That dodgy 'secret' K&C cabinet meeting

In my view the High Court was quite correct to forbid Kensington and Chelsea Council from holding a formal cabinet meeting from which press and public were to be excluded. The Guardian brought the case. 

Firstly, the cabinet has plenty of opportunities to have private meetings - under the name of majority group, leader's meeting, or even outside the Council as a Party event. There is only one reason for meeting formally as a Council cabinet - and that's to take decisions. Now there are circumstances, defined by Schedule 12A of the 1972 Local Government Act, under which cabinet agenda reports can be classed as 'Exempt' and press and public can be excluded from meetings. The reasons are pretty tight. K&C didn't even attempt to use these grounds, for there was no written report to consider. Instead they sought to use a part of the Council's standing orders that covered preventing public disorder. 

So with no report tabled - open or exempt - why the need for a formal cabinet meeting? I suspect that they were intending to take a decision, that a report had been written, and that cabinet could agree to take it without prior publication to all councillors on grounds of 'overwhelming urgency'. If they just wanted a private discussion, why a formal cabinet meeting?

There is something very dodgy about the behaviour of K&C cabinet members here. Sadiq Khan, though, is just making silly little boy's political capital with his request to Mrs May to put the Council under special measures - he knows full well this is reserved for cases of egregious corruption such as the Muslim mafia takeover of Tower Hamlets. London's mayor has just proven himself to be a junior league failure, not fit to play with the big boys. He will be a one-term wonder. 

However, the council's new Tory cabinet needs to up its game to prove it can do the job. 

Khan - a failing one-term wonder

EU is failing again in the Western Balkans

If I could draw a cartoon it would be the statelets of the western Balkans fighting in a furious 2020 dustball of fists and boots whilst an EU President as shamefaced as a labrador who has copiously fouled the bedroom rug looks on, with the caption "You had one job ..."

The EU's foreign policy is a litany of failure, yet these hubristic Federasts want their own army to reinforce that failure; whilst they poke Putin in Ukraine, the Western Balkans are being lost to Russian expansion and Salafist pollution, corrupted through Turkish influence with Saudi money into a hotbed of radical Islamism. Reports in both the Republican American Interest and the Lefty Der Spiegel  catalogue the loss of interest by the EU in further Balkans accessions and the loss of interest by the Balks (if they can be so termed) in the EU; latest polls indicate that just 18% of Serbians really want to join the Federation. As Russia protects Christian orthodox nations, newly groomed Islamist statelets throw up new Saudi-funded mosques staffed by Saudi-supplied imams, to radicalise a new generation of Islamist terrorists. 

The Washington Post thinks it is a failure of democracy, that Balkans statelets are 'halfway democracies' and offers reasons for this. The paper misses the biggest reason of all. That the EU has the role of democracy mentor and monitor, and that the EU is in itself the most profoundly anti-democratic of regimes. It's like giving the job of Civics teacher to Pol Pot. What sort of lesson do the Balkans get from a corrupt Brussels EU regime that believes that the secret ballot and universal suffrage are obstacles to be over-ridden, that plebiscites can be repudiated and overturned, that solemn treaties can be broken for political ends and that threats, bullying and hubristic posturing are equated with statesmanship?

We should not forget that the Balkans are exporting their violent men who return even more skilled in crime and violence; Islamists fight for ISIS and pass back and forwards through a complicit Turkey, Albanian cocaine gangs dominate Europe, Serb people traffickers cross Europe in trucks filled with Afghan migrants. The reason why Austria can't put cigarette prices up to over €4,50 a pack is the ease with which white brands are smuggled from Balkans factories. Now that Croatia is part of the EU, there are a quarter million more Croatian passport holders than there are Croatians; well, who speaks enough Serbo-Croat to know? 

I have little doubt that the western Balkans will blow up again, and the dirty EU labrador whose fault it will be will wring its paws and ask for British peacekeepers and US ground attack aircraft to clear their shit up.

The one key factor in EU migration

You will all be used by now to everything from constipation to Summer lightning being blamed on Brexit; the remoaners know no limits in seeking to establish Brexit as the cause of every ill. Cow dries up? Crop fails? Late hail? Ewe aborts? Brexit. A few hundred years ago the same people blamed witches for everything that went wrong with their lives. Today they blame Brexit. 

EU staff are fleeing the NHS in terror, apparently. If you read the Guardian, you'll get a picture of the UK as a fearful panic nation in which stoic Hungarian nose-surgeons brave being spat at on the bus for talking funny. It's utter rubbish of course; the Guardian is an open sewer and its content just as palatable. Now the Indescribablyboring runs its own 'Brexit panic fear brain-drain exodus'  made-up news story. Sigh.

There's really only one factor that determines more than any other the level and pressure of inward EU migration to the UK; the £ - € exchange rate. When it stood at €1.35 - €1.43 to the £, every raspberry was picked, every ward swabbed and every bathroom tiled. Now it's €1.13 and housing costs in London and the South East are through the roof, EU workers are asking 'what's the point?'

If politicians had known they could reduce EU migration so effectively by weakening the pound, they would have done it before.  If the Peso hit $0.50 rather than $0.05 then Mr Trump would not have to build a wall. People simply don't uproot and migrate unless it's worth it. Until Greece defaults, the entire Italian banking system folds, Deutsche Bank drops or Spain goes bust, and so long as the pound is weak, our EU gastarbeiter will drift home.

Labour Party tower block 'murderers' condemned

Well, the government haven't politicised the faulty tower blocks, but Communist squib John McDonnell has done so - saying victims of the Grenfell fire were murdered by political decisions. Before he condemns so widely he might like to look at the political control of the councils which have covered their tower blocks with lethal materials;

Portsmouth	Conservative
Brent	Labour
Camden	Labour
Manchester	Labour
Plymouth	NOC
Hounslow	Labour
Doncaster	Labour
Norwich	Labour
Stockton on Tees	NOC
Sunderland	Labour
Islington	Labour
Lambeth	Labour
Wandsworth	Conservative
Barnet	Conservative

 Who are the potential killers now, John? And I'll bet when the DCLG release even more names that Labour councils predominate.

Also, can anyone explain why the government should face a £600m bill for correcting this danger? Why should not these councils dip into their own very substantial (£19bn from CIPFA) reserves to pay for it? Is this not exactly what council reserves are for?