far North West, how we, in the far South West, should do things.
Some here in Cornwall have suggested we might have been better to ask people closer to home, people who live and work in Cornwall, people who understand the area’s needs and issues, people who have a really clear grasp of what would help Cornwall both economically and socially.
But myself and the other members of the leadership board thought: What do they know? Why would we want the views of people in Launceston? Far better to get highly-paid consultants from Lancaster, 400 miles away, and pay them handsomely for their opinion.
We hope you had a lovely time this summer, travelling around Cornwall as guests of our Cornish taxpayers, and finding out stuff about what makes Cornwall tick. We knew you’d like it. And we knew you must be very clever folk, what with you being called “consultants”. I imagine at least one of you has an “ology”.
I have your findings on my desk in County Hall right now, and I have to say your report makes very good reading. I see you suggest Cornwall ought to promote “a sense of place” and that we should “embrace the environment, focus on tourism and develop our food and drink sector”. I particular found it interesting to discover that some people you spoke to (probably when you were down the beach, soaking up a bit of sun) believe “improving job prospects” is important to them. Mm, I wouldn’t have thought of that (see, I’m not a consultant). All this is kind of what we’ve been doing for a while now, but hey, it’s nice to know that you, super-clever consultants, agree. I’m so pleased we had plenty of spare money in the council’s coffers to pay you thousands for your advice. Much better than spending it on essential services, I’m sure you’ll agree.
That Labour councillor Tim Dwelly might scoff, describing my decision as “a huge waste of money” and “a right booboo” and calling your work “the worst PR and consultancy guff imaginable”, but I bet he hasn’t got an “ology”.
I much prefer your proper PR-speak. I like “dynamic entities” and “inclusive growth” and “exploit the brand” and “thinking bigger and wider” and “help tell the story of our assets”. I have no idea what any of it means (I’m not a consultant, ha-ha), but I am impressed by big words. That’s why I called this initiative a “strategic narrative consultation exercise”. Tory MP Steve Double called it “daft”.
And as for Mebyon Kernow leader Dick Cole getting all teasy about paying you “to tell us what we already knew”. What does he know? He’s only lived in Cornwall his whole life. But I bear no hard feelings. Ee by gum, I don’t. If that Dick Cole walked into my office right now, I’d say: “Ow do, Dick, there’s nowt to be mithering aboot, don’t be such a babby. Here’s a barm cake, now shut your cakehole.”
Please find enclosed cheque for £75,000.
Lots of love,
Adam Paynter
Sincere thanks to Simon Parker of the Western Morning News for this very entertaing send up.
By Graham Smith
A handful of Cornwall councillors will tomorrow (Thursday) settle down to start trying to answer questions about how their £1.2 billion authority should spend its budget – whether to prioritise the so-called “pasty pound” by favouring local suppliers, or whether to pursue the “Barnet model” of outsourcing to a handful of large corporations.
A new committee, called “Working With and Developing Local Supply Chains,” will meet for the first time and consider “evidence” from four experts. The five members of the committee include two Liberal Democrats, two Conservatives and one Independent councillor. The meeting will not be transmitted live but will be recorded for viewing later.
The officials are keen to reduce the number of small suppliers – currently more than 5,000 – and instead place much larger contracts with giant outsourcing specialists like Capita.
The “outsourcing” approach was pioneered by Barnet Council, where Cornwall’s chief executive Kate Kennally had once been a senior official. The term “Broken Barnet” has become local government shorthand for vastly over-priced, poor quality services.
One of the experts who will speaking to the committee tomorrow is Neil McInroy, of the Manchester-based Centre for Local Economic Strategies, who pioneered what has become known as the Preston model of local government purchasing. It is the opposite of the “Barnet model” and focusses on the concept of “community wealth building.”
Supporters of the Preston model, in Cornwall, regard it as a way of enhancing the value of the “pasty pound” by ensuring that hundreds of millions of pounds in local government contracts are spent locally, retaining wealth within Cornwall.
Preston Council has won national praise for its economic approach. “Community wealth building offers an opportunity for local people to take back control,” said Preston Council, “to ensure that the benefits of local growth are invested in their local areas, are used to support investment in productive economic activities and that people and their local institutions can work together on an agenda of shared benefit.”
Despite the concerns of many councillors, the enthusiasm of senior Cornwall Council officials for the Barnet model has continued in recent months.
THIS IS MY RESPONSE AND ADVICE TO THOSE DELIBERATIONS.
“Economic storms can be just as lethal to growth as hurricanes can be to trees, as the Covid 19 pandemic is proving.
The $64000 dollar question being when we have grown and utopia is achieved, where to next?
in We are not as poor as we are portrayed, nor are we rich enough to be spoiled by wealth, while most agree that there are pockets of deprivation, which interestingly enough European funding has done little to alleviate, it should also be pointed out very clearly that there always have been and always will be pockets of deprivation, as there are in many other places, in reality it is all relative.
That said the wealth of social and environmental capital we Cornish are endowed with is both unique and priceless.
It is up to the Cornish to recognise this, capitalise on our own unique brand so coveted by others and work their own salvation from it rather than sitting around waiting for someone else to save us from ourselves
Globalism in the form of inward investment will not solve Cornwall’s problems in isolation.
I am a great believer the concept of a parochial circular economy where as far as possible we deal with each other and invest in each other from within thereby retaining the massive benefits of the accrual of modest but sustainable profits within our own community.”
The new town (Langarth) between Treliske Hospital and Chiverton Cross moves apace with our money, BORROWED by Cornwall Council, as our debt. Initially 4,000 new homes, then another 4,000 to follow, but little infrastructure and no proper sewerage provision other than holding tanks and lots of truck journeys to Newham. All this on a promise to deliver a FREE stadium for Cornwall (cost: £3m) provided by developer Ian Saltmarsh of Inox; the cost is now up to £16m and rising rapidly, and no sign of the (white elephant) stadium 8 years later, whilst Saltmarsh/Inox and his friend former CC guru John Betty have run off with £36m selling some farmland to Cornwall Council at 100x times the actual price, and additionally with a deal made in the first weeks of lockdown this year. And the rugby fraternity, bless 'em, still believe they'll one day get a free STADIUM for CORNWALL. Is it the idiots leading the naïve or the corrupt leading the blind?! Dickie Evans knows well that nothing is free in this life...
YET ANOTHER BANANA SKIN!
Another “leak” whodunnit at Cornwall Council, as confidential details of proposed Hayle land deals escape from County Hall
Another leak inquiry is underway at Cornwall Council, as officials try to find out who released confidential information about land values at Hayle.
The information was contained in the so-called “pink papers” prepared for a cabinet meeting held on 4th November. Land owners are angry about County Hall’s threats to use compulsory purchase powers to acquire sites needed for housing and road improvements.
Now officials are trying to find out who leaked information which would normally have remained secret, and which was discussed in “Part 2” of last week’s meeting, with press and public excluded. The information concerned assessments of land values and has not been published in the media. It is not known when the information was passed to land owners in Hayle.
The reason the council had wanted the information to remain confidential was because it relates “to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information.)”
Although there are only 10 members of the cabinet, the information was shared widely with more than 100 other councillors and a very large number of County Hall officials.
Leaking confidential information can sometimes be a criminal offence. Cornwall Council leak inquiries rarely identify the culprit.
There is often a fine line between deciding if it is in the public interest to withhold information or whether it is in the public interest to “blow the whistle” and release that information.
Some of the more high-profile leak inquiries in recent years involved details of the police allegations against former Launceston councillor Alex Folkes, who had been labelled a danger to children despite never facing criminal charges.
http://www.cornwall24.net/2013/09/heartlands-where-the-future-is-as-historic-as-the-past-part-1/
Here’s an independent assessment of this rather expensive scheme:
Cultural candy??? PFFFFFFFTTTTT!!!
Here it is folks, the sum total of £32 million + some corporate claptrap, waffle, fudge, equivocation, moral lassitude, corruption and crass incompetence cheered on by the ubiquitous Councillor Mark Kaczmarek who also put his name to the Langarth abomination.
This blot of Anglicised imposition on a truly historic post-industrial gem, the highlight being 'Cooks Corner' where the imported plebs can fuel their revolting lifestyles with mass binges of junk food.
Meanwhile the publicly subsidised developers have laughed all the way to the bank having sold their not-so-cheap and very nasty so-called homes for top dollar.
Was a virtually permanent traffic jam the best that the combined brains of SWERDA & Cornwall Council could really come up with???
If so, we really are in trouble as the spawn of SWERDA in the form of the Cornwall Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) come up with ever more idiotic ways of wasting money, in cahoots with their 'partner', Cornwall Council.