Friday, May 12, 2006

Nashville's dinnergate

I see that Nashville's dinner-gate issue - whether council members can eat for free on food supplied by local Nashville restaurants - is in the Tennessean again.

Councillors are considering tinkering with the hospitality rules to allow them to accept food up to a value of $25.

I'm not sure if sponsored suppers for local politicians is a good idea - but I don't have a problem with them getting some grub during long evening meetings. Why not just pay for it out of the Metro budget?

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In one of my previous jobs, we had very strict hospitality rules. Since it involved visiting local councils with a view to checking out what they had or had not done wrong we had to be careful about being swayed by council hospitality. Our rules allowed us to drink as many cups of tea or coffee as the council might provide - milky tea tasting vaguely of dusty tea factory floor sweepings or cheap instant coffee usually. But we were only allowed one (1) council biscuit. Seriously. When presented with a plate of dry cookies with the knowledge that you can have only one - the pressure to choose wisely was high.

1 comment:

genderist said...

We can't accept gifts with monetary value greater than $20, either, but people bring us homemade treats all the time. And donuts grandma---

I've probably excused myself from taking part in at least 30 boxes of donuts over the last six months. But since I've been eating tree bark, I could throw down with a dozen donuts and some Taco Bell.