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Barnet
Area Forum - 26 June
By John
Lewis
On
26 July, the Barnet area forum was held at Fould's
School, Barnet. This was a chance for residents to air
their views on matters of local concern.
Unsurprisingly
this prompted a sizeable Bees showing of about 30-40 fans
and the bulk of the meeting was taken up by angry Bees
fans demanding answers from the council. The panel
consisted of a number of senior council officers (the
equivalent of civil servants) and two councillors, who
were co-chairs of the meeting.
After a few
other items, the main item of the evening came up -
Barnet FC and the redevelopment of Underhill stadium. I
kicked off proceedings with a brief speech outlining the
problems, and asking the two Conservative Councillors to
name one thing they had done to encourage the club to
stay in the borough since they were elected.
Unsurprisingly this question was to remain unanswered
throughout the evening.
Disappointment
Those who
arrived thinking that this might be an opportunity to
hold the council to account over its actions were to
leave sorely disappointed. It was noticeable that at no
time did the Tory councillors who were on the panel
(chair and vice-chair) show any willingness to answer any
questions posed by the floor, instead the council civil
servant type guy who was responsible for the environment
was left to answer nearly all the questions. Obviously
being an elected representative is not deemed sufficient
grounds to warrant being accountable to the general
public.
His answers
were pretty uninformative. His first response was merely
to summarise what we already knew- namely that the club
had had two meetings with the council, and then put the
same council spin on things as Victor Lyon. I responded
by pointing out that de-designation was only step 1 of
the process, but this was fobbed off by the bloke
repeating what he said earlier.
Clearly,
this man was not a politician, and could not give
political answers to political questions. It was unfair
to expect him to defend the policies of the council. His
job is only to implement them. We had no gripe against
him at all, only the new administration. What we objected
to was the direction of policy, not the implementation of
it. However, the two Tory councillors- Peter Davis
(Underhill) and Wendy Prentice (High Barnet) seemed quite
happy to let this poor man fend off the questions, and
refused to be held accountable themselves for the policy
choices of their party.
Brassy
Confession
At one
stage, a member of BRASS stood up, finally confessing to
being a member of the Tory Party and delivered a rather
condescending speech. Since this was supposedly a forum
for residents to air their views to the council, it was
rather odd that he chose to face the Barnet supporters
rather than the panel of listening council
representatives with his views. Then again, seeing as his
speech was basically a condescending diatribe against
Barnet FC, with some highly misleading and dubious claims
about the chairman it was clear why.
All of the
speech concerned South Underhill (not on the agenda- the
matter in question was the existing site) and rather than
addressing the council with his concerns, it seemed to be
to give the Bees fans a teacherly ticking off for having
the temerity to want to build a league standard stadium.
Apparently the club could have built a stadium, but went
about it the wrong way, and as a result us Barnet fans
should all blame Tony Kleanthous instead. So that bloke
who has invested all that time, effort and millions of
pounds of his own money into the club is actually the
reason for its problems- rather than a handful of local
residents in opposition, who were of course, only
motivated by a desire to see the best for Barnet FC.
Ignored
Several
Bees fans raised points about what exactly the council
was doing to help the club - and all of these were
ignored by the chair, who seemed desperate to find
someone else to ask. Again the bloke from the council who
was not an elected representative was made to answer the
questions. At no time did any elected representative make
any attempt to explain how the council had done anything
to help the club.
The best
offering we had was a meek response from Wendy Prentice
who said she was an Arsenal fan (does she support
Ashburton Grove I wonder?) and that her son supported
Barnet, so she wasn't against the club. Throughout the
meeting fans had explained that warm words were not
sufficient, and that actions were what mattered. I am
sure the bloke steering the Titanic cared passionately
about avoiding icebergs, and that King Alfred was a big
fan of cakes. This point seemed entirely lost on the
councillors, whose attempts to fob us off with the mantra
"we care about Barnet FC" seemed spectacularly
unsuccessful.
Wendy
Prentice did attempt to claim that the two meetings
arranged with the club were signs that the Tories wanted
to keep the club in the borough. This constitutes a
rather interesting definition of the word help. At the
first they tried to scupper South Underhill, and at the
second they tried to scupper redevelopment of the
existing site. What assistance! On this definition of
"helping" we could Knight Bernard Matthews for
services to Turkey longevity. When it was pointed out
that these two episodes hardly encouraged the club to
stay in the borough, she suddenly spotted someone at the
back of the room wanting to speak and rapidly handed the
floor to him.
Hijack
Things got
even more heated when a Labour councillor (there only in
his capacity as a resident, you'll note) delivered a
brief but thunderous speech in defence of Barnet FC in
what was without doubt the most sensible, straight
talking honest input from any councillor all evening.
This prompted Tory councillors (there just to observe-
not on the panel) to point out that shamelessly party
political tirades from councillors were best kept in the
council chamber and then - just to emphasise how strongly
they felt about meetings being hijacked by politicians -
to weigh in with personal rantings of their own. Only
Katia David, to her credit, kept quiet.
Mysteriously,
the Tory councillors in the chair seemed far less willing
to discipline their own side for intervening without the
authority of the chair, than they were to caution Barnet
fans. At some point during this council chamber type
exchange, Fiona Bulmer newly elected Underhill councillor
decided to break into song with "We won the
election". It was her only contribution of the
evening and was illustrative of her grasp of the
situation. Then one of the new Tory councillors gave some
spiel about wanting to help the club, but when challenged
on what they had actually done, swiftly looked to the
chair with an expression of panic on his face.
Sadly,
unlike in the world of football, those who are on the
receiving end of a stuffing were, when they are the
chairman, able to move things on to the next matter. And
so, without much being answered they did.
Simple
Question
All in all,
the evening left us with a feeling that the Tory
Councillors knew very little about what was going on, or
were at least content to let a poor old council official
take all the flak from angry Barnet fans. They seemed
totally unwilling to defend their actions, or more
pointedly to answer the question set out at the beginning
of the evening
"What
have you done to encourage the club to stay in the
Borough?".
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