Stretching a point

We don’t know where KCC leader Paul Carter buys his elastic but it’s sturdy stuff. For the past few years he has taken to illustrating just how difficult KCC’S budget decisions are by saying the elastic is being “stretched to breaking point”. As if by magic, it never quite breaks.

But we are wondering just how much longer this can continue. This year’s budget calculations leave little room for manoeuvre.

A crack team of writers must have been assembled by the Liberal Democrat South East MEP Catherine Bearder for her riposte to Theresa May’s speech in Florence. “The waffle fell far short of those served in Belgium,” she said. Perhaps you had to be there.

The bureaucatic layers in the NHS are sometimes as impenetrable as geographical rock strata. But eight Clinical Commissioning Groups in the county have simplified things by signing a contract with an organisation called NEL CSU to supply “a range of commissioning services”.

These include handling Freedom of Information requests. Presumably, this works by NEL CSU getting a request and finding the information by, er, asking the relevant CCG.

Good luck to Kent’s PCSOS who have been handed some new powers by the chief constable. Among them will be the power to give penalty tickets to drivers who park in restricted areas outside schools. Let’s hope they get crowd-control training.

North Thanet MP Sir Roger Gale had harsh words for those who criticised Thanet council for leasing Margate harbour arm for a peppercorn rent.

They were talking “nonsense”. The critics included neighbouring MP Craig Mackinlay.

Follow Paul on Twitter @ Paulonpolitics