Although the Tories keep banging on about cutting costs to reduce tax, that only applies to services to the public (like closing down children's playgrounds, cutting hot school meals, etc.) and not if the money is going into their own pockets.

Where they control the council at county level they created some new posts of deputies to cabinet members or something like that, which get paid a special responsibility allowance of about £4000.

In the borough council, where they are not in control, they are not suggesting that executive members should have deputies, but are instead suggesting that there should be special responsibility allowances for the shadow executive.

At no point have they suggested at county level that opposition members get an allowance for shadowing the cabinet, nor have they suggested that in the borough there should be deputies for the executive.

A great deal of the complaining has come from councillor Duncan Crow of Furnace Green. He tries to justify his claims, and his piss-poor attendance at shadow executive meetings by pointing out that he works in the evenings and cannot afford to take time off from work. He says "I do not get paid time off". Of course he does. Everyone has paid time off by law. He just uses it for holidays, as he is entitled to do, instead of using it to cover council commitments. His choice, so he can't complain.

If he finds it so hard to attend meetings, maybe he should not have stood as a county council candidate last year?

Being on both councils he already has basic allowances of £14,700 but can't afford to take any time off work, and I do not have a lot of sympathy for that. If the current basic allowance is not to enable councillors to cover the cost of having to take leave to attend meetings then what is it for?

It all depends on what you consider the allowances to be for. When I was a councillor I used up most of my spare annual leave at work to attend meetings, seminars, and other official council events. If I had used it up I took unpaid leave. I figured that the allowances I was paid were for just that sort of thing.

Personally I treated being a councillor as unpaid work for the good of the town, and the allowance enabled me to cover the costs involved in doing that so I would not be out of pocket. I did not even bother claiming expenses for travel when I went up to York for a summer school. After all that I still had plenty of the allowance left over.

Another school of thought is that you try to claim expenses for all those costs and treat the allowance as a boost to the family finances.

Mind you, Mr. Crow's colleague in Furnace Green is the one who is really milking the system. I hear that she works abroad on an oil rig, or in Nigeria, or perhaps on a Nigerian oil rig. Something like that anyway. She does come just often enough to put in the minimum of appearances at council to avoid being disqualified, and did attend one out of 10 shadow executive meetings. As a local taxpayer I wouldn't really want to be giving her a special responsibility allowance for that!

Between them, the Furnace Green councillors attendance at these meetings was 4/20 – just one more reason for voters there to get out and vote for Eugene Sully who, unlike George Galloway, did his stint in the Big Brother house before getting elected.

There are plenty of other reasons to not give this new suggestion any serious consideration. For a start, the positions are not appointed by the council, but by the opposition group. Furthermore, the shadow positions are not real ones enshrined in the constitution, but just invented by the opposition. (As far as I know – the constitution may have changed since I left)

Having said all that, I do support the idea of giving a special allowance to the deputy chair of development control – as long as they actually do more than just chair the meetings when the chair is absent or has declared an interest.

I didn't really think the chair deserved an allowance for chairing the meetings (except as danger money at the contentious ones!) but justified it through the work outside the meetings. When I chaired that committee I used to meet with the planning department during the day to discuss future trends and other stuff. I think the deputy should have been involved in that sort of thing. Maybe they are now: I am a little out of touch with what goes on at the Town Hall these days.

Its all just another example of the so-called 'Caring Conservatives' being the old, greedy, selfish Tory party it has been all along.  I have written a letter to the Crawley Observer along these lines, but I don't hold out much hope of seeing it published.

UPDATE: since writing this the Observer did actually publish the letter, which surprised me.  If I thought they really would I might have left out the cheap dig about playgrounds as I think the point stands well enough without it.  Also I have been informed that Kirstie Neal, contrary to Conservative stereotypes, does have a conscience and has not been drawing her allowance, so accusing her of milking the system is really unfair, and I will withdraw that comment.