Money Well Spent

Nanny loves to spend our money on her "pet projects", it's so easy when it's not your own money to indulge yourself isn't it?

However, even by Nanny's wasteful standards this spending spree takes the biscuit.

Nanny's good chums in Havering Council have spent the last 12 months, and £10,000 of taxpayers' money on conducting a very serious and time consuming investigation.

What were they investigating then Ken? I hear you ask.

Seemingly the planning meetings of the council were being disrupted.

How were they being disrupted?

Someone saying "baa".

I kid you not!

Nanny got herself into a right old huff over this, and decided to track down this most evil of miscreants.

The result?

Twelve months and £10,000 down the toilet later, and Nanny has compiled herself a fine report amounting to a staggering 300 pages.

Unfortunately, the prime suspect is no longer a councillor and is, therefore, outwith being spanked by Nanny (those three words will generate this site some interesting hits from the search engines:)).

Seemingly this sorry tale of waste began last September during a planning meeting, when an application was being heard to put a mobile home on a farm housing rare breeds of horses and sheep.

The discussion was interrupted by a male councillor making "baa-ing" noises.

Coun Jeff Tucker, who represents the area where the farm is, got himself into a huff and reported the incident to the Standards Board for England which, in turn, referred it back to Havering council for investigation.

The probe (can I say probe?) has come up with four suspects, who will be interrogated by the standards hearings sub-committee in November.

One of the suspects, Denis O'Flynn, a former Labour councillor and deputy mayor, said:

"This has been an extremely expensive example of the worst kind of council bureaucracy.

The fact that this investigation has cost so much time and money is the height of stupidity."

Quite!

Congratulations to Havering Council, who have won my Prestigious Prats of The Week Award.

Feel free to drop them a note via this link info@havering.gov.uk teleing them of their award.