The Friday Joke - Brian is mellowing

There is to be a vote of no confidence in the leader of Barnet Council, Richard Cornelius (Mr Mustard is perfectly OK with the man himself and is always trying to get him to play truant after meetings and come to the Greyhound for a pint - he would like to but is always very busy -  Mr Mustard often refers to him as the "leader" as he doesn't think he is much of one but must have some negotiating skills to have hung on despite so many debacles). Mr Mustard saw in the local paper that Corny is allowed to vote that he has confidence in himself and that struck Mr Mustard as most amusing as well as a bit sad and rather pragmatic.

The numbers are finely balanced with 32 Conservative councillors, 30 Labour & the Liberal-Democrat tour de force Jack Cohen. Now Mr Mustard doesn't presume to know which way Jack will vote and hasn't asked him but suppose for one moment he decides to vote that he doesn't have confidence in the Leader and that Corny wasn't allowed, or opted not to as a man of honour, vote, then there could with full attendance be 31 votes each way with the Mayor having the casting vote and we can guess that he would save Corny's skin as he was supported by his Leader in "LandlordGate". So as you can see ever vote is going to count and all it might take is one brave Conservative councillor to vote against, perhaps with another councillor who has ambitions to be deputy leader in support, and we are going to have a leadership contest. Such fun.

The newspaper article led to the following tweets (and there were other people who also tweeted) and although Brian has blocked Mr Mustard he couldn't resist commenting and instead of the rather "robust" comments he usually makes he mildly admonished Mr Mustard in the nicest way possible. Has Brian turned over a new leaf?

Will we see him next in Cafe Buzz with a bunch of flowers and a fulsome written apology and having his breakfast there every day as the start of his rehabilitation programme to re-enter politics (now you have taken a joke too far Mr Mustard and diverted into the realms of fantasy: Ed)

Have a good weekend all and don't take any chances with your parking as Mr Mustard is about to be exceptionally busy with a surfeit of work.

Mr Mustard

Emergency planning for a mayor disaster

Did you know that the council is partly responsible for emergency planning in the event of a major disaster, see this page. We're all doomed but at least every Capita employee will be safe?

Mr Mustard may have got the title slightly wrong, or there again he may not have?

On his way to a committee room this week Mr Mustard came across a pile of the July 2014 Barnet First magazine, which thankfully hadn't been shoved through his "no junk mail" letterbox and which he supposed it was his civic duty to read, having forgotten his copy of Private Eye which he reads during the quieter moments of dull committee meetings.

The back page is called "working hours" and is a sort of "a day in the life of" a council employee and this month it is the turn of the senior mayoral support officer in which the employee concerned starts by saying it is about more than driving the mayor around. Of course it is, you have to wash the car as well, look after the regalia & robes and the Mayor's parlour at which point we must have a slight diversion:

And I’ve a many curious things to shew when you are there.”
Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”

“I’m sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high;
Will you rest upon my little bed?” said the Spider to the Fly.
“There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin,
And if you like to rest awhile, I’ll snugly tuck you in!”
Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “for I’ve often heard it said,
They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!”

Said the cunning Spider to the Fly, “Dear friend what can I do,
To prove the warm affection I’ve always felt for you?
I have within my pantry, good store of all that’s nice;
I’m sure you’re very welcome — will you please to take a slice?”
“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “kind Sir, that cannot be,
I’ve heard what’s in your pantry, and I do not wish to see!”

“Sweet creature!” said the Spider, “you’re witty and you’re wise,
How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes!
I’ve a little looking-glass upon my parlour shelf,
If you’ll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself.”
“I thank you, gentle sir,” she said, “for what you’re pleased to say,
And bidding you good morning now, I’ll call another day.”

The Spider turned him round about, and went into his den,
For well he knew the silly Fly would soon come back again:
So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner sly,
And set his table ready, to dine upon the Fly.
Then he came out to his door again, and merrily did sing,
“Come hither, hither, pretty Fly, with the pearl and silver wing;
Your robes are green and purple — there’s a crest upon your head;
Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead!”

Alas, alas! how very soon this silly little Fly,
Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by;
With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew,
Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue –
Thinking only of her crested head — poor foolish thing! At last,
Up jumped the cunning Spider, and fiercely held her fast.
He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,
Within his little parlour — but she ne’er came out again!

And now dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly flattering words, I pray you ne’er give heed:
Unto an evil counsellor~, close heart and ear and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly.

~ Councillor, surely? (Ed)

and continuing with the duties of this person:

"advising the mayor on protocol" which Mr Mustard would suggest ought to include that an officer and a gentleman wouldn't call on tenants unannounced at 10pm at night.

Now we look at where the mayor has been and this Mr Mustard has cut and paste from the original article to save you going out to your recycling bin.

If Mr Mustard was of a cynical turn of mind he might think that the mayor is off indulging his hobbies at our expense. Can't he see our cadets at their Barnet base or entertain them in his parlour? How often is often? Does anyone feel a freedom of information request coming on?

Finally the Friday Joke, a day late, but never mind

Hugh Rayner, first citizen or worst citizen? You decide. You can always email him at cllr.h.rayner@barnet.gov.uk if you have any words of advice on protocol, decorum, morality, how not to bring disgrace on ones office etc. Feel free to blind copy Mr Mustard in at mrmustard@zoho.com as he likes a laugh.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Breakdown in the Bus Lane

Executive summary:

Residents in CPZ's have to pay for the incompetence of Barnet Council.

The reasoning:

Mr Mustard has been thinking about parking ticket collection rates. He wondered how Barnet Council were doing in this area. He decided to send for certain figures for the year ended 31 March 2011 as it is a year that can be considered as over as "debts die of old age" is a saying in his industry and by now over 99% of everything that is going to be resolved for that year has been. Here are the figures:

Penalty Charge Notices (PCN) in 2010/11	Parking	Bus Lane	Notes
The total number of PCN’s issued	99,982	24,183
The number paid	72,766	15,567
Percentage paid %	73%	64%	1
The number sent to bailiffs	16,723	0	2
The number paid after bailiff intervention	2,508	0	3
Bailiff success rate %	15%	n/a
The number cancelled for any reason	17,880	1,849
Cancellation rate %	18%	8%	4
The number still being chased for payment	3,000	4,872	5
Unresolved rate %	3%	20%	6

Notes:

1. The percentage of bus lane tickets paid ought to be higher than for parking offences as mistakes in bus lane tickets should be rare and as the reasons for a valid appeal are more limited.

2. Here is the real reason why the percentage of bus lane tickets paid is lower than for parking tickets. It is because none at all were sent to bailiffs. This means that in 2010/11 you could simply ignore a bus lane ticket and you would have not been prompted to pay by a bailiff arriving on your doorstep.

3. The bailiff enforcement system is not an effective one if they only collect 15% of what they are asked to collect. It also begs the question as to how good the quality of the issued parking tickets were.

4. More than 1 in every 5 tickets for alleged parking offences were cancelled. This also makes one question the quality of the tickets issued. What a huge amount of pointless administration. If the quality was increased to 99%, perhaps by employing better paid and trained traffic wardens, the back office administration parking team could have been reduced by 20%. 

Even for bus lane tickets a cancellation rate of 1 in 13 tickets is pretty poor.

5. Mr Mustard finds the still being chased number of 3,000 to be a conveniently round number. He was not told that it was an estimate. There is a 1 in a 1000 chance that is is the truth. 

For bus lanes 1 in 5 tickets are still supposedly live. Mr Mustard thinks that they are only being chased in theory and it's just that no senior manager has had the guts to write them off.

Why?

Why have no bus lane tickets been sent off for bailiff collection? The story that came Mr Mustard's way was that it was the implementation of a new and incomplete Civica CE system, so file that, if true, under senior management failure.

The financial loss to us CPZ residents.

If the collection rate for Bus Lane tickets had been as high as for parking then the number of tickets paid would have been 17,600 which is an extra 2,033 tickets recovered.

In 2010/11 bus lane tickets were £120 and if unpaid they went up to £180 so the revenue lost is £365,940, or £366,000 to the nearest thousand.

In the report to Cabinet Resources Committee on 14 December 2011 the outsourcing of Parking had an untroubled passage to an Agreed vote. The attached report said that NSL were expected to provide the following increases in income 

2012/13  £59,000

2013/14 £121,000

2014/15 £186,000

which by one of those rare co-incidences amounts to £366,000

If NSL do nothing other than routinely put bus lane contraventions through the entire collection cycle, rather than stopping part-way, they will collect in one year the extra income needed across three years and thus look fantastic simply by doing an average job. One Barnet will be marked down as a roaring success when in fact it was due to an internal administrative failure or a management decision that the income was depressed.

Instead of Mr Mustard's "blogger bus" CPZ permit rising in cost from £40 to £100 it could have risen instead to the more reasonable sum of £65 (there being about 10,000 permits in issue which could have been increased by about £35 less - rounding £366,000 divided by 10,000 downwards) or Visitor Vouchers could have been pegged at £1.

Think about that councillors. If you had paid more attention in CRC and asked some searching questions and if you knew more about the resources of the council that you make rapid decisions about, then you wouldn't have residents and businesses up in arms about parking and your seat looking rather wobbly.

Here is a snippet copied from the Mrs Angry's Broken Barnet blog (and she is very angry at the moment about being described in a most unladylike fashion along with the rest of the public gallery - in an ungentlemanly fashion for some of them)

Hugh (Rayner) made a very interesting observation. If contracts do fail, he said, with absolute seriousness, the bloggers will know before we do. Would it be possible to ensure that they, the councillors, are informed when contracts are about to fail?

Mrs Angry laughed to herself.

Don't worry, Hugh: We'll tip you the wink.

Not only do we know about impending One Barnet failures Hugh, we already know more than most councillors and Directors and Assistant Directors about current administration failures. 

Have a think about this one and go and buy yourself a fine tooth comb for future meetings of the committee that you chair. Throw away the clock you watch and just have more meetings that last longer and are more rigorous.

Might some serious scrutiny have uncovered this before a blogger did so?

Does anyone at the council, whether Officer or Councillor, feel even the tiniest little bit ashamed or embarrassed to be shown up in this way?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard