Star comment: Those at top need to earn their salary
Where is the light at the end of the tunnel?
Shropshire Council says it may need to make another £9.6 million in savings. And the way the next few years are panning out, Shropshire has to brace itself for further massive cuts.
What we could see is a sea change in which the council is unable to provide some services directly, and the best it can do, and best it can afford, is to facilitate them.
The message is: pain today, more pain tomorrow.
It is pointless to cast around looking for blame. There are various culprits from which you can choose, ranging from the last government’s debt legacy to the current administration’s inability to turn things round and make any meaningful improvement.
Some people would no doubt place the blame more locally. It is all part of the political argy-bargy at national and local level.
The bottom line is that a huge responsibility falls on the shoulders of the council rulers to make sure every last penny of the authority is spent wisely and the council is run as a sleek, slimline, but highly efficient organisation.
There is no room for manoeuvre. Pet projects and speculative projects will have to be reassessed.
Senior officers at the council would justify their salaries on the basis that they are what they would receive in the private sector.
Nobody will like the cuts that will inevitably come, but they will like them a lot less if they see that there is waste and inefficiency in other areas.
Now is the time for some private sector thinking and private sector practices in which this big organisation cuts its cloth according to its means.
And now is the time for those at the top at the council to earn their crust and ensure council taxpayers get value for money.
Comments for: "Star comment: Those at top need to earn their salary"
Peter
Private sector thinking and private sector practices eh?
You mean the sort of practices that allow remuneration committees to vote on senior exec salaries, where these committees are made up of an old boys club and are both recipients of the output of one committee and judges within another - on a 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours basis'.
Pay for such people, even since the bankers' recession has increased by well over 20 percent. Pay for ordinary workers, including senior people in the public sector, has risen by just 2.8 percent on average in the same period. And the massive rises in private sector senior exec pay are not linked to growth or success in their companies - they are simply driven by greed and the false assumption that they need to engage in this race to the top whilst the rest of us are in the race to the bottom.
This week's 'Dispatches' programme on Channel 4 revealed just how greedy these people are - and how they are making themselves very rich at the expense of the rest of us. The programme wasn't presented by someone from the left either - it was presented by Sir Michael Darrington - ex-chief exec of Greggs bakeries, and by his own admission a self-confessed capitalist.
So forget pumping out the propaganda that the public sector, or immigrants or unemployed people, or any other scapegoat group for that matter are responsible for the debt we have - they're not.
The debt was caused entirely by greed and fraud at the top of the private sector, both within banks and elsewhere. Instead of doing something to get the money back by closing massive tax loopholes for both wealthy businesses and individuals, we have a goverment determined to protect their party's paymasters in the financial services industry, and protecting the toffs from the plebs.
We need to look at measures to stimulate growth - claw back as much of the £120bn per year that leaks out of our economy via tax loopholes (that's 1.5 times the entire welfare budget per annum!), raise the minimum wage (to allow people to afford to work and break out of the poverty trap), invest in subsidised child care, as many other countries do (again to tackle the issue of the poverty trap), and invest directly in building social housing, to both create jobs, and spend money more effectively, rather than letting much of it leak away in profits for private sector landlords.
All this will cost, of course - but it's an investment - and far better than the current situation where we are actually increasing borrowing to fund unemployment and tax cuts for the wealthiest.
Roger
Wrong. Now is the time to look at what outsourcing to the private sector has done to our public services. Now we need to make sure that the contractors have not driven down expectations and reduced services. Have the outsourced services suffered the pay cuts and freezes that the public sector has? Or do their charges rise at RPI+.
Now is the time to insist on savings, assure full delivery of the services and now is the time to apply sanctions for non delivery . Now is the time to ensure that outsourcing is economic before the councillors go down the route of placing all work beyond financial control.
We have no chief executive so who is driving the efficiencies, who is using their expertise and experience in local government to make the right changes. Or is it being driven by a political ethic which could be financially disastorous.
Bollards to the council and stop spending our money on things we can do without. Austerity is not paying for things we can't afford. No more traffic lights and make do with what we have and make them work better. Stop creating traffic chaos to widen the empty pavements. Traffic calming is a luxury we can’t afford. Think meals on wheels rather than cyclists in empty cycle lanes. Think of making sure our poor children get at least one hot nutritious meal a day and cut back councillor's allowances. Think service, not PC projects. Think making computers last a computers life time. Think about eliminating delays in awarding much needed benefits. Think responsibility to the council tax payer and their priorities, not central governments and politicians.
Think stopping political interference for long enough to allow the public servants to do their job.
grumpy old man
What get them into the real world...no way it's cold and nasty there.
Peter
All the evidence points to senior execs in the private sector coining it throughout the recession. I'm quite sure that senior execs in the public sector would be more than happy to have seen such wealth visited upon them.
I'm afraid 'cold and nasty' are conditions reserved for justy about everyone but private sector executives... Open your eyes to the facts!
Jelly
The real world eh? Rebekah Brooks who was chief executive at News International with a turnover roughly similar to Shropshire Councils annual budget got a severance package of £7 million
grumpy old man
I think most of you are missing the point. This isn't about comparing salaries , it's about comparing work loads and results. yes results...a missing word in Public Sector vocabularies.
Michael W
There is little or no accountability to the ratepayers.The execs seem to coast along and if they are poor performers get handed generous severance packages and just trot off to another well paid job in another council.
I'm happy for people to be paid what they are worth but it should be contractually agreed that if they do not perform to the level expected and contracted to, then they should be dismissed without any form of golden handshake, after all none of the staff at the lower end of the pay scale get a goodbye gift if dismissed.
There really does need to be more discussion with the public about projects and ideas about the future.
Much is made of public consultation but inevitably the people making the decisions are often not locals, don't understand the local culture or peoples aspirations and have zero responsibility for their actions ignoring the results of consultations if they don't agree with their points of view.
It should be councillors directing the officers to carry out the wishes of the public but many councillors are simply not up to the task of running a multi million pound business, for that is what the councils all over the UK are, so the question has to be asked why did they stand for election anyway and why on earth did the public actually vote for them.
A none of the above on the ballot papers should be standard.
reallyconfused
Another rant from Peter, that's totally off topic...what has all that got to do with people in Public sector jobs earning their money?...nothing!
james carter
with around 5000 staff exc teaching less than 1/2 of 1 percent of all staff are paid more than £50 000.... that would never be the case in a company of similar size!!!