Thursday 10 February 2011

Oh, Woe, Woe And Thrice Woe!

Though it might rank as one of Britain's better-appointed public conveniences, with two attendants, a parents' rooms and oak doors leading to immaculate cubicles, the lavatory on the ground floor of the city's Town Hall Extension took on a sudden symbolic importance yesterday.

Unlike six others in the city centre and a further 10 in the suburbs from Wythenshawe to Harpurhey, the facilities at Mount Street are soon to be the only council-funded public lavatories in Manchester – a grim survivor of the first round of government budget cuts.
Manchester residents will have nothing to go on!
Yet while the closure of toilets is by definition an inconvenience – up to 40 per cent of all surviving facilities have been closed by councils in the past decade – the terms being used to describe the other measures revealed by the Labour-led Manchester City Council yesterday were more visceral. "Savage" and "devastating" were the local headlines as the council wielded the axe on leisure centres, libraries, swimming pools, weekly bin collections and night-time street cleaning.
All the things, you’ll note, that the public will notice. And blame the coalition for…
As it became one of the first big Labour-run cities to reveal the full details of its austerity plan, council leader Sir Richard Leese described the reduction in public funding – £110m cut from next year and a further £60m in 2012/13 – as the "worst since the war". Two thousand jobs are already due to go at the town hall, but it is elsewhere, in some of the most deprived areas of the city, where the burden will be shared.
The poor worst hit – it’s a ‘Guardian’ dream!
Sir Richard, first elected to the council in 1984, has lived through the years of rate capping under Margaret Thatcher and the cuts required to keep down the poll tax in the early 1990s, but he believes neither "were a patch" on the current situation in scale or speed of implementation.
Worse than the hated Thatcher? Say it ain’t so!
If Manchester was expecting understanding from the Coalition, it was mistaken. Grant Shapps, Local Government minister, called for savings by greater sharing of back-office facilities and from copying "innovative" neighbouring councils such as Tory-run Trafford. "This is a cynical move by a Labour council, which is intentionally cutting frontline services and playing politics with people's lives. It's Labour politicians that are in denial about the financial mess left by the last government, and they have clearly failed to prepare for the inevitable reductions in public spending as a result of Labour's budget deficit," he said.
Boo! Hiss! Eeeeeeevil Tories!

Of course, there’s one area where Manchester Council definitely won’t be making any savings:
Only one Greater Manchester council has plans in place to cut its chief executive’s pay – as town halls slash spending by £500m.

As the region’s 10 councils prepare to shed thousands of jobs, only one has any firm plans to hit its boss in the pocket.
Heh! Try and lay the blame for that on the coalition, Sir Dick!
Manchester council leader Sir Richard Leese said: "For Manchester to successfully get through this era of unprecedented public spending cuts we need motivated staff delivering service efficiently and effectively.

"Cutting salaries is not the way to achieve this and this is really nothing more than a gimmick to deflect attention away from the sheer scale of the cuts."
You mean, like cutting all but one of the public loos?
All Greater Manchester’s town hall bosses earn more than David Cameron’s £142,500 salary.
Alternatively, perhaps Simon Jenkins has an answer?
A core feature of modern British government is that those who grab power to win credit in good times will win blame in bad ones. What is odd is that Cameron and his colleagues refuse to accept the converse. If they shed responsibility, they can also shed blame.
Excellent suggestion!
… the mess was caused by uncontrolled public spending and borrowing over the past decade. Even if Osborne goes the whole hog, spending will still be higher in five years' time than it was in 2000.
Which is something that needs to be hammered home every single time someone wails about ‘cuts’…
… in refusing to leave councils free to ease cuts by raising taxes, the coalition has incurred a possibly lethal political price. It should relax the local tax cap introduced by Lady Thatcher in 1983 and let local taxes take some pressure off the cuts. If councils choose to sack staff, close libraries, shut toilets and slash services, it will be their decision and that of their voters. Cameron will be off the hook.
Of course, some areas will still be solid blue, or solid red.

But that’ll be their choice, won’t it?

17 comments:

SadButMadLad said...

Classic case of shroud waving by MCC.

Edwin Greenwood said...

I'd be surprised if the denizens of Wythenshawe or Harpurhey will notice the absence. They'll just continue to use the streets as they've always done.

Lynne said...

But will it affect Lesbian clog dancers initiatives and paraplegic trapeze and high wire societies grants? If not, why not?

Angry Exile said...

"...we need motivated staff delivering service efficiently and effectively."

When were they planning on getting round to fucking hiring some?

Weekend Yachtsman said...

"refusing to leave councils free to ease cuts by raising taxes"

Which is because, left to themselves, they will always take the easy way out and just bang up the bills to keep their clients, rent-seekers, and loony projects all ticking along nicely.

And it simply isn't true that the voters will turn them out. Numerically, the voters who get the handouts way outnumber those who pay the bills.

We need a system of no representation without (nett) taxation, otherwise it's another case of two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.

Bill Quango MP said...

WY is correct. The rates cap was to stop militant and loony left councils, such as Lambeth, from hiking up the taxes instead of working efficiently.

Captain Haddock said...

Easy answer is for everyone to descend on the Town Hall bogs for their mass catering "offloads" .. until there are so many people there the Staff won't be able to cope ..

Hordes of "desperate" people clogging up the Town Hall ..

Self-important Councillors being "inconvenienced" ..

Peel Park said...

Twenty years after Thatcher's so-called savagery, there is now a faint chance this is the start of the leftoids finally stopping trying to blame her for everything. Relief, lads... we can start blaming cameron!

But what I feel for them is that these cuts are (apparently) the worst since the second world war.

As it happened I lived in Salford in the early 'fifties (yes, I know, next city along) but I find it hard to believe back then the Manchester city council were shovelling zillions of public money into making a "better city"

For sixty years the left has ground out more and more from the state and its citizens, and now when a bog closes and they have the temerity to suggest that everything was great back in 1953.

Er, not from what I saw.

johnd2008 said...

If you are caught short in Manchester, do it up against the Town Hall wall.

john miller said...

Hahaha

"Cutting salaries is not the way to achieve this and this is really nothing more than a gimmick"

It's not what is said, but rather who says it.

Local government rich boy = good
Rich banker = bad

Simon Cooke said...

I re-wrote Manchester's budget - you might find it interesting!

http://theviewfromcullingworth.blogspot.com/2011/02/budget-manchester-city-council-might.html

ivan said...

Simple answer to reducing expenditure - cut the TOP 2/3 of council employees, huge savings simples.

banned said...

I don't see what the problem is, who needs bogs so long as there are plenty of diversity outreach workers, five-portions a day co-ordinators and climate change offices?

The Lib-Dem leader of Chesterfield council was on Radio 2 today to discuss how pissed off he was about the Coalition (he wasn't, btw), as an aside he mentioned that they had been running their city so well that they were able to absorb the cuts without any job losses and with no reductions in services.
I propose that he takes over Manchester. You know, like they do with good headmasters and bad schools.

JuliaM said...

"Classic case of shroud waving by MCC."

Yup. They do it because it always seems to work...

"They'll just continue to use the streets as they've always done."

The 'Jeremy Vine' show had a chippy Mancunian on to protest about this, and claim that residents and shopkeepers would be fed up with the smell of urine in their doorways every morning as a result.

A policeman called in to point out that all the people he'd cautioned for this had just come from a pub or nightclub (with toilets) or were on their way to a pub or nightclub (with toilets).

And at a time of night when no council-run toilet would be open anyway.

"But will it affect Lesbian clog dancers initiatives and paraplegic trapeze and high wire societies grants?"

Of course not!

"When were they planning on getting round to fucking hiring some?"

Heh! Good point.

JuliaM said...

"And it simply isn't true that the voters will turn them out. Numerically, the voters who get the handouts way outnumber those who pay the bills."

Because most of the handouts come from centrally-administered budgets. Why not go for true localism, and devolve that to the councils?

"WY is correct. The rates cap was to stop militant and loony left councils, such as Lambeth, from hiking up the taxes instead of working efficiently."

Cut off the central government money supply and let them be totally independent then.

Eventually, when all the wealth-creators leave and the place is a wasteland, the penny might drop.

Or we'd know where to call in the airstrike, at least...

"...there is now a faint chance this is the start of the leftoids finally stopping trying to blame her for everything."

Never happen. Just like the US Dems with Bush.

"I re-wrote Manchester's budget - you might find it interesting!"

Indeed!

"I propose that he takes over Manchester. You know, like they do with good headmasters and bad schools."

What better than to put his money where his mouth is?

Greencoat said...

"Cutting salaries is not the way to achieve this and this is really nothing more than a gimmick to deflect attention away from the sheer scale of the cuts."

Chutzpah goes nuclear!

Anonymous said...

In most councils, full time work is 37 hours. In Manchester city council, 35 hours is the norm. just sayin'sall

tincity