You'll never guess what. I just happened to be researching the very latest installment of the Brian Coleman Free Dinner register, which is officially the most popular series of blogs ever to grace the Barnet blogging scene when, guess what? My old friend Mrs Angry had the audacity to pop up a nice shiny new blog all about outsourcing in Barnet. Well I'm always keen to see what the competition are up to, so I pootled off for a mosey.
( http://wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.com/2011/09/one-barnet-up-for-sale-welcome-to-house.html )
Now sadly for once, dear old Mrs Angry is not quite as up to speed as she could be on the subject of Brian Colemans views on OneBarnet. She is labouring under the misapprension that our beloved Councillor Brian Coleman who is also a £53 Grand a year GLA member and the £25 grand a year chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning authority wants to stick a spanner in the works of the One Barnet program. Now maybe beloved Brian may find it useful to give the impression that he's agnositic on One Barnet, but a quick look at the LFEPA gifts and hospitality register (The Brian Coleman Free dinner register as it's known in these parts), show that the last entry is this :-
31/08/2011 Lunch at Livebait, 43 The Cut, London SE1 8LF. Estimated value: £30.00.Jeroen Weimar - MD, Serco Group plc
(You can see the whole register here - http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/gh_brian_coleman.asp )
Now I've no idea what they discussed. For all I know, they spent the whole of their lunchtime discussing whether Torres is a good signing for Chelsea, but the fact of the matter is that Serco are bidding for hundreds of millions of pounds worth of business in Barnet and their boss is taking a senior Barnet Cabinet member out for a cosy lunch. Now if I was Jeroen Weimar and my company was bidding for such a massive contract and I've got one of Barnets most senior politicians eating lunch, I'd say "Well Brian, is this OneBarnet project a go'er or not". Given that he clearly thought our Brian was worth having lunch with, and Serco Ltd havent pulled out, it seems fair to conclude that any negativity attributed towards OneBarnet from Brian is purely for public consumption.
One has to conclude that if Coleman seriously wanted to scupper One Barnet (at least with Serco) he had the ideal opportunity. As Serco are still participating in an exercise which clearly will cost them a fair bit of money, we have to conclude that Brian didn't advise Mr Weimar to grab a bargepole and run.
It seems to me that a reassessment of the role of Brian Coleman and Council Leader Richard Cornelius in the One Barnet fiasco is highly called for by the assorted blogs of Barnet. Have we been spun a line? Well if we have, I suspect that some people may regret it sooner rather than later
( http://wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.com/2011/09/one-barnet-up-for-sale-welcome-to-house.html )
Now sadly for once, dear old Mrs Angry is not quite as up to speed as she could be on the subject of Brian Colemans views on OneBarnet. She is labouring under the misapprension that our beloved Councillor Brian Coleman who is also a £53 Grand a year GLA member and the £25 grand a year chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning authority wants to stick a spanner in the works of the One Barnet program. Now maybe beloved Brian may find it useful to give the impression that he's agnositic on One Barnet, but a quick look at the LFEPA gifts and hospitality register (The Brian Coleman Free dinner register as it's known in these parts), show that the last entry is this :-
31/08/2011 Lunch at Livebait, 43 The Cut, London SE1 8LF. Estimated value: £30.00.Jeroen Weimar - MD, Serco Group plc
(You can see the whole register here - http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/gh_brian_coleman.asp )
Now I've no idea what they discussed. For all I know, they spent the whole of their lunchtime discussing whether Torres is a good signing for Chelsea, but the fact of the matter is that Serco are bidding for hundreds of millions of pounds worth of business in Barnet and their boss is taking a senior Barnet Cabinet member out for a cosy lunch. Now if I was Jeroen Weimar and my company was bidding for such a massive contract and I've got one of Barnets most senior politicians eating lunch, I'd say "Well Brian, is this OneBarnet project a go'er or not". Given that he clearly thought our Brian was worth having lunch with, and Serco Ltd havent pulled out, it seems fair to conclude that any negativity attributed towards OneBarnet from Brian is purely for public consumption.
One has to conclude that if Coleman seriously wanted to scupper One Barnet (at least with Serco) he had the ideal opportunity. As Serco are still participating in an exercise which clearly will cost them a fair bit of money, we have to conclude that Brian didn't advise Mr Weimar to grab a bargepole and run.
It seems to me that a reassessment of the role of Brian Coleman and Council Leader Richard Cornelius in the One Barnet fiasco is highly called for by the assorted blogs of Barnet. Have we been spun a line? Well if we have, I suspect that some people may regret it sooner rather than later
3 comments:
Dear old Mrs Angry would like to point out that our Brian is rather more complex than you realise - he is a pragmatist, not an ideologue. His motivation is ego, and he is not a team player - he likes to play games - but according to his own rules. And as we all know, he likes to go to lunch.
Whether he is a true believer or not is of no consequence, however, if he fails to disassociate himself from what has become the toxic brand of One Barnet, his own career will be fatally compromised,and oh dear,look - we are now in the run up to May 2012. Just imagine, a GLA - and a London Fire Authority - without Brian Coleman.
That happy day is getting closer and closer.
If voters want to oust Brian Coleman at the GLA elections next year, they should ask Labour why they selected an ungracious failed MP as their candidate: someone who gets very touchy when you start to question him about his second home allowance claims.
The public across the whole of this country have been let down by the political classes for some time now, but in Barnet we seem to be especially blessed by self-serving parasites.
DCMD: Agreed, but surely, you go with what you've got.
(I know, don't call me Surely.)
Is DCMD in favour of ABC (anyone but Coleman)?
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