Various news outlets have reported that many of our senior councillors have spent the last few days, at our expense, in luxury hotels in the French Riviera destination of Cannes. Famous for its film festivals, yaughts and stars the town is less well known for being the host of an international property conference which takes place annually, called MIPIMIt is apparently a global gathering and this year a delegation was led from London by Boris Johnson, which our councillors were part of. They have been accused of going there at great public expense simply to sell off more of our estates to developers, re-housing the unfortunate tenants elsewhere. The councillors defend this by saying thats not the case at all, they simply want to attract inward investment into the Borough. Personally I have no problem with councillors going to the end of the earth if they need to if its going to lead to real inward investment in our Borough, but the fact that their defence is so weak does rather suggest that their accusers have got a point.
They have not categorically denied that further estates in Hammersmith and Fulham will be sold off to developers. Would they like to take this opportunity to do so?
Meanwhile, back in the 3% council tax cut utopia that is Hammersmith and Fulham, here is yet more evidence of what those cut backs in public services actually look like
[...] None of this directly affects Shepherd’s Bush but it is relevant to us because there are real questions about whether the Council has been entirely open and truthful with residents. I last reported on this here. [...]
ReplyDelete[...] their defence has appeared shifty, as for example they jetted off to meet property developers in Cannes, and recently even the Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh was captured on film being forced by [...]
ReplyDelete[...] the outset: admit their plans to redevelop the estates and publicly argue for that. Instead we had surreptitious flights to Cannes, official denials and then the embarassment of a Leader being forced to contradict his own press [...]
ReplyDelete[...] 22, 2009 by chrisunderwood H&F Council have a thing about developers, and this wednesday will see a final planning application decision which will [...]
ReplyDelete[...] 2 with 1908 readers: Why are our councillors in Cannes? [...]
ReplyDelete[...] it means is that part of the Council’s plans – to sell the building to developers as we know they like to do – cannot go ahead. Further, what this means is that they have not therefore made the budget [...]
ReplyDelete[...] Conservative councillors took to see a fair of property developers in the South of France resort of Cannes. In hindsight this was a theme we returned to again and [...]
ReplyDelete