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Originally Posted by kronas
the money, already obtained and spent by the local council here is not specifically used much, its there to provide questionable services, and even then some of the services that were once free such as household items removal now costs you...
*wonders where the money goes  |
Local council money tends to be used on the favoured projects of councillors. Quite a bit of it goes on their expenses even if that means a fact-finding tour to the Bahamas. To be fair some councillors and councils do try to keep expenses to a minimum.
Council overheads have increased in line with wage and salary increases. In effect councils have to spend more because of the pay of people employed by them and we foot the bill. Local councils are notorious for overstaffing, instead of looking at more effective and more efficient ways of getting jobs done. The same thing can be said about national government too and a lot of publicly owned organisations.
It's also true to say that there is a massive lack of common sense and creativity in the thinking at all levels of these organisations. My local council redeveloped the town hall putting in lots of extra features except of course a multi-storey car park to deal with increased demand for car-parking caused by the development in an area where existing parking facilities are inadequate.
The problem in this country is that we are pricing ourselves out of the market with the result that employers are taking their business overseas. Look at the new call centres in India and at the international companies who close down factories in the UK and transfer the work abroad.
Sadly, this government has concentrated on getting pay UP instead of going for getting prices DOWN. It hasn't focused on increasing efficiency by looking at better, cheaper methods of getting things done. Instead more staff are taken on to do work that could be done by fewer people using improved methods at cheaper cost and if you follow that to its logical conclusion we will have an endless pattern of increased tax bills both locally and nationally.
It also means that, over time, more companies will either go bust or shed workers or move to a cheaper labour market. More people will be out of work and those in work will be overworked. Just look, for example, how long the queues are in high street shops as few staff struggle to deal with the large numbers of customers waiting to pay for goods.
The politicians, aka the 'fat cats of government', will be OK because they can charge everything they do to you and me. And it's time that changed.
