Read all about it… in a quarterly!

Published: 9 December, 2010

• CAMDEN’S Labour cabinet last week agonised long and hard before agreeing an £80+ million package of cuts.  

Just a few minutes later, however, they happily reversed an earlier spending cut and reinstated a Camden Council quarterly magazine costing us £100,000 a year.


Unlike in the previous Your Camden magazine, which Labour’s finance chief Councillor Theo Blackwell has luxuriated in claiming the credit for scrapping these last six months, Cllr Blackwell told us that there would be no ban on running stories promoting councillors who happen to be in the Labour cabinet.

Challenged about the usefulness of the propaganda rag, Councillor Angela Mason said it would enable the council “to provide updates to residents  about the weather”!

On a quarterly basis?  You couldn’t make it up (but perhaps they’ll try). One story the council missed completely this week was Islington breaking off negotiations over the two boroughs sharing a single chief executive and senior officer team. Camden were still sending out an email to “Camden Partners” on Thursday afternoon giving everyone an update on how well the negotiations were going hours after Islington announced it had been called off.  

Indeed I’m still to see an official Camden press release explaining what happened.



Perhaps now we can be told exactly what they were looking at in the first instance. I know, why not put in in the first edition of Camden’s new magazine...

CLLR ANDREW MENNEAR
Conservative, 
Frognal & Fitzjohns ward