Barneteye Weekly Roundup - 10/1/2012

What a week it has been. On Monday we had the shop owners of Finchley holding a protest against Barnet Council's parking policies. The parkimng fiasco, overseen by Barnet and Camden GLA superemo Brian Coleman (who is up for re-election for his £50K a year part time job in May - hint, hint) has not only pushed many traders all over Barnet to the brink of bankruptcy, it has ACTUALLY COST THE COUNCIL NEARLY HALF A MILLION QUID IN LOST INCOME ! My fellow Barnet blogger Mr Mustard has done an excellent expose of just how much the fiasco has cost - http://lbbspending.blogspot.com/2012/02/permits-figure-differences-mr-mustard.html. You can see a video of the protest if you scroll down and look in the sidebar. It was a good humoured event, despite the snow! The North Finchley traders are a resilient bunch and any sane council would harnessing their energy for the good of Barnet, not indulging in a slash and burn policy of destroying their businesses.

On Tuesday we commemorated the 200th Borthday of Charles Dickens. Barnet was an inspiration for Charles Dickens, his experiences of the workhouse in Wellhouse Lane inspired perhaps his best known novel, Oliver Twist. Dickens was a staunch fighter for social justice and this was a permanent theme through all of his work. The Barnet Eye wonders what he'd make of a character such as Brian Coleman and his recent outburst against the disabled "Why should the Council subsidise transport for these people", which would be a bad enough thing to say without Colemans penchant for free taxis at the public's expense  - http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/Brian_Coleman_2010_2011.asp. I have wondered if the reason Brian Coleman and his chums in the local Tory party are so keen to shut all of the museums in Barnet is purely because they associate with the type of character Dickens used to lampoon ni his works and they want to erase all memory of one of our greatest authors links with the Borough. I can think of no other reason why the historic workhouse building would be demolished.

On Wednesday, the Barnet Eye stats counter showed that our website had been inundated with hits from recruitment companies and headhunters searching for a very well known (to readers of this blog) figure at Barnet Council. What was intriguing was that there was a splurge of them in the afternoon and then another splurge of hits in the evening from private emails. It rather looked to me as if people had been checking the individual out and then decided to dig deeper later in the day. Is someone planning to jump ship? Only time will tell.

Yesterday, the big news was the strike in Barnet by Council workers, against outsourcing, redundancies and cuts to services. To ensure their time was not wasted, they volunteered to put a shift in at a local charity. There is an excellent write up in the Edgware and Mill Hill Times -
http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/9523342.Strikers_fighting_council_s_outsourcing_plans_help_out_charity/ - as ever the story has the obligatory inane comment from Councillor Daniel Thomas.

"Any staff who move as part of the restructure will remain in the local government pension scheme, keep the same level of pay and have a job guaranteed for 12 months at the very least from their move.  I'm sure many of our residents would envy that level of certainty in the current financial climate."

At present, many staff are being forced to relocate to Croyden. All of this for a job which is likely to only last 12 months. Does Daniel Thomas really think that for mothers working part time for the council with children in local schools, this is enviable? The man is quite clearly a blithering idiot.

There are also a couple of big national stories. Of most interest to this blog was the news that Fabio Capello had resigned. My 11 year old son ran in excitedly and announced "Capello has just resigned". He was not a fan. I suspect that the England job is an impossible task. Harry Redknapp seems to be the man for the job. He has transformed Spurs from mid table mediocrity to Champions League contenders. Whilst he's made some shrewd signings, he has developed players such as Gareth Bale beyond recognition. He clearly is a great motivator and a man who understands the way British players play. Spurs play great football, which is something any purist such as myself would say should be paramount.

Then there was the Harry Redknapp tax trial. I have some sympathy for Harry Redknapp.  Many footballers and rock stars do not have a great education and end up with pots of money. Many end up skint, due to the fact that they really don't understand tax. I would like to see all footballers and other short career/high earners have to be enrolled in a scheme whereby their tax affairs were managed by a competent professional, otherwise the football club/ record label would bear the tax liability. This would soon stop the situation where young people earn a lot of money in a short time, spend it and then get bankrupted because they can't pay the tax. For the taxpayer, the worst thing is usually by the time the Inland Revenue take action, the money has been spent, so they bankrupt the individual and never get the money back anyway. That is clearly a ridiculous situation. I don't blame the tax authorities, they are just doing their job as best they can. If we didn't pay tax, the country would fall apart.