Sunday, April 06, 2008

Shredded Feat

Phew! Several industrial sized Pritt sticks later, I've finally pieced together that Thanet Council staff consultation paper which I rescued from the shredder. And glued most of my fingers together in the process, which is making it rather dofficult to tupe.

It makes for fascinating reading, particularly if you've run out of Horlicks and are in desperate need of a kip. It would be too tedious by far to reproduce it all here, so I've distilled it into an executive summary:

1. We need to save money.
2. At the same time, we need to ensure that our 'senior remuneration package remains competitive.'
3. We're so good, our senior staff are being poached.
4. We're therefore going to create more senior posts, despite the fact that we chopped a load of them a while back on grounds of efficiency.
5. So if Heads of Service perform well, we'll promote them and give them loads more dosh.
6. And, er, we'll be the ones who'll decide if they're doing well enough to be promoted, thank you very much.
7. To afford all this we're going to make some people redundant who were actually doing quite a good job really.

Other, um, priceless information includes disposing of assets 'in a way which maximizes any regeneration benefits' and this:

It is generally aknowledged that the Margate Renewal Programme (What, the one that puts photos of Ramsgate Harbour on its This Is Margate website? - Ed.) is beginning to develop positive results and to avoid future uncertainty it is proposed to make the currently externally funded post part of the TDC establishment once the external funding expires in 2009 should this be required once there is greater clarity from SEEDA about their intentions.

Ho-hum. Look, if you want to read more, just email me and I'll send over all 15 pages. Right, I'm off to watch Graham Norton try and find a Nancy.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I see what you mean about sending you to sleep - no wonder some important council decisions slip through unnoticed if councillors have to wade through pages of this sort of thing - Yawn! Yawn!

Richard Eastcliff said...

Yes BTT. It's amazing how sensible, i.e. dull these documents can sound. In fact the bottom line seems to be an argument to sack a bunch of people so that the top bods can give themselves a load more dough! But of course, if they just said that, rather than couching it in 15 pages of guff, it would probably get more attention than they'd like!

Anonymous said...

plus ce change signifique