Barnet bag of shite: Barnet PledgeBank (no.1 in an all-too-frequent series)

It's a relief to learn from Rog T's correspondence with a top local police officer that my heckling at the council meeting on 1 March did not constitute a breach of the peace. I didn't risk arrest then. However, one of the MetPro security goons did offer me outside - I'm glad I resisted the temptation, as fisticuffs would have been bang out of order.

I certainly didn't go to the meeting with the intention of heckling - well, not much. A few mutters, I suppose, in unison with others. And, of course, the dignified, silent "right to film" protest.

But when you hear people spouting utter shite, it's simply dishonourable to sit there in silence.

So when, in her summing up speech on the budget, Lynne Hillan spoke warmly of Barnet PledgeBank I simply had to shout across the hallowed assembly:

Five pledges! There are five pledges on PledgeBank. It's a load of rubbish - and we're paying for it!

At that I sat down again. This seems fair comment, and I'm not at all ashamed of having interjected at this point. As far as I'm concerned, Barnet PledgeBank is a fraud being perpetrated on the residents of Barnet. That's it really.

Guest blog: The Spin Speech

By Ron Cohen

The wavering was between "The King's Speech" and "Black Swan". Not much of a choice, is it? But thinking of Natalie Portman again, that whatever part she plays reminds me of a doughnut wheeled over the big screen. So it was the King.

And we have a king, entangled in anxieties, his upbringing and stutter, but convinced that the faith of a nation depends on a thread of saliva hanging from the tip of his tongue.

All his efforts are concentrated on bringing himself to make this fateful speech. We watched these herculean efforts of a man convinced in his destiny but we can't avoid thinking of the Spin Speech.

David Cameron, facing the spring of nations in the Middle East. David Cameron standing like Ali Baba in front of the Kuwaiti Parliament, preaching democracy and human rights, that the people of the Middle East are “hungry for political and economic freedom”, and that "violence is never an answer to people's legitimate aspirations,” while behind him standing the 40 arms dealers he brought with him, waiting for the chit chat to finish so they can go to their business – selling arms to the most oppressive regimes in the region. His audience can hardly hide the smiles and Cameron can hardly hide the winks.

In his deepest of his heart he's sure he can do much better. Just given the chance he would deliver a Churchillian speech. Facing the overwhelmed nation he would say “We will cut them on the forests, we will cut them on the benefits, we will cut their social housing, and we will cut their elderlies and youngsters.” But all he is facing is Ed Miliband. Not very inspirational challenge for the Big One. And, anyway, all Ed would say is OK, but later.

But Cameron's poverty of speech is inspirational for his lessers in Barnet. Obviously, they don't understand the subtleties of his speech, and like the 40 dealers are waiting to go straight to the business.

Democracy? According to Hillan: “Democratic services and the monitoring officer employed the security for the meeting.” So now we know. The role of the democratic services is to prevent the residents from participating in the democratic process. And it makes perfect sense; after all, if cabinet meetings are “not a place for discussion” so why should the full council be bothered with that?

And after finishing with the niceties of the speeches they went straight to the business. Never mind the public, it's only an ornament and, anyway, no one is listening.

And while the residents were manhandled all over the place, pushed and shoved, the Labour councillors remain seated, chained and locked to their seats. Isn't it really a source of inspiration? Of a successful direct action? An heroic resistance to the Tories' intimidations? Next time we must imitate them. We'll come with our own chains and locks.

By the way, one of the hooligans in black appeared to be an Israeli. Makes one wonder then, if all this emigration thing was worth the trouble.

Transparency Barnet council style

Barnet council leader Lynne Hillan has budged. She has. I'm sure she'd deny it, but I will say it. After telling the Times series on Monday that there'd be no filming, blogging or tweeting in the public gallery while she is Leader (are you sure you want to bring that up, Lynne?), this morning she had made some attempt to appear reasonable. She told the Times that, although residents still would not be allowed to film the council meeting:

“I think the world has moved on since we last debated this. Frankly we all expect to be able to find the whole world on YouTube now.

"My own view is that the public would be best served by us live streaming council over the web, but this is a matter for the whole of council to debate. I am happy to have that debate at full council in the near future.”

Well, that's it then, she's budged, and we'll hold her to it. She takes some shifting, does Lynne Hillan, but a good fortnight of harrying, and judicious use of the pronouncements in favour of transparency from her own government, plus one manic afternoon on phone and email to Bindmans, human rights lawyers (I have to thank them a lot for their work) have resulted in this grudging half-promise to bring Barnet into the 21st century.

Unlike some more frugally-minded bloggers, I think that the council should spend some money on getting the job done properly and having professional filming, as Haringey does, for example. And then, in addition to that, allowing blogging, filming and tweeting in the public gallery.

My own experience of filming in the public gallery was that it is pretty tedious, but then my equipment was a bit clapped out (and, to be frank, so was I). But AL managed to get some nice clips. See them here.

The interest with these clips is less the content - it's a council meeting, fer chrissakes! - than the fact that AL got these bits of film at all. Because AL and me, in my own feeble way, and Mrs A, all had to do our filming with the threat of being booted out hanging over us.

In the event, we were not booted out (I came close, for a bout of sustained heckling, but I won't bore you with the details of that now). Whatever the "legality" (huh!) of Barnet council's filming ban, at least among some parts of the council apparatus - some of the Tory group, some of the council officers: it's not clear who - there isn't the appetite to enforce it.

That's great news. It means the ban is a dead letter.

P.S. Oh, yeah, the g*ts passed their £54.4 million cuts and privatisation budget, but let's celebrate our tiny victories. On those, we build.

Is Lynne Hillan infringing my human rights?

Several members of Barnet's blogging community have spent much of today contemplating how to respond to Lynne Hillan's stubborn decision not to allow blogging, filming and tweeting in the public gallery at council meetings.

The decision relates mainly to Tuesday's council meeting, where the council is - alas - likely to adopt a plan for £54.4 million cuts. However, unless they change their minds, the ban will hold good for all council meetings.

So it is well worth challenging! I set out at lunchtime to get some legal advice and by 6pm was sending a solicitor's letter to Lynne Hillan.

It questions Hillan's decision on a number of grounds. One of them, the finest, I think, is that she is infringing my human rights. I suspect, however, that the one that will carry the most weight with Hillan is that she is flouting recent guidance from her own Conservative government, and the fact that the letter has been copied to Secretary of State Eric Pickles.

Let's see how Hillan responds. In any case, whether she relents or not, a number of Barnet residents plan to test her ruling by blogging, filming and tweeting in the public gallery on Tuesday night. The anti-cuts protest at Hendon Town Hall begins at 6pm, and the council meeting itself starts at 7pm.

Lynne Hillan digs in her kitten heels

Barnet bloggers have been wondering how Barnet council's Tory group would respond to their own government's advice to let residents film and tweet about council meetings.

It was predictable that they would not embrace the new era of transparency, and would only grudgingly bend to the winds of change. The Tory group, I've heard, had a stormy meeting about the issue. I can imagine how opinion might have divided, roughly along the lines of the close vote during the challenge to Lynne Hillan's leadership.

I understand Lynne Hillan was not at this meeting and therefore could not vote for herself on this occasion. But she has given an interview to the Times series clearly giving the line: there will be no filming, blogging or tweeting on my watch! Read the article here.

I am one of those who has pledged to test Barnet's stand on this. Apparently it does not say anywhere in the council's constitution that residents cannot film, blog or tweet from the public gallery. When the rules on the questions of public and media access to council meetings were written, such ideas as YouTube, Twitter and Blogger were but a twinkle in a geek's eye.

I think blogger David Hencke this morning adequately sums up Hillan's position:

This dinosaur attitude from a Queen Canute is breathtaking. Her ignorance about how the modern world works is absurd. Presumably her next step as Barnet leader will be to table a motion condemning Lady Thatcher for allowing the public by law to attend council meetings.

We will go ahead and attempt to assert our right to film, tweet and blog at the council meeting at Hendon Town Hall tomorrow night, Tuesday 1 March (6pm for the anti-cuts lobby, 7pm for the council meeting). I will have copies of the DCLG guidance for residents to brandish.

Finally, remember that Hillan has dug in her heels on previous occasions, only to be forced to climb down in the teeth of fierce opposition.

The public occasions I know about are Allowancegate, when she partially backed off raising senior cabinet members' allowances (committee chairs still went on to get a huge rise), and the case of Edward Meakins, where Barnet Homes relented in their threat to move him out of his home of 74 years. (Barnet Homes is separate - at arm's length - from Barnet council, but I cannot believe that the Tory administration did not put pressure on Barnet Homes to change their decision.)

We know, then, that Hillan can be budged, but we also know, from these examples, that it takes an almighty force of opposition to budge her - and that she doesn't give in graciously!

Civilisation

My cheeks are burning, I am a shy person but I behaved uncharacteristically badly on Monday evening, heckling the Barnet council cabinet meeting.

It was just intolerable sitting there spectating, while the Tory cabinet droned and intoned their way through 600pp worth of business, all of it bad news. £54.4 million cuts which, she tells us, it pains council leader Lynne Hillan to inflict on us - but she and her cabinet still manage to find justifications and excuses for every last measure.

So putting up charges for social services - cutting social services - is repackaged as 'fairer charging'; abolishing the youth service is 'freeing up volunteers from bureaucracy so that they can get more involved in providing positive activities... for the young people of Barnet'; and so on.

There were many different groups there representing people using services which are suffering direct cuts or rises in charges. They included a large and lively contingent of children, parents and staff from the schools that are having their crossing patrols cut; and the residents who are being forced to pay much more for having the temerity to live in a Controlled Parking Zone and own a car - or be visited by someone in a car, such as a volunteer befriender coming to check on an elderly person, perhaps.

At the end of the evening, I think, Yvonne Hossack, the lawyer for many sheltered housing residents in Barnet, was planning to serve papers on the council legally challenging Barnet's second attempt to remove the sheltered housing wardens.

I left the meeting quite late on as Daniel Thomas, Cabinet member for Resources and Performance, was toiling through his preamble to the budget plans proper, on why the cuts are necessary. On my way out I toyed with the idea of smoking a cigarette in the ladies' loo to trigger the fire alarm and thus, potentially, delay the fateful decision to another day - but I don't smoke. The Cabinet was going to pass its cuts budget.

That isn't the end of the story. The budget will be ratified at the council meeting on Tuesday 1 March. Anti-cuts protesters will have a lobby outside Hendon Town Hall from 6pm.

I am already ideologically opposed to Barnet's Tories, but, above and beyond that, seeing them in action always reveals one or two purely distasteful moments. The first tonight was when Andrew Harper detailed how £1 million saving would be achieved by charging more disabled Barnet residents for the social services they need to lead decent lives. Basically, taking £1 million away from vulnerable people. The second was the way the cabinet ganged up to grill Gillian Gear, who is the archivist at Barnet Museum and has volunteered there for 30 years.

Dr Gear is the sort of person that, two or three years ago, Tory councillors would have liked to shake hands with, maybe, posing for a snap in the local paper, while they extolled the virtues of volunteering and keeping open a valued cultural feature of a successful suburb.

Tonight, the political demands of the time have changed, and so they set out to humiliate and belittle Dr Gear. How many hours is the museum open? asked Brian Coleman, in a tone that implied that the volunteers who run the museum were not giving a very good service (actually, it is quite likely that the council just wants to sell the building). Why, asked Andrew Harper, trying to be hard-nosed but just making himself look deeply unpleasant, should all Barnet residents pay to keep the museum open?

Why, Mr Harper? Well, because we are a civilised people who value knowing something of our history, where we came from. I didn't always behave in a very civilised fashion yesterday evening, but I do understand that a country that closes its museums is a civilisation in decay. Barnet's Tories don't seem to have clocked that.

More information: Barnet Museum, currently battling for its life; and Church Farmhouse Museum, similiarly imperilled.

P.S. It's only right to acknowledge that the staff of the council's governance and democracy department did a great job preparing for this meeting and working to keep it on track. Sorry we were such a pain.

One Barnet: our Barnet

Barnet council's mass privatisation plan has had a couple of name changes. Starting out life as Future Shape, it soon became easyCouncil (though it was critics that liked to call it that, after then council leader Mike Freer said Barnet had a lot to learn from budget airlines). Trying to put this cheap and nasty association behind them, the Tory administration seems finally to have settled on "One Barnet".

It refers to the intention (far from being realised) of sharing back office and, to some extent, residents' personal information with other large organisations in the borough, including potentially the police, Middlesex University, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the NHS.

It also sounds friendly and we're all in this together-ish. We're not in it together, however, as the controversial attempt to raise senior cabinet members' allowances showed (and committee chairmen and women did get whopping great rises in the end).

The new Barnet Alliance for Public Services newspaper "Our Barnet" provides some details of the One Barnet that Lynne Hillan and her fellow Tories are trying to foist on us. It is a council with a £54.5 million financial hole to plug over the next three years. They say they will achieve this through a combination of:

- One Barnet £12.1m
- Efficiency projects £22.9m
- Increased income £4.2m
- Service reductions £15.2m

If One Barnet fails, ie, they don't save any money or, worse, wind up losing money, you can bet the "service reductions", eg, devastating the youth service, stopping the crossing patrols outside schools, cutting children's centres, axing the museums, abandoning the Arts Depot to an uncertain future and closing libraries, withdrawing EMA from sixth form students, and leaving school buildings dilapidated, will only increase.

And you can bet that "revenue income optimisation", eg, fleecing drivers, and charging social services users, will increase.

That's the Tories' One Barnet, for you. Our Barnet is about standing up to central government and challenging the cutting of Barnet's grant, defending vital public services, spending our taxes on services, not handing it over to large corporations for their profits, guaranteeing that working for Barnet means decent pay and conditions of service, libraries open for longer, school buildings are repaired, elderly people have the services they need to lead dignified lives, young people enjoy the meaningful activity they need to help them develop, and everyone has somewhere decent to live. I know where I'd rather live.

If you would be prepared to deliver some copies of the "Our Barnet" newspaper in your area, please email info@barnettuc.org.uk.

Pledge Bank? Two can play at that game...

Barnet Tories have been getting all excited about Pledge Bank. Leader Lynne Hillan wants to use it to promote Big Society. I am using it to promote the march against her administration on 30 January.

Barnet march - I'll do it, but only if you help.

Flash communities good, flash mobs bad

Rumour reaches us (an email, actually) that the planned Arts Depot flash mob was shut out of North London Business Park this afternoon. Nope, they couldn't even get near the Barnet council offices to demonstrate their opposition to proposed cuts in their council grant.

Barnet council, who have recently embraced a new adventure in social media called the Pledge Bank (PledgeBank, probably) went all humourless on the artistic types from the Arts Depot. That, I suspect, is only going to make them more determined - and Barnet Council more ridiculous.

I can't find PledgeBank on the web yet, but there is an interesting article on Conservative Home quoting council leader Lynne Hillan on how the PledgeBank fits with promoting the Big Society (BigSociety, surely). The comments are entertaining, as you might expect.

Hillan says:

Increasingly local government will be a deal: “We will provide a half a ton of grit if you agree to spread it”. There is a real engagement challenge here - often these groups will not be the usual suspects. They will be “flash communities” of short duration, forming to complete an activity - such as clearing snow or tackling local environmental damage.

Flash communities good, flash mobs bad. You read it here first.

Guardian: easyCouncil costs more than it saves

Today's Guardian reports how easyCouncil has so far cost more than it has saved.

The Conservative-controlled north London council has committed to spending £1.5m this financial year on a much-hyped reform programme to help close a yawning budget gap, but it is on course to recoup just £1.4m in savings in the year.

The council's funding shortfall is set to hit £15m next year, and the borough has tried to innovate through its "One Barnet" programme. This includes paying to develop a system of "life coaches" to persuade residents to reduce dependence on the state, appointing business consultants to help town hall officials and even opening a library in a branch of Starbucks in a pilot which could result in the closure of some library buildings.

The programme is budgeted to deliver savings of £13m a year by 2014, about a third of the total cuts planned by the council. It had been projected to save £3m by the end of the financial year, but Lynne Hillan, council leader, has now admitted the savings will be less than half of that.

Read it all here.

Brian Coleman, slum landlord

At tonight's Barnet council cabinet meeting Brian Coleman called Grahame Park, Stonegrove Park and West Hendon Estates "disgusting slums". Since he is a prominent member of the Cabinet with responsibility over these neglected parts of the borough, that makes him a self-confessed slum landlord.

These places are in need of regeneration, but the briefest acquaintance with them will tell you that they are full of decent people leading perfectly respectable lives; and they really aren't that bad places, either!

The reason they wait so long for regeneration is because Barnet council - like most councils in the land, and like the government - is wedded to the idea that regeneration can only happen when a private developer sees sufficient of a buck can be made there.

In his diatribe against "social housing", Coleman said "the market will decide". This is the same Coleman who lives in a low-rent house courtesy of the Methodist Church. Meanwhile, Barnet residents fester on the housing waiting list or make the best of living in rundown conditions.

The Labour Group was attempting tonight to get the Tory administration to agree to a review into the potential harmful effects of the recently announced cap on housing benefit, and other measures against social housing declared today as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review.

Barnet will lose money and Barnet residents could be made homeless by the new measures, some of which even Tory London mayor Boris Johnson opposes. Lynne Hillan has already written a few lines to Eric Pickles on this issue, but in public, tonight, she couldn't resist being partisan, and rejected the chance to do something manifestly sensible and in the council's interest. She wouldn't commit to a review at this stage. What's she waiting for? More shit to hit the fan?

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.

Mr Travers moves to calm councillors' audit committee jitters

It's funny, isn't it? One of the planks of Future Shape/easyCouncil/One Barnet is to build a new relationship with residents. Increasingly I am thinking of this as the "arms-length relationship". Minimal services, delivered by a private or arms-length firm, with people paying to top up if they can afford it or want "extras" (as yet undefined).

More and more remote access, less face to face contact. Ideally, actually, in the minds of the current administration they'd rather we all just f***ed off; then they could spend no money on no services, and say it was a job well done. Although some of them would be floundering about looking for an outlet for their talents, and they would miss the allowances...

Deputy Chief Executive Andrew Travers has written to all the councillors to calm their concerns about a letter Roger Tichborne has sent them. Roger is simply pointing out that the Grant Thornton audit of Future Shape so far shows there are several "opportunities for improvement" (gaping holes) in the (scant) progress made.

We know that some Tory councillors are worried about Future Shape, not just Labour and Lib Dem. In the Cabinet, when I saw them discuss Future Shape (as far as they do actually discuss anything on these stage-managed occasions), I sensed that one or two needed reassurance that the return would be worth the outlay - Richard Cornelius was one.

Well, they must surely be really wondering now. Mark Shooter called Future Shape a "Stalinist bureaucratic initiative" when he challenged Lynne Hillan for leadership of the Conservative group - and we know he ran her a close second!

I have just watched the "Panorama" programme investigating whether the 9,000 or so public sector employees who earn more than the Prime Minister (£142,500) deserve their pay. The reputations of a few of those people are on the line here in Barnet if Future Shape goes down. No wonder they are moving to calm fears.

My question is why don't the likes of Travers talk to the people? We are the ones that really need to be persuaded of the merits of the project we are paying for. I forgot, we must be kept at arm's length.

P.S. Roger has unearthed all sorts of details about Andrew Travers' pay and career path, too knotty for me to untangle at this late hour, but rewarding reading, I'm sure.

Join the army: the Barnet army of armchair auditors

When he was standing against Lynne Hillan for leadership of Barnet's Tory group on the council, Mark Shooter said:

The choice that you face... is a stark one. ...It is between:

A closed and secretive approach [yes, he was talking about Lynne Hillan] battling all and sundry who want to expose waste and bad play at the Town Hall and my leadership that wants to fling open the windows and let the disinfectant of sunlight pour in and an army of armchair auditors find savings to help us in our task. An administration who treats the public with contempt [yes, he was talking about Lynne Hillan] and my leadership who wants to harness the passion and energy of our residents to give us great ideas to make Barnet a better place.

Did he mean it? We'll never know, since he wound up voting full confidence in Lynne Hillan at the council meeting on Tuesday 14 September. But whether he did or not, I like the idea and I have unilaterally appointed myself recruiting sergeant for the Barnet army of armchair auditors. Please let me know if you would like to join or, to signal your interest, simply post our absurd insignia to your blog/Facebook page/Twitter stream, etc. (That's how we do things around here.)

(This is the cheapest Friday night I've had in a long time.)

Lousy Tory councillors back Hillan all the way

I couldn't get into Hendon Town Hall to see the Barnet council meeting tonight, but I've seen the lousy news on the appropriately lousy London Daily News website, that the Tories backed leader Lynne Hillan unanimously in the vote of confidence tabled this evening.

I can only think they have woken up and smelt the coffee - the coffee that their own government is brewing. Barnet Tories cannot afford to be divided against the growing opposition to their plans. Whether they cut or privatise or whatever else they come up with, their government has told them the real enemy is outside. (It was, literally, tonight, in the shape of a trade union and residents' lobby of around 150 people, despite the rain.)

Cameron must have read his party the riot act (and let's hope he won't be needing it again soon). Or Hillan has made some trifling political concessions to the internal Tory opposition. They might be feeling good about themselves, but I don't think the average Tory voter in Barnet will have been impressed by the recent shenanigans. One minute, Barnet Tories are at daggers drawn, the next they are vowing their undying respect for each other.

It really doesn't wash. Let's remind ourselves what Mark Shooter said about Hillan's regime a few short days ago:
- bullying
- Stalinist
- morally dubious.

You can read it all here if you don't believe me, on Conservative Home ("it's anything but cosy"). I'm starting to wonder whether your average Tory politician is a different species from the rest of us.

Lynne Hillan refuses to meet the press

Times series reporters attended Barnet council meeting at Hendon Town Hall tonight and asked to interview Lynne Hillan. They wanted to present her with the paper's "Reject the Rise" petition bearing nearly 1,600 signatures, collected from Barnet residents against the allowances rise. But Hillan would only meet with the paper's group editor - our intrepid reporters weren't senior enough for her. (And they looked so smart in their suits!)

Hillan wasn't snubbing the reporters - she was snubbing the residents who have signed the petition.

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.

Can Barnet Tories vote according to conscience?

Mark Shooter, if the rumours are correct, only avoided becoming leader of the Barnet Tory group on Tuesday night by one vote (he's rumoured to have got 18 votes to Lynne Hillan's 19). I don't know what they put in the water at the Town Hall but Shooter's comments to the Times series afterwards sound distinctly sheeplike:

Speaking after the meeting, Hendon ward councillor, Mr Shooter, said he would now work with his party colleagues for the good of the borough.

He said: “I am happy to say that I will support unity and work with the group for the sake of the people of Barnet.

“Obviously I am disappointed after receiving tremendous support. I would like to thank my supporters but I accept the decision as being fully democratic.

“I will do my part to get behind the group and make sure the authority and the councillors do the best for the borough.”

From this, you wouldn't think that all hell had just been unleashed in the Barnet Tory group - publicly, at that. I can only think that during the meeting, which I understand to have gone on for three hours, an awful lot of air was cleared.

The odds of Shooter and his supporters backing the no confidence vote in Hillan next Tuesday appear to have lengthened considerably.

So, this is my question now. Do Shooter and those who backed him believe that the Tory group should vote with their conscience in future or simply toe the line?

This matters because Shooter highlighted a number of issues in his final pitch to councillors before Tuesday night where he is wildly at odds with the current leadership. Those issues, with my interpretation/comment in brackets, are:

"...fully erase the decisions of that flawed Council meeting of July 13th; the allowances will then revert to the previously agreed scheme." (We should reverse the rise in senior Cabinet members' allowances and the rise in allowances for committee chairs.)

"...leadership is a lot more than cobbling together some decisions with a few friends and then bullying others into submission." (Does it include allowing councillors to vote according to conscience?)

"Before Labour’s change to the law in 2000, all Councillors ran the Council. This had worked well for a very long time." (Exclusive rule by Cabinet should end.)

"Why, if our highly paid directors are so skilled in local government affairs do we need to spend millions of pounds on consultants? One or the other has got to go." (Look to your laurels, Nick Walkley et al.)

"I do not believe Soviet bureaucratic initiatives like One Public Sector, Labour’s Total Place (and Barnet’s Future Shape / Easy Council) ideas are not [sic] the way forward." (Needs no comment!)

"...we can avoid morally dubious decisions such as the scrapping of the warden service, the closing of libraries and the selling off of the allotments." (Could Shooter support it at a council meeting should the wardens cut be voted on again? Could he in all conscience vote to close a library, should that question arise?)

Shooter and his supporters might - or might not! We'll know on Tuesday - have decided to close ranks for the good of the Barnet Tory party, and they might have screwed some commitments out of Hillan et al on the strength of the vote on Tuesday night. But how long could such an arrangement last? And how foolish would Shooter look if he now voted at variance with the manifesto he outlined during his challenge?

Will Hillan be finished off by Shooter or Harpoon?

So, Lynne Hillan won the vote at the Tory group tonight (I'm only reading this on the Times website and on the other blogs - I've no inside knowledge!). But the vote was close. The high vote for Brian Schama as chairman of the party (he lost 18:19 to Wendy Prentice) after he wrote the rudest possible email to Hillan shows how deeply divided Barnet Tories are.

And Rog T reckons that Andrew Harper will step in to unite the two sides and emerge the real winner in a few weeks time. Rog knows more about, er, most things than me; he must have good information to make him say that.

So the saga goes on to next Tuesday and the confidence vote at the council meeting. I really can't see Shooter's supporters not voting against Hillan in that vote, now that the situation in the party is revealed as so rancorous. I don't know what the real Barnet Conservative grassroots thinks, but I'm sure they'd just rather it was all over soon than caring how!

P.S. Yes, that is the unkindest headline I've ever written. I'm ashamed of myself, but inside every journalist lurks a tabloid journalist. As one woman to another, Lynne, I don't mean it quite as bad as it sounds.

Starbooks - tall, grande or paperback? Or, Barnet's library future

I've returned from the Barnet council cabinet meeting. I only arrived just in time for the meeting and when I got there most of the people had already absorbed the atmosphere and were sitting in funereal silence with their heads bowed over the enormous pile of paperwork. It was like gate-crashing a wake.

I felt like making a quip about it when I was called to ask my public question, but I hadn't the heart. You see, socialists are nicer than Tories.

My question about libraries was answered on paper by Lynne Hillan and she read it out as well. I wish I had a copy but, because I was late, I didn't get one. I'll ask Governance and Democracy to send me one.

The upshot of Hillan's answer was: the council is not involved in an estates review which will include looking at merging (closing) libraries. The Strategic Library Review is only about enhancing the service and making it more responsive to changing need. I would be reassured if I hadn't read Councillor Robert Rams' comments to the Times series that the library service is likely to be squeezed by 25-30 per cent.

Councillor Rams was allowed to have a go at me! I wouldn't mind but I hadn't been rude to him (chubby chops!). I said I thought the aim of the consultation over the library service was probably actually about identifying which libraries they could close.

"Typical trade unionist! Head in the sand!" Rams opened with some gusto. He went on to say that he imagines that there will be more venues offering books in Barnet once the review is over, not fewer. He held out what is to him a tantalising prospect: Starbucks lending library. I've news for him: it's been tried already, it was called Borders, and it failed.

And why was the atmosphere so dreadful this evening? Well, of course, tomorrow night, Lynne Hillan faces a challenge to her leadership of the Tory group on the council from Mark Shooter. The Tories in Barnet are, whatever they pretend, in a hideous mess. Lib Dem group leader Jack Cohen has played a bit of a blinder, and put down a no confidence motion in Hillan for the council meeting on 14 September. If she survives the vote tomorrow, Hillan next faces a vote in which Labour and Lib Dems will vote against her, and only eight Tory councillors need to break ranks for her to lose.

Would they do it? We debated this in the corridors outside the meeting, in the pub and on the way home. I think they just might. There would be terrible opprobrium from some Tories for voting with Labour and Lib Dems. But, after all, the Lib Dems are the government's coalition partners, so they cannot be painted as completely untouchable. And the stakes are extremely high.

It is not just about Allowancegate, or some paltry squabble in a local Tory party, it is about big politics. Can Barnet council sort out its difficulties and the incumbent party, the Tories, push through enormous cuts and possibly privatisation on the borough? Can they do it without hitting the headlines every day and humiliating the national party?

If enough Tories in Barnet wake up and smell the (Starbucks) coffee, they will realise that they have to get rid of Lynne Hillan. I'm not telling them to do it. To be honest, I'd rather have her at the helm than Shooter, I think, because I know that Hillan is politically inept. Shooter, it's too soon to say.

P.S. Anyone want to join a save our libraries campaign?