Snouts in the Trough exposed!

What an interesting thing we listened to this morning on BBC London. The Vanessa Feltz show had not only the Glorious Leader, Chris Roberts, on it, but also the leader of the Tories Spencer Drury. We can't deny we feel slightly responsible for it, after all, the Daily Mail did run a story story today with the headline "Council spends £95,000 on luxury box at new Dome".

The Glorious Leader was on the radio charging the Tories with hypocrisy saying that they themselves had taken free tickets for the Dome. Later on at the end of the show the Tory Leader Spencer Drury said he had turned the offer of tickets down as it would be hypocritical. So who was it taking the tickets?

It appears it was the Tory Culture spokesman, Nigel Fletcher. The councillor had accepted the tickets after opposing spending the money on the box. A tad hypocritical no? We did enjoy the defence he posted on his blog a few hours ago, basically it's a load of crap. Apparently he only took the tickets in order "to see at first hand who these [community] groups were" that the Council said would benefit from the tickets. If that's the case why wait until you got mentioned on radio before saying anything?

Putting the Tory culture spokesman's hypocrisy aside for a moment though, we did enjoy hearing the Glorious Leader telling Vanessa that he wasn't going along to see Bon Jovi anyway and so was "clean". If that's true, why is he - as Nigel Fletcher points out - on the guest list along with Councillor John Fahy and the Deputy Leader Peter Brooks?

Could it be, just maybe, that on Friday night he was going, and mysteriously something that happened on Saturday made him suddenly decide he wasn't? After all, Councillor Fletcher would still be going too if the story hadn't broken. They're all guilty of having their snouts in the trough, and they're "livin' on a prayer" if they think they're not.

Olympic Borough's actively support sport, right?

One of the more lively events in the 3½ hour spectator sport that is Greenwich Council's Politburo democracy, is the ability of the public to talk about petition items. January's council meeting was a master course in this, with a number of petitioners taking up the chance to talk.

One group - which was desperately trying to get their local sports field brought back into a working condition - ended up holding up copies of Greenwich Time, which had the headline "It's good to be listened to!" whilst simultaneously shouting "liar!" when Cllr Fahy was speaking (it brought such a smile to our face).

However, even with public there, the administration seemed to be far more keen to move a primary school onto the site. Who cares about the views of local residents when you have brass necked arrogance on your side?

Tory Councillor, Andy Jennings, who was supporting the petition, asked why, if we're an Olympic Borough, we have amongst the worst sporting participation rates in the country, which is no doubt linked to the lack of interest the Council shows in maintaining sports grounds.

We wonder this too. Could it be that the council wants to sell the old primary school site off and make a fast buck?