Wirral Council debates the definition of a luxury hotel room
Scene from Rising Damp TV series
Debate continues to rage to this day about how relative poverty should be defined after Adam Smith used his famous Linen shirt quote*.
And it looks like councillors on the Wirral are set to continue debating the definition of a luxury hotel for some time.
Today's page 11 story in the Daily Post is likely to tickle a few readers after two councillors refused to go to a conference in London after being booked into a hotel with shared toilets and bathrooms.
Cllr Sue Taylor, who refused to attend, said the details on the hotel's website reminded her of the TV show Rising Damp.
Cabinet member Cllr Chris Blakeley has stepped into the row and said: "Having a bathroom and toilet in their room is not a luxury."
Click HERE to read the full story.
*The Adam Smith quote from The Wealth of Nations:
"By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but what ever the customs of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into, without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. ... Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend, not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people."
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David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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I'm with the Councillors on this one. They have a good case: no way do you get a credible hotel room in London mid-week for ã50. You'd barely find one in Liverpool at that price. We should treat our elected representatives with better respect - even if they don't always deserve it. Better to treat them properly, the better to respect democracy in the process, than to force them into humiliating circumstances. Sensible conditions to enable them to do a proper job does not require us to engage in punitive penny-pinching.
The best way for councils to save money on conferences is to cut down on the number they attend. Most are set up purely to justify the existence (or line the pockets) of the organisers.
Secondly, if it is decided that a conference is going to be genuinely useful, don't send both officers AND councillors - just send one or the other as appropriate.
Whatever you may think of individual councillors, it's in everyone's interest to attract the best people. That's not just about money, it's about treating people properly. Making them travel at antisocial hours and staying in substandard accommodation, where their safety might be at risk, is not the way to do it.
You can bet that council officers would not be treated like that because it would be against their terms and conditions. That's why when a council's leader and chief executive travel to London for a meeting, the rules state that the Chief Exec travels first class, while the Council leader sits at the back of the train!
Speaking of luxury living....I would just like to thank that fine public servant, David McIlhinney for ensuring that i have been shortlisted for the top job with the city council.
Should be a piece of cake from now on - that Joe Anderson will be a pushover, Dave Mc tells me.
And after that, we can both look forward to even more luxury living!
(See what i did there, David B?)
...and when I am announced in the next few days, just you see how I sort this place out (is that the way I should say it David? That Joe fella just hasn't a clue has he?)
There'll certainly be no Rising Damp for me in my LDL office, sorry, I mean Council office!
It's already been amnnounced
Fitzgerald fitz
http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=92974
how depressing. one hoped that some of Anderson's less gullible and more thoughtful colleagues would have had the guts to stop this stitch up in its tracks.
We get what we deserve,
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