Wednesday 5 May 2010

Dodgy Councillor to be Next Lord Mayor

The Post is reporting that Cllr Brian Grocock has secured the nomination to be the next Lord Mayor. The formal appointment is due to be made by full council at its meeting on 10 May.

The Post says that his nomination papers were signed by Jon Collins himself, which is strange seeing as JoCo made a public declaration that he accepted 'in full' the findings of the Audit Commission's report into the NCH scandal that Grocock had lied in order to secure constituents a house by claiming that one of them was his grandson. He's up before the Standards Committee over that which already has form for quietly sitting on aspects of that pitiful episode. Grocock's case has already been sitting around for a year and shows no sign of progress.

Of course, the question as to whether he actually lied or not is immaterial. The fact is that he used his influence to subvert the housing allocations policy. Whether it was on behalf of his grandson or the Queen of Sheba hardly matters.

The Lord Mayor's role includes "...act[ing] as the a-political figurehead of the City Council; champion of the city of Nottingham and its people..." I'm not sure how being found to be corrupt is consistent with that. The Lord Mayor's position attracts a special allowance of £24,899 pa on top of the standard councillor's allowance of £11,581 pa. It is therefore the second highest paid post after the Leader.

Politically speaking, and bearing in mind the geological timescales of the Standards Committee, this again makes me wonder whether JoCo has thought all this through. Having a sitting Lord Mayor being censured by the Standards Committee would be bad enough but in a year's time NCC's councillors will be facing an election. It's quite conceivable that the Standards Committee will be announcing its findings uncomfortably close to a time when sitting Labour councillors could do without their party's role in one of the biggest scandals at NCC in recent times being highlighted before a cynical electorate.

Unless of course for some reason JoCo feels confident of the way that the Committee's decision will go...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's sad but I've ceased to be surprised any more by the devious, underhand, bare-faced, arrogant bollocks that this council keeps perpetrating on the people of Nottingham.

I reckon Collins and crew may well be facing a similar fate to Gordon Brown next year.

Andy said...

I really think a lot of it's down to Collins. His political judgment seems to have gone haywire. Regardless of the morality he would easily end up with a PR disaster right before his next election.

The Quizzical Observer said...

Excellent post which I have just read out to Mrs QO. 'Someone should point that out to Private Eye,' she said.

Her career briefly included a spell at NCC, so she knows whereof she speaks.

Andy said...

Been trying to get stuff in PE for a while now but they don't seem interested in us midlanders. There's a lot of competition for space in 'Rotten Boroughs' apparently.

The Quizzical Observer said...

Sadly, I suspect they could run that feature to two or three pages and not be short of material. Still, keep on blogging - the word does get round.