You want our votes? Then cut out the secrecy

Editor's Comment

WHAT value do politicians place on the people who elect them?
A great deal, if you go by the Lib-Dem and Conservative newspapers that are now dropping through letterboxes in preparation for the coming local elections.
The political machines need votes. Promises of all kinds drip from this wave of propaganda.
Both parties that form Camden’s ruling coalition talk of openness. Though in political harness, they breathe their differences, sometimes openly, sometimes obliquely.
Meanwhile, in the real world, an extraordinary event is being planned – the demolition of the serviceable Town Hall annexe, its replacement with, apparently, a 25-storey skyscraper, and the relocation of the thousands of council staff to another skyscraper on the enormous undeveloped King’s Cross site.
Since the formation of the borough of Camden in the mid-60s it would be hard to find a parallel shake-up of such dimensions, affecting both the council’s budget and its staff of thousands.
Surely, with the elections beckoning, only a few months away, the Lib-Dem/Tory Coalition, if only for self-preservation, would be expected to openly lay their proposals before the public.
Political commonsense suggests this as a prudent course.
But obstacles block the path. They have grown organically over the decades, nourished by secrecy and, with it, an arrogance, all of it spreading out of the dark shadows of secret government, both here and in Whitehall.
Far fetched?
Not if you consider that the Lib-Dem/Tory Coalition refuse to make public any costings – certified by accredited surveyors – to back up the claim that the annexe faces a £15 million repair bill. Do these costings exist? Has the figure of £15 million been plucked out of the air?
Nor will the council make any disclosures about which companies are supposedly bidding for the redevelopment of the annexe site.
Too confidential to be made public, say the Lib-Dem/Tory Coalition. But isn’t that the same public the Lib-Dem/Tory Coalition are wooing for their votes?

• THE creation of a one-lane Camden High Street is pretty inevitable. It was talked about nearly a decade ago.
No one would disagree that something has to be done about our traffic-laden streets. But has this particular plan been thought through? Again inevitably, traffic will find other ways of going north – along Kentish Town Road, Mornington Street, Regent’s Park Road. A masterplan is required for London. A pragmatic piecemeal approach to traffic management, though British in character, is unlikely to work.