Council Waste of Tax Payers Money

Mr_Skint_2

Went into my local Council Offices Today.

Checked out there new TV

Then Found out the Price here

Shocked, you should be

skippy64

They probably got it to watch cricket on it on Thursday !!

Bendybops19

Oh that is just ridiculous. For goodness sake!!!!!! Why would they possibly need it?!?!

dccarm

Looks like someone had some of their budget left over at the year end and couldn't think of anything practical to do with it.

My wife to be works for a council and when she was buying her new laptop they gave her a purchase order and sent her to Comet to buy it at retail price. No bulk discount, or national price agreement or anything!

(I just clicked on the link. That's obscene! - is it really the same model? You should be writing to your MP, councillor, Gordon Brown, or anyone that will listen)

santana-mx3

I don't work for a council myself but I'm afraid I have seen plenty of examples of money-wasting in council offices.

On the positive side, there is useful spending on "gadgets" which are used to demonstrate to local businesses who wish to invest in the latest IT or AV equipment for marketing or to improve efficiency. Even if the gizmos make good toys for the council exmployees concerned, these nevertheless serve a useful purpose and the staff are very helpful to local businesses.

However, spending on fancy TV equipment for staff/visitors to watch, giant real Christmas trees (ok it's only once a year but why spend so much?) and replacing of the workers' everyday equipment (even when they don't need or want it) simply to ensure a larger budget the following year is very annoying.

The problem of items being bought without obtaining the best deals is also annoying because it is totally unnecessary - it doesn't take much effort to research prices on the internet even if you don't have a negotiated bulk purchase arrangement for your borough's council (a national agreement would be a bit awkward).

When I have had to deal with printers/brochure designers, I have often found that their top-of-the-range samples with the most expensive paper, print processes, die cut tooling etc. were the ones they had produced for councils. Why?

One posisitve thing is that I have seen a certain amount of reduction in the purchase of purely self-indulgent/showy items. I hope that trend continues.

Coatze_2

Thats a joke, was the tv for advertisements for the council and the wonderful things they do.

IvanOpinion

I think the TV is probably the very thin end of the wedge ... did I not here about some hospital trust spending 70K on a lump of rock? Seriously, a council thinks nothing of 10K - it is a significant amount of money to a person but nothing more than a few pence to a council. The problem is that a lot of 10K smal change adds up to a large amount of money.

Ivan

Mr_Skint_2

It just sits there with a 5 page slide show on
how efficiently they spend there budget.

Makes you wanna cry

MORPH3US

Makes you sick doesn't it. Worst thing is, you found it for just under £10k, I would bet anything that they paid £12k or over for it!!!!

I work for a huge organisation in the midlands and we order stationary from Lyreco who send us a catalogue that has "discounted" prices just for us.

Anyone care to guess how much for a 96 disk soft case like this



SVP sell the 120 disc version for £3.18

Lyreco price...........

£39.99?!?!?!?!?

!!!!!!!!!!!

I went to Staples and got one for £2 but just think of all the people who aren't like me and spend thousands of pounds on crap like this because its not their money!!!

robnye

my local paper has just held a vote on whether the local council should sell of its two mayoral personalised number plates..... worth in the region of £100K to £150K. so that the council tax could be lowered

letters flew in from all around.

the vote said no, and the common agreement was..... it would only reduce peoples council tax by £1 per household......

each year my local council has to release its budgets for the previous year..... lots of scrutiny over how many plates of biscuits had been eaten and how much they had cost....... quite funny really.....

having worked in or for local authority or for over 14 years (left 5 years ago), even then the amount of wastage finacially was horrendous......

trisontana

This just doesn't happen with local councils , it is also prevalent with many large companies. I used to work for a very large utility company and they wasted money in the same way. For instance , if we were travelling by plane or train on company business,they would not let you shop around for the best price. All the bookings had to be done through their designated travel agent who always charged the top wack .

Also any electronic and electrical spares or stationary that we wanted had to be obtained through designated supplies who were always more expensive than local companies we could have used. This usually took longer as well . Instead of just popping down to the local outlet and buying these and then charging it on expenses, a purchase order had to be raised , then approved , then sent off to head office and finally the order was placed and delivered after a wait of several days.