Thanet District Council and the new Conservative cabinet what went wrong? A bit of a ramble.

I suppose that so much of the comment, interest, whatever you like to call it has been focused on John Worrow, that the main long term problem for any council with no overall majority has to face, hasn’t really been mentioned.

This is how the governing group manages the independents and opposition councillors.

The new Conservative cabinet in Thanet started in an unusual position, in as much as they were poles apart from the old Conservative cabinet of Ezekiel & Co. so they inherited a situation where the previous cabinet, while theoretically on the same side and therefore difficult for them to criticise, was viewed by them as something not very good.

I think the new Conservative group viewed themselves as a group of academics, inhabiting a somewhat higher country of the mind than the geography the rest of us inhabit.

This higher country of the mind is also an area often inhabited by senior local government officers, lets face it if you can’t get job as a captain of industry and you can’t get a job as a senior civil servant in national government, you can’t get a job at county level, well I don’t suppose I have to draw a diagram.

When it comes to dealing with the problems in local government, it is having a very complex set of rules and producing intricate paperwork that fills the bill and ensures you keep your job, the maxim being. Make it long make it complicated make it up if you have to.

With the internet I have caught them out on several occasions and posted about it, they take a very complex document, that probably even they don’t understand and lift it from another council’s website, replacing the word Thanet with the name of the other council.

Now the council cabinet are supposed to represent the people of Thanet, and the officers are supposed to present the information for the decision of the cabinet in a form that ordinary people can understand.

What seems to have happened is that our new intellectual cabinet, we shall call them the collegiate after the fictional character College, the tramp; went of for a tramp through the high country of the mind with the officers. Well this was all fine and dandy, in these ebony towers it isn’t necessary understand what is going on, just that they appear to, until they had to hand out chairs to the independents.  

Well it seems one of the independents didn’t understand the rules here and visibly failed to understand what was probably incomprehensible anyway, to which the collegiate responded along the lines of, you’re just not clever enough to understand the framework.

I had a bit of this sort of nonsense over Pleasurama, I pointed out to the councillors and the officers, that the EA officer with the qualifications in costal engineering, had said that come a big tide and storm, the thousand or so people living in the new development could all be trapped inside.

I said to them, look the only expert who has pronounced on this thing says it needs pedestrian escapes and a risk assessment. I was assured that this didn’t matter as all the proper procedures had been followed, as though this would hold back the sea.

Anyway no one likes to be perceived as stupid, so after a lot of failed smoothing out, this independent voted against the Conservatives. This surprised the others as they had all agreed to vote for them, one did and the other one abstained, well you know the rest.

After this and even more amusing was that the other two Birchington Conservative councillors voted against the Conservatives and with Labour for their free parking. 

How things will go now are a bit hard to say, I think Sandy Ezekiel is up before the beak next week, so how that pans out could effect the Conservative numbers for a while.

With this following the rules thing, the latest laugh is on the sidebar of Thanet life, as I predicted in my previous post the council have put up the new cabinet posts, that they should have put up last Friday today, but as they can’t admit that they forgot to do it on time, it appeared there date stamped Friday.

I suppose the a good example of this is the current tangle over Europe, the eurocrats have built a whole continent based of the expansion of legislation and bureaucracy.   

Now pretty much everyone can see that the countries of Europe managed to rub along by having exchange rates between their currencies.

If the Germans all rushed around being productive, while the Spanish sat outside the taverna and the Spanish economy went a bit pear shaped, the value of the peseta became less so Spanish holidays became cheaper, more people went there on holiday and the Spanish economy improved.

Masses of eurocrats and members from all countries have to do something, usually something expensive, billions were spent on the single currency, and it doesn’t work.

Well the Germans are printing Marks, which seems to be the nearest anyone has come to saying it was just a mistake.

I suppose they could get rid of nearly all of the people involved and go back to a common market, throw all of the European legislation out of the window, I don’t see much chance though.

I find as Europe progressed through this grand dream I have more European friends and one thing they all seem to have in common is a dislike for the great central bureaucracy.

I wonder if there is a way to government at any level, where it common sense that prevails.

Back to the collegiate cabinet and the notion that they had drifted of into some high country of the mind where they thought the complexities of running Thanet requires superior minds and that only they were capable of running our little island.

I suppose the culmination of this was losing the confidence vote in their leader they carried the thing through to what they saw as the logical conclusion and put the same man up for election by the same people who had just voted him out.

Did they I wonder, feel that there was no other Conservative councillor that would get the votes of the independents and the Conservative councillor who had defected. After all the votes of all the other Conservative councillors would be guaranteed pretty much whichever of their number they put up for election.

Perhaps it was just because they really had no plan B, kamikaze perhaps, anyone got any ideas?

I was wondering if this has ever happened before, I mean a politician losing a vote of confidence and then being put up for election again by his party in front of the people who have just voted him down, I can’t find any incidence of this elsewhere historically, can anyone else?

I may ramble on a bit more. 

Thanet District Council, no confidence in the leader and Ramsgate Maritime Museum; tomorrows meeting.

There is a good chance that the that at tomorrows council meeting the leader Bob Bayford won’t be able to get enough votes to remain leader, if this is a case the rules are that the council will then have to elect a new leader immediately. I would say once again there is a good chance that the new leader will be Clive Hart.

The question of course, whatever the result is, what next? However the vote goes it leaves us in the same predicament, a council with an unstable leadership, likely to be turned over at the next meeting.

Essentially the problems revolve around there being no councillor charismatic enough to be a leader who would take all of the councillors with them and sort out some of the serious problems that Thanet has.

I don’t think either the Labour or the Conservative group have grasped the fundamentals of working within a situation where they have no overall majority. I think most councillors see the resolutions in terms of personal gain, handing out posts to independents that carry a good allowance, rather than in terms of actually trying resolve Thanet’s problems.

I think what I would do, if I was in the position of leading either group, would be to start with a list of objectives for the term of the current administration, put those objectives in the public domain, with a challenge to the independents to support them. 

What of course won’t go away is the way the councillors and officers handled the elected leader consultation. Politically the councillors really haven’t got a leg to stand on as both of their parties seem to be supportive of letting the people decide which system of local government they want and both parties at national level seem to be broadly in favour of the elected leader model. From the officer point of view, I would say that the way the consultation was handled falls into the bracket of being so bad that its legality is questionable.

On to the Ramsgate Maritime museum and the question due to be raised at tomorrow’s meeting.

Failure to produce a workable lease has meant that the museum has been mostly closed for the last few years, something that is damaging to Ramsgate’s economy, particularly the café culture near the museum.

I am only trying to guess what is going on here and detect the two underlying stances.

A charitable trust, that wants to take over the museum and I would say they see what they are offering as something highly beneficial both to Ramsgate and TDC.

The council, I think would rather go for an unsustainable quick fix, like the one that Margate Museum has, that would both get local people off their backs and keep their options open should they ever want the building for something else.

I would say that this is partly because of the uncertainties relating to rest of the council owned property nearby; Royal Sands, slipways and Casino (pavillion) building, which could make the clock tower both desirable and valuable and partly because the council have no real plan for the harbour. The main issue here being that the council own all of the harbour and may wish to let the whole thing out to an outside management company, that in tern may fancy this iconic building for themselves, perhaps as offices.

This all means that the council benefits from any delays in assigning the lease to the charitable trust, and because of commercial confidentiality any unreasonableness in the negotiations are hidden, so while all the delays go on and the council don’t appear that good, but they don’t appear that bad either.

Another problem here is that trust that want to take over the museum are very experienced, this of course means that they have come up against pitfalls before, both in terms of grant and event funding, so they will insist on a workable lease, both in terms of what the charity commissioners will accept, what sponsors will accept and what is viable in terms of onsite funding.  

Anyone who has been to The Preston Steam Rally, an event managed by this trust, will understand that they will not settle for something unworkable and very small scale; that will ultimately fail.

There is a sense where councils prefer to work with organisations that are amateur, this always gives the council the upper hand.

My investigations lead me to believe that we have once again reached a point where the differences between what the council are prepared to grant in terms of a lease and what the charitable trust are prepared to accept are very close indeed.

By this I mean that lease agreements could be signed in weeks rather than months or years. However as I said I believe that the council would rather delay things at least until they have published their master plan for the harbour.

Will the question at tomorrow’s council meeting force the council’s hand into taking some positive stance?

"A steady stream of people come to Ramsgate to visit the Maritime Museum and are disappointed to find that it is closed.  What reassurances can Councillor Bayford give the people of Ramsgate that this unacceptable situation is being addressed with any urgency?”

By this I mean, will the council risk losing the contents of the museum, The Sundowner and the Cervia, in order to keep their options open and the plates spinning. They certainly seem to prefer Ramsgate’s public buildings to be both vacant and closed, pretty much all of the ones they own in Ramsgate are. I would imagine this an easier and safer option for the council than seeing them put to some use.

Motion To Remove The Leader Of Thanet District Council

NOTICE OF MOTION – LEADER OF THE COUNCIL To: Council – 8 December 2011 By: Corporate & Regulatory Services Manager and Monitoring Officer Classification: Unrestricted Ward: All Wards

Summary: To consider a Notice of Motion submitted in relation to the Leader of the Council

For Decision

1.0 Introduction and Background

1.1. Council Procedure Rule No. 16 governs the process for motions on notice being submitted to Council.

1. The following motion on notice has been received from Councillor Hart in accordance with that Rule::
2. “Council resolves that Cllr Bayford be removed from the Office of Leader of the Council and that a new Leader be appointed”
1. Options

2.1 To debate the motion

1. Not to debate the motion
2. Corporate Implications

3.1 Financial

3.1.1 None at this stage

3.2 Legal

3.2.1 Council Procedure Rule 16.3 states that, if seconded, a motion on notice will stand referred without discussion to the Cabinet or appropriate Committee for determination or report, unless the Council decides to debate the motion in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 19 (rules of debate). As the Leader can only be removed from office by a resolution of full Council, this means that if Council does not agree to debate the motion, the motion will fall at that point.

3.2.2 If Council agrees to debate the motion and the motion is subsequently carried, Article 7.04 of the Constitution requires Council to proceed to elect a new Leader. The election of a new Leader will be conducted in accordance with the requirements of Council Procedure Rule 21.6 (voting on appointments). Any new Leader would hold office for the unexpired residue of the term of office of the previous Leader, i.e. to the date of the Annual Meeting of Council in 2015, subject to the removal power of full Council.

3.2.3 Article 7.05 provides that upon election, the Leader will appoint a Councillor to the office of Deputy Leader with full power to act in the absence of the Leader. Consequently if a new Leader is elected and does not intend to confirm the continuation in office of the current Deputy Leader, it will be necessary for the new Leader to first remove the current Deputy Leader from office in accordance with the requirements of Article 
7.05. This will conclude all the issues that cannot be postponed to a further meeting of Council or dealt with by the new Leader under executive powers. Council is entitled to be informed at the next ordinary meeting of Council of the final composition of the Cabinet, including the allocation of portfolio responsibilities.

3.3 Corporate 3.3.1 Council Procedure Rule 16 provides the opportunity for Councillors to give advance notice of motions to be put to Council. Article 7 of the Constitution deals with the election and removal from office of the Leader.

Ed. Of course the only real option for Thanet, where we are likely to be looking at years of narrow, or no overall majority councils, is to change from the leadership elected by the councillors – which effectively means chosen by a very few people in both political groups – to the system where we the electorate elect a leader. The council held a public consultation about this and the unanimous result was that local people wanted to elect their own leader. I don’t think the councillors even gave it a thought before deciding to overturn this result and carry on selecting their own leader, from the existing councillors. I have added this link to the LSE recent article on elected mayors as it is pertinent to the comment http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2011/11/29/elected-mayors/

Art Installation Animal Export Protest as The Turner Contemporary Margate gets Rodin’s Kiss.

I couldn't find a picture of Rodin turning up with his sculpture The Kiss so I have done a quick sketch.

I know the repositioning of the hand is an old joke in the art world, I am sorry I couldn’t resist it.


A bit of an overreaction from TDC I thought to about twenty people engaged in a peaceful protest, see http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2011/10/statement-on-live-animal-export-protest.html


I think the leaders comments that it is ok to protest in Ramsgate but not in Margate in case it effects business are open to some unfortunate interpretations. 

Here is some video footage of the protest

King of Thanet Council

Bob Bayford

Having just put up Laura Sandys press release http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2011/05/election-night-glamour-of-democracy.html and read Luke Edwards post http://www.thanetwaves.co.uk/2011/05/bob-bayford-for-pm.html thought I had better not nick his picture so I have run it through a simple piece of hardware, (sorry I don’t do doors) I thought I ought to do another one of my posts on the leadership of the council.

We have recently had an election about the running of the council as some of you may have noticed, however the real choices seem to be going to be made next Thursday at the council.

One thing we are going to get is almost all new senior council officers, including a new chief executive, strangely enough the council don’t seem to have announced who else is replacing who, possibly they don’t think that we are interested.

What’s the phrase, the people of Thanet don’t know they are born, or some such thing. One also wonders how exactly all the new chiefs are selected, I mean do they select each other or are they selected by the representatives that we elected?

Local democracy is one of those peculiar things where the more I find out about it the less I find I understand it, once upon a time I had a rather naïve notion of the local council as being a group of people who we elected by local people to represent them, who then selected a clerk and some people to handle the paperwork and went about the business of running the local area in the way that local people want.

In reality we have three different local councils all responsible for different things with a plethora of incredibly highly paid bureaucrats running a seeming endless number of departments, generating mountains of paper and some how in all this the rubbish gets emptied and if you are very lucky your road gets mended. 

Chances are if you ring up the council and say there is a pothole outside your house, you will be told that you have rung up the wrong council.

In all of this it is quite difficult to see if our elected members make that much difference, or if you as an individual can make any difference at al by contacting one of the elected members and trying to get some democratic representation.

You may for instance phone up your ward councillor and ask them to look into some problem, only to be told that the other political party got elected and won’t tell him or her anything about the issue.

This then leaves your only democratic option as the leader and the other cabinet members, in most cases one would assume the leader to be the obvious choice, particularly when writing to the council.

Like all large organisations, you don’t really expect the leader to reply in person every time, but you do expect to get some sort of reply.

After all what is the elected leadership supposed to be doing, if it isn’t representing the electorate?

Well from my point of view this bloke Bob is very reluctant to reply, despite knowing that in some respects I represent the readers of this blog who I assume are mostly local people.

Now he seems to be saying that he has a mandate to rule based on proportional representation, can this be right?

All the Labour and Conservative councillors working together is an option that sounds good, but I think in practice just means wreak leadership and the council officers pretty much doing what they want, unchecked.

As I have said before this leadership problem is of the council’s own making because of the way they handled the elected leader issue and now we have the situation where three independent councillors hold the balance of power.

Combined with this we have a Conservative group who seem to want to lead in a mainly secretive and exclusive way, they don’t normally issue press releases or communicate their ideas to us.

This leaves us with the perception that either they are not very concerned about local issues or that the situation in the council has got beyond their control and the officers are running rings around them.

Issues that I have looked into here in Ramsgate, like the historic vessels pontoon and the maritime museum suggest a jobsworth rather than common sense approach prevails within the council.

Sticking with the representation issue, the way the election has gone the two main towns are now red, so a Conservative administration would mean no cabinet members living in or representing either of our two main towns. Looking at the state of the towns they do look as though they are being governed by the surrounding villages.

So here we are new strong leader to select, very little constructive public information, something which suggests both the Labour and Conservative groups have gone into different corners.

I wonder if among all of the councillors there is anyone that a substantial majority of councillors would accept as leader, this would be one solution that would give us a strong council.

I wonder if any of the councillors really believe that neither Ramsgate nor Margate should have any cabinet representation.  

Of course the alternative is a leader elected in a a public election by the Thanet Electorate. 

    
Something I am not clear about is what they do if the they can’t make it work, I mean do they just muddle along for four years, or is there some way they can go back to the electorate?

Improvement works to Ramsgate Harbour stops Tall Ships visit

Reading the words of Thanet District Council’s leader today, see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/news/latest_press_releases/race_of_the_classics.aspx?lang=en-gb if you don’t believe this is actually on the council’s website, you may find is reminiscent of newspeak.

Leader of the council, Cllr. Bob Bayford, said: “It’s a great shame that we won’t be able to accommodate the Race of the Classics this year, but the improvement work to the harbour is a priority and something that we know people want to see completed. We understand that people may be disappointed to hear this news, but the long term future of the harbour is the most important thing for us. We look forward to welcoming the tall ships and the Race of the Classics back to an improved Ramsgate Royal Harbour in 2012.”

The picture above was taken today, sorry it’s a bit gloomy it was like that today. There was me assuming that the reason that the tall ships wouldn’t be coming because they couldn’t actually enter the harbour because the sandbar blocking the entrance is the largest we have ever had.

I know I am probably considered an unperson, but this looks like duckspeak although I know I should bellyfeel it to be blackwhite.

Update I have just discussed this with a senior member of the Politbüro, who would prefer not to be named, this is what the said.

“We must think or this as considerable progress, you must remember the terrible problem of Sandy’s Beach has been completely resolved by the new Bob’s Breakwater.

A beach inside a harbour is quite unsuitable whereas a breakwater is quite appropriate to a harbour situation.”