A: Lynne Hillan
Yesterday there were two important stories in Barnet. One was this story on the Barnet Tory Bugle, telling of how a junior Government under secretary (or Minister as the Bugle called him) was visiting Lynne Hillan and praising the Future Shape project.
http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/8418218.Minister_endorses_Future_Shape_plans/
The other was the relaunch of the Barnet Future Shape Leaked documents website by this blog. Here we published a secret internal council document detailing the fact that the project is in meltdown.
http://barnetfutureshape.blogspot.com/2010/09/cso-project-notes-for-barnet-council.html
Lynne Hillan believes the Future Shape project is marvellous. She's now suckered a minister (who presumably she hasn't shared all the bad news with) into saying it's marvellous. Sadly all of the professional organisations who have reviewed the project (Council auditors Grant Thornton, Councils own CSO group) say the wheels have come off (if indeed they were ever on).
All I ask Hillans Tory colleagues to do is read these documents. If they read them, I cannot believe that they can arrive at any other conclusion than she's lost the plot and should be replaced immediately and that the council should stop throwing good money after bad on the bonkers Future Shape scheme.
Oh and how come we've not heard a peep out of £250,000 a year CEO Nick Walkley? Surely it's his job to deliver this fiasco. Nick, it's about time you got a grip.
3 comments:
Rog, re the leaked doc, can you rescan we can read the bits dropped off the edge?
And would some anonymous person care to translate some of the acronyms and Barnetspeak into normal English?
As regards the story about Bob Neill visiting Barnet, and it being presented as a visit by the Local Gov't Minister, of course Grant Shapps holds that post, but er, Grant Shapps was rather forthright in his condemnation of the Barnet Tory allowance hike, wasn't he?
Oh dear: and Eric Pickles, the SEc of State, showed his attitude by having the Salingers round for tea and sympathy, so instead Bob Neill has been invited over to Barnet as a PR exercise in what appears to be a panicky reaction to the aftermath of Grant Thornton.
Please note what is happening in the council's new pointless ideas website: the censorship of any 'dangerous' suggestions, removed but leaving an tell tale shadow in the tags ... this is another sign of panic: if you don't like the conversation, silence the speaker, eh? There is also a concerted effort to try and produce 'good news' stories to distract the plebs: about as useful, I would suggest, as the orchestra playing 'Abide with Me' while the Titanic sinks slowly into the the ocean.
click on the pages for a readable version. As for a translation, heaven forbid that anyone actually understand it
oh ... and quite. Barnetspeak, the only language in the world designed to obstruct rather than enable communication ...
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