Wrong End of the Table Again

[steveL]

Quite an interesting statistic. 9,000 households where nobody over 16 works and that's out of a total of around 33,300 households. This makes Hartlepool the 4th worst in the country.

Appropriate then that Cllr Cranney acts as the council spokesman as he doesn't work either and hasn't done for years and I'm not surprised to hear him say that Hartlepool has one of the highest business start-ups given that his own must account for a fair number of them.

You could say that Cranney works by proxy having peppered the board of OFCA with his relatives; OFCA being an organisation that has seen over £5m go through its hands over the last few years. He lists 'Communities 1st' as his latest CIC Company though he 'retired' from this in June this year.

On my reckoning, 12 Labour Councillors do not work, 6 work in the Public Sector in jobs where they seem to be able to come and go as they please (two funded directly by HBC) and only 1 in the private sector. So that's 60% as opposed to 27% for the town generally. Marj used to work for Cranney's OFCA and when Carl last worked, Thunderclap Newman were No.1 in the charts.

They also seem to have a real problem with Councillors who do work for a living.

You can turn this statistic around and say that, even in these poor circumstances, 73% of households have someone over 16 that does work. In which case, Labour's insistence that council meetings are held during the day, when most of the public do not have the opportunity of attending, is hard to justify - unless, that is, opposition Councillors and members of the public are the last people that you want to turn up.

http://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/news/shock-figures-show-hartlepool-has-9-000-households-where-nobody-works-1-8159758

[Inspector Knacker]

So, if all the councillors worked, meetings would by necessity be outside normal working hours and therefore be accessible to most of the general public. So you have to ask the bleedin obvious question, are the meetings held for the convenience of the councillors and officers or the general public wishing to participate in local democracy ?

[fred c]

 Under the present regime there isn't any democracy....  the consultation about the timing of council meetings was by a majority in favour of more meetings in the evenings.

Have they taken any notice of public opinion.... No