Some of those consultants are the most questionable of all: PR consultants, doing the job of inadequate politicians.

As an observer of matters at Ally Pally, I was amazed to see that the council spent in the order of £200,000 with Lexington Communications, one of London’s more expensive PR consultants. This was in order to facilitate the “disposal” process.

And every single penny was wasted!

When Lexington’s contract was not renewed – after the collapse of the flog-it-to-Firoka fiasco – I was astounded at how easily the Trust Board wanted to replace it with *another* PR company that allegedly would offer better value for money.

Public relations is one area of consultancy that this council should curtail: severely.

When I was a councillor I found it difficult to speak out against it, because if you did so you were accused of being some sort of dinosaur who wanted to go back to the bad old days of socialist style in-house work, which was obviously not private sector so obviously bad an inefficient. Plus you got tied up with these incredibly complex structures, and effectively you were told “No councillor, don’t worry your little mind about this, we have it all under control, it’s modern, it’s private sector, if you don’t understand it it’s because you’re an old-fashioned sort who doesn’t understand how modern business runs”.

Well, what do we find out now? It was all about smooth-talking salesmen extracting their fat fees. No doubt this £24 million on consultants was sold like the rest as absolutely essential and modern and it would cut costs in the long run because of their private-sector know-how.

Anyway, are you telling me £24 million pound went through the council budget and no-one knew about it until now? Aren’t there committees and things which have to agree budgets and expenditures? Or did it get nodded through the “Cabinet” because we were sold that style of governance on the grounds it was oh-so-more efficient than the old committee system where every budget item had to go past the eyes of a group of councillors which must include opposition councillors and every councillor was on at least one of these committees often on one they had expert knowledge on? Or, again “No councillor, don’t worry your little mind about this, you go off and be a good little community worker, and if you insist on doing something here we’ll put you on some ‘scrutiny’ working party and tie you up looking at something small while the millions spent elsewhere pass by out of your sight”.