coucil underspend

[katarina]

So the council has a seven million pound under spend!!! So why do they want to close all our facilities to save money? explain the logics of this please.

[pmcd]

Councils set themselves spending targets/limits/budgets, which come into force at the start of the financial year, and are followed slavishly for about 9 months until council officials reports are written. "Well done, Mr Smythe, you kept within your target for classroom assistants. Have an "A" grade and a bonus....."

Then the panic starts - they've saved £7m, which they then have to spend by the end of the financial year, so they can get the same allocation for the next spending year. Now they would look daft if they spent the money on anything they'd already saved by cutting, so you can look forward to rubber lamp posts, 120 doggie doo-dah signs and dog poo wardens, some "street art" (in my last town, the wise councillors invested in huge stone balls along the High Street, which were used for pyschopathic marbles games by the town drunks until they Council drilled the heavy, useless balls into the pavements.....)

This is not logic that we can understand. But it makes sense to those in authority. and just remember. YOU voted them in.......

[sandyr1]

You definitely have a way of putting things, but you are correct....Works the same way here..............

[Cattach]

So the council has a seven million pound under spend!!! So why do they want to close all our facilities to save money? explain the logics of this please.

It is all to do with experinece and professional competence. Just look at the Chair people of out Highland Council committees and you will see what I mean. What does the Education Chairman know about Education? (or the Head of Education for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross who once ran swimming pool - allegedly!, the Finance Chairman about Financial Governance and so on. Amateurs out of their depth and with a lack of understanding of first principles in those fields. You see that by the decisions made regarding education and the cutting of Specialist Teachers, Nursery Teachers, etc. Our recent Caithness Music Festival, once the biggest in the country, now is a shadow of its former self. One choir per section in many of the classes and very few soloists - those yougsters are the upand coming culture of this county and it has been decimated. We want our children to be fit and not be over weight yet specialist PE is now almost off the Primary School Curriculum. Schools are losing many teachers in Primary and both High Schools. Prioritie? - Is the new fancy Bilingual sign at the Thurso council office, with gaelic in big print and first on the sign a higher priority than education. One sign ypou may say but have you been down the west of the area to see the proliferation of signs and names on signs? Tourist from this country, let alone abroad, must have some job finding the proper route before they are post the junction.

[Leanne]

Roundabouts is always a favourite when councils have money to burn...

[concerned resident]

The Council cut our rubbish collections and wasted millions on a heat plant in Wick, and they under spent. The word incompetent comes to mind, and we pay these people? They must have money to burn, ours.

[Alice in Blunderland]

Roundabouts is always a favourite when councils have money to burn...

Here it used to be kerbing at the side of roads :D

[katarina]

Well, obviously someone cannot do their sums! Education should come first. since they now cannot use it for that, why not give all the shops in wick a grant to do up the front of their buildings? right now the delapidation is a disgrace!