Crisis at local council level

[Manc in London]

So councils and their problems? First up Manchester a council where the big 6 department managers hate each other ....

Senior management teams in a number of authorities i know about are busy bickering, lying to each other, playing games, backstabbing and acting in self interest. It's disgraceful.

 

[Chippy_boy]

The operation of one council applies to all?

Yes, they are all identical in every respect. No variation whatsoever. In fact it's quite remarkable that they all have identical budgets and precisely the same number of councillors.

You couldn't make it up, could you.

 

[inbetween]

Yes, they are all identical in every respect. No variation whatsoever. In fact it's quite remarkable that they all have identical budgets and precisely the same number of councillors.

You couldn't make it up, could you.

I've seen it so many times, go into any of these places (or anywhere in the public sector) and it will be "well we have always done it this way".....

Councils and most public organisations are running out of money because they refuse to adapt to a situation where they just aren't given all the money they want.

I would personally do away with the whole premise of a council. You don't need an expensive central council to run services.

 

[Patientman63]

Some people on this thread need to give their collective heads a wobble.

My son works for the local council (not saying which) on Revenue & Benefits, and i can tell you straight off that he works fucking hard, and is on shit money for what he does and the responsibility he has, with pay rises over the last 8 years of 1% or LOWER, so in real terms is way worse off now than 8 years ago. And before people bleat on about the pension, at the current rate he won't see that till he's 68, maybe even older, so whoopee fucking do.

I personally think there are some huge sweeping generalisations here, councils are like any other big business, there are twats and wastrels in them all, just because a business is privately owned or PLC doesn't mean it's free of well entrenched idiots and malingerers.

Given the social responsibility the councils have, we should be doing more to ensure central government makes the funds available so they can deliver the services we as a society so desperately need.

Sure councils can improve, show me any business that can't, but fuck me stop generalising and slagging off the good people who work damn hard there, the people who are trying to do something with literally NOTHING

 

[inbetween]

Some people on this thread need to give their collective heads a wobble.

My son works for the local council (not saying which) on Revenue & Benefits, and i can tell you straight off that he works fucking hard, and is on shit money for what he does and the responsibility he has, with pay rises over the last 8 years of 1% or LOWER, so in real terms is way worse off now than 8 years ago. And before people bleat on about the pension, at the current rate he won't see that till he's 68, maybe even older, so whoopee fucking do.

I personally think there are some huge sweeping generalisations here, councils are like any other big business, there are twats and wastrels in them all, just because a business is privately owned or PLC doesn't mean it's free of well entrenched idiots and malingerers.

Given the social responsibility the councils have, we should be doing more to ensure central government makes the funds available so they can deliver the services we as a society so desperately need.

Sure councils can improve, show me any business that can't, but fuck me stop generalising and slagging off the good people who work damn hard there, the people who are trying to do something with literally NOTHING

I don't think anyone is disputing people work hard but does more funding solve problems or does it just paper over the cracks?

I bet your son has several managers and a few team leaders who seem to do sod all and don't appear to manage or lead a team. I may be wrong but it was the case when I worked in the NHS quite a few moons ago, the mentality is totally bizarre to where I am now.

Get rid of one of those people and you can employ someone else to help your son, problem solved, workload halved and you have probably saved money. This is the kind of thinking that is totally absent in the public sector imo.

 

[The Colonel]

Another gem is the traffic lights at the M5 Junction 14. Traffic used to flow past there with little or no problem. But no, the local council with money to burn decided they needed to waste a few hundred grand on something or other. Presumably underspent on the highway maintenance budget so something must be found to waste money on. They thought J14 was the perfect candidate.

So they spent nigh on £1m on installing traffic lights and changing the road layout a bit. The result? Total gridlock at peak times. Not deterred, the council concluded they needed to waste even more money to "fix it". So another £500,000 was splurged on tweaking the timings and moving a kerb or two. Made no difference: still absolute grid lock at peak times.

So the final conclusion was that the traffic lights are unsuitable for peak traffic conditions and must be turned off during peak hours - say 7am to 9am and 4pm to 6pm. They duly turned them off and the junction works fine again.

We now have the utterly farcical situation of traffic lights being on when there is little or no traffic there, and switched off as soon as a few cars arrive. You could not make it up and it would indeed be hilarious if the local tax payers were not £1.5m down on the pantomime.

Were we rolling in money, these sorts of idiotic events would be much less irritating, but to continually waste money like this, on things that no-one wants? And there seems to be no accountability, because they are all in this same club: People being paid with someone else's money, responsible for spending someone else's money and with a sense of self-importance because, well, we're part of "government" you know.

Personally, I'd disband half of our local authorities. Why should we have different standards of healthcare, or education for example in different parts of the country? Makes no sense to me. A good move would be to get rid of much of these wasteful layers of "democracy" which in many cases seem to lack any concept of fiscal prudence and responsibility.

Isn’t it the national body, The Highways Agency, that funds and manages motorway projects though?

 

[Manc in London]

Yes, they are all identical in every respect. No variation whatsoever. In fact it's quite remarkable that they all have identical budgets and precisely the same number of councillors.

You couldn't make it up, could you.

Ah right. I thought I may have been conversing with someone who knows what they are talking about. Personally, I avoid expressing an opinion unless it is informed.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Ah right. I thought I may have been conversing with someone who knows what they are talking about. Personally, I avoid expressing an opinion unless it is informed.

Me too.

But ask me a daft question and I'll happily amuse you with a daft response.