Arms and fists all up in the air again?

Last night was again the Council's AGM, we wouldn't have bothered to write a post as apparently it was very similar to last years. With councillors awarding themselves different jobs which have already been decided in closed door discussions. The Tories and Lib Dems made their usual plea for a more impartial mayor as it is constitutionally supposed to be an unbiased position, and not the former Labour Deputy Whip as the Council administration got.

Like we said we wouldn't normally bother to write about this, as it is about as regular as the tides in the Thames. However at the very end of the meeting we are led to believe that the often outspoken half of the dynamic duo, Cllr Paul Webbewood managed to lose control of his senses again. By all accounts he got up at the end of the meeting, marched over to the Labour front bench and threatened the Labour Councillor and Chair of Licensing Cllr Ray Walker. Why you may ask? Was it because his local watering hole was refused a late license? No, apparently it because Cllr Ray Walker wouldn't let Tory Councillor Eileen Glover be on the licensing committee.

So let's just go over that again, a Lib Dem Councillor tried to get into a fight with a Labour Councillor over the views of a Tory Councillor. An all-party Royal Rumble!

Picking figures from the air

As well as silly motions the Budget was also discussed, but was hardly dissected at the last council meeting on Wednesday.
Here's some things which might have been missed; this budget saw the continuation of last years smash and grab raid on various council services.
In an Oscar like ceremony the leader of the council praised various departments for making tough decisions on "efficiency savings".
This is where we have difficulty with this budget and its from purely philosophical reasons, namely if it is an "efficiently saving" then it really can't be a tough decision, as it is by definition the most efficient, and therefore least troubling way of doing something. If however, the dear leader was to call these by there more common term, namely "cuts", then this would be easier for our simple minds to understand.
One area which will not directly be seeing many cuts will the be grass and hedges of the Council's parks, this is because of the "efficiency savings" which a review, which is yet to take place, has said will be found in the parks and leisure services department. We say will because in many cases that exactly what's planned, a review is to be set up to to find £xxx,xxx worth of savings, but what they don't know is how they will do it, nor do they know what staffing implications there will be. Hardly the most logically way to go about it.
Just warm yourselves knowing that your tax is going up by around 2%. Aren't we lucky!

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?

The Hokey-Cokey Council Meeting

Last night was the Annual General Meeting of the Council. It lasted half an hour. We can't deny we found it highly amusing. The agenda was pretty straightforward. They all just turned up to vote and confirm the different Cabinet positions, committee chairs, etc that were being dished out. In other words, it was the night many were officially confirmed in their stupidly high salary part-time jobs.

Greenwich Unison were outside shouting and protesting about their pay cuts whilst the snouts in the trough munched away on hundred of thousands of pounds worth of "expenses" by show of hands. It was a bit like the hokey-cockey in fact...

"They put their left hand up, their left hand down, up, down, up down, shake it all around. They take the easy money and they spend it quick! Even though inspectors say they're shit!"

We'd like to thank our below minimum wage teenage photocopy boy for coming up with the above jingle.