Exposed - Barnet Taxpayer spending over £75,000 per annum on "political assistants" for Labour and Conservative Councillors

One of the missions of this blog is to expose hypocritical behaviour in Barnet Council. In January, I posted this blog detailing a series of questions querying the activities of  Trades Unions in Barnet, which had been asked by Councillor Andrew Stronglou. Councillor Strongolou

http://barneteye.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/letter-to-councillor-andreas-stronglou.html

One of them received the answer as follows

Question 29 Councillor Andrew Strongolou

Does the tax that goes towards supporting the trade unions provide as much value for money as other council expenditures?

Answer by Councillor Richard Cornelius

Unions have a historically useful function but I would hate to feel that tax payers resources were being applied to political activity.

When I read this, I was stunned by the response by Richard Cornelius. He stated that he would be appalled if Taxpayer money was used for "political activity". The reason I was appalled by this remark was because Barnet Council pays for political assistants for both the Labour and Conservative groups. I trust that Richard Cornelius, Leader of the Council will now take appropriate action, given his comments.

I immediately fired off an FoI request asking how much this costs. Today I received the Answer. Here it is. Barnet try and be as opaue as possible with their answer. Iasked to clarify how much the assitants cost, based on there answer it could be anywhere between £65,000 per annum and £89,000 per annum. At a time when they are sacking librarians, I am shocked that our money is being spent in this way. How do you feel, knowing that you are subsidising the purely political work of the two big parties in Barnet?

When the politcians say that we are all in it together,they clearly forget about luxuries like this

  Barnet Council Political Assistant by