Reform MP asks Starmer to ban the burqa. Reform chairman says that was dumb.

Sarah Pochin, Reform’s newest MP used up her first question during Prime Minister’s Questions in order to, out of the blue, ask whether Keir Starmer would ban the burqa. The burqa is an outer garment worn by some Muslim women that covers the body and face.

Starmer’s answer was no. And he took another chance to have a go at Reform for their wildly irresponsible plans to cut taxes.

Can I welcome her to her place, but I’m not going to follow her down that line.

But now she is here and safely in her place, perhaps she could tell her new party leader that his latest plan to bet £80billion of unfunded tax cuts, with no idea how he’s going to pay for it, is Liz Truss all over again

Even the chairman of the Reform party itself thinks her question was “dumb”.

Reform councillor who missed nearly half her meetings due to ill health believes that people that miss meetings due to ill health should resign

Seemingly contrary to her workshy counterparts in Kent and Nottinghamshire, Reform councillor Jo Monk seems to believe that failing to turn up to council meetings because you’re ill is a bad enough sin that you should probably resign.

In a recent meeting she said:

I’ve sat for the last four years witnessing people coming and going when they felt like it.
…
If you have health issues that are that serious then perhaps you should resign and let someone else who is more committed do that.

What’s good for the goose apparently isn’t good for the gander though. She herself has only attended around half, 56%, of the meetings since she was elected back in 2021. Why? Reportedly, ill health.

Richard Udall, leader of the council’s Labour group, said: “I think she was only talking about councillors, which is in itself surprising as she only had a 60 percent attendance record in the last council due to ill health.”

Reform bans new employees from joining the council pension scheme; will punish those who already have

Richard Tice of Reform has mandated that anyone who starts employment at any Reform-controlled council going forward will not be allowed to join the Local Government Pension Scheme.

It’s hard to retrospectively remove the entitlement from those who already work at councils and hence are members – so instead he’s going to punish them with lower pay rises than everyone else.

These pensions are certainly more generous than the standard private sector pension, but, in a different world, I’d imagine that anyone claiming to be a friend of the average worker in a situation where many people entering retirement don’t have an adequate income for a decent quality of life would be more inclined to try and improve the lot of the folk with worse pensions rather than force the few people who do still have reasonable schemes down to the lowest common denominator.

Never one to not bring a culture war to anything going, he is apparently also worried that councils are investing in “woke” pension funds.

Reform councillor claims that some children are just evil

Local councils have some responsibility for children who have to be taken into care.

Any that end up under the governance of Councillor Andy Osborn, of the Roman Bank and Peckover ward, should be particularly pitied.

Councillor Andy Osborn (Reform UK – Roman Bank and Peckover) told a Cambridgeshire County Council meeting on June 3 that some children in care were “not just naughty children, they can be downright evil”.

He said he had heard of cases where children were “smashing cars up, running away from home, and are on drugs”.

Cllr Osborn said: “It is not just a case of somebody being a bad boy or a bad girl, it is a case of they have learnt from their bad parents not to react correctly.”

His colleagues were unimpressed by this ignorance and callous viewpoint.

Martin Purbrick, Executive Director of Children, Education and Families, explained:

I think it is important to recognise any child in care is a child that has experienced early childhood trauma and it is that trauma, which can often lead to difficult behaviours and emotional responses to challenging situations, which children and young people find it difficult to manage themselves.

Sometimes that can manifest itself in behaviours like you have described, which can be difficult, but I do think it is important that we as a committee also remember that under that behaviour is a child that has experienced something incredibly difficult and something that has really changed the way that they are able to manage their own emotions.

A ‘shambolic start’ for Nottinghamshire County Council as Reform cancel key meetings

The Refom-controlled Nottinghamshire County Council seems to be taking a leaf out of Kent Council’s book by unilaterally cancelling a wide variety of the planned meetings for June including Cabinet, Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Planning and Rights of Way Committee, and Governance and Ethics Committee meetings.

Sam Smith, a Conservative councillor, calls this a “shambolic start”, saying:

Local residents were promised action, change and common sense. Instead, we’ve got silence, confusion and a complete absence of leadership.

Scrapping every key meeting in their first full month in charge is not only reckless — it’s dangerous. This puts public services at risk and shows just how unprepared Reform really are

The Reform members seem unable to answer questions on what are supposed to be their particular areas of responsibility – and even on issues they heavily campaigned on as a party such as solar panels.

In their responses, the Reform cabinet members said they ‘hadn’t been briefed’ on the issues raised — including solar farms and highways programmes — which the opposition have since described as having “no excuse” as they have “full access to senior officers who are available to support them”.

Mr Smith said: “They should be in their offices, speaking to officers, and getting to grips with their jobs. Instead, the car park is empty, and the council is effectively leaderless.“This is what happens when you elect people who had no plan and no idea what the job involved.

Tice’s claim that this Labour government allowed the biggest influx of migrants into the UK ever is a lie

The deputy leader of Reform, Richard Tice, recently claimed in at least one national newspaper that:

..the statistics show without a doubt that this Labour government has allowed the biggest influx of migrants in British history⁠

A fact-checking organisation. Full Fact, looked into this, and surprise surprise, it isn’t true.

As the Independent reports them saying:

…when we asked Oxford University’s Migration Observatory about Mr Tice’s claim, it told us: “We cannot identify any data that support the assertion that the current government has been responsible for the biggest influx of migrants in British history,

Trying to find some way in which it might be true they looked also at the number of migrants crossing the channel even though that quite clearly isn’t what Tice said – and the small boat kind of migrants are a tiny fraction of all migrants. But even that doesn’t seem to be true.

In the view of both Full Fact and the Migration Observatory, statistics from the Office of National Statistics:

…appear to suggest that the “biggest influx” of migrants on record so far took place under the previous Conservative government. The Migration Observatory believes this is the case, telling us: “Data clearly show that the ‘biggest influx of migrants in British history’ took place under the previous administration.”

Reform councillor Adam Smith is suspended after less than a month

It took less than a month for Adam Smith, one of Reform’s councillors for West Northamptonshire, to get himself suspended.

Reform are being a bit vague about why, saying only that:

Following a number of concerns regarding the conduct of councillor Adam Smith, the whip has been suspended pending an internal investigation.

Although the NN Journal reports that the concerns “are understood to refer to his personal life”, whatever that might mean.

Refom appoint a cabinet member for ‘efficiency’ to Kent Council at a cost of over £50,000

In between cancelling statutorily required meetings, Reform has appointed an extra cabinet member in place as part of the DO(L)GE effort to find unspecified “efficiencies” and cut costs.

So far the main result appears to have been to increase costs, given that as well as the extra £17,123 allowance they are paying them another “special responsibility allowance” of around £37,000.

So at the moment, they’ve increased spending on cabinet members, not decreased it. The person who’s supposed to make things more efficient is actually making it cost more

reports a Labour colleague.

Kent council leader Linden Kemkaran’s X account gets suspended

It’s been noted that Reform leader of Kent Council has had their Twitter/X account suspended for violating the rules of the platform. So far we don’t seem to know why – but given the state of X they must really have gone out of their way to post something offensive.

Previously a Conservative councillor, Linden Kemkaran, has been investigated for Islamophobia in the past, and has a history of sharing unsavoury Twitter posts on the subject. But it’s not yet clear if the recent suspension is anything to do with that.

Kent Council paralysed as Reform keeps cancelling legally required meetings

After winning control of Kent County Council, Reform have taken action to do…very little.

Their Liberal Democrat colleagues report that of the first 5 committee meetings scheduled in June they have cancelled at least four of them, and the status of the fifth wasn’t clear at the time.

The cancelled meetings:

  • Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee
  • Planning Applications Committee
  • Governance and Audit Committee
  • Regulation Committee

Says a Lib Dem councillor:

I thought this administration claimed they wanted to get to work from day one. Funny way to show it: no meetings, no scrutiny, no decisions, no direction. This isn’t Reform. It’s paralysis.

Going forward, the Byline Times notes another couple of cancellations, including some meetings that you are not really allowed to skip:

They include gatherings of legally-required committees such as the Governance and Audit committee which are essential to setting a budget and keeping finances in check.

You would think scrutinising budgets would be exactly the sort of work these DOGE-fans would want to do, but apparently not.

A Labour councillor comments:

…there is a decision free zone within KCC at the moment. They don’t know what they’re doing.