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Is the Town Hall in control or impotent?
GORDON Brown says one thing in Parliament, the banks do another – and now Camden Council has joined the pack in the hunt for the scalps of small businesses.
Who is in charge? The country is facing its biggest economic crisis for 70 years, according to the Chancellor, yet those who are elected to run it seem impotent at times.
Gordon Brown kept on repeating in the Commons yesterday (Wednesday) that money needs to be spent to help families and small businesses. The politicians may have ticked the right boxes, but reality suggests the opposite is happening throughout the country.
Small businesses are being hounded by banks. Interest rates on overdrafts are being arbitrarily raised.
Here in Camden, the picture is troubling.
We report several traders in trouble who complain they are not being given the little bit of help they need to survive. And this is probably the tip of the iceberg in the borough.
Town Hall officials – acting like the bankers even Gordon Brown may soon tire of – are debt-chasing small businesses, threatening to bring on the bailiffs.
Who runs Camden? Unelected council officials or the men and women we pick to run the Town Hall?
Politics should play no part in all this.
The Tory/Lib-Dem coalition who run Camden may not like Gordon Brown’s crisis-busting policy but residents would expect their elected representative to carry out the government’s programme.
Are we right to assume that our ruling politicians know of the case studies we report – and are happy with the actions of officials? Or is it possible, they know not what is being done in their name?
The time has come for a new Barney investigation
OUR revelations this week concerning the tragic events leading to the death of the young scaffolder Ralph Kennedy should prompt the authorities to seriously consider their previous findings.
We do not wish to rush into a judgment. This, inevitably, is a complex case. But the evidence now amassed by Hodge, Jones and Allen – the solicitors acting for the Kennedy family – is sufficiently compelling, we believe, to merit immediate attention.
According to the dossier compiled by Edward Whelan, a manager of considerable experience, there are many damaging assertions underlining how he tried, unsuccessfully, over many years to raise alarms about electrical safety on council estates.
In a statement to the solicitors he says the faulty light fitting that killed Mr Kennedy was, in effect, “a booby trap”.
The bell is ringing for renewed action in this case! |
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