At last night's dreary Full Council - all the business over in 55 minutes, probably because Deborah and I weren't much in the mood for battle - I asked the Cabinet member for Schools if he knew anything about a projected major overspend on the new Cowes Secondary School pathfinder. This is the school where the government has given the Council £32m, they had to contribute £1.5m, and in June they had to up that a further £2.5m - see my blog of 18 June.
He claimed not to know anything though we have been reliably been informed that the projected cost is now in the £40 millions. Still we will find out whether our information is correct as we have asked the Schools Minister to look into it in the public interest.
16 comments:
I bet the TWELVE items in the December cabinet meeting will not be so quick.
Remind me, why do we have 40 odd members when 7 run the shop?
Quite, but as it was a system introduced by the current government, it is up to them to sort it if it doesn't work democratically.
D.R.
Oh dear Geoff. In a week where LABOUR have blown more bullions than we can count you want to bash the local Tories for a school?
The world's gawn mad eh. Shame on you.
'an end to boom and bust.'
The others are supposed to either help the Cabinet with policy development (Tory backbenchers)or hold the Cabinet to account (opposition members). Also being a councillor is about far more than Full Council. I spend most of my time representing residents to the Council.
However, I still think that there should be a reduction from 48 to 32 councillors rather than 40, as the IW Tories promised the electorate in 2005
Anon 9.11
Geoff is a local councillor and not an MP. Therefore I ,for one, am glad he's bringing this issue up. Remember that it will be the local tax payer who will have to cough up this money. Can you for once stop banging on about Gordon Brown's mess and think about the mess Pugh and gang are making for us all at local level.
Thanks Geoff.
As far as I can tell, every major party supported the bail out plan for the banks, so why the carping about the government who for once appear to have led the way around the world. Those of you honestly thinking it was a bad idea please put forward your alternative suggestions. None of us feel comfortable bailing out big money, but the consequences to ordinary, working class people of banks going bust is simply not worth thinking about. Hold your nose like the rest of us.
As for 'boom and bust' there is a world of difference between an politically created boom such as 1972 (Barber) or 1987 (Lawson) which was done with the deliberate purpose of undermining the status quo and reducing manufacturing and the current situation which is global and has its roots in some dubious lending practices around the world. Those people who have now acquired 2020 hindsight were nowhere to be seen in the good times - and who exactly deregulated the city? Need some history reading you do.
You are right, there didn't seem to be an alternative to nationalisation. However as we ruled out nationalisation as a system of running things decades ago how we got to this in 2008 must be of concern?
Gordon did say 'an end to boom and bust' over and over, year after year. He didn't see the crisis building and others did. Seeing this coming was his job. Britain is in greater debt than any other. The state worker pension issue alone will drown us or the next generation.
Sorry, you may not like it but the government has to be held to account for its failures. Remember it wasn't just the huge spending this past 11 years. Labour borrowed on an unprecedented scale despite the huge revenues from oil, banks and property taxes. The future is bleak whatever party now takes charge.
Granted, borrowing is not a great way to build an economy. Spending and investing are not the same thing. And statements like "an end to boom and bust" were asking for trouble later on: as this crisis proves, there is no way that any national politician can hope to fulfil such a promise in the longer term. This was New Labour's mistake. But an examination of the Tory position reveals precisely what has been said here; they, eg Anthony Barber, engineered economic boom for political purposes. Like all bubbles, it burst, just as this one has (ie, the credit and house price boom, both of which were entirely unsustainable). When Brown brought an end to government control of interest rates, through the independence (qualified, that is) of the Bank of England, he made an effort to get away from political manipulation of the economy, a step no Chancellor has ever before been prepared to take, and he deserves credit - as it were - for doing so.
What neither Brown, Cameron nor Clegg can do is resist the pressures of the globalized economy; all any of them can do is attempt, in cooperation with the US Treasury, to manage and regulate them. It would help if so many of us stopped pretending that any government has real control over international capital, and if David Cameron would drop these homely irrelevancies of his, eg "govt failed to fix the roof while the sun was shining". Leaving aside the fact that they are utterly meaningless, what does he think the money was spent on? It reduces the political discourse to a shoddy selection of soundbites and folksy asides reminiscent (to the ancient) of the late Will Rodgers.... Or of Tony Blair.
Trouble with capitalism is not that it is doomed in a predetermined way, but that it suffers from these very cycles of growth and recession. Party politics is so irrelevant these days because all anyone talks about is managing a system that doesn't work in the first place.
All this is way off the point Geoff was making in the first place, but the reason people come here, I assume, is that it's the only place so far as I know where there is any political debate at all. Issues get drowned in the minutiae of local government with its endless committees, commissions, cabinets, which reflect national government and, alike, miss any point worth registering. Which is a story for another day.....
Ah, you've hit the nail on the head. What a good post. People do come on here to debate and argue and yes, it is now one of the few places you can.
In my view the greatest enemy of politics is the need for 'unity.' To be seen to be part of the 'team.' This really means those fortunate enough to become 'the leadership' get to decide everything, often without debate. The rest of us have to go along with it or appear disloyal. Tony Benn is right about many things. His mantra is mine: 'Who are you, where do you get your power and how can we remove you?'
How do 'we' remove the monetary committee of the BofE. How would we if they'd carried on keeping interest rates high when we needed them to come down?
Whatever happens next the best interest of the people is surely more honesty. Please, no more b/s. The PFI's and State worker pensions are obvious examples of our lack of power or choice. Those of us who want both to stop have nowhere to go, just as those who worry about uncontrolled immigration have nowhere to go. BNP excepted.
I don't believe Gordon got the right to wash his hands of any problems once the BofE had the power to regulate interest rates. He was in the hot seat, he has to take responsibility now it's gone wrong.
Cameron looks weak to me. (And I'm a Tory) He should hold the government to account but so far doesn't seem to have any obvious alternative plan. How embarassing. The Tory plan is win the next election on a 'we're not Labour' ticket. Great.
There are some interesting comments here. Is there a party containing politicians with the guts, determination and support to do what needs to be done?
We are in for a difficult time and we need effective politicians on the Island, who can work together no matter what colours they wear. We need our council tax to be used sensibly and for the benefit of those who pay it, not for myriad consultants at County Hall and endless, often pointless
consultation exercises, the results of which are often put to one side or forgotten.
Geoff, you were right to bring up the schools overspend. The fact that the Cabinet member didn't know about it tells us two things; 1. The Cabinet member hasn't got a grasp on what's happening. 2. The council officers are actually running the council.
Pugh and the other senior Tories are pathetic.
4.10 Anon you are right. A coalition of all the talents. I'd sign up to that, provided our manifesto item one was no more bloody consultants!
Item two would be to employ only officers who want to make a life here. What we have is crazy. The last CE left us his 'Green-island' legacy. It won't be him looking at 400ft wind turbines rusting for the next 25 years from the safety of his £250 grand a year job in London. Every other county in the south has resisted this eco tax grab nonsense, we're signed up to it without question by County Hall.
Our council should be run by people who care both about now and future generations. People like you and me Morris!
Government (local and national) stitched up by a builder? What a shock. Not!
When did a public building ever get built on time or on budget? Answer I'd wager: Never.
WORD IS THE COMPLETE SCHOOL AT COWES (JUNIOR AND SENIOR SECTIONS) WILL COST £48 MILLION TO BUILD.
£48M sounds good. £36M for the OSP (14-19), and only £12M for the Gateway (11-14)?
(I do not think that the £32-36M was ever envisaged to cover from age 11.)
To pick up, briefly this time, the consultant point, oh how right you are. They exist to validate what those who commissioned them wanted, and they cost a fortune, in housing, in local government, in health. The regulators, however, actually expect you to use them, not surprising perhaps given the regular exchanges of personnel between them. So the Housing Corporation, the Strategic Health Authority, the NAO will all ask hapless locals, "and how did you arrive at your conclusions?", ie, did you use one of our approved consultants? So the gravy train trundles on.
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