Public Announcement

Contrary to emails that may have been received by our readers from the Leader of the Council, we would just like to confirm that we are not dead. We considered it for a while, and we even dug our own grave and grew huge muscles as a result, but we have now decided that death is worse than... well... it's worth than death.

The good news is that our wives/husbands are not dead either. Nor are they even close to death. Were it the case though, we wouldn't kill them off by getting our work experience boy to post about it because we're not incompetent idiots.

Is it all about AA?

There is something very strange going on at the Council this month. They're having a full Council meeting just four weeks since the last one. We've been thinking that it was almost democratic but then we read the agenda and found ourselves in a corner of the office giggling like a pretty schoolgirl in pigtails.

The thing that made us giggle was a motion tabled by the councillor for Thamesmead, Jackie Smith, which essentially blames the Tory opposition for the failures in the local education results. We think it's worth saying here that the Tories have not been in power in Greenwich for well over the 30 years, so the idea that they could be to blame for anything in the Borough takes idiocy to a new level.

Jackie, we tip our hat to your idiocy and brass neck lunacy. Nay, we not only think you're an idiot, we think you're about as intelligent as an ameoba with Down Syndrome. We've decided to coin such stupidty as "idiot-plus-plus-good". Should our dear readers be wondering what the details of the motion are it goes like this.

Apparently, the Tories have not supported the "Achievement Agenda" in education and thus when Greenwich went from somewhere in the region of 20th from bottom, to bottom, it was all the fault of the Tory councillors that number barely more than ten in a council of over 50.

We have another theory about the motion though. It's not just about pointless party politics that no one cares about (as no normal people read or pay attention to the politics going on in Greenwich really). Putting aside the fact that so many cannot read because they were educated here, we couldn't help but notice that the acronym of "Achievement Agenda" is "AA".

Could it be that Councillor Smith was making an unprovoked, unprecendented, and decidely sneaky attack on one of her fellow councillors, and the possible issues they may or may not have with the bottle and the bottom of a glass? We couldn't possibly comment of course.

The definition of competent?

Knowing if someone is still alive or if they sadly are no longer with us, that would be a pretty definitive test as to if an organisation is competent or not?

Following on from an email conversation that we’ve just been forwarded it would appear that in that case Greenwich Council have failed this test, as a message was sent out to large number of people informing them that sadly someone had recently passed away, after a few hours a second message was sent out to say that in fact they had not passed away.

Following on from this, the Lib Dem Leader asked for an explanation, Cllr Chris Roberts then weighed in to say that “mistakes can be made” but “the matter is now closed” without an explanation. John Austin MP for Eirth and Thamesmead, replayed to say that an explanation should be given. Cllr Chris Roberts still has not given an explanation but has at least, but perhaps for the first time said, that any blame is his.

If anyone has any more details on how this mistake happened then do share. However we will not be naming the poor individual directly affected by this, as given this momentous mistake they have already suffered enough. We do feel however that those responsible for such a mistake should at least come clean as to how it happened.

More well timed consultation

Consultation; its something that local government has to do, but let's face it, they don't really want to do it. After all, it would only let the pesky public get a look at what little plans they have for us all. So how do you carry out the consultation that you have to do, but with the minimum of possibility for the public to chip in and spoil the council's plans?

Well its all about timing, we've covered how a well timed Compulsory Purchase Order can reduce the public outcry at the loss of local facilities or businesses and this recent example seems to be from the same play book.

The "Schools administration consultation" which appears to have just started is another example of this, now that the rush for schools places is over they decided to start the consultation, knowing that people aren't going to be looking at this stuff again for a while. On top of that a quick Google link search seems to show that the webpage this consultation document was located isn't actually linked to anything. So it is going on, its just that they don't want you to find it.

Some answers on "Green, Blue, Black"

After finally getting our hands on the members questions from last months Council meeting it would like there were only 7,162 properties which did not have there bins emptied because they contained the wrong sort of rubbish in them. But that's not all, as there were also "2,000 green bins, 600 black bags and 400 nappies not collected in error." So at least now we know. These figures were just for the first week of the new rubbish collection plans. So who knows what it is up to now.

If anyone had problems getting though to Cleansweep to complain about the uncollected nappies smelling we the reason would be that there were over 20,665 calls to Cleansweep in January, Decembers was 7,306 for the whole month. So it looks like they were busy.

From what we've heard the only only thing of interest was the presentation by the NHS of the new service (cuts), that are being made to the hospitals that Greenwich people use.

Apparently the only thing of amusement was the Dynamic Duo attempting to justify the motion about nappies, or should that be motions in nappies? Either way one of the Councillors apparently asked them if they would like to collect their child's used nappies, as a sort of Lib Dem trial, to show everyone how it would work, before the Council took a proper decision on it. Well perhaps they wouldn't leave 400 nappy bags uncollected?

Stuck in Thamesmead?

We've often covered Thamesmead and now it looks like a few other heads are starting to look at it, one of them being the BBC's Panorama show, which last night looked into the housing developments in the area which have lead to some residents finding themselves in negative equity as well as concentrating on the anti social behavior problems which residents have found.

The show can be seen on the BBC's iplayer for another week, with the Thamesmead section being about 15 minutes into the show.