99% is ....... The Barnet Eye: Councillor Jack Cohen

Showing posts with label Councillor Jack Cohen. Show all posts

Thursday, 5 March 2015

Barnet Labour betrays us all in Council chamber

Last night saw a new low in Barnet Town Hall politics. Tuesday was the night when Barnet Labour lost any fig leaf to protect its reputation. The council debated the budget for the coming year. The Labour group failed to propose an alternative budget. Whilst this blog has taken issue with many of the initiatives prooposed by Barnet Tory Leader Richard Cornelius, the sad truth is that if Barnet Labour, lead by discredited leader Alison Moore, cannot even get its act together to propose and alternative, then Mr Cornelius wins by default.

The Barnet Eye lead the way in blogging in Barnet. This was the first blog to video the council. We forced Barnet Council to reverse its unconstitutional ban on filming town hall debates. We regularly attended debates and reported on the events. We have been unofficially boycotting the Town Hall since the last council election in protest at the lack of effectiveness of the Labour Group. We cannot justify giving up valuable drinking time to report on council debates where the opposition are so useless that they cannot muster a coherant position to oppose the Tory administration.

The local paper reports on the chaos in Labour here - http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/11833705.Council_leader_slams_Labour_for_failing_to_put_forward_alternative_budget/

The Barnet Eye has not given up on the people of Barnet, but we have completely given up on Barnet Labour group. Until such time as the local Labour Group actually have some policies and a leader who is capable of making a coherant case, we have no choice but to accept that any sensible opposition to the policies of the administration will not be provided by the Labour group in the council. Given that the only other opposition voice is the lone Lib Dem Jack Cohen, who Labour did everything possibe to unseat in the last Council election, delivering two seats to the Tories and losing the council as a result, there really is no debate to listen to. If Labour councillors, who are paid a minimum of £10,000 a year to oppose administration policies, cannot come up with sensible alternatives, then there is no point in giving them any support.

The sad truth is that the sole Lib Dem, Jack Cohen, is the only person with anything sensible to say about the Tories policies. With over three years until the next Council election, it seems like Richard Cornelius, the Tory Leader can sleep easy, in the knowledge that the only threat to his power, are the whippersnappers in his own party, who think they are a tad more talented than their behaviour suggests,

None of this means that the Barnet Eye blog has given up in our mission to make Barnet a better place. It purely means that until either the Labour party gets it act together or a sane alternative emerges, there is no point opposing the polices of this administration in anything other than a personal manner. To pretend Labour would be better is would be dishonest. They clearly haven't got a clue

Friday, 9 November 2012

Barnet Question time - The full story

Last night at the Greek Cypriot Centre in Brittania Road, the leaders of the three political groups on Barnet Council held "Barnet Question Time" or #BarnetQT as the Twitter #Hashtag called it. Along with Richard Cornelius, Alison Moore and Jack Cohen, we had APSE consultant Andy Mudd as an expert and the meeting was chaired by BAPS member Barbara Horn-Jacobson. The hall was completely packed to standing and the audience comprised all manner of people. The event has also been videod for posterity and I do hope anyone who is interested has a look at these. My role was to provide a sound system and act as MC. I didn't participate in the debate, save for one short point, but made the safety announcements and carried the mic around. I was trying to think how best to summarise the night, and decided that rather than try and put my spin on it, I'd just print all of the tweets with the #Barnetqt tag. These give a very democratic flavour of what happened. Of course you can check these yourself on twitter. They have various links etc and I'd suggest you start at the bottom and read up. I will say this. Jack Cohen stated that this was the most well attended public meeting for 20 years. He recalled how when residents area forums had a proper format, hundreds of people would attend, to sort out their community. I do hope that the Tories who were present take on board the fact that local people are interested.

I was very surprised that no Tories tried to argue the case. It was interesting to see that Brian Coleman turned up. The comedy moment of the night was watching Helen Michael arrive and make a B-line for the spare chair next to Coleman only to realise who she'd be sitting next to. She made a swift retreat and sat at the other side of the hall. Sadly Brian did not enlighten us as to his views on One Barnet.

The other item of note was the film crew from the Guardian. If nothing else, they are now aware that the opposition in Barnet to the One Barnet project is not just "5 stroppy bloggers and the Unions" as Deputy Leader of the Council Daniel Thomas had told them.

‏@__Revel

@ReasonableNB @Vickim57 #barnetqt One Barnet Question Time - Richard Cornelius http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHUTp3pJQgw … …

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A little tool to help you defeat the invisible men

I've added an IP address lookup tool. If you get an email or you have a stats counter on your blog, you can see who it is and where they came from using this. If you've got an email from someone, view the email. Click on File, then click on properties, then click on details. Now click on message source

You will see some text as follows :-
X-Originating-IP: [1.2.3.4]

Where I've put 1.2.3.4, cut and paste this number into the IP lookup and hey presto, you know where the email came from.

If it says it's from your bank, but the IP address is Freds chipshop, you know it's a scam.