Councillors can get a bit touchy about their allowances and at £1.8m last year, you can understand why KCC 84 members might find the subject of how much it costs the taxpayer a little sensitive.

So, let's give them one cheer for understanding that as they preside over a budget making £95m of savings, they ought to look to themselves to see if they can save the taxpayer a bit of cash. (I'll gloss over the number of times that I've been told by various councillors that much as they'd like to do something, the council is tightly bound by the recommendations of the independent remuneration panel that makes them. They are not and never have been).

Councillors allowances to be cut>>>

Some £200,000 is to be chopped from the budget for members' allowances and various options are being weighed up - including an across-the-board cut for all members.

There will, in any case, be some savings because of the re-organisation underway at County Hall that will see the number of directorates slimmed down and the word is that will mean a smaller cabinet, which at some point will mean a potentially interesting re-shuffle. Currently, each cabinet member gets a special responsibility allowance of £23k on top of a basic allowance of £13k.

But if I was looking at where the axe might fall, it'd be on the number of councillors who have jobs as deputy cabinet members. There are 13 councillors in such posts and they each get £11,837 on top of their basic allowance. If I was in one of these roles - and there are a lot of them - I'd be feeling a little anxious just now.   

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No surprise that the Conservatives won the by-election for the KCC division of Tonbridge following the death of Godfrey Horne. The result provides KCC with its first mother-daughter team - the winning candidate was Alice Hohler, the daughter of Sarah Hohler, cabinet member for education.

Alice romped home with a healthy majority of 2,013 but it was a grim night for the Lib Dems. Its candidate polled 561 votes against the 3079 the party's two candidates who contested the division in the 2009 election secured and to add to the party's discomfort, got beaten into second place by Labour, who in 2009 were did so poorly, they got beaten by UKIP.

All of which suggests that disaffected Lib Dem supporters are gravitating to Labour while the Conservative vote is holding up reasonably well in its safe territory. So, along with deputy cabinet members, these are anxious times for Liberal Democrats ahead of May's locall elections.

I had one of those weeks where rejection definitely had a capital R. Not only did a TV project disappear, as quickly as the weekend monsoon rains dissipated on Monday morning, but several other promises did not materialise as well.

Talk sadly is very cheap in television and ideas often get bounced out of the door because people are too afraid to take a chance on moving away from the same old formats - or perhaps they are afraid they will lose their jobs if they take creative risks.

Now that the quite brilliant drama Downton Abbey, perversely taken up by ITV1 and not the BBC, (http://www.itv.com/dramapremieres/downtonabbey/) has finished we are left with a huge Sunday night void that has now been filled with I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here and X Factor, which is tantamount to television burglary.

But for ITV1 it is the cash cow season, and as a company they do need the money, sadly for the viewers, it is like a cigarette that has a 100% filter. I sadly missed my Ultimate Big Brother housemate Chantelle, who was down opening a shop in Ricemans, yes I know it is now called Whitefriars Shopping Centre, last week.

However, another friend and ex cast member Victor Ebuwa is coming down to Kent this weekend and we are off to do a personal appearance at Liquid nightclub in Ashford this Saturday 20th November (www.liquidclubs.com/ashford) and then for the next few days after that I am going to show him the pubs of Kent and proper beer - none of that London rubbish.

Those you who travel up to London on the train from Canterbury West would have now realised that money spent on the station by Network Rail has been a waste of money. There are still only two ticket booths, as before, and only one is ever open - this means getting to the station even earlier to buy a ticket!

Often I get caught behind tourists who are baffled at how many different fares and routes there are to London. Frustrating? Yes! Is it going to change? Probably not! I managed last Sunday despite the torrential rain to drive to Ashford to appear as a guest on Adam Dowling’s (along with his side-kick and producer Emma) show on KMFM - it was a great radio show and I thoroughly enjoyed my one hour stay with them both.

I am off to finish my Christmas shopping to avoid the mayhem that descends on Canterbury’s high street over the Christmas period, I am also going to buy a tin hat, because my next blog is going to be controversial but fair. Until next time.

Certain stories can be so execrable that it literally boils your blood. Nothing is more grotesque than the abuse of taxpayers money – especially wasting or using it for ridiculous reasons. Kent County Council has once again returned to spectacular form.

Near £200,000 spent on private health care for 250 senior members of staff.

Surely is this not an abuse of our money and why cannot theses employees pay for medical care themselves? I'm pretty certain these positions have high salaries. After all, the National Health Service has been operating for over 60 years and based on the principle of free universal care too all. Regardless of income.

Some animals are more equal it seems.

May be this is ignorance on my behalf or a difference in opinion but public bodies should not be using tax payers to finance luxuries, such as health care or lucrative trips abroad. The message being sent to voters is horrifying – we must suffer cuts in our health services, but senior council staff can be shipped to private health care. And due to national austerity, hard working families would be unable to afford the premiums for themselves but face financing the perks and benefits of local officials through taxation.

After these violations, Kent might need a little tea party.