The trouble with Lambeth Council... The banana files part 1...

The Levithan and the banana files...

Well thought I should take on the task of coming clean with what I know about Lambeth. I have, in fact, been asked many times by people close to me to honor my pledge not to hold back and say it as it is. I have been involved with the Leviathann ( a name I have given to Lambeth Council) since 1988 and there isn't much that I have not seen or know about this body, so will start dishing out some constructive criticism on this special day of my birthday (thanks to those who send me birthday wishes including Stuart Barber our very capable - but tough and misunderstood - Regional Officer, bless him.

So where do I start? The best way to describe Lambeth as an organisation is to say that it attracts those who are committed to public service. I have known officers who spend a lot of effort getting jobs with Lambeth simply because they love what Lambeth as a Borough stands for. I, for example, chose to come to Lambeth in 1988 following the abolition of the LSPU and even though I had a choice of 8 other Labour boroughs I insisted that Lambeth was the right place for me. Lambeth is vibrant, exciting, diverse, trendy and mysterious. It also has problems that come with being a big organisation and not having a central focus or the ability to coordinate.

I once compared Lambeth Council with the modern state of Greece. Both are excellent at dealing with difficult and major crisis and have the ability to get inspired and achieve greatness never to be seen before (hence the 3 star achievement) But both have a huge problem with coordinating their internal activities and have any control over parts of their bodies. Lambeth, for example, suffers from having to introduce constant changes to the way it functions and it keeps trying to re invent the wheel so it would go back to reorganising internal structures in a frantic way. The same with Greece. The modern Greeks managed to win the European cup in 2004, win the Eurovision in that same year (not that that's a big deal) and shut up international critics by producing one of the most successful Olympics ever in Athens in 2004 but following that they went down the hill and have buggered up their economy in a big way!

Lambeth Council also has a major problem with over reacting when dealing with matters to do with staff and it often manages to alienate good, honest hard working public servants so it drives them away. The entire organisation is heavily influenced by a number of key players and these people have a lot of influence on what happens and how Lambeth (the organisation) functions. I will talk about this sector in following issues of this special edition of my journal (sounds better than a blog init?) I did, in fact, post something similar on here in March but a close ally and friend advised me to remove the material as he thought I could get into trouble so I had to remove what I wrote. But I have decided to go back and re do it all. I shall call my contribution to this the ' Banana files..' so look out for you might be referred to in the banana files.......

Happy birthday to me !

Nick Venedi