David MacLean
Leicester Mercury political correspondent
Rogers Wins At Euro Lottery
Jan 23rd
East Midlands MEP Roger Helmer has been dragging out the will-he won’t-he saga of whether he’ll resign for several weeks now.
He had originally announced his intention to resign in December 2011, but delayed it when it became unclear who he’d be replaced by.
I suspect our readers are rather bored of the whole issue, which is why my last update on the story ended up on the no-man’s-land of page 12 in the Mercury.
What Roger may be pleased to know is that there could be one unexpected benefit of his stand against the “leftish Europhile eco-friendly metrosexual” bogeyman.
Bell Pottinger director Daniel Hamilton reports that MEPs are entitled to a higher rate of pension after 12 years, six months and one day in the job.
For MEPs elected in 1999 – such as Roger – that milestone was passed earlier this month.
The worst press release of 2012
Jan 16th
I am pleased to submit this as the first contender for worst press release of 2012. It landed in my inbox this morning, and it was sent by Leicester City Council.
- An awkward acronym? Check
- An amazing truism? Check
- The word ‘major’ in the intro? Check
- News hook is an “official launch”? Check
- 600 word release that’ll be used as a nib, at most? Check
Hold the front page, boss, because five “research clusters” from well-known European regions such as Aquitaine and Molise will be teaming up with researchers in Leicester to come up with one of those “green traffic management systems”.
The council press office went wild and capped-up the entire project acronym – THE ISSUE – which is the ‘Transport Health Environment – Intelligent Solutions Sustaining Urban Economies’ to your man on the street.
In a moment of press office magic we’re helpfully told that “local partners will be working in partnership”.
And the whole thing is funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme, which “promotes knowledge exchange and joint working”. Obviously.
The note to editors offering “further media opportunities” is, shall we say, ambitious…
Farewell, Paul
Jan 10th
And so we bid farewell to County Hall spin doctor Paul Masterman.
The £7,500-a-month PR guru left Leicestershire County Council last month.
Paul has long been a hot topic on this blog. His employers Westco had teamed-up with Leicestershire County Council in 2010 to find a candidate to head-up the slimmed-down communications and press team at county hall. No-one was ever interviewed for the job, which attracted 40 applications, and Westco were signed up for further £10,000-a-month stints to run the council communications team.
Opposition councillors say upwards of £100,000 has been wasted on the whole process at a time when the authority is making cuts to services.
Despite only meeting Paul once, he certainly left an impression. He once blocked me on Twitter after I mentioned a BBC report.
The report said that he was suspended during a disciplinary investigation at a previous council after it was discovered he’d attempted to influence a BBC online poll regarding a council merger.
You can’t keep a good man down, though. He’s now appeared, in the same role, up the road at Staffordshire County Council.
The Lutfur Link – Part 2
Dec 20th
Remember this post?
It shows Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman and some of his associates being lavished with praise by city Labour politicians for helping with the election campaign in May.
They included Leicester East MP Keith Vaz, Jon Ashworth, who later that day was declared the new Leicester South MP, and Sir Peter Soulsby who was later voted in as elected mayor. Several of Labour’s city councillors are in attendance.
When I first highlighted this video in the summer I had to dance around Mr Rahman’s background.
I can be slightly more blunt this morning. The PCC has ruled that describing him as an “extremist-backed” politician, with “close links” to an extremist Islamic organisation, is “not misleading”. He denies the links.
Ask your local Labour politician whether they were aware of these claims when he joined them on the campaign trail…
Mayor pay panel member leaves the country
Nov 18th
Is there any room on the flight for the other three, Dominic?
(It’s worth pointing out that he’s off on a long-planned break – rather than fleeing the country!)
The Fall Guy?
Nov 16th
Councils across the country have these “independent pay panels” which only ever seem to send politicians’ pay one way – and that’s up.
It’s never been a problem before, of course. Yes, a grumpy story might pop-up in the Mercury when a councillor pay rise is first announced, people will be temporarily disgruntled, but then it blows over in time for full council where elected members happily accept the proposals for a pay hike.
Start mucking around on these panels by suggesting pay freezes or cuts and you’d quickly find yourself sidelined.
The shock move to almost double the mayor’s salary to £100,000, and his deputy’s pay to £75,000, has a completely different feel to rises which have gone before. Some backbench councillors are outraged and have threatened to quit the party, while city centre vox pop participants are unanimous in their opposition, a sign no doubt of the strong public opinion in general.
Peter Soulsby won’t be drawn one way or the other on the £100k proposal, but has swiftly kicked the can down the street and well into the new year.
Martin Traynor, chair of Leicester’s pay panel, is bravely standing by his recommendations just as every politician in town frantically distances themselves from them. He was due to appear on BBC Radio Leicester this morning to justify his findings.
It’s hard not to get the feeling that Martin’s going to become the fall guy for all of this.
Soulsby Salary Set To Soar
Nov 15th
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City mayor, his team, and councillors in line for big pay hike
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“There’ll be uproar,” says one politico
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See Wednesday’s Mercury for full story
In A Spin: Misled by county council over Westco FOI
Nov 13th
I was misled by Leicestershire County Council when it effectively told me that no records existed anywhere on county council hard drives of an FOI request I lodged just a few weeks ago, I can now confirm.
I suspected that their initial response wasn’t accurate and appealed the decision.
In the meantime a source at the council confirmed that I was on the right track, and that the county may have misled me in its original response.
After hinting at this development on Twitter, I’ve now had a response from the county council. It has admitted that it did hold the information I’d ask for, and has now handed it over.
The council’s explanation for the original response is that my original request had been “misinterpretated” and on reviewing the decision “it was acknowledged immediately that a mistake had incurred”.
Perhaps the most interesting thing to jump out is Paul Masterman’s involvement in the original request.
Different council’s deal with FOI requests in different ways. But at the county council, whenever I’ve called them about responses to FOI request that I’ve seen on the public disclosure log, they’ve never been aware of individual FOIs prior to my phonecall.
It suggests that the press office usually takes a hands-off approach to FOI requests, which in my view is good practice.
So it came as a surprise to see Westco man Masterman getting involved in my request before a response had been signed off and sent to me.
The emails are just one line of inquiry. I’ve now been contacted by a handful of people who were involved in campaigns for the other LGA chairmanship hopefuls – who have all provided me with further information.
There’s still a lot to work on, and it’s heartening to see new Westco-related requests appearing on the council’s FOI disclosure log from those who are interested in this issue.
