• GLIB, patronising, and unaccountable…

The Extra November 19 report of the Westminster City Council meeting exposes the entrenched and blinkered attitudes of both the council leader Rachael Robathan and her cabinet members.

According to the leader the Marble Arch Mound fiasco was a “one-off” and not a failure of political leadership.

However no explanation of how this “one-off” occurred; but as a result of this “one-off” the deputy council leader Melvyn Caplan quit. That surely questions the role of leadership and oversight.

Cllr Robathan assures us that she will follow all the recommendations of the £6million “one-off” review and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

It should have never happened in the first place and the cancellation of the Oxford Circus piazza plans posited by the city council comes as a relief to all taxpayers.

Within the same meeting Conservative cabinet member Cllr David Harvey was extremely patronising towards Labour’s Liza Begum in his glib answers about “how tough” some decisions were and commenting that Cllr Begum “may get to be a leader somewhere, probably won’t be Westminster…”

That is a “one-off” remark that Cllr Harvey should reconsider in these more enlightened times.

ETHAN POD
Address supplied