Last Monday I achieved a small success.
It was the occasion of the Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Council’s Joint Audit & Standards Committee discussion on the Mid Year Report of Treasury Management 2014/2015.
Normally these meetings are a gentle breeze through the agenda merely noting what has happened and making the odd recommendation – all written and suggested by the officers.
Except that the recommendations included allowing deposits in banks and other organisations whose credit rating was BBB+. Additionally although recent regulatory changes approved by the European Parliament changed the eligibility of certain deposits (for compensation), public sector and financial organisations, remain ineligible for compensation. Anyone responsible for money management knows that in times of difficulty you chase security over yield – and I wasn’t going to let the investment profile move southwards.
Fortunately my view prevailed and the proposal to use BBB+ counterparties was withdrawn.
Which makes one ask, why it was suggested in the first place?
Month: November 2014
Budapest Cafe Orchestra
Yesterday we went to the Apex in Bury St Edmunds to see the Budapest Cafe Orchestra. (http://www.budapestcafeorchestra.co.uk/review.shtml) We were expecting something authentically ethnic but instead their leader hailed from Haringey and the team came from all over the U.K.
Fortunately the orchestra did not take themselves seriously and describe themselves as “the finest purveyors of Balkan music this side of a Lada scrap heap”.
To quote their web site: The BCO is a music-driven phenomenon, a specialist performance-entertainment outfit, certified to enthral audiences everywhere. The infectious energy of the BCO sweeps you off your feet and stays in your heart forever. One journeys from one emotional pole to another: from a desperately tragic evocative heart-rending ancient Jewish melody to a dance from Romania or Russia and all the fiery exuberance that goes with it.
The Budapest Cafe Orchestra share as many blood cells with the folk of Hungary as the Penguin Cafe Orchestra do with the web-footed fellows of Antarctica. Their Magic Potion is a closely guarded recipe of malt, hops, yeast and water, handed down in the secret tongue of Estuary English through generations of Professional Gypsies. With a sole mission: to entertain and enchant audiences, they are undaunted by even the most demanding and wildest village hall crowds, for example those inhabiting the darkest corners of Warwickshire.
We dined at Carluccio’s before the show and it was overall a very good night out.
A Cynic Writes
Bill Bonner in The Daily Reckoning on Wednesday wrote that the American voters w”ere busy at the polls… participating in the solemn fantasy of modern democratic government. Approximately 60% of people who were eligible to vote stayed away from the polling stations. Among young people, 18-29, the total was even higher, about 75%. The rest wasted their time standing in line and giving their ballots to the usual grifters, panderers and earnest nincompoops who fill public offices.
One of them, Michael Grimm of Staten Island, had a commanding lead when last we looked. Representing New York’s 11th Congressional District, the local paper says he is ‘hot headed’ and ‘distasteful’. It claimed he was making Staten Island the “laughing stock of the nation” after he was indicted on 20 counts of mail fraud, tax fraud, and perjury. In April, he threatened to throw a reporter off the balcony of the Capitol building. Perhaps the reporter had it coming; we don’t know. But we understand the voters who cast their lot with Grimm; at least they have no doubt what they are getting – exactly what they deserve. But the problem with political jokes, as Henry Cate observed, is that they get elected. And then, we all have to live with them”.
* I don’t classify myself as a grifter, panderer or a nincompoop who fills a public office but this is an apt description for some.
Old Models – Poor Directions
Yesterday’s E.A.D.T., published the following letter:
New council H.Q. in Hadleigh will achieve the most savings
It’s all very well for the Leader of Babergh District Council to say that it is unlikely for Babergh’s and Mid Suffolk’s headquarters to be based in Hadleigh (EADT 25th October) – but this is precisely the direction indicated by the consultant’s report. Locating the main activities in Hadleigh and disposing of surplus sites and space will achieve a 50% reduction in costs. Relocating activities to the County’s building in Ipswich will achieve savings between 11% and 13%. Putting a new hub in the Ipswich fringe will only yield a 32% saving. The hub and spokes business and governance model is seductively simple but only suitable for banks, building societies and estate agents. It is recipe for senior management to distance themselves from the reality of the everyday lives in the areas they are supposed to be managing and directing. This is not a desirable way forward. Instead, both councils should focus on how value for money can be delivered to the residents because if monies are not spent wisely council taxes will rise.
Yours faithfully,
Brian Riley
District Councillor – Hadleigh North
County Councillor – Hadleigh
So far reaction has been favourable
Tower Hamlets
The Spectator’s Coffee House Evening Blend reports that Tower Hamlets was “a council ruled by a ‘medieval monarch’ that was ‘riddled with cronyism and corruption’. That was how Eric Pickles’ described the local authority ruled by Tower Hamlets’ First’s Lutfur Rahman. The Communities Secretary sent in three commissioners to take over the authority after a report by accountancy firm PwC found contracts were awarded without the appropriate paperwork and Rahman picked preferred companies. It said Tower Hamlets’ ‘current governance arrangements do not appear to be capable of preventing or responding appropriately to failures of the best value duty of the kind we have identified’. This is Pickles’ first intervention in a council since he sent commissioners to monitor Doncaster in 2010. His statement in the Commons today drew support from Labour, who are calling for Rahman to resign as Mayor. His way of governing and the rotten borough practices of the council leave him with no friends in other parties
http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=b7034b6517cfdcc8d4d4e60e9&id=19fa52a048&e=725a6d17bb
In the Trough!
Guido Fawkes writing in the Sun on Sunday highlights the perils of being in the public eye and making political statements. His focus was on Harriet Harman (deputy Leader of the Labour Party) who wore a T-shirt bearing the message “This is What a feminist Looks Like” from the upmarket High Street chain Whistles.
This T-Shirt retails at £45 and the workers who produce the T-shirts are paid £0.62 per hour. Even for Mauritius these wages rates are sub-optimal. Whistles also has the same design on a clutch bag at £55, a sweatshirt for £85 and an iPhone cover for £30.
Advertising like this by political leaders (including David Miliband and Nick Clegg) could not be bought.
Profits from the T-shirt sales were to go to the Fawcett Society. And to be fair the Fawcett Society were assured that the garments would be produced ethically here in the UK.
So what we have here are politicians making a point, retailing manufacturers enjoying pork on pig and an ethical society with egg on its face.
All in all a sad day for community involvement and a good day for cronyism and poor judgment.
As the saying goes – if you think education is expensive – try ignorance!
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