[jaysay]

Originally Posted by Ken Moss

Each year the party leaders are given a budget of a few thousand pounds for their own group development and I have just received the figures for the past 12 months.

It doesn't seem to be online anywhere but the Conservative figures contain details of such essential spending as £120.91 on newspapers, £320.00 on Christmas cards, £80.77 on a camera and memory card and what appears to be £769.45 on even more buffets for the group's private meetings.

As it stands, I receive just over £280 for my council work and have to pay for all of the above myself, as do the rest of the Labour group. We send Christmas cards every year and quite rightly pay for those ourselves, most of us already have a digital camera and we even have to suffer the hideous expense of buying our own papers. The Council Leader gets in excess of £43,000 per year and yet claims for all this.

Whilst the Labour group have spent around £100 on a training course, the Conservative leader has gone more than £230 over the allocated £3,805 with another two months to go.

So much for good financial management.

Maybe the camera was purchased so he could take a photo to use as his avatar on here when he finishes office in May