So why did we buy the suite then?

Some of our councillors in Greenwich are very good at sending email out to their electorate to "keep in touch", or as we like to say "make it look like you're doing something for the freebie salary". One such representative is the councillor for Peninsula Ward, Mary Mills.

Councillor Mills sends out her mailing and always says that her fellow ward councillors, Dick Quibell and the Glorious Leader want to be "associated" with her words. Her latest newsletter says

A number of people have asked me if I can get them tickets for events at the Dome. The answer is absolutely no the ONLY access I have to tickets is to get them by paying full price plus commission from commercial ticket agencies.

Oh really? So what was the Corporate Suite bought for then? Expensive upper-class storage space? Seriously, it beggars belief that Cllr Mills, and her colleagues, including Chris Roberts, could claim that tickets are not available any other way than through a ticket agency when they have publicly said that the suite was bought to give free tickets to "community groups" and rewards for long service.

Basically, we're being told on the one hand that the £95,000 spent on the suite for the year is money well spent and will provide access to events for people for free, and then in the next breath they're saying it won't?

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.

Labour councillors rebel against leadership over O2

Readers may recall last week that we mentioned the Council's plan to spend nearly £100,000 of their budget on a corporate suite at the O2. At the beginning of this week you'll all be delighted to hear that it was waved through at the Cabinet Committee in a meeting that lasted less than half an hour.

But wait, what is this we hear? Are the minions of the Council leadership rebelling? Last night it seems that three Labour councillors decided to "call in" the decision of their Cabinet masters. They wanted the Overview and Scrutiny Committee to check the decision.

Councillors Mick Hayes, Janet Gillman and Danny Thorpe are the rebels, but why are they doing it you may ask? It seems they feel that the decision should not have been waved through by the Cabinet and they want to have a say on it too. What they will say will says remain unknown and will be interesting to watch.

Might it be that the sub-text will be "we'll let you have this if we can have cheap concert tickets too?" One thing we have learned is the Council is thinking of making money from the suite by selling the available tickets it has in the box - we believe this is alternatively called "diversifying into ticket touting" (isn't that illegal - Ed?)

Update: Should anyone be wondering, the "rebellion" last about 20 minutes and the rebels basically said, "we just wanted to look at the proposal too, carry on"

Council to buy corporate suite at O2?

What's this we've spotted in some of the papers just printed by the Council for next weeks agenda? A discussion about whether the Council should spend just shy of £100,000 a year on a plush corporate suite in the O2 overlooking the flashy new arena?

We think we may have to join some community groups so we can get tickets.

Fancy going to a Charlton match?

The other day we highlighted the tale of the Red Bull Race tickets that was originally posted by Charlton Average. Since then we've had an email tip off suggesting that free tickets for things are quite common in the Council.

According to a mole, the Council offices often receive free tickets for Charlton Athletic Football matches in the post. Apparently the presumed intention is to give them out to the likes of old peoples homes, children's home and other worthy "community groups".

However, our mole suggests that the tickets usually disappear quite quickly, and we must admit that we've never seen the Council boasting about how its treated the more unfortunate in the Borough to a nice day out at the Valley to watch Premiership football (Championship now shurely?). We're now left wondering where the tickets might go?

This is of course little more than scurrilous gossip, and we have no evidence that its even remotely true, but we're sure a few inquiries under the Freedom of Information Act would be able to find out if it was. We would do it ourselves but we'd have to give them the address of the office.

Which "community groups"?

There are a growing number of blogs in the Greenwich area these days, and one of them is called Charlton Average. Like our esteemed organ it is an entirely anonymous site and is not afraid to ask some awkward questions about things which go on in the Borough. Yesterday they made a very astute observation about the forthcoming Red Bull Air Race which will be occurring over the Greenwich Peninsula.

According to Red Bull, they have allocated a number of free tickets for local residents in the three boroughs involved, and have asked the local Councils to distribute them. On the other side of the river, Newham and Tower Hamlets have decided to have a lottery with their allocation, but Greenwich has not.

In fact, Greenwich haven't even made a big deal of the event in their in-house propaganda newspaper Greenwich Time which is so unlike them. What they didn't plan on it seems was Red Bull giving out the direct line to Pravda-Central in the Council Offices and telling people to call Michele Ingram and apply for tickets.

Sadly Michelle's phone doesn't get picked up by a person anymore and is on permanent answerphone with a message indicating that tickets are being given to "community groups" in the first instance before the "general public". Conveniently they don't say what these community groups are.

Time to make a few phone calls. If anyone knows what's going on with the tickets and feel the need to share the news discreetly, you know what to do.