Does Bob Neil not have better things to do than bully councils?
Regular readers may remember my last little exchange with junior bag carrier to Eric Pickles, Bob Neil. Close to a year ago.
He urged Camden Council to break the law. His law. It’s in his department’s gift to ask parliament to change the law he wants Camden to break. Well on exactly the same issue, almost exactly a year later the irrepressible Bob Neil strikes again.
One of the ways that you can tell that they must know that they are in the wrong is because it’s the junior bag carrying minister that’s been deployed as the attack dog. If they had any validity to their argument at all, they’d have sent in Pickles or even Cameron (who went along for a photo op a while back).
But you can’t have real politicians, with actual clout calling on local authorities to break the law, you see. So up pops Bob.
All of this sorry saga has rather distracted us from the matter at hand, in what we may be able to do, if anything, to help The People’s Supermarket and the many other small businesses who are struggling in the current drastic economic times.
Bob is actually contributing to their situation (and that of other struggling businesses in the borough) by diverting the resources of our officers from providing businesses who are struggling with support, to responding to his ridiculous correspondence and the media queries he’s tried to generate.
So well done Bob. But I guess at least that last bit, of messing up the economy rather than helping, is in tune with the rest of Tory party policy.
Sarah, I am not a natural supporter of yours and see you are being attached by one tory after another, Well you are 100% right on this, It would be perverse to treat the Peoples Supermarket differently from other local businesses – your free market credentials are in tact! (sorry) Maybe it would be more charitable to say your “fairness” credentials are in tact. (They are the same thing you know)
Be interested to know who you are. Not a single free market consideration entered my head. The Labour party is pro jobs and so pro employer – so long as the employer is responsible. We’re also pro community. Communities need facilities like shops. Mostly in this matter I am guided by the law and the interests of all small businesses in Camden. Small community businesses often need support because of the big boys crowding them out. They also often provide very valuable community services, like the shop on Cromer Street in my ward drops food round to the elderly residents in the blocks on the street. It’s vital. And so we’re happy to help, if we can. But we have to do it equitably and while safeguarding taxpayers money to invest in good services for our communities.
As an aside, I’m not sure if you’re free market comment was tongue in cheek or not but you clearly don’t know me very well if it wasn’t. Because I’m vociferously pro all sorts of pesky little things that free marketeers hate. Like collective bargaining and strong trade union rights. Health & Safety protection for employees. Anti-discrimination legislation, including positive action. Living wages. Generous maternity and paternity rights. Good holiday and sick entitlements etc etc etc. And the shorter the period of qualification for any of these (and more rights) the better.
As the owner of Kennard’s which was killed off by public/charitable largesse to TPS, I have zero sympathy with their current, hysterical attacks on Camden. The problem is an ill-conceived, experimental venture which everyone thought was initially a good idea but which has since begun to unravel. Camden should be firm and TPS, like every other business which cannot pay its pay, should go to the wall.