August 6: Oysters and fois gras at the taxpayers' expense
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COUNCIL taxpayers will undoubtedly make up their own minds
about whether county council chiefs were right to spend £360 on a
"working dinner" at a top London restaurant.
I suspect many will be unpersuaded,
not to say sceptical, by the authority’s defence of the evening
meal at which two guests were entertained and among the dishes were
fois gras, native oysters and two bottles of wine that cost more
than £60.
(And the defence of a trip to
Edinburgh for a film festival and a stay at a five-star hotel that
cost more than £800 will strike some as the
product of an over-imaginative script writer.)
I can't imagine that there will be
many who are prepared to swallow KCC's line that its dinner at
Rules restaurant was somehow value for money. The
argument it would have been more expensive to book a meeting room
somewhere else is, to say the least, rather flimsy.
How council
chiefs dined on oysters and foie gras at taxpayers'
expense>>>
Taking that argument to its logical
conclusion, there would be countless meals being eaten at our
expense at exclusive central London restaurants all the time.
I’m not the first to wonder why such a
meeting could not have been held at County Hall. If it had been,
the only costs involved would have been meeting the travel fares of
the two guests to Maidstone.
And were there not any more modest
places to dine at in the heart of central London?
I think that many will also wonder
exactly how much of a "working dinner" this actually really was. Is
it credible to believe they were they handing round written reports
and documents between courses?
One interesting aspect of our
investigation is that there now appear to be new rules that govern
the buying of alcoholic drinks by elected members.
It seems new arrangements are in place
that require county councillors to make a contribution to these
costs. Interestingly, we haven’t been able to establish when these
new rules came into play but I have a suspicion that they might
have been relatively recently – indeed, it could possibly have been
a consequence of our inquiries but KCC has declined to say.
The wider issue here is the one of
perception.
As MPs discovered with their expenses
claims, the public do not take kindly to this kind of thing and
neither, I imagine, will KCC employees facing an uncertain future
about their jobs.
Residents struggling to make ends meet
may also need some convincing that this kind of thing is
appropriate and necessary.
My own view is that this reflects the
corporate culture at County Hall which considers and often likens
KCC to a private business. Wining and dining of clients and
others goes on all the time at large companies but KCC remains a
public body.
Yes, hundred pounds here and there may
not seem much but that misses the point. As the authority warns
about the need for some serious belt-tightening, it really ought to
be leading by example.
To coin a phrase, it does sometimes
seem at County Hall that there is one rule for them and one for us.
Or maybe that should be Rules.
Friday, August 06 2010
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