Political blog, September 3: KCC's meeting refreshment bill
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I've been to enough
council meetings to know that those that suspect councillors are
lavished with refreshments and drink are pretty wide of the mark.
You can get a cup of tea or coffee but biscuits and cakes? No
chance.
Still, I see someone has uncovered how much is spent on
refreshments at KCC meetings and the grand total for 2008-2009 is
£13,782.40.
In the context of a £1.4billion annual budget, that's pretty
small beer (or Assam or Earl Grey).
The largest chunk went on buffet lunches offered at full county
council meetings hosted by the chairman and available to all 84
county councillors - or at least to those who are there for the
meetings. That accounted for £8,068.10 while £5,139 was spent on
other committee meetings and £575.30 on local board meetings.
There were 260 formal and informal meetings held last year which
averages out at £53 a meeting - which seems a lot but takes into
account the £8,068 spent on chairman's lunches at full council
meetings. Take that out and average is about £20.
Still, as it is all money out of the public purse and as we are
paying for it, I thought you might like to know.
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There's a meeting of
Kent TV's board of governors scheduled for
tomorrow and while the long-term future for the project has
not yet been determined after it was controversially granted a
seven-month extension, the scheme has become the subject
of a withering attack by one of the board's own members.
In a column for Kent Business, the KMG's
business paper, Martin Jackson writes that he believes the
£1.6million internet channel is in need of radical reform and has
failed to fulfill its early promise.
Mr Jackson, a respected media pundit and founder of
former Kent television broadcaster TVS, claims the service is
“largely perceived as a creature of the county council which is not
surprising as the governors are chaired by the chief executive of
KCC and peopled in the main by public sector bureaucrats.”
He writes: "We are denied a any financial information but are
swamped with technical details" adding that the the board of
governors - set up to ensure impartiality and adjudicate on
complaints - had been “largely redundant.” He says radical reform
is vital with a new board “shorn of its public sector placement but
representative of the wider Kent business community.”
Mr Jackson writes: “Despite attracting
a substantial audience, now climbing towards an impressive two
million, Kent TV has not fulfilled its early promise.”
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I quite like the idea of a series of television debates between
the three main party leaders ahead of the next general
election.
The challenge is to find a way of making them interesting enough
spectacles. The TV debates staged in America can be quite sterile
as the protagonists are so well trained to avoid gaffes that they
rarely say anything they haven't said before or anything genuinely
interesting.
I'm not sure David Frost, who is being touted as a possible
host, would be right. He always struck me as too avuncular a
political interrogator.
Someone like Andrew Neil, who presents the BBC's late night
political programme, "This Week" and "The Daily Politics" might be
a better choice.
For anyone who fancies a flutter, there are
some interesting odds from
Ladbrokes on the possible presenter. Andrew Neil is 100-1.
I'd steer clear of Ant and Dec though, at 500-1
but for an outside bet, how about Piers
Morgan at 250-1...
Thursday, September 03 2009
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