Birmingham Council - "The end of services as we know it"

[Du1point8]

shouldbworking said:

The bbc interviewed a council representative on radio 4 yesterday. He managed to successfully convince me that the cuts were utterly justified, repeatedly ignoring questions like why should they get 20% more per person than average, as they currently do, and not managing to provide any examples of where this money was going. He just bleated pathetically about how it was all so unfair.

Same people seemed to have no problems when banks cut thousands of jobs, in fact they said that the people working there deserved it.

Strange that 90+% of people who left the banks were due to cost cutting rather than bad practices.

Now again it comes round to PS and they claim its all unfair, yet the banks did it 4 years ago and are still trimming down now.

Pretty certain that are lots more people in other private industries that can say the same.

Yet the PS people deserve their job as its their right.... hmmm

[NoNeed]

Du1point8 said:

shouldbworking said:

The bbc interviewed a council representative on radio 4 yesterday. He managed to successfully convince me that the cuts were utterly justified, repeatedly ignoring questions like why should they get 20% more per person than average, as they currently do, and not managing to provide any examples of where this money was going. He just bleated pathetically about how it was all so unfair.

Same people seemed to have no problems when banks cut thousands of jobs, in fact they said that the people working there deserved it.

Strange that 90+% of people who left the banks were due to cost cutting rather than bad practices.

Now again it comes round to PS and they claim its all unfair, yet the banks did it 4 years ago and are still trimming down now.

Pretty certain that are lots more people in other private industries that can say the same.

Yet the PS people deserve their job as its their right.... hmmm

I suspect that if the true figure was 20% more there wouldn't be a problem, this is a council that the local evening mail reported pays the people that paint lines in the road a whopping 53k and those that change bulbs in street lights 90k a year. This was about 4 years ago and the council had to change the livery on its vans due to pubkic outrage creating some rather silly vandalism

[Pwig]

Fleegle said:

50,000 council employees serving an area of 1million.

And they are surprised there is no money left?? WTF are these 50,000 employees doing exactly?

I put a call out to my local planning officer on Monday 10am……..I’m still waiting for my return call. One of two things is happening here, either they are so worked off their feet because my council ratio isn’t 1:20 of the people they serve, or they are bone idle feckers

I'm guessing that figure includes teachers mind? They are technically employed by the council arn't they?

[Digga]

If you pay managers more OPM, by dint not of services delivered or customer satisfaction, but primarily because of the 'responsibility' of running a larger department, guess waht? Departments grow.

[Laughingman21]

eccles said:

Is what you've said any less stupid?
Yes great idea make them all redundant so we can save money,pay them a load of money to leave their job, then pay them benefits, pay their council tax put them in public housing as they can't afford to pay the mortgage,etc etc. That'll really help the deficit!
I know you can't employ everyone, but wholesale redundancies look good in the short term, but rarely help in long term.

So we should keep sopmeone in a £50k a year job that's not needed to save them claiming Less than half that in benefits. That sounds like a good financial move!!!!

[anonymous-user]

martin84 said:

Whether or not too high a proportion of Birmingham works for the council or the aforementioned Labour council keeps people in work whose jobs aren't required isn't the whole story. If you sack these people they'll be out of work, completely. I don't think anybody here wants us to put more people on the unemployed scrapheap.

It's inevitable. Absolutely inevitable.

Just how can we keep borrowing and squeezing the private sector to pay for the non productive public sector?

It should be a lot less expensive to use a payers money to pay minimum benefit than pay significant salaries etc.

[anonymous-user]

martin84 said:

'It's st for us so I want it to be st for them' isn't going to get us anywhere but bankrupt as a country on many levels, not just financially. This 'us vs them' of the private and public sector mentality which exists on here is depressing to say the least.

I don't like seeing people lose their jobs, irrespective of what sector they were in. When it's their own fault that's fine, but when it's the fault of others then it's not. The public sector expanded by 2 million since 1997, the Government actively encouraged public sector employment and offered many of the safeguards and guarantees which private sector employment doesn't. It's not the workers fault the Government went out of it's way to slim down the private sector, it's not like they could've got a job which didn't exist.

You're right. An extra 2M in the public sector when, given the growth in technology and IT the number should have been falling, as in the Private Sector.

Frankly, that 2M needs to go, including several hundred Politicians, and then we could get back to being a solvent Country.

[turbobloke]

Is this the same right-on Birmingham Council that the Supreme Court has just slapped?

"Supreme Court justices said more than 170 former Birmingham City Council employees could launch pay equality compensation claims in the High Court."

http://news.sky.com/story/1001957/ex-council-staff...

No doubt the town hall minions responsible will volunteer compensation payments from their pension pot rather than have taxpayers stump up for their mistakes.

[Camoradi]

Perhaps Birmingham Council should work out what level of salary cuts (perhaps focussed on the higher earners) would enable them to preserve the current level of services, and put it to a vote of their employees. Many private companies have consulted with their employees in this way, and in most cases their employees have chosen pay cuts for all over redundancies for an unfortunate few.

It would be an interesting test of how committed public servants are to providing vital services.

[Justayellowbadge]

The numbers in the BBC piece tell you the size of the cuts.

No mention of the scale of them.

What is the point in stating they have to make 600m in savings, 200m more than previously thought, if they don't tell you out of what budget?

600m over 5 years from a budget of 1bn would be crippling.

600m from 10bn could be absorbed in a heartbeat by cutting the paperclip spending.

[Du1point8]

Justayellowbadge said:

The numbers in the BBC piece tell you the size of the cuts.

No mention of the scale of them.

What is the point in stating they have to make 600m in savings, 200m more than previously thought, if they don't tell you out of what budget?

600m over 5 years from a budget of 1bn would be crippling.

600m from 10bn could be absorbed in a heartbeat by cutting the paperclip spending.

Their budget is roughly £3.5 billion a year.

So over 5 years not including inflation they have a budget of £17.5 billion and have to find cuts in that of 4-4.5%. (600m)

This was taking from their budget 2012 brochure which states its £3.2 billion in income and £300 million in council tax

[martin84]

Laughingman21 said:

Also, those in government that bloated the public sector for years actually got voted out last time, so they did have to go and find themselves a new job.

I don't think Gordon Brown is worrying about how he's going to put food on the table next week somehow.

Laughingman21 said:

Whilst its not the employees fault that the last government over spent, they did happily pocket the cash.

Oh so not only does PH hate people who don't go to work, you now hate those who do? They happily pocketed the cash? Wouldn't you? Did you expect them to demand private sector jobs which didn't exist instead?

thinfourth2 said:

What a monumentally stupid thing to say

I suppose your solution is the government should employ everyone who is currently unemployed as Jeremy Kyle quality anaylists. They can be paid 20grand and work from home

That's no more idiotic than the Coalitions policy of cutting jobs while increasing spending and increasing debt.

98elise said:

Are you saying they couldn't find other work....every last one of them? I was made redundant last november. I'm not on the scrapheap.

Good for you.

hornetrider said:

Which bit of 'There is no money left' do you not understand?

The part where the Coalition keep increasing borrowing despite sacking thousands of people in the name of 'saving money' while spending more in reality.

Bandit said:

Well one thing you could do is greatly reduce the level of taxation on private enterprise (which is currently, amongst other things, is used to employ said Public Sector workers).

How are we supposed to do that when - as hornetrider just said - there is no money left? Where do we find the money for tax cuts? What bit of 'there is no money left' do you not understand?

REALIST123 said:

It should be a lot less expensive to use a payers money to pay minimum benefit than pay significant salaries etc.

You all have this impression that everybody in the public sector is on 100k a year for doing nothing. The only public sector workers on 'significant salaries' will be the ones who don't lose their jobs.

turbobloke said:

I guess they'll just have to hang around waiting for somebody else to create jobs, in the same difficult economic conditions, then whine about the income of those that do...No matter, it's all everybody else's fault, mostly those who create jobs and wealth.

I don't see much wealth being created in this country at the moment. Or jobs, for that matter. So let's shelve the whole 'jobs and wealth creator' argument for the time being until they actually start doing that.

You're all missing the key point here. You're saying we have to lose these jobs to tackle the deficit but the Coalition are failing to do that. Their policies are not tackling the deficit. So what's the defence for happily sacking people if you can't even claim you're saving money? We all know savings need to be made but the Government aren't doing it intelligently, take the sacking of civil servants who were midway through working on the West Coast train deal, only for that to fall apart. When we said 'cut the deficit' we didn't say 'sack everybody you might need.'

Every businessperson on Earth will tell you the only way we get out of this is to have an expanding economy rather than a stagnant or heaven forbid further contracting one. They'll also tell you mass sackings made without using any intelligence gives you a bigger bill of some sort further down the line. The only answer is growth. Just slashing spending and making people homeless will not fix the economy, it won't get us anywhere. It's not even cutting the national debt, merely adding to it slightly slower. Until we start growing again any cut in spending will be replaced by extra spending elsewhere, unless we decide to turn into Africa and throw people onto the streets.

The worst part though is seeing peoples glee at others misfortune on here. I think unemployment generally is a bad thing, plenty of you think it's excellent - so long as it doesn't happen to you, obviously. I'm not sure whats so disgusting about believing unemployment is negative, only on PH is such a comment derided. You give the same impression of yourselves that the Government give to the people they're sacking - that you're absolute tts who couldn't give a fk about anybody else.

In fact I struggle to think of anybody on here I'd describe as likeable and who I'd bother to stop and help at the side of the road.

[turbobloke]

martin84 said:

Oh so not only does PH hate people who don't go to work, you now hate those who do?

On reflection, wouldn't you say that this approach you're taking is somewhat flawed? Not least because the one PHer you may be replying to isn't PH, but also because people aren't saying what you say they said.

There are no posts I can recall that say all of PH hates people who are out of work, or hates those who work, it would be illuminating to have a link to such statements.

[martin84]

turbobloke said:

There are no posts I can recall that say all of PH hates people who are out of work, or hates those who work, it would be illuminating to have a link to such statements.

I'm working on the basis that the vast majority of posts on here are all the same as each other. Most posts on this thread for example could've all been written by the same person because they all express the same view. Hence 'PH says...'

[turbobloke]

Another generalisation which fails as badly as the last lot. And (minor point) you are part of PH.

[Du1point8]

so what do you suggest then?

Give them more money for non jobs so that they get a wage for not doing anything?

Like the moral officers, anti smoking officers, paperless officers and so on and so on... Really?? The PS should hire someone on £25-30k a year to lecture people about having a paperless office and that is a good thing?

Private sector doesnt need to hire someone to tell them this kind of stuff so why did the job need to be made in the Public sector?

2 years down the line the government is still haemorrhaging money, partly due to them not being very good at reversing decisions/having the balls to do it, partly due to it being a coalition and pandering to the Lib Dems, finally due to the last government signing up to loads of crap just before they left power.

So where do you think the extra money should come from that you think should be fed back into they system, to make it work? Which parts should be given the money?

You told us were its all gone wrong, now you must have a solution to it all too?

[martin84]

It's not a generalisation. Read this thread again and you'll see every post is the same.

As for being part of PH, I like to think of myself as the voice of reason.

[fido]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Those Union officials will be f8d then.

[ewenm]

martin84 said:

I like to think of myself as the voice of reason.

You are the same as everyone else here then

[JensenA]

martin84 said:

turbobloke said:

There are no posts I can recall that say all of PH hates people who are out of work, or hates those who work, it would be illuminating to have a link to such statements.

I'm working on the basis that the vast majority of posts on here are all the same as each other. Most posts on this thread for example could've all been written by the same person because they all express the same view. Hence 'PH says...'

Martin, what you are failing to see is that every Public Sector Job is a drain on the economy. All Public Sector jobs are funded by the Private sector. No one wants to see people lose their jobs, but we (the UK) cant keep borrowing money, and/or Taxing the Private sector simply to keep people employed in the Public Sector.

You state that the Government is increasing borrowing, implying that they have maded a willing decision to increase borrowing. The fact that Government borrowing is increasing, simply underlines how serious the position is - the UK is still having to borrow money to make ends meet.