Dave – the editor

I was having a quick scan through the headlines on the local news media to see if there was anything worth commenting on (a.k.a. ranting about!) for this blog. This is what I came up with just for Thurrock:

Borough debt mountain of £1,416 billion reported to councillors

Nothing new seems likely for councillors seeking info on A13 widening project

Council tells elderly residents they will have to fund £19,000 for gates required if they want to keep their security

Thurrock loses out of £460,000 in travel safety cash as second tranche of funding is announced. Did its mocked initial travel scheme play a part?

I’ve had a bit of a busy day and was looking for an easy hit, not having to work out where the f**k to start with a potential slew of blog posts!

Back in October, we published this jokey piece about who was the worst local authority in the area we now cover: Who’s the feckin’ worst authority out of these two? The idea for this came after a bit of a mad conversation with one of our mates from Basildon & Southend Housing Action (BASHA). Basically, it was to try to introduce a bit of humour into the weird, grim situation we find ourselves in…

The intention was to leave it until the end of the year before deciding which authority was the worst to deal with. There’s no point waiting until then. While we and BASHA reckon the leader of Basildon Council – Cllr. Gavin Callaghan (Lab) – is a self important, puffed up chancer full of bullshit, we have to concede that the f**ker knows what he’s doing, even if we hate it with all of our passion. Callaghan can’t touch Thurrock Council for sheer incompetence, callous dismissal of the concerns of the residents they’re supposed to be serving and a lack of transparency and accountability that any former Eastern Bloc regime would have been proud of.

So, it’s official, out of the two authorities we now cover, Thurrock Council are the fecking worst by a country mile!