Bad apples.

I claim to be Irish, too, since it’s possible to be Irish by having one grandparent born there and filling in a form. Actually, my son’s Irish, too, by that reckoning, and he was born in, er, Hammersmith. And, while we’re on the subject, the most Irish of my Irish mates (he tends to great me by singing ‘The Boys Of Kilmichael’, possibly because it contains a frankly flattering reference to ‘Tom Barry’s bold column’) was born in Ealing and lives in, er, Hammersmith. There’s a large Irish population around here, and defining who’s Irish and who isn’t is rather difficult at the best of times.

That’s nonsense, and a really weak excuse.

If I bought a Marsbar today, am I not entitled to an opinion on it? Isn’t paying one-years council tax reason enough to have a valid opinion as to how the money is spent?

This position is so daft, and so utterly illogical, it’s not even worthy of discussion.

“No offence, man, but tou Toryboys probably should abandon the ‘don’t interfere in our country’ defence’”… …

I pointed out to you that you are not qualified to criticise Tory councils when you have only lived here for 5yrs and most of that time has been spent gazing at a monitor. Incidentally, you claim to be Irish. 100%?

“as we speak, the self-appointed aristocracy here is busy making a nuisance of itself in Iraq, etc, and putting the many who don’t care for it into coffins, etc, so let’s maybe give the old ‘mind your own business’ one a wide berth for the moment.”

That statement is a good indication of your low level debating capabilities. Its so ridiculous its hardly worth commenting on. The elected Labour Party, who are backed by the trade unions and use to represent the British working-class more than 60yrs ago, took this country to war in Iraq. They did this by mis-leading parliament and the public on the gravity of the threat posed by Iraq to our security.

“Re: Barnet – can’t wait to find out how the council there is pissing your money away, either. Should be comedy gold. They’ve got savings in Iceland, so clearly have end-to-end financial whizzes on the job. I’m expecting great things as a result, and stories of prudence and exemplary fiscal management – something along the lines of – to paraphrase the great Private Eye – ‘Michelle in Accounts read about Icesave on the internet, and it all sounded like such a good idea.’”

Yes, hindsight is a wonderful thing. Barnet had money in Icelandic banks, as did neighbouring Lib/labour Haringey council, as did numerous other LAs run by all the parties, as did many State authorities, including the Govt’s own State funds watchdog – The Audit Commission (4% of its entire budget)! So did 300,000 private investors. All of whom are now aghast that Gordon Brown new of the impending collapse of Iceland back in April and told nobody and did nothing. Even their beloved Guardian, who were recommending Icelandic banks to their readers in their financial pages, just weeks before the collapse.

Barnet elected the Tories back in 2000 (maybe you were at school somewhere in NZ) following a disastrous socialist Lib/Lab 8yrs, where they ran down the reserves and committed to such disastrous projects such as the Tally Ho Arts Centre against the wishes of the residents. They were then kicked out and most of the leading lights then deserted the borough for lives elsewhere (London boroughs have often been the target for opportunist socialists from the provinces). So, please lets have more of your incisive comments on a subject you just google from your bedroom.

Are you actually aware that much of the process of collecting and distributing funds from council taxpayers is controlled by central Govt? Much of this process was instigated by the Thatcher Govt (were you born?) to safeguard the assets of LAs run by the loony left. However, the politically corrupt Labour Govt has used this process to gerrymander votes by diverting funds from non-Labour run councils to Labour ones.

“Kate, wasn’t it the media – those now squealing with outrage – who enthusiastically recommended Icesave (as recently as this autumn) as a great place to put your money?”

Indeed.

“I seem to remember the financial pages of the Daily Mail were particularly enthused by the Icesave press-packs.”

Yes, and the Guardian, the Independent, the Times, etc. Does your obsession with the Daily Mail cause blindness?

It’s the flagship for some ideas on the right of the Conservatives about how to deal with former Labour administrations (slash and burn and do everything you can to cut taxes). Its leader got a place on the Forensic Audit Panel helping Boris deal with a former Labour administration (slash and burn and do everything you can to cut taxes).. It’s held up in neighboroughing areas* by the local Tories as a reason to vote Tory (slash and burn and do everything you can to cut taxes).. I think it deserves a closer look, don’t you, to see what the consequences of a tax-cuts-at-all-costs policy are?

* where I live, for instance.

Academies are not up-market institutions – your ignorance is astonishing. Academies are deliberately targetted at areas of educational underachievement and in many (although not every single) case the Academies have ended up being massively oversubscribed within a couple of years of being built, as parents from every social and ethnic background witnesses their achievements. Have you visited the Mossbourne Academy in Hackney for example? It’s a shining light of educational improvement and your disparaging remarks are an insult to what they and many others have achieved.

http://www.lettersfromatory.com

They – and the others – need to go further than that, though. They need to tighten legislation around restructuring so that people will be less inclined to lobby to create personal fiefdoms. They need to do some work on appropriate manager-budget-staff ratios.

They need a little imagination about the way that they’re going to provide public services to the public’s best advantage at a time when the public is most likely to need those services. People may well be looking to councils, community law centres and voluntary groups, etc, as the recession bites – this may well even apply to some of our previously well-off comrades who still like to think that the markets have the answer.

I also think that there needs to be a reassessment of the people at which we should be directing our anger. After all – I hardly think a bunch of housing officers and dinner ladies at Hammersmith are responsible for the current economic climate. Sure, some of them might get a bit more leave than the rest of us, but that hardly rates in the greater scheme to my mind. I mean – so what? The fault for the current economic mess lies firmly with the greedy egomaniacs who’ve been driving global finance for the last ten years, and the wet politicians who’ve worshipped them as they’ve done it.

They’ve helped themselves to our hard-earned money – around the world – and continued to organise bonuses for themselves while they’ve been at it. Yet the neocons at the likes of Hammersmith feel perfectly justified in trying to turn the mob onto a bunch of frontline officers who do a considerably more meaningful day’s work than Fred the Shred ever did. I feel considerably more sympathy for the frontline workers at councils and the people who need the services they provide than I do for the wankers who brought down Lehman Brothers and who’ve thrown all of us in it (yep – NZ and Ireland are in recession too).

Grrr.

I’ve just fisked your pal Iain Dale over at my place, feel free to drop in and leave a comment of support for him.

And for anyone else interested, if not exactly “Conservative behaviour on the ground” then at least on t’internet.

http://prisonersvoice.blogspot.com/2008/11/question-time-for-iain-dale.html

I understand from union reps at Bristol city council, for example, that relatively innovative work has been done there in drawing up workable and cost-effective models for inhouse delivery of homecare services.

The council was so offput by outsourcing stories like those they were hearing about Barnet – where outscourcing became costly and a legal problem for the council, let alone ineffective service-wise – that people started to think outside the square. I’ve got more work to do on that one and for all I know it’s collapsed, but the people talking about it got my attention at the time, because they seemed to be trying to go somewhere better with the whole concept of public service provision. This ‘the private sector knows it all’ line goes out with George Bush and the banking crisis, and this is our moment to look around for places and people who are trying to think about the way a new order might work for them on the ground.

For example, I was in a department that was run by one director. The department was restructured and divided into two – for which two people at assistant director level were required, and found. Suddenly, there two where before there’d been one. It was like a minced hydra.
I understand from people still employed at that council that there have been another three restructures or so since I left – which seems extraordinary. How many times do you need to reorganise, and how often do you need to shore up the management structure? The place just wasn’t that big or complicated As I said earlier in this post, I remember one union rep and myself happening across an audit committee report that said the number of people earning more than £50k a year had doubled or trebled in as many years. I’d have no problem with a Tory argument that said those numbers needed rationalising, while frontline staff should be maintained. All this seemed to be taking place while the council was developing relationships with so-called delivery experts like Jarvis and its various offshoots. I mean – how many cooks do you need?
I’d agree that councils have become much more service orientated and that staff have a much better grasp of the notion of customers and frontline service provision. Pity councillors as we have them at Hammers, etc, don’t feel the same. The aim there appears to be to eradicate services used by those unlikely to vote Tory.

One problem re: management in local govt is that it is quite hard for any individual council to buck the trend. Say a council decided that it thought 80k for directors and 100k+ for a chief executive was vastly excessive and decided to offer half that – it would end up finding that only very weak candidates would apply. An incompetent senior management team will end up costing a council far more than it saves by lowering their salaries, by making bad decisions.

As well as working with staff and unions, I think there is definitely more scope for councils to link up with local voluntary and community organisations when delivering services and deciding on policies. Sometimes councils do deliver poorly run, expensive services, and it is more feasible for them to get another organisation, be it private or voluntary, to do it, but equally there are times when services are being delivered by other providers and would be better delivered by local authorities.

Overall, I think over the past decade nearly all councils have got much better at delivering services and getting value for money.

Fair point. I’m wondering if any of the Labour councils have gone for this wholesale ‘outsource & sack everybody’ approach. Ealing rings a bell, but not sure if that’s true and/or if it is/was Labour? That’s yr neck of the woods, I believe, so you might be able to put me straight on that.

I understand now that some Labour councils are working more closely with staff and unions to look for viable solutions for inhouse service provision, mostly because it’s cheaper and delivers a more reliable service. This wholesale outsourcing theory doesn’t always seem to have paid dividends – it leads to a very high staff turnover because of the much reduced pay and conditions, and often, it seems, to budget problems, because companies can’t deliver services at the cheap prices that they say they can when tendering. Total minefield, and many exceptions to the rule either way, of course, but one that is certainly worth looking at further and looking for trends in.

I do think that councils – Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, whatever – tend to be top heavy and that the management models many follow have led to – of course – too many managers. I’d happily swap two managers for 20 frontline housing officers or social workers, etc. It may be possible to reduce council tax while not compromising the services much by rationalising the management structures. Be interesting to know your thoughts.

Good article. Might also be worth mentioning that in all of the examples which you and others have given, H&F, Camden, Brent and Edinburgh, the heavy cuts to services came after Labour was voted out and the Tories and/or Lib Dems were voted in. Not to say that Labour councils never cut services or anything like that, but they tend to be a bit less prone to the ‘keep council tax down whatever the real cost’ mania.

Ripping the piss out of Newmania is one of my favourite pastimes. Oh well. I’ll have to make do slaying trolls on my XBOX.