Rail bridge lights out for five years and counting
A pedestrians’ foot bridge has been left without lights for five years because repairs have been delayed for safety reasons. Hampshire County Council said it was waiting for permission from Network Rail to carry out the repairs.
Telegraph p16
23 October 2012
Council leaders warn further cuts ‘certain’
James Evison
Further council cuts are ‘absolutely certain’, local authority leaders in the north of England have warned.
The news comes ahead of the end of the local government grant settlement next March, with the Government currently consulting on new financing arrangements beyond April 2013.
Local authorities are due to discover the settlement in December, but it is widely anticipated that a further two years of spending cuts will be required for council budgets.
Preston Council deputy leader, Cllr John Swindells, claimed the council have ‘probably cut as close to the bone as we can’ – and any further savings will result in services being affected ‘deeply’.
Durham CC leader, Simon Henig, echoed the statement, claiming the impact on vulnerable people and care budgets was ‘accelerating’ as a result of the budget cuts, and had to find in excess of £40m for the next few years.
North Yorkshire also has to find budget cuts of more than £48m having already implemented plans for a £69m reduction in costs at the beginning of this year.
The Local Government Association is warning local authorities will only be able to provide basic services at the end of the decade should the budget shortfall continue – and local authorities would end up £26.5bn in the red.
Last week Lewisham LBC mayor, Sir Steve Bullock, said it could ‘get a whole lot worse’ following an announcement the local authority planned £28.3m in cuts from next April.
your comments
Interesting to read the MJ article a few lines down, “Councils are failing to make ?fair? payments to care home operators…”. Cutting funding to the public sector is cutting business in the private sector too. That golden thread may take time for the Treasury to understand.
Dominic Macdonald-WALLACE, Shared Service Architecture Ltd, Added: Tuesday, 23 October 2012 01:11 PM
What is certain is that these cuts to funding are designed directly to force the destruction of jobs and services and is part of a plan to destroy the concept that there is such an entity as society. It is clear that the destruction of the public sector is priority number one. The future for ex public sector workers is workfare or McDonalds, since the Government clearly wants low paid low cost workers not what we currently have. I would suggest that the pain to come has been underestimated.
David Hambly, Added: Tuesday, 23 October 2012 11:08 AM
How much longer do British taxpayers have to suffer cuts whilst their hard earned cash continues to flow into countries that are more than able to pay to look after their own citizens, but just don’t want to? They must be laughing their heads off every time they cash our cheque.
And the sternest statement our MPs can make on this scandal? ‘Tory MPs want Britain to use the meeting to call for bigger contributions from other countries’. WRONG! The British people want the British Government to stop lording it around on the world stage and cut these contributions without further delay.
British aid supports schemes in Iran and China
By Colin Freeman Sunday Telegraph 7 Oct 2012
FRESH concerns over Britain’s spending on foreign aid were raised last night as it was disclosed that the country is helping support projects in Iran and China. The Department for International Development (DfID) is a key supporter of the World Bank, set up to help develop poorer countries.
The bank, established after the Second World War, is funded by developed countries to provide capital to lend on interest-free or easy terms to poorer countries, and to use as collateral to raise further funds on the international money markets.
It also provides grants from cash given by donor countries, of which Britain is fifth largest, behind America, Japan, Germany and France. However, the level of aid given to the World Bank raised new worries last night over how aid funds are spent, and there is also concern over some of the bank’s loan schemes.
Inquiries by The Telegraph found a number of projects that bore only limited relevance to Britain’s development goals. They include:
• £50 million in loans for a road safety campaign to improve Iran’s appalling road accident rate. The country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, holds a PhD in traffic management.
• A £30 million loan towards the cost of a Confucius “cultural heritage protection” project in China.
• £122,000 for a “radio reality format” project to encourage women in central India to use water more efficiently.
Last year DfID contributed £953.4 million to the bank. In stark contrast, China gave only £98 million in 2010, while Russia gave just £70 million. Additionally, Britain is still giving aid to “middle income” countries through its contributions, despite the Government’s recent pledge to restrict handouts to only the neediest nations.
In a major review of aid 18 months ago, ministers promised a “tighter focus” on 27 of the poorest nations. However, among those in receipt of World Bank grants are Moldova, Cambodia and Kosovo, which were on a list of 16 countries for which DfID stopped direct funding.
The three receive grants totalling £56 million from the World Bank’s International Development Association, a fund to which Britain paid £2.64 billion – 12 per cent of the total – in the last round of contributions in 2010. On that basis, roughly £7.6 million of the grants to Moldova, Cambodia and Kosovo came from the British taxpayer.
The money is part of the 0.7 per cent of national income that Britain spends on overseas aid, which critics say must either be reduced or more carefully monitored. The lack of control that Britain has over how its foreign aid budget is spent by international bodies was highlighted by The Telegraph last week, when it was revealed that British aid cash channelled through the European Union is being spent on projects such as tourism parks in Iceland and energy-efficient holiday complexes in Morocco.
This week, the World Bank will hold its annual meeting in Tokyo, when talks will start on the next round of handouts, due to be finalised next year. Tory MPs want Britain to use the meeting to call for bigger contributions from emerging economies, especially if they want a greater say in the bank’s affairs.
“As a layman, I would have imagined that the voting rights should follow the money,” said Philip Davies, the MP for Shipley. “By anybody’s standards, we appear to be overpaying relative to other countries, and it is more than we can afford in this time of austerity.”
A DfID spokesman said the Government had not made any decisions about its future contribution to the World Bank’s aid programmes. But he added: “We are committed to a faster programme towards poverty reduction worldwide – this includes pushing other countries to increase their contributions.”
Reproduced with thanks from The Daily Telegraph 15 August 2012
Confidence is key to success, but don’t trip on your ego
By Hannah Furness
THE secret to career success is not talent, hard work or education, but sheer, unashamed confidence, a study has suggested.
Although workers with big egos will often perform poorly and make more mistakes, their colleagues consistently fail to spot their errors and continue to believed they are “terrific” or “beloved”.
Their personality means they are often promoted over those who are more competent, as colleagues mistake their confidence for talent.
A study of more than 500 students, academics and workers, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, showed that those who appeared more confident achieved a higher social status than their peers.
Within a work environment, higher-status individuals tended to be more admired, listened to, and had more sway over group decisions.
Prof Cameron Anderson of the University of California, who led the research, said that, as a result, “incompetent people are often promoted over their more competent peers”. He said those who were overconfident often sought power, fame or success and that overconfidence was encouraged by the prospect of increased social status, respect and esteem.
“Our studies found overconfidence helped people attain social status,” he said. “Those who believed they were better than others, even when they weren’t, were given a higher place in the social ladder, and the motivation to attain higher social status therefore triggered overconfidence.”
The researchers found that many of their subjects believed sincerely that they were more physically talented, socially adept and skilled at their jobs than reality reflected. In one study, 94 per cent of college professors were found to believe that their work was above average.
Prof Anderson said: “In organisations, people are very easily swayed by others’ confidence even when that confidence is unjustified. Displays of confidence are given an inordinate amount of weight.”
In a series of six experiments, the researchers found evidence that companies should be sceptical of individuals’ confidence. In one test, they found overconfident individuals talked more and participated more extensively in group tasks, even when they were less competent.
In another experiment, a general knowledge test, those who made loud claims to know the right answers were held in highest regard, even when they got the answers wrong.
Prof Anderson, of the university’s Berkeley Haas School of Business, said: “Group members did not think of their high status peers as overconfident, but simply that they were terrific.”
Two final studies found it was the desire for status that encouraged people to be overconfident.
The study, entitled A Status-Enhancement Account of Overconfidence, concluded: “The individuals among us who are elevated to positions of status wield undue influence, have access to more resources, get better information, and enjoy a variety of benefits.
“Although we may seek to choose wisely, we are often forced to rely on proxies for ability, such as individuals’ confidence. In so doing we, as a society, create incentives for those who would seek status to display more confidence than their actual ability merits.”
Reproduced from: http://www.rsnonline.org.uk/index.php
Wednesday, 01 August 2012 14:38
Joining forces against fly-tipping
Written by Ruralcity Media
LANDOWNERS have joined forces with a local authority to make it easier to remove fly-tipped waste from private land.
The partnership between the Country Land and Business Association and Suffolk County Council aims to solve waste issues at a local level.
It builds on work already undertaken by the local authority on tackling trade waste.
CLA president Harry Cotterell said: “It costs around £800 to deal with each incidence of non-toxic fly-tipped waste on private land.
“Although we would like to see waste taken to local tips free of charge, we understand this is unlikely without a change in the law.
“However, the partnership with Suffolk County Council should help identify the barriers preventing fly-tipping from being dealt with.
“There must be a long-term sustainable solution, so we are pleased Defra is seeking to provide funding for the joint effort and, if successful, the outcome could be rolled out to other local authorities.”
One idea the CLA is keen to explore is a ticketing scheme for victims that uses a reference number to trace the crime, from the point of reporting the fly-tipping to the police or local authority to disposing of it at the local tip.
Mr Cotterell added: “The CLA will also continue to lobby the government to remove the potential for landowners to be prosecuted purely because they have not removed waste tipped on their land.”
The partnership was announced at a recent government summit on fly-tipping, chaired by Defra minster Lord Taylor of Holbeach.
The summit was a key government commitment to bring organisations across all sectors together to galvanise support for regional action on fly-tipping.
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There’s a piece in the latest Local Government Association (LGA) First magazine, that could easily prove extremely misleading to elected members, given that it suggests that, despite all the budget cuts and threats to services, councils’ are doing okay.
The article is actually extracted from something written Neil Wholey, Head of Research and Customer Insight at Westminster City Council – whatever that is, the job, not the council. Whilst the piece may not be inaccurate in any way, the author obviously knows his stuff and the facts are the facts, it’s certainly likely to offer a misleading picture to those who, when reading it, don’t bother to separate out the elements that make up a council.
As a LGA publication, it’s difficult not to see the magazine as primarily a vehicle for communicating with elected members, as opposed to the professionals and this where the misleading bit begins. The article called, Residents’ Views, tells the reader that, despite all the hardships being visited on taxpayers by government, local government’s reputation is doing surprisingly well.
I’ve no reason to doubt what the author is saying when it comes to public opinion, especially if the questions were asked in a way that avoids any reference to the politics of the council. The problem comes when an elected member reads this and either misses, or completely ignores, the basis on which the questions were asked. The public are expressing a view of their experience of the council, not the councillors.
I wonder what the answer would have been if, instead of asking, ‘overall do you think the council is providing good services in your area?’ they had asked, ‘how well do you think the (insert political group name as appropriate) are running your local council?’. By inserting politics into the question, you immediately invite a biased response, based on the politics of the person being asked the question. Taken a step further, even if the council is performing well, the fact that it is controlled by one, or other of the political parties, will be far more influential when it comes to an election, than any public satisfaction survey, however rosy a picture it paints.
My point is, that any politician reading this and taking it at face value, could be in danger of deluding themselves in to thinking that taxpayer satisfaction with ‘the council’, is the same as satisfaction with ‘the councillors’.
The latest bright idea from the coalition government, liberalised gambling laws, has an uncanny parallel with a similar bright idea of the previous Labour Government – 24 hour drinking.
The changes to the licensing laws have been an unmitigated disaster for our town centres, making them no-go areas at weekends, unless you are one of the thousands of 18-30’s determined to become hopelessly intoxicated and dangerously aggressive.
Changing the gambling laws won’t have the same type of negative impact as the changes to the drinking laws. However, making it even easier for the public at large to gamble to excess, will prove just as damaging in the long run. I can’t workout whether this is an idea born out of desperation to find a further source of deficit reducing revenue, or a sign of some sort of inappropriate favouritism, where looking after the financial interests of those who fund political parties and campaigns, takes precedent over everything else. I wonder how many expensive lunches it took the gambling industry to persuade ministers this was a good idea.
These proposals have been dressed up as localising control, giving councils the power to determine what happens locally. If its anything like the licensing laws, all it will do is impose yet another function on councils that are already struggling to maintain current services. The one thing it won’t do, is, as with the licensing laws, give councils the ability to say no, simply because they believe it would be bad for their community.
Whilst on the subject of lobbying, how long do you think it will take before ministers start releasing media statements, saying how good it would be for everybody if we retained the changes to Sunday Trading laws, currently only in place for the Olympics.
Localism, community right to challenge, independent schools, neighbourhood planning, community panels and of course, directly elected mayors. A common thread here, or to use the current jargon, the golden thread, is community. You could actually translates the term community into, ‘non-local government’. I say local government, because central government has made sure that none of the plans put forward for the reform of public services, have threatened their continued existence.
There’s been a concerted effort by the likes of Eric Pickles and George Osbourne, to make local government the villains of the piece, in taxpayers’ eyes, when it comes to the cost of providing public services. This ‘official’ campaign is under-pinned by the long held and media fuelled public perception of local government – It’s full of pen pushing bureaucrats; they all have a job for life so do as little as possible; what they do do, is always done at half speed; there’s too many managers, getting inflated levels of pay; when they retire, it’s too early and they all get a gold-plated pension. Oh! and while we’re at, those bloody councillors are a waste of space and get too much in expenses! They actually mean allowances, as expense are simply the refunding of what’s been paid out for things such as travel, whereas allowances are what councillors receive for being councillors.
Given this unremitting assault on local government from all sides, one has to wonder how long it will be before local government becomes pretty much extinct, which it’s difficult not to see as the ultimate ambition for Whitehall – why? Think about it – a large amount of tax revenue is currently diverted to local government through the grant process. Leaving most local services to be provided and therefore funded by the communities that use them, would give government a very large pot of money that wasn’t available before. Those services that are left for local government to provide, such as emptying the bins, will be funded from the perpetually frozen council tax, the partial retention of the business rates and possibly CIL. There will of course be a few other roles for local government to fulfil, because the government either can’t be bothered with it, or need to deflect blame away from themselves by putting somebody else in the firing line. Public health and the universal credit being the current ones.
Adult social care and the growing concerns surrounding the cost of provision suggests that this could still be the elephant in the room. However, given how duplicitous central government has been towards local government to date, I suspect they already have a plan that will leave local government further sidelined and weakened, whilst also being blamed for its failings.
Those taxpayers who think councillors are a waste of their council tax and should be done away with, just need to be patient for a few more years, if the local government press is to be believed.
Apparently, the bill for adult social care will increase at such a rate, whilst local government funding will be reduced at a similar rate, that there will no money left to do anything else. It’s estimated that the adult care bill will absorb 90% of the available funding, with the remainder being used to empty the bins. If this forecast is accurate, then I think there will be little need for elected members in whatever remains of local government.
As well as helping to formulate policy for the wide range of services councils currently provide, councillors also set the tax rate that partly pays for these services. Just as importantly, councillors help local taxpayers deal with the effects of those policies, especially when they don’t work as advertised, or even don’t work at all. It therefore follows, that by starving local government of funding, apart from those needed for adult care and emptying the bins, elected members will have little or no policies to formulate and very few issues to help taxpayers with. No policies = no problems = problem solved.
Central government will be able to keep the masses distracted by continuing to promote elected mayors, so there’s something local for them to vote for every few years. Local democratic energies will be absorbed by the outcomes of localism. Local people will need to spend their time running the services they value and that used to be run by councils. This may ultimately lead to the creation of a group of community leaders, trusted by the public to steward these services and charged with making the best use of their communities hard earned money. Indeed, they may even be called councillors.
Some of my councillor colleagues told me that they weren’t interested in attending yesterday’s workshop on public health, because ‘it was a county council problem’. The county council are the ones with all the resources and have been involved with public health for the last few years, but that doesn’t mean districts will be able to leave them to it – the game has changed it seems.
The first speaker at Tuesday’s event was from the Strategic Health Authority. According to the programme, after this presentation, ‘Members will better understand the government objectives through the health reform policy…’. Well, I must of missed the bit where that became clear. I now now know how my fellow councillors feel, when I’m trying to explain the technicalities of our planning policy!
What I did understand, was that the current system is fiendishly complicated. It has lots of people with wonderful job titles like, Clinical Commissioning Group Chairman and enough acronyms to fill a a decent sized book. Some of these acronyms describe the various boards, panels, groups, herds, gaggles and flocks, these people attend to wring their hands over issues such as, how fat we are all becoming.
Britain used to be the sick man of Europe, now, apparently, we are the obese man of Europe. Well if the footballers and tennis players can’t do it, at least us fatties are stepping up to the mark to claim first place in something.
The new system, that local government will be wrestling with, appears to be as equally fiendish in its complexity and bewildering terminology. The only difference will be, that instead of the NHS being the ones getting the blame for us all eating, drinking and smoking too much, it will be local government.
A spokeswoman from the Local Government Association then gave us a presentation, promoting the opportunities the new responsibilities will offer local government – opportunites? She told the audience, that local government was extremely keen to take on these new responsibilities, offering confirmation by telling us that, ‘no council had said no thanks, we’ve already got too much on our plates’. Cynic that I am, I suggested that saying no, at a time when local government was being subjected to a form of genocide by central government, would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.
Of course unitary and upper tier (county) councils would say yes please, we can do that. It will help them justify their continued existence. It also gives them a further opportunity to claim that they are essential, whilst district councils are an unneccesary expense that should be scrapped. Maybe they’re right, time will tell and that time could be sooner than many of us think.
Roger Gambba-Jones 