[Closed] Petty minded councils

...along with plant nurseries

plant nurseries are funded by the local council? if plants want children, they should look after them themselves.

Seriously though, the places that sell plants are funded by peoples council tax?

The one near me provides plants for all council owned buildings it appears.

Manchester has shut al its public toilets, while haveing a massive town hall and other large building sin the centre of manchester lit up like christmas trees.

Seems as if a few of our local councils are closing services just to upset the locals

I know that you place local councils in the same category as social workers, teachers, and in fact the entire public sector, all of which you despise, but do you really believe that bollox ?

Assuming that you don't, why even say it ?

Of course, one could argue that they might be closing things to show how terribly teh evil tory scum are with all their evil tory scum cuts....

Just saying, like....

Declare yourself a Freeman and set up an incorporated political wing, run for election and then declare war upon tyranny?

Have no idea what your on about ernie.

Another daft comment from a predictable source.......Flashheart.

Brilliant. I thought i'd missed poor illiterate project's impotent rant about the public sector...but no, here it is.

Th etories have reduced funding the LA are able to make the cuts where they like, but seem to be doing their best to upset the people and cause as much trouble for the tories as possible.

Ah, but of course, Ernie, you are right about everything, aren't you.....

You know you'd hate it if I didn't say something you could get on your moral high horse about! 😉

ernie do you attend a council workplace.

Believe you me Flashheart, I don't need to get onto any high horse to take the moral ground above you.

😀

Charlie - have you repaid the cost of your PGCE yet?

Arts funding is already cut and has been for years...but It's important for the nations wellbeing. Governments are not totally daft. So it still gets money. We don't just do Opera and "Cats" and build stupid sculptures all the time you know!

Could you live without Music, poetry,Film, Lit. Design, Architecture....?

I couldn't. There are some people who never get to see this stuff. They are too poor or have never had the chance. What makes these people less deserving of any fun than you? Are we not allowed to feel good about ourselves. We are gonna need all the arts stuff we can get when we retire.

Shoestring Budget Celtic Connections Tour.

[img] [/img]

+1

Hear hear, CBike.

Could you live without Music, poetry,Film, Lit. Design, Architecture....?

No more Music, Poetry,and Films ?

It's like living under the Taliban.....the Tory Taliban.

Po-faced Tory fundamentalists, who begrudge the people enjoying life.

[url= http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100019539/the-tory-taliban-are-resurgent-in-the-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-conservatives/ ]The Tory Taliban[/url]

Where to start.

You're making assumptions which aren't true. The councils - well to be fair, specifically the local councils that I know about - have been forced into making [i]massive [/i]cuts, and there are more to come over the next few years.

There's great swathes of redundancy at the moment, the majority of staff have been on 90 days' notice at some point (ie, their jobs have been at risk). About a third of the workforce has gone.

The untouchable "senior staff" that you cite have also been hit; a lot have been laid off, typically posts have been merged (or in some cases whole departments) so these 'overpaid' types who are lucky enough to remain have just had their workload doubled. At best, no-one's getting any more money for this, and many have taken voluntary pay cuts in an effort to save jobs. Many of the road crews are now operating four day weeks so that their colleagues aren't out on their ear.

The staff that are left are working incredibly hard to make the best of what they have. The phrase used a lot there at the moment is "do less with more." This isn't wholly a bad thing as there were bloated areas that needed streamlining, but the cuts and changes they're being forced into go way beyond that, they're simply unattainable without impacting the service they provide.

It seems from other comments here that you have an axe to grind with the public sector. I don't know anything about that, but I do know categorically that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. Sorry.

Pfft I bet (given the mandate) I could save £100k a year on a local council's budget through cutting out the ridiculous inefficiencies. I was on a training course recently with a guy from a local council, I was staying in a hotel for £100 a night he was having to commute over an hour each way (£110 train ticket) as the council said a hotel is a perk and travel in considered an essential and due to how they have to report both (or something) he had to go by train. Even more ridiculous is rather than buy a 7-day rail card which would have worked out around £500 he had to buy individual tickets each day as a 7-day card would have allowed him to travel over the weekend to so would then be considered a perk also (not that he would have wanted to).

So this guy is wasting 2+ hours of his life a day and the tax payer £50+ just because of ridiculous rules. I'm sure there's some basis in logic to it, to reduce the risk of corruption etc. but it just ends up being totally stupid and pissing away money. Small example I know but I bet there's thousands of such things going on every day.

I think the Tories are cutting too deep and too fast but some of the stunts some councils are pulling is clearly politically motivated rather than trying to manage the cuts properly. It's also the over-paid senior managers deciding where to make the cuts so don't tell me they're taking a big hit to. And the argument they need years to implement efficiency savings winds me up - what have you been doing all these years? Knowing you could do better but not caring enough to actually bother? They should already be extremely efficient...

I was staying in a hotel for £100 a night

£100 a night? Never mind the council, your firm needs to take a long hard look at how it sources hotel rooms.

Loving the "Unite" banner ad at the top of the page 😆

I was on a training course recently with a guy from a local council,

My other half works for a local council. She's travelling down to London from Lancashire semi-regularly at the moment, and nine times out of ten she pays for it voluntarily out of her own pocket. She's far from the only one doing this at the moment. This is how desperate they are to save money.

the council said a hotel is a perk and travel in considered an essential

Either that's a quirk of his particular council, or he's lying to you in order to sound hard done to (or because he wants to go home to his family of an evening). It's certainly not a blanket council-wide policy.

Also, if the guy in question had stayed overnight rather than going home, he'd presumably have been entitled to his breakfast and evening meal on expenses, so your "taxpayer's £50" theory is broken.

A better question might have been "why are the council sending people of training courses when they're making job cuts?"

[i]My other half works for a local council. She's travelling down to London from Lancashire semi-regularly at the moment, and nine times out of ten she pays for it voluntarily out of her own pocket. She's far from the only one doing this at the moment. This is how desperate they are to save money.[/i]

Please tell me you are joking?

And if she's daft enough to actually do this, at least make sure she sets it against her tax (a letter to HMR&C will be enough), and gets some back.

In all seriousness, if you think you could save £100k on a council budget, get in touch with your local council. I'm sure they'd be delighted to hear your unique insights. I'm sure it'll make a massive impact on top of the 25 million they've already cut.

Please tell me you are joking?

Sadly not, I keep trying to get her to stop it.

Incidentally, I found some figures regarding this,

Plenty of other things they could cut, like wages of senior staff

The council where my OH works had a 40% reduction in staff at director level.

Just look at the pettiness of Hackney (Lab) Council, for example:

[url= http://hackneycentrallabour.blogspot.com/2011/03/hackney-council-passes-budget-for.html ]Hackney Council Passes Budget for 2011/12[/url]

Over the past few years, Hackney Council has been prudent. Millions of pounds have been saved and re-invested into front line services. Council tax has been frozen for 5 years in a row, ensuring that the council looked to itself to find the savings it needed to invest in priority areas. However, with a cut of £44 million to our spending in this year alone - some difficult decisions had to be made.

Despite the complete removal of "Area Based Grant" which was central government money directed to the poorest areas of the country, we have managed to find £3 million to contribute towards maintaining services that would otherwise have been axed totally: help for domestic violence victims and youth crime intervention work.

No youth facilities will be closed, no libraries shut, no reduction to key services like recycling or street cleansing, no restrictions on care to be provided to our oldest and most vulnerable of residents.

There have been redundancies - to date about 190 voluntary redundancies have been taken up. Other positions which were unfilled, or occupied by agency staff have been removed. Senior management has been scaled back. Some fantastic officers who all three of us have worked with as members of the Cabinet have left, or will be leaving at the end of the month. None of these are to be welcomed, but these decisions have allowed us to preserve the services at the frontline and which are needed by our residents.

Although I'd be interested to see how they define 'most vunerable'

Our local council has a plant nursery. It runs at a profit, so cutting it would be a pretty silly thing to do.

In all seriousness, if you think you could save £100k on a council budget, get in touch with your local council. I'm sure they'd be delighted to hear your unique insights. I'm sure it'll make a massive impact on top of the 25 million they've already cut.

Unfortunately, in some councils that's quite easy...

A quick search on t'internet discovered that Lewisham Council saved £77,000 with one quick and easy decision upsetting no one except the chief executive's wife who now can't afford as many Gucci handbags.

[url= http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/8883864.Chief_executive_to_take___77_000_pay_cut_after_reducing_hours/ ]£77,000 pay cut[/url]

Apparently there's one council CEO that earns £299,000...can't find it on the internet but that's more than twice his ultimate boss - the prime minister.

My wife works for the council...she works in a planning policy and gets angry reading local newspapers due to 'inventive journalism'. Councils spend their time trying to do what's best for the local area and it's difficult to please everyone all the time.

Look at mountain bikers vs ramblers....I bet the majority of STW users would love it if the council funded a permanent, serviced MTB trail centre in the local woods. Trouble is there would be a Rambling World forum out there somewhere who will be writing up a petition to stop it.

Apparently there's one council CEO that earns £299,000...can't find it on the internet but that's more than twice his ultimate boss - the prime minister.

I bet the PM has a better book deal and lecture circuit and pension when they retire.

Comparing to the PM is pointless. Comparing with the CEO of a private sector company who employ the same number of staff as a council would make more sense.

Only if they're truly accountable which they aren't. Exactly what are council leader's judged on? There's no shareholders (no, voters don't count) and no board of directors, there's no share price or market analysts. I don't doubt some of them are very good and would cut it as a private sector CEO but I doubt they all would.

Plenty of other things they could cut

Have you spoken to them about your ideas? Or would you just prefer to whinge on here?

miketually - Member
Comparing to the PM is pointless. Comparing with the CEO of a private sector company who employ the same number of staff as a council would make more sense

I agree, and I still think that MPs are underpaid for what they do. If they were paid more, they wouldn't have to swindle expenses and be bought lunches all the time by lobbyists...

I bet the PM has a better book deal and lecture circuit and pension when they retire.

Comparing to the PM is pointless. Comparing with the CEO of a private sector company who employ the same number of staff as a council would make more sense.

What's a book deal and lecture circuit got to do with anything? Salary is a salary...council CEOs shouldn't be paid more just because they are unlikely to get book deals.

Have you spoken to them about your ideas? Or would you just prefer to whinge on here?

Know what this reminds me of? Armchair football fans.

You know those tedious bastards that you find at the bar of every pub, the ones that drone on and on about how Smithy would be better on the wing and everyone knows that the transfer of Overpaido was a bad idea because "he's shit innit;" the same people who refer to a team they watch occasionally as "we" when the reality is that the only active part they've played is to eat pies and shout a lot. The ones that think they know better than the manager who's been doing the job professionally for years and probably played at a high level for most of their career before that. But no, the people actually making the decisions are idiots compared to the intellectual behemoth that is Big Dave in the Rose & Crown.

Same here. Everyone's an expert, everyone knows what's wrong and what they'd do differently. Point the first, your grasp of the "facts" is tenuous at best, don't believe everything you read in the Daily Mail. Point the second, you reckon you could do better, why aren't you doing it?

Yeah but can Big Dave tell me what tyres I should be using for the North Downs this weekend?

FuzzyWuzzy - Member
Only if they're truly accountable which they aren't. Exactly what are council leader's judged on? There's no shareholders (no, voters don't count) and no board of directors, there's no share price or market analysts. I don't doubt some of them are very good and would cut it as a private sector CEO but I doubt they all would.

Council leaders are councillors so accountable to the electorate and other councillors. They are different to a council's chief exec.

I've met the council ceo at my local council...he didn't look like any corporate CEO I've ever seen.

He reminded me of Toad from Toad Hall...in terms of dress, poshness, and stature.

and other councillors

Including answerable to councillors of opposing parties.

Tell me FuzzyWuzzy, as part of your vision of "democracy", would you like the obviously [i]undemocratic[/i] British parliament, replaced by a democratic body consisting of those with money and shares, a board of directors, and a team of market analysts ?

Now [b]that[/b] would represent true "accountability"

Cougar - Member
Where to start.

You're making assumptions which aren't true. The councils - well to be fair, specifically the local councils that I know about - have been forced into making massive cuts, and there are more to come over the next few years.

There's great swathes of redundancy at the moment, the majority of staff have been on 90 days' notice at some point (ie, their jobs have been at risk). About a third of the workforce has gone.

[b]Our council and a few others have made nobody redundant unless they asked[/b]

The untouchable "senior staff" that you cite have also been hit; a lot have been laid off, typically posts have been merged (or in some cases whole departments) so these 'overpaid' types who are lucky enough to remain have just had their workload doubled. At best, no-one's getting any more money for this, and many have taken voluntary pay cuts in an effort to save jobs. Many of the road crews are now operating four day weeks so that their colleagues aren't out on their ear.[b]Our road crews where Tuped to a private comapny and tyhey seem to do the job theyre paid to do , not just sitting in a van all day[/b]

The staff that are left are working incredibly hard to make the best of what they have.

[b]And they should be very grateful to have a job, that pays well with good pension scheme and sick pay a lot of workers dont get that[/b]

The phrase used a lot there at the moment is "do less with more." This isn't wholly a bad thing as there were bloated areas that needed streamlining, but the cuts and changes they're being forced into go way beyond that, they're simply unattainable without impacting the service they provide.

It seems from other comments here that you have an axe to grind with the public sector. I don't know anything about that, but I do know categorically that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. Sorry.

[b]I feel exactly the same as you about you, i just see massive waste and services being provided that shouldnt be, that should be made self supporting eg theatres, swimming pools, leisure centres,car parks,football clubs our council sponsors a football club[/b]

Posted 9 hours ago # Report-Post

Oh and its sad for people to be out of a job, but if the job needs doing it will be undertaken by the private sector, charity or volunteers.

A lot of jobs where created to build empires, and and now the empires are failing people are getting upset, the general public all had the chance to vote for who ever its just a shame a lot voted for this gang and are now making us all pay the price for the mess thats about to happen.

I'm more annoyed about the fact that 48% of my council tax goes towards pubic sector pensions!
These need reformed more than anything else imo.

Our council and a few others have made nobody redundant unless they asked

Which council is that, out of interest?

you started with this whing

Seemsas if a few of our local councils are closing services just to upset the locals, things being closed include, care homes, public toilets, sure start centres, and nurseries for kids along with plant nurseries, street lightning,refuse collection,evening bus services and sunday buses,the list goes on

if the job needs doing it will be undertaken by the private sector, charity or volunteers.

they should be very grateful to have a job, that pays well with good pension scheme and sick pay a lot of workers dont get that

you are right we should demand all workers get good rights via highly unionised workforces see you a the baracade comrade.
Pauly SOURCE THAT IS UTTER BS UTTER UTTER BS. i suspect most councils pay 70% + on wages alone 48% on pension not even the Mial would claim that

But there has been very little consoltation or time to set up the new care systems reqd.

A leisure centre or theatre can easily be handed over to the private sector,along with the staff, with little disruption to peoples lives, elderley and disabled people needing care need to be provided with support and reassaurance that things are being done to help them.

Pauly make a freedom of information request to your local council asking how many staff are on long term sick leave on full pay, and how much the council pay each month into the staff pension scheme, also how many ex staff are claiming a pension and at what cost to the council tax payer.
Also ask how much the redundancy scheme is paying out, and how its going to be funded, by law they have to tell you, they did for me.

The report is to be handed to former Labour minister Lord Hutton who is in charge of a commission investigating the future of public sector pensions.

Councils spent £5.4billion last year to keep the LGPS solvent - a quarter of all the money raised by council tax.

For someone paying an average English council tax bill, this means they are paying just under £300 a year towards town hall pensions.

"Orkney spent 69 per cent of their council tax income on financing pensions, Western Isles had the second highest percentage, 65 per cent, followed by Dundee city with 50 per cent."

Soure; The Taxpayers Alliance

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1508474/26pc-of-council-tax-goes-on-public-pensions.html

26% according to this more recent article, although this is an average of all local authorities.

thank god councils are not wasting money of pointless frivolous things like FOI for people who hate them then
Is that figure less than 48% Pauly claimed Project? you seem quite well informed cant think why you did not just give teh figure as a percentage
EDIT: I knew the figure hence my challenge. The last few years were record years iirc- can you think of an economic reason why a pension find may have suffered badly in the last two years?

Why is it always listed as percentage of their council tax income as opposed to percentage of their budget?

Councils have a regulatory responsibility to provide informatioon requested under FOI BY LAW.

Until they change the law.

also what makes council staff imune from change, the car, train, bus, steel, newspaper, and many more industries have undergone massive change and reorganisation in the last 30 years,i know because i was there.

project re read your opening complaint you moaned about the changes to services and now you cost them money as well

Junkyard - Member

you started with this whinge

Why so worried seeing as you also think

It is one of the characteristics of project's posts, that constantly contradicts himself.

Example :

[i]"its sad for people to be out of a job, but if the job needs doing it will be undertaken by the private sector, charity or volunteers.[/i]

and.....

[i]the general public all had the chance to vote for who ever its just a shame a lot voted for this gang and are now making us all pay the price for the mess thats about to happen. "[/i]

both in the same post the btw.

Project clearly has a deep hatred for all public sector workers. They are all lazy, greedy, useless, etc, etc, a theme which he undoubtedly picks up from his tabloid newspaper, and which he constantly repeats on here. He wants everything privatised.

However project also recognises just how unpopular the Tories are with their policies of cuts and privatisations, so he castigates them for doing the very things which he says he wants done.

Crazy ? ........well yes, but he somehow feels that it will exonerate him when the totally predictable consequences of attacking and destroying large swathes of the public sector are felt.

It's called blaming others for the consequences of your own actions.

It is in fact, a strategy which the Tories are masters of.

Ernie i agree with the last sentance only, also i never read a newspaper, pointless waste of money.

It just seems as if certain councils are cutting essential services with no or little back up from the private sector, nearly all the privatised industries have now gone, the NHS, councils and forestry commission seem to be some of the few left, did people care when all the mines where closed, the steelworks and car plants shut, along with all the jobs that where lost, along with irreplaceable skills.

It just seems as if ...

It *seems*, or it *is*?

You didn't answer my question, btw - did you miss it?

They cut everything so that people who suffer will blame the govt. Simple.