John Alden having trouble with his sums
John Alden, whose lifelong ambition is to keep asking awkward questions about Birmingham City Council’s labyrinthine financial processes, is not for the first time in his life feeling a little confused.
Alden, who chairs the leisure, sport and culture scrutiny committee, is a tax accountant in real life.
He naturally has, therefore, a vivid imagination when it comes to deciphering balance sheets.
But even Alden declares himself stumped when he tries to find out exactly how Brum’s new £193 million library is to be paid for.
Some £99 million is to be borrowed by the council to help pay for the project. That much is known. Alden has worked out that the interest payable on the loan will be 7.5 per cent – which works out to annual repayments of about £7.5 million.
The question is: where will this money come from?
It would be unfair, given the Birmingham-wide importance of the library, to land the leisure and culture department with the full burden.
Such a move would certainly result in cuts to other services, with community libraries first in the firing line.
But Alden’s attempts to secure a guarantee that the repayments will be met by the council’s corporate centre have not been successful.
“I hope someone knows how these figures add up. We are flying in the dark here,” he declared.
It’ll be even darker if plans to raise half the cost of the library by selling land to developers fall victim to the credit crunch.
Alden wrote to the corporate finance unit seeking assurances. Two months later, he had half an answer. He is still waiting for the other half.
He yearns for the old days when backbenchers routinely terrorised committee chairmen.
“It must be 10 years since we have had a proper debate at council drilling down into the budgets of each portfolio. Meetings used to go on to two o’clock in the morning,” he recalled wistfully.
Oh, dear. I get the feeling that Coun Alden will soon be ushered away for one of those cosy little chats with the council leader and the chief executive.
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The efforts made by Birmingham City Council in a futile attempt to persuade the owner of the “gentlemen’s entertainment” Rocket Club in Broad Street to remove an advertising banner during the Conservative conference at the ICC are almost beyond parody.
Alan Sartori’s little joke – The Rocket Club welcomes the Tories - there’s nothing Conservative in here – did not amuse po-faced paper-pushers who were already seething after Marketing Birmingham supplied 10,000 conference delegates with vouchers enabling them to a little cut-price conversation with Mr Sartori’s collection of lovely ladies.
The Rocket Man’s telephone was red hot with a succession of bumbling bureaucrats begging him to remove the sign.
After all, it might be seen by Conservative ladies.
Birmingham, a modern city of a million people, might be exposed as a place where, heaven forfend, naked women can be glimpsed in a club licensed by the council.
I am reliably informed that a senior official at Marketing Birmingham telephoned Mr Sartori urging him to remove the sign and behave discreetly.
Have these people got nothing better to do?
Clearly not.
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Birmingham Tory councillor Len Clark has veered off message again.
No surprise there then, although he does it so eloquently.
Clark, listening to council chief executive Stephen Hughes blathering on in a scrutiny committee about the Local Area Agreement which sets out all sorts bold plans and targets for improving the lives of people living in Birmingham, had a magisterial put-down: “Plans are the enemy of flexibility,” he trumpeted.
Clark, who has been around a bit, is old enough to remember the 1970s when he was a Labour member of the West Midlands County Council.
Similarly radical plans to boost employment, cut crime and social deprivation were drawn up by well-meaning officials and politicians.
But guess what happened?
The economy collapsed, Britain was on the verge of bankruptcy and the rescue plans were blown away by soaring unemployment and inflation.
Does this sound familiar?
