| Of course this cannot be justified in the light of hundreds of redundancies over the last year. All this nonsense was part of the Tory/ICG 'efficiency savings' programme for which they paid consultants from KPMG millions in fees. A three year old with a rudimentary knowledge of numbers could have worked that out, cutting frontline staff is the laziest and easiest way of cutting costs - efficient? I doubt that. It hardly needs consultants to advise you unless you haven't a clue how to run and manage a local authority. But to then give pay rises that ups the wages bill enormously is some sort of a sick joke, these are the people who would have conspired to make the redundancies. No-one seems to give a fig that there have also been subsequent cuts in services. People in Chiswick have been up in arms about the parking permit scam, they just don't get it, that to keep council tax at the same level something has to give, if they won't pay through council tax then they will pay by other means, parking, charging for services that were previously free, education budget cuts, you simply cannot have it both ways. One way or another councils have to get money from somewhere, this lot have chosen stealth. It's always the same, ordinary frontline staff that are the ones to go whilst management look after their own and proliferate, it's a bloody disgrace. |