The year the town hall shrunk

[Alan B'Stard]

Documentary available on Iplayer. Depressing stuff but worth watching.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01nvwr8/The_Year_the_Town_Hall_Shrank_All_In_This_Together/

"Documentary series telling the story of how the city of Stoke-on-Trent struggles to cope with the impact of the largest funding cuts to local government ever imposed by central government.
The depth of the cuts forces not just the council to reconsider what they do and how they do it, but the people of Stoke to ask themselves what they expect their local authority to do for them. This is not just the story of Stoke, it is the story of us all as it goes behind the rhetoric of whether we are all in it together in this age of austerity, or whether it is right to take tough choices because we have become over-dependent on services that we can simply no longer afford"

 

[John Marwood]

A brilliant and refreshingly balanced series of sensitive filming - a clear insight into local government amateurism and central government dictatorship - a combination that critically hurts the weakest amongst us - the mentally unwell , old and infirm

 

[Franklin_Delano_Roosevelt]

Documentary available on Iplayer. Depressing stuff but worth watching.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01nvwr8/The_Year_the_Town_Hall_Shrank_All_In_This_Together/

"Documentary series telling the story of how the city of Stoke-on-Trent struggles to cope with the impact of the largest funding cuts to local government ever imposed by central government.
The depth of the cuts forces not just the council to reconsider what they do and how they do it, but the people of Stoke to ask themselves what they expect their local authority to do for them. This is not just the story of Stoke, it is the story of us all as it goes behind the rhetoric of whether we are all in it together in this age of austerity, or whether it is right to take tough choices because we have become over-dependent on services that we can simply no longer afford"

The problem is with Local Authority cuts (and I dare say other Public sector cuts) is that whilst savings have to be made to help bring down the deficeit the cuts are happening in the wrong places. "Ordinary" Council workers who help to deliver services and on the whole earn rather average salaries are having their jobs axed which means that those that are left are expected to do more to pick up the slack of redundant colleagues. Meanwhile there are hoards of vastly overpaid middle and senior management who really do nothing other than go to meetings often earning £60K +. This is because they are being charged with making the decisions as to where budget cuts should happen and as the saying goes you don't get turkeys voting for Christmas. It is the worst of all worlds. The "bloatedness" of the Public sector which is often referred to remains alive and well whilst services and ordinary workers lose their jobs.

 

[tek-monkey]

Agreed, middle management will always vote to sack a few below them and expect whoever is left to pick up the slack. I guess I'd do the same though.

 

[70-plus]

Middle management is also being made redundant but what they can do is create themselves into a private company and then those in higher management will recruit the private company and pay them "private company rates" to give them advice on what to do. You really couldn't make it up. The increase in private sector jobs has nothing to do with the private sector but has everything to do with the public sector turning itself into a private company - hence the 4,000 jobs going over to a joint company with Capita having 51% of the shares and the votes. How will Capita make a profit?

 

[Gramaisc]

You're all in this together - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-21195787 ...

 

[Jonah]

Given the choice between losing one middle management job at £60k a year or 3 "ordinary" jobs at £20k a year and firms (not just councils) will always choose the 3 "ordinary" jobs.

It's something I can never understand.

 

[tek-monkey]

Its quite simple, they ask the middle manager to choose!

 

[Gramaisc]

When considering the merits of a manager's existence (or any other employee), one can ask oneself - "What difficulties would we be in if he had met his demise last night?"