Council Jobs to Go -10% Staff Saving Needed

olly300

macaque wrote: »

Whilst I am happy to believe that they are well intentioned, it is evident that the government and the LAs are generally doing a more harm than good. They foster a dependency culture and undermine family values.

Some people shouldn't have children in the first place however as the government can't dictate who can and can't bred if they can do it naturally, then unfortunately someone has to pick up the pieces to attempt to protect the child(ren) involved.

If it's not the state then it will be the charitable sector which normally means a religious element will be involved. And religion has been used to cause enough conflict in the world already.

MrsE_2

olly300 wrote: »

Some people shouldn't have children in the first place however as the government can't dictate who can and can't bred if they can do it naturally, then unfortunately someone has to pick up the pieces to attempt to protect the child(ren) involved.

If it's not the state then it will be the charitable sector which normally means a religious element will be involved. And religion has been used to cause enough conflict in the world already.

:T :T :T :T :T :T :T :T

MrsE_2

macaque wrote: »

Whilst I am happy to believe that they are well intentioned, it is evident that the government and the LAs are generally doing a more harm than good. They foster a dependency culture and undermine family values.

I think Olly has answered that better than I could.

There is just one thing I would like to add, its not the grass roots workers who have fostered the dependency culture, thats come from the very very top of government.

prozac_2

Everything is so wrong. the goverment should have strived to cut down civil service jobs during the boom times. instead they cashed in with higher council taxes.

Now its bust , the goverment should be spending and hiring. but they have to sack instead because everything already bloated.

tstemp

baby_boomer wrote: »

It's not the money in IceSave that's killing them.

It's the money that's not in their own staff pension schemes that ensure continuous inflation busting council tax increases into the 22nd Century.

Not especially - I think you are confusing local government with civil service. Staff contribute 6% of salary to their pensions and the average pension is around £4000 per year with many schemes fully funded. Compare that to the bonuses (paid out of customers pockets) given to people in the financial sector who are, to be honest, doing nothing more than sitting around playing monopoly with other peoples money. (and now losing)

The recent alleged fraud in the US is said to involve £33 billion - enough to pay the average local government pension to 6 million officers for 5000 years!

Generali

tstemp wrote: »

Not especially - I think you are confusing local government with civil service. Staff contribute 6% of salary to their pensions and the average pension is around £4000 per year with many schemes fully funded. Compare that to the bonuses (paid out of customers pockets) given to people in the financial sector who are, to be honest, doing nothing more than sitting around playing monopoly with other peoples money. (and now losing)

The recent alleged fraud in the US is said to involve £33 billion - enough to pay the average local government pension to 6 million officers for 5000 years!

Local authority pension schemes are probably some of the best funded in the UK AIUI.

Civil Service pensions are entirely unfunded and the liability of approximately GBP 1,000,000,000,000 is unaccounted for. IMO, Civil Servants under the age of 45 are extremely unlikely ever to receive the pension to which they are currently contracturally entitled.

macaque_2

beingjdc

"I don't know why I'm bothering, but;"

You are not obliged to contribute.

"Hardly. The pressure on Local Authority targets from Government is to provide the support elderly people need to carry on living in their own homes for as long as possible. After that, the Council takes the cost of care if they go through the council care route, but I can assure you it doesn't make a profit on them, quite the opposite."

I have an elderly relative on a modest pension. She gets almost no help at all from the local council. Councils may claim to help the elderly but the bottom line is that they are letting down millions of old people disgracefully.

"Who do you think funds schools and colleges, trains and recruits school governors, provides school buses, informs people what adult education courses are available where, and sorts out the situation where every parent in a town wants to send their kids to the one good school?"

Tax payers fund schools, not local authorities. Why do private schools do so much better than state schools without all these beauracratic support structures (and don't tell me it is all about money because it is not)? Both Labour and the Conservatives have considered removing education from the LAs on the grounds that this would mean more money spent in the class room. The LAs always fight like mad to retain their gravy train budgets.

"No they aren't. Maybe if you leave your Rolls parked on the street and forget about it, a private company would 'dispose of it', but not a burned-out Ford Escort that's been joyridden onto the playing fields and torched."

Come on now, this is a very minor activity.

"Making sure bars have the amount of soundproofing from the neighbours that they promised, that clubs have fire escapes, that buildings open to the public are accessible in wheelchairs, etc."

There are plenty of ways of controlling such things without creating a council department for it. What is also disturbing about these kinds of activities is the councils are using it as an opportunity for double dipping. They are paid to provide services for the community and then they levy high annual charges for the services. It is a creeping privatisation of the worst sort.

"Not round here or anywhere else I've lived it isn't, except insofar as those private companies are subcontractors of the Council - and even the stuff that's recyclable will increasingly not get picked up, given falling commodity prices."

Why do you disagree and then go on to affirm what I said?

"Village greens, and providing the local searches required when someone buys land to make sure that there aren't any public rights of way over it, historic grazing rights, and so on. A bigger deal in, say, The New Forest, than Lambeth, admittedly."

A recent news report stated that local councils were suffering lost income from reduced search fees. Why are LAs making profits from seach fees? This is another case of double dipping.

"Councils are taxed heavily by the European Union for every tonne of rubbish they send to landfill. Since 30% of the average household's waste can be composted, if a Council can encourage people to compost their waste, a lot of money can be saved."

Council's do not compost household waste, they compost garden waste. For billions of years dead plant matter has been breaking itself down where it lies. Suggesting that the local council needs to take the material away by lorry for composting is ridculous. Even if you put compost in landfill it does the same thing.

"Who do you think checks that the restaurant kitchen isn't covered in rat droppings, that the pub's serving you a full measure and not serving 15 year olds, that it closes at roughly the right time of night, has an actual alcohol licence in the first place, and so on? Yep, that pesky Council again!"

Suddenly, local councils have identified an urgent need for a department to save the population from wicked restaurant owners. We have managed to survive as a species for 3 million years without such services.

"To reduce incidences of food poisoning."

The greatest risk of food poisoning by far is in the home. Are these busy bodies now planning a campaign of home inspections?

"You're quite funny, you don't actually know what a land charge is, do you?"

You had the choice of being civil or patronising. Sadly you chose the latter.

"Sort of. The Environment Agency deals with serious pollution incidents and setting overall standards and safety limits, but most local enforcement, for example a company setting fire to their rubbish to avoid paying to have it taken away, is done by the Council."

There is far too much of this type of duplication going on.

"Collection and disposal are separate in a lot of areas, for reasons both good and bad."

The cynic in me knows why this is.

The local councils spend far too much time inventing new roles for themselves whilst failing to do the basics properly. They have created a raft of new charges for their services and use opaque accounting methods to hide the fact that they are ripping off the public and businesses. Why should a council make a profit on Taxi registration? Despite all their frantic activities, we now have a society that unhealthy and unhappy. Although we are a highly taxed nation, we do not enjoy the quality of public services that countries like France and Germany have. Too much tax payers money goes on overpaying staff, security cameras, propaganda, frivolous projects etc. Over the next few years we face a severe fall in living standards. Local Councils will have to take a long hard look at themselves or we will all end up living in caves again.

baby_boomer

treliac wrote: »

It's interesting how people pontificate on the respective value of other people's work. Presumably when they've no real idea of what it's like to actually be there.

I wasn't pontificating on the value of the work social workers do. I was merely giving you my narrow and limited experience of the few idiots I dealt with in this profession.

Normally, in my professional life, I don't expect to be condescended to by people of limited intelligence, poor organisational skills and no manners - and that's presumably after training in interpersonal relations?

tstemp wrote: »

Not especially - I think you are confusing local government with civil service. Staff contribute 6% of salary to their pensions and the average pension is around £4000 per year with many schemes fully funded.

As we've established above, Council Tax payers are responsible for plenty of large and unfunded schemes as well.

But you aren't seriously suggesting that many local government schemes are fully funded after a year in which every asset class has shrunk, are you?

beingjdc

macaque wrote: »

I have an elderly relative on a modest pension. She gets almost no help at all from the local council. Councils may claim to help the elderly but the bottom line is that they are letting down millions of old people disgracefully.

You'll be unsurprised to hear that Councils have done a lot of work on what it would cost to do things differently. The upshot is, we could provide most of what people think we should be providing for older people, but the Council Tax would have to go up by another 10% or so over and above the annual increase. There's some particularly good research on this by Hampshire. As things are, the financial situation means Councils have to ration their help both by providing it only to those with the greatest need for it, and by charging those who can afford to pay.

Tax payers fund schools, not local authorities.

This is a stupid point. You could say taxpayers fund everything funded by local authorities, since taxpayers are where the vast majority of local authorities get their money from.

Why do private schools do so much better than state schools without all these beauracratic support structures (and don't tell me it is all about money because it is not)?

Because they are stuffed with children whose parents are committed to paying money for their education, so clearly value it more than average, who can afford that, so are presumably quite well-off and likely to be well-educated themselves, and because it's easier for a private school to expel disruptive children as they don't have a duty to teach all children like the state does.

Both Labour and the Conservatives have considered removing education from the LAs on the grounds that this would mean more money spent in the class room. The LAs always fight like mad to retain their gravy train budgets.

You really being are a fool. I've told you in detail how limited the LA section of the education budget is, and you refuse to listen. Both parties have backtracked from these proposals having realised they would be damaging to everyone concerned, particularly schoolchildren.

What is also disturbing about these kinds of activities is the councils are using it as an opportunity for double dipping. They are paid to provide services for the community and then they levy high annual charges for the services. It is a creeping privatisation of the worst sort.

It's nothing of the sort. There's nothing wrong with Councils using the services they provide on a commercial basis to private companies to raise money or at least break even, and use that to keep the Council tax down. Why should taxpayers subsidise restaurants and property developers?

Council's do not compost household waste, they compost garden waste. For billions of years dead plant matter has been breaking itself down where it lies. Suggesting that the local council needs to take the material away by lorry for composting is ridculous. Even if you put compost in landfill it does the same thing.

Who mentioned taking it away? Composting could be about providing help for people to do this in their own gardens. In any case, if you think chucking stuff in landfill and letting it decompose is a good way to get useful compost, I suggest you google the word 'leachate', and try to learn something.

Suddenly, local councils have identified an urgent need for a department to save the population from wicked restaurant owners. We have managed to survive as a species for 3 million years without such services.

It's not sudden at all, in most civilised countries the hygiene standards of people who sell prepared food are inspected. 3 million years ago, I don't think many people went to dodgy kebab shops. They probably learnt for themselves how to tell if meat is off, or else died.

You had the choice of being civil or patronising. Sadly you chose the latter.

That's because, and only because, you made the wrong choice between having a constructive discussion in which you learned something, or making your ignorance a matter of pride. You chose the latter, and positively revel in not understanding things.

The cynic in me knows why this is.

Well, it's mostly because in areas where there are two tiers of council, the government in its wisdom at some time decades ago chose to make different tiers responsible for collecting waste and disposing of it. Different specialisms around this grew up, and different private sector contracts were signed.

Old_Slaphead

tstemp wrote: »

The recent alleged fraud in the US is said to involve £33 billion - enough to pay the average local government pension to 6 million officers for 5000 years!

Not sure why Madoff gets associated with LGPS?

Are there 6 willion LA workers now - I know it's gone up but surely not by that much.

FWIW £33billion would pay the pensions of 6 million public sector workers for JUST 1 YEAR (at current accrual rates)!!!