Thursday 7 May 2009

Head honchos at TDC and Pleasurama crunch day

With Sandy Ezekiel re-elected as leader of the council I feel some comment is due here, firstly I have to say that he has generally treated me with courtesy and usually answers my emails.

Confidential communications from conservative councillors would suggest that they are unsurprised and split about 50 50 over the decision.

However talent in government in Thanet is limited and at the moment we are faced with the choice of governance that is ether a Labour of Conservative cabinet made up of councillors in safe seats, and the irony that the cabinet selects the leader and the leader selects the cabinet.

It begs the question is this in the spirit of democracy?

The only solution that I can see here is a leader of the council elected by the people of Thanet who would be able to use the best of the talent from all political persuasions.

We are able to do this now by petitioning for election of a political mayor, not to be confused with the existing ceremonial mayors, who would lead the council and select councillors for appropriate briefs.

Next I have been tying to find out exactly ho much pay senior council officers really get, this is not an easy task.

I now have the following information, which may be of some help untangling the puzzle.

9. REMUNERATION OF EMPLOYEES

2006/07
Number of Staff followed by Remuneration Band Number
10 £50,000 – 60,000
9 £60,001 – 70,000
- £70,001 – 80,000
3 £80,001 – 90,000
- £90,001 – 100,000
1 £100,001 – 110,000
- £110,001 – 170,000
1 £170,001 – 180,000


The table above shows the number of employees whose remuneration exceeded £50,000. Remuneration is defined as the amounts paid to or receivable by an employee, and includes sums due by way of expenses allowance and the estimated money value of any other benefits received by an employee other than cash. Employee pension contributions are now included here, so the figures for 2006/07 have been restated to reflect this.

Finally Pleasurama decision day the irony here is that I am only hoping for a decision that ensures we get a development that hasn’t the potential to kill or injure its inhabitants. In most towns one would expect local government to also insist that a development in a prime site in between a building of international architectural significance and adjacent to our Royal Harbour should be of some architectural merit.

The picture is of wave overtopping on the eastern undercliff once again nothing special about it as it’s a regular occurrence.

The last of the ordinary spring tide and moderate sea videos shows that our harbour is capable of providing humorous entertainment as well.



12 comments:

  1. do we know who actually stood for the leadership and what the votes were ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. 13.50 I am not sure of this information and someone better informed may comment more accurately but my understanding is Bill Hayton and Sandy Ezekiel and a vote by an unrecorded show of hands with the great majority for Sandy and Bill angry that people who had said they would support him not doing so.

    A bit of a case of seeing the way things were going and picking the winning side perhaps.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A show of hands I bet the result would have been different if it was a secret ballot. Trade Unions elect leaders and reps by secret ballot and so does the Labour party so why are Thanet Conservatives different.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tony I am only guessing that it would have been a show of hands as that’s the way that it’s done at council meetings. The council chamber has electronic voting equipment installed at our expense but Conservative councillors claimed to be unable to use it, I believe a lot of council decisions would be different with secret voting. It must be very convenient for those at the top to be able to see who supports them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Tony et al it seems that I was completely wrong the challenges were from Jo Gideon and Chris Wells and the ballot was secret.

    ReplyDelete
  6. There is also a rumour that Jo Gideon has been sacked from her role in the cabinet but I stress that I could be entirely wrong about this too.

    ReplyDelete
  7. May be a lot of councillors who will get new fitted carpets in the near future?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Michael,
    The cabinet do not elect the Leader, The Ruling Group do, and this is endorsed by full Council.

    Not perfect but better than the election of someone known by only their media profile

    ReplyDelete
  9. What will happen, Ken, if Full Council does not endorse?

    ReplyDelete
  10. What happens if the disaffected Tories decided to join forces at Full Council with the opposition, as they can do?

    ReplyDelete
  11. What was the outcome of the secret cabinet debate on the Royal Sands debacle, Michael?

    ReplyDelete
  12. deferral of course (not the leadership) but Sleazarama that is?

    I and many others suspect a legal challenge will ensue, shortly?

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.