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How many free meals do our politicians put away?
• COUNCIL leader James Kempton’s response to Labour’s demand for free dinners for every child under 11 was that taxpayers would resist on the ground it would mean free lunches for children from wealthy families (Will politicians take salary cut to pay for free school meals for all? January 16).
A similar argument about taxpayers not wishing to foot the bill is used regarding pensioners, among the most vulnerable members of the community. Services such as meals-on-wheels and luncheon clubs are basically means-tested. Organisations such as Islington Strategic Partnership, which is supposed to look at the health and wellbeing of pensioners, don’t appear to be doing anything.
There are certainly questions raised by Cllr Kempton’s defence of his £68,500-a-year salary. Does he live in the real world, the one where the majority of Islington residents are facing a recession?
He is a member of Islington Strategic Partnership and other “quangos”. When attending all these meetings how many free meals does he get?
Maybe the council’s executive committee members, including Cllr Kempton, could be a bit more transparent about the amount of “freebies” and “perks” they claim.
John Worker
Secretary, Islington Pensioners Forum
• I APPLAUD Labour councillors for demanding that our ruling Lib Dem councillors take a cut in their pay packets to reflect the financial pain we are all suffering. In my own work in the private sector, I have been having to accept 20-30 per cent cuts in my income.
However, I am not sure if taking that money and then dispensing it in the form of free school dinners for all is such a good idea. It seems very indiscriminate when such help should be directed at the most needy. I hope this is not a return to Labour lavishing around our hard-earned taxpayers’ money, as we will not then welcome their return to power.
Tim Newark
Islington Taxpayers’ Alliance
• AS a parent of two young children, and as someone who benefited from free meals and uniform vouchers throughout my school years, I know the real value to families if such a policy is implemented.
Alongside discounting the council tax for pensioners and freezing the tax for all, the package could form a real plan to help all Islington residents through the downturn and one which the Conservatives would support.
The issue is not how eye-catching the policy is, but how it is going to be paid for, and not just now but for the long-term. For starters, we have a Lib Dem-controlled council with a set of councillors lining their pockets with huge salaries and allowances. This has to stop now.
The council’s propaganda-filled free sheet needs to go, saving taxpayers’ money as Boris did when he scrapped Labour’s The Londoner.
It is also time for the Lib Dems not just to reform their own fat cat-style allowances, but to tackle decades of unreformed management and the culture of wasteful spending at the Town Hall.
Somehow I, along with many Islington residents, just don’t believe the Labour Party can ever deliver this or be the change which is so desperately needed.
Richard Bunting
Deputy chairman, Islington Conservatives
• LIB Dem leader Councillor James Kempton claims he was not forced to talk to Labour about this year’s budget plans; he was going to do it anyway. Strange that he did not do it in either of the previous years when he could rely on the mayor’s casting vote to get his plans through.
Green councillor Katie Dawson says we should co-operate more. We tried it. Labour councillor Janet Burgess worked with Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn to arrange a meeting with licensing minister Gerry Sutcliffe. As a measure of goodwill we invited two Lib Dem councillors to join us. An hour before the meeting the Lib Dems put out a press release quoting Lib Dem councillor Tracy Ismail as saying the Lib Dems had met the minister and he was going to change policy because of what they said to him.
I asked Tracy about this and she denied ever saying the words put into her mouth and even knowing anything about the press release.
Katie, beware of sharing ideas with the Lib Dems. They are so bereft of ideas of their own they will steal other people’s notions and pass them off as theirs.
Cllr Barry Edwards
Labour, Holloway ward
• I know that finance was never the Labour Party’s strong point in Islington, but the school meals idea seems like fantasy politics and the worst kind of populist gimmickry.
They say they want to fund a £3million “school meals for everybody” scheme with just £200,000 of savings on councillor salaries and the usual vague savings from “communications”. So that leaves a gap of £2.8million to find from communications. That seems a bit of a tall order. Will they be looking to make council staff redundant in the middle of a recession to bridge this gap?
As for the allowances, Labour really should be honest and compare like with like. Whatever you think of the salaries Islington’s councillors pay themselves, the fact is that all the executive members work full-time in their jobs.
That can’t be said for the other boroughs mentioned. Hackney, Haringey and Camden executive members are only part-timers, including most of their leaders.
And Labour Hackney’s elected mayor earns more than Islington’s leader so I don’t know why Labour is being so holier-than-thou about this. I’m sure most reasonable people in Islington would rather have full-time executive members than part-timers in a borough like ours with all the problems and challenges we face. I just wish Labour would stop making it all sound so easy when it isn’t.
Vamsi Velagapudi
Drayton Park, N5
• SO, Islington Labour believes politicians’ pay should be cut, but local MP Emily Thornberry (who is a backbencher) gets paid much more than any councillor in Islington (even the council leader) and continues to vote for her own pay rises, when the Lib Dems in Islington have voted to freeze cabinet members’ pay for the past few years.
I don’t see Ms Thornberry giving up her press officers or her communications budget, which she uses to bombard us all with letters at the taxpayers’ expense. It is okay for her to let residents know about the work she is doing, but not the council, which has a public service duty to advertise its services.
What about Jennette Arnold, our Labour London Assembly member? She doesn’t manage huge budgets and put in long hours like the cabinet councillors in Islington, but she gets paid more than them.
Cabinet councillors in Islington don’t get paid that much for what they do. I read an article once which stated that most of them work a 70-hour week, have degrees and have professional backgrounds. The website says £35,000 is the responsibility allowance for a cabinet position, and you say Labour is proposing to cut it to £25,000. I don’t see many other professional people in their 30s, 40s and 50s working full-time in senior positions for £25,000, unless they have a rich partner, pension or have paid off their mortgages (perhaps Labour councillors are in this position).
Labour should practise what it preaches and ask its MP to take her pay and press cut too.
Jenny Bealle
Essex Road, N1
• COUNCILLORS Paula Belford and Richard Watts make reference to “free” school dinners (Serve up free meals, January 16).
When will it be understood that nothing is “free”? What is provided “free” to one is paid for by another.
The term they should be using is subsidised school dinners. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Ian Kelly
N5
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