Much like Alice in Wonderland, there were times at this week’s Full Council meet I felt I’d stepped through the looking glass. Politics has become a strange place since Brexit and Exeter is no exception. Many of my political counterparts appear to have taken on roles akin to those of Lewis Carol’s classic with more than one vying for the role of the Mad Hatter.
The theme of the evening was fake news. More specifically, Council reports that sport some very questionable figures. I’ve said before you can come up with statistics to prove anything but Exeter council seems to have no problem making decisions based on dodgy, and sometimes downright false, data.
I raised a question about last month’s fudging of figures on the air quality consultation. The report claimed residents don’t want to make local businesses contribute to a fund that would tackle congestion and improve air quality. This was some fairly creative accounting as the Council included everyone who answered ‘don’t know’ in the ‘no’ pile, thereby skewing the result considerably.
I raised this at Scrutiny. Council ploughed on regardless. I raised this again at Full Council and proposed we amend this ‘error’. Labour voted en bloc to maintain their decision based on duff information. The justification for doing so wouldn’t have been out of place at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
Were this the only contradiction of the night I might not be complaining. However, Labour moved a motion condemning the privatisation of Royal Mail. Nothing wrong in this, I wholeheartedly support the sentiment. But I couldn’t help but ask, after setting out the case for why privatisation was so bad, how Labour could justify maintaining and continuing the privatisation of Council services, such as Leisure Centres? Labour couldn’t answer the question confirming what I’d already begun to believe: that we were now well and truly through the looking glass and in fact down was up, and up was down.
It didn’t stop there either. I seconded a motion from the Save Clifton Hill Green Space Campaign. Following the controversial decision to close and sell off Clifton Hill Sports Centre, local residents (referred to as riffraff by the Council Leader) have been demanding the surrounding green space which is bigger than Belmont Park be kept in Council hands and kept green. One by one Labour Councillors got up and said what a good motion it was and how in principle they supported it. In practice though, they all voted against it. Every single Labour Councillor.
Naturally, in Exeter’s new political Wonderland one should always vote against a motion, especially when one supports it.
I tabled the only other motion of the night. This motion was aimed at reversing the decision to sell off Clifton Hill. The basis for my argument was that the report in June which was used as the justification to close the site was riddled with misleading and inaccurate information. The report claims the roof would cost £1m to fix. However, the Council have also claimed the cost of repair would be £700k while other papers show the cost at less than £600k. In contrast the most recent structural survey said no works would be required for 5 years. As I said at Council, it is small wonder residents are losing faith in politics.
There were more contradictions and inaccuracies to pull out of this report such as the suggestion the cost of roof repair figures was based on a structural survey. Following a recent Freedom of Information request, the Council was forced to admit in fact no structural survey had been conducted since 2016. Even with the knowledge Council made the decision to close and sell the site based on incorrect information and having the opportunity to revisit this mistake and actually listen to residents, Labour chose instead to press on defeating both motions. Wonderland indeed.
Labour did manage to vote themselves an additional £11m for the Jabberwocky otherwise known as the new Sidwell Point leisure centre. Proof, if any was needed that the policy in Exeter is to complete this project, literately to the detriment of everything else.
This trip into the whimsical world of Wonderland is available to watch on the Council’s Facebook page. A word of warning however, once down the rabbit hole, you may not get out.
Privatised Eye 