Thurrock council is only going to spend on essential services.
A Conservative-run council with a £469m funding black hole has declared itself in financial distress and barred itself from making any non-essential spending.
There shouldn’t be any non essential spending. They should raise only that which is necessary for essential services – emptying the bins, keeping the roads lit and filling in potholes. Non essential spending is vanity spending using taxpayers’ money and needs to stop.
Things like cleaning streets, collecting rubbish and providing social services will still be carried out because they are among the services that Thurrock has a statutory obligation to provide.
Yup.
There can be no spending on, say, a brand new playground.
Yup. And sack all the diversity non jobs as well.
And make the councillors/council execs who took those absurd decisions responsible for the losses. They shouldn’t be able to boost their own inadequate egos by spending other peoples money that was intended for services! Who do they think they are? Bankers? I suppose they took bonusses for all their innovations too
It’s not just about boosting egos; my workplace has suffered from a plague of expensive and time-consuming schemes and projects devised by various middle managers who are applying for promotion in house or elsewhere and want to impress the selection panels.
Since that is how the top management got where they are, and promotion for underlings makes them look good (as does a shiny new coffee bar/art centre/meditation space), they are sympathetic enough to assign vast sums to this kind of thing.
Definitely get rid of any diversity jobs.
Absolutely.
A key question in my mind is whether or not there is a spreadsheet detailing what is and is not essential. With a column showing how many people are employed (or contracted) to provide those services.
Unless you have such a spreadsheet people will find ways of bending the rules (even if only subconsciously) to their favour.
I could do that. It would be a very small spreadsheet.
Ah yes.
I propose that a new department be put in place, the task for which will be to identify non essential departments.
After starting with a small steering committee of, say, 19, with associated support staff located in existing premises. This will not stretch our office requirements too much, because the members of the steering committee, and their support staff, will spend most of their time on intensive fact finding missions.
Concurrent with this activity more suitable premises will be built to accommodate the staff required for such a challenging task.
You know the rest. Read C Northcote.
Nah. Just me. I’ll do it for free.
The NHS could do with scrapping all the diversity non-jobs too. Perhaps then the proper NHS workers currently on strike would receive a pay rise.
As a follow-up, I see the ex-CEO (who resigned) has been paid £50k for 3 months notice. What are the auditors doing? Do these greedy troughers think they can get away with anything
“Do these greedy troughers think they can get away with anything”
To be fair, the evidence does seem to be on their side when it comes to that…
See also all the ambulance trusts and MSM putting out ‘only call an ambulance if it’s an emergency!’ due to today’s strike.
Since when did people call one when it wasn’t?
radio 5 live this morning, asking for listener experiences of the strike, had a call from a wheelchair user: The live news stream carries a shortened version to which I’ve added content from the original call:
Margret in Orpington, who is 77 years old, slipped and fell this morning [when getting out of bed, she ended up sitting on the floor].
“In the past I have called an ambulance [four times],” she says, “but this morning I called my carers and they were here within minutes”.
The carers helped her into her wheelchair, which was apparently all the intervention needed.
Oh, good grief!
You’d be surprised
How “essential” is street lighting between (say) midnight and first light?
Yes, cyclists will have to obey the rules about lights, reflectors and reflective clothing, otherwise they will perish!