The reading age of the Cabinet?

The Reading Room

Mr Mustard thinks that a contract of 8,000 pages (+ appendices) which plays with the lives of 500 people should be read by every cabinet member before they vote at their meeting of 6 December. Accordingly he wrote to every Cabinet member, and sent a copy to all councillors, as follows:

Dear Cabinet Members & Mayor

I don't sign anything without reading it first.

It is the Mayor of Barnet's signature* which will actually put in place the NSCSO contract. I do hope that he is going to read it all first and I also hope that you Cabinet members will all do your duty diligently and read the entire thing so that you will be in a position to make an informed decision on my behalf as a council tax payer who will have to pay for any bad judgment that you make.

I need to know if you do or don't read all 8000 pages.

Please let me know how many pages you have read so far (you can express this as 3 lever arch files out of 20 if that is appropriate ).

Please tell me how many you intend to read before 6 December.

I will email you again on 6 December for a final count.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard


* (Note: The Mayor is excused as Mr Mustard now learns that his office goes on the Contract but he doesn't physically sign any longer as it detracts too much from the time needed to plant trees and cut ribbons and he/she really didn't have time to read everything properly in the past.)

Now this was only on Tuesday at 1.30pm and all Cabinet members should currently be locked away on level 7 of Barnet House (where Mr Mustard thinks the only copy of the contract is safely gathering dust untouched by human hand) being made to read the entire document and ask searching questions. Maybe they have been too busy reading to answer Mr Mustard and so to give them a little chivvy up Mr Mustard has decided to post a table of pages read by each Cabinet member and update it as extra information is received.

Here we are now with the officers' decision recommendation having been made on Thursday 22nd and the Cabinet meeting fast approaching on 6 December. How many do we know for certain of the 8,000 pages have been read?

This:

Cabinet member	Pages read
Richard Cornelius	none at all
Andrew Harper	none at all
Dean Cohen	none at all
Robert Rams	none at all
Helena Hart	none at all
Tom Davey	none at all
Daniel Thomas	none at all
Sachin Rajput	none at all
David Longstaff	none at all
Joanna Tambourides	none at all

Not looking good for an informed decision so far is it?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard