Leader Listens - What are we paying for?

As you will no doubt be aware if you read this blog, the Leader of Barnet Council has a blog called Leader Listens, paid for by me (and you if you are a taxpayer). He justifies this expense (he could have a free blog like this) by saying that the expensive version allows him to use more facilities. Whilst I've yet to see any features which are an improvement on a free blogspot blog, one has to assume there must be some reason.

If he's going to have a taxpayer funded blog, one would think he'd have the decency to use it for the public good. The last entry was March 5th and constituted of a big excuse for Barnet losing it's 4 star council status. Since then a massive story has broken in Barnet. The council has lost £27.4 millioni Iceland. The leader of the council put out a statement on Monday saying that Council Officers had mislead him. For the last 5 months, the leader of the council was lead to believe that the Council Officers had followed the agreed policy. On monday, the scrutiny committee pointed out that the secret cabinet report had lead them to conclude that this wasn't the case. A Council Officer has resigned and auditors have been called in.

Strangely the press release detailing this isn't on the Council press release page. On top of this it isn't mentioned on leader listens either. What is the point having a leader listens website if the leader doesn't bother to use it. Surely the Iceland story is the story in Barnet. If this doesn't warrant a mention, then what does? Sadly I suspect that like Mike Freer's policy for publishing comments, the reason it doesn't appear is because it shows him to be a poor leader. I really don't think that at a time when funds are tight, the council should waste a penny on such a vanity project.

Mr Freer has stated on his blog and in other media that he is confident that Barnet will get all it's money back from Iceland. I challenge him to show us one piece of information on his blog to support this assertion. I also challenge Mike Freer to explain why he hasn't called in the Police to investigate the cover up surrounding the Icelandic investment policy. If he has been deliberately and systematically mislead by multiple council officials, resulting in risk to public funds, surely the Police should have been called on Monday.

Finally I ask Mike this. Was the Council official who resigned given a payoff to go quietly? If Mike Freer answers all of these questions honestly, openly and completely on his Leader Listens blog, I will accept that it serves a public function and will refrain from criticising it's cost in future.