Sutton visits

My opposite number from the London Borough of Sutton came to call yesterday. Paul Scully is, with great credit, visiting a number of Conservative Councils that have been achieving great things so he can construct a good plan for his elections in London next year.

When we were in opposition, we visited Wandsworth to see how they did things. Our Libdems tried to find things that were bad about Wandsworth to prove that we shouldn’t learn from them.

We didn’t visit Sutton….

On a related note, I see that the LibDems are continuing to advertise for candidates saying “you don’t need to be an expert on council matters or politics”.

Good thing airlines don’t advertise like this – “Pilots wanted, help us fly our planes to exotic destinations, expertise not necessary!”

Now I’m not saying you need years of training, but it does help to know something about how Government works if you want to be running it. Local Government is hard.

So it’s no wonder they’re a complete shambles (like Labour have been nationally, incidentally) when they do achieve power!

“I want to be Prime Minister”

says Nick Clegg, apparently forgetting the David Steel moment of rashly preparing for Government. At least Steel and Owen had poll ratings over 20% – and at one point over 50% . . .

He’s gone from rising hopeful to elder statesman in record time and with absolutely no interval in between!”
– Michael Foot on David Steel in 1979.

This is a good page to find the SDP’s national conference arrangements.

Clegg says we’re “phoney”

It appears that Nick Clegg  believes that simply abusing his political opponents is the way to achieve credibility.

How wrong can he be!

In a rally on Saturday evening for Lib Dem delegates, Mr Clegg will label Mr Cameron the “conman of British politics”.

It has been Cameron and Osborne who have led the debate on restricting public spending and Cameron particularly strong in showing leadership on MP’s expenses.

“fake, phoney change from David Cameron’s Conservatives, and real change the Liberal Democrats offer.”

And Clegg wants people to follow the line that a Cameron govt will be no different to the Brown govt . . ? I don’t know who fed him that line but accusing “Cameron’s Conservatives” of being “fake” really isn’t a particularly strong tack, especially when Cameron has a high trust rating amongst all voters.

Councils Seminar

Invited by the Shadow Treasury and Local Govt team to speak at a Conservative Councils Seminar, last week I jumped at the opportunity.

A good session was had, and together with Hammersmith and Fulham, Essex, Kent, Wandsworth, Westminster and East Sussex leaders we exchanged ideas, experiences and lobbied (and were lobbied by) some senior colleagues who could, in a few short months, be Cabinet chiefs themselves.

It finished with an address by George Osborne in front of the media which resulted in some good national recognition for Windsor and Maidenhead in particular and Conservative Councils in general.

Pictured below the deputy Leader of East Sussex, Margaret Eaton (LGA Chairman), Caroline Spelman (Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Govt) and Philip Hammond (Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury)

Transparency Recognised

I was telephoned by some chap at the Sunday Times last week, and I wasn’t around. Someone in my office took a message to say that he was interested in the spending transparency that the Borough had implemented.

Trying to phone him back, I got no answer twice. I wanted to point out that we had in fact published not only the suppliers payments but also scanned all of the councillor claims as well!

So today in the Sunday Times, the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead was the leading council quoted!

Awesome stuff – lower down in the printed version they showed people using the purple boxes and talking about recycling rewards; pity, the rewards only work with the blue bins and the green waste wheelie bins.

I’ll take it though.