John Alden mission set to cost the council millions
The unexploded bomb that is Tory councillor John Alden has been put in charge of Birmingham City Council’s trusts and charities sub-committee.
This is rather like asking a sumo wrestler to tip-toe across a minefield and get to the other side without major loss of life.
Alden, whose idea of subtlety is to lower his voice from the usual 100 decibels to about 95, is determined to root out numerous financial irregularities that have crept into the council’s handling of trusts. Put bluntly, finance officers have tended to play fast and loose with trust law – most notably in the case of Joseph Chamberlain’s country house, Highbury Hall, where civic catering has operated for years without paying rent to the trustees.
Alden reckons the council owes £5 million and he claims to have struck a deal with resources director Paul Dransfield to have the money re-paid.
He is continuing to put the fear of God into the lawyers, having recently discovered that the council has breached its responsibilities by failing for some 30-odd years to file accounts to the Charity Commission for the Friends’ Institute community centre in Balsall Heath.
Incredibly, he’s even grassed himself for approving the expenditure of £55,000 from the Loxley Trust when he did not have the powers to do so.
Alden quipped: “Some council officers don’t seem to understand the difference between a trust asset and a council asset.
“Isn’t it interesting all these little things that I keep turning up?”
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Naturally, any sane person’s heart would sink when faced by a cabinet agenda with items such as ‘street lighting: design policy and protocol’, ‘ward lighting programme 2008/09’ and ‘bridge assessment, strengthening and maintenance programme 2008/09’.
Birmingham City Council leader Mike Whitby did his best to chivvy things along on Monday by urging members to whip through a heavy schedule efficiently, but he hadn’t reckoned on a performance of stupefying boredom by opposition Labour leader Sir Albert Bore.
Sir Albert wanted to talk about ... process.
Arghhhhh. If there is one thing you don’t want to hear any politician talk about it is process.
But Sir Albert loves all that kind of stuff. How are decisions made? Who takes the decisions? What are the rules etc, etc.
Even deputy Labour leader Ian Ward, who has played Laurel to Bore’s Hardy for more years than he cares to remember, looked set to stab himself to death if only he’d had a sharp instrument to hand.
Why, one wonders, does Sir Albert, an intelligent man, continues to put himself through this?
The time has come, surely, to stand aside with honour and let some new blood steer the floundering Labour ship.
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It’s always something of a concern when councillors start to write about themselves in the third person.
Such behaviour, according to psychologists, denotes a tendency toward delusion and self-importance.
The following is an extract from the blog of Longbridge Tory councillor Keith Barton, the famous global warming sceptic:
“It seems Paul Dale devoted some of his Iron Angle Column to castigating Keith over his remarks on the report on Sustainable Communities.
“Firstly he argued that he had got Keith’s Committee wrong due to the fact that a council website had not been updated. Fair enough but this should have been altered months ago and Keith’s only excuse is that he does not spend all day Googling his name and searching for himself on websites.
“Paul also accused Keith of being a ‘climate change disbeliever’ something which Keith denied in his letter to the Post last week.
“This further reinforces Keith’s view that climate change is a matter of faith for some people and not viewed as the scientific fact that Keith sees it as.
“Perhaps if Paul had used the term ‘heretic’ and called for burning at the stake he would have expressed himself more truthfully.
“Still, it is Keith’s fault for pointing out his inattention to detail and once you upset a journo he has the advantage of having the paper do his dirty work for him.”
Oh dear, oh dear. Burning at the stake would be a little harsh in this instance. Paul thinks Keith should take a long holiday instead.
