Us lucky citizens of Barnet used to look smugly across to our West at Brent Council. We used to laugh smugly as Private Eye labelled them "Bent Council". Back in 2002 when the Tories took Barnet Council from Lib/Lab coalition, the Barnet Council Tax was hundreds of pounds a year less. Look what the Tories in Barnet have done.
2010 Council Tax Bands
Brent Band D Council Tax - £1368
Barnet Band D Council Tax - £1423
Brent Council hasn't been featured all over local and national press recently. The councillors there just get on with doing their job. They actually give the impression they care. One blog I follow is that of CouncillorShafique Choudhary, a Labour Councillor for Barnhill ward in Brent. Unlike Barnet Tories, Shafique likes to keep his voters informed of what he's up to. He does this by writing a blog (a free one). In his latest post, he mentions his attendence of the Barnet Planning meeting on Thursday - What he says is quite saddening -
http://barnhill-newdawn.blogspot.com/2010/07/different-world.html -
I reproduce in full what he had to say :-
Last night I attended yet another Barnet Planning Committee regarding the Brent Cross Development. What a contrast between the planning committee methods in Barnet and Brent! It seems, in spite of the neighbourhood proximity, the two borough are a thousand miles apart.
I felt proud being a councillor in Brent, not a “yes” robot in Barnet
Now you will notice that Shafique doesn't try and score party points. He just says that the whole system is broken. I left a comment on Shafiques blog saying I thought it was a bit unfair on our local Labour and Lib Dem councillors who I think are pretty good and most certainly not "Yes Robots". The bottom line though, is that Lynne Hillan has transformed Barnet Council into a joke authority. If I had said twenty years ago that in a few years Brent Labour councillors would be publicly gloating about the ineptitude and stupidty of the Barnet Tories and everyone across the board would agree, you'd have thought I was bonkers. These days it is the Brent Councillors who hold their head high and walk with pride, whilst Barnets Tories skulk in the shadows, bottle out of Residents forums and only come out for
free dinners at the expense of other people.
4 comments:
Results of instant research (while breakfast is digested):
Virtually the whole of north London went (or stayed) Labour at the last election - except for Barnet.
Brent is now Labour again, after four years of a LibDem-led coalition with the Conservatives (and a breakaway 'Democratic Conservatives', which was wiped out last May).
The word on the Brent street (coming from a Brent Deep Throat) is that the coming cuts in Brent will not be at the severe end of the range, because Brent's finances are comparatively healthy. (No railway bridge and Town Hall overspends, for instance!)
I presume Brent's LibDems and Conservatives would claim the credit for that, rather like Ken Clarke gave a healthy economy to Bambi in 1997.
In my instant analysis and phoning people, there were two other points that stood out:
(1) Brent (under all parties) more or less sorted out its bad housing "while the sun shone" during Pa Broon's low-inflation, high-growth boom-decade. BARNET DIDN'T.
(2) Brent has embraced fighting climate change. That supposedly is core to policy-making. (No idea if this is true in practice.) WHAT HAS BARNET DONE? Can you imagine the Cabinet Member for Environment and Transport doing so?
Baarnet,
Thanks for the comment. This is what I love about blogs, you raise a few points I'd not even considered.
The issue of the finances is a great one which requires further investigation. Shame don't call me Dave has retired again
I loved 'Not the Barnet Times'.
I know that the dust-covers have been put on all the furniture, the gas cut off, and the NTBT house locked up.
However, I hope some day, not too far into the future, there will be the soft crushing sound of pea-gravel on the long driveway up to the house, the key will come out of the pocket, the lock will turn, and DCMD will be back in action, refreshed and determined to put the right-of-centre point of view to his many fans.
baarnett,
Have to agree with you on Brent's Housing and their ALMO, 'Brent Housing Partnership. They certainly proved many doubters wrong over the past 10 years
They are the first to have bought homes destined for a Housing Association that, could not afford to buy them in these times. It's fairly common view amongst Barnet's tenants & leaseholders, that some of Barnet's Executive officers along with the former Councillor for Housing and, later ousted leader, never wanted to succeed as our neighbour Brent has done.
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