Jonathan Wills Nazi salute?

[scoots]

Totally agree, GR. Well put.

[righter]

shouldn`t we all be worried that is was a "secret" meeting?

 

Democracy needs to be seen to be done.

 

i might not ( rarely) agree with what they do,but at least i can find out about it if i need to,then make my feelings known to my councillor (ha ha)

 

Did they thing the plebs could not understand the issues?

 

My beef would be with the number of times they employ (useless) consultants...not where they stayed.

 

Although if they employ them every two minutes it`s no wonder it would be cheaper to buy them a house than put them up in hotels etc....maybe we can give them individual houses...might kick start our economy.

[paulb]

he was right to question spending 200,000 on an house. does that not seem high for a nice family house of say 3 bedrooms. unless of course a member of the council has a house on sale for say 200k

 

however the Nazi salute and saying is offensive. he should have apologized for being offensive. after all did he not learn to overly annoy people can result in threats of manual nasal surgery being offered.

[Ghostrider]

shouldn`t we all be worried that is was a "secret" meeting?

 

Yes, but leaking sundry issues (that presumably "offended" the leaker, and are not necessarily a representative sample of what the justification was to hold the meeting in private) that occured at one to "prove" such secrecy was "wrong", "un-necessary" or whatever, is no solution. Questioning and if appropriate condeming the decision that was taken (presumably at a publiclly accessible meeting) to hold said meeting in private, is.

[scoots]

It's playground politics. Behaving like a bairn who is trying to justify having been caught out doing something naughty. Sigh

[Spinner72]

shouldn`t we all be worried that is was a "secret" meeting?

 

Democracy needs to be seen to be done.

 

Private meetings are, and should, used for reasons such as this, where is it nobody's business how much a private individual may have received (house owner).

 

If anyone wants to trawl through the minutes, there will have been a public decision taken to investigate the option at some point. As always, *that* is when the time to object would have been, but as we have seen so many times from this council, it appears it was left to the last minute and not in line with protocol.

 

What is definitely concerning is the idea of sourcing permanent accommodation for consultants when present policy is to reduce and eliminate their use as much as possible..

[Ironwithin]

Hearing what he was complaining about seems more worrying to me. £200,000 on a house for consultants! Why was a meeting about this in private? Who knows what else they are busy wasteing money on in secret.

[scoots]

Spinner, once again, I'm in total agreement with your post here. That he STILL refuses to follow these protocols, despite previous experiences he has had, and surely in the knowledge that by leaving it to the end, he's going to achieve nothing except boosting his public press portfolio, brings to mind two literary references...

 

The first from Shakespeare,

".... It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing."

 

The second is simply that of Don Quixote, tilting at his windmills.

 

He is evidently a highly intelligent man. This is why it is so frustrating and saddening to see these almost regular spats flaring up, achieving nothing

except to embarrass Shetland further (many more of them are guilty of this, not just he). He could achieve so much more genuine progress and change, I believe, if he accepted and exploited the system from within, rather than always being the one outside the tent...

 

I believe the contents of the letter seek to obfuscate the incident and his own

clownish or childish "humour". Like it or not, in this country, as in most others, those in elected public office are believed to be held to account for their words and deeds by those who give them their mandate. That's the folk

of Shetland (or at least his ward). That he apologised to Mr Simpson, and this was accepted, is fine. Absolutely fine. But, with the matter becoming public knowledge, whether through Murdoch's media or graffitti in the public toilets, I would have thought better of him had he just said in this letter "He wouldn't let me speak up for those I represent and I lost my temper a bit. I

apologised to him and I apologise to those I represent and who I will continue

to fight for as long as you'll have me".

 

Had he come up with something even as remotely honest as that, it would have taken all his opponents off at the ankles, and this matter would be where it belongs in an ideal world. Done and dusted, save for the odd anecdotal reference ("Remember when old Wills did his Captain Geering impression? Arf! Arf! Sniffer!")

 

For those of you mystified,

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Hans_Geering

 

As always, sorry seems to be the hardest word... (copyright: Bernie Taupin

)

[Infiltrator]

£200,000 on a house for consultants

 

The words 'tip' and 'iceberg' spring to mind, these consultants have been beavering away for months, god only knows what the final cost is likely to be.

[shetlandpeat]

A friend of mine is a consultant. They work with local authorities and

their fee includes accommodation, travel and incidentals.

 

They more or less cost the council what they would pay if they employed someone.

 

Never has a property been included in the deal..

 

This would have had to come out as the cost of the house would have needed to be listed as anything else over a certain price/cost.

No secret really, it would have been common knowledge sooner or later, perhaps they did not want the scandal.

[angelpie]

An apology has been given and excepted. The End.

 

Not accepted by the general public... he hasn't yet said sorry to us. The only people who could possibly have accepted his retraction (not actually an apology) were a bunch of wobbly councilors who are too afraid of being the next victim of humiliation to stand up to him.

[icepick239]

Rockmount

[Quarffie]

An apology has been given and excepted. The End.

 

Not accepted by the general public... he hasn't yet said sorry to us. The only people who could possibly have accepted his retraction (not actually an apology) were a bunch of wobbly councilors who are too afraid of being the next victim of humiliation to stand up to him.

 

I agree, to my knowledge an apology has not been offered to nor accepted by those Mr Wills 'represents'

Even if his action was done in a humourous manner/meant to be a joke, it demonstrates a very poor judgement, even more so from an elected representative and he should now at least do the decent thing and offer his resignation.

[angelpie]

A friend of mine is a consultant. They work with local authorities and

their fee includes accommodation, travel and incidentals.

 

Never has a property been included in the deal..

 

The house wasnt a gift to the consultants, it would have remained the property of the council and saved a shed load of accommodation costs (which you admit above are part of the normal consultant package). That £200K would have gone up in value over time instead of paying continuous heftly hotel costs and using rooms that could be used by much needed tourism.

 

I just worked out that if one constultant stays at a normal hotel here 30 days a month for 12 months at 125 pounds a night including breakfast and dinner (yes I know that is very conservative) then it will cost around 45K per year.

 

That house would have paid for itself in no time and still been an asset on the books.

 

Has nobody noticed yet that Wills is negative about all ideas good or bad. The guy has no good ideas himself and hasnt got the guts to say yes to anything.

[Brian]

when present policy is to reduce and eliminate their use as much as possible.

 

Present policy and practice is in fact to increase and extend their use, although, as Danus Skene pointed out in the Shetland Times this week, there is no coherent plan.