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COMMENT
 
Answers coming?

WHAT lay behind Councillor Heather Johnson’s decisions to (a) take part in a debate over the contentious Regent’s Park tower block scheme and (b) then make the crucial casting vote to allow it to sail through the council’s planning committee?
We may soon discover the answers to these questions following a decision by the Tories to ask the Standards Board to investigate Cllr Johnson’s performance on that fateful evening a month ago when she chaired the committee.
At the moment, however, the Standards Board is a leaking vessel.
Its recent controversial decision to suspend Ken Livingstone from office has been sidelined to make way for a judicial inquiry.
Then last week it grovelled miserably before Islington council for the way it handled a misconduct case against its chief executive and sundry councillors.
Confidence in such an unelected quango is at a low ebb among local authority circles.
But if not the Standards Board, who else?
Undoubtedly, the Tories – and everyone else who are concerned about the ill-conceived scheme in Euston Road – will be hoping a reinvigorated Standards Board will solve the mysteries of the council’s planning committee.

Solving the debt

FACED with frightening debts what does the average person do?
Sell off assets to meet them.
Disposal of properties, in particular, is usually a short cut to solvency.
And that is University College London Hospital’s master plan as it struggles to control its spiralling deficit now coasting well over the £30m mark (See page 12).
But once asset stripped, what then? In a competitive market – that is what the National Health Service has become for Foundation Hospitals like the UCLH – will it be able to generate enough revenue every year to meet the enormous annual payments unleashed by the hospital’s Private Finance Initiative scheme?
Schools will face a similar quandary in the brave new world now being ushered in by Tony Blair’s Education Bill.
For decades Britain enjoyed a mixed economy of public utilities and private enterprise.
Today – encouraged first by Mrs Thatcher, now by Tony Blair – private companies, often transnational conglomerates, are slowly taking over the public sector.
However, this shift in the tectonic plates will not be halted unless the private companies themselves are harnessed by restrictive legislation. In today’s climate of political apathy this is not a likely scenario.
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