Quango is a luxury in hard times
Tuesday 3rd February 2009, 7:30AM GMT.
LETTER: Thank you, Sarah Raper, for your reply. It is obvious you are going to trumpet Transforming Telford be-cause you are the chief executive and your job may be at stake together with the other interests of 14 board members.
Your vision of Telford is not everyone’s and, as for your statement about creating a greater sense of place and prosperity from which the town as a whole will benefit, I have to ask which town – Wellington, Oakengates, Dawley, Newport?
These are towns and I see no benefit for them, only another nail in their coffins.
Transforming Telford takes two per cent of our council tax – plus, I suspect, match funding from English Partnerships and Advantage West Midlands, two other unelected quangos.
I wrote last March that you had £922,880 from the council plus what you had from the others. You claimed to have found 200 jobs. I reckon based on that each job cost about £10,000. Not value for money in my humble opinion.
In this time of recession, Transforming Telford is a luxury we cannot afford.
D L Barnett
Arleston
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Funnily enough, DL, your vision of Telford isn’t everyone’s, either; and your frequent, tedious letters to the Star (home of the frequent, tedious letter-writer) suggest your opinion’s not all that humble.
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I for one would quite happily pay higher council taxes if I knew it would lead to the creation of a decent and attractive town centre for Telford. Keep it up TT.
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Allie, that may be the case, but DL’s observations covering the three unelected quangos mentioned, (and many more not mentioned), in the letter are spot on.
In my view ….
1) Repetition of function
2) Self justification.
3) Lavish spending with no “real world” idea of the cost of things.
4) Having the tendency to feel that they know better than anyone what local opinion wants and
5) Gold-plated, index linked, 100% guaranteed, taxpayer -funded pensions
…. are just a few of the undesirable characteristics of such institutions.
Being unelected, unrepresentative, and perfectly happy to lap up large saucers of taxpayers’ cash may have been seen as acceptable in the high-rolling, big-spending days of profligate Blair and Brownism, but not really in touch with the new prudent age that we have now been forced to enter.
They really do need to be disbanded, and quickly. Get that money saved or put to better use.
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I can find 200 jobs in telford for half a million, can i get on the gravy train please?
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Mr Barnett notices what every other council taxpayer notices and the only difference between people like him and the majority, is that he bothers to express his views, instead of quietly sitting back and letting these people “leach” off us…well said, DL Barnett, keep pointing out the error of their ways. No doubt some of the above “supporters” of the quangos are paid to write letters in support of themselves.
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