The whole saga over the Children and Families Organisational Review gets murkier and murkier ...I mentioned last week that I thought there was less than total transparency being shown by those in charge of the process - Convener saying one thing/Trade Unions another?
- well, now the Trade Unions have sent a letter to all the elected Members on the Education Committee refuting a lot of the points made in the earlier answer to my question of 20th December - see question 8 here - about aspects of the Review process
- it also transpires that a specific consultation paper on the Community Learning and Development (CLD) part of the Review was only published JUST AFTER the Education Committee met last week - sheer coincidence??
- I could be wrong here - but I don't believe that consultation paper has been anywhere near a Committee Meeting of the Council - okay, it's CLD and non-statutory (so nothing 'illegal' being done) but we are supposed be in the halcyon days of Edinburgh's Bright New Future when all of us were to "have real opportunity to participate in decision-making"??
- I now also think the decision to cancel the Special Meeting of the 12th February is completely contrary to the extant Council Decision of the Education Committee Meeting on 30th October 2007 - have a look at Paragraph 8 of this minute ...
- for ease of reference, the above decision reads - "To approve the departmental review as detailed in the report subject to the outcomes report being submitted to the Education, Children and Families Committee ahead of the Council budget meeting." (my emphasis)
- well, that's clearly NOT happening now!
It's almost certain that almost WHATEVER is in that report will be approved, given the mathematics and dynamics of the day.
And yet, political scrutiny of the whole Review process has amounted to absolutely ZERO.
I'll (sadly) predict that chickens will come home to roost over this in the not too distant future.
2 comments:
I notice you are missing a couple of links in your post. Re the point about the "consultation paper on the CLD review" I think this would be helpful.
Also, may I suggest a link for "also transpires".
Credit where credit is due please. We don't want to see you accused of the same tactics of the Evening News by stealing stories from a certain site that sucks and giving no credit.
... okay, okay - perfectly fair point.
Will rectify tomorrow in another post.
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