UFOs and Icelandic Deposits

Written by Cllr Jack Cohen and published in Hendon Times on Fri 9th Apr 2010

Holidays over, and the election gun has been fired. Nominations for the Council Elections closed yesterday. So we political geeks will be straining to find out who is standing where and more important who is not standing.

In the meantime life at the Town hall goes on as usual. Wednesday was the monthly meeting of the area planning sub committees. I was at the Finchley and Golders Green Committee. We met in the Council chamber. As usual there was a problem with the public address system.

A small agenda had attracted decent turnout of interested residents. We turned down an application in my ward (Childs Hill). This was for a block of flats, no problem with that. We were not happy though with the design. The report to committee said this:

"The increased height of the corner plot is considered to "anchor" the new development to the site. The application therefore provides a rare opportunity for a landmark building in a location which is considered capable of accommodating it, and would introduce a piece of innovative design into an area which at the moment is lacking in this respect"

Or put another way an ugly monstrosity!

Another application concerned an extension that had not been built in accordance with planning permission, nothing new there then. The quote of the evening came from an objector to another application. The objector said she had the backing,"of two reputable estate agents". A councillor came close to the quote of the evening when he alleged "planning officers would give permission for a UFO to land. Although what he meant by that beats me.

So on to yesterday evening to the Business Management Overview and Scrutiny Sub Committee (Special Meeting), what a mouthful; budding Councillors already having second thoughts? After dealing with an important item about homelessness amongst young people, Yes even in leafy Barnet this is a real problem. And by the way will our National Politicians be addressing this?

Next item was the Treasury Management Policy. This deals with how the Council invest its money. (In Icelandic Banks). Para 9.8 of the accompanying report included the following: "The Council has two treasurer advisors namely Butlers and Sector." The report then goes on to explain their role which amongst other things is "to advise the authority" and later on "advising on alternatives". Well pretty clear to me that their job is to advise. Not so, who says so, step forward the Leader of the Council.

Answering questions on the report the Leader insisted their role was not to advise but to merely supply information. Apparently we pay them £17,000.00 a year for this. And what do they do for this money, "we don't know" replied the leader, "we are trying to find out". You could not make it up