£13 MILLION? …A MERE BAGATELLE!

I want the desk with the biggest chair!

It was interesting to hear the Labour Council Leader Kieran Quinn announcing his delight as he whipped the wraps off the exciting multi-million pound ‘vision of Tameside, especially the part that explains, “It will also mean that we (the council) can replace the aging council administration building, that is too large for our for our needs, no longer fit for purpose and too expensive to run with a smaller, more efficient building, that we can share with other partners

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It therefore goes to confirm; as many people have been saying for years, that in the not too distant past, Tameside’s Labour controlled council employed far too many public sector workers and saw Tameside’s empire builders, filling every spare chair in the council offices with flunkies; doling out public money to overpaid, over-cushioned pen-pushers.

Become a Tameside Labour councillor, it's a job for life!

We still remember the debacle when bosses at Tameside Council forked out £4,995 on training and leaflets for staff and councillors giving them guidance and tips on how to walk as part of the council’s well-being strategy. And that is just one small example, (… I think enough has been said about bronze statues!)

If nothing else, the cuts in grants from central government has proved that despite the Labour Leader’s annual gripe about having to make draconian cuts to services; the fact that he is now more than happy to be moving the entire council into smaller premises, illustrates that the council could have been operating just as easily with far less staff and for far less money for years.

Having less money to waste on vanity projects, the current councillors have been made to wake-up and examine every aspect of the way they work; and although they appear to have gone some small way in discovering how to maximise efficiency, they’ve still got a long way to go in bringing down the excessive pay of senior managers.

Does anyone find it rather odd that in his keynote address in 2011, Kieran Quinn revealed that the authority would have to find £132 million of savings over the next four years and axe more front-line jobs to cope with the cuts in Whitehall’s funding. Yet here we are, two years later, he suddenly finds the wherewithal to stump-up £13million which is reported to be their share of the £76million investment in the construction! (…You’ll notice there’s been no mention of the extra hundreds of thousands of pounds they’ll spend on new office desks, chairs, cabinets, etc’!)

Now whether the design and positioning of this ambitious town centre scheme will have the desired effect on the local economy, we will have to wait and see, but if, as we are told, this will bring in an extra 3300 people, more thought is needed as where they are going to park. After all, they are not all going to arrive by bicycle and tram!