After leader of Essex County council David Finch took the decision not to pursue Lord Hanningfield for £51,000 in expenses resident David Kirkwood believes it's time we finally left the former leader alone and focused our efforts elsewhere.
IN LAST week's Chronicle, Liberal leader Cllr Mike Mackrory called for Essex County Council to embark on legal action to recover £51,000 from Lord Hanningfield for alleged misuse of a corporate credit card (see page 8).
He has taken it upon himself, like many before him, to publicly castigate this man. He calls for him to be summarily dragged through the courts presuming to know that Lord H must have done wrong.
There is, it seems, no end to this zeal for retribution, now reduced to tediously picking through credit card payments, searching for anomalies, years after they were checked, audited then filed away.
I think Cllr Mackrory does a great deal of good and he is a formidable, forthright man and a fine leader. Lord H was too, let's not forget that.
This man has suffered enough and is depleted and not able to spring as he once would to his own defence. My sense is Lord H needed to have sprouted some claws and fought back, rather than exhibit an exhausted lacklustre defence that is encouraging people to attack him more.
But I have not been torn from my position and thrown into jail as a septuagenarian and subject to the glaring rage of national attention.
Joanna Killian, Essex County Council chief executive, legitimately makes expenses claims on top of her near quarter of a million pounds a year salary just as when Lord H was leader.
Elected members receive very little and yet contribute so much and we pay Joanna Killian the equivalent of about a dozen hard working council employees.
I think if we are so concerned about money we should concern ourselves with why it is people who deal with everyone else's money feel they should get a significant share of it, as if the association endows them with exceptional powers.
Can it be that those 12 men and women are so very unexceptional compared to Joanna Killian? Personally I doubt it – most likely Joanna Killian is simply grotesquely overpaid.
Our zeal has been misplaced; we need to look at how and why we sanction these huge salaries. I wonder does this chief executive take much time off sick for example, what are her perks, her various pension contributions, does she buy in advice, consultants and cover for services her prodigious salary was intended to include in her job description?
Four or five thousand pounds a week means we can expect a great deal, what do we get though, really what do we get and how do we know we are getting it?
We know for sure that Joanna Killian heads up a culture exemplified by her hugely disproportionate salary, but not much else.
These often unremarkable people have a few well-turned phrases mostly extolling their self-proclaimed money-saving talents and then they slavishly maintain a low profile come what may.
They are people attached to significant salaries and are very keen to keep them and this demands they are innocuous, the diametric opposite to what we require.
And so this meaningless pursuit of a tired, unwell and deeply traumatised septuagenarian man who gave so much for so long keeps the attention away from where it should be directed.
We look to a fair society made from equals and yet at the centre of our county council exists a plutocracy we are all paying to maintain, that is perverse. We should put a stop to it.
