Where is the big story at the Barnet Tory Bugle?

The bad weather has been a massive story in Barnet. The council is running out of grit and now only 60 roads are being gritted. Key roads such as Cricklewood Broadway are no longer on the list of those deemed "priority". I note that even roads such as Hartley Avenue, where the fire and ambulance stations are and where there is a large doctors surgery are being neglected.

How could the situation get to such an appalling state? The answer to this is simple. Because there is no firm management and no sensible planning to sort it out. You see the Leader of the Council, Lynne Hillan and her Deputy Andrew Harper have been on holiday all week. All major organisations have a degree of contingency planning and if the chief is on holiday, the Deputy steps up. In Barnet, it seems that they just don't care. As a result we've had a fiasco. Within hours of Mayor Brian Coleman telling BBC London that Barnet had plenty of grit, novice roads supermo, Daniel Thomas was telling the Ham & High that Barnet was running out of grit.

In most normal organisations, when things go wrong a "crisis management centre" is set up. Everything goes through this. All decisions are made and all information is collated. The Coleman/Thomas contradiction couldn't happen because all key players would know the situation. The fact that Coleman made such a fool of himself is proof that Barnet just is not managing the situation.

Which brings us to the key point. With such awful management, how come our local papers haven't been exposing the fiasco. Surely they should be pointing out that Lynne Hillan hasn't even been in the job a month and she's completely cocked up her first major crisis. Her Deputy, Andrew Harper is just as bad, why didn't he step up to the table? I actually feel a bit sorry for Mayor Brian Coleman. He knows that the new leadership has completely blown it. He knows that any claims of credibility Hillan might have had as a leader have gone, by swanning off and allowing her deputy to do the same. That is just plain bad management, as Coleman has told anyone who will listen.

Why have we seen nothing in the Barnet Times about the lack of leadership? Why have they not highlighted the management drift? What possible reason can there be for ignoring such a fundamental lack of crisis management in the Borough. Lets look at what the Council does. Schools have shut, bins haven't been collected, roads haven't been gritted, potholes have appeared, social services have operated a skeleton service. I could go on. Last year I called the Barnet Times the Barnet Tory Bugle for its tame coverage of the Tory cock ups in Barnet. It seems to me that this title is still more than justified.

Picture at top : Lynne Hillan and Andrew Harper enjoying their holiday (only joking - it seems that action is something these two are incapable of)

Yet another victory for The Barnet Eye !!!!!

Regular readers of this blog will know that I've been running a campaign to expose a perceived pro Tory bias in the Barnet Times. This started when they refused to publish any letters criticising the councils warden cuts on their website. I have highlighted other examples, most recently the terrible coverage of the march through Finchley to protest about warden cuts. The Times printed lengthy quotes from Lynn Hillan, the Tory responsible, but didn't mention who organise the march (Barnet Community Campaign) or get a quote from Vicki Morris. How they could justify such one sided coverage, I don't know. The Guardian's Dave Hill picked up the story and this finally stirred the sleepy old Times into action. Tom Johnson, who to be fair is a good guy and a good journalist, emailed Dave to justify the Times action. He said that it was fair to let Hillan put her side of the story. I'd agree if they'd interviewed Vicki, but they didn't.

As I know the last thing Tom would like to be thought of is a Tory Lackey, I suspect that a little debate was had at the Times. I can't go into details, but it seems that as of yesterday the Barnet Tory Bugle is no more. The Times has reverted to being what it always used to be, a great campaigning paper. Once more they are setting the news agenda. Check their news site for some great stories - not a Tory Bugle in sight anywhere ! Even Dave Hill has recognised the improvement in this story.

I send the Times & Rebecca Lowe hearty congratulations for some great reporting. I am pleased that they have rediscovered their cojones and shoved that great big bugle right back up where the sun doesn't shine ! I had a pint or two to celebrate last night, rather ironically with a mate who is a councillor who has just been the subject of a standards inquiry. No it's not you know who. It's someone from the Wheathampstead Parish Council !

Where's the beef at the Barnet Tory Bugle

Those regular readers of this blog will have read previous posts on the sad demise of the once great local paper, the Edgware & Mill Hill Times and it's stablemates. This fine group of papers has morphed from a great and independent paper, into a mouthpiece for the Barnet Conservative regime running the Town hall. It looks to me as if there is a hotline from the Barnet Tories to the editor, with a seemingly endless stream of "helpful" stories. Rather oddly, stories which may damage them don't seem to surface, or if they do the disappear just as rapidly. Take for example the news that the Tories want to privatise Hendon Cemetary. Does this see the light of day? Well it does if you read VickiM or the Barnet Council Watch blog. Given that it's stuffed full of my nearest & dearest, I feel rather strongly about it. We all remember the Westminster Cemetary scandal. Strangely, no sign of this story on the Bugle's News website.

What do we have? Well there is the story of how Damian McBride could be slung out of the Finchley Labour party for starting rumours about Tories. Clearly this story is highly damaging to Labour and rightly so. There is one tiny problem. I thought journalists were meant to do a bit of digging for their story. I thought they were meant to get a little bit of balance. It seems that these days at the Times, they can't be bothered beyond a quick call to Andrew Dismore. The thing is that if they had bothered to look, they've got a McBride scandal on their doorstep. McBride was sacked as an advisor for thinking of starting a website full of slurs & nasty rumours. Have any of the journalists at the Times looked at what is going on locally? David Miller runs the Barnet council watch website. He is a Conservative, his mother is a Conservative peer. David and his mother have been subject to a coordinated campaign of smears, innuendo & lies, purely because he is in dispute with a faction of the local party.

It is clear to anyone who could be bothered to investigate, what is going on & who is behind the scheme. At it's very mildest, this cyberbullying & intimidation takes the form of planted questions at Council meetings which portray Mr Miller as an obsessive and a waster of public money. This practice has been deemed to have breached Mr Miller's rights, but has there been a public apology to Mr Miller?

I'm all for the McBride's of this world getting booted out of their local parties. The Tories have a great opportunity locally to show Labour how it's done. I'm sure that if the Edgware Times could be bothered to ring Mr Miller, he'd give them all the ammunition they need for a great scoop.