D Little wrote:
There is abundant evidence to support my assertion that senior officers (not all of them) are incompetent.
That is vastly different to veiled hints that local businessmen are corrupt.
The latest crackpot plan is to borrow £200m to invest in property. Commercial rates are around 5% which means £10m per annum in interest alone. And they're paying somebody £200k for the privilege.
David, I disagree.
From my experience all of the council employees I have ever dealt with are no better or worse than public servants elsewhere. The purpose of a council I believe is to extract a certain amount of money from us which is pooled to provide us the services we need. This is all done reasonably well. Bins are collected, traffic is moving,parks are kept open etc. It's not a first class service but since we keep voting to keep our council tax the lowest in the area what do you expect?
Unfortunately every so often a collective madness overcomes our elected representatives who have a plan for some 'grand project' inevitably involving expensive outside consultants.
Full of hubris we all get behind another mad plan to 'turn around the district'.
We've invested in Icelandic Banks, spent £24 million on the White Cliffs Experience, spent millions on DTIZ, blown £400,000 on Olympic Celebrations to provide us with a promised 'legacy' which has never been measured and is no longer talked about, and are now about to borrow up to £200 million to go into property speculation.
No council employee could be expected to be 'competent' enough to turn any of these into a success and nemesis inevitably follows. Our officers however 'were only following orders' while the elected idiots behind the scheme, rather than resigning in shame, move on to the next cunning plan with a lack of remorse that would put Jeffrey Archer to shame.
As for local businessmen being 'corrupt' what do you really expect? With the exception of a few firms (mostly Quaker chocolate manufacturers!) any businessman worth his name will maximise profit by cutting expenses (including wages and taxes) and maximising income.
It's called capitalism and is why things you buy tend to be so incredibly cheap and well made and why the poorest in this country have access to stuff, including free healthcare, beyond the dreams of even the richest in the UK less than a century ago.
For all we pretend to protest about things, if Starbucks and Amazon paid more tax, you and I would end up paying for it through our purchases, and when push comes to shove we are a crowd of hypocrites and 99% of us will go for the cheap coffee and books, pausing only to take a selfie on the IPhone as we march against globalisation.