Single White Female

Have you seen the film Single White Female. It's all about an obsessive who moves in to a flat following an advert. The obsessive has a desire to become the glamarous, successful flatmate. This obsession ultimately destroys all of the characters in the film. One of the great things about modern technology and online newspapers is that people spot things you had never dreamed of an leave comments that throw a whole new perspective on someone. A great example of this happened today. The Barnet Times posted an article about Council Leader Mike Freer's desire to turn the Council into the RYANAIR Council.

One reader summed it up fantastically

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AmandaB, Hendon says...
9:00am Tue 1 Sep 09

Three words... Single, White, Female!

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I hadn't realised before, but AmandaB is spot on. Since Mike Freer was selected to be the Parliamentary Candidate for Finchley, he seems to have gone bonkers and wants to BECOME MARGARET THATCHER. A couple of months ago, I spoke to the Leader of Labour group Alison Moore. She told me that when Freer was an opposition councillor and she was involved in the running of the Council, he was a fearsome operator. She said that he regularly gave her maulings in meetings that she found hard to deal with. She confided that since he's become leader and Finchley PPC, he seems to have lost his jiggle. He has become a lamentable figure in Council, seen as easy meat by such inquisitors as Jack Cohen, Susette Palmer and Agnes Slocombe. Only the Tories majority preserves him.

The Tory cabinet owe their jobs to him, he controls their allowances, so he has a degree of control, but this seems to translate itself into doling out ever more ridiculous amounts to keep rebellion at bay ( Melvin Cohens new £7,500 allowance for chairing three meetings would seem to be a case in point).

Mike Freer has become obsessed with his Future Shape project. Millions of pounds have been spent on Consultants, but the promised savings seem as illusive as ever. In his crusade to become Margaret Thatcher, he has tried one tack after another. Rather like Ellie in the film, Mike tries to take on Thatchers ideas and personailty, but fails for a simple reason. Like Ellie, he's to obsessed with the myth of the person, that he doesn't get that there is more to success than just dressing in someones clothes (or policies). I'm not a Thatcher fan, but she had a keen sense of what could be done, what couldn't and what shouldn't. That is why she never privatised the Post Office or the Railways.

Freer was so deluded about the success of Future Shape, that he gave the Barnet Trades Unions TENS OF THOUSANDS of taxpayers pounds, to employ one of Europes top professors to help them draft their response. What did his report say? That Future Shape was fatally flawed. I saw Mike Freer's response at a Council meeting. He said he was angry, because the good professor didn't agree with him. Does that strike you as rational? Or a sensible use of taxpayers money by a Thatcherite?

Mike knows Thatcher was a privatiser, so he thinks, as did the obsessive Ellie with her copying of Allie's clothes, that everything must be privatised. He is so obsessed that any wise council from colleagues is ignored. Mike hopes that his scheme will catch David Camerons eye and lead to rapid promotion. I suspect that as Cameron watches programs such as Panorama about the Sheltered housing cuts, the year before an election, promotion is the last thing on his mind.

How did "Single Whit Female" end for Ellie? Badly. Nuff said.