Memo suggests Deano has gone loco over motion
FORMER Liberal Democrat leader of Liverpool council Warren Bradley always knew how to motivate his troops come election time - or so he thought.
Mr Brocklebank recalls how just prior to the May polls of 2009 he complained in these pages of some of his group being 'lazy', presumably in the hope this would motivate them into dragging themselves out onto the campaign trail.
In the end, the then Cllr Bradley's plans didn't work out: the very thought of pumping leaflets through letter boxes always seems to aggravate those dodgy backs and gammy hips.
But where the Lib Dems would be told to pull their socks up, it seems members of the now ruling Labour group are being told to pull them down. For both Cllrs Joe Hanson and Laura Robertson-Collins have been reprimanded by chief whip Alan Dean for daring to put down a motion calling for a scrutiny panel to be set up to look into the council's woeful recycling record.
And so Deano wrote to all members (one of those emails that has the habit of falling into the wrong hands) to the effect that if anyone wanted to identify a problem, they'd better wait until the council already had the solution up its sleeve. He also chose to remind them that Labour are 'not the opposition'.
Imagine the effrontery of a member of the ruling party daring to recognise a problem and suggest it might be resolved. What ever next?
Just in case anyone's wondering, there's no problem with recycling. The lowest rates in the country, repeated missed collections ... recycling crisis, what recycling crisis?
The whole sorry saga brings to Mr B's mind Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf (otherwise known as Comical Ali), Saddam Hussein's spokesman who, despite bombs falling around him on the Baghdad skyline, repeatedly denied the 2003 invasion was underway.
So, where Iraq had Comical Ali, Liverpool now has Comical Alan.
NO-ONE can doubt the hard-working credentials of Cllrs Hanson and Robertson-Collins.
Old 'Joe the Blow' had been working tirelessly in recent months to help shake-up Merseytravel's Jurassic governance under the tenure of now ex-chairman Mark Dowd.
After months of toil, and whipping up a letter signed by a 'gang of eight' seeking Cllr Dowd's resignation, his mission was accomplished, no doubt to the delight of Mayor Anderson.
However, it was less likely to the delight of chief whip Cllr Dean: in recognition of their help in unseating Cllr Dowd, in the ensuing horse-trading one of the St Helens contingent became deputy chair of Merseytravel, a seat previously occupied by Cllr Dean.
And none can deny Cllr Robertson-Collins is keen to execute her political duties: Mr B is told she once had to be advised it wouldn't be appropriate to turn up to a colleague's engagement party with hundreds of leaflets and expect guests to get envelope stuffing!
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David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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It is seriously disappointing that the only issue from last night's Council meeting that got a mention in today's paper are the changes in Benefits.
There's a paper (F&R Committee 11 July) setting out the options for dealing with this, and there will be a full consultation next month. It's painful, but not exactly new.
A useful distraction, though. Joe as Don Quixote, maybe, rousing the troops to tilt at windmills. Because it doesn't achieve anything at all. They need to concentrate on the things they actually have the power to change.
The mayor and council run the city. And one of the things they should be paying much more attention to is ensuring that now more than ever, money isn't wasted, savings are made where they can, etc. etc. Do the best with what we have, in other words. Common sense.
The Mayor says he is ensuring this happens, but he is actually ensuring that no-one can examine or question what is actually done. He's not forced to do this by the government, or by cuts - he's doing it because he wants to. He wants councillors to rubber-stamp everything instead of scrutinising things properly, as the appalling e-mail shows (and the last-minute torpedoing of proper mayoral scrutiny at the previous council meeting makes clear).
We really need robust scrutiny - so never mind this rather stale news, what did they do about this scandalous behaviour last night?
Except there were no local elections in May 2009.
So Alan Dean leaked his own email to this blog. That's what Joe Anderson apparently believes anyway. Pure farce? Dirty tricks? Or the final tumble of a clown? Believe me, this circus is going to be highly entertaining