One Barnet - Billion Pound Gamble? You bet!

The Ham&High newspaper have an article today called 'One Barnet - a Billion Pound Gamble?'.

They attended the premiere on Monday night of Charles Honderick and Roger Tichbourne's new film 'Barnet - The Billion Pound Gamble' (which is very good, by the way - list of free, local screenings here).

It's good that they've written such an article, trying to explain One Barnet in some detail. But it's actually pretty limited and gives Barnet Council far too much of the benefit of the doubt.

There are also some plain errors in it.

I have posted a long comment - they haven't approved it yet, perhaps they're combing through it for accuracy/libel, etc. I actually think they should give Barnet Alliance a chance to respond in their pages. I'll ask them for it!

My comment is below. It's a comment on the bottom of an article posted on a website, so it's not 'fully rounded', but I think it's useful.

Thank you for covering One Barnet in some detail. There are a few corrections I would like to make.

One Barnet did not start life in 2010, but earlier. I think it was mooted around 2007, and started going through the council committees in late 2008. When it began life it was 'Future Shape'. The national spending review in 2010 only gave the council a new propaganda reason to say it was necessary.

For sure the council say it will be done to save money. But will it? Many large-scale outsourcings have gone wrong and ended up costing money, eg, BT in Liverpool. Cornwall Council - led by the Conservatives - this week voted to pull back from a large outsourcing project. There are numerous more examples. It IS a big gamble, and while we might gain - might - we also lose a lot of control and accountability

Moreover, the One Barnet umbrella doesn't just include three big and one small outsourcing contracts (two large contract negotiations are far advanced; a large street scene contract will follow soon; parking has recently been outsourced to NSL with a severe drop in the quality of the service).

One Barnet also includes such things as: service reductions (cuts); 'efficiencies'; raising charges for some services (this really DOES fit with the easyCouncil model) including adult social care and parking for residents living in CPZs - currently being fought by residents through the courts. So a lot of the 'savings' are really just cuts!

One Barnet is also highly ideological: a lot of the savings they hope to be made are through fostering 'a different relationship with citizens' - and this boils down to getting us to do more things for ourselves. OK for some; on the whole, not OK. Services in Barnet are hardly extravagant at the moment, and generally people really need the services they use.

There is also a simple belief by the Conservative administration that private sector is best; it is often demonstrably not so. We are also worried about the lobbying role that the outsourcing companies have conducted on senior council officers who then prevail on councillors (who frankly know shockingly little about One Barnet) to go along with privatisation. BT, one of the bidders for the £750m NSCSO contract, had a man seconded to Barnet Council for a long period, for example.

Am I going on a bit? I'm sorry, but there is so much detail that people need to know more about in order to see why we are worried, and why we are working so hard to oppose One Barnet. People can read more on the Barnet Alliance website: http://barnetalliance.org/

I think the final thing I would want to take issue with is Cllr Thomas's claim that the administration has a mandate for One Barnet. In no sense was the policy 'out there'. The Conservatives' manifesto in 2010 had 3 points: council tax freeze; weekly bin collection (whoopee!); we won't allow building on the green belt.

That's it! They have repeatedly said they don't think residents care about how their services are delivered - but never thought to ask them. We are finding as we tell residents about One Barnet that they do care, and that they oppose the programme.

Vicki Morris
Barnet Alliance for Public Services publicity officer

The guinea pig is still alive... but for how much longer?

I started this blog in 2008 as a diary of the campaign against Barnet council's privatisation plan "One Barnet".

In 2008 "One Barnet" was called "Future Shape", as in "the future shape of the council". Naturally, people made lots of puns about "pear shaped", as in "it's all gone pear shaped".

For a while the privatisation plan was known - at least in the national news media - as easyCouncil, a phrase adopted with some bravado by Mike Freer (now an MP, then leader of the council).

I added a small picture of a guinea pig to the sidebar of my blog, to show that what the council were trying to do in Barnet was an experiment, and one that could be very dangerous to the subject.

Each year I have added an apt quotation about Future Shape/easyCouncil/One Barnet to convey the risk involved.

I had been wondering what to use for this year's (!) quotation but the recent damning APSE report (see here) provides more than enough chilling examples.

So, to remind us where we've been and where, alas, we might still be headed, here are the quotations from the years, finishing up with the quotation for this year. None of this is anything but dismaying:

"This model has a sound theoretical basis... [sic] However it is unproven at this scale." Future Shape cabinet report, 3 December 2008

"Nobody has said this is going to be easy, it's a work in progress, some of it will never see the light of day." Barnet council leader Mike Freer, 16 November 2009

"I do not believe Soviet bureaucratic initiatives like One Public Sector, Labour’s Total Place (and Barnet’s Future Shape / Easy Council) ideas are... the way forward." Barnet councillor Mark Shooter, 4 September 2010

“There are... many examples of long-term partnerships where the commitment and enthusiasm of the provider has waned over the duration of the contract. Major... organisations will generally resource extensively during the first year, or two, of a new contract but this level of resourcing diminishes as the contract moves to a more stable business as usual position.” One Barnet Procurement Principles, 1 March 2011

"...there can be little confidence that Barnet has the capability, and perhaps more worryingly the culture, necessary to meet the challenge posed by the letting and management of contracts that, under the One Barnet plan, will be far bigger than anything the Council has previously dealt with. The risk of implementing a strategy based almost entirely on contracting out is high and can only be magnified by the reduction in client capacity envisaged in the commissioning model. A reasonable council would take account of this and if it is unable to take the necessary steps to increase confidence in its procurement and contract management, could only conclude that moving forward to an unprecedented level of outsourcing would be reckless to the point of being unlawful." 'London Borough of Barnet: Procurement and Contract Management', Association for Public Service Excellence, March 2012

Charging headlong into the Barnet call centre

The what? The Barnet call centre. Part of the Future Shape plan for Barnet council involves setting up a Customer Service Organisation (CSO) aka call centre. Yes, they kept quiet about that one, didn't they?!

Anyway, there are problems in the plans so far made to set up the Barnet CSO. These are revealed in a paper Rog T has got hold of and posted on his new Barnet leaks blog. The paper is an expert overview of the plans to move to set up a CSO through which Barnet residents would access services (as opposed to F2F - face to face - access). It is clear that Barnet council would like us to move to doing far more things over the phone and online.

The paper is pretty involved stuff, but will reward study. Actually, it is political dynamite. Two quick things that jump out at me. First is the warning from the expert that outsourcing revenues and benefits - yes, they want to do that - has not worked well when it has been tried in the past in London.

Second is a loud echo of the warning made in the recent Grant Thornton audit of Future Shape. In this document we find:

From a purist point of view, I can't help noticing [!] there is no business case, a rudimentary project plan only, resourcing needs are not fully identified, the target operating model is emergent, benefits are expressed as trends rather than quanitifed, etc. ...Barnet may well feel this formal sketchiness is justified in the context of the change model it has adopted, of setting a strong direction, injecting pace, levering others' experience and expertise, filling in the legacy information gaps as you go, etc. The style has huge advantages, but some distinct risks for you to manage, notably in expectations.

Christ! Sorry for the expostulation, but when the Future Shape process was started back in 2008 I posted a small picture of a guinea pig at the side of my blog. She's there still, and it sounds like, two years on, we are still in total guinea pig territory.

By the way, I don't think that the vast bulk of residents actually want their interactions with Barnet council to be through a CSO. But that doesn't figure in anyone's calculations, it seems.

P.S. I've reached the end of the document and I absolutely love the final paragraph:

6.8 Don't forget the Equalities Impact Assessment. When the council takes a formal decision it needs to be able to demonstrate that it has taken relevant issues into account, and this is one of them.

Yes, sound advice, whoever you are that wrote this. Barnet got caught with that one before, ie, when its decision to axe the sheltered housing wardens was ruled illegal because they didn't take sufficient account of disability legislation. You do very well to remind them!

Bob Neill "not too fussed"; Coleman's incendiary rubbish; Barnet unions answer back

A government minister, Bob Neill MP, has found time in his busy schedule to visit Barnet council, point at a scale model of the Brent Cross scheme, and tell everyone he is

“not too fussed” about concerns raised by external auditors Grant Thornton no business plan has yet been drawn up for the Future Shape programme.

Good for him, but then he doesn't have to live here. We who do are quite "fussed". The Times series has the report.

They also report Brian Coleman defending weekly rubbish collections on the grounds that fortnightly collections are likely to lead to more fires. We'll hold him to that!

Last but not least in my shameless pillaging of Times series stories, Barnet trades council's secretary Austin Harney replies to Coleman's recent slurs against the borough's trade unions. Austin says:

We are not bosses but grassroots trade union representatives who sacrifice our spare time for all people living and working in the London Borough of Barnet.

Under "Easy" Barnet Council, support for the communities and the residents could easily disappear and exacerbate the poverty levels. It seems that our council is attempting to destroy any progress.

I, kindly, ask Brian Coleman to reconsider his criticisms and listen to our communities and residents who could be suffering from these cuts in council services.

Replies to the Guardian article on Future Shape/easyCouncil/One Barnet

Guardian letters has some responses to the article last week about the Grant Thornton report on Future Shape/easyCouncil/One Barnet, and the more recent report on Suffolk council's plan to outsource all their services.

Your report on Barnet's madcap privatisation schemes (Auditor challenges Tory 'easyCouncil' model, 24 September) left out one other fact which incenses local residents. The Barnet councillors trying to slash services have given themselves huge allowance rises. The council leader recently got a 55% rise to £54,000 a year, while other leading councillors saw their allowances double to £35,000. The best-known of these councillors, Brian Coleman, was quoted in July as saying: "I don't have to justify what I earn. Councillors are worth every penny they earn."

Roger Kline, Barnet, Hertfordshire

Just to be clear, the phrase "generally robust" used to describe the governance and planning of our Future Shape change programme was not the council's defence, but the words of Grant Thornton, the independent auditors.

As Future Shape has moved into the delivery phase, Grant Thornton also made a series of recommendations about changes to governance that reflect this. These recommendations are sensible and have been adopted.

Nor has the council any policy of closing libraries. We are, however, asking residents how they would like their library service to be delivered. Changes may involve the current building stock – or a more innovative solution. But protecting public services cannot mean the simple replication of last year's model.

Cllr Lynne Hillan, Leader, Barnet council

One of the biggest casualties of Barnet council's new policy is likely to be the voluntary sector. The charity I work for provides advice on a range of issues, particularly welfare benefits, debt and housing, to disadvantaged members of the community. Just the sort of activity David Cameron has been encouraging us to do. But Barnet has now stopped our modest grant and told us we will have to vacate our premises early next year, so we will probably have to close, with the loss of 30 trained volunteers. The "big society"? It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

David Miller*, Secretary, East Finchley Advice Service

* Not to be confused with David Miller of "Not the Barnet Times" blog fame.

Barnet Alliance launched at successful meeting

Oh, back in the news again, Barnet council. The Guardian has picked up on the Grant Thornton audit report on Future Shape/easyCouncil that shows little progress so far.

Meanwhile, at the Emerald Suite in North London Business Park more than 200 workers and residents met for the launch of Barnet Alliance for Public Services.

A good night, all in all. Though no one's feeling complacent, I'm sure.

UPDATE: There are some videos from the meeting on Hangbitch's (!) blog.

There are a few pics on my Flickr site here.

Suffolk county council follows Barnet into oblivion, unless... Meeting tonight!

Taking its lead from Barnet easyCouncil (we've learned in the past few days how well that's going), Suffolk county council appears to have decided it can go one better and become the noCouncil.

It plans to outsource everything. From directly employing 27,000 staff it hopes to reduce to a few hundred, drawing up contracts in a dusty annex of the county hall (the rest having been sold off as flats, naturally).

15,000 staff work in education, but all of those, ideally, would go out of Suffolk's direct employ, with the accelerated move to academies and free schools. (We know how well that particular Tory plan is going.)

Of course, this is just something written in the Guardian, just as the Guardian wrote at length about Future Shape/easyCouncil. So, just pie in the sky, then. Hopefully.

Warm invitation

Of course, if you think all of this is too awful to contemplate and you still believe that the residents of Barnet have the power to do something about it (if we don't, what have all our democratic traditions come to?), please come to the public meeting tonight (Thursday 23 September) to launch the alliance against cuts and privatisation.

Don't cut our services. Don't privatise our services. No to easyCouncil!

Thursday 23 September, 7pm, Emerald Suite, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London N11 1GN.

Speakers include film director Ken Loach and John Lister of London Health Emergency, but the main aim of the meeting is to hear from Barnet residents and workers and make plans to defeat the absurd easyCouncil plan.

More details: info@barnettuc.org.uk

Barnet: lions led by donkeys! Meeting this Thursday...

Do make an effort to come!

Rag, bull

Tuesday night sees two Barnet council meetings of interest, both concerned with Future Shape/easyCouncil/One Barnet: the Audit Committee will look at auditor Grant Thornton's damning report on the lack of progress made in the "governance arrangements" for the Future Shape programme.

In another room, the Future Shape Overview and Scrutiny Panel (they haven't gotten around to renaming it) meets to review progress with the whole Future Shape programme generally. Generally, it isn't good.

Future Shape, Unison estimates, has cost £2.5 million so far, in consultants' fees, staff costs, etc. And another £2.5 million is being sought.

So what are we getting for our money? Reading between the lines, sod all. The report going to the scrutiny panel on Tuesday shows little progress in many areas. Since Future Shape is all about mass outsourcing of council services, that is probably a good thing, but all the time they are trying to do what is probably undoable, they are throwing more of our money away.

The report is a piece of management gobbledygook all through, but what I can discern is that in order to reach the deadlines they have set themselves, the Future Shape team are going to be sitting up late into the night over the next month. The code for progress made is Red, Amber, Green.

GUIDANCE ON RAG FORMAT:

Red: Overall performance is significantly off trajectory, outside direct control of the Workstream Lead (WL) and Programme Director (PD) and requires Operational Group (OG) intervention.

Amber: Performance is off trajectory, requires substantial WL or PD attention. Some aspects may require urgent intervention.

Green: Performance is on trajectory under control and contained within normal day to day project management.

Of the five Future Shape "workstreams" only one - "People & Culture" - is currently "on trajectory"; the others - "Value for Money", "New Relationship with Citizens", "Commissioning" and "Leadership" - are currently "Amber".

Of course, we could probably decide whether to be worried or excited about these delays if we knew what the f*** they were talking about. Perhaps it's as well we don't. The only thing is, I wonder whether anyone at all in the council knows what the f*** they are talking about.

Future Shape: RAG or bull, you decide. I can't.

Future Shape: the game is up

Barnet council have already spent hundreds of thousands of pounds (are we into the millions yet?) on preparing Barnet council services for wholesale privatisation, the so-called Future Shape/easyCouncil/One Barnet programme.

Then they started spending money on commissioning reports looking at how they are doing on preparing Barnet council for wholesale privatisation. The conclusions of one just published, by Grant Thornton ("Review of the Governance Arrangements of the One Barnet Programme: Value for Money Review 2009/10"), suggest what critics have always suspected: the council is floundering about, making little progress, and wasting money, not saving it. I think this snippet ("Recommendation 1"!) about sums the problem up:

The Council [should] develop and agree a business case for the One Barnet programme, incorporating:
· the planned benefits and outcomes of the programme;
· the estimated cost of the programme;
· overall timescales of the programme, including key anticipated milestones; and
· a high level risk profile.

Here is the full report going to the Audit Committee on 21 September.

Rog T has compiled the choicest quotes already, and you can read his comments here.

Future Shape: is the game up? It bloody well ought to be! Stop wasting our money and jeopardising our services. No to Barnet easyCouncil!

Connaught workers: what it means to be a wage slave

After an outrageous display of dithering by the authorities, it appears that the former Connaught workers do have a job. Barnet Unison contacted KPMG last night and learned that KPMG had not known that Lovell had agreed to take the workers on when they issued redundancy notices.

It is still a very anxious time for the workers while they wait for all their paperwork. Why should they bear the stress? Connaught went bust; KPMG are disorganised. We all know that it is not a question of a bit of paperwork to the Connaught workers: it's about their lives!

This episode highlights something that it's easy to lose sight of. In this society if people don't have a job they go hungry (unless, of course, they are rich...). You can't scratch a living from the soil anymore (thank goodness!). We can't all become small business people providing goods and services to each other. Where would we get the money to pay for them? Who would make the things we sell?

One of the aspects of wage slavery that makes it so awful is the insecurity. In the era of modern capitalism, before it was somewhat civilised by the advent of public services, we didn't work unless someone was making a profit from it. We had no control over whether we worked or not and, thus - in a world of relative plenty - whether we ate or not.

Slavish devotion to the free market as a way to run the economy, the turn to privatisation away from public services (Future Shape/easyCouncil), entails a return to more insecurity for workers, and more stress like that the Connaught workers are going through. It's a bonkers idea.

Connaught's bottom line: a cautionary tale for fans of Future Shape

While I was helping out with the trades council stall against cuts and privatisation in Burnt Oak on Saturday, a Connaught van pulled up at the side of the road. I waylaid the passenger as they got out. They were from Hammersmith and Fulham. They too had been sacked - by text message - last week, but quickly re-employed by Lovell, the company that has taken over Connaught's more lucrative contracts. They had a lot of sympathy for the sacked Connaught workers in Barnet.

This story tells us a lot about what it means to rely on the private sector to provide public services. Basically, Connaught's contract with Barnet, due to be ended by Barnet itself in February, is just not worth any private company's time or effort. So now the workers are idle, and the repairs are going undone. Barnet Homes is negotiating for the contract to be taken on by a new company (and the 45 workers will have their third employer in a row), but if there isn't enough clear profit in it, no company will want to take it on. The workers will still be idle, and the repairs will still be undone.

Why should much-needed public services only get done when they can make a profit for someone? It doesn't make sense. The need is there, and the people are there to do the work. Where does profit come into it? It's the public purse that will pay for it in either case. Why wouldn't we want all of our money spent on the service, instead of some of it going into private pockets?

Barnet council should have done and bring the council house repairs back inhouse. The workers can go back to repairing people's houses and Barnet residents will be getting the best value for their money.

Lobby Barnet council, Tuesday 14 September

Don’t cut our services – don’t privatise our services – no to Barnet easyCouncil!

Lobby of the council meeting on Tuesday 14 September

6-7pm, Hendon Town Hall, The Burroughs, London NW4 4BG

---
The Tory administration in Barnet has been rocked recently by the angry reaction to their allowances rise for senior Cabinet members. Although the Tories claim to have backed down, eight committee chairs will still see their allowances rise from £9,974 to £15,333, a rise of 54%.

Lynne Hillan has seen off a challenge to her leadership of the Conservative group – but only just! She will face a no confidence vote at the council meeting. It seems that she has done enough to satisfy dissident Tories for now, and they will probably keep her in office. But how long can this unity last?

Mark Shooter, who challenged Hillan, has criticised her leadership style, talking of “bullying”. He has criticised the decision to cut sheltered housing wardens, calling it “morally dubious”. He has described the council’s cherished Future Shape/easyCouncil privatisation plan as a “Soviet bureaucratic initiative”.

And all of this comes from a fellow Conservative!

We do not believe that this administration has the moral authority to continue in office, to impose their regime of cuts and privatisation on Barnet council workers and residents. We believe that cuts will harm the most vulnerable and degrade the quality of life for all in Barnet. Mass outsourcing of services will lead to worse working lives for Barnet’s workforces and worse services for residents. And disruption when contracts go wrong, as has happened through the collapse of Connaught.

We don’t accept that public services should be slashed to bail out the banks, which are now merrily paying out dividends and bonuses again. If you have an issue with this council, please come along on the night and make your voice heard!

For more details or to help build the event, please email info@barnettuc.org.uk.

Also for your diary: 7-9pm, Thursday 23 September
Emerald Suite, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London N11 1GN
Launch of Barnet Alliance 4 Public Services. Public meeting, all welcome.

Connaught collapse - Back to the Future Shape?

Barnet council is currently embarking on a mass privatisation drive (Future Shape aka easyCouncil); they want to stop direct employment of council workers and farm them and service delivery out to arms length companies such as Barnet Homes and to multinationals such as... Connaught.

Oops. Connaught, the firm that has the contract for council house repairs in Barnet, among other places, is going bust. What will happen to Connaught's local workforce (once TUPE'd over to Barnet Homes and then again to Connaught)? Hopefully, they will be brought back into the Barnet fold.

It's a worrying time for the Connaught workers, annoying for Barnet's council tenants, who have only an emergency repairs service (as I understand it), and alarming for all Barnet residents who care to think about it: privatising services is no guarantee of a reliable, cheap service, yet Barnet's Tories present it as the answer to all our prayers.

In fact, the Connaught story shows Future Shape happening in reverse, no bad thing!

Barnet council's new relationship with residents: don't ask us any questions

I thought this might happen. Until recently, Barnet residents were able to raise any matter of council business under public questions at a number of council meetings, including the Cabinet, the body that takes all the big decisions. Then the Cabinet got bored of answering our questions - why, as much as 30 minutes of their precious time had to be given over to this part of the agenda!

They changed the rules so that we could only ask questions on a topic that was being discussed at the meeting in question. Since the public had to give eight clear working days' notice of what we wanted to ask the Cabinet, it made it impossible to ask any questions at all, because the agenda for the Cabinet meeting is never available that early.

So they have now changed the deadline. We can ask questions on any topic discussed at the meeting, and must give two clear working days' notice of what we want to ask. You now have till 10am on Thursday 2 September to submit your questions for the 6 September Cabinet c/o Nick.Musgrove@barnet.gov.uk.

I have only just found out about the deadline change, so I and a number of other people have submitted questions to the Cabinet which we now find cannot be asked. I would love to have a list of those questions - if anyone wants to send me their question, I'll publish them here.

The upshot of it is this - unless it is on the agenda of the Cabinet meeting on 6 September, Barnet residents cannot ask questions about:

- Mr Meakins
- Future Shape/easyCouncil
- councillors' allowances
- Brent Cross
- sheltered housing wardens
- Connaught
- Catalyst
- academies and free schools
- Icelandic banks

Well, you can make your own list of pressing concerns in which Barnet residents have a vital interest. I'm about to look through the agenda of the Cabinet meeting on 6 September (594 pages) to see what we can ask questions about. Hm, what can we do with this little lot, and can I get paid for this?

Report of the Business Management Overview and Scrutiny Sub-Committee
5. Recycling and Waste Minimisation
Reports of the Cabinet Member for Housing, Planning & Regeneration (and of the Business Management Overview and Scrutiny Committee in respect of item 6a)
6. Local Development Framework – Core Strategy – Publication Stage
6a Comments of the Business Management Overview & Scrutiny Sub-Committee on the LDF Core Strategy
7. Local Development Framework – Development Management Policies
8. Local Development Scheme
Report of the Cabinet Member for Customer Access and Partnerships
9 Strategic Library Review
Reports of the Cabinet Member for Education, Children and Families
10. Barnet’s Corporate Parenting Strategy
11. Investment Strategy to meeting demand for Primary School Places
Report of the Leader of the Council
12. Audit Costs relating to the external investigation of the sale of land at Underhill
Report of Acting Democratic Services Officer
13. Referrals from Council
14. ANY OTHER ITEMS THAT THE CHAIRMAN DECIDES ARE URGENT

Barnet council haemorrhages another £6 million

Barnet council has partially lost a case against Catalyst Housing Group (I think it was actually Catalyst's case against Barnet). It will probably cost the council - us, in fact - £6 million. There are a few more details here (open the pdf and search for "Catalyst").

Catalyst was the partner of Fremantle, the company that took over the running of Barnet care homes and became notorious for slashing the pay and holidays of its workforce. This was a cause célèbre in the labour movement for a couple of years, and provides an ominous presentiment of what we face with the Future Shape programme.

The failure of another contract between the council and a contractor highlights what the council's own reports say: they are in no fit shape at the moment to handle a landscape of mass contracted out services. And I doubt they will ever be in a fit shape to do that. They shouldn't even try.

The Catalyst saga is another scandal for a council continually giving the Conservative party headaches and harming residents and employees in the pocket time and again.

Please join the campaign to stop the Future Shape madness, and to get rid of this lousy administration!

• Lobby of the council, Tuesday 14 September, 6pm, Hendon Town Hall, The Burroughs, NW4 4BG
• Public meeting, Thursday 23 September, 7-9pm, Emerald Suite, North London Business Park, N11 1GN

More details: info@barnettuc.org.uk

Posters for the public meeting, 23 September

Barnet UNISON has done a lovely poster for the Barnet Alliance 4 Public Services meeting on Thursday 23 September. Two lovely posters, actually.

Please let people know about this event, as well as the lobby of the full council meeting at Hendon Town Hall on Tuesday 14 September.

We have had a few victories lately, but important as they have been they have been skirmishes compared to what is coming. See the Institute for Fiscal Studies report today showing how regressive the Tory-Lib Dem government budget is.

Fat cat poster.

easyCouncil poster.

Can Trouble Shooter save the wardens? And stop Future Shape? And get money back from Iceland?

Mark Shooter has set out his stall before the Tory group meeting on 7 September that will decide whether he takes over as group leader from Lynne Hillan. In an interview with the Times series, Shooter appears to promise the earth - to the likes of me. Alas, Mark, I don't get a vote.

He seems to say a lot of the right things - if you don't like the Tory council and everything they stand for.

Read the interview here.

In it Shooter says the council:
- screwed up over the Icelandic bank deposits
- should review its plan to scrap sheltered housing wardens
- might be wasting money on the Future Shape scheme where it could make savings through other "efficiencies"
- has a bullying culture.

Has he done himself any favours with this interview? I doubt it. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would think that he is doing work for David Cameron, reassuring Tory voters that the Barnet party has a nice wing as well as the nasty wing represented by Lynne Hillan and Brian Coleman, and that it is still safe to vote Tory! But I'm not a conspiracy theorist...

I hope you like meetings... and lobbies!

As Barnet council's Future Shape/easyCouncil agenda proceeds, there is a plethora of meetings this summer and autumn that the concerned public might like to attend. The trades council, council unions, and disgruntled residents of all stripes will be organising lobbies before each one.

We don't have much say in what goes on in Barnet, but by congregating on the grass (not on the flower beds, please) in front of Hendon Town Hall, as the councillors hotfoot it into the building for their meetings, we can show that we are watching, and care about the decisions they make.

Next Wednesday 11 August is the next meeting of the council's FUTURE SHAPE OVERVIEW & SCRUTINY PANEL. The meeting starts at 7pm, there will be a lobby from 6pm. The public can attend the meeting, but we are likely to be kicked out when the real meat and potatoes business is discussed. According to the relevant page on the council website, these are the items we mustn't be around to hear about:

X1 - Development and Public Health Services
X2 - Adult Social Services

The motion to exempt press and public will be on the grounds that these matters, in the case of X1, include

Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information).

and

Information relating to any consultations or negotiations, or contemplated consultations or negotiations, in connection with any labour relations matter arising between the authority or a Minster of the Crown and employees of, or office holders under, the authority.

And in the case of X2 just

Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information).

These categories for exemption strike me as pretty broad! Never mind that one of Future Shape's three overarching aims is "A new relationship with citizens". The novelty clearly doesn't extend to letting us in on the secrets of what they have planned for our council services. After all, as Barnet's Tory administration reminds us pretty often, we aren't interested in such things as who delivers council services.

Even when we patently are.

The papers for the meeting - those that we are allowed to see - are available here. See you on the barricades, sorry, on the lawn in front of Hendon Town Hall.

As an aside, it will be interesting to see whether Kate Salinger is allowed to attend as one of the Tories' members of the panel - she was appointed by them to this post when it was set up.

Broken Record #1: "Single parent families on benefits can cost state more than £5million, says new report"

This is the first in a series of blogposts on moral scares by Tory-supporting newspapers, and the crackpot schemes they come up with to "fix" what David Cameron is calling "broken Britain". I agree that Britain is broken, but I see the faultlines in different places to where the Tories see them, and attribute many of the problems to Tory policies, pursued by Tory and New Labour governments. The solutions I advocate are rather different from those put forward by Cameron, the Evening Standard, the Daily Telegraph, etc.

Today's broken record, "Single parent families on benefits can cost state more than £5million, says new report", from the Daily Telegraph, originates in a story from our own borough of Barnet, with the case study - there has only been one - done for the most recent Barnet council Future Shape report.

One wouldn't mind so much about this story, if the subject were at all representative, but as you will quickly deduce from reading the first and second paragraphs, the scare has been concocted from the experience of one family with a pretty unique set of "challenges":

According to an extreme case study put together by Barnet Council in North London - which focuses on an abused single mother brought up in care who has three children - the cost can be counted at £5,782,894.

It assumes that neither the mother or any of the children ever do any paid work and that the children, like the mother, spend extended periods in state care.

The Telegraph scare story is actually based on a longer story in the Daily Mail which, while reactionary, remarkably for the Mail, manages to be less alarming.

Expect more stories like this in the run-up to the election. Actually, that being so very soon, this sort of thing is designed more for the post-election slash-and-burn season coming our way, if we cannot successfully resist all parties' cuts plans.