Reporting on Kent county council matters is fairly sparse in our local newspapers, although Paul Francis, Group political editor of the Kent Messenger does a first class job of scrutinising Kent county council .I've just been taking a gander at a fine example of his work and that of Bob Bounds (Editor Kent Messenger), which concerns some of the more extraordinary spending by KCC bureaucrats on , well themselves actually .
As many of you will be aware and county council is a four or five star council, I believe part of that rating surely must come from the extravagant manner in which they treat themselves, an example is quoted of how on one occasion staff were helped themselves to nearly £400 worth of chocolate (Thorntons), £200 worth of commemorative photographs and £1000 taxis.
If you feel strong enough, to read more about the extravagant lifestyle of KCC's staff, bearing in mind that you pay for it, then do please click here for the Spending Files an insight in to Kent's lavish spendthrift culture.
Every time I read of fresh excesses by Kent council, I have to pinch myself to remember that Paul Carter, leader of the council is actually a Tory and not some spendaholic socialist, nutjob from the 1980's.
This is peanuts compared to the amount squandered on EU Jet at Manston, sorry 'Kent International Airport' from the Tory members' slush fund, despite officer recommendations against.
ReplyDeleteCllr Pink Toadman lost almost £200k of our money with no comeback whatsoever. Oh wait, the Tories promoted the incompetent didn't they....and first-past-the-post delivered these ****wits a huge majority yet again.
I doubt whether any of the front line staff get tsken out on jollies or are given free chocs and have taxis paid for. I think these excesses only apply to the select few working at county hall.
ReplyDeleteOr pinch yourself to prove that he is neither a "Socialist Nutjob" nor an unprincipled, deceitful power-grabbing Lib Dem who then settles into the lap of his Tory masters. Evens things a bit, doesn't it.
ReplyDeleteMore in today KM!
ReplyDeleteYou will like this one Tony.
-----------------------------------
A bill totalling £6,340.55 was charged to a credit card for payments to Google aimed at raising the profile of KCC's controversial TV station Kent TV.
A series of 10 payments over 12 months appear against transactions charged to the credit card of Tanya Oliver, KCC's director of strategic development and public access.
The payments related to Kent TV, the authority's internet-based TV station, which was scrapped earlier this year.
------------------------
And there was more Kent TV spending on this credit card.
Where they trying to hide the Kent tv spending by using a senior managers credit card? It only goes to show that the published cash spent on Kent TV was only part of the millions thrown doen the drsin by Carter, Giroy and it looks like Oliver too.
Thank you KM.
How very cosy indeed !
ReplyDeleteNo mention of how much money was allocated or spent by 'common purpose graduates' by the eagle eyed Mr Francis or KM ?
I wonder why?
Maybe they consider it of no importance that the people of Kent have spent thousands on these 'training' courses.
I wonder how much these gallant "professionals" were paid by Kent tax payers to provide this 'joint working service' ?
ReplyDeleteWill this be reported in the KM, we wont bother holding our breath?
Kent police take on the heavy work
Once again the police provide the muscle for social workers to seize children, says Christopher Booker.
Eleven days ago a Kent mother noticed a small mark on her five-year-old son’s ankle. He couldn’t say what had caused it. She dabbed on some antiseptic cream and thought no more about it. Two days later his school noticed the mark and contacted social services. The mother was summoned to hospital and told to sign a form allowing her two children to be kept in care by social workers until she had been interviewed by the police. She was driven 15 miles to Folkestone police station where she was interviewed and held in a cell until midnight.
The police then confiscated her BlackBerry, saying it was needed as evidence, and told her she would have to walk home.
Terrified and crying, she walked 15 miles in the dark, arriving home as dawn was breaking, She then discovered that at 9.45 the previous evening, three police cars had arrived at the house with sirens blaring.
Four policemen and a social worker had woken her seven-year-old daughter to remove her, sobbing, in her nightclothes.
Last week the parents were told by social workers that they would face a care order on the children, whom they were allowed to see briefly on condition that they did not discuss why the children had been taken from home. The police promised the mother’s solicitor that they would return her BlackBerry, worth over £200. But they then told her there was no record of it on their system.
I emailed Kent police twice last week to ask whether they could confirm or deny the details of this story, but have had no reply.
In my item last week headed “Why are the police providing muscle for forced adoptions?”,
I described how a south London mother was removed to a psychiatric hospital with the aid of six policemen and three social workers, in order to hand her two children to their estranged father.
After the two girls tried three times to escape, and a tribunal found there was no reason for their mother to be detained, the family was last week happily reunited.
But once again I must ask why the police support social workers in this astonishingly heavy-handed way, when too often, it seems, there is no good reason to snatch children from their homes in the first place.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8039034/Kent-police-take-on-the-heavy-work.html