Lynne the Library lacerator Vs Richard Cornelius ???

On Saturday, The Barnet Eye revealed that Lynne "the Library Lacerator" Hillan planned to sell off all of the Borough's Libraries


http://barneteye.blogspot.com/2010/08/exclusive-barnet-council-planning-sell.html

Today the sleepy old Hendon Times caught up with the story


http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/8362739.Libraries_in_firing_line_for_council_sell_off/

The sell off is a short term punt to try and get some cash in the coffers before the borough goes broke due to Tory mismanagement by Council Leader Lynne Hillan and her loving band of cadres. We can now add libraries and allotments to the things Lynne Hillan thinks are less important to the people of the Borough than her allowances.

There is one person who this policy puts in a bit of a pickle (assuming he has any principles left whatsoever). Richard Cornelius came to promenance and got selected as a councillor on the back of a campaign to save Totteridge library. He stressed just how important these were and what a vital public service performed. He vowed that he'd never support a leader who planned to scrap them and came out vociferously against the then Tory Leader Victor Lyon. Of course he didn't get fat allowance cheques then (neither did his wife). The question is, with a leadership election brewing, with the Mark Shooter challenging Lynne Hillan and her cadres, will Richard and Alison Cornelius follow their consciences and vote for the new kid who has stated that he will maintain the current library service or will he ditch any last vestige of trustworthyness and back Lynne the Library Lacerator?

Richard Cornelius has always amused me. In the Michael Moorcock novel "The English Assasin" a character called Jerry Cornelius gets his kicks from burning down libraries. I always thought that it was ironic that Richard Cornelius came to promenance fighting to save them. Maybe he has more in common with his namesake than we thought. On the subject of the the other characters in the book, Bishop Beesley has always reminded me of another character in Barnet politics. Does the wikipedia description remind you of anyone?

"Bishop Beesley, endlessly corrupt gluttonous villain. Thirsts for power, money, pleasure."

 Answers on a postcard please.

Allowancegate : The Tory Spivs who are up for sale

The Barnet Eye returns to it's role as the Mystic Meg of Barnet politics. I have a prediction. Mark Shooter will fail in his bid to unseat Lynne Hillan on September the 7th. Despite having won the argument on both the moral and the competence grounds, Lynne Hillan has a little rabbit in her hat. It's called a big pile of  (your) dosh. In my absence, eagle eyed bloggers and blogger correspondents (why is it never the local press) have spotted a little bribe which Hillan used to secure the vote in the first place.

I guess I should have cottoned on to the scam when Councillor Hugh Rayner collared me at the Hendon & District Residents forum and urged me to read his press release detailing why the allowance rise was such a good idea. Now me being a naive and stupid person, I just thought this was a coup de grace of brown nosing. How wrong I was. I should have used the old FBI investigation maxim "Follow the Cash". I am endebted to my commenter Baarnet for pointing these out :-

Andreas Tambourides (Licensing Chairman SRA to increase by 50% - meets twice a year - even after supposed u-turn)

Hugh Rayner (Business Management OSC Chairman SRA to increase by 50% even after supposed u-turn)

Joan Scannell (General Functions Committee Chairman SRA to increase by 50% even after supposed u-turn)

Alison Cornelius (Health OSC Chairman SRA to increase by 50% even after supposed u-turn)

Darryl Yawitch (Budget & Performance OSC Chairman SRA to increase by 50% even after supposed u-turn)

Brian Gordon (Policy and Performance OSC Chairman SRA to increase by 50% even after supposed u-turn)

Wendy Prentice (Planning and Environment Committee Chairman SRA to increase by 50% even after supposed u-turn)

To win the Leadership, Mark Shooter needs 20 Tories to vote for him. There are eleven cabinet members and this mob makes 7 more. Basically this means Hillan only needs to buy three more members (with your cash) and the job is done. One interesting thing, which shows just how unprincipled these Tories are is this letter from Richard Cornelius. Does he mention anywhere that the scheme change gave both him & the missus a 50% pay rise (click on the letter to enlarge).

Dissident Barnet Tory, Ex Councillor Daniel Hope has been detailing all of this on his excellent Barnet Bugle blog. I suggest you take a quick peek at this if you want the full details.

One other thing which may surprise you is the fact that friends of mine who are active in both the Barnet Labour have "unofficially" suggested that it might be a good idea to back off from pressing for a leadership change within the Barnet Tories.

There is a belief that Hillan is a complete liability and there is a chance that the Tories will unravel completely if she's left as a wounded and critically damaged leader. She has clearly "lost" the local party membership and a good proportion of the councillors. My sources tell me that at least 15 Tory Councillors who are completely sick of Hillan. There are another ten who have stated privately that she's, shall we say, not necessarily the best choice, but have reasons to possibly carry on with support for her (lets say that most of these reasons are nothing to do with morality or principles).

It is now a matter of public record that Hugh Rayner gave the Chairmen of Hendon Tories a dressing down after he called the rises "Immoral, disgusting and vile". Did Councillor Hugh Rayner disclose the fact that he'd made a packet out of the scheme, when dressing down Mr Adrian Murray-Leonard? The bottom line in this whole issue is that Mark Shooter is fighting a bunch of unprincipled Spivs who are quite prepared to put cash before principle, put career progression before public service and put lining their pockets before doing a good job.

I have this message for any Barnet Tory Councillors who have a conscience and care about the people of Barnet. Go public with your support for Mark Shooter. He is clearly a far more capable candidate than Lynne Hillan. It is vital that for the good of Barnet, Hillan is replaced and only public declarations of support, rejecting troughing allowances will sanitise the Tory party in Barnet.

I urge all Barnet residents to contact their local councillors and urge them to support Mark Shooter and to go public with this support.

What do the Edgware and Totterdige byelection results tell us

Reading the local press coverage of the Edgware and Totteridge council byelection results, made depressing reading for a Labour supporter such as myself at first glance. Both Tory candidates had much improved majorities on their predecessors. Departing Councillor Richard Weider notes in his blog that Darrel Yawitch is the most popular councillor in the borough ! Whilst Darrel may put this down to the fact that he's a much better looking guy than poor old Richard, I suspect that the performance of David Cameron is probably a more valid explanation. Since the departure of Tony Blair, Prime Ministers Questions have turned into a weekly bear bating session. Whilst even at his lowest, Blair could always be relied on to put in a good performance, Gordon Brown's only conceivable strategy I can discerne is to go for the sympathy vote. Ministers resign, back benchers queue up to stick the knife in. Every Conservative friend I have and I have quite a lot, were in a state of pre-orgasmic delight at the posibilty of voting. I knew that the Tories would get a big vote. Even those who are, shall we say, not too keen on the local Barnet party, felt duty bound to "send Gordon a message".

Darrel Yawitch and Alison Cornelius did very well. I should imagine they could sit back last night and have a glass or two of bubbly and think "job done". From what I've been told, as Tories candidates go, they are both decent and hard working. I doubt that this time next year, after the full elections, they will be back down to the jobcentre, especially as they are in extremely safe wards. They are both safe pairs of hands and I'm sure they will do a good job.

What can we deduce about the Labour vote? As both seats were firmly Tory with no prospect whatsoever of a Labour victory, especially in the current political climate, I fully expected a catastrophic slump in both seats. I had contacted both the Labour and Lib Dem leader on behalf of the Barnet Community Campaign to ask them to stand asside so that we could have put up a single issue "anti sheltered housing warden cut" candidate. Both refused, saying that it was party policy to stand a candidate. I may be wrong, but I honestly believe that such a candidate would have given both Alison and Darrel a run for their money. One thing I know for certain is that there would have been a willing flood of volunteers canvassing. As it is, friends tell me that virtually no leaflets were dropped in Totteridge or Edgware. It was a shamefully missed opportunity. Oh and if you were wondering, I was strongly asked to stand, but being a councillor really isn't my thing.

As the Lab/Lib's wouldn't stand aside, we took the view that their was no prospect of success, therefore it would damage the campaign. If the anti warden cut vote had a three way split, we'd fail and I would not sanction such a monumental effort being totally wasted.

Which takes us on to the Labour and Lib Dem vote. As I said I expected a collapse. As it was they did better in Totteridge than at the last election and about the same in Edgware. The same is true of the Lib Dems. I expected them to be wiped out. Given the state of the party nationally, the fact that the seats were safe and the low level of canvassing, I had no expectation whatsoever of anything other than abject failure. Why did so many turn out for such a hopeless cause? As far as I am concerned, it is because of the hated scheme to scrap wardens. This will never derail a Tory in a safe seat, but I suspect that had either seat been a marginal, we may have seen some rather different results.

In hindsight, I honestly wish that the Barnet Community Campaign had persuaded Vicki Morris to stand as candidate in Edgware. We will never know, but we could have then compared the results of Edgware with Totteridge and really know how well supported we were. As it was there was no real candidate of protest.

Totteridge council by-election snub to Brian Coleman

The results for the Totteridge byelection (above) are fascinating. On the face of it a rather predictable victory for the Tories in one of their safest wards. Compare that result with the 2006 council elections.

2006 Local Council Elections Results

Candidate	Party	Result
Cornelius, Richard Alan	Conservative	Elected: 2464
Coleman, Brian John	Conservative	Elected: 2461
Margo, Caroline Sara	Conservative	Elected: 2304
Cardow, Anna Maria	Liberal Democrat	695
Cole, Michael Maurice	Liberal Democrat	627
Fitzsimmons, Janet Audrey	Labour	600
Jarvis, Frederick Frank	Labour	561
Mcdougall, Robert Thomas James	Independent	959
Newby, Andrew John	Green	687
Smuts, David Andrew	Labour	509

Ward turnout: 42.51%

There are a couple of things I noticed in this most Tory of Barnet heartlands. The most striking is that there was a 15% increase in the vote for the Conservatives. Generally, council byelections suffer a very poor turn out, compared to full council elections, especially when the result will have no effect on which party runs the show. It would seem to me that the reason is obvious. The name Brian Coleman did not appear as a Conservative candidate on the ballot form. Could it be that when his name is not there, 15% more Barnet Tories actually feel comfortable voting Conservative. As taxes have gone up, money has gone down the Icelandic plughole, Aerodrome Road has burnt taxpayers cash, the council has lurched from crisis to crisis, can there be another reason? It certainly isn't because they are doing a good job.

It is also interesting to note that both the Labour Party and the Lib Dems also increased their vote. I suspect that there are few places in the country where more people voted Labour at this byelection than at the last Council election. Surely this has to be a reaction to the Sheltered housing warden cuts. I must confess I expected the Labour vote to crumble, in light of Gordon Brown's problems on the National stage. I honestly never expected more people to vote Labour in Totteridge for this byelection.

It is disappointing to see that the Greens didn't put a candidate up. I suspect they may have done very well, for the protest vote.

Congratulations to Councillor Alison Cornelius, I hope she does a fine job representing the people of Totteridge. She can look across the breakfast table at her husband Richard tomorrow and smile in the knowledge that she's far and away the most popular Tory in Totteridge. She has the numbers to prove it! Who is the least popular? The figures speak for themselves !