We were going to write mostly our own story this evening about Councillor Richard Kingstones’ post regarding taking away special responsibility allowances for Councillors. Someone had already seen it and decided to write in to the Mailbag and called him out themselves. Because as usual Richard Kingstone is being a populist pompous prick, and making some dubious claims about how much he’s spent of the allowances he’s happily taken in (allowances he’s perfectly entitled to).
Essentially Richard shows no regard for the people unlike him who aren’t privileged. Richard owns a £325,000 house he paid £74,950 for in 1997 for example, and gets a decent salary as a senior teacher at Rawlett School. Despite once being in horrendous debt, he is now comfortably off. He is in no position to talk about anyone else’s circumstances, most of the Councillors are not as well off as this guy. Naturally his pal Paul Brindley the troll backs up his point of view, as usual completely ignoring the tens of thousands of pounds needlessly spent when he flounced off the council, causing a by election (he also doesn’t offer to pay back the money he got in allowances either). This toxic pair of completely moronic power obsessed man children think they and they alone hold the light of truth and righteousness.
People who stand for council are not always as privileged enough as Kingstone to forgo an allowance and spend hours of their time outside potentially full time work attending meetings, extra meetings when there’s special responsibility attached. Since Richard has never and likely will never be called upon to carry out one of these functions, he can happily point fingers from the back of the room with his holier than thou attitude.
The man is out of touch, power crazed and apparently doesn’t want the ‘little people’ having the chance to affordably be part of the council. His followers and the occasionally clueless Councillor Jan Wadrup are as usual up Kingstones’ backside, because as usual Kingstone has portrayed a skewed narrative to suit himself. The only interaction with anything to do with the council his followers have is via what this man tells them on his Facebook page, they are literally too stupid to look into anything further independently. He plays on this fact all of the time.
Here is our readers contribution:
Kingstone has finally lost his mind.
Special allowances were fine when he had them, now he doesn’t he wants them taken. I don’t see him paying back everything he’s been paid over the years.
Not all elected councillors have a rich background like him and his bow tie.
Many have full time jobs, the hours they put in as a councillor is rarely covered by the allowances and lots lose time off work (or entire jobs if they are self employed!) to represent local people. Lots pay out of their own pocket for activities they carry out and events they organise.
Kingstone might be planning on not standing again but no need to burn it all down for the rest.
We need a system that works for all, whether student freshly elected or IT teacher.
Kingstone suggests, special responsibilities are merely attending a meeting. He may view his previous roles that way but those in the cabinet and on committees do appear to work fairly hard. Well done to them for actually taking the roles seriously. [End of mail]
Well considered response there from our reader.
And here’s what the leader of the Council Thomas Jay had to say back to Richard:
Now we wonder if Kingstone and his pet troll are going to keep on saying the same rhetoric when Labour take control of the council next Thursday. Since apparently the Tories are the only ones that are raking it in according to Brindley (no-one is) and the Labour councillors (who as it happens already occupy a few of the chair positions with extra cash) will be in the position of assigning themselves these special allowances. Will he angrily focus on them when they undoubtedly refuse to bow down to Kingstones’ ill conceived idea? As Kingstone said, he tried to get this motion of his last year, but having failed at the first hurdle it never materialised.
At the end of all of this, Councillors allowances exist for a reason. They are not a huge amount of money, they are taxed and incur National Insurance contributions. Their jobs when they have to put up with the kind of idiots hanging around facebook pages Kingstone and the Troll run (as well as the trolls rants himself) we wouldn’t do for any amount of money. The abuse they face from knuckle dragging clueless members of the public is beyond ridiculous. They absolutely deserve some of the criticism they get from the likes of this page when they decide to act publicly in an arrogant or disingenuous manner, or straight out lie. There’s a simple fix to that though, don’t do it, keep quiet and get on representing the people instead.
As we’ve previously said, people hold these people to much higher standards than they ever would themselves, which is untenable when they are just as human as anyone else. Some are absolutely inept, which we are now able to see via the Councils YouTube channel. Some of the chairs of the various scrutiny committees aren’t worthy of the money they are paid and that is the real problem, not the payments themselves.
This is just yet another stunt aimed at his colleagues from Kingstone, a privileged already well off man who delights in having power and telling everyone else what to do, comfortable in the knowledge he will never likely ever be in the position to have to chair a committee full time, or make a decision for Tamworth for the rest of his political career.
