Gearing Up
Although the City Council doesn't shut down in what this year at least is referred to optimistically as the summer recess, it is certainly a lot quieter around the Town Hall during August.
( The Council of course doesn't ever shut down with some staff, for example care staff, even working on Christmas and New Years Day, and operatives permanently on call in case of emergency ). The only formal meetings in August tend to be the Planning Committee and Licensing panels, but once the bank holiday is out of the way everything starts winding back up again and the full committee cycle restarts with Overview and Scrutiny Committees meeting next week. Another exception to no meetings in August is AGMA and the Combined Authority, to which we can now add the shadow Police and Crime Panel. The Greater Manchester " family " of meetings take place on the last Friday of every month ( except December when for obvious reasons the meeting tends to be a little earlier in the month ), moving month by month around the conurbation, settling today at Sale Town Hall, for me just a short tram ride from St Peters Square. AGMA used to take a morning, but is now stretching into almost a full day of meetings, but that is in part the price we have to pay for the greater level of devolution we have at the city-region level.
Earlier in the week I had the City Council's own Executive agenda-setting meeting. That takes place two weeks before the meeting of the Executive with the agenda and papers due to be published next Tuesday, eight days before the meeting itself. I understand that Whitehall have sent us yet another set of rules about how we should organise our meetings. You would think they would have enough on trying to sort out the government's own problems, without devoting hours to find ways to make local government more bureaucratic. So much for localism!
02/09/2012
Well, is it any wonder that the economy is performing so badly when the Government spend so much time issuing their little dictats!
As far as I can deduce, 'localism' is a code for "don't blame us, blame your (usually Labour controlled) local authority".
I think we're going to see a lot more of this from the Tories when the benefit changes really start to kick in from next April.
Hopefully the majority of people will be able to see the true architects of this unfolding horror....
06/09/2012
The Sector have been forever Gearing always struggling to do the ground roots work and always beeing availabale to those in need. As far as the voluntary sector is concerned the benefit changes have already kicked in and we are already dealin with the effects on families of the disabled who already save this dicating government billions by taking over the Care they are supposed to recognise destroying communities seems to be theirmain mission.
06/09/2012
I fully agree with your comments about government interference in local authorities, but I guess it is a symptom of power and the corruption of power
05/10/2012
That's because it's usually our Labour controlled local authority that is to blame!
They are selling off the city's artworks, continually issuing parking fines unfairly, and our public transport is exorbitantly over-priced.
What's all this money being spent on? -
It's certainly not being used to unclog our drains, nor to mend the pot-holes in our increasingly delapidated roads and pavements.
Instead, it is being wasted on pop concerts + our councillors have yet again voted to pay themselves amongst the highest wages in the country!