I was at a wonderful meeting last night, of which great things will come.
But it was in Newcastle, meaning that, after the train back to Durham, I had to get a taxi back to Lanchester, because the last bus is now at nine o'clock between Mondays and Thursdays.
On Sundays, it is at a scarcely credible twenty past six.
I am medically unable to drive. That I am forbidden to do so is printed on the packaging of my medication.
But I used to live somewhere that was very much on the beaten track, as befitted a place only eight miles from Durham city centre.
Thanks to the appalling Durham County Council, however, it has been turned into the middle of nowhere.
This. The Teaching Assistants. Windlestone Hall. The Cricket Club, with its private box for senior Councillors and Officers.
The whiff of corruption hangs over Andrew Cunningham's old fiefdom, while the stench of incompetence and cruelty is overwhelming.
Private Eye, of Poulson fame, is already on the case.
Nationwide, there is easily a half-hour current affairs documentary, a Panorama or a Dispatches, to be made on those semi-rural, almost suburban communities the very old, very young, or simply disabled residents of which have in recent years been sent to the dark side of the Moon by the withdrawal of public transport.
It is no wonder that Durham County Council has to pay its members what for some of them amounts to more than £500 per hour (£13,300 per year for two meetings per month, each of those meetings being ordinarily of one hour's duration), and more than many of its Teaching Assistants will soon enjoy, so that they can attend meetings that begin at nine o'clock in the morning.
Even with their senior citizens' bus passes, how else would they ever get home?
This. The Teaching Assistants. Windlestone Hall. The Cricket Club, with its private box for senior Councillors and Officers.
The whiff of corruption hangs over Andrew Cunningham's old fiefdom, while the stench of incompetence and cruelty is overwhelming.
Private Eye, of Poulson fame, is already on the case.
Nationwide, there is easily a half-hour current affairs documentary, a Panorama or a Dispatches, to be made on those semi-rural, almost suburban communities the very old, very young, or simply disabled residents of which have in recent years been sent to the dark side of the Moon by the withdrawal of public transport.
It is no wonder that Durham County Council has to pay its members what for some of them amounts to more than £500 per hour (£13,300 per year for two meetings per month, each of those meetings being ordinarily of one hour's duration), and more than many of its Teaching Assistants will soon enjoy, so that they can attend meetings that begin at nine o'clock in the morning.
Even with their senior citizens' bus passes, how else would they ever get home?
You're a nasty politician, David Lindsay. People think you're not, maybe you think you're not, but you are. Andrew Cunningham? Poulson? "More than £500 per hour"? "Even with their senior citizens' bus passes"? You're prepared to go pretty damn low and not for the first time.
ReplyDeleteFunnily enough, the man he alone thought wasn't some kind of saint, now dead, turns out not to have been some kind of saint after all. So those of us who take the same view of DL could be vindicated in the end. We're a minority but we've always been there.
DeleteDavid, with the greatest respect, you have declared you will stand and therefore if successful will "earn" the same? I think people will find this view odd in light of your declared intent.
ReplyDeleteAs a trade unionist, I will take the rate for the job, yes. Both the rate and the job will, however, be revisited when we take the authority to No Overall Control, depriving the Leader of his seat along the way.
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