Newman: ‘Croydon will stand idly by and be victims of cuts’

insidecroydon

11 years ago

The Labour Party leader in Croydon has pledged that the borough will back the Tory Government’s austerity dogma, and so allow the borough’s residents to suffer ever greater cuts to their public services.

Tony Newman: another blunder

Or at least, that’s what Tony Newman has managed to allow to be published in his name in a formal report submitted ahead of tonight’s meeting at the Town Hall of the full council.

In the 51-page report which Newman has had some lackey put together for him, the council leader states: “I have publically [sic] said before and I will say it again, Croydon will stand idly by and be victims of the cuts.”

This appears on the first page of Newman’s turgid prose.

It’s a Croydon Council version of the one-time popular newspaper game, Spot the Balls-up.

As well as the slack spelling error (publicly) in the same sentence, which really ought to be picked up by an office junior using a spell check, the passage also includes an absolute error in meaning, which probably demonstrates that no one’s bothered to read the thing through properly before pressing “print”.

Not even Newman himself.

The first page of Tony Newman’s council report. At least someone remembered to include the vacuous slogan at the bottom of the page

And if Newman – council allowances £53,223 per year, plus exes – can’t be bothered to read his own bullshit, then why should anyone else bother?

Where it does get worrying is when you consider whether Newman and other members of his front-bench cabinet team, as well as the six-figure salaried council officials who are supposed to report to them, are equally as slack and slap-dash over the attention to detail of other council documents. Such as multi-million-pound contracts with contractors and developers.

Maybe that explains how East Croydon Station has a bridge built with £24 million of public money, and which has no exit on one side of the tracks. Or how our council managed to spend £140 million on building a new office block, when the usual bill for similar developments is less than £50 million…