Neville gets a glimpse of hell
Neville Summerfield, the cabinet member for regeneration-lite, arrived early for his interrogation by scrutiny committee.
Not quite as early, though, as the ever-earnest committee chairman Tim Huxtable, who must be the only person in the entire council who is planning to work on December 31. He intends to hold a “pre-agenda meeting” on New Year’s Eve.
As the pious Huxtable put it to a committee clerk: “If I am in the office, so are we all.”
Having sussed that this was not likely to prove very popular, Huxtable offered an alternative date. December 24 – Christmas Eve.
Good grief. Here is someone who has recently become a father for the first time, and he wants to spend Christmas Eve at work. Where do they get these people from?
Summerfield stumbled into Committee Room 3, where the curtains had been drawn, lights dimmed and a Powerpoint presentation flashed a giant picture of Stonehenge on the wall. As with so many things at the council, there was no logical explanation for this.
Why Stonehenge? Why was it there?
No one could say for certain, although the most likely explanation was some kind of subliminal statement about the council’s business transformation project, which is supposed to move the city from the Stone Age into more modern times.
“I’ve come to Hades,” quipped Summerfield.
“And how would you know what Hades looks like,” retorted Huxtable, a devout Roman Catholic.
“I have no idea what Hades looks like, and I hope I never find out.”
No, Tim will probably end up at halfway house in Purgatory. Or has that been abolished?
Oh, yes. The wit and repartee at scrutiny committees knows no bounds.
Summerfield shuffled off for a quick fag, and returned five minutes later to announce that he had decided to “drop the gags” during his presentation on the Birmingham economy, in order to keep within the 10-minutes allotted. There was so much good news to disseminate, you see, that there would be no time for banter.
You’d have never known we were in the midst of the worst recession since the 1930s. Next year is going to be very exciting for office development, insisted Neville, reeling off a number of speculative developments which he declared would be built and fully occupied before you could say, well, economic turn-down.
But those ungrateful scrutineers demanded facts. How much office space in Birmingham is vacant at the moment? Will the famous Eastside vertical theme park ever be built? Will the city park ever be built?
Neville resisted the temptation to nip out for a smoke, and ploughed on.
How could he, a grand strategy man, be expected to know about boring details?
“I don’t see myself as servicing the engine or adjusting the tappets. I steer the ship, really,” he added.
Pretty pleased after such a splendid put-down, Neville went on to spoil things: “Let’s hope it’s not the Titanic.”
Oh, how they laughed.
