Act 1
As reported previously, The Jean Eccles called “extra ordinary Hemsworth Town Council meeting” took place last night and as expected Jean Eccles attempted to portray herself and her cabal ideas as the next best contestants fit for TV’s Dragons Den.
Armed with her new trusted pen in her hand, having seemingly put her pencil into retirement, the well worn and untrusted lies spewed forth from her mouth with the volume level on full.
Jean replaced her mentor, Jim Kenyon as The Chair of Hemsworth Town Council back in May 2022. Jim Kenyon himself, is often referred to as “Joke” for what erupts from his mouth and now it seems Jean is displaying similar qualities, which are more suited to the villain in a Christmas pantomime, than the Chair of a large Town Council.
Today’s post will concentrate on the Lakeside café/bar and the accounting methods of Pantomime Dame Jean. She asked for any comments from the “financial” report she had circulated the previous week.
It was asked why the letter had not been made public and why outstanding issues had not been dealt with and there had been difficulty in even understanding the letters contents.
Dame Jean responded with, that it was Council decisions not to get new fridge freezer, not get new paths etc. You’ve been saying we are in dire straits. We are OK.
Yes straight from the chair “we are financially ok” how reassuring.
This was immediately challenged by Councillor Maxine Hird who stated they were not.
Not to be silenced Pantomime Jean declared loudly and clearly that: We have a substantial amount of money to spend before April.
It was then pointed out that this would mean even more spending from reserves and our always ready with an answer to even the trickiest of financial questions, Jean bellowed: “that’s what reserves are for”.
It appears that Jean still hasn’t grasped the basics of budgeting and money burns holes in her purse, well our money anyway, and it must be spent and reserves are just that, reserved money for unseen and unexpected events and should not be spent on whims and fancies.
Alan Draper confirmed that the finances were not brilliant but OK and the reserves left were all spoken for, much to the disappointment of our Chair.
Dame Jean then tried to prove how viable the Lakeside café/bar actually was by referring to the figures she had provided that only covered the last 6 months and even then there were glaring shortcomings in them.
She was asked how she could prove viability with no staffing costs shown: as most people know staffing costs are usually the biggest outlay for most business and you can’t prove viability without all the costs shown.
On hearing this Dame Jean quickly and without hesitation tried to pass the blame on to Alan Draper by saying “So Alan is wrong then?”
Maxine Hird attempted to explain the basics of budgeting to Jean.
Eccles responded by saying she understands and they budgeted for that in the precept.
Ferret thinks my god you couldn’t make this up, a complete and total inability to understand and realise that precept money was real money and our real money, money we have no choice but to pay.
With this revelation, the public erupted in full voice; fully realising the chair of the council hasn’t got the foggiest idea about budgeting and business planning!
With her new Pen in her inky hand, she pointed at the public and suspended the meeting saying she wasn’t being shouted at.
So Jean, is it alright for you to throw our hard earned money away without any remorse or even provide a proper explanation and this is on top of the failed pledge to actually lower the precept by £200,000 from your first year of office?
Did you think we had forgotten about that?
INTERVAL – ACT 2: More detail of this and the reconvened pantomime meeting to follow tomorrow, warning it doesn’t get any better.