Get a life!

As the quality of journalism of local newspapers declines and their readership falls through the floor in recent years a new phenomenon has appeared with the rise of the internet ; the local blogger.

It is now a rare occurrence for any professional journalist to be sitting in the gallery of a Council meeting and their place has been taken by the amateur and often obsessive “blogger”

Up and down the country individuals who have a particular axe to grind or have failed to be actually be elected to their local Council sit for hours listening to tedious committee meetings and then composing blogs which often have little relationship to the proceedings they have just witnessed.

The problem with bloggers in local government is that unlike the local press who still have to abide by the rules of the soon to be defunct Press Complaints Commission (although many local journalists openly flout it)

In Barnet we are particularly blessed with bloggers with a number writing several times a day about Barnet Council matters (is the Council really that interesting?). A number have taken to doing it anonymously by adopting silly names which in my view is rather on a par with sending poison pen letters or as Mike Freer put it “the one handed bloggers”. The signs of obsessive behaviour are clear to see, one blogger has viewed this blog over 200 times in less than a week. More worryingly as they become more and more obsessive their conspiracy theories become wilder and wilder and their grasp of reality becomes more tenuous. I did have a very good laugh earlier in the year when one blogger suggested that those of us involved in the organising of the borough’s celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee were part of some sort of “Masonic” conspiracy, for the record I am not a freemason. I do have to admit that there are several blog stories that have appeared that I know to be complete fiction from start to finish because I deliberately fed a pack of lies to either a Council officer or indeed a Councillor whom I suspected of leaking to the bloggers and sure enough the stories appeared.

Their attempts to personalise local politics (where to some extent the local newspapers have followed suit) has lead them to begin to indulge in bizarre activities. Councillors and senior professional officers of the Council have been followed, a black van has been reported suspiciously parked outside Councillors homes, officers of the Council have had their private residences photographed, and one female Council officer had her mobile phone number published, my 88 year old Mother was attacked in the street and one Council officer had to take their house off the market after inappropriate enquiries from bloggers.  Additionally there have been repeated acts of criminal damage on Conservative Party premises in the borough. Many Councillors of all parties no longer disclose their private addresses in order to protect their families.  In short bloggers rather than attempt to keep the wider community informed and involved, something all Councillors would welcome, have attempted to instigate a regime of intimidation just because they happen to politically disagree with the current Council administration. This is not unique to Barnet with the distinguished Leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council Sir Merrick Cockell amongst others regularly being regularly the victim of appalling personal abuse.

Additionally as a lazy way of filling their blog they submit dozens and dozens of Freedom of Information requests on spurious matter which they then reveal as shocking exclusives on their blogs. Of course this is also a tactic employed by the Taxpayers Alliance which regularly reveals “shock horror” that Local Government spends money! In Barnet the hundreds of thousands of pounds spent dealing with FOI requests could have kept Friern Barnet Library open. Just a thought!

I am not worried about blogs that genuinely debate matters of political interest and indeed there are several that cover Barnet affairs from a socialist point of view with which I fundamentally disagree but I enjoy reading. Furthermore the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles’ idea about recruiting “armchair auditors“ is a positive move to enhance the power of the Internet and make local government more accountable. In Barnet some bloggers who think they act as the servant of the voters have actually developed bigger egos than us Councillors; the difference is they don’t have a democratic mandate to back it up and get highly offended if anyone criticises them. They can dish it out but they cannot take it.

One gets the feeling that some bloggers have fixated on Barnet Council and its’ officers and members in preference to obsessing over David Beckham or Simon Cowell.

My message to some bloggers, “Get a Life!“

Jobs for the Boys?

I have just returned from a well earned holiday in that most beautiful part of the Kingdom, Cornwall , to be precise the slightly isolated and upmarket town of St Mawes . My favourite Hotel in the whole of England , The Tresanton ,owned by Olga Polizzi ( Daughter of the late Lord Forte and Mother of Channel Five Hotel Inspector Alex) once again made me very welcome .

This Hotel is the not sort of place where you are  likely to see guests with Tattoos or inappropriate body piercing and where over a fabulous dinner on the terrace overlooking the beautiful Falmouth Estuary you can peruse the other guests . Is that a Senior Director of Barnet Council with his family? Oh look an Officer from City Hall and her BAFTA winning TV scriptwriting husband!  And that was just Monday…………

The success of the Tresanton is the immense attention to detail by the staff and indeed whilst I was there by Olga Polizzi herself who made sure that standards were maintained. As Olga is a former Westminster City Councillor, and friend of Lady Thatcher, I would expect nothing less. The success that Olga and her brother, Sir Rocco Forte have made of their group of luxury hotels across the world (which sadly my budget does not extend to visiting) is testament to hard work , vision and no doubt the family genes.

However Olga is married to the distinguished writer and biographer William Shawcross, whose official biography of the late Queen Mother earned him a CVO and rave reviews and for those with long political memories is the son of the late Sir Hartley Shawcross, Attorney General in the Clement Attlee Government and Chief British Prosecutor at the Nuremburg War crime trial.  As Sir Hartley got older, and he lived to 101, he gradually moved to the right, as so many do, and acquired the nickname “Sir Shortly Floorcross”. Of course the Attlee family went all the way Clement’s son, the second Earl joining the SDP and the current Earl Attlee serving on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords as a Lord in Waiting (Government whip).

Hence I was not surprised to see that William Shawcross is the favoured candidate to take as Chairman (not “Chair” I hope) of the Charity Commission as a safe and sound pair of hands. The Charity Commission is one of those endless Quangos which seem to stagger on despite attempts by successive Conservative Governments to cull them. Perhaps as an incoming Chairman Mr Shawcross, who is a member of the Board of the Anglo Israel Society, can look at the so called “charitable activities” of Christian Aid and Oxfam amongst others with their anti State of Israel stance.

Another Quango is the Arts Council where the no doubt “Guardian” reading Dame Liz Forgan has not had her contract renewed and is being replaced by the more entrepreneurial Sir Peter Bazalgette.

These changes remind me of the American system where when the President goes his whole Administration goes with him. I think it is time we considered a similar system in the UK and that when there is a change of Government all the Senior Civil servants, ambassadors, High Commissioners, Chairman of Public Bodies go as well. There is something slightly creepy and not a little two faced about rows of Civil servants lined up by the Permanent Secretary to applaud an incoming Cabinet Minister when he arrives at his new Department when you know jolly well a couple of hours they were shedding tears at the departure of the last Secretary of State. It is useful to have endless Government appointments available to be filled by trusted supporters who perhaps it is advisable to send to the other side of the world as Ambassador to Mongolia or Governor of Pitcairn Island. Britain has always practised it to a limited extent, the former Home Secretary Lord Waddington made an excellent Governor of Bermuda (a post I have always rather fancied since we no longer appoint the Viceroy of India!)  And among those who have served as High Commissioner to Australia are Lord Carrington, ex Tory MP Sir Alistair Goodlad and ex Labour Ministers Baroness Liddell and Baroness Amos. The appointment of ex Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell as High Commissioner to Malawi never came about as the UK shut the High Commission down to save money.

In Local Government the practise of clearing out Officers who are seen as having been too partial to the last lot has been going on for decades. Often disguised as early retirement, ill health retirement or redundancy “due to reorganisation “, the departure is usually accompanied by a large cheque. It is an open secret that in 2002 when the Conservative Group took power in Barnet it discussed changing the  Chief Executive but decided against it on grounds of cost and the theory that that the individual had been diligent in implementing the Labour / Liberal Administration agenda and no doubt would do the same for us . He did.

Neighbouring Enfield did change the Chief Executive in 2002 and got into enormous trouble with the District Auditor and suffered the financial consequences. The press over the weekend reported that 400 Senior Council officers received severance payments last year of over £100,000 and anyone in Local Government could name those who left because they fell out with the Leader of the Council or the majority group or indeed both.

The principal of appointing your own senior officers was enshrined in the Greater London Act that created the Mayor and Assembly where 12 “Political Officers “ could be appointed by the Mayor without open advert . This lead to some rather suspect appointments by Ken Livingstone and indeed one or two by Boris Johnson but has meant that the men and woman at the top at City Hall whilst governed by Local Government terms and conditions are politically driven and owe their jobs to the Mayor ’s whim. The also have fixed term contracts which expire when the mayoralty ends.

As the election of Police Commissioners in the autumn makes it easier to remove incompetent Chief Constables perhaps it is time to consider the wholesale Politicisation of the Civil Service and Local Government in the interests of efficiency and democratic accountability.