The Very Certain Stephen Greenhalgh

From Saturday's Telegraph:

"Stephen Greenhalgh, the leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council, where the Tories cut council tax after seizing power from Labour, said: 'There must be huge scope for savings. There must be tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers' cash to be saved. Boris needs to get control of the cash.' Mr Greenhalgh said the [Forensic Audit Panel] would take a critical look at the dozens of regeneration projects receiving money in the capital, and would ask them to justify their funding by showing results. He said: 'In my view, what you will see is a much more market-led approach to social and economic regeneration. Fewer but more important projects, market-led regeneration, not just taxpayers' money.'"

Interesting. "Tens of millions," is a lot of money but how large a percentage of total spending might it eventually amount to? What is a 'market-led' approach to social and economic regeneration? Also, is Greenhalgh being paid for his work on the Forensic Audit Panel and, if so, how much?

Comments

[The Tory Troll]

Patience Wheatcroft said on the Politics Show yesterday that none of the panel were being paid for their services. Apparently they're all doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

Tim Donovan also pushed her on whether a panel of Conservative members and supporters could independently judge whether a Labour Mayor had been spending properly and also whether it was necessary for a panel to investigate this for two months just to say at the end of the process that the Conservatives would have spent the money differently.

He also asked whether it was necessary for them to investigate wrongdoing when Deloittes were already carrying out an independent investigation.

Pushed by Donovan, she said that 'Boris would be surprised if we didn't find any evidence (of wrongdoing.)'

And disappointed presumably.

[Geoff]

According to this:

http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/budget/0809budget.jsp

The LDA's budget is just over £500m, so a saving of 'tens of millions' would be around 5-15% of the total budget.

[Mike]

Here's how Stephen Greenhalgh cut £36million from his local authority

http://thecowanreport.blogspot.com/2008/03/h-council-confirms-36million-of-cuts.html

[Phil Taylor]

It will be vanishingly easy to find £10 millions to either give back to Londoners or to spend on things that they value.

The old Mayor spent £10.5 million on the Tour de France last year. Great party for middle class bike enthusiasts but maybe less use to pensioners picking up the bill.

Every year the old Mayor spent £100 million on advertising - about 10 times more than central government does per pound of total spending.

[angela]

There has been talk of wastage and possible misuse of public funding. Obviously any new administration has no alternative but to check that everything is in order.

Patience Wheatcroft said on THE POLITICS SHOW last Sunday that none of the investigative team were being paid and they were happy to work for free to benefit the tax payer.

[The Tory Troll]

Phil you are being a bit over enthusiastic with your figures again. Your own estimates on your own blog only put the cost of the tour de france to London at £9.215 million, and that in itself is without attempting to calculate the benefits in trade, tourism and investment brought about by the tour.

Sure you can save money in the short term by not having these kinds of events and by not promoting them, but in the long term the result is a city that stagnates.

The Mayors 'publicity' budget was held held up by Boris' campaign team as some kind of bottomless pit from which the solutions to all of London's problems could be solved, but the fact is if you are going to have events and initiatives, then you will need to spend money in promoting them. Otherwise they fail and you end up wasting the original investment.

[Phil Taylor]

Forgive me Troll for mixing up the total budget for the TdF, £10.5 million, with London's contribution to it £9.215 million. Doesn't it freak you out that Livingstone thought it was worth spending £9.215 million of your money and mine on subsidising a bunch of drug cheats to cycle round our city?

TfL's bullshit calculation of the benefits of the event included £5 million of their own spending in the calcs. They also failed to explain how someone eating an ice-cream on the TdF route was adding to London's economy compared to that same person eating the same ice-cream in their local park. Most of the four million spectators were Londoners - it is not as if they would have stayed in bed that day if the race had not happened. Have you never heard the phrase zero sum game?

London will not stagnate if the new Mayor stops Livingstone's bread and circuses operation.

The old Mayor's comms spending is at least 2 or 3 times bigger than local and national government comparators which means there is some £60-70 million to play with which is a pretty large sum compared to total GLA income from the precept of £882 million for the current year.

PS Troll, you only know the TdF figures because I asked for them and waited months to get them. There was no way that old fraud Livingstone was going to give them up without a fight.

[The Tory Troll]

You call Livingstone a 'fraud' despite the fact that he has never been charged with anything of the sort. I know this is just a comments thread, but contrary to popular belief, libel is still libel, no matter where it is published.

As for the tour, do you really believe that if Boris had been in charge it wouldn't have gone ahead? We're only a few days in and Boris has already clung himself to as many festivals and events as he can get his hands on. No change there then.

No change too on the transparency front, except perhaps a change for the worse. Boris' dropping of the appeal against the desalination plant is just the latest announcement to come out without any real detail or explanation. When Livingstone launched the appeal, the full appeal and background were published on the website. Now it has been dropped by Boris, we just get a couple of paragraphs on 'new ways of working' whatever that means. I'm also still waiting for those details of expenses (like salaries for example) that we were promised 'from day one.'

[Paul]

Blimey, Phil Taylor's sounding extremely unpleasant here. I'd heard he could be a bit fast and loose with the figures at times but his comments here just seem wilfully nasty.

I just wanted to rebut his point about the money spent by Londoners on the TdF route not being 'new money' as it were. My wife and I spent a very pleasant day first watching the TdF rush past us, then perusing a French market set up nearby for the occasion, spending money there buying lunch and some other items. Finally we travelled up to Hyde Park to watch the finale of the UK leg of the TdF and enjoy another market and more spending.

None of that spending, nor indeed the income for two Zone 1-6 Travelcards into TfL and the train operating companies, would have taken place without the event. We would probably have stayed at home, eating cheap supermarket food and watching TV or sitting in the garden or something. Instead we spent money, travelled into central London and had a thoroughly enjoyable day, an experience self-evidently repeated by thousands of others along every mile of the route.

Unfortunately it looks like professional miserablists like Mr. Taylor don't want anyone to enjoy themselves if he has had to contribute a penny to funding that enjoyment. I'm glad a certain rather higher profile Conservative seems, as The Tory Troll points out, to be taking a more positive view of celebratory occasions and festivals!

[Phil Taylor]

Troll, Here is a definition of fraud for you: something intended to deceive; deliberate trickery intended to gain an advantage. Pretty fair description of the way the Mayor and TfL handled the issue of the cost of the Tour de France I would say.

Paul, I am glad you enjoyed your day out to the Tour de France but I don't think anyone would believe your assertion that you would have stayed at home without spending a penny if it hadn't happened. Are you really going to be stuck at home doing nothing for three or four years until the Tour comes back?

Even if one accepts the crowd numbers of 4 million it was so expensive it still cost £2.50 per head. You might like your freebie Paul but a lot of council taxpayers would really rather keep their own money and spend it on their own pleasures.

[Adam]

'spend it in their own pleasures.'

Like planting trees for example?

[Paul]

For goodness' sake, Phil, how can you dispute something I am stating would have been my action that weekend were it not for the TdF coming to my area? You don't know me. I happen to spend a significant proportion of my time sitting at home if there's nothing in particular to leave the house for, as it happens. That's why I have time to post and respond to comments on blogs. Of course I'm not going to stay at home for four years if the TdF doesn't return, but given that I do stay at home on more of the days when I'm not at work than I go out on, it is more likely than not that if the TdF had not been here then I would not have gone out. Ditto any number of other free events the previous Mayor brought to London - I've lost count of the number of such events which have directly caused us to purchase travelcards to go into London from our Zone 6 home.

Just because so many of our neighbours prefer not to take advantage of the wonderful city centre that's such a short, cheap ride away, and have voted in a Mayor from your party, doesn't mean you can speak for all of us out here in the suburbs and imagine you have any idea what we do with our spare time.

I look forward to an apology from you for accusing me of lying about my own personal life!

As for the cost, £2.50 per head sounds like a bargain. It's half what we each paid (to TfL/National Rail) to join the fun anyway. The fact is that something like the TdF coming is a 'money cannot buy' event, which could not be delivered on a privately purchased basis. In fact it's basically a "public good" - you can hardly charge people to congregate by the edge of public roads so if you're doing it you have to spread the cost across everyone. And it would be ridiculous if a wonderful city like ours didn't host large events, open to all, but that's what your miserly suggestion amounts to, since these events could not be operated on a pay-as-you-enjoy basis, and would certainly not be as successful as they are now if an attempt to charge for them was made.

I assume you also oppose the TV licence fee, want entrance fees for museums reintroduced and would like to abolish all central government funding for the arts? Thank goodness you're on the hopefully forever marginalised right wing of your party on these issues!