Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs Awards

Fear not, Cheshire East councillors and officers reading this, you do not feature this time!

As regular readers will know, AudlemOnline, and a number of local residents, are keen followers of Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs page as it exposes the waste, fraud and numerous wrong-doings amongst local councils across the country.

This week's edition features their 2014 awards. We liked a couple of awards so much that we decided to feature them, one because it's funny, the other as it's relatively local:

Legover Award

Gloucester city council's chief executive Julian Wain masterminded a 'realigning the management resource' exercise. Others understood this to mean 'sacking lots of people'.

One of the resources realigned was Wain's girlfriend, Sadie Neal. She found her £35,000 a year job 'deleted' – but happily walked into a new job, similar to her old one, that paid £16,000 a year more.

The only other candidate – who hadn't slept with the boss – was made redundant. After Private Eye wrote about this a council 'investigation' found that no 'wrong-doing' had taken place.

The exonerated Wain nevertheless left shortly afterwards. The Tory Council leader said it was council policy to 'reduce layers of management.'

As a keen layer of management, Wain must have been an obvious target.

Malcolm Tucker Award for Media Manipulation

After Labour Stoke City council came under fire for spending £26,000 on a banquet for bigwigs at the Chelsea Flower Show, BBC Radio Stoke received a text from a member of the public supporting the council and commending it for trying to bring business to the area.

Hacks called the sender, 'Jean in Fenton' to get her to give her views on air. The call went straight to deputy council leader Paul Shotton's voicemail.

Checks revealed that many phoney texts supporting the council had come from his number in recent months. Result: public humiliation and suspension from the Labour party. Genius!

And if you want to read a great front cover featuring one of our most hard-working Royals, simply click on the photo of the current edition.

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