The gravy train has left the station and has already made its first stop – a plush Cornish hotel where councillors enjoyed the first of many publicly-funded beanfeasts.
The train drivers are a bunch of county councillors and they have invited along a dozen district councillors to be their oily rags.
They are heading for a place called Utopia – a land of milk and honey where money grows on trees.
The train will, of course, hit the buffers before it reaches its planned destination. But by that time Cornish taxpayers will be much the poorer and the deluded councillors will realise – too late to do anything about it – that they have once again been used as puppets to help empire-building bureaucrats boost their power and wealth.
The meeting at the Headland Hotel in Newquay last Thursday set into motion the long journey towards the formation of a single council for Cornwall. Carrick, Kerrier, Penwith, Restormel, North Cornwall and Caradon councils will be abolished. By 2009 there will be just one power-wielding super authority in Cornwall with 20,000 staff on the payroll and an annual budget of £800 million.
With big stakes like this to play for, is it any wonder that expense is no object as the councillors get to work? Why bother using one of the many spare committee rooms at County Hall in Truro when there’s a palatial, four-star clifftop hotel – where a room for the night can cost over £300 – available on your doorstep?
I can’t tell you how much this first “getting to know each other” meeting cost Cornish taxpayers because the county council hasn’t given me the answer I requested. All they would tell me was that it was considered “more effective to work outside the committee rooms within council premises” and “the Headland Hotel provides an ideal venue where this important work can take place.”
What a load of cobblers – and so typical of the attitude we have come to expect from a council that wastes our money on bottled water for staff and a community newspaper that nobody will read while at the same time cutting essential services.
I suggest all councillors read a copy of the “Corporate Assessment Peer Review” – an audit of the council which has just been published. The report notes: “There is a danger that the new unitary council itself is seen as the answer to the issues facing the current council. The range and scale of these issues is far too significant to wait or be ignored until the new council emerges, and the single most important issue facing the council is the culture of denial and lack of ownership at a senior level.”
Tough words, especially when they come from an audit panel consisting of councillors and bureaucrats from outside Cornwall. But the Cornish bureaucrats have nothing to fear from the peer review. One of the recommendations is: “Review salaries for leading posts to ensure they are competitive nationally to recruit high calibre people.”
What’s the betting that this recommendation is seized upon with great enthusiasm, even though our Liberal Democrat rulers have only recently given huge pay increases to senior officials and themselves.
As I’ve said before, and I’ll repeat again now, by the time the new unitary council is in place local government costs in Cornwall – especially for staff – will have shot through the roof. And as local taxes go up to pay for it all, councillors will, of course, blame it all on the government of the day.
Sound familiar?