I think I owe Tory councillor Kirstie Neal an apology. Well I don't think so, I know so, because she told me so.

It is reasonably well-known that she has been living/working out of the country for quite a while now. What is less well-known, and I certainly did not know it, is that she has not been claiming her councillor's allowances. Had I known that I certainly would not have referred to her 'milking the system', so… sorry about that, and thanks for pointing out the error.

While I am quite happy to have opinions which nobody else agrees with, there is no point arguing if I have incomplete or wrong information!  If she had been claiming the allowance I would certainly stand by my comments, but she isn't, so I won't.

On the topic of the allowances, there was a happy resolution to it all as Brenda Smith moved that the independent panel be asked to go back to the drawing board and start again but be more thorough and transparent next time and almost the entire council agreed. 

The brilliant thing was that the original recommendation to the council was in two parts and Brenda just moved an amendment to the first part which had said it would accept the panel's recommendations, except for the bit about shadow executives.  After the amendment the gist of the entire thing was this:

1. The council thinks the panel didn't do enough research and followed a poor process in all respects.

2. The council wishes to thank the panel for their hard work and diligence.

I still don't know if leaving part two intact was an oversight or not, but the overall effect was quite amusing in an ironic kind of way.