Simply Bad Management?

There’s been a bit of a row going on in Lambeth over the council’s monitoring of Councillor Kingsley Abrams email and his subsequent suspension from the local Labour group for four months.

However what seems to have been 'overlooked’ amongst all the shouting, accusations, counter-accusations, etc. is that the email incident which led to his suspension was simply another attempt in a sustained campaign of harassment aimed at forcing him out prior to the local elections on the 6th May.

All of which failed when he dug his heels in and refused to resign. Suspending him after he was re-elected with 2533 votes - the highest in that ward - simply shows how petty, spiteful and childish New Labour’s neo-tory leaders really are.


Yes, that’s all very interesting but what does it have to do with Dover?

Considerably more than you might think.

The reason behind all this ‘fuss’ is Kingsley Abrams’ staunch opposition to the now spectacularly failed Lambeth Living, an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO) created in 2008 by Lambeth council to manage it's housing stock and which was described by the Audit Commission as “poor and deteriorating” with 11 out of 13 service areas being described as a weakness or having more weaknesses than strengths.

The report also expressed concerns over Lambeth Living’s steep rent increases which had been expected to exceed 17% last year and concluded that housing standards had significantly deteriorated under Lambeth Living’s management with little prospect for improvement.

However, damning as it is, the Audit Commission’s report simply confirmed what was already common knowledge.

Lambeth council’s ALMO experiment has been an unmitigated disaster.

Starting with an unexplained ‘deficit’ of £8.4 million in the first 4 months of operation - much of which has still not been fully accounted for. Residents and leaseholders being over billed, double billed, billed for works and contracts which simply did not exist. Accounting errors which left Lambeth Living with an additional deficit of over £4 million last year.

With this in mind it will probably come as no surprise to learn that only 2 of the more than 100 tower blocks in the borough have a valid fire safety certificate.

Describing Lambeth Living’s customer service centre as 'dire' seems somewhat anti-climatic by comparison.


The ALMO scam... erm... I mean scheme, being proposed by Dover District Council in partnership with Canterbury, Shepway and Thanet is essentially identical in all the important aspects to that created by Lambeth council.

Dover District Council’s claim that 21 of the 69 - soon to be 68 with the forthcoming demise of Lambeth Living - are ‘top performing’ is like claiming that one cesspool is performing better than another cesspool because it doesn’t smell so bad.

The truth is they both stink and it’s not something that most people would want in their community.

In fact, only 11 out of the soon to be 68 ALMOs actually meet the Decent Housing Standard while the other 10 are ‘on course’ to meet their obligations by the end of the specified two year period.

Which still leaves nearly three quarters of them failing and with the Audit Commission due to go on the bonfire in the near future that number will only grow as councils will then be free to appoint their own auditors.

Also amongst their various waffling claims of improved services, more say in how those services are provided etc. is the claim that council tenants would “pay similar rents”.

Note, similar, not the same.

This means that when the expected cost savings fail to appear - as seems likely based on other local authorities experiences - it will almost certainly be council tenants and leaseholders who will be expected to foot the bill for the ALMO's failures.



So what’s next for Lambeth council tenants and leaseholders? With the dismal failure of Lambeth Living the council claims it has only one option left - stock transfer. It is now seeking approval to ‘transfer’ ownership of a large portion of it’s better housing assets to ‘approved’ social housing landlords.


By the way, I’m fairly sure that there is absolutely no truth in the rumours of a secret deal to sell council housing stock to the Southern Housing Group at a significantly discounted price when the ALMO scam... I mean scheme, collapses.

Rogue Waves

I was at the Waves cafe in De Bradelei Wharf a couple of weeks ago when I overheard two of the staff discussing how they could get rid of the new cook.

Apparently one of them wanted ‘her’ job back.

Their idea was to plant something in the cook’s bag then inform the manager they had seen her put it there.

At the time I simply ignored it. I hear a lot of this sort of petty spiteful gossip - it’s difficult to avoid it given the size of my ears. A right ‘princely’ pair as one of my colleagues once joked.

However I was back there again at the weekend and was reminded of this rather nasty little tete-a-tete when I learned that the cook they were referring to had been dismissed last week - for theft.

Now this could simply be a coincidence of course, but as a friend in the Kent Constabulary once remarked,

Not even the Commissioner of the Met is stupid enough to believe that!

What's your Dolly's Name?

Any parent knows - or should know at the very least - that the more intelligent a child is, the more careful you have to be about what you say in front of them.

The problem is that not only do we sometimes forget this, children usually have extremely good hearing - particularly when it’s something they’re not supposed to hear - and a remarkable ability to be ’within earshot’ when you’re not expecting it.

This was recently demonstrated in clear, unambiguous terms by the four year old daughter of one of my wife’s colleagues.


Bimbo Barbie, Brain-Dead Barbie, Boney Barbie...


You get the picture?

Naturally, her husband is rather more amused by this than she is.

Recycle, Request, Refused...

It seems that not all of Dover District Council's staff have got the message about it's alleged commitment to recycling.

A certain nameless DDC official recently told a local school that they could not have the materials they wanted for a school project as they were to be incinerated. When the school attempted to clarify what it naturally assumed to be a health and safety issue they were told.

"Oh no, there's nothing wrong with them. They're just marked for incineration that's all."

While I was out...

In the weeks before the election it was suggested that the reason for my long silence was that I had been 'identified' and subsequently crucified by party enforcers or perhaps even by the blackshirts themselves.

That's not unreasonable considering the way I've criticised the behaviour of the party leadership and Gordon Brown in particular. But alas, as so often in real life, the true reason is much more mundane and boring...

I've been busy.

One of the problems associated with this little 'hobby' of mine is the deceptively large amount of time it can consume. It's all very well thinking I'll just dash off a quick post about whatever happens to have caught my attention, but where politics are concerned that quick post can easily turn into a multiple page missive.

Keeping it to a reasonable size and/or paring it down afterwards takes time. Ensuring that the shorter version says what I want it to without too much danger of being accidentally misinterpreted takes even more time and suddenly it's not a quick post any longer.

Naturally I could 'make' time for this but then it wouldn't be fun anymore and as I've mentioned before, I do this mostly for my own amusement.


This means that I missed the opportunity to comment on such gems as Gordon Brown's appalling behaviour at the Cenotaph. The well deserved ear-bashing he got from Mrs Janes and his pathetic attempts to deflect criticism of his fiscal mismanagement by pointing the finger at Spain and claiming that the UK was not the only member of the G20 still in recession.

As the more politically aware will already know. Spain is not and has never been a member of the G20, regardless of whatever that deranged Scots git may or may not have convinced himself and some of his ‘colleagues’ of - although in their case it was more likely to have been the blackshirts who did the ‘convincing’. To then call them an 'unofficial' member when challenged on this fact merely served to further highlight his increasing inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality.


And then of course, there was Jim Devine's 'inappropriate' behaviour towards Nadine Dorries.

I must admit this did not come as a surprise to me as Jim Devine is one of the very worse offenders who, drunk or sober, seems to be incapable of keeping his hands off any woman unfortunate enough to attract his attention.

Sadly however, Jim Devine is by no means the only one guilty of this sort of misconduct which is far too common amongst MPs, some of whom seem to see this as a perk of the job rather than a criminal assault.


Finally I tip my hat in respect to a very senior member of the BBC, who on being told that Chris Evans had been chosen to replace Sir Terry Wogan as the presenter of the Radio 2 breakfast show because “he’s popular with the 15 to 24 age group" remarked

"So are venereal diseases but you wouldn't employ one to present an early morning radio show!"

At Bloody Last!

Well it's finally happened.

David Geffen... I mean Peter Mandleson... erm... Gordon Brown, has called a General Election.

Normally a Prime Minister, or in this case a Deranged Scots Git, will call an election when they think it will give them the best chance of winning.

However with Gordon Brown being the only person on the planet who still believes we have a gnat's chance in hell of winning, the timing has another purpose.

To force the Digital Economy Bill through Parliament before it get torn to shreds.

For those of you who have been hiding in the closet - yes it is nice and quiet in there - the Digital Economy Bill is a rather despicable piece of legislation written almost entirely by copyright lobbyists such as the BPI working quietly behind the scenes.

Carefully buried within the bill are clauses which give ministers the power to extend copyright by decree, give copyright holders the ability to 'convict on accusation' without being required to provide evidence of infringing activity and much more.

Government ministers have been fighting tooth and nail to block amendments since it's original reading, particularly those which would introduce judicial oversight of enforcement action, and on one occasion simply removed the amended text, replacing it with the original.

Naturally I did my bit by oh so casually asking a certain Labour peer about the amendment he had sponsored. He wasn't a bit pleased to see that it had vanished without trace and no notation to indicate why.

However with the tories now 'on-board' I fully expect this to make it through the 'wash-up' essentially unchanged.


As for the election itself. Gordon Brown wants you to support him. Not the Labour Party. Him personally.

I would suggest there are much quicker, less drawn out and painful methods of destroying everything you've worked for.

Dousing your home in petrol and setting it alight with you still inside it is one of them.

Give me my pills! Quickly! I need my pills!

It seems that Gordon Brown's instinct for self-preservation is still working despite his rapidly disintegrating mental state - or he is no longer capable of telling the truth - judging by the way he lied when Andrew Marr asked him if he was taking pills to 'help him get through'.

One thing is for certain. His expression when Marr asked the question followed by his not-so-private temper tantrum afterwards will only fuel further speculation.