Conflicts and interests

The weekend could only be described as sleepless....family crisis involving an emergency admission to hospital and grandparents making late night dash across the city to collect 3 infants...late night problems with garage door at PEP involving removing all vehicles so we can at least keep the services going during the week...I don't function well without, at least, 3 hours sleep so it's been trying. I know the aphorism that God doesn't give you anything to bear that you can't, but sometimes He gets pretty damned close to the bone.

Also, the Evening News phoned to check again, on the details of PEP's lease of garage facilities with PEP. The conspiracy theorists are obviously still cranking it up. For the avoidance of doubt, PEP holds the original lease agreed on 22 January 2003 signed by the Transport Organiser and a WEL representative. This was updated on 31 March 2004 for insurance purposes - again by the Transport Organiser and a WEL representative. The original lease was agreed before I was a Board member at WEL or before Steve Izatt was in post. I presume it went before WEL Board members at the time for an 'in principle' approval. The updated lease would not go before the Board since it was simply an operational matter but if it had, I would have declared an conflict of interest and withdrawn from the meeting.

For readers' interest...when the current WEL Chief Executive, Colin Hunter, took up post he recommended a change in strategy which involved the company developing the North Shore plots to maximise short term income. I chaired the meeting which agreed this change in strategy even though I knew it would cause problems for PEP's garaging arrangements. At WEL, my first priority was always doing the best for WEL....being in public life means having to always manage these kinds of conflicts of interest. And there is no shame in organisations like WEL supporting an older people's project and all the other community groups it did. In fact, that's what they should be doing!