City consultations
Following the city council ‘consultations’ on the cuts, where we were asked to rate council services for importance, meetings have been going ahead with the title “We asked. You said, What next?” . This consultation is designed to draw residents into discussion about what should be cut. But there is a clear message of no cuts coming out from the exercise.
Here is one view from a resident of Forest Fields about an Nottingham City Council consultation on Wednesday:
NCC have no answers to the cuts
Something that the Councillor didn’t point out but that I thought was quite interesting was that all of the categories were given average scores of greater than 2.5, and all but one category was given an average over 3. These results look suspiciously like people want to keep all of their services.
There are now two more “We asked. You said, What next?” meeting dates left in the current round, both on 14th December.
And in the county …
From our own correspondent (Parish of Nottingham blog): http://parishofnottinghamshire.blogspot.com(Thursday, 9 December 2010)
Kay Cutts looked like she was going to explode today in full council:
A Beeston member asked her about the transfer of some land for the tram to the City Council. Evidently her second hand car salesman transport portfolio holder won’t sell it so the City Council are getting a compulsory purchase order – a long, expensive drawn out business. I’ll now quote a witness:
“The member asked her a straightforward question about the transfer of the land to which she replied rather curtly that a compulsory land transfer arrangement, not purchase was under way and her colour slowly changed from Vogon green to a lighter shade of red. The member then asked how she squared this with her promise not to obstruct the tram and that it may cost her friends in the City Council over £200,000 to get the compulsory order, how could she justify that waste of public money during these difficult times? Her complexion then went through the various stages of red to glowing traffic light, we all thought she was about to burst. She finally just stuttered out something about them not selling voluntarily before sitting down, looking rather embarrassed. We then realised why – sitting directlybehind her was a glowering Leader of the City Council; Jon Collins.”