Ventnor Blog

It’s taken us a while to treat the recording we did with Joe Duckworth last Thursday, the day after full council meeting. (We also understand that it was the first interview that he’d given)

The recording was carried out around a table, where we were all a little too far away from the mic. This lead to us having to play around to reduce the hiss, while boosting the audio. It’s come out sounding slightly underwater, but hope you find it all OK. (Watch out at about the 10 minute point for the sound spike)

Click on the arrow below to launch the podcast:

We’re with Joe, that the general population needs to have a better understanding of what the council officials, as well as the elected members are doing.

To this end, we were pleased to have Joe agree two important items

1) Bloggers do have a place in the council chambers to report on council business. (1:45)

2) Joe will meet with Ventnor Blog on a monthly basis to chat over items of interest. (7:20)

Here’s some bullets of the chat …

There’s a short chat about blogging, his blog, why people blog, the rights of people to express themselves; Percy Sugden and the right to reply.

He then went on to cover how residents of the Island want to know what’s going on; 47% of residents are critical of the council and how it can be turned around;

What lead him to commission the Undercliff Drive November report (10:45); The awarding of contracts, including internal checks & balances and internal auditors (14:00).

What the extent of the remit is for the Undercliff Examination committee, “not have any bounds” (15:20); How the HPR situation arose; What disciplinary actions will be taken; the diminishing returns for looking back at previous contract;

“It’s shocking what happened on the Undercliff” (19:00), “and there may well be a few other things that are there.”

And of course, Cheetah Marine and the Eastern Esplanade (19:20); The investigation is solely around procurement not the sale of assets (20:16).

Joe stepping back from his commitment to talk to have a monthly chat with VentnorBlog? (21:30)

We’re grateful to everyone who sent through questions to put to Joe, we didn’t have time to cover everything, but hope to do so on our return visit.

Thanks also to Joe for his time and his staff for organising the get together. Looking forward to the next one.

podcast, Politics