You just can’t escape the news about the financial mess that the country is in at the moment. Seeing that it has been reported on, almost daily, since 2008 then it’s hard not to notice! But not to be outdone, it appears that our local councils are now jumping on the “We’ve got no money left in the pot” bandwagon. After spending the last few years cutting essential services and community projects, the “executives” are now saying that because they can’t raise taxes, it is jobs that are now in the firing line (if you excuse the pun!), to bring budgets back in to line. These jobs losses, you realise, will be from the front-end and most essential of council services. What’s the betting that not one job from the cushy middle management, pen-pushing, paper-shuffling, consultancy outreaching type position is lost?
If only there was another way? But hold on, there is…
Why can’t councils just look a little closer at each department’s spending and challenge what is being bought, used, spent and ask is it worth it, do we need it, and is it essential? What do I mean by this? Well it’s not just a coincidence that in the last financial quarter of the year we have road works popping all over the place. Some of them may well be for long over-due projects. But the vast majority of them seem to be done “just for the hell of it!” There is a road near to where I live that has had six seperate works done on them – not all at the same time nor in the same location. These works have consisted of holes being dug, temporary traffic lights installed, very little obvious work being done, and the holes being filled back in a few days later. I wouldn’t mind but not one pothole has been addressed in this time!
Even a perfectly solid wall has been knocked down and rebuilt not far from my house. I can see that it is being reinforced, but as the pervious wall was anything but crumbling, one has to ask why is this work is being carried out at all and to what cost?
